2.1 Introduction We use the words ‘conscious’ and ‘consciousness’ in a variety of ways. We talk of losing and regaining consciousness, of being conscious of one's appearance and of taking conscious decisions. We speak of self-consciousness and class-consciousness, of consciousness-raising activities and consciousness-enhancing drugs. Freudians contrast the conscious mind with the unconscious, gurus seek to promote world consciousness and mystics cultivate pure consciousness. These various uses reflect
2.1 Introduction The distinction noted in section 1 between the representational properties of a linguistic utterance (its ‘meaning’) and the representational properties of a mental state (its ‘content’) gives rise, naturally enough, to the suspicion that one of these might be more fundamental than the other. In this section I will look at a theory, most closely associated with the British philosopher H.P. Grice (1913–88), to the effect that the source of an utterance's meaning is the speaker's mind
1.6 Further reading For an advanced general introduction to the philosophy of language, see Blackburn 1984. Lycan 1996 is pitched at a more accessible level. Pinker 1994 is an informal but informative discussion of the hypothesis that much of our linguistic ability is innate, an important topic that has had to be left out of this unit.
2 Kinds of minds Let us then start on the questions of what kinds of things possess or could possess mentality, while remembering that the meaning of the term is somewhat elastic and imprecise. What kind of possible things, other than Introduction This unit introduces some philosophical questions concerning the nature of the mind and mental phenomena, such as thoughts, perceptions and emotions. The unit considers what is involved in having a mind, whether there are different kinds of minds, and whether there is some characteristic that is shared by all mental phenomena. This unit is an adapted extract from the Open University course< 5.4 Clinics and outpatient services In addition to acquiring greater access to general practitioners in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, poor patients also received more medical help from the outpatient departments of charitable hospitals and dispensaries. Hospital outpatient departments were an increasingly popular source of care: between 1860 and 1900, the number of patients attending the outpatient department of the London Hospital increased from 25,000 to 220,000. By 1910, there were 1.75 million attendanc 5.1 Introduction When people did seek help for their ailments, most sought some form of outpatient care. For the upper and middle classes, during much of the nineteenth century, this meant calling in a general practitioner. The poorest could apply for help at the outpatient department of a charitable hospital or dispensary. Another source of help was to apply for assistance from local government – in some countries the local authorities employed doctors to care for the poor. In Britain, medical help was ava 3.3 Hygiene Good hygiene – a clean home and a clean body – would also appear to have been available to all classes, but again, it was easier for the wealthier classes to achieve these goals. Newer houses, with bathrooms and laundries, modern plumbing and sanitary facilities, and servants to do the hard work, ensured that the middle and upper classes could enjoy regular baths (hot and cold), clean clothes and clean homes. Exercise and good personal hygiene were not just a means of protecting hea 4.3 Social factors in the growth of the asylum: social control, the family and the asylum Both contemporary commentators and historians have argued that the pressures of capitalism resulted in families being not only less capable of supporting family members but also less tolerant of unruly behaviour. In Scull's phrase, the asylum became a dumping ground for ‘inconvenient people’. It is clear from contemporary admission documents, including private correspondence and diaries, that caring for a mentally ill relative put all sorts of emotional strains on families. Many strove in 6.3 First Essay The earliest essay, written under the nom de plume of ‘one of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the County of Lanark’ (if intended to provide Owen with anonymity this was a thin disguise, given the content) and entitled ‘On the Formation of Character’, is prefixed by the famous precept, central to the ‘New View’, that: Any general character, from the best to the worst, from the most ignoran 2.2 Battlefield sites Battlefields are ‘increasingly being taken up as part of a nation's “official” heritage’ (Carman and Carman, 2006, p. 1) so it is essential to consider their role in the construction of individual and group identity, and in developing a sense of nationhood. As heritage sites, battlefields are a paradox: on the one hand, their qualities as deeply experiential places have long been recognised and are well documented; on the other hand, battlefield sites are often unprepossessing places. 2.1 Overview Heritage sites have particular and significant roles in our personal and national identity. They operate as fundamental building blocks in the construction of a sense of self and of ‘pastness’. They are key elements that enable individuals to locate themselves within a larger group past and identity. There are any number of sites – from great house to open-air museum to ancient monument, and to any of the many other places that mark aspects of the past – but together they provide the 6.2.2 Fixed air It was well known that ‘air’ was given off by magnesia (or limestone) when treated with acids. Black sought to show that this ‘air’, which he called ‘fixed air’ (carbon dioxide), is also lost when magnesia is heated. Hampered by practical difficulties in his efforts to collect the fixed air liberated during the heating of magnesia, Black used a series of chemical reactions to prove his argument. He dissolved the magnesia usta in sulphuric acid to produce a solution of Epsom salt. 5.3 Hutton's geology: ‘No vestige of a beginning – no prospect of an end’ Geologists are engaged on the business of reconstructing the earth's past and determining the agents of geological change. The only documentary evidence of the earth's origins and ancient past, and of the agents that had caused change, available to Hutton was the book of Genesis, and he had sceptically put it aside, along with miracles. But what if the processes that are presently observable were to be taken as the key to the past? How far might geological enquiry go with the assumptio 3.3 Architecture Printing and publishing, then, had their connections with the Enlightenment programme. Architecture too was related. The Adam family of architects (the father and his two sons) moved in the Edinburgh circle of the intellectuals. The young Robert Adam, for example, attended both McLaurin's mathematics lectures and Monro's anatomy lectures at the university, and his home life was enlivened by regular visits from the leading lights of the city. As one contemporary described the household, in a r 2.2 The Church The Scottish Church seems an unlikely place to look for the stirrings of enlightenment. In 1690, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland passed an act against ‘the Atheistical Opinions of the Deists’, and, in 1696, an eighteen-year-old Edinburgh University student was executed for denying some of the propositions of Christianity. The legacy of the Scottish, Calvinist Reformation, it seems, was one of conformism, intolerance and narrow-mindedness. But this is not the whole sto 3.5 What can we learn? The next activity poses a question that should encourage you to bring together the various observations you made above. What can we learn from who is trained and the way people train to make kente and adinkr 3.3 Training to weave kente Once you’ve watched the video, make a few notes on how the kente weavers train. 2.4.3 Literature This doesn't have the kind of physical presence that material evidence does, but it has a different strength: it gives us, more literally, voices from the past. We can, as it were, hear the ancient Greeks and Romans speak, about what happened, about how they felt, about what they thought, and experience how they expressed themselves. This gives us a rather different access to their world, complementary to the one we get from material culture. Like the word ‘arts’, literature can sug 2.4.2 The visual arts These are closely related to archaeology. They, too, are things we can look at and touch after all. The difference is very much one of interpretation. Are the Parthenon statues art or archaeology; is an ancient painted pot art or archaeology? In order to avoid such questions, many people use the term ‘material culture’ to cover both. For many purposes, the difference doesn't matter. In fact, it is a good illustration of the advantages of interdisciplinary work, with different kinds of app
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