What is the philosophical take on the subconscious and who came up with the idea? It seems highly problematic to me in that its existence can never be established because of its very nature. It is rather like positing Pluto to account for wobbles in other known planets' orbits except that Pluto can be demonstrably found! This is different from the unconscious mind which keeps you breathing, etc. which works rather like the programmes running in the background on your PC. No mystery here. And where do dreams enter into this debate? I can't ever recall having had a 'symbolic' dream, just ones dramatising traits and memories I am well aware of. A statement like 'I hated her but I now realise I subconsciously loved her' is surely just hindsight. Knowing and not knowing something at the same time has to be impossible?

Before a computer is assembled, it's a pile of useless wires and hardware. Put it all together and the whole is much greater than its parts, in that it can do things like beat the best chess player in the world. Conversely with the human brain, severe enough head injuries can cause profound changes in personality. Doesn't this "whole much greater than the sum of parts" not prove that dualism fails Occam's razor? I mean, if there was a soul independent of brain matter, where does it go after severe head injuries? By all accounts, people are not who they used to be after such unfortunate losses. Thanks Jeff

Many years ago someone asked a question I'm still unable to answer. I think it falls under 'perception'. I traveled quit a bit and had many interesting experiences as a woman working for a multi-national corporation. While in Pakistan, I met a co-worker's wife. We got along very well and had a great time discussing something we both enjoyed very much - cooking. She turned to me and asked, "What does an avocado taste like?" They just weren't available to her in Lahore. She had seen pictures and read recipes but never had one. I couldn't relate the taste through comparison because avocadoes are unique. I could talk about colour or texture but that didn't satisfy her question about flavour. I asked many people when I got home. The answers all related to texture or colour. I had an interesting disagreement over the answer, "It tastes green." How do you express or talk about flavour without a base to compare against? How can someone share perception without a common experience? Thanks Nadine

I was walking down my school hall today and was thinking about just some random things, such as how this hallway smells, who that person looks like, etc. Then, about 2 minutes later I began to think the same basic thoughts, just in a seperate location and at a later time. Since nobody else heard these thoughts the first time, maybe my mind did not really think of them 2 minutes ago but was just telling myself that 2 minutes ago I thought those things. What I mean to say is, how can I be sure that I thought of something earlier if my mind may have just fabricated its own memories?

It's safe to say that Electricity has no feeling. and that a dead body has no feeling. And that a live body that's in a coma has no feeling. Therefore is it not also safe to say that a soul must exist? There has to be something to make a person a person. We cannot have "minds" and "thought" if we are only electricity and cells. Correct?

It seems philosophy is about one's relationship with the world... yet, there is no category of "Relationships" presented by AskPhilosophers. Perhaps it's too broad a category? Perhaps the right category for the following question is "Personality"... but that's not on the list either. It seems that personalities shift as part of a relationship. Behaviors that wouldn't have ever been displayed not only present themselves but seem to be part of a persona and then are viewed as part of one's personality. How do we know the true nature of one's personality?

Do men need speech in order to think? In other words, can we do the act of thinking without "speaking" to ourselves consciously or unconsciously? For myself, I use colloquial English, the language I am most fluent in, when I think in my mind. Does it have to be the case that one would use his or her most developed language to think?

In what ways do perceptions (what we see) and images (what we imagine) differ? Is a hallucination an image or a perception? How about a dream? Bob

Dear Philosophers, What's it like to be another person? Milo (age 6)

If I read something I wrote long ago, am I engaged in a different sort of activity than reading something someone else wrote? What if I don't remember writing it?