By SHEN Xiaoqian

The School of Foreign Languages held the fifth lecture, which was given by Dr. Matthew Conduct at 7 p.m. on January 4th, 2013 in Liyun A102. The topic of the lecture was three philosophical problems in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy.

The first problem was about Cartesian dualism. One of Descartes’ famous saying was “I think therefore I am.” In his dualism theory, mind and body were two fundamentally kinds of substance in the world. The former was thinking substance while the latter was extended substance. Dr. Matthew Conduct began the second problem of illusion with the question - Do we experience the world directly? Then he displayed some pictures that could cause illusion and explained that illusion might be the result of human experience. The last problem was the Chinese Room Argument, whose result was that minds could not be produced by computational approaches alone.

Philosophy was always regarded abstract and even obscure. However, it seemed to be different in Dr. Matthew Conduct’s lecture. There was always a question and answer session following every discussion of the problems, so that the audience could have their confusion solved in time which would also encourage them to brainstorm.