This winter vacation is very meaningful. First of all, I am grateful to the school and teachers for the learning opportunities provided to us, Dr. Tom's wonderful lectures and teacher Kahlo's careful tips. It's my great honor to join the academic learning of Cambridge University. Although it's only more than a month, I have experienced the academic atmosphere of Cambridge classroom, and the difference between the course learning method and the logical thinking mode.
As a psychology student, I am interested in philosophy of mind. This course takes me into a field of mind and introduces the core issues in philosophy of mind. In the process of learning, Dr. Tom answered questions in Padlet before class, his rigorous logical reasoning process and wonderful explanation in the course, his patient listening and reply in students’ discussion, and the guidance to our essay, all brought me great inspiration. The different positions on the relationship between mind and body make me think more about how we know the world. For a long time, we have been deeply influenced by the thinking framework of Cartesian dualism and the position of materialism. However, along these ideas, we cannot get a reasonable explanation of the relationships between mind and body. The mind is an immaterial entity different from the body. It cannot be equivalent to external behavior or brain’s neural activities. No matter how accurate the behavior or neural activities are described in scientific terms, it cannot explain the subjective conscious experience. Therefore, the only use of scientific knowledge cannot clarify the nature of the mind, and we still have a lot of work to do on the road of exploring what the mind is.
In general, this learning makes the time colorful, which is not only the improvement of knowledge, but also the transformation of thinking mode. Thanks again to Jilin University and Cambridge, Dr. Tom and the teachers of the project team. I hope that such projects will be better and better, and if possible, looking forward to be fortunate enough to participate in it next time.
