The philosophy of cognitive neuroscience tackles concepts about mental phenomena that cannot be uncovered with experimental research alone. This can be quite nebulous as it’s difficult to tell what’s going on in someone’s mind. Although advances in neurotechnology have been able to illuminate some of these difficulties, the subjectivity remains. Unlike generally objective studies such as that of physics and mathematics, the philosophy of the mind requires scholars to dive into the private nature of subjective thought. One of the main topics in this domain is consciousness. While some define this as the state of being ‘awake’, many philosophers dive into consciousness as a higher level of mental phenomena. Under this umbrella, are executive, buffer, and higher-order state theories. In executive theories, philosophers attempt to define conscious states in the context of contemplation and planning. Buffer theories, on the other hand, define consciousness as being present if a being stands in relation to specific areas of their mind that are responsible for specific processes, most notably introspection. Lastly, higher-order state theories look at consciousness as existing when a being is capable of perceiving and analyzing their own mental phenomena. Along with the study of conscious phenomena, unconscious thinking plays an important role in cognition as well. The work of prominent psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung exemplifies this. For instance, thoughts and impulses that are repressed from the conscious mind to the unconscious can reveal themselves through unintentional errors in speech or action, famously termed Freudian slips. Another interesting theory in the field is Jung’s collective unconscious. Jung asserted that the base of human unconsciousness is centered upon a collection of human experiences throughout history. These shared instincts manifest themselves through universal archetypes such as the hero, the primordial mother, and the old sage. Additionally, the foundations of our psyche, including the ego, self, and persona are also archetypical. Although this just scratches the surface of the psychoanalytic school of thought, it’s clear that unconscious phenomena can have vast influences on how humans think. The study of how unconsciousness influences decision-making is one domain that advances in neurotechnology have shed light on. In a 2008 study, Soon, Brass, Heinze, and Haynes leveraged fMRI to reveal that subjects' decision-making was influenced by unconscious predictive brain activity in the frontal and parietal cortex for up to ten seconds before consciously making the decision. In another study, Sheth, Sandkühler, and Bhattacharya (2009) used EEG signals to find that unconscious brain activity is also associated with predicting the moment of realization in subjects tasked with solving verbal puzzles. These findings, among others, show the promise of using neurotechnology to reveal the mental phenomena associated with human behavior. Beyond consciousness, another major topic of debate in the philosophy of mind is rationality. While this study doesn’t suggest that humans are inherently rational, it does attempt to make sense of behavior from a cognitive perspective. The four major routes of accomplishing this are deductive, inductive, abductive, and practical reasoning. Deductive reasoning involves being able to determine the validity of a hypothesis through the validity of its premises. Inductive and abductive reasoning, on the other hand, doesn’t hold such a guarantee and involves a bit of inference. Inductive reasoning often involves making general conclusions based on evidence, while abductive reasoning is based on the underlying reasons behind such evidence. Lastly, practical reasoning involves evaluating actions under the context of the inferred motivations and tendencies behind such actions. Another issue of the philosophy of mind is intentionality. Most notably noticed by medieval philosophers, mental processes tend to be centered around some direct content. While this content doesn’t necessarily have to be grounded in real-world phenomena (for instance, daydreaming about aliens), the theories in this domain place thought relative to something. Often, this something is heavily centered around internal beliefs and desires. However, it is difficult to make the case that all thought is intentional. The mental phenomena associated with an itchy feeling might not be about any subject. In the study of cognition, there are a few general perspectives on the root of mental phenomena. In Dualism, associated with French philosopher Rene Descartes, mental phenomena are viewed as separate from any physical phenomena. This entails that certain aspects of cognition cannot be explained by diving into physical studies. This brings about what is known as an ‘explanatory gap’. While we might be able to explain how an action potential works, how can we explain why one person feels the emotions that they do? In an attempt to leap over this ‘explanatory gap’, radical behaviorists, such as B. F. Skinner, argue the theory of eliminativism, the belief that mental phenomena don’t exist at all. Under the umbrella of eliminativism, is behaviorism, the idea that, rather than mental phenomena, philosophers should search for patterns in outwardly observable behavior. While this school of thought makes studying the mind-body problem more straightforward, it might not tell the full story. Another theory of the mind, known as physicalism, is that mental phenomena are grounded in the physical. The most straightforward form of this school of thought is the Identity Theory. This involves observing the physical phenomena that correspond with certain mental phenomena in order to gain context to explain seemingly mysterious cognitive processes. Another group of ideas is functionalism, which attempts to explain mental phenomena through its purposes. Philosophers that fall into this camp view mental processes as functions and identify them through each process’s inputs, interactions with other processes, and outputs.