•  644
    Actuality and knowability
    Analysis 71 (3): 411-419. 2011.
    It is widely believed that for all p, or at least for all entertainable p, it is knowable a priori that (p iff actually p). It is even more widely believed that for all such p, it is knowable that (p iff actually p). There is a simple argument against these claims from four antecedently plausible premises.
  •  644
    The project that Dan Lloyd has undertaken is admirable and audacious. He has tried to boil down the substrate of information-processing that underlies conscious experience to some very simple elements, in order to gain a better understanding of the phenomenon. Some people will suspect that by considering a model as simple as a connectionist network, Dan has thrown away everything that is interesting about consciousness. Perhaps there is something to that complaint, but I will take a different ta…Read more
  •  644
    Intro to what "first person" and "third person" mean. (outline the probs of the first person) (convenience of third person vs absoluteness of first person) (explain terminology) Dominance of third person, reasons. (embarassment with first person) (division of reactions) (natural selection - those who can make the most noise) (analogy with behaviourism) Reductionism, hard line and soft line Appropriation of first person terms by reductionists.
  •  635
    Materialism and the metaphysics of modality
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59 (2): 473-96. 1999.
    This appeared in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59:473-93, as a response to four papers in a symposium on my book The Conscious Mind . Most of it should be comprehensible without having read the papers in question. This paper is for an audience of philosophers and so is relatively technical. It will probably also help to have read some of the book. The papers I’m responding to are: Chris Hill & Brian McLaughlin, There are fewer things in reality than are dreamt of in Chalmers’ philosop…Read more
  •  626
    Naturalistic dualism
    In Max Velmans & Susan Schneider (eds.), The Conscious Mind, Oxford University Press. pp. 359--368. 1996.
  •  626
    We could have been characters in a huge computer simulation. It is a familiar idea that the whole world might be simulated on a computer, and things would seem exactly the same to us (and indeed, who is to say that we are not).
  •  607
    Connectionism and compositionality: Why Fodor and Pylyshyn were wrong
    Philosophical Psychology 6 (3): 305-319. 1993.
    This paper offers both a theoretical and an experimental perspective on the relationship between connectionist and Classical (symbol-processing) models. Firstly, a serious flaw in Fodor and Pylyshyn’s argument against connectionism is pointed out: if, in fact, a part of their argument is valid, then it establishes a conclusion quite different from that which they intend, a conclusion which is demonstrably false. The source of this flaw is traced to an underestimation of the differences between l…Read more
  •  602
    The nature of narrow content
    Philosophical Issues 13 (1): 46-66. 2003.
    A content of a subject's mental state is narrow when it is determined by the subject's intrinsic properties: that is, when any possible intrinsic duplicate of the subject has a corresponding mental state with the same content. A content of a subject's mental state is..
  •  597
    How can we construct a science of consciousness?
    In Michael S. Gazzaniga (ed.), The Cognitive Neurosciences Iii, Mit Press. pp. 1111--1119. 2004.
    In recent years there has been an explosion of scientific work on consciousness in cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and other fields. It has become possible to think that we are moving toward a genuine scientific understanding of conscious experience. But what is the science of consciousness all about, and what form should such a science take? This chapter gives an overview of the agenda
  •  595
    The problems of consciousness
    In H. Jasper, L. Descarries, V. Castellucci & S. Rossignol (eds.), Consciousness: At the Frontiers of Neuroscience, Lippincott-raven. pp. 29-59. 1998.
    This paper is an edited transcription of a talk at the 1997 Montreal symposium on "Consciousness at the Frontiers of Neuroscience". There's not much here that isn't said elsewhere, e.g. in "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" and "How Can We Construct a Science of Consciousness?"]]
  •  571
    The hard problem of consciousness
    In Max Velmans & Susan Schneider (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, Blackwell. 2007.
    The easy problems of consciousness are those that seem directly susceptible to the standard methods of cognitive science, whereby a phenomenon is explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. The hard problems are those that seem to resist those methods. The easy problems are easy precisely because they concern the explanation of cognitive abilities and functions. Once we have specified the neural or computational mechanism that performs the function of verbal report, for example, th…Read more
  •  532
    Minds, Machines, And Mathematics A Review of Shadows of the Mind by Roger Penrose (review)
    PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 2 11-20. 1995.
    In his stimulating book SHADOWS OF THE MIND, Roger Penrose presents arguments, based on Gödel's theorem, for the conclusion that human thought is uncomputable. There are actually two separate arguments in Penrose's book. The second has been widely ignored, but seems to me to be much more interesting and novel than the first. I will address both forms of the argument in some detail. Toward the end, I will also comment on Penrose's proposals for a "new science of consciousness".
  •  521
    Intuitions in philosophy: a minimal defense
    Philosophical Studies 171 (3): 535-544. 2014.
    In Philosophy Without Intuitions, Herman Cappelen focuses on the metaphilosophical thesis he calls Centrality: contemporary analytic philosophers rely on intuitions as evidence for philosophical theories. Using linguistic and textual analysis, he argues that Centrality is false. He also suggests that because most philosophers accept Centrality, they have mistaken beliefs about their own methods.To put my own views on the table: I do not have a large theoretical stake in the status of intuitions,…Read more
  •  516
    Thanks to all the people who responded to my enquiry about the status of the Continuum Hypothesis. This is a really fascinating subject, which I could waste far too much time on. The following is a summary of some aspects of the feeling I got for the problems. This will be old hat to set theorists, and no doubt there are a couple of embarrassing misunderstandings, but it might be of some interest to non professionals.
  •  491
    Self-ascription without qualia: A case study
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (1): 35-36. 1993.
    In Section 5 of his interesting article, Goldman suggests that the consideration of imaginary cases can be valuable in the analysis of our psychological concepts. In particular, he argues that we can imagine a system that is isomorphic to us under any functional description, but which lacks qualitative mental states, such as pains and color sensations. Whether or not such a being is empirically possible, it certainly seems to be logically possible, or conceptually coherent. Goldman argues from t…Read more
  •  488
    More than a decade ago, philosopher John Searle started a long-running controversy with his paper “Minds, Brains, and Programs” (Searle, 1980a), an attack on the ambitious claims of artificial intelligence (AI). With his now famous _Chinese Room_ argument, Searle claimed to show that despite the best efforts of AI researchers, a computer could never recreate such vital properties of human mentality as intentionality, subjectivity, and understanding. The AI research program is based on the underl…Read more
  •  467
    A leading philosopher takes a mind-bending journey through virtual worlds, illuminating the nature of reality and our place within it. Virtual reality is genuine reality; that's the central thesis of Reality+. In a highly original work of "technophilosophy," David J. Chalmers gives a compelling analysis of our technological future. He argues that virtual worlds are not second-class worlds, and that we can live a meaningful life in virtual reality. We may even be in a virtual world already. Along…Read more
  •  459
    High-level perception, representation, and analogy:A critique of artificial intelligence methodology
    with Robert M. French and Douglas R. Hofstadter
    Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intellige 4 (3). 1992.
    High-level perception--”the process of making sense of complex data at an abstract, conceptual level--”is fundamental to human cognition. Through high-level perception, chaotic environmen- tal stimuli are organized into the mental representations that are used throughout cognitive pro- cessing. Much work in traditional artificial intelligence has ignored the process of high-level perception, by starting with hand-coded representations. In this paper, we argue that this dis- missal of perceptual …Read more
  •  451
    Is the Hard Problem of Consciousness Universal?
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 27 (5-6): 227-257. 2020.
  •  449
    Imagination, indexicality, and intensions (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (1): 182-90. 2004.
    John Perry's book Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness is a lucid and engaging defense of a physicalist view of consciousness against various anti-physicalist arguments. In what follows, I will address Perry's responses to the three main anti-physicalist arguments he discusses: the zombie argument , the knowledge argument , and the modal argument
  •  446
    On implementing a computation
    Minds and Machines 4 (4): 391-402. 1994.
    To clarify the notion of computation and its role in cognitive science, we need an account of implementation, the nexus between abstract computations and physical systems. I provide such an account, based on the idea that a physical system implements a computation if the causal structure of the system mirrors the formal structure of the computation. The account is developed for the class of combinatorial-state automata, but is sufficiently general to cover all other discrete computational formal…Read more
  •  441
    This is just a beginning categorization. I claim no 'objective correctness' for it. And of course the categories can be fluid, and the same joke can be a member of more than one category (and perhaps it will be funnier if it is). But thinking about the jokes which I can recall from the Humour Weekend, most seem to fall squarely into one or another category, indicating that perhaps this is a useful way of dividing jokes. It seems to me that the "causes of humour" in all 4 classes are different, c…Read more
  •  435
    Précis of The Conscious Mind (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59 (2): 435-438. 1999.
    Chapter 1: Two Concepts of Mind. I distinguish the phenomenal and psychological concepts of mind. I argue that every mental state is a phenomenal state, a psychological state, or a hybrid of the two. I discuss the two mind-body problems corresponding to the two concepts of mind, and discuss the various senses of the term “consciousness”. Chapter 2: Supervenience and Explanation. I distinguish varieties of supervenience, especially logical and natural supervenience, where supervening properties c…Read more
  •  432
    The Virtual as the Digital
    Disputatio 11 (55): 453-486. 2019.
    I reply to seven commentaries on “The Virtual and the Real”. In response to Claus Beisbart, Jesper Juul, Peter Ludlow, and Neil McDonnell and Nathan Wildman, I clarify and develop my view that virtual are digital objects, with special attention to the nature of digital objects and data structures. In response to Alyssa Ney and Eric Schwitzgebel, I clarify and defend my spatial functionalism, with special attention to the connections between space and consciousness. In response to Marc Silcox, I …Read more
  •  419
    The Singularity: A Reply to Commentators
    Journal of Consciousness Studies (7-8): 141-167. 2012.
    I would like to thank the authors of the 26 contributions to this symposium on my article “The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis”. I learned a great deal from the reading their commentaries. Some of the commentaries engaged my article in detail, while others developed ideas about the singularity in other directions. In this reply I will concentrate mainly on those in the first group, with occasional comments on those in the second. A singularity (or an intelligence explosion) is a rapid incr…Read more
  •  410
    In article <[email protected]> [email protected] writes: Reminds me of a friend of mine who claims that the number 17 is "the most random" number. His proof ran as follows: pick a number. It's not really as good a random number as 17, is it? (Invariable Answer: "Umm, well, no...") This reminds me of a little experiment I did a couple of years ago. I stood on a busy street corner in Oxford, and asked passers by to "name a random number between zero and infinity." I was wondering w…Read more
  •  408
    It is fairly well-known that certain hard computational problems (that is, 'difficult' problems for a digital processor to solve) can in fact be solved much more easily with an analog machine. This raises questions about the true nature of the distinction between analog and digital computation (if such a distinction exists). I try to analyze the source of the observed difference in terms of (1) expanding parallelism and (2) more generally, infinite-state Turing machines. The issue of discretenes…Read more