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1346Consciousness, Big Science and Conceptual ClarityIn Gary Marcus & Jeremy Freeman (eds.), in The Future of the Brain: Essays by the World’s Leading Neuroscientists, Princeton University Press. pp. 161-176. 2014.
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879Do causal powers drain awayPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (1): 133-150. 2003.In this note, I will discuss one issue concerning the main argument of Mind in a Physical World (Kim, 1998), the Causal Exclusion Argument. The issue is whether it is a consequence of the Causal Exclusion Argument that all macro level causation (that is, causation above the level of fundamental physics) is an illusion, with all of the apparent causal powers of mental and other macro properties draining into the bottom level of physics. I will argue that such a consequence would give us reason to…Read more
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816QualiaIn Richard L. Gregory (ed.), Oxford Companion to the Mind, Oxford University Press. 2004.Qualia include the ways things look, sound and smell, the way it feels to have a pain; more generally, what it's like to have mental states. Qualia are experiential properties of sensations, feelings, perceptions and, in my view, thoughts and desires as well. But, so defined, who could deny that qualia exist? Yet, the existence of qualia is controversial. Here is what is controversial: whether qualia, so defined, can be characterized in intentional, functional or purely cognitive terms. Opponent…Read more
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2258The mind as the software of the brainIn Daniel N. Osherson, Lila Gleitman, Stephen M. Kosslyn, S. Smith & Saadya Sternberg (eds.), An Invitation to Cognitive Science, Second Edition, Volume 3, Mit Press. pp. 377-425. 1995.In this section, we will start with an influential attempt to define `intelligence', and then we will move to a consideration of how human intelligence is to be investigated on the machine model. The last part of the section will discuss the relation between the mental and the biological
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207Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett (review)Journal of Philosophy 90 (4): 181-193. 1993.
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4The computer model of mindIn Daniel N. Osherson & Edward E. Smith (eds.), An Invitation to Cognitive Science, Mit Press. 1990.
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96Begging the question against phenomenal consciousnessBehavioral and Brain Sciences 15 (2): 205-206. 1992.
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599Mental paintIn Martin Hahn & B. Ramberg (eds.), Reflections and Replies: Essays on the Philosophy of Tyler Burge, Mit Press. pp. 165--200. 2003.The greatest chasm in the philosophy of mind--maybe even all of philosophy-- divides two perspectives on consciousness. The two perspectives differ on whether there is anything in the phenomenal character of conscious experience that goes beyond the intentional, the cognitive and the functional. A convenient terminological handle on the dispute is whether there are
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2466Seeing‐As in the Light of Vision SciencePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (1): 560-572. 2014.
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129Are mechanistic and teleological explanations of behaviour incompatible?Philosophical Quarterly 21 (April): 109-117. 1971.
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268How to Find the Neural Correlate of Consciousness*: Ned BlockRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 43 23-34. 1998.There are two concepts of consciousness that are easy to confuse with one another, access-consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. However, just as the concepts of water and H 2 O are different concepts of the same thing, so the two concepts of consciousness may come to the same thing in the brain. The focus of this paper is on the problems that arise when these two concepts of consciousness are conflated. I will argue that John Searle's reasoning about the function of consciousness goes wron…Read more
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86Response to Kouider et al. : which view is better supported by the evidence?Trends in Cognitive Sciences 16 (3): 141-142. 2012.
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1213The Canberra Plan Neglects GroundIn Terence Horgan, Marcelo Sabates & David Sosa (eds.), Qualia and Mental Causation in a Physical World: Themes from the Philosophy of Jaegwon Kim,, Cambridge University Press. pp. 105-133. 2015.This paper argues that the “Canberra Plan” picture of physicalistic reduction of mind--a picture shared by both its proponents and opponents, philosophers as diverse as David Armstrong, David Chalmers Frank Jackson, Jaegwon Kim, Joe Levine and David Lewis--neglects ground (Fine, 2001, 2012). To the extent that the point of view endorsed by the Canberra Plan has an account of the physical/functional ground of mind at all, it is in one version trivial and in another version implausible. In its mo…Read more
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26Functional Role and Truth ConditionsProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 88 (1): 273-292. 1988.Ned Block, John Campbell; Functional Role and Truth Conditions, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 88, Issue 1, 1 June 1988, Pages 273–292, https:/
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1419Rich conscious perception outside focal attentionTrends in Cognitive Sciences 18 (9): 445-447. 2014.Can we consciously see more items at once than can be held in visual working memory? This question has elud- ed resolution because the ultimate evidence is subjects’ reports in which phenomenal consciousness is filtered through working memory. However, a new technique makes use of the fact that unattended ‘ensemble prop- erties’ can be detected ‘for free’ without decreasing working memory capacity.
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The philosophy of psychologyIn Philosophy 2: Further Through the Subject, Oxford University Press. 1998.
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1145Conceptual Role SemanticsIn Edward Craig (ed.), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 242-256. 1998.According to Conceptual Role Semantics, the meaning of a representation is the role of that representation in the cognitive life of the agent, e.g. in perception, thought and decision-making. It is an extension of the well known "use" theory of meaning, according to which the meaning of a word is its use in communication and more generally, in social interaction. CRS supplements external use by including the role of a symbol inside a computer or a brain. The uses appealed to are not just actual,…Read more
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1218Psychologism and behaviorismPhilosophical Review 90 (1): 5-43. 1981.Let psychologism be the doctrine that whether behavior is intelligent behavior depends on the character of the internal information processing that produces it. More specifically, I mean psychologism to involve the doctrine that two systems could have actual and potential behavior _typical_ of familiar intelligent beings, that the two systems could be exactly alike in their actual and potential behavior, and in their behavioral dispositions and capacities and counterfactual behavioral properties…Read more
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1191The harder problem of consciousnessJournal of Philosophy 99 (8): 391-425. 2002.consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp.
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555Consciousness and cognitive accessProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 108 (1pt3): 289-317. 2008.This article concerns the interplay between two issues that involve both philosophy and neuroscience: whether the content of phenomenal consciousness is 'rich' or 'sparse', whether phenomenal consciousness goes beyond cognitive access, and how it would be possible for there to be evidence one way or the other.
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1559Sexism, racism, ageism and the nature of consciousnessIn Richard Moran, Alan Sidelle & Jennifer E. Whiting (eds.), Philosophical Topics, University of Arkansas Press. pp. 71--88. 2000.Everyone would agree that the American flag is red, white and blue. Everyone should also agree that it looks red, white and blue to people with normal color vision in appropriate circumstances. If a philosophical theory led to the conclusion that the red stripes cannot look red to both men and women, both blacks and whites, both young and old, we would be reluctant (to say the least) to accept that philosophical theory. But there is a widespread philosophical view about the nature of conscious …Read more
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Anti-reductionism slaps back: Mental causation, reduction and superveniencePhilosophical Perspectives 11 107-132. 1997.
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607Attention and mental paint1Philosophical Issues 20 (1): 23-63. 2010.Much of recent philosophy of perception is oriented towards accounting for the phenomenal character of perception—what it is like to perceive—in a non-mentalistic way—that is, without appealing to mental objects or mental qualities. In opposition to such views, I claim that the phenomenal character of perception of a red round object cannot be explained by or reduced to direct awareness of the object, its redness and roundness—or representation of such objects and qualities. Qualities of percept…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Perception |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Neuroscience |
Philosophy of Mind |