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34789Philosophers on Philosophy: The 2020 PhilPapers SurveyPhilosophers' Imprint 23 (11). 2023.What are the philosophical views of professional philosophers, and how do these views change over time? The 2020 PhilPapers Survey surveyed around 2000 philosophers on 100 philosophical questions. The results provide a snapshot of the state of some central debates in philosophy, reveal correlations and demographic effects involving philosophers' views, and reveal some changes in philosophers' views over the last decade.
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871Two-dimensional semanticsIn E. Lepore & B. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to the Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. 2006.Two-dimensional approaches to semantics, broadly understood, recognize two "dimensions" of the meaning or content of linguistic items. On these approaches, expressions and their utterances are associated with two different sorts of semantic values, which play different explanatory roles. Typically, one semantic value is associated with reference and ordinary truth-conditions, while the other is associated with the way that reference and truth-conditions depend on the external world. The second s…Read more
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637Naturalistic dualismIn Max Velmans & Susan Schneider (eds.), The Conscious Mind, Oxford University Press. pp. 359--368. 1996.
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621Connectionism and compositionality: Why Fodor and Pylyshyn were wrongPhilosophical 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
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600The hard problem of consciousnessIn 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
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544Minds, 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".
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455Imagination, 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
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441Précis 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
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418Intensions and Indeterminacy: Reply to Soames, Turner, and WilsonPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (1): 249-269. 2014.
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324Ramsey + Moore = GodAnalysis 67 (2): 170-172. 2007.Frank Ramsey (1931) wrote: If two people are arguing 'if p will q?' and both are in doubt as to p, they are adding p hypothetically to their stock of knowledge and arguing on that basis about q. We can say that they are fixing their degrees of belief in q given p. Let us take the first sentence the way it is often taken, as proposing the following test for the acceptability of an indicative conditional: ‘If p then q’ is acceptable to a subject S iff, were S to accept p and consider q, S would ac…Read more
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233Précis of Constructing the WorldPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (1): 217-219. 2014.
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198Syntactic transformations on distributed representationsConnection Science 2 53-62. 1990.There has been much interest in the possibility of connectionist models whose representations can be endowed with compositional structure, and a variety of such models have been proposed. These models typically use distributed representations that arise from the functional composition of constituent parts. Functional composition and decomposition alone, however, yield only an implementation of classical symbolic theories. This paper explores the possibility of moving beyond implementation by exp…Read more
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155B Chandrasekaran writes: It appears that there are three realms: the realm of matter, the realm of representations, and the realm of qualia/intentions/consciousness, not just two: matter and consciousness. I like this distinction, although I think there might more naturally be four realms to distinguish.
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141Books for review and for listing here should be addressed to Emily Zakin, Review Editor, Department of Philosophy, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056Teaching Philosophy 25 (4): 403. 2002.
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140A piece of iMeThe Philosophers' Magazine 43 41-49. 2008.The radical view, the view we’re kind of pushing, is that the iPhone can be seen literally as a part of my mind. I actually remember things: in virtue of this information being in the iPhone, it is part of my memory. The iPhone isn’t just a tool for my cognition, it’s part of my cognition
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102Toward a Science of Consciousness III: The Third Tucson Discussions and Debates (edited book)MIT Press. 1999.The first two conferences and books have become touchstones for the field. This volume presents a selection of invited papers from the third conference.
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83Has the biobank bubble burst? Withstanding the challenges for sustainable biobanking in the digital eraBMC Medical Ethics 17 (1): 1. 2016._BMC Medical Ethics_ is an open access journal publishing original peer-reviewed research articles in relation to the ethical aspects of biomedical research and clinical practice, including professional choices and conduct, medical technologies, healthcare systems and health policies. _BMC __Medical Ethics _is part of the _BMC_ series which publishes subject-specific journals focused on the needs of individual research communities across all areas of biology and medicine. We do not make editoria…Read more
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42Availability: The cognitive basis of experienceBehavioral and Brain Sciences 20 (1): 148-149. 1997.Although A-consciousness and P-consciousness are conceptually distinct, a refined notion of A-consciousness makes it plausible that the two are empirically inseparable. I suggest that the notion of direct availability for global control can play a central role here, and draw out some consequences.
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41Malpractice Liability for the Failure to Adequately Educate Patients: The Australian Law of “Informed Consent” and Its Implications for American Ethics CommitteesCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 2 (3): 371. 1993.At first glance, the first informed consent case to be decided by the High Court of Australia appears to be little more than a clear and simple description of the substantive law accepted in most American jurisdictions - although that is no small accomplishment in and of itself. In Rogers v. Whitaker, the highest court in Australia succinctly and persuasively rejected informed consent as a species of battery law, accepted it as a form, of ordinary professional negligence law, and adopted the “Am…Read more
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40Uploading: A Philosophical AnalysisIn Russell Blackford & Damien Broderick (eds.), Intelligence Unbound, Wiley. 2014-08-11.This chapter describes three relatively specific forms such as destructive uploading, gradual uploading, and nondestructive uploading. Neuroscience is gradually discovering various neural correlates of consciousness, but this research program largely takes the existence of consciousness for granted. It presents an argument for the pessimistic view and an argument for the optimistic view, both of which run parallel to related arguments that can be given concerning teletransportation. Cryonic tech…Read more
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38Consciousness and its Place in NatureIn Stephen P. Stich & Ted A. Warfield (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell. 2003.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction1 The Problem Arguments Against Materialism Type‐A Materialism Type‐B Materialism15 The Two‐Dimensional Argument Against Type‐B Materialism Type‐C Materialism Interlude Type‐D Dualism Type‐E Dualism Type‐F Monism Conclusions.
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36'TT Ontology, the Hard Problem of Experience,-*'-*'Free Will, and Agency'In Stuart R. Hameroff, Alfred W. Kaszniak & Alwyn Scott (eds.), Toward a Science of Consciousness II: The Second Tucson Discussions and Debates, Mit Press. pp. 2--79. 1998.
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23The SingularityIn Susan Schneider (ed.), Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, Wiley. 2016.This chapter provides a rich philosophical discussion of superintelligence, a widely discussed piece that has encouraged philosophers of mind to take transhumanism, mind uploading, and the singularity more seriously. It starts with the argument for a singularity: is there good reason to believe that there will be an intelligence explosion? Next, the chapter considers how to negotiate the singularity: if it is possible that there will be a singularity, how can we maximize the chances of a good ou…Read more
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Philosophy, Misc |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy, Misc |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |