•  1121
    Sliders
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 30 (9): 154-163. 2023.
    'Sliders' are a speculative introspection-enhancing future technology allowing humans with cybernetic brain implants to precisely and voluntarily modulate moods and other mental states that vary along a one-dimensional scale. Such future humans may, for example, use the Sliders interface to temporarily present a COWARDLY–COURAGEOUS 'slider' in their visual field, and with a mere act of will change their level of courage from a 60 to a 65 on the 100-point scale. The present article discusses the …Read more
  •  6
    The Neurophilosophy of Consciousness
    In Susan Schneider & Max Velmans (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, Wiley. 2017.
    Neurophilosophical appeals to neuroscience involve explicit and detailed use of contemporary neuroscientific literature. Neurophilosophy is not to be distinguished from other forms of naturalism by the philosophical conclusions that might be reached but by the role that contemporary neuroscience plays in the premises of the arguments for those conclusions. This chapter examines the neurophilosophical theories, and these theories will be useful to look at a small sample of some of the relevant ne…Read more
  • The Philosophy of Neuroscience
    with Bickle John and Anthony Landreth
    In Peter Adamson (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2012.
  • Synthetic neuroethology
    In James Moor & Terrell Ward Bynum (eds.), Cyberphilosophy: the intersection of philosophy and computing, Blackwell. 2002.
  •  314
    Robot Pain
    In Jennifer Corns (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Pain, Routledge. pp. 200-209. 2017.
    I have laid out what seem to me to be the most promising arguments on opposing sides of the question of whether what humans regard as the first-person accessible aspects of pain could also be implemented in robots. I have emphasized the ways in which the thought experiments in the respective arguments attempt to marshal hypothetical first- person accessible evidence concerning how one’s own mental life appears to oneself. In the Chinese room argument, a crucial premise involves the thesis that f…Read more
  •  274
    Conscious-state Anti-realism
    In Carlos Muñoz-Suárez & Filipe De Brigard (eds.), Content and Consciousness Revisited, Springer. pp. 184-197. 2015.
    Realism about consciousness conjoins a claim that consciousness exists with a claim that the existence is independent in some interesting sense. Consciousness realism so conceived may thus be opposed by a variety of anti-realisms, distinguished from each other by denying the first, the second, or both of the realist’s defining claims. I argue that Dennett’s view of consciousness is best read as an anti-realism that affirms the existence of consciousness while denying an important independence cl…Read more
  •  31
    Philosophy Illustrated: Forty-two Thought Experiments to Broaden Your Mind (review)
    The Philosophers' Magazine 96 114-116. 2022.
  •  753
    The most promising approaches to understanding phenomenal consciousness are what I’ll call cognitive approaches, the most notable exemplars of which are the theories of consciousness articulated by David Rosenthal and Daniel Dennett. The aim of the present contribution is to review the core similarities and differences of these exemplars, as well as to outline the main strengths and remaining challenges to this general sort of approach.
  •  1702
    Meta-Illusionism and Qualia Quietism
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 23 (11-12): 140-148. 2016.
    Many so-called problems in contemporary philosophy of mind depend for their expression on a collection of inter-defined technical terms, a few of which are qualia, phenomenal property, and what-it’s-like-ness. I express my scepticism about Keith Frankish’s illusionism, the view that people are generally subject to a systematic illusion that any properties are phenomenal, and scout the relative merits of two alternatives to Frankish’s illusionism. The first is phenomenal meta-illusionism, the vie…Read more
  •  269
    Evolving artificial minds and brains
    with Alex Vereschagin and Mike Collins
    In Drew Khlentzos & Andrea Schalley (eds.), Mental States Volume 1: Evolution, function, nature, John Benjamins. 2007.
    We explicate representational content by addressing how representations that ex- plain intelligent behavior might be acquired through processes of Darwinian evo- lution. We present the results of computer simulations of evolved neural network controllers and discuss the similarity of the simulations to real-world examples of neural network control of animal behavior. We argue that focusing on the simplest cases of evolved intelligent behavior, in both simulated and real organisms, reveals that e…Read more
  •  130
    Representational parts
    with Rick Grush
    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1 (4): 389-394. 2002.
    In this reply we claim that, contra Dreyfus, the kinds of skillful performances Dreyfus discusses _are_ representational. We explain this proposal, and then defend it against an objection to the effect that the representational notion we invoke is a weak one countenancing only some global state of an organism as a representation. According to this objection, such a representation is not a robust, projectible property of an organism, and hence will gain no explana- tory leverage in cognitive scie…Read more
  •  105
    Cognitive cellular automata
    In Complex Biological Systems:, Icfai University Press. 2008.
    In this paper I explore the question of how artificial life might be used to get a handle on philosophical issues concerning the mind-body problem. I focus on questions concerning what the physical precursors were to the earliest evolved versions of intelligent life. I discuss how cellular automata might constitute an experimental platform for the exploration of such issues, since cellular automata offer a unified framework for the modeling of physical, biological, and psychological processes. I…Read more
  •  9
    Cognitive Science is a major new guide to the central theories and problems in the study of the mind and brain. The authors clearly explain how and why cognitive science aims to understand the brain as a computational system that manipulates representations. They identify the roots of cognitive science in Descartes - who argued that all knowledge of the external world is filtered through some sort of representation - and examine the present-day role of Artificial Intelligence, computing, psychol…Read more
  •  508
    The Myth of Color Sensations, or How Not to See a Yellow Banana
    Topics in Cognitive Science 9 (1): 228-240. 2017.
    I argue against a class of philosophical views of color perception, especially insofar as such views posit the existence of color sensations. I argue against the need to posit such nonconceptual mental intermediaries between the stimulus and the eventual conceptualized perceptual judgment. Central to my arguments are considerations of certain color illusions. Such illusions are best explained by reference to high-level, conceptualized knowledge concerning, for example, object identity, likely li…Read more
  •  244
    2. Daugman, J. G. Brain metaphor and brain theory 3. Mundale, J. Neuroanatomical Foundations of Cognition: Connecting the Neuronal Level with the Study of Higher Brain Areas
  •  75
    I argue for the superiority of non-gappy physicalism over gappy physicalism. While physicalists are united in denying an ontological gap between the phenomenal and the physical, the gappy affirm and the non-gappy deny a relevant epistemological gap. Central to my arguments will be contemplation of Swamp Mary, a being physically intrinsically similar to post-release Mary (a physically omniscient being who has experienced red) but has not herself (the Swamp being) experienced red. Swamp Mary has p…Read more
  •  154
    Of all the enigmatic remarks running through Wittgensteinís Tractatus, none are a greater source of puzzlement to this reader than the endorsement of solipsism in 5.6-5.641. Wittgenstein writes ìI am my worldî, but, even though ìwhat solipsism means, is quite correct...it cannot be said, but it shows itselfî (5.63; 5.62). More intriguing still, he writes.
  •  771
    Metaphysical Daring as a Posthuman Survival Strategy
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy 39 (1): 144-157. 2015.
    I develop an argument that believing in the survivability of a mind uploading procedure conveys value to its believers that is assessable independently of assessing the truth of the belief. Regardless of whether the first-order metaphysical belief is true, believing it conveys a kind of Darwinian fitness to the believer. Of course, a further question remains of whether having that Darwinian property can be a basis—in a rational sense of being a basis—for one’s holding the belief. I’ll also make …Read more
  •  402
    Many philosophical issues concern questions of objectivity and subjectivity. Of these questions, there are two kinds. The first considers whether something is objective or subjective; the second what it _means_ for something to be objective or subjective
  •  63
    I develop advice to the reductionist about consciousness in the form of a transcendental argument that depends crucially on the sorts of knowledge claims concerning consciousness that, as crucial elements in the anti-reductionists’ epistemicgap arguments, the anti-reductionist will readily concede. The argument that I develop goes as follows. P1. If I know that I am not a zombie, then phenomenal character is (a certain kind of) conceptualized egocentric content. P2. I know that I am not a zombie…Read more
  •  653
    The Philosophy and Neuroscience Movement
    Analyse & Kritik 29 (1): 3-23. 2007.
    A movement dedicated to applying neuroscience to traditional philosophical problems and using philosophical methods to illuminate issues in neuroscience began about twenty-five years ago. Results in neuroscience have affected how we see traditional areas of philosophical concern such as perception, belief-formation, and consciousness. There is an interesting interaction between some of the distinctive features of neuroscience and important general issues in the philosophy of science. And recent …Read more
  •  253
    The introspectibility of brain states as such
    In Brian Keeley (ed.), Paul Churchland, Cambridge University Press. 2006.
    Is the Introspection Thesis true? It certainly isn’t obvious. Introspection is the faculty by which each of us has access to his or her own mental states. Even if we were to suppose that mental states are identical to brain states, it doesn’t follow immediately from this supposition that we can introspect our mental states as brain states. This point is analogous to the following. It doesn’t follow immediately from the mere fact that some distant object is identical to a horse that we can percei…Read more
  •  485
    Supervenience and neuroscience
    Synthese 180 (3). 2011.
    The philosophical technical term "supervenience" is frequently used in the philosophy of mind as a concise way of characterizing the core idea of physicalism in a manner that is neutral with respect to debates between reductive physicalists and nonreductive physicalists. I argue against this alleged neutrality and side with reductive physicalists. I am especially interested here in debates between psychoneural reductionists and nonreductive functionalist physicalists. Central to my arguments wil…Read more
  •  114
    I propose and defend the Allocentric-Egocentric Interface Theory of Con- sciousness. Mental processes form a hierarchy of mental representations with maxi- mally egocentric (self-centered) representations at the bottom and maximally allocentric (other-centered) representations at the top. Phenomenally conscious states are states that are relatively intermediate in this hierarchy. More speci.
  •  147
    The majority of contemporary philosophers of mind are physicalists. The majority of physicalists, however, are non-reductive physicalists. As nonreductive physicalists, these philosophers hold that a system's mental properties are different from a system's physical properties, that is, they hold that the sum total of mental facts about some system is a different set of facts than the sum total of physical facts about the same system. As physicalists, however, these nonreductivists hold that ment…Read more
  •  549
    An epistemological theory of consciousness?
    In Alessio Plebe & Vivian De La Cruz (eds.), Philosophy in the Neuroscience Era, Squilibri. 2008.
    This article tackles problems concerning the reduction of phenomenal consciousness to brain processes that arise in consideration of specifically epistemological properties that have been attributed to conscious experiences. In particular, various defenders of dualism and epiphenomenalism have argued for their positions by assuming special epistemic access to phenomenal consciousness. Many physicalists have reacted to such arguments by denying the epistemological premises. My aim in this paper i…Read more
  •  411
    Philosophical tradition contains two major lines of thought concerning the relative difficulty of the notions of objectivity and subjectivity. One tradition, which we might characterize as