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508Zombies and ConsciousnessOxford University Press UK. 2005.By definition zombies would be physically and behaviourally just like us, but not conscious. This currently very influential idea is a threat to all forms of physicalism, and has led some philosophers to give up physicalism and become dualists. It has also beguiled many physicalists, who feel forced to defend increasingly convoluted explanations of why the conceivability of zombies is compatible with their impossibility. Robert Kirk argues that the zombie idea depends on an incoherent view of th…Read more
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421The inconceivability of zombiesPhilosophical Studies 139 (1): 73-89. 2008.If zombies were conceivable in the sense relevant to the ‘conceivability argument’ against physicalism, a certain epiphenomenalistic conception of consciousness—the ‘e-qualia story’—would also be conceivable. But the e-qualia story is not conceivable because it involves a contradiction. The non-physical ‘e-qualia’ supposedly involved could not perform cognitive processing, which would therefore have to be performed by physical processes; and these could not put anyone into ‘epistemic contact’ wi…Read more
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153Physicalism and strict implicationSynthese 151 (3): 523-536. 2006.Suppose P is the conjunction of all truths statable in the austere vocabulary of an ideal physics. Then phsicalists are likely to accept that any truths not included in P are different ways of talking about the reality specified by P. This ‘redescription thesis’ can be made clearer by means of the ‘strict implication thesis’, according to which inconsistency or incoherence are involved in denying the implication from P to interesting truths not included in it, such as truths about phenomenal con…Read more
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153Raw Feeling: A Philosophical Account of the Essence of ConsciousnessOxford University Press. 1994.Robert Kirk uses the notion of "raw feeling" to bridge the intelligibility gap between our knowledge of ourselves as physical organisms and our knowledge of ..
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139Review: Consciousness: Essays from a Higher-Order Perspective (review)Mind 115 (460): 1107-1110. 2006.
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110The inaugural address: Why there couldn't be zombiesAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 73 (1). 1999.Philosophical zombies are exactly as physicalists suppose we are, right down to the tiniest details, but they have no conscious experiences. Are such things even logically possible? My aim is to contribute to showing not only that the answer is 'No', but why. My strategy has two prongs: a fairly brisk argument which demolishes the zombie idea; followed by an attempt to throw light on how something can qualify as a conscious perceiver. The argument to show that zombies are impossible exploits the…Read more
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109How physicalists can avoid reductionismSynthese 108 (2): 157-70. 1996.Kim maintains that a physicalist has only two genuine options, eliminativism and reductionism. But physicalists can reject both by using the Strict Implication thesis (SI). Discussing his arguments will help to show what useful work SI can do.(1) His discussion of anomalous monism depends on an unexamined assumption to the effect that SI is false
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97George Botterill and Peter Carruthers the philosophy of psychologyBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (1): 159-162. 2001.
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97Zapping the zombiesThink 5 (13): 47-58. 2006.In the philosophy of mind, zombies often make an appearance. It seems we can conceive of zombies — beings physically exactly like ourselves but lacking conscious experience. There may not actually be any zombies, of course. But the suggestion that they could exist does at least seem to make sense. Or does it? Robert Kirk investigates
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90Strict implication, supervenience, and physicalismAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (2): 244-57. 1996.This Article does not have an abstract
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70Physical realizationAnalysis 69 (1): 148-156. 2009.Sydney Shoemaker thinks the ‘most revealing characterization of physicalism’ is in terms of realization . He offers a meticulously worked out account of physical realization and goes on to apply it to a range of major topics: mental causation, personal identity, emergence, three-dimensional versus four-dimensional accounts of temporal persistence, qualia. 1 He also discusses constitution by micro-entities, functional properties, causation by ‘second-order’ properties, ‘phony’ and ‘genuine’ prope…Read more
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63Nonreductive physicalism and strict implicationAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (4): 544-552. 2001.I have argued that a strong kind of physicalism based on the strict implication thesis can consistently reject both eliminativism and reductionism (in any nontrivial sense). This piece defends that position against objections from Andrew Melnyk, who claims that either my formulation doesn't entail physicalism, or it must be interpreted in such a way that the mental is after all reducible to the physical. His alternatives depend on two interesting assumptions. I argue that both are mistaken, ther…Read more
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62Consciousness Reconsidered.Raw Feeling: a Philosophical Account of the Essence of ConsciousnessPhilosophical Quarterly 46 (184): 417-421. 1996.
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60Mind and BodyMcgill-Queen's University Press. 2003.In Mind and Body Robert Kirk offers an introduction to the complex tangle of questions and puzzles roughly labelled the mind-body problem.
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52"The best set of tools"? Dennett's metaphors and the mind-body problemPhilosophical Quarterly 44 (172): 335-43. 1994.
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52From physical explicability to full-blooded materialismPhilosophical Quarterly 29 (July): 229-37. 1979.
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48Raw FeelingPhilosophical Review 105 (1): 94. 1996.Kirk’s aim in this book is to bridge what he calls “the intelligibility gap,” expressed in the question, “How could complex patterns of neural firing amount to this?”. He defends a position that he describes as “broadly functionalist,” which consists of several theses. I will briefly review them.
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45XIII*—The Trouble with Ultra-ExternalismProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 94 293-308. 19934.Robert Kirk; XIII*—The Trouble with Ultra-Externalism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 94, Issue 1, 1 June 1994, Pages 293–308, https://doi.org/
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42Working across species down on the farm: Howard S. Liddell and the development of comparative psychopathology, c. 1923–1962History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 40 (1): 24. 2018.Seeking a scientific basis for understanding and treating mental illness, and inspired by the work of Ivan Pavlov, American physiologists, psychiatrists and psychologists in the 1920s turned to nonhuman animals. This paper examines how new constructs such as “experimental neurosis” emerged as tools to enable psychiatric comparison across species. From 1923 to 1962, the Cornell “Behavior Farm” was a leading interdisciplinary research center pioneering novel techniques to experimentally study nonh…Read more
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41'Wanted—standard guinea pigs': Standardisation and the experimental animal market in Britain ca. 1919–1947Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 39 (3): 280-291. 2008.In 1942 a coalition of twenty scientific societies formed the Conference on the Supply of Experimental Animals in an attempt to pressure the Medical Research Council to accept responsibility for the provision of standardised experimental animals in Britain. The practice of animal experimentation was subject to State regulation under the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876, but no provision existed for the provision of animals for experimental use. Consequently, day-to-day laboratory work was reliant …Read more
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University of UlsterRegular Faculty
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |