Brains
On Philosophy of Mind and Related Matters
On Philosophy of Mind and Related Matters
Brains
Block and Kitcher vs. Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini
In case anyone is interested in the response by Block and Kitcher to Fodor's argument against evolutionary biology:
http://bostonreview.net/BR35.2/block_kitcher.php
http://bostonreview.net/BR35.2/block_kitcher.php
Journal of Cognitive Science - Call for Papers
Call for Papers
Journal of Cognitive Science
http://cogsci.snu.ac.kr/jcs.
This is an interdisciplinary, international, peer reviewed journal, published by the Institute for Cognitive Science at Seoul National University. The editor, Chungmin Lee, is in the process of revamping the journal, gaining distribution as part of the Springer network and listing in various databases. I recently agreed to serve as their philosophy editor, so philosophy papers are definitely welcome! More information below the fold.
<< MORE >>
The Latest Philosophers' Carnival
Here. Check out the prominence given to our Adam Shriver, including a link to his NY Times op-ed piece!!
Consciousness, Consciousness, & More Consciousness!
The Online Consciousness Conference has officially begun!!
Below the fold I have posted some thoughts on the higher-order thought theory of consciousness and introspection in case people want more consciousness!!
<< MORE >>Mind Network
Hi Guys, N.B. this isn't just for UK folk, we're hoping that it is also of use to a wider international community, and we're serious about building international links...
This is to announce the launch of the Mind Network, a new UK network for Philosophy of Mind & Cognitive Science
http://mindcogsci.net/
The aim of the Mind Network is to foster a community of UK researchers in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and to build links with the wider international community.
The Mind Network will organise regular, mobile, UK workshops. The idea is to get researchers in philosophy of mind and cognitive science in one place on a regular basis to present papers, discuss their work, and have a good time.
The first meeting will take place Saturday 20 March 2010 in the Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford. The speakers are:
Full details are posted on the website (http://mindcogsci.net/).
Do feel free to post on the website info about upcoming conferences, seminars, workshops, etc.
The Mind Network is organised by Tim Bayne, Stephen Butterfill, Tim Crane, Nick Shea, and Mark Sprevak
This is to announce the launch of the Mind Network, a new UK network for Philosophy of Mind & Cognitive Science
http://mindcogsci.net/
The aim of the Mind Network is to foster a community of UK researchers in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and to build links with the wider international community.
The Mind Network will organise regular, mobile, UK workshops. The idea is to get researchers in philosophy of mind and cognitive science in one place on a regular basis to present papers, discuss their work, and have a good time.
The first meeting will take place Saturday 20 March 2010 in the Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford. The speakers are:
- Andy Clark (Edinburgh)
- Matt Soteriou (Warwick)
- Lisa Bortolotti (Birmingham) & Phil Gerrans (Oxford, Adelaide)
Full details are posted on the website (http://mindcogsci.net/).
Do feel free to post on the website info about upcoming conferences, seminars, workshops, etc.
The Mind Network is organised by Tim Bayne, Stephen Butterfill, Tim Crane, Nick Shea, and Mark Sprevak
Graduate Workshop on Pain
On 11 June 2010 the Philosophy Department at the University of Birmingham (UK) will host a Graduate Workshop on Pain, sponsored by the British Society for the Philosophy of Science and supported by the Royal Institute of Philosophy.
Keynote speakers will be: Dr David Bain, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Glasgow; and Dr Stuart Derbyshire, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of Birmingham.
Keynote speakers will be: Dr David Bain, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Glasgow; and Dr Stuart Derbyshire, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of Birmingham.
On the event webpage you can find some information about the programme and a call for papers open to graduate students in philosophy and psychology: http://www.ptr.bham.ac.uk/news/events/pain.shtml.
Knocking Out Pain in Livestock
Hi, thanks very much to Gualtiero for allowing me to post here. Last summer, I published an article in the journal Neuroethics discussing the possibility of genetically engineering livestock that lack the affective or "suffering" component of pain. New Scientist magazine picked up on the story and this generated a little flurry of media activity. It was fun getting a lot of feedback on the paper, but as you might imagine, much of the discussion revolved around people's pretheoretical intuitions on the subject, so I've been looking forward to the possibility of getting some feedback from the Philosophy of Brains community.
Anyway, the basic idea of the article (which can be found here) is as follows: I think the question "Will we be able to get rid of intensive factory farming in the near future?" is an empirical question. It's a complicated empirical question since it ultimately depends upon many people's ethical decisions, but nevertheless there are ways of evaluating whether it is a realistic possibility. Based on the evidence I've seen, I'd say it's extremely unlikely that our society will change our habits enough in the near future to eliminate the practice of factory farming. Given this, and since factory farming is responsible for a huge amount of suffering, I argue that we ought to genetically engineering animals that lack the ability to feel pain (or rather, the ability to feel a particular component of pain).
Furthermore, I think we're actually very close to being able to do so. In order to say why, I need to briefly review some facts about the pain system in mammals. Scientists have identified two distinct pathways from nociceptors to higher brain regions. The sensory pathway (which travels from the thalamus to the primary and secondary somatosensory cortex) underlies our ability to localize pain, to estimate it's intensity, and to describe what type of a pain it is (sharp, dull, burning, etc). The affective pathway (which travels from the thalamus to the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula) underlies subjects' judgments of how unpleasant the pains are, or how much the pains are minded. Humans who have damaged affective pathways (particularly the anterior cingulate) will report that they still feel pain but no longer mind it. As such, lesioning the anterior cingulate (ACC) is used in rare cases to treat debilitating chronic pain. The role of the ACC in human pain has been further verified by fMRI studies, single-unit recordings (yes, in humans), and pharmacological interventions.
In nonhuman mammals, a similar pattern of results is observed. Rats with damage to the ACC will still show immediate reactions to noxious stimuli, but will no longer change their preferences as a result of this stimulation. Morphine, which disproportionately acts on the affective pathway in the brain, causes similar effects. Furthermore, increasing neural activation in the ACC will cause rats to avoid certain environments even in the absence of noxious stimulation, while blocking ACC activity will prevent rats from avoiding these environments even in the presence of noxious stimulation. Thus, I argued in a previous paper, it appears that the ACC plays a similar role in pain perception in other mammals as it does in humans.
But what's really interesting, from my perspective, is that researchers have been learning a huge amount about the cellular neurobiology of the ACC in recent years. Min Zhuo's lab at Toronto has identified neurons in cortical layers II/III of the ACC that change their synaptic connections as a result of painful stimulation. Blocking long-term potentiation in these neurons results in rats that show the immediate reaction to painful stimulation but lack the symptoms of chronic pain found in controls. In fact, the lab has performed several genetic knockouts on the rats that appear to selectively block the affective dimension of pain.
More research needs to be done, but given that scientists appear to be able to locate specific genes that influence the affective dimension of pain, it looks to me that creating pain affect knockouts in other mammals, such as those that are used as livestock, would not be an especially difficult endeavor. We already know what genes to look for, and have a good idea of what kinds of tests could be used to look for similar effects. Thus, I argue, we are very close to being able to create livestock that can still have an immediate reaction to pain while lacking the unpleasant sensation that seems to constitute the suffering of pain.
If we are able to do this, and if there's no indication that we will be getting rid of factory farming in the near future, shouldn't we take steps to mitigate the suffering of millions of animals every year?
Anyway, the basic idea of the article (which can be found here) is as follows: I think the question "Will we be able to get rid of intensive factory farming in the near future?" is an empirical question. It's a complicated empirical question since it ultimately depends upon many people's ethical decisions, but nevertheless there are ways of evaluating whether it is a realistic possibility. Based on the evidence I've seen, I'd say it's extremely unlikely that our society will change our habits enough in the near future to eliminate the practice of factory farming. Given this, and since factory farming is responsible for a huge amount of suffering, I argue that we ought to genetically engineering animals that lack the ability to feel pain (or rather, the ability to feel a particular component of pain).
Furthermore, I think we're actually very close to being able to do so. In order to say why, I need to briefly review some facts about the pain system in mammals. Scientists have identified two distinct pathways from nociceptors to higher brain regions. The sensory pathway (which travels from the thalamus to the primary and secondary somatosensory cortex) underlies our ability to localize pain, to estimate it's intensity, and to describe what type of a pain it is (sharp, dull, burning, etc). The affective pathway (which travels from the thalamus to the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula) underlies subjects' judgments of how unpleasant the pains are, or how much the pains are minded. Humans who have damaged affective pathways (particularly the anterior cingulate) will report that they still feel pain but no longer mind it. As such, lesioning the anterior cingulate (ACC) is used in rare cases to treat debilitating chronic pain. The role of the ACC in human pain has been further verified by fMRI studies, single-unit recordings (yes, in humans), and pharmacological interventions.
In nonhuman mammals, a similar pattern of results is observed. Rats with damage to the ACC will still show immediate reactions to noxious stimuli, but will no longer change their preferences as a result of this stimulation. Morphine, which disproportionately acts on the affective pathway in the brain, causes similar effects. Furthermore, increasing neural activation in the ACC will cause rats to avoid certain environments even in the absence of noxious stimulation, while blocking ACC activity will prevent rats from avoiding these environments even in the presence of noxious stimulation. Thus, I argued in a previous paper, it appears that the ACC plays a similar role in pain perception in other mammals as it does in humans.
But what's really interesting, from my perspective, is that researchers have been learning a huge amount about the cellular neurobiology of the ACC in recent years. Min Zhuo's lab at Toronto has identified neurons in cortical layers II/III of the ACC that change their synaptic connections as a result of painful stimulation. Blocking long-term potentiation in these neurons results in rats that show the immediate reaction to painful stimulation but lack the symptoms of chronic pain found in controls. In fact, the lab has performed several genetic knockouts on the rats that appear to selectively block the affective dimension of pain.
More research needs to be done, but given that scientists appear to be able to locate specific genes that influence the affective dimension of pain, it looks to me that creating pain affect knockouts in other mammals, such as those that are used as livestock, would not be an especially difficult endeavor. We already know what genes to look for, and have a good idea of what kinds of tests could be used to look for similar effects. Thus, I argue, we are very close to being able to create livestock that can still have an immediate reaction to pain while lacking the unpleasant sensation that seems to constitute the suffering of pain.
If we are able to do this, and if there's no indication that we will be getting rid of factory farming in the near future, shouldn't we take steps to mitigate the suffering of millions of animals every year?
The Phenomenal Qualities Project Podcasts
via Sam Coleman;
Podcasts now available on the Project website-
Featuring:
Tim Crane, David Papineau, Philip Goff
Jerry Valberg, Andreas Hutteman, Sam Coleman
on such topics as:
The nature of phenomenal concepts, perception,
consciousness and metaphysics, intentionalism,
qualia, physicalism.
Podcasts available at:
http://phenomenalqualities.wordpress.com/phenomenal-podcasts/
See also our uploaded papers, and photos from recent events.
—
-The Phenomenal Qualities Project is funded by the AHRC-
http://phenomenalqualities.wordpress.com/
For more information, or to join our mailing list
please contact Sam Coleman (S.Coleman@herts.ac.uk)
Improving on Heterophenomenology?
I've written a paper comparing and contrasting Dennett's Heterophenomenology and the "self-measurement methodology of fist-person data". The latter is an account of first-person data and their use in science that I've been articulating over the last few years. Needless to say, I argue that my account is better than Heterophenomenology, but I also try to make clear that I agree with Heterophenomenology on some important points.
Abstract: Heterophenomenology is a third-person methodology proposed by Daniel Dennett for using first-person reports as scientific evidence. I argue that heterophenomenology can be improved by making six changes: (i) setting aside consciousness, (ii) including other sources of first-person data besides first-person reports, (iii) abandoning agnosticism as to the truth value of the reports in favor of the most plausible assumptions we can make about what can be learned from the data, (iv) interpreting first-person reports (and other first-person behaviors) directly in terms of target mental states rather than in terms of beliefs about them, (v) dropping any residual commitment to incorrigibility of first-person reports, and (vi) recognizing that third-person methodology does have positive effects on scientific practices. When these changes are made, heterophenomenology turns into the self-measurement methodology of first-person data that I have defended in previous papers.
Some other pieces of my account may be found here, here, and here.
Today the new paper was accepted for a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies edited by Richard Brown. If anyone has comments, they would be very welcome. (Brown has requested the final version ASAP.)
Abstract: Heterophenomenology is a third-person methodology proposed by Daniel Dennett for using first-person reports as scientific evidence. I argue that heterophenomenology can be improved by making six changes: (i) setting aside consciousness, (ii) including other sources of first-person data besides first-person reports, (iii) abandoning agnosticism as to the truth value of the reports in favor of the most plausible assumptions we can make about what can be learned from the data, (iv) interpreting first-person reports (and other first-person behaviors) directly in terms of target mental states rather than in terms of beliefs about them, (v) dropping any residual commitment to incorrigibility of first-person reports, and (vi) recognizing that third-person methodology does have positive effects on scientific practices. When these changes are made, heterophenomenology turns into the self-measurement methodology of first-person data that I have defended in previous papers.
Some other pieces of my account may be found here, here, and here.
Today the new paper was accepted for a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies edited by Richard Brown. If anyone has comments, they would be very welcome. (Brown has requested the final version ASAP.)
