The following is a science fiction about consciousness in which I’ve twisted a few counterfactual knobs to make things tough for the materialist. In this attempted reductio, I assume physicalism is the case, and generate a putatively serious objection. It is the only line of thought that has recently given me serious worries as a neurophile, so I am curious what others think.
Looking at MRI signals in visual cortex, researchers were able to reconstruct, with varying degrees of success, the movie clips people were watching (examples below in movie). The most obvious applications we could extrapolate to are for folks who are paralyzed, or perhaps even during dreaming. What I find most …
I’m looking for the key sources on the claim that consciousness does not have spatial properties such as extension, shape, etc.. Descartes it the obvious one, but other than Descartes are there any other sources for good discussion of this matter?
Patricia Churchland’s new book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality is now out. I haven’t read it yet, but I know she has been talking about and researching this topic for a long time. I expect it to be a fun, interesting read. Her basic thesis is that morality …
I’ve been reading over Chalmers’ conceivability/possibility arguments against materialist theories of mind. For those that don’t remember, his argument is: 1. We can conceive of zombies. 2. Conceivability implies logical possibility. 3. Therefore, zombies are logically possible. 4. If zombies are logically possible, then physicalism is false. 5. Therefore, physicalism …
Many have a strong intuition that consciousness cannot be a brain process, but what are the arguments for this claim? I’m listing every one I can think of below. If you know any others, please let me know in the comments this could be a useful quick-and-dirty resource for people …
There is a standard story about the emergence of the identity theory. Namely, before (say) 1956, because the concept of an experience was not synonymous with the concept of a brain state, we knew a priori that experiences could not be brain states. Let’s call this the semantic argument against …
