In this post I want to approach the topic of the previous post from a different angle. I raised two questions about the U&C study: whether people believe the comparative ratings (Question 1), and what inference, if any, leads them to their ultimate verdict (Question 2). Either question would be …
When you were a kid, did your room ever get really messy? Of course it did. Did its messiness bother you? Quite possibly not. Lots of kids are not at all bothered by their messy rooms. (Question: Does it even look messy to them, or does it look orderly? We …
Apologies for a few weeks of vacation-induced silence. Thanks to Philipp et al. for an excellent symposium, and Kristina and Jakob for what promise to be a very stimulating couple of weeks. I’ll continue posting links periodically through the summer. – JS The unanimous selection for the Philosophical Explorations Essay Prize 2014 is …
The U.S. Office of Naval Research is funding a $7.5 million grant to build robots with morals. Philosophy gets a mention in the opening line, but after that, it seems to be seen as an engineering problem. Also, we are talking here about the U.S. military, so color me pessimistic. [Update: Though please …
You may (or may not) have noticed that Pete Mandik and Richard Brown (me) have started a podcast, called SpaceTimeMind, where we talk about tax law updates for 2014, uh, I mean, er, we talk about space and time and mind! The first episode is up now (and has been …
In the first section of chapter 7 of The Peripheral Mind, I discuss Aristotle’s Illusion, a tactile-proprioceptive illusion that is very easy to replicate by crossing two of your hand fingers, and touching the region thus created between the fingertips with a cylindrical object. Most people report that they feel …
The problem of personal identity is one of the most bewitching puzzles in all of philosophy. Until very recently, most philosophers subscribed to the view first advocated by the 17th-century British philosopher, John Locke. Locke held that our fundamental nature is given by our status as self-conscious, rational agents (“persons”) …
