books – Page 2 – The Brains Blog

2. The intentionality of memory

Jordi Fernandez October 22, 2019 Intentionality / Jordi Fernandez: Memory - A Self-Referential Account / Memory2 Comments

This week, I’m writing a series of posts on my new book Memory: A Self-Referential Account (Oxford University Press, 2019). The post today concerns the content of memories; the topic of chapter three. I defend the view that memories are self-referential in that they represent a property of themselves. Specifically, …

1. The metaphysics of memory

Jordi Fernandez October 21, 2019 Jordi Fernandez: Memory - A Self-Referential Account / Memory / metaphysics of mind13 Comments

This week I am writing a series of posts about my new book Memory: A Self-Referential Account (Oxford University Press, 2019). My first post, today, concerns the metaphysics of experiential, or episodic, memory. In chapter two, I address the question of what it takes for a subject’s mental state to …

Now Featured

John Schwenkler October 21, 2019 books

We are pleased to have Jordi Fernández blogging this week on Memory: A Self-Referential Account, newly published by Oxford University Press. To view all of Jordi’s posts on a single page, please click here.

The Phenomenal Basis of Epistemic Justification

Declan Smithies September 13, 2019 Consciousness / Declan Smithies: The Epistemic Role of Consciousness / EpistemologyOne Comment

This week, I’m blogging about my new book, The Epistemic Role of Consciousness (Oxford University Press, September 2019). Over the past three days, I’ve discussed the epistemic role of consciousness in perception, cognition, and introspection. In this final post, I want to explain how I integrate these claims about the …

A Simple Theory of Introspection

Declan Smithies September 12, 2019 Consciousness / Declan Smithies: The Epistemic Role of Consciousness / Self-consciousness

This week, I’m blogging about my new book, The Epistemic Role of Consciousness (Oxford University Press, September 2019). Today, I’ll discuss the epistemic role of consciousness in introspection. What is introspection? Literally, ‘introspection’ means ‘looking within’. But the term is often used as a placeholder for the distinctively first-personal way …

Beliefs and Subdoxastic States

Declan Smithies September 11, 2019 Belief / Cognition / Consciousness / Declan Smithies: The Epistemic Role of Consciousness4 Comments

This week, I’m blogging about my new book, The Epistemic Role of Consciousness (Oxford University Press, September 2019). Today, I’ll discuss the epistemic role of consciousness in cognition. Could there be a cognitive zombie – that is, an unconscious creature with the capacity for cognition? As I use the term, …

Blindsight and Super-Blindsight

Declan Smithies September 10, 2019 Consciousness / Declan Smithies: The Epistemic Role of Consciousness / perception15 Comments

This week, I’m blogging about my new book, The Epistemic Role of Consciousness (Oxford University Press, September 2019). Today, I’ll discuss the epistemic role of consciousness in perception. Human perception is normally conscious: there is something it is like for us to perceive the world around us. And yet there …

Now Featured

John Schwenkler September 9, 2019 books

We are grateful to Declan Smithies for blogging this week on The Epistemic Role of Consciousness (Oxford, 2019). To read all his posts on a single page, please click here.

The Mental Lives of Zombies

Declan Smithies September 9, 2019 Consciousness / Declan Smithies: The Epistemic Role of Consciousness2 Comments

This week, I’m blogging about my new book, The Epistemic Role of Consciousness (Oxford University Press, September 2019). Thanks to John Schwenkler for hosting me. Today, I’ll start by situating the project of the book within a broader landscape in the philosophy of mind. What is the role of phenomenal …

3. The Naturalistic Case for Free Will: Indeterminism as an Emergent Phenomenon

Christian List August 16, 2019 books / Christian List: Why Free Will Is Real / Free will / mental causation4 Comments

How could we have alternative possibilities if the world was physically deterministic? I argue that physical determinism does not rule out indeterminism at the level of agency. The distinction between determinism and indeterminism is level-specific.

2. The Naturalistic Case for Free Will: An Indispensability Argument

Christian List August 14, 2019 books / Christian List: Why Free Will Is Real / Free will / mental causation4 Comments

Realism about free will is warranted, because the picture of humans as choice-making agents is explanatorily indispensable in the human and social sciences.

1. The Naturalistic Case for Free Will: The Challenge

Christian List August 12, 2019 books / Christian List: Why Free Will Is Real / Free will / mental causation18 Comments

This series of posts discusses some key ideas from Why Free Will is Real (Harvard University Press, 2019) by Christian List.

Now Featured

John Schwenkler August 12, 2019 books2 Comments

We are pleased to have Christian List blogging this week on Why Free Will Is Real (Harvard University Press, 2019). To see all of Christian’s posts on a single page, please click here.

5. Diachronic Constitution and Extended Consciousness

Julian Kiverstein and Michael Kirchhoff June 20, 2019 Michael Kirchhoff and Julian Kiverstein: Extended Consciousness and Predictive Processing3 Comments

Based on our third-wave framing of predictive processing, we argued in our previous post (4) that generative models cannot be unplugged from the world, given that action couples the agent to the environment. It is only via action in the world that the agent is able to tune and maintain …

4. Is Perceptual Experience Controlled Hallucination?

Julian Kiverstein and Michael Kirchhoff June 19, 2019 Michael Kirchhoff and Julian Kiverstein: Extended Consciousness and Predictive Processing

Predictive processing is standardly combined with views of perceptual experience as the outcome of psychological processes of unconscious inference. Perceptual experience is taken to be the product of guesswork about what is out there in the external world. The brain forms its guess by a process that approximates probabilistic reasoning, …

3. The Markov Blanketed Mind

Julian Kiverstein and Michael Kirchhoff June 18, 2019 Michael Kirchhoff and Julian Kiverstein: Extended Consciousness and Predictive Processing / Uncategorized

https://www.crcpress.com/Extended-Consciousness-and-Predictive-Processing-A-Third-Wave-View/Kirchhoff-Kiverstein/p/book/9781138556812 Common-sense suggests that it is perception and action that delineate a boundary for the mind. Perception is the interface where the world impacts on the mind, and action is where agents make a causal difference in the world. Chalmers (2008, 2019) suggests that this common-sense view presents the most …

2. Third-wave extended mind and predictive processing

Julian Kiverstein and Michael Kirchhoff June 17, 2019 Michael Kirchhoff and Julian Kiverstein: Extended Consciousness and Predictive Processing / Uncategorized5 Comments

Thanks to John Schwenkler for the invitation to guest-blog this week about our book Extended Consciousness and Predictive Processing: A Third-Wave View (Routledge, 2019): https://www.crcpress.com/Extended-Consciousness-and-Predictive-Processing-A-Third-Wave-View/Kirchhoff-Kiverstein/p/book/9781138556812 Where does your (conscious) mind stop, and the rest of the world begin? We defend what has come to be called a “third-wave” account of …

Now Featured

John Schwenkler June 16, 2019 books

Thanks to Michael Kirchhoff and Julian Kiverstein for blogging this week on Extended Consciousness and Predictive Processing: A Third Wave View (Routledge, 2019). To view all their posts on a single page, please click here.

1. The Boundaries of the Conscious Mind

Julian Kiverstein and Michael Kirchhoff June 15, 2019 Michael Kirchhoff and Julian Kiverstein: Extended Consciousness and Predictive ProcessingOne Comment

Thanks to John Schwenkler for the invitation to guest-blog this week about our book Extended Consciousness and Predictive Processing: A Third-Wave View (Routledge, 2019). Suppose a science of the mind of the future fully explains what it is that makes an animal a conscious subject, capable of enjoying and enduring …