The Brains Blog

4. Composite Subjectivity and the Panpsychic Universe

So let’s circle back to the combination problem for panpsychism, that got me on this topic in the first place. Despite reading and writing a lot about it, I’m still never quite sure what counts as ‘solving’ the combination problem. Often I read papers that say ‘here’s the combination problem’ …

3. Composite Subjectivity and Psychological Conflict

Luke Roelofs February 6, 2019 February 6, 2019 Consciousness / Luke Roelofs: Combining Minds

In the last post we took physical systems (organisms, brains, solar systems) that contained each other as parts, and asked which were conscious. But some philosophers think this is misguided from the get-go: no physical system, whatever its features, can strictly be a subject of consciousness, but can only ‘support’ …

2. Composite Subjectivity and Functional Structure

Luke Roelofs February 5, 2019 February 5, 2019 Consciousness / functionalism / Luke Roelofs: Combining Minds

Consider a contrast. The solar system contains my brain as a part; my brain is conscious; the solar system is not conscious (at least in any everyday sense – let’s set panpsychism aside for now). That’s enough to show that having conscious parts is not enough, all by itself, to …

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John Schwenkler February 4, 2019 February 10, 2019 books

We are grateful to Luke Roelofs for blogging this week on Combining Minds: How to Think About Composite Subjectivity (Oxford, 2019). To view all his posts on a single page, please click here.

1. Why Think About Composite Subjectivity?

Luke Roelofs February 3, 2019 February 4, 2019 Consciousness / Luke Roelofs: Combining Minds / Metaphysics

Combining Minds aims to persuade you that minds can indeed combine. But first, we need to work out what that claim even means and why you might think they can’t. So here’s a little bit of intellectual autobiography on that topic. In the last few decades, philosophers interested in the …

4. An Ethics of Spontaneity

Michael Brownstein January 31, 2019 January 31, 2019 Michael Brownstein: The Implicit Mind / Philosophy of Mind / Psychology

Section 3 of The Implicit Mind asks: how can we improve our implicit minds? What can we do to increase the chances that our spontaneous inclinations and dispositions get it right rather than act as conduits for bias and prejudice? It is tempting to think that one can simply reflect …

3. Implicitness and the Self

Michael Brownstein January 30, 2019 January 30, 2019 Michael Brownstein: The Implicit Mind / Philosophy of Mind / Psychology

Spontaneity can give rise to actions that seem “unowned.” Tremble and shake on a glass platform suspended over the Grand Canyon, and you might ask, “I know I’m perfectly safe, so why is my body acting like I’m not?” Have a friend point out to you that when asking questions …