books — The Brains Blog

Self-Consciousness and “Split” Brains: The Duality Claims

Elizabeth Schechter October 2, 2018 October 4, 2018 Elizabeth Schechter: Self-Consciousness and 'Split' Brains

The book argues for three duality claims: one concerning split-brain consciousness, one concerning split-brain intentional agency, and one concerning split-brain psychology generally. Each of the duality claims amounts to a claim about personal identity. If there are two centers or streams of conscious there must be two subjects of conscious …

Self-Consciousness and “Split” Brains: The split-brain phenomenon

Elizabeth Schechter October 1, 2018 June 4, 2020 Elizabeth Schechter: Self-Consciousness and 'Split' Brains

Thanks, John, for this opportunity to talk about my book, and thanks, everyone else, for reading. The book is an empirically informed work of personal identity about the split-brain phenomenon. “Split-brain surgery” is a colloquial term for a surgery that cuts through the corpus callosum (and sometimes additional white matter …

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John Schwenkler September 30, 2018 October 8, 2018 books

We are grateful to Elizabeth Schechter for blogging this week on Self-Consciousness and ‘Split’ Brains (Oxford, 2018). To view all her posts on a single page, please click here.

Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds: Conceptual Analysis and Conceptual Engineering

Edouard Machery September 22, 2018 June 10, 2019 analytical philosophy / Concepts / Edouard Machery: Philosophy Within its Proper Bounds / Experimental Philosophy / Explanation

In the previous post, I defended a restricted form of modal skepticism and I concluded that many traditional philosophical issues could not be resolved and should be set aside. One may wonder what is left for philosophers to do: Am I suggesting to close philosophy departments? Fear not, dear reader, …

Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds: Modal Skepticism

Edouard Machery September 20, 2018 September 20, 2018 analytical philosophy / Causation / Concepts / Edouard Machery: Philosophy Within its Proper Bounds / Epistemology / Experimental Philosophy

In the previous post I presented the main arguments against the method of cases developed in Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds. Various objections can be raised against this argument, some of which have already been put in print. Chapter 5 addresses 8 objections: I defend the experimental quality of the research …

Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds: Unreliability, Dogmatism, and Parochialism

Edouard Machery September 19, 2018 September 19, 2018 analytical philosophy / Causation / Concepts / Edouard Machery: Philosophy Within its Proper Bounds / Epistemology / Experimental Philosophy

In the previous post, I argued for a minimalist characterization of the method of cases, which I share with some of the most well-known critics of experimental philosophy. In this post, I want to present the two arguments against the method of cases, developed in Chapter 3 and 4 of …

Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds: The Method of Cases

Edouard Machery September 18, 2018 September 18, 2018 analytical philosophy / Concepts / Edouard Machery: Philosophy Within its Proper Bounds / Experimental Philosophy

In the previous post, I introduced the method of cases: To find out whether modal claims are true, philosophers describe actual and possible situations and assess what facts hold in these situations. For instance, following Gettier’s classic paper, to determine whether, necessarily, someone knows that pif and only if she …