Most of the philosophers who discuss computation are interested in computation because they are interested in the computational theory of cognition. Cognitive systems are typically assumed to represent things, and computation is supposed to help explain how they represent. So many philosophers conclude that computation is the manipulation of representations. …
It’s my pleasure to introduce this symposium on Bernard Molyneux’s paper “The Logic of Mind-Body Identification” (in the current issue of Ergo), with commentaries by Liz Irvine (Cardiff), István Aranyosi (Bilkent), and Jonathan Simon (NYU). Molyneux’s paper introduces a new strategy for explaining why proposed identities between the mental and …
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 …
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”) …
Just a quick note that I recently published an article in The Philosophical Forum , “A New Theory of Free Will“, that may be of interest to readers (a free PDF of the penultimate draft is available here). Here’s the abstract: This paper shows that several live philosophical and scientific hypotheses – including …
C.B. Martin, The Mind in Nature, OUP, 2007. C.B. Martin died on October 23, 2008, barely a year after his magnum opus came out. As Paul Snowdown writes in his obituary, Martin was one of the most “original, profound and important” philosophers of our time (hat tip Leiter Reports). Yet for a …
I just culled together a bunch of putative examples of downward causation, some from advocates, some from detractors. Particularly interesting and promising is the article by Robert Bishop, Downward causation in fluid convection, and Bechtel/Craver’s article Top-down causation without top-down causes, for which brief quotes will not do justice. (Note …
