Philosophy Carnival #44
Here.
Category: Mindcraft
Posts from the founder of Brains, Gualtiero Piccinini.
My Kitchen Experiment with Olfactory Attention
Many theories of attention postulate a mechanism involving the thalamus. Roughly, the idea is that the thalamus can enhance certain sensory signals going to the cortex at the expense of others, and this is what constitutes (sensory) attention. (The mechanism may depend in part on recurrent signals from cortex to …
Neurolaw
The next issue of the New York Times Magazine has an article on the way neuroscience is changing the law and judicial system. More reasons why philosophers of mind and ethicists should not ignore neuroscience.
Consciousness in Children without Cerebral Cortex
I got an interesting letter from the grandmother of a child with hydranencephaly (reproduced by permission):Mr. Piccinini,Your response to Dr. Merker’s paper, Consciousness without a CerebralCortex: A Challenge for Neuroscience and Medicine, was educational anddisappointing. I appreciated the evaluation of phenomenal versuscreature consciousness and the application of state consciousness;however I …
Edelman’s Second Nature
Gerald Edelman has written yet another book about consciousness, whose title is Second Nature. There is a fairly entertaining review of it by neuroscientist Steven Rose in The Guardian.
HBO’s The Addiction Project
In partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, HBO is producing a 14-part documentary set to begin March 15th, called The Addiction Project, which attempts to redefine drug and alcohol addiction by looking at the latest science. There is more…
Weekend Entertainment
Marc Hauser’s lab has a webpage where they conduct a moral sense test. More tests are listed in the end page.