A couple of related papers on consciousness and experiemental philosophy are being hosted at Brain Hammer as part of the Philosophy of Mind and Science Works in Progress Sessions (PMS WIPS): Posted Dec 15 is “Intuitions about Consciousness: Experimental Studies” by Joshua Knobe and Jesse Prinz (University of North Carolina …
When I was in graduate school, I remember how hard it was to get good feedback on my dissertation work. My advisor was great, but it was difficult to get feedback from others. I tried to send my work to other experts outside my department, and some of them were …
I open a thread for eventual comments on Chapter 2. Comments can of course be sent to me by e-mail. Thanks for those of you who read the chapter and commented on it. Abstract In Chapter 2, I distinguish two meanings of the term “concept” in philosophy—concepts as capacities …
Corey Maley sent me “a link to a webcast of a debate between David Gelerntner and Ray Kurzweil on machine consciousness. Perhaps a bit more interesting is a talk by Jack Copeland on Turing’s contribution to codebreaking and to the development of AI (which starts at about the 1 hour 45 minute mark).”
Someone sent me an article on a model of female response to stress that was developed in recent years by Shelley Taylor, a social psychologist at UCLA. Since I was unaware of this model and found it interesting, I thought I would share. Here is how the article begins: Move …
According to a recent paper in Nature Neuroscience, children with autism have virtually no activity in their brain’s mirror neuron system, the apparatus that facilitates imitation and empathy. The researchers believe this malfunction may be the primary cause of autism. Link.
The standard story about the demise of introspectionist psychology goes something like this: Towards the beginning of the 20th Century, experimental psychologists relied on introspecting subjects to study the mind. Members of one prominent school believed that each thought is reducible to sensory images (visual, auditory including verbal, proprioceptive, etc.). Among …
