Upcoming Conference Deadlines

Some calls for papers of interest to philosophers of mind, psychology, and neuroscience:February 15 Eastern APAMarch 1 Society for Philosophy and PsychologyMarch 15 International Society for Research on Emotions—2006 Computing and Philosophy conferencesEuropean-CAP 2006 Conference22-24 June, 2006****February 3, 2006*** Submission of extended abstractsHosted by the Dragvoll campus of the Norwegian …

Some General Purpose Philosophical Listservs

I was recently asked which general purpose listservs in philosophy is worth subscribing to. I subscribe to the following three, which strike me as reasonably useful so far:https://www.louisiana.edu/Academic/LiberalArts/PHIL/philosop.htmlhttps://www.lsoft.com/scripts/wl.exe?SL1=PHILOS-L&H=LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UKhttps://www.disputatio.com/esap-news/

Why the Zombie Conceivability Argument Is Unsound

Perhaps the currently most popular and discussed objection to physicalism is the zombie conceivability argument, whose most famous proponent is David Chalmers. In a nutshell, the argument goes as follows: zombies are conceivable, if zombies are conceivable then zombies are possible, and if zombies are possible, then physicalism is false; …

Did I Commit the Church-Turing Fallacy?

Today I received my complimentary copy of The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia, edited by Sahotra Sarkar and Jessica Pfeifer, Routledge, 2006. I wrote the entry on artificial intelligence. To my astonishment, the entry reads as follows: If Turing’s thesis [i.e., the Church-Turing thesis] is correct, stored-program computers can perform …

Serious Metaphysics?

Bloomfield, P. (2005). “Let’s Be Realistic About Serious Metaphysics.” Synthese 144: 69-90.He argues that the only sense of possibility relevant to serious metaphysics (i.e., relevant to the metaphysics of the actual world) is how things may be given how the actual world is. (This notion of possibility-given-the-way-the-actual-world-is is supposed to …

Do Determinables Exist?

Gillett, C. and B. Rives (2005). “The Non-Existence of Determinables: Or, a World of Absolute Determinates as Default Hypothesis.” Nous 39(3): 483-504.They argue that there are no determinables, only determinates, on grounds of ontological parsimony. In their opinion, positing determinables on top of determinates leads to “double counting” of causal …

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