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Symposium on Pendaran Roberts, Keith Allen, and Kelly-Ann Schmidtke’s “Folk Intuitions about the Causal Theory of Perception”

Welcome to our fourth Ergo symposium, featuring Pendaran Roberts (University of Warwick), Keith Allen (University of York), and Kelly-Ann Schmidtke’s (University of Warwick) “Folk Intuitions about the Causal Theory of Perception” with commentaries by Eugen Fischer (University of East Anglia) and John Schwenkler (Florida State University). I’d like to thank …

4. Conceptual Emergence and Neural Networks

Paul Humphreys November 16, 2017 November 16, 2017 AI / Neuroscience / Paul Humphreys: Emergence / Philosophy of Science

Conceptual emergence occurs when, in order to understand or effectively represent some phenomenon, a different representational apparatus must be introduced at the current working level. Such changes in representation are common in the sciences but it has usually been considered in connection with changes in synchronic representations. Here, I’ll consider …

3. Two Types of Fundamentality

Paul Humphreys November 15, 2017 November 15, 2017 Paul Humphreys: Emergence / Philosophy of Science

Today’s entry addresses a type of argument that will be familiar to most of you, the argument that all higher level natural facts in our world logically supervene on the fundamental physical facts.[1] Consider a very simple world, which we can call Checkers World. It behaves exactly like a game …

2. The Origin of the Universe Argument

Paul Humphreys November 14, 2017 November 15, 2017 Paul Humphreys: Emergence / Philosophy of Science / reduction

Yesterday we saw, via an example from social psychology, that diachronic approaches to emergence can avoid some of the major problems of synchronic approaches. That motivating example is not wholly convincing as an example of transformational emergence. Here is what I believe is a more robustly ontological example. The Standard …

1. Transformational Emergence

Paul Humphreys November 13, 2017 November 13, 2017 Paul Humphreys: Emergence / Philosophy of Science

I thank the editors of the Brains Blog for extending this invitation, despite the fact that I am not an expert in neuroscience and related areas of philosophy. This week I am going to present a friendly challenge to the readers by arguing that the emphasis on synchronic approaches to …

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John Schwenkler November 13, 2017 November 19, 2017 books

We are grateful to Paul Humphreys (University of Virginia) for blogging this week on his book Emergence, new from Oxford University Press. To view all his posts on a single page, click here.

Philosophical Foundations of Neurolaw

Martin Roth November 7, 2017 November 9, 2017 Ethics / Free will / functionalism / Neuroscience; Philosophy of Science / Philosophy of Mind

Another book that may be of interest to The Brains Blog community is my Philosophical Foundations of Neurolaw, which is coming out next month. A major aim of the book is to provide an alternative to Michael Pardo and Dennis Patterson’s treatment of issues in the philosophy of mind and …