I argue that embryonic stem cell research is fair to the embryo, even on the assumption that the embryo has attained full personhood and an attendant right to life at conception. This is because the only feasible alternatives open to the embryo are to exist briefly in an unconscious state and be killed or to not exist at all. Hence, one is neither depriving the embryo of an enduring life it would otherwise have had nor is one causing the embryo (...) pain. I also argue that a rational agent in a situation relevantly similar to that of the embryo would consent to such research, and I use this insight to ground two justice-based arguments in favor of this research. (shrink)

In responding to Joshua Farris’ The Soul of Theological Anthropology, I suggest several reasons for questioning the theological need for substance dualism in any form. Specifically, I argue that it is not at the level of analytic argumentation that the mind or soul is best understood, and that the sciences do indeed challenge substance dualism. In making this argument, I examine the roles of intuition and theological pre-commitments in one’s determination of the correct understanding of the mind or soul. I (...) suggest that dualism is not only theologically unnecessary, but also an intuition that we have reason to question. (shrink)

The “hard problem” of consciousness is a challenge for explanations of the nature of our phenomenal experiences. Chalmers has claimed that physicalist solutions to the challenge are ill-suited due, in part, to the zombie argument against physicalism. Perry has suggested that the zombie argument begs the question against the physicalist, and presents no relevant threat to the view. Although seldom discussed in the literature, I show there is defensive merit to Perry’s “parry” of the zombie attack. The success of the (...) maneuver suggests a slight softening of the hard problem of consciousness for physicalists. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two prominent arguments claiming that physicalism entails reductionism. One is Kim’s causal exclusion argument (CEA), and the other is Papineau’s causal argument. The paper argues that Kim’s CEA is not logically valid and that it is driven by two implausible justifications. One is “Edward’s dictum”, which is alien to non-reductive physicalism and should be rejected. The other is by endorsement of Papineau’s conception of the physical, immanent in Papineau’s causal argument. This argument only arrives at the (...) physical property-property identities by using a conception of the physical that licenses anything to be reductively physical, including putative core anti-physical entities; thus, leaving Papineau’s causal argument and Kim’s CEA without a reductive physicalist conclusion of philosophical interest. (shrink)

Physicalism, if it is to be a significant thesis, should differentiate itself from key metaphysical contenders which endorse the existence of platonic entities, emergent properties, Cartesian souls, angels, and God. Physicalism can never be true in worlds where things of these kinds exist. David Papineau, David Spurrett, and Barbara Montero have recently developed and defended two influential conceptions of physicalism. One is derived from a conception of the physical as the non-mentally-and-non-biologically identifiable. The other is derived from a conception of (...) the physical as the non-sui-generis-mental. The paper looks at the resources available to those conceptions, but argues that each is insufficient to yield a conception of physicalism that differentiates it from key anti-physicalist positions. According to these conceptions, if we lived in a world full of things that clearly cannot be physical, we would still live in a physical world. Thus, such conceptions of physicalism are of little theoretical interest. (shrink)

The late Nietzsche defended a position which he sometimes to refers as ‘sensualism’ and which consists of two main theses: senses ‘do not lie’ (T1) and sense organs are ‘causes’ (T2). Two influential interpretations of this position have been proposed by Clark and Hussain, who also address the question whether Nietzsche's late sensualism is (Hussain) or not (Clark) compatible with the epistemological view which he held in his previous work and which has been dubbed the ‘falsification thesis’ (FT). In my (...) paper I will show that both readings raise substantial difficulties and propose an alternative account of Nietzsche's sensualism. In particular, I will argue: (a) that according to Nietzsche the representational content of sensory experience ‘does not lie’ since it is physically grounded in causal exchanges with the external world which are mediated by sense organs; (b) that Nietzsche believes that the claim that senses ‘do not lie’ is also true of the phenomenal, qualitative content of sensory experience; and (c) that FT, despite its prima facie tension with (a) and (b), fit well Nietzsche's sensualism. (shrink)

International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume 27, Issue 3, Page 273-293, September 2013.

Consciousness is sometimes viewed as a particular parametric factor in the analogy of blood pressure or electric charge. The paper argues that this is an erroneous conception becomes consciousness involves a varied assortment of different phenomena that have no single unified commonality. And so even as ‘abnormal psychology’ has to be a disjointed assembly of diverse specialties so will ‘consciousness studies’ have to be.

I argue that Diaz-Leon fails to defend the phenomenal concept strategy against Stoljar's criticism because she fails to give us any general reasons for thinking that conditionals that involve psychologically distinct concepts could be a priori.

I argue for the epiphenomenality of functional properties by means of thought experiments and general principles. General principles suggest that an object’s causal powers nomologically supervene on its intrinsic properties and that its functional role does not. This implies that it is possible for an object to lose its functional role without undergoing any change to its intrinsic properties or causal powers. Nor is it difficult to conceive of such scenarios. Various thought experiments are introduced for just this purpose. But (...) properties that can vary independently of an object’s causal powers in this way are epiphenomenal, for their instantiation by an object at a time makes no difference to the causal processes the object is involved in at that time. The same processes would have occurred even if such properties hadn’t been instantiated. The intrinsicness thesis is controversial, but it is not controversial that it is true of productive causation, and many believe that productive causation is the only form of mental causation worth having. Nevertheless, in the paper’s final section I consider dependence-based accounts of causation, which do not presuppose the intrinsicness of causal powers, and show that they too have difficulties accounting for the efficacy of functional properties. (shrink)

In a recent paper (Linguistics and Philosophy 23, 4, June 2000), Jason Stanley argues that there are no `unarticulated constituents', contrary to what advocates of Truth-conditional pragmatics (TCP) have claimed. All truth-conditional effects of context can be traced to logical form, he says. In this paper I maintain that there are unarticulated constituents, and I defend TCP. Stanley's argument exploits the fact that the alleged unarticulated constituents can be `bound', that is, they can be made to vary with the values (...) introduced by operators in the sentence. I show that Stanley's argument rests on a fallacy, and I provide alternative analyses of the data. (shrink)

Glüer and Pagin (2003) have claimed that autistic speakers are a counterexample to HOT theories of meaning and communication. Through analysis of their argument and a re‐examination of the literature, I show that autistic speakers are not a counterexample to HOT theories, but, conversely, that such theories are necessary to account for their communicative peculiarities.

Glüer and Pagin (2003) have claimed that autistic speakers are a counterexample to HOT theories of meaning and communication. Through analysis of their argument and a re-examination of the literature, I show that autistic speakers are not a counterexample to HOT theories, but, conversely, that such theories are necessary to account for their communicative peculiarities.

The dominant position in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) is computationalism where the operative principle is that cognition in general and consciousness in particular can be captured by identification of the proper set of computations. This position has been attacked from several angles, most effectively, in my opinion, by John Searle in his now famous Chinese Room thought experiment. I critique this Searlean perspective on the grounds that, while it is probably correct in its essentials, it does not go (...) far enough. Quite simply, it runs afoul of the problem of emergentism. The proffered solution to this problem is that consciousness (or very rudimentary forms of it) needs to be viewed as an inherent property of organic form. While this recasting of the problem solves the emergentist dilemma it opens up a number of other issues. However, the new problems, unlike the old, appear in principle to be amenable to scientific analysis. (shrink)

Cameron, Eklund, Hofweber, Linnebo, Russell and Sider have written critical essays on my book, The Construction of Logical Space (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Here I offer some replies.

The tenth proposition of Spinoza’s Ethics reads: ‘Each attribute of substance must be conceived through itself.’ Developing and defending the argument for this single proposition, it turns out, is vital to Spinoza’s philosophical project. Indeed, it’s virtually impossible to overstate its importance. Spinoza and his interpreters have used EIp10 to prove central claims in his metaphysics and philosophy of mind (i.e., substance monism, mind-body parallelism, mind-body identity, and finite subject individuation). It’s crucial for making sense of his epistemology (i.e., Spinoza’s (...) account of knowledge and response to skepticism) and in resolving puzzles within the Ethics (i.e., explaining human ignorance of all but two attributes). Even those who do not attribute some of the above claims to Spinoza need EIp10 to defend much of what they believe about Spinoza’s system. This paper locates a previously unnoticed argument for this proposition in Spinoza’s Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well Being. There, Spinoza shows himself concerned with a powerful and underappreciated form of philosophical skepticism, one with surprising echoes in the work of his contemporary Leibniz as well as in the later Wittgenstein. Spinoza’s introduction of E1p10 in the Ethics circumvents this form of skepticism, solving the problem the Short Treatise envisions while also explaining that text’s argument’s absence from the explicit justificatory structure of the Ethics. (shrink)

A response to a recent critique by Cem Bozşahin of the theory of syntactic semantics as it applies to Helen Keller, and some applications of the theory to the philosophy of computer science.

The hard problem of consciousness arises in most incarnations of present day physicalism. Why should certain physical processes necessarily be accompanied by experience? One possible response is that physicalism itself should be modified in order to accommodate experience: But, modified how? In the present work, we investigate whether an ontology derived from quantum field theory can help resolve the hard problem. We begin with the assumption that experience cannot exist without being accompanied by a subject of experience (SoE). While people (...) well versed in Indian philosophy will not find that statement problematic, it is still controversial in the analytic tradition. Luckily for us, Strawson has elaborately defended the notion of a thin subject—an SoE which exhibits a phenomenal unity with different types of content (sensations, thoughts etc.) occurring during its temporal existence. Next, following Stoljar, we invoke our ignorance of the true physical as the reason for the explanatory gap between present day physical processes (events, properties) and experience. We are therefore permitted to conceive of thin subjects as related to the physical via a new, yet to be elaborated relation. While this is difficult to conceive under most varieties of classical physics, we argue that this may not be the case under certain quantum field theory ontologies. We suggest that the relation binding an SoE to the physical is akin to the relation between a particle and (quantum) field. In quantum field theory, a particle is conceived as a coherent excitation of a field. Under the right set of circumstances, a particle coalesces out of a field and dissipates. We suggest that an SoE can be conceived as akin to a particle—a SelfOn—which coalesces out of physical fields, persists for a brief period of time and then dissipates in a manner similar to the phenomenology of a thin subject. Experiences are physical properties of selfons with the constraint (specified by a similarity metric) that selfons belonging to the same natural kind will have similar experiences. While it is odd at first glance to conceive of subjects of experience as akin to particles, the spatial and temporal unity exhibited by particles as opposed to fields and the expectation that selfons are new kinds of particles, paves the way for cementing this notion. Next, we detail the various no-go theorems in most versions of quantum field theory and discuss their impact on the existence of selfons. Finally, we argue that the time is ripe for a rejuvenated Indian philosophy to begin tackling the three-way relationship between SoEs (which may become equivalent to jivas in certain Indian frameworks), phenomenal content and the physical world. With analytic philosophy still struggling to come to terms with the complex worlds of quantum field theory and with the relative inexperience of the western world in arguing the jiva-world relation, there is a clear and present opportunity for Indian philosophy to make a worldcentric contribution to the hard problem of experience. (shrink)

A popular argument supporting functionalism has been what is commonly called the “multiple realizability” argument. One version of this argument uses thought experiments designed to show that minds could be composed of different types of material. This article offers a metaphilosophical analysis of this argument and shows that it fails to provide a strong case for functionalism. The multiple realizability argument is best understood as an inference‐to‐the‐best‐explanation argument, whereby a functionalist account of our mental concepts serves to explain our multiple (...) realizability intuitions. I show that the argument is inadequate because alternative accounts of our mental concepts exist that provide equally plausible explanations for these intuitions. Moreover, in the case of our qualia concepts, a nonfunctionalist account explains several other intuitions that functionalism cannot explain. Thus, despite its popularity, the intuition‐based version of the multiple realizability argument is a poor reason for accepting functionalism. (shrink)

In various contexts and for various reasons, writers often define cognitive processes and architectures as those involving representational states and structures. Similarly, cognitive theories are also often delineated as those that invoke representations. In this paper, I present several reasons for rejecting this way of demarcating the cognitive. Some of the reasons against defining cognition in representational terms are that doing so needlessly restricts our theorizing, it undermines the empirical status of the representational theory of mind, and it encourages wildly (...) deflationary and explanatorily vacuous conceptions of representation. After criticizing this outlook, I sketch alternative ways we might try to capture what is distinctive about cognition and cognitive theorizing. (shrink)

The idea that there are features of or in our conscious experience that are, in some important sense, private has both a long history in philosophy and a large measure of intuitive attraction. Once this idea is in place, it will be very natural to assume that one can think and judge about one’s own private features. And it is then only a small step to the idea that we might communicate such thoughts and judgements about our respective private features (...) with each other. (shrink)

Unlike the sciences (physics), psychology has not developed in any of its areas (such as perception, learning, cognition) a top-theory like Newtonian theory, the theory of relativity, or quantum theory in physics. This difference is explained by a methodological discrepancy between the sciences and psychology, which centers on the measurement procedure: in psychology, measurement units similar to those in physics have not been discovered. Based on the arguments supporting this claim, a methodological distinction is made between the sciences and psychology (...) as an associational science. It is suggested that that these two kinds of science generate two different classes of technologies. The possibility that in psychology there is a connection between the issue of measurement and the unsolved consciousness/brain problem is discussed. (shrink)

As Price (2009) famously mused, if a philosopher were to be magically transported, perhaps through means of time travel, from the 1950s to the modern day, they would indeed be shocked by the resurgence of metaphysics in the analytic tradition. Most of all, perhaps, they would be shocked by the popularity of power metaphysics. What a strange item to have in a philosopher’s curriculum, they might think: after all, didn’t David Hume claim that “[t]here are no ideas which can occur (...) in metaphysics more obscure and uncertain than those of power, force, energy, or necessary connection”? Indeed, much has changed since then. At the pain of using overly vague terminology, we can call “power metaphysics” the subdiscipline of metaphysics interested in the development and evaluation of a family of positions which we will refer to under the umbrella term of “dispositionalism”. According to dispositionalists, the world we inhabit is also populated by genuine and irreducible powers, dispositions, and capacities of objects. (shrink)

Unpleasant experiences include backaches, moments of nausea, moments of nervousness, phantom pains, and so on. What does their unpleasantness consist in? The unpleasantness of an experience has been thought to consist in: (1) its representing bodily damage; (2) its inclining the subject to fight its continuation; (3) the subject's disliking it; (4) features intrinsic to it. I offer compelling objections to (1) and (2) and less compelling objections to (3). I defend (4) against five challenging objections and offer two reasons (...) to believe it. Hence, I advocate "Intrinsic Nature," the idea that unpleasantness is intrinsic to unpleasant experiences. (shrink)

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 89, Issue 3, Page 562-566, September 2011.

According to the scrutability argument against physicalism, an a priori gap between the physical and conscious experience entails a lack of necessitation and the falsity of physicalism. This paper investigates the crucial premise of the scrutability argument: the inference from an a priori gap to a lack of necessitation. This premise gets its support from modal rationalism, according to which there are important, potentially constitutive, connections between a priori justification and metaphysical modality. I argue against the strong form of modal (...) rationalism that underwrites the scrutability argument and suggest a more moderate rationalist view. I offer a novel demonstrative reply to the scrutability argument, according to which demonstratives play a vital role in the generation of meaning for our representations of conscious experience. This connection between conscious experience and demonstratives, rather than a metaphysical gap generated by the truth of dualism, is the source of the epistemic gap between consciousness and the physical. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay has three goals. The first is to introduce the notion of fundamentality and to argue that physicalism can usefully be conceived of as a thesis about fundamentality. The second is to argue for the advantages of fundamentality physicalism over modal formulations and that fundamentality physicalism is what many who endorse modal formulations of physicalism had in mind all along. Third, I describe what I take to be the main obstacle for a fundamentality-oriented formulation of physicalism: ‘the problem (...) of abstracta’, which asks how physical can accommodate phenomena such as mathematics and universals, and which modal formulations do not face. I canvas three solutions: the inapt for ground solution, the concrete restriction, and the contingency restriction. (shrink)

According to Frank Jackson’s famous knowledge argument, Mary, a brilliant neuroscientist raised in a black and white room and bestowed with complete physical knowledge, cannot know certain truths about phenomenal experience. This claim about knowledge, in turn, implies that physicalism is false. I argue that the knowledge argument founders on a dilemma. Either (i) Mary cannot know the relevant experiential truths because of trivial obstacles that have no bearing on the truth of physicalism or (ii) once the obstacles have been (...) removed, Mary can know the relevant truths. If we give Mary the epistemological capabilities necessary to draw metaphysical conclusions about physicalism, she will, while trapped in the black and white room, be able to know every truth about phenomenal experience. (shrink)

A popular approach in philosophy, the so-called Canberra Plan, is critically scrutinized. Two aspects of this research program, the formal and the informal program, are distinguished. It is argued that the formal program runs up against certain serious technical problems. It is also argued that the informal program involves an unclear leap at its core. Consequently, it is argued that the whole program is much more problematic than its advocates recognize.

The issue of downward causation (and mental causation in particular), and the exclusion problem is discussed by taking into account some recent advances in the philosophy of science. The problem is viewed from the perspective of the new interventionist theory of causation developed by Woodward. It is argued that from this viewpoint, a higher-level (e.g., mental) state can sometimes truly be causally relevant, and moreover, that the underlying physical state which realizes it may fail to be such.

This paper proposes a theory of how conscious emotional experience is produced by the brain as the result of many interacting brain areas coordinated in working memory. These brain areas integrate perceptions of bodily states of an organism with cognitive appraisals of its current situation. Emotions are neural processes that represent the overall cognitive and somatic state of the organism. Conscious experience arises when neural representations achieve high activation as part of working memory. This theory explains numerous phenomena concerning emotional (...) consciousness, including differentiation, integration, intensity, valence, and change. Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

The nature of experience has been held to be a major reason for accepting the A-theory of time. I argue, however, that experience does not favour the A-theory over the B-theory; and that even if the A-theory were true it would not be possible to perceive the passage of time. The main argument for this draws on the constraint that a satisfactory theory of perception must explain why phenomenal characters map uniquely onto perceived worldly features. Thus, if passage is perceived, (...) it must be explained what makes one phenomenal character rather than another a perception of passage; and it must also be explained why that phenomenal character is a perception of passage rather than of some other feature of the world. I argue that no such explanation can be given, and consequently that passage cannot be perceived. I conclude that the A-theory is rendered unintelligible, and should therefore be rejected. (shrink)

This is an expanded and revised discussion of the argument briefly put forward in my 'A New Problem for the A-Theory of Time', where it is claimed that it is impossible to experience real temporal passage and that no such phenomenon exists. In the first half of the paper the premises of the argument are discussed in more detail than before. In the second half responses are given to several possible objections, none of which were addressed in the earlier paper. (...) There is also some discussion of some related epistemic arguments against the passage of time given by Huw Price and David Braddon-Mitchell along with objections raised against them recently by Tim Maudlin and Peter Forrest respectively. (shrink)

Intentionalism is the view that the phenomenal character of a conscious experience is wholly determined by, or even reducible to, its representational content. In this essay I put forward a version of intentionalism that allows (though does not require) the reduction of phenomenal character to representational content. Unlike other reductionist theories, however, it does not require the acceptance of phenomenal externalism (the view that phenomenal character does not supervene on the internal state of the subject). According the view offered here, (...) phenomenal characters essentially represent subject-environment relations that are relevant to the possibilities for causal interaction between the subject and the environment; relations of the kind that J. J. Gibson dubbed affordances. I argue for this view chiefly through an examination of spatial perception, though other cases are also considered. The view assumes that a phenomenal character has an essential functional role; though it need not be assumed that a functional role is sufficient for a phenomenal character. (shrink)

Machine awareness is a disputed research topic, in some circles considered a crucial step in realising Artificial General Intelligence. Understanding what that is, under which conditions such feature could arise and how it can be controlled is still a matter of speculation. A more concrete object of theoretical analysis is algorithmic iteration for computational intelligence, intended as the theoretical and practical ability of algorithms to design other algorithms for actions aimed at solving well-specified tasks. We know this ability is already (...) shown by current AIs, and understanding its limits is an essential step in qualifying claims about machine awareness and Super-AI. We propose a formal translation of algorithmic iteration in a fragment of modal logic, formulate principles of transparency and faithfulness across human and machine intelligence, and consider the relevance to theoretical research on -AI as well as the practical import of our results. (shrink)

In his ‘anti-zombie argument’, Keith Frankish turns the tables on ‘zombists’, forcing them to find an independent argument against the conceivability of anti-zombies. I argue that zombists can shoulder the burden, for there is an important asymmetry between the conceivability of zombies and the conceivability of anti-zombies, which is reflected in the embedding of a totality-clause under the conceivability operator. This makes the anti-zombie argument susceptible to what I call the ‘Modified Incompleteness’, according to which we cannot conceive of scenarios. (...) In this paper I also argue that conceiving of the zombie-situation is a good starting point for rendering the zombie argument plausible. (shrink)

A new philosophy of nature is urgently needed. The received ontological view, physicalism, is unable to account for experiential phenomena and in particular for consciousness in all its varieties. We shall outline the concept of experiencing which should figure as a new conceptual primitive in natural philosophy. Experiencing refers to a process which comprises the interaction of an agent with its world through action based on phenomenal experience. This process can be viewed under two different aspects. One regards the subjective (...) aspect of experiencing, the other one regards it in terms of physical objects. The first case illustrates the “what-it-is-likeness„ of experiencing, the second illustrates how experiencing gets “objectified„ in nature. We furthermore wish to delineate our concept of experiencing from the concept of (meta-cognitive) awareness. Scientific theories that explain how awareness comes about in sufficiently organized brains should respect the distinction between experiencing and awareness. We also sketch how experiencing could be related to theoretical biology in terms of information processing by organisms. Experiencing is non-exclusive; it refers to a primitive and a-personal natural process and not to a property possessed only by humans or other persons. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 19 It is argued in this paper that physicalism is best understood as a research programme, rather than a thesis or an attitude, as some philosophers argue. Given that research programmes connect past, present and future philosophical or scientific activities, physicalists need not decide between current and future physical theories, as it has been required by Hempel’s Dilemma. The author contrasts this proposal with other solutions to Hempel’s Dilemma proposed by currentists, futurists, and those philosophers who (...) claim that physicalism should best be understood as an attitude, arguing that understanding physicalism as a research programme avoids problems that are present in the alternative views, and that it matches well with the standard classifications in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Resumen En este trabajo presento dos tipos de conceptos, los conceptos psicológicos y los conceptos de color y sugiero una ampliación de la tesis externista que defiende Axel Barceló en su libro Sobre el análisis.In this paper I present two types of concepts, psychological concepts and color concepts, and I suggest an extension of the externist thesis defended by Axel Barceló in his book Sobre el análisis.

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2012v16n2p255 O artigo investiga se o naturalismo biológico (a solução de John Searle para o problema mente-corpo) pode ser considerado uma concepção fisicalista acerca da mente. Apesar de defender um fisicalismo a respeito dos particulares (seção 2), Searle adere ao argumento básico dos dualistas para a irredutibilidade das propriedades mentais (seção 3), e não consegue fundamentar sua alegação de que tal irredutibilidade é compatível com o fisicalismo (seção 4). Desse modo, sua teoria da mente se revela como um dualismo de (...) propriedades. (shrink)

The paper aims to show that scepticism concerning the status of first-person reports of mental states and their use as evidence in scientific cognitive research is unfounded. Rather, principled arguments suggest that the conditions for the intersubjectivity of cognition and description of publicly observable things apply equally for our cognition and description of our mental or internal states. It is argued that on these conditions relies the possibility of developing well-defined scientific criteria for distinguishing between first-person and third-person cognition and (...) description. The paper concludes by outlining the consequences for cognitive research and for functional theories of mind. (shrink)

If the physical mind is located in quantized space of the brain then how does the physical mind become the self? This remains an unresolved problem. It can be restated as how mental representations or mental states get their informational contents, and of doing so in terms of the natural functions brain states have? We call these natural brain functions not teleosemantic functions, but rather teleological functions. This is because teleosemantics portrays mental representations which must have informational contents that track (...) “operational explanations of cognitive capacities” while teleological functions do not as they are hidden in quantized space, suggesting that mind is physical. Specifically teleonomic capacities have been built into us by natural selection, which naturally leads to a teleogical notion of function. Our claim is that teleofunctionality as unification of mental states has natural functions that carry intrinsic dispositions that may be broadly defined as ‘subjectivity’ or intrinsic information content of mental states. Mental states have intrinsic dispositions to change their functions, producing correspondences to the world that includes further layers of subtlety hidden in quantized space. How does intrinsic information self-replicate content in cases of mental misrepresentation? The putative special virtue of teleosemantics and its ability to give a theory of error through ‘uncertainty’ is discussed based on a teleological functionalist epistemology. (shrink)

Physicist Max Tegmark argues that if there are infinite universes or sub-universes, we will encounter our exact duplicates infinite times, the nearest within 10^10^115 m. Tegmark assumes Humean supervenience and a finite number of possible combinations of elementary quantum states. This paper argues on the contrary that Tegmark’s argument fails to hold if possible thoughts, persons, and life histories are all infinite in number. Are there infinite thoughts we could possibly think? This paper will show that there are. If so, (...) then it is not only Tegmark’s specific claim about our duplication that is called into question. We additionally acquire another strong argument against Humean supervenience. (shrink)