Paper on structural realism and how its problems lend support to some kind of panpsychism.

In this paper, it is argued that the late twentieth century conception of consciousness in analytic philosophy emerged from the idea of consciousness as givenness, via the behaviourist idea of “raw feels”. In the post-behaviourist period in philosophy, this resulted in the division of states of mind into essentially unconscious propositional attitudes plus the phenomenal residue of qualia: intrinsic, ineffable and inefficacious sensory states. It is striking how little in the important questions about consciousness depends on this conception, or on (...) this particular division of mental states. So accepting this division and its associated conceptions of intentionality and consciousness is not an obligatory starting point for the philosophy of mind. A historical investigation of how these ideas came to be seen as inevitable can also help us see how we might reasonably reject them. (shrink)

Reduction and reductionism have been central philosophical topics in analytic philosophy of science for more than six decades. Together they encompass a diversity of issues from metaphysics and epistemology. This article provides an introduction to the topic that illuminates how contemporary epistemological discussions took their shape historically and limns the contours of concrete cases of reduction in specific natural sciences. The unity of science and the impulse to accomplish compositional reduction in accord with a layer-cake vision of the sciences, the (...) seminal contributions of Ernest Nagel on theory reduction and how they strongly conditioned subsequent philosophical discussions, and the detailed issues pertaining to different accounts of reduction that arise in both physical and biological science (e.g., limit-case and part-whole reduction in physics, the difference-making principle in genetics, and mechanisms in molecular biology) are explored. The conclusion argues that the epistemological heterogeneity and patchwork organization of the natural sciences encourages a pluralist stance about reduction. (shrink)

A post-Newtonian understanding of matter includes immaterial forces; thus, the concept of ‘physical’ has lost what usefulness it previously had and Cartesian dualism has, consequently, ceased to support a divide between the mental and the physical. A contemporary scientific understanding of mind that goes back at least as far as Priestley in the 18th century, not only includes immaterial components but identifies brain parts in which these components correlate with neural activity. What are we left with? The challenge is no (...) longer to figure out how a physical brain interacts with a nonphysical mind, but to try to unify theories of mind and theories of brain that to date do not share a single property. The challenge is enormous, but at least we can be quite clear about what its nature is, as there is no reason to be distracted by the idea of two distinct substances. In the present volume, many historical perspectives on the mind-body problem are discussed. In what follows, we follow major currents of thought regarding the mind-body problem so that it can be seen how we arrived at the modern conception that it makes sense only to talk about theory unification. (shrink)

I have laid out what seem to me to be the most promising arguments on opposing sides of the question of whether what humans regard as the first-person accessible aspects of pain could also be implemented in robots. I have emphasized the ways in which the thought experiments in the respective arguments attempt to marshal hypothetical first- person accessible evidence concerning how one’s own mental life appears to oneself. In the Chinese room argument, a crucial premise involves the thesis that (...) from a lack of it seeming that one is in pain, one can conclude that one is not in pain. There’s a counterpart thesis playing a crucial role in the prosthetic neurons argument, one asserting an entailment from its seeming that one is in pain to one’s being in pain. I further suggested that by adopting a HOT theory of consciousness, of the sort reviewed in Pereplyotchik’s chapter in the present volume, one is thereby in a better position to endorse the prosthetic neurons argument over the Chinese room argument than to make the opposite appraisal. (shrink)

Although thought experiments were first discovered as a sui generis methodological tool by philosophers of science (most prominently by Ernst Mach), the tool can also be found – even more frequently – in contemporary philosophy. Thought experiments in philosophy and science have a lot in common. However, in this chapter we will concentrate on thought experiments in philosophy only. Their use has been the centre of attention of metaphilosophical discussion in the past decade, and this chapter will provide an overview (...) of the results this discussion has achieved and point out which issues are still open. (shrink)

Can identity itself be vague? Can there be vague objects? Does a positive answer to either question entail a positive answer to the other? In this paper we answer these questions as follows: No, No, and Yes. First, we discuss Evans’s famous 1978 argument and argue that the main lesson that it imparts is that identity itself cannot be vague. We defend the argument from objections and endorse this conclusion. We acknowledge, however, that the argument does not by itself establish (...) either that there cannot be vague objects or that there cannot be identity statements that are indeterminate for ontic reasons. And we further acknowledge that it does not by itself establish that there cannot be identity statements that are indeterminate in virtue of the existence of vague objects. We then go on to argue that, despite this, one who believes in vague objects cannot endorse Evans’s argument. To establish this we offer supplementary arguments that show that if vague objects exist then identity is vague, and that if identity is vague then vague objects exist. Finally we draw attention to an argument parallel to that of Evans’s, but safer, which can be employed against the putative ontic indeterminacy in identity of vague objects which can be differentiated by identity-free properties. (shrink)

In an earlier paper (Biggs, 2007) I argue that those attributing mental states sometimes simulate the phenomenal states of those to whom they are making attributions (i.e., targets). In this paper I argue that such phenomenal simulation plays an important role in some third-person mental state attributions. More specifically, I identity three important roles that phenomenal simulation could play in third-person mental state attributions: phenomenal simulation could cause attributions, facilitate attributions, or deepen simulators' understanding of targets. I then argue that (...) phenomenal simulation sometimes deepens simulators' understanding of targets, regardless of whether it causes or facilitates any attributions. Accordingly, I conclude that phenomenal simulation plays an important role some third-person mental state attributions. I close by briefly considering how this conclusion relates to the theory-theory versus simulation-theory debate. (shrink)

Within the discipline of psychology, the conventional history outlines the development of two fundamental approaches to the scientific study of emotion—“basic emotion” and “appraisal” traditions. In this article, we outline the development of a third approach to emotion that exists in the psychological literature—the “psychological constructionist” tradition. In the process, we discuss a number of works that have virtually disappeared from the citation trail in psychological discussions of emotion. We also correct some misconceptions about early sources, such as work by (...) Darwin and James. Taken together, these three contributions make for a fuller and more accurate account of ideas about emotion during the century stretching from 1855 to just before 1960. (shrink)

Within the discipline of psychology, the conventional history outlines the development of two fundamental approaches to the scientific study of emotion—“basic emotion” and “appraisal” traditions. In this article, we outline the development of a third approach to emotion that exists in the psychological literature—the “psychological constructionist” tradition. In the process, we discuss a number of works that have virtually disappeared from the citation trail in psychological discussions of emotion. We also correct some misconceptions about early sources, such as work by (...) Darwin and James. Taken together, these three contributions make for a fuller and more accurate account of ideas about emotion during the century stretching from 1855 to just before 1960. (shrink)

Brentano (1874) famously claimed that two features demarcate the mental: consciousness and intentionality. Although he claimed that these features are intimately related, subsequent generations of philosophers rarely treated them together. Recently, however, the tide has turned. Many philosophers now accept that consciousness is intentional, where to be intentional is to have representational content, is to represent ‘things as being thus and so — where, for all that, things need not be that way’ (Travis, 2004, 58). In fact, weak representationalism, which (...) holds that perceptual experiences have representational content, is ‘now fairly uncontroversial’ (Lycan, 2004). (shrink)

Emotion experience reflects some of the outcomes of the mostly nonconscious processes that compose emotions. In my view, the major processes are appraisal, affect, action readiness, and autonomic arousal. The phenomenology of emotion experience varies according to mode of consciousness (nonreflective or reflective consciousness), and to direction and mode of attention. As a result, emotion experience may be either ineffable or articulate with respect to any or all of the underlying processes. In addition, emotion experience reflects the degree to which (...) the emotion processes control perception, thought, action and bodily arousal. (shrink)

I argue that emotional feelings are not just bodily feelings, but also feelings directed towards things in the world beyond the bounds of the body, and that these feelings (feelings towards) are bound up with the way we take in the world in emotional experience.

Metaphysics is supposed to tell us about the metaphysical nature of our world: under what conditions composition occurs; how objects persist through time; whether properties are universals or tropes. It is near orthodoxy that whichever of these sorts of metaphysical claims is true is necessarily true. This paper looks at the debate between that orthodox view and a recently emerging view that claims like these are contingent, by focusing on the metaphysical debate between monists and pluralists about concrete particulars. This (...) paper argues that we should be contingentists about monism and pluralism, and it defends contingentism against some necessitarian objections by offering an epistemology of contingent metaphysical claims. (shrink)

In the past few years, the subject of AI rights—the thesis that AIs, robots, and other artefacts (hereafter, simply ‘AIs’) ought to be included in the sphere of moral concern—has started to receive serious attention from scholars. In this paper, I argue that the AI rights research program is beset by an epistemic problem that threatens to impede its progress—namely, a lack of a solution to the ‘Hard Problem’ of consciousness: the problem of explaining why certain brain states give rise (...) to experience. To motivate this claim, I consider three ways in which to ground AI rights—namely: superintelligence, empathy, and a capacity for consciousness. I argue that appeals to superintelligence and empathy are problematic, and that consciousness should be our central focus, as in the case of animal rights. However, I also argue that AI rights is disanalogous from animal rights in an important respect: animal rights can proceed without a solution to the ‘Hard Problem’ of consciousness. Not so with AI rights, I argue. There we cannot make the same kinds of assumptions that we do about animal consciousness, since we still do not understand why brain states give rise to conscious mental states in humans. (shrink)

While there is a vast philosophical literature exploring the conditions under which it is appropriate to hold individuals morally responsible for their actions, relatively little attention has been paid to the related question of which kinds of individuals merit these responsibility ascriptions. Under normal circumstances, typical adult human beings are held morally responsible for their behaviour but infants and nonhuman animals are not. In this thesis, I aim to account for this difference. That is, I aim to give an analysis (...) of the concept of moral agency. In Chapter One, I begin with a schema of moral agency, under which moral agents are characterised by the possession of certain abilities, enabling certain actions, for which certain responses are warranted. The literature on moral responsibility offers many ways of filling in these details, primarily by specifying the relevant agential abilities in terms of various responsibility conditions. My aim in this chapter is to offer a basic account, under which moral agents are characterised by the simplest possible abilities while still being appropriate targets of the relevant responses, such as praise and blame. I draw on the work of Nomy Arpaly, whose account of moral responsibility identifies the relevant ability as the ability to act out of good or ill will. I offer an analysis of this ability, under which basic moral agency is characterised by the ability to have desires about others’ mental states. In Chapter Two, I consider a range of alternative responsibility conditions offered by other philosophers, each of which appears to be necessary for moral agency. I argue that these conditions are not necessary for a basic account of moral agency. In Chapter Three, I move beyond basic moral agency to offer a more restrictive account that aims to capture other important aspects of our moral lives: the practice of justification and our ability to improve our moral character. I claim these aspects are underpinned by the use of moral reasons to guide our behaviour, and in contrast to moral motivation, this guidance is characterised by the ability to have beliefs about the desirability of actions. In Chapter Four, I aim to answer two questions: at what age do humans become moral agents, and are there any nonhuman animals who are moral agents. I draw on the work of Josef Perner, who offers a three-stage framework of the development of mental representation during childhood. I consider the conceptual coherence of this framework, its applicability to both accounts of moral agency developed in the thesis, and the empirical evidence that bears on the framework. As a result, I tentatively conclude that basic moral agency develops at around 18 months of age and may be present in a few species of nonhuman animal, whereas the more restrictive type of moral agency developed in Chapter Three develops no earlier than around 3.5 years of age and is restricted to human beings. (shrink)

Eric Schwitzgebel (2011) argues that phenomenal judgments are in general less reliable than perceptual judgments. This paper distinguishes two versions of this unreliability thesis. The process unreliability thesis says that unreliability in phenomenal judgments is due to faulty domain-specific mechanisms involved in producing these judgments, whereas the statistical unreliability thesis says that it is simply a matter of higher numbers of errors. Against the process unreliability thesis, I argue that the main errors and limitations in making phenomenal judgments can be (...) accounted for by domain-general factors: attention, working memory limits and conceptualization. As these factors are shared with the production of perceptual judgments, errors in phenomenal judgments are not due to faulty domain-specific processes. Furthermore, this account defends phenomenal judgments against general scepticism by providing criteria for distinguishing between reliable and unreliable phenomenal judgments. (shrink)

This book discusses the problem of mathematical knowledge, and its broader philosophical ramifications. It argues that the challenge to explain the (defeasible) justification of our mathematical beliefs (‘the justificatory challenge’), arises insofar as disagreement over axioms bottoms out in disagreement over intuitions. And it argues that the challenge to explain their reliability (‘the reliability challenge’), arises to the extent that we could have easily had different beliefs. The book shows that mathematical facts are not, in general, empirically accessible, contra Quine, (...) and that they cannot be dispensed with, contra Field. However, it argues that they might be so plentiful that our knowledge of them is intelligible. The book concludes with a complementary ‘pluralism’ about modality, logic and normative theory, highlighting its revisionary implications. Metaphysically, pluralism engenders a kind of perspectivalism and indeterminacy. Methodologically, it vindicates Carnap’s pragmatism, transposed to the key of realism. (shrink)

This book intends to show that radical naturalism, nominalism and strict finitism account for the applications of classical mathematics in current scientific theories. The applied mathematical theories developed in the book include the basics of calculus, metric space theory, complex analysis, Lebesgue integration, Hilbert spaces, and semi-Riemann geometry. The fact that so much applied mathematics can be developed within such a weak, strictly finitistic system, is surprising in itself. It also shows that the applications of those classical theories to the (...) finite physical world can be translated into the applications of strict finitism, which demonstrates the applicability of those classical theories without assuming the literal truth of those theories or the reality of infinity. Both professional researchers and students of philosophy of mathematics will benefit greatly from reading this book. (shrink)

Contents Preface - ix -/- I. Scientific fiction movies: is there any place for God?! 1. A brief introduction about the birth of science fiction - 15 2. Religious beliefs vs Science Fiction - 18 3. Is there any place for God?! - 20 -/- II. The Village (M. Night Shyamalan) and The Giver (Phillip Noyce) or why utopia is (im)possible 1. Some utopian notions. Remembering Thomas More - 29 2. The Village and The Giver. Some remarks on ideal societies (...) - 34 3. Notes about the possible and impossible of utopia - 39 -/- III. The limits of Zombies films are the limits of philosophy? 1. Are zombies real? From folklore to films - 46 2. The mind-body problem and the empty-minded zombies? - 54 3. The fallacy of the question. Zombies films and philosophy with no limit - 61 -/- IV. Lucy - why the brain cannot be a screen 1. Lucy and some other movies - The ten percent of the brain myth - 67 2. The enhancement of humanity -The pos-humanism after Nietzsche – 71 3. About the mind and the brain. Lucy or why the brain cannot be a screen – 74 -/- V. Viktor Navorski and Sir Alfred: the limits of consciousness at the border of chaos 1. About the terminal, Locke and Lipovetsky - 83 2. Being someone at a non-place - 87 3. Reality vs fiction. Merhan Karimi Nasseri as Sir Alfred - 89 -/- VI. Alienation and slavery from Precious or what we do not want to see 1. Cinema as a moment or the exclusive experience of feeling cinema - 97 2. Two movies, only one reality - 101 3. To conclude: the paradox of precious silence or what we don't want to see - 104 -/- VII. Philosophy of time and being in Alice through the looking glass 1. Some initial considerations on Alice - 113 2. The impossible and the possible in Alice’s time - 116 3. About time and subjectivity and subjectivity in time – 120 -/- References - cxxv. (shrink)

Jonathan Y. Tsou examines and defends positions on central issues in philosophy of psychiatry. The positions defended assume a naturalistic and realist perspective and are framed against skeptical perspectives on biological psychiatry. Issues addressed include the reality of mental disorders; mechanistic and disease explanations of abnormal behavior; definitions of mental disorder; natural and artificial kinds in psychiatry; biological essentialism and the projectability of psychiatric categories; looping effects and the stability of mental disorders; psychiatric classification; and the validity of the DSM's (...) diagnostic categories. The main argument defended by Tsou is that genuine mental disorders are biological kinds with harmful effects. This argument opposes the dogma that mental disorders are necessarily diseases that result from biological dysfunction. Tsou contends that the broader ideal of biological kinds offers a more promising and empirically ascertainable naturalistic standard for assessing the reality of mental disorders and the validity of psychiatric categories. (shrink)

Um dos grandes desafios da era da informação consiste em filtrar informações claras, rigorosas e atualizadas sobre tópicos importantes. O mesmo vale para a filosofia. Como encontrar conteúdo filosófico confiável em meio a milhares de artigos publicados diariamente na internet? Para ir ainda mais longe, como encontrar uma introdução a algum tópico com uma lista de referências bibliográficas atualizadas e que seja organizada por um especialista da área? Já que você começou a ler este livro, é provável que tenha ouvido (...) falar em algum momento da Enciclopédia Stanford de Filosofia, disponível gratuitamente na internet desde 1995. A página da Stanford faz exatamente isso. Ela cobre inúmeros verbetes sobre quase tudo em filosofia, oferecendo informação confiável sobre temas como feminismo, filosofia na América Latina, zumbis, metafísica e milhares de outros tópicos. A sugestão típica aos profissionais da filosofia que têm interesse em começar a estudar algum tópico, mas não sabem sequer por onde começar, é procurar pelo verbete relevante da Stanford. Infelizmente, o grande empecilho da página para o nosso contexto é que todos os verbetes estão disponíveis apenas em inglês, algo que cria um obstáculo a inúmeros estudantes e interessados que não dominam a língua. Neste sentido, acreditamos que esta publicação preencha um hiato importante na filosofia brasileira. Embora a filosofia no Brasil tenha se profissionalizado e expandido ao longo dos anos, há ainda lacunas em diversas áreas, e os verbetes foram aqui selecionados cuidadosamente no intuito de preencher ao menos algumas dessas lacunas. Este livro apresenta quatro verbetes cruciais para a filosofia, aqui divididos em quatro capítulos: (1) condições necessárias e suficientes, (2) referência (3) causação e (4) consciência. (shrink)

La teleosemántica es una teoría teleológica de las representaciones mentales, propugnada por David Papineau, que tiene como propósito ofrecer una explicación naturalista y evolucionista de dichas representaciones, en particular de las creencias. Mi objetivo será analizar las creencias y su relación con la verdad en la obra de Papineau. Según Papineau, los contenidos y las representaciones mentales, específicamente las creencias, cumplen funciones derivadas de la evolución biológica de la especie, y correlativamente, la finalidad de las creencias y los contenidos proviene (...) de las funciones biológicas que cada una de ellas tiene. De acuerdo a Papineau, para que las creencias cumplan sus funciones biológicas deben ser verdaderas, es decir, corresponder con la realidad. Defenderé la idea de que, a diferencia de lo que plantea la teleosemántica, la verdad y la falsedad, o más específicamente, los enunciados verdaderos y falsos son doxásticos, es decir, son enunciados que expresan creencias. Las creencias no tienen que ser verdaderas, sino más bien útiles, de manera que el que sean verdaderas o no es un producto secundario de la creencia. (shrink)

​Imagination will remain a mystery—we will not be able to explain imagination—until we can break it into parts we already understand. Explaining Imagination is a guidebook for doing just that, where the parts are other ordinary mental states like beliefs, desires, judgments, and decisions. In different combinations and contexts, these states constitute cases of imagining. This reductive approach to imagination is at direct odds with the current orthodoxy, according to which imagination is a sui generis mental state or process—one with (...) its own inscrutable principles of operation. Explaining Imagination upends that view, showing how, on closer inspection, the imaginings at work in hypothetical reasoning, pretense, the enjoyment of fiction, and creativity are reducible to other familiar mental states—judgments, beliefs, desires, and decisions among them. Crisscrossing contemporary philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and aesthetics, Explaining Imagination argues that a clearer understanding of imagination is already well within reach. (shrink)

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue titled "Contemporary Natural Philosophy and Philosophies" - Part 1 that was published in the journal Philosophies.

“Dalla filosofia dell’azione alla filosofia della mente” è stato il percorso di alcuni filosofi di nazionalità varia degli anni 1980 – come Paul Churchland negli Stati Uniti o Ansgar Beckermann in Germania – che prima si sono interessati agli aspetti più teorici nella filosofia dell’azione, come il modo di funzionamento delle azioni e la loro spiegazione scientifica, e che poi, con l’arrivo e la diffusione dei personal computers e delle scienze cognitive, hanno ampliato e approfondito questo interesse di ricerca e (...) si sono dedicati alla filosofia della mente più in generale e in particolare alla spiegazione scientifica e filosofica del mentale. Sandro Nannini faceva parte di questo movimento ed è stato uno tra gli inizialmente pochi filosofi italiani che si sono occupati di questi argomenti; successivamente ne è diventato uno dei maggiori specialisti in Italia, proponendo una sua particolare versione di naturalizzazione del mentale. Subordinata agli interessi teorici è stata la sua iniziativa accademica di fondare e promuovere il primo dottorato italiano di ricerca in Scienze Cognitive. Il presente volume tratta dell’opera di Sandro Nannini in contributi che sono riflessioni più o meno specifiche sulle differenti tappe del suo percorso, affrontando temi come l’analisi dell'azione, il libero arbitrio, la discussione di Nannini di vari classici della filosofia, la tendenza del naturalismo a dissolvere la filosofia in un enciclopedismo empirico e la sfida dei qualia e della fenomenologia all’approccio naturalistico alla mente. Il volume contiene inoltre un saggio dello stesso Sandro Nannini, nel quale espone l’ultimo sviluppo della sua filosofia della mente nonché le risposte agli interventi degli altri autori: Mario De Caro, Sara Dellantonio, Rosaria Egidi, Roberta Lanfredini, Christoph Lumer, Paolo Parrini, Pietro Perconti, Claudio Pizzi, Emanuela Scribano e Giuseppe Varnier. (shrink)

'Reason, Causation and Compatibility with the Phenomena' strives to give answers to the philosophical problem of the interplay between realism, explanation and experience. This book is a compilation of essays that recollect significant conceptions of rival terms such as determinism and freedom, reason and appearance, power and knowledge. This title discusses the progress made in epistemology and natural philosophy, especially the steps that led from the ancient theory of atomism to the modern quantum theory, and from mathematization to analytic philosophy. (...) Moreover, it provides possible gateways from modern deadlocks of theory either through approaches to consciousness or through historical critique of intellectual authorities. This work will be of interest to those either researching or studying in colleges and universities, especially in the departments of philosophy, history of science, philosophy of science, philosophy of physics and quantum mechanics, history of ideas and culture. Greek and Latin Literature students and instructors may also find this book to be both a fascinating and valuable point of reference. (shrink)

For as long as the Christian church has been working out its understanding of the second person of the Trinity, it has employed analytic philosophical reflection to sharpen theological comprehension. In recent times, there has been a rekindled appreciation for the employment of analytic reflection in the service of theology. Analytic theology has established itself as a way of doing theology that employs analytic philosophical analysis in the project of faith in divinely revealed truths seeking understanding. In this issue, the (...) fresh insights of analytic theology are applied to a theme most central to Christian theology—the Son of God. (shrink)

This monograph introduces a meta-framework for conducting interdisciplinary research in the science of emotion, as well as a framework for a particular kind of theory of emotion. It can also be understood as a “cross-over” book that introduces neophytes to some of the current discourse and major challenges for an interdisciplinary approach to the science of emotion, especially from a philosophical perspective. It also engages experts from across the disciplines who are interested in conducting an interdisciplinary approach to research and (...) theorizing in the science of emotion, and introduces to them some of the contemporary debates in the philosophy of emotion. It does so by providing a taxonomy of theories of emotion which allows one to understand the contemporary interdisciplinary discourse in the science of emotion as a debate between four fundamental types of theories of emotion—realism, instrumentalism, eliminative-realism, and eliminativism—and which can be found or potentially found across the disciplines, and by arguing for foundational principles which can unify, without consilience, these four kinds of approaches as perspectives about the same object of inquiry. It also covers a wide range of concerns, including the problem of skepticism in the science of emotion, the problem of the underdetermination of a theory by the evidence, the question of the place of ordinary intuitions and ordinary language for a science of emotion, the mind-body problem, the hard problem of consciousness, the meta-hard problem of consciousness, the problem of intentionality, questions about the rationality of emotions and whether emotions can be a vehicle for knowledge, and the debate between cognitive and noncognitive theories in the philosophy of emotion. (shrink)

In this book, William Brant inquires how violence is reduced. Social causes of violence are exposed. War, sexual domination, leadership, propagandizing and comedy are investigated. Legal systems are explored as reducers and implementers of violence and threats.

This book reports on the results of the third edition of the premier conference in the field of philosophy of artificial intelligence, PT-AI 2017, held on November 4 - 5, 2017 at the University of Leeds, UK. It covers: advanced knowledge on key AI concepts, including complexity, computation, creativity, embodiment, representation and superintelligence; cutting-edge ethical issues, such as the AI impact on human dignity and society, responsibilities and rights of machines, as well as AI threats to humanity and AI safety; (...) and cutting-edge developments in techniques to achieve AI, including machine learning, neural networks, dynamical systems. The book also discusses important applications of AI, including big data analytics, expert systems, cognitive architectures, and robotics. It offers a timely, yet very comprehensive snapshot of what is going on in the field of AI, especially at the interfaces between philosophy, cognitive science, ethics and computing. (shrink)

It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special nature of the concepts used to describe conscious states. Marc Champagne draws on the neglected branch of philosophy of signs or semiotics to develop a new take on this strategy. The term “semiotics” was introduced by John Locke in the modern period – (...) its etymology is ancient Greek, and its theoretical underpinnings are medieval. Charles Sanders Peirce made major advances in semiotics, so he can act as a pipeline for these forgotten ideas. Most philosophers know Peirce as the founder of American pragmatism, but few know that he also coined the term “qualia,” which is meant to capture the intrinsic feel of an experience. Since pragmatic verification and qualia are now seen as conflicting commitments, Champagne endeavors to understand how Peirce could (or thought he could) have it both ways. The key, he suggests, is to understand how humans can insert distinctions between features that are always bound. Recent attempts to take qualities seriously have resulted in versions of panpsychism, but Champagne outlines a more plausible way to achieve this. So, while semiotics has until now been the least known branch of philosophy ending in –ics, his book shows how a better understanding of that branch can move one of the liveliest debates in philosophy forward. (shrink)

I argue for a soft compatibilist theory of free will, i.e., such that free will is compatible with both determinism and indeterminism, directly opposite hard incompatibilism, which holds free will incompatible both with determinism and indeterminism. My intuitions in this book are primarily based on an analysis of meditation, but my arguments are highly syncretic, deriving from many fields, including behaviorism, psychology, conditioning and deconditioning theory, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, simulation theory, etc. I offer a causal/functional analysis of (...) meta-mental control, or 'metacausality', cashed out in counterfactual terms, to solve what I call the easy problem of free will. (shrink)

Los experimentos mentales son dispositivos epistémicos de la imaginación, o de análisis de problemas filosóficos, que recorren las fronteras de aquella, desde el sillón. Dichas fronteras tocan dilemas perennes de la filosofía: cuestiones de la metafísica, como el tiempo, el espacio y la realidad, el problema de la libertad y el determinismo, la naturaleza de la mente, la identidad personal, los argumentos acerca del significado, las posibilidades, fuentes y condiciones del conocimiento, las relaciones entre discurso y lógica, la ética, cuestiones (...) de la filosofía social y política, y la estética. Muchos problemas de la filosofía han sido abordados mediante experimentos mentales, una herramienta útil de la caja de herramientas del filósofo. No todas las herramientas son populares, no obstante. Los experimentos mentales son, pese a sus defensores, falibles, incluso si son argumentos bien planteados. Justamente, este libro recopila artículos con las principales defensas y ataques a los experimentos mentales, especialmente en términos de su confiabilidad para llegar a conclusiones, o bien de su relevancia en términos de su origen: el sillón de la filosofía. Este ha sido vapuleado por los nuevos aires de la filosofía analítica, que trata al sillón como un viejo artefacto del análisis a priori. De hecho, hay posturas que critican a los experimentos mentales por constituir bombas de intuiciones no confiables. Por supuesto, no hay razón irrefutable para aceptar los experimentos mentales y las filosofías de sillón. Pero ¿hay alguna en la filosofía? El libro no pretende convencer al lector del valor de los experimentos mentales y las filosofías de sillón. Por el contrario, su objetivo es formar una imagen propia de estos dispositivos epistémicos, tanto en relación con sus virtudes y limitaciones. Si ello se logra, habrá valido el esfuerzo llevado a cabo en esta compilación de artículos, los que muestran los límites, desafíos y críticas de la experimentación mental desde el sillón. (shrink)

What happens to the inner light of consciousness with the death of the individual body and brain? Reductive materialism assumes it simply fades to black. Others think of consciousness as indicating a continuation of self, a transformation, an awakening or even alternatives based on the quality of life experience. In this issue, speculation drawn from theoretic research are presented. -/- Table of Contents Epigraph: From “The Immortal”, Jorge Luis Borges iii Editor’s Introduction: I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day, Gregory (...) M. Nixon iv-xi Research Essays The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument Teed Rockwell 862-881 Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology, Steve Bindeman 882-899 The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death, Bernardo Kastrup 900-909 Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon—A Hypothesis, Eva Déli 910-930 The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death, Bryon K. Ehlmann 931-950 Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathway, Contzen Pereira & J Shashi Kiran Reddy 951-968 On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death, Massimo Pregnolato & Alfredo Pereira Jr. 969-991 Science and Postmortem Survival, Edward F. Kelly 992-1011 Explorations ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics, Chris H. Hardy 1012-1035 Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? Radivoj Stankovich (with Micho Durdevich) 1036-1050 Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death, Ken Bausch 1051-1063 Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm, Ronald Peter Glasberg 1064-1077 Living With Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness, Donald Brackett 1078-1098 Mysticism, Consciousness, Death, Mike Sosteric 1099-1118 What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James, Jonathan Bricklin 1119-1140 Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? Roger Cook 1141-1153 It’s the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World, James P. Kowall & Pradeep B. Deshpande 1154-1208 Statements A Feminine Vision for the World Consciousness, & a New Outrageous Ontology, Lorna Green 1209-1217 The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife, Iona Miller 1218-1228 Are We Really “such stuff as dreams are made on”? Chris Nunn 1229-1225 Is the Afterlife a Non-Question? (Let's Hope Not), Deepak Chopra 1226-1230 Life After Death? An Improbable Essay, Stuart Kauffman 1231-1236. (shrink)

According to David Chalmers, the hard problem of consciousness consists of explaining how and why qualitative experience arises from physical states. Moreover, Chalmers argues that materialist and reductive explanations of mentality are incapable of addressing the hard problem. In this chapter, I suggest that Chalmers’ hard problem can be usefully distinguished into a ‘how question’ and ‘why question,’ and I argue that evolutionary biology has the resources to address the question of why qualitative experience arises from brain states. From this (...) perspective, I discuss the different kinds of evolutionary explanations (e.g., adaptationist, exaptationist, spandrel) that can explain the origins of the qualitative aspects of various conscious states. This argument is intended to clarify which parts of Chalmers’ hard problem are amenable to scientific analysis. (shrink)

This dissertation concerns the foundations of epistemic modality. I examine the nature of epistemic modality, when the modal operator is interpreted as concerning both apriority and conceivability, as well as states of knowledge and belief. The dissertation demonstrates how phenomenal consciousness and gradational possible-worlds models in Bayesian perceptual psychology relate to epistemic modal space. The dissertation demonstrates, then, how epistemic modality relates to the computational theory of mind; metaphysical modality; deontic modality; logical modality; the types of mathematical modality; to the (...) epistemic status of undecidable propositions and abstraction principles in the philosophy of mathematics; to the apriori-aposteriori distinction; to the modal profile of rational propositional intuition; and to the types of intention, when the latter is interpreted as a modal mental state. Examining the nature of epistemic logic itself, I develop a novel approach to conditions of self-knowledge in the setting of the modal μ-calculus, as well as novel epistemicist solutions to Curry's, the liar, and the knowability paradoxes. Solutions to previously intransigent issues concerning the first-person concept; the distinction between fundamental and derivative truths; and the unity of intention and its role in decision theory, are developed along the way. (shrink)

Despite the current resurgence of modest forms of mind–body dualism, traditional Cartesian immaterial-substance dualism has few, if any, defenders. This paper argues that no convincing case has been made against substance dualism, and that standard objections to it can be credibly answered.

A purely metaphysical formulation of physicalism is surprisingly elusive. One popular slogan is, 'There is nothing over and above the physical'. Problems with this arise on two fronts. First, it is difficult to explain what makes a property 'physical' without appealing to the methodology of physics or to particular ways in which properties are known. This obviously introduces epistemic features into the core of a metaphysical issue. Second, it is difficult to cash out 'over-and-aboveness' in a way that is rigorous, (...) metaphysically pure and extensionally apt for the purposes of the debate. In this paper I will touch on the first problem, but I wish to focus on the second. In particular, I will focus on the claim that supervenience theses cannot define physicalism because they allow classical emergentist dualism through the physicalist door [Horgan 1993; Kim 1998; Wilson 2005]. I will argue that when the relevant supervenience thesis is metaphysical, emergentism is excluded. Against recent arguments to the contrary, I maintain that this is the case even given necessitarianism about natural laws [Wilson 2005]. I will argue that a necessitarian with emergentist sympathies will be forced either into a type of quasi-panpsychism, where our basic physical properties contain the illicit seeds of mentality at their core, or she will be forced to admit that emergence laws are not necessary after all. Either way, the combination of necessitarianism and emergentism does not provide a counterexample to supervenience physicalism. (shrink)

If two subjects have phenomenally identical experiences, there is an important sense in which the way the world appears to them is precisely the same. But how are we to understand this notion of 'ways of appearing'? Most philosophers who have acknowledged the existence of phenomenal content have held that the way something appears is simply a matter of the properties something appears to have. On this view, the way something appears is simply the way something appears to be . (...) This identification supports a Russellian theory of phenomenal content, according to which phenomenal content is exhausted by facts about what specific properties are represented by an experience. The present paper motivates and develops an alternative Fregean theory of phenomenal colour content. According to Fregean theories, the phenomenal content that is shared by any two phenomenally identical experiences is a matter of how the world is represented, and need not involve sameness in what is represented. It is argued that ways of appearing are modes of presentations of external properties and objects, and a detailed theory is presented about the nature of the modes of presentation involved in colour experience. (shrink)

In its classical form, epiphenomenalism is the view that conscious mental events have no physical effects: while physical events cause mental events, the opposite is never true. Unlike classical epiphenomenalism, contemporary forms do not hold that conscious men­ tal states always lack causal efficacy, only that they are epiphenomenal relative to certain kinds of action, ones we pre-theoretically would have thought consciousness to causally contribute to. Two of these contemporary, empirically based challenges to the efficacy of the mental are the (...) focus of this chapter. The first, originating in research by Libet, has been interpreted as showing that the neural events initiating voluntary actions precede our conscious willing of them, meaning the conscious will cannot be what causes them. The second challenge, originating in studies by Milner and Goodale, consist of instances in which the content of visual consciousness and motor action dissociate, casting doubt on the intuitive view that visual consciousness guides visually based motor action. (shrink)

partial review of Thomas Nagel’s book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False is used to articulate some systems-theoretic ideas about the challenge of understanding subjective experience. The article accepts Nagel’s view that reductionist materialism fails as an approach to this challenge, but argues that seeking an explanation of mind based on emergence is more plausible than seeking one based on pan-psychism, which Nagel favors. However, the article proposes something similar to Nagel’s neutral (...) monism by positing a hierarchy of information processes that spans the domains of matter, life, and mind. As depicted in this hierarchy, subjective experience is emergent, but also continuous with informational phenomena at lower levels. (shrink)

This paper controverts the ability of intentionalism about perception to account for unique epistemic significance of phenomenal consciousness. More specifically, the intentionalist cannot explain the latter without denying two well-founded claims: the transparency of experience, and the possibility of unconscious perception. If they are true, intentionality of perception entails that phenomenal consciousness has no special epistemic role to play. Although some intentionalists are ready to bite this bullet, by doing so they effectively undermine one of the standard motivations of their (...) view, i.e. the claim that perceptual experiences justify beliefs. Consequently, whatever reason might there be to think that phenomenal consciousness has unique epistemic import, it is also a reason to reject intentionalism. I recommend replacing the latter with an unorthodox formulation of relationalism about perception. (shrink)

In Zhong (Philos Phenomenol Res 83:129–147, 2011; Analysis 72:75–85, 2012), I argued that, contrary to what many people might expect, the counterfactual theory of causation will generate (rather than solve) the exclusion problem. Recently some philosophers raise an incisive objection to this argument. They contend that my argument fails as it equivocates between different notions of a physical realizer (see Christensen and Kallestrup in Analysis 72:513–517, 2012). However, I find that their criticism doesn’t threaten the central idea of my view. (...) In this paper, I make two separate responses that appeal to two unequivocal notions of physical realizers, respectively. I aim to show that a modified argument that uses either notion would work. (shrink)

The Exclusion Argument has afflicted non-reductionists for decades. In this article, I attempt to show that emergentism—the view that mental entities can downwardly cause physical entities in a non-overdetermining way—is the most plausible approach to solving the exclusion problem. The emergentist approach is largely absent in contemporary philosophy of mind, because emergentism rejects the Causal Closure of Physics, a doctrine embraced by almost all physicalists. This article, however, challenges the consensus on causal closure and defends a physicalist version of emergentism. (...) On closer examination, I find that neither physical evidence nor physicalist considerations can satisfactorily support causal closure. Moreover, I argue that two competing approaches that accept causal closure, compatibilism and autonomism, involve ad hoc postulations of mental causation. Therefore, all things considered, emergentism is the best option available to non-reductive physicalists. (shrink)