Category: Philosophy of Mind
-
By Gordon Hull Last time, I suggested that a recent paper by Mala Chatterjee and Jeanne Fromer is very helpful in disentangling what is at stake in Facebook’s critique of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). Recall that BIPA requires consent before collecting biometric identifiers, and a group of folks sued FB over phototagging. Among…
-
When I first took philosophy of mind at St Andrews in 2002 as an undergrad, we discussed the mind-body problem, behaviorism, identity theory, functionalism, modularity, and qualia. I wrote my term paper on anomalous monism and strong supervenience, entitled: "Is it possible for someone to be in a particular mental state without having any propensity…
-
By Catarina Dutilh Novaes A few days ago the link to an interesting piece popped up in my Facebook newsfeed: ‘Three reasons why every woman should use a vibrator’, by Emily Nagoski. I wholeheartedly agree with the main claim, but what makes the piece particularly interesting for philosophers at large is a reference to Andy Clark…
-
by Eric Schwitzgebel Enclose the sun inside a layered nest of thin spherical computers. Have the inmost sphere harvest the sun’s radiation to drive computational processes, emitting waste heat out its backside. Use this waste heat as the energy input for the computational processes of a second, larger and cooler sphere that encloses the first.…
-
I live very close to Port Meadow, one of the largest meadows of open common land in the UK, already in existence in the 10th century, and mentioned in the Domesday book in 1086. I saw my first-ever live, wild oriole there. The land has been never ploughed, so it is possible to discern outlines…
-
Eric Schwitzgebel recently took up the question of whether an infinitely extended life must be boring. The discussion ended (when I looked at it) with Eric’s fruitfully suggesting that we look at various cognitive architectures and their capacities for boredom over the long run. No doubt there are many kinds of minds. Let’s radically simplify…
-
Readers of the Brains blog might know about a symposium there concerning a paper by Philipp Koralus. In his commentary on the paper, Felipe de Brigard mentions the problem of captured attention: "I have a hard time understanding how ETA may account for involuntary attention. Suppose you are focused on your task—reading a book at…
-
reflections on beautiful souls, hypocrites, undecidability results, and the structure of normativity
In much of the philosophy of language and mind coming out of the late Wittgenstein and/or early Heidegger, a distinction is made between merely following a norm versus also being able to correctly assess whether others are following that norm. Note that the Brandom of "Dasein, the Being that Thematizes" (in Tales of the Mighty…
-
We might soon be creating monsters, so we’d better figure out our duties to them. Robert Nozick’s Utility Monster derives 100 units of pleasure from each cookie she eats. Normal people derive only 1 unit of pleasure. So if our aim is to maximize world happiness, we should give all our cookies to the monster.…
New APPS 