https://philosophyandfiction.com/2023/11/01/pigs-and-truffles-giveaway/?page_id=7569 Tina Lee Foresee, a longtime fellow blogger, has a new book coming out: Truth & Generosity: How Truth Makes Language Possible, by her and her husband, Neal Weiner. From what I understand, it will be on the relationship between language and belief. She's working to promote the book, which is what the pig hunt … Continue reading Tina’s new book on language and belief
Category: Zeitgeist
Hello Fediverse!
This week, WordPress.com announced that all of their blogs would now have the option to join the Fediverse. The announcement included instructions on how to enable it. As Twitter, now X, has become increasingly less usable, a number of other platforms have been vying to be its replacement: Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, and several others. Unfortunately, … Continue reading Hello Fediverse!
Borderline consciousness?
Eric Schwitzgebel had an interesting paper come out this week, exploring the question of whether there can be cases of borderline consciousness, that is, cases where a system is neither determinately conscious nor determinately non-conscious. For example, maybe humans, dogs, and cats are determinately conscious, rocks and protons are determinately not conscious, but something like … Continue reading Borderline consciousness?
Are many-worlds and pilot-wave the same theory?
It's been a while, but I've occasionally mentioned on the blog that Cecil B. Demille's The Ten Commandments (the 1950s color version) is one of my favorite movies. And this has remained true even as I've come to see it as straight fantasy. An interesting fact from when I first saw it as a very … Continue reading Are many-worlds and pilot-wave the same theory?
Integrated information theory as pseudoscience?
It's been an interesting week in consciousness studies. It started with Steve Fleming doing a blog post, a follow up to one he'd done earlier expressing his concerns about how the results of the adversarial collaboration between global neuronal workspace (GNW) and integrated information theory (IIT) were portrayed in the science media. GNW sees consciousness … Continue reading Integrated information theory as pseudoscience?
Watching James S. A. Corey work
James S. A. Corey is the author of The Expanse series and the pen name of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Abraham and Franck are writing a new novel. And they're opening up the entire process to a Patreon audience. Membership allows you to watch the entire process, from figuring out what they're going to … Continue reading Watching James S. A. Corey work
Solving a problem requires not banishing the possible solutions
Adam Mastroianni has a post that's getting a pretty good amount of attention. Mastroianni discusses recent claims of fraud in psychology, as well as the replication crisis. But his actual topic is how little difference it makes when most of the studies in question are removed from the scientific record. The overall gist is that … Continue reading Solving a problem requires not banishing the possible solutions
How to tell if AI is conscious
An interesting preprint was released this week: Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness. The paper is long and has has sixteen authors, although two: Patrick Butlin and Robert Long, are flagged as the primaries. The list of contributors includes Jonathan Birch, Stephen Fleming, Grace Lindsay, Matthias Michel, and Eric Schwitzgebel, all … Continue reading How to tell if AI is conscious
The need for self curation in social media
It's been a few weeks since I last posted on social media and there have been developments. Twitter is now officially gone, replaced with X. For some reason, the symbolism of this move seems to have convinced a lot of people that the old Twitter is gone in a way the last several months of … Continue reading The need for self curation in social media
SMBC: Consciousness: a definition thing
Zach Weinersmith is a man after my own heart when it comes to consciousness, as today's Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal shows. As the consciousness is in the eye of the beholder and hierarchy of definitions guy, I feel this comic. It also resonates with Jacy Reese Anthis' conscious semanticism outlook. Click through for the original … Continue reading SMBC: Consciousness: a definition thing
SelfAwarePatterns 