Tag Archives: Philosophy of Mind

Ginger Campbell is doing a series on consciousness

Posted on August 24, 2019 by

I’ve highlighted Dr. Ginger Campbell’s excellent Brain Science Podcast before.  It’s an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the science of the brain.  Many of the books and concepts I’ve highlighted here over the years, I first heard about on … Continue reading →

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The problems with panpsychism

Posted on July 31, 2019 by

Late last week, there was a clash between philosophers on Twitter over panpsychism.  This was followed by Philip Goff, an outspoken proponent of panpsychism, authoring a blog post arguing that we shouldn’t require evidence for it.  This week, Susan Schneider … Continue reading →

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The difficulty of subjective experience

Posted on July 14, 2019 by

As I indicated in the Chalmers post last week, phenomenal consciousness has been on my mind lately.  In the last few days, a couple of my fellow bloggers, Wyrd Smythe and James Cross, have joined in with their own posts.  … Continue reading →

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Chalmers’ theory of consciousness

Posted on July 7, 2019 by

Ever since sharing Ned Block’s talk on it, phenomenal consciousness has been on my mind.  This week, I decided I needed to go back to the main spokesperson for the issue of subjective experience, David Chalmers, and his seminal paper … Continue reading →

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Rule out plant consciousness for the right reasons

Posted on July 4, 2019 by

In recent years, there’s been a resurgence in the old romantic sentiment that maybe plants are conscious.  I hadn’t realized that an entire sub-field had formed called Plant Neurobiology, the name itself incorporating a dubious claim that plants have neurons.  … Continue reading →

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The ASSC 23 debate on whether artificial intelligence can be conscious

Posted on June 30, 2019 by

The ASSC (Association of Scientific Study of Consciousness) had its annual conference on consciousness this week, which culminated in a debate on whether AI can be conscious. Note: the event doesn’t actually start until the 28:30 minute mark.  The remaining … Continue reading →

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The sparsity of phenomenal consciousness, or of cognition, or both

Posted on May 27, 2019 by

Ned Block gave a Google talk (embedded below) that was ostensibly supposed to be about why AI approaches to cognition won’t work.  However, while he does address this topic briefly, it’s toward the end and he admits he hasn’t really … Continue reading →

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Are zombies conscious?

Posted on May 5, 2019 by

This is not a question about philosophical zombies.  I did a post on them a while back.  (The TL;DR is that I find that whole concept ranges from incoherent to dubious, depending on the exact version.) This post is on … Continue reading →

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Emotions, feelings, and action programs

Posted on May 1, 2019 by

Sean Carroll’s latest Mindscape podcast features an interview with neuroscientist Antonio Damasio: When we talk about the mind, we are constantly talking about consciousness and cognition. Antonio Damasio wants us to talk about our feelings. But it’s not in an … Continue reading →

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Do boiling crawfish suffer?

Posted on April 23, 2019 by

This Easter I visited one of my cousins and, as is tradition for a lot of people this time of year, we had a crawfish boil.  Eating boiled crawfish (crayfish for you non-Cajuns) is an ever present activity in southern … Continue reading →

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