My study plans

After much cogitation, mainly about PhD possibilities, but also (very briefly) about whether I even want to complete the MSc, yesterday I reached some firm conclusions, which I’m publicising to confirm my commitment to them (ie for my own benefit even if nobody else is interested, which is entirely possible).

The main development yesterday was my realisation of the link between the MSc dissertation and what is now my main aim for a PhD project. So here’s my favourite expression of what I very much hope to do a PhD on:

It is tempting to suppose that some concept of information could serve eventually to unify mind, matter, and meaning in a single theory. Daniel Dennett and John Haugeland.

My thing always used to be consciousness, but having a much clearer view of the state of the art since starting the MSc course, I don’t believe there’s very much left to do there. Information is something else, and I have some very definite ideas, which remain intact even after studying Dretske and others last semester, and spending much of this week looking at philosophy of info on the web.

The link between the MSc dissertation (see the proposal) and the proposed PhD project is memes, as items of information. I’m now thinking that it might be possible to explain the difference between Blackmore’s and Dennett’s concepts of consciousness largely in memetic terms. That’s basically because Blackmore, unlike Dennett, provides a convincing account of how memes get going in the first place (though she didn’t make the link between that story and consciousness). That unfortunately reduces the emphasis on meditation (probably, I think), but you can’t study everything!

If that works out as I hope and expect it will, it’ll make a great jumping off point for the PhD project. The timing isn’t so great, though, because as yet I’ve no idea who might be willing and able to supervise it, so I’ll probably have to take a year out, and start the PhD in September 2011, which seems a long, long way away! But of course I don’t have to wait until then to get working on it…

[Later: I should maybe make it clear that my commitment to this plan isn't absolute, but any alternative would have to be very good to compete. Short of sheer fantasy, I can hardly think of anything better!]

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