(All references are to Susan Blackmore, Conversations on Consciousness, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005.)
Pat says we don’t know that the “hard problem” is really any more hard than many others (p50-52), and “we don’t know how consciousness is produced in brains” (p51). I know that it’s a pseudo-problem, and that consciousness is not produced.
Paul […]
In Susan Blackmore’s Conversations on Consciousness [Bla05], Daniel Dennett says that a philosophical zombie “could cry at sad movies, be thrilled by joyous sunsets, enjoy ice cream. . . and yet not be conscious at all.” (p81)
This might seem a trivial point, but it’s a typical example of Dennett’s thinking, or at least his […]
I’m reading Douglas Hofstadter’s new book I Am A Strange Loop just now, and just ran into my first significant disagreement with him (in this book, that is). On page 76, after describing a walk along an airport concourse during which various scents evoke numerous associations, he writes (emphases in the original):
Each of these examples […]
This is from an article at TimesOnline (quoted without permission):
A study commissioned by the Government that suggests robots could one day have rights was attacked by leading scientists yesterday as a red herring that has diverted attention from more pressing ethical issues.
Researchers studying robotics said that the Robo-rights document, published in December and sponsored by […]
