Archive for the ‘philosophy’ Category
A movie with its heart in the right place, but…
…to be honest I haven’t seen Being In The World yet (it doesn’t seem to have been released), so what follows is based on the website, but there are enough trailers, clips and text there to get me thinking. Being In The World is a new movie by Tao Ruspoli, and, as is common these [...]
March 30, 2010
Posted in: AI, philosophy, psychology 
No Comments
The brights, mysticism and me
I recently joined the brights. What’s a bright? A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview A bright’s worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview That’s from the website’s home page. Naturalism is “the doctrine that the world can [...]
March 2, 2010
Posted in: philosophy No Comments
Second Annual Online Consciousness Conference
This might seem a bit gimmicky (or maybe I’m just behind the times—I certainly am as regards this announcement) but some big names are taking part.
February 23, 2010
Posted in: announcements, consciousness, philosophy No Comments
Effects of media violence ignored by media?
I’ve been reading a paper by Susan Hurley (@Wikipedia), a philosopher who sadly died a couple of years ago aged only 53, for a university course. The title is “By-passing conscious control: imitation, media violence and freedom of speech.” (In S Pockett et al, Does Consciousness Cause Behaviour, MIT Press. I might be doing an [...]
February 16, 2010
Posted in: philosophy, politics, psychology No Comments
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 [...]
February 13, 2010
Posted in: Dennett, announcements, information, philosophy No Comments
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow
I discovered this while working on my PhD research proposal (which at the moment is on again, though maybe not for long). I’m interested in the implications of altered states such as flow for philosophy of mind. But you don’t need to be a philosopher or psychologist to learn a lot from this. Some of [...]
January 30, 2010
Posted in: philosophy, psychology No Comments
VS Ramachandran: The neurons that shaped civilization
VS Ramachandran: The neurons that shaped civilization http://tinyurl.com/yceysmc Neuroscience, culture, empathy, eastern philosophy, etc, etc. All in about seven minutes. Amazing.
January 6, 2010
Posted in: philosophy, psychology No Comments
No wonder people don’t like Dennett
In Kinds of Minds (1996, p15), Daniel Dennett quotes Elaine Morgan: The heart-stopping thing about the new-born is that, from minute one, there is somebody there. Anyone who bends over the cot and gazes at it is being gazed back at. (1995, p99) Dennett responds: As an observation about how we human observers instinctively react [...]
December 19, 2009
Posted in: Dennett, differentials, philosophy 3 Comments
The Churchlands
(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. [...]
May 25, 2007
Posted in: consciousness, differentials, philosophy No Comments
Some thoughts on Dennett
Added December 2009: This now needs a health warning. It was written before I knew anything about theory-theory and simulation theory, and though my basic stance has changed little if any, I’d now express some of these ideas quite differently. (Also, some of the internal links might not work.) In Susan Blackmore’s Conversations on Consciousness [...]
May 16, 2007
Posted in: Dennett, consciousness, differentials, information, philosophy 6 Comments