Month: December 2008

Testing…1,2,3…

Richard Brown 4 Comments

In preperation for Consciousness Online I am testing my ability to take a narrated powerpoint presentation, convert into a movie and then embed it into a post (there is at least one person who will be doing a narrated powerpoint pres). So, as a test here is my presentation of ‘What is a Brain State?’ from the 2006 Towards a Science of Consciousness conference…let’s see if this works.

UPDATE
So, it works! But the text is kind of small and hard to read in the player…I suppose I can link to the video at google video and people can go there and watch it in a larger player, or even full screen…

Final Fantasy Fiasco!

Richard Brown 10 Comments

I am saddened to have to announce that I have had to pull my contribution to Blackwell’s Final Fantasy and Philosophy book,  Moogles, and Chocobos, and…Kripke? Oh My!, due to unacceptable editorial cuts made by the series editor Bill Irwin. Originally the paper was 25 pages, the book editors wanted it cut to 13 pages, which I did (that is the version I link to above). Then the series editor wanted it cut to 7 pages! This I could not do. I am going to leave the paper up at my website just in case someone wants to read it. I spent six months writing and re-writing it, so I am a bit peeved…but what’re ya gonna do?

All in all this has been a very enlightening experience for me. I was excited about the Pop Culture and Philosophy series because I thought it was a way to bring philosophy from the Ivory Tower to Main St. In particular I was excited about the prospects of turning people on to analytic philosphy.  But after this, and the fighting I have had to do in order to get serious philosophy into the Terminator volume, I now have a very different feeling about this series…

Body Swap Illusion

Richard Brown Leave a comment

Story here…this is really facisnating stuff. I might also point out the the higher-order theory of consciousness seems very able to explain this. One is conscious of the other body as being one’s own and therefore experiences the other body as one’s own. In fact I don’t see how other theories of consciousness would be able to handle this result at all…