I am happy to say that I have just uploaded the final video of my online introduction to philosophy course! I have all of the videos up at my youtube channel but I also started a special blog for them here: http://onlinephilosophyclass.wordpress.com
I have slides for my philosophy of religion class, which I may or may not record lectures for, but I have been thinking about doing a philosophy of mind class…maybe for when I teach it in the Spring of 2012.
Dec 5th is the deadline for submissions! Note the updated special sessions!
I am pleased to announce the call for papers for the fourth online consciousness conference. The Invited Program includes,
Bernard Baars, The Neurosciences Institute
Special Session on Attention, Awareness, and Expectation organized by the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behavior featuring,
Floris P. de Lange, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior
Jacqueline Gottlieb, Columbia
Marisa Carrasco, NYU
Special Session on Action Consciousness organized by Myrto Mylopoulos, The Graduate Center CUNY
Élisabeth Pacherie, Institut Jean Nicod
Christopher Frith, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging
Special Session on the Social Conditions of Self Consciousness organized by James Dow, Hendrix University
Radu J. Bogdan, Tulane University
Peter Carruthers, University of Maryland
Papers in any area of consciousness studies are welcome (construed broadly to include philosophy of mind and philosophy of neuroscience). Papers should be roughly 3,000-4,000 words and subsequent presentations, should the presenter choose to make one, should be about 20 minutes (though longer papers/presentations are acceptable). Submissions, suitable for blind review, should be sent to consciousnessonline@gmail.com by December 5th 2011. Those interested in being referees or commentators should also contact me. Authors of accepted papers are urged to make, or have made, some kind of audio/visual presentation (e.g. narrated powerpoint or video of talk) though this is not required to present.
For more information visit the conference website at http://consciousnessonline.com
Find Consciousness Online on Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/pages/Consciousness-Online/361010842469
Via the latest philosophers’ carnival I learn of a recent kerfluffle, started here, and continued here over the usefulness of philosophy and I can’t resist throwing my $0.02 in.
One thing that I have little patience with is the view that dismisses philosophy all together. The view that there is no progress in philosophy is itself a philosophical view. The view that all knowledge is scientific knowledge is also a philosophical view. When people say that philosophy is a waste of time they invariably mean one particular way of doing philosophy is a waste of time. This is clearly illustrated by people like Richard Feynman who spend a lot of time denouncing philosophy in general when a closer looks reveals that he was pissed off about the method used by particular philosophers (that he happened to encounter). This is also born out by the anti-philosophy comments at the linked posts. If you do not like thought-experiments, analysis of ordinary language, or scholastic proofs for God’s existence that is fine, but that is not the same thing as not liking philosophy.
Philosophy is unavoidable. You cannot even say why it is worthless without actually doing some philosophy; that is part and parcel of its suckiness. I think it was Aristotle who first voiced this sentiment, (though I can’t seem to find the passage any where in my Barnes anthologies)…anyways. Deal with it.
Here are some recent paper drafts I have been working on, in various stages of being rewritten for various projects. Comments are most welcome!
[Cross-posted at Brains]
So much has been going on in nyc that I have had trouble keeping up with it. However I have a bit of free time today and wanted to jot down a few notes about Sid Kouider’s recent presentation at the CUNY CogSci Colloquium. Sid was addressing a topic close to my heart, which the the issue of phenomenological overflow (I am pretty sure his talk was based on his recent TICS paper). In his talk he first gave several arguments against the notion of overflow and then gave his account of what is going on in the cases at issue.
One of his arguments was against the idea of inaccessible phenomenology in general. His idea seemed to be that phenomenology that was inaccessible could not, in principle, make any contribution to the awareness of the individual and so the fact that subjects were able to report that they had rich experiences was some evidence that they had at least some access to the information and so counted against the inaccessibility of those states. Ned Block objected that there was a confusion between something being inaccessible and something being necessarily un-accessed. Something is inaccessible (roughly) when there is no possibility that it could be accessed. Ned admitted that he probably does believe in inaccessible consciousness but was very clear that he does not think that the phenomenological overflow argument relies on this claim. Rather, the phenomenological overflow argument relies on the claim that some phenomenology is necessarily un-accessed at any given time. This is compatible with the claim that it could be accessed at some other time. So, the argument requires only that there is always more to what we are consciously experiencing than we can access at any given time not that there is some conscious experience that is completely inaccessible.
I objected at this point that Sid’s argument seemed to withstand this point. In general I think that this distinction of Ned’s is useful for clearing up a potential confusion about how the argument is supposed to work but it does not abolish the point that Sid was making. In fact, this point has been made, in a slightly different way by David Rosenthal and myself (in the paper linked to above). Subjects report that they see a bunch of letters in the Sperling type cases and that they see all or most of the rectangles in the Sligte type cases so they must have at least partial access to the first-order state. Taking their reports at face value actually counts against the notion of overflow.
A large part of the discussion at this point centered on Sid’s argument that there is an observer effect here that should push us away from thinking about unaccessed phenomenology. His argument seemed to be that any way we could possibly test for it would run afoul of the confound that access was involved (a version of the methodological puzzle). A few people objected that Sid was raising the bar to high here and demanding standards which exceed those of ordinary science. Shouldn’t we avoid the trap of thinking that there is something special about consciousness and accept regular scientific standards of when it is and isn’t around? If so it seems we could overcome the observer effect by accumulating enough ‘circumstantial’ evidence to convince us one way or the other. Dave Chalmers at this point made a comparison to the way we think about tables and chairs. I know that there is a table here because I see it (I access it), and I can’t prove that it is there unless I access it, yet none the less I go on being reasonably confident that the table continues to exist when I am not accessing it. Might not the same be true for consciousness? For my part I think that this kind of thinking is often behind the intuitions of those who endorse phenomenological overflow but I don’t find it very convincing. I agree that I think the table is there when I am not looking at it, but I do not assume that the table is there as it appeared to me! That is, the table as unaccessed (unseen) does not look like the table that I see! The table as unaccessed is, according to our best theories, either a swarm of particles or a local collapse in a wave function, or what have you…this is not how it appears to me. So too, we can agree that the accessed thing is still there without thinking that it is there as it was when I accessed it. The qualitative state is there, but when unaccessed it is not like anything for me to have it and so there is no phenomenology present.
Sid then went on to discuss his partial awareness hypothesis, which amounts to the claim that we can have access at many different levels. So, in the Sperling type cases, the subjects will have access to the semantic meanings of the letters in the cued row and only partial access to the letters in the uncured row. To have partial access is to access a lower stage of the processing hierarchy. For instance, he presented data that showed that subjects in a Stroop-like paradigm that were presented with fake color words (like ‘geren’) would treat them like color words (i.e. exhibit strop interference) only when they expected that there were going to be some color words (strong prior confidence) and also were in conditions where the words were very hard to detect (see his paper for details).
At this point Ned objected that he and Sid agreed on how to interpret the experimental results. For Sid the subjects in Sperling cases have full access to the semantics meaning of the letters in the cued row and only partial access to the letters in the inched rows. Ned pointed out that on his view he thinks that the subjects have a conscious experience of the letters in the cued row and have degraded conscious experience of the others in the uncured rows. He has always said that the phenomenology in the uncured rows is unable to be brought under the correct concepts that would allow the subject to know the identities of the letters. This sounds just like what Sid has said and so it sounds like Sid is endorsing phenomenological overflow. But this is incorrect. Sid has agreed that the subjects have the phenomenology that Ned says that they do, but on Sid’s view they have that conscious experience because they have partial access to the first order states! On Ned’s view they do not have access to those states in any way and still have phenomenology. So Sid has not endorsed overflow of any kind. The subjects have just as much conscious experience as they can access. Since they have access only to low level processing of uncured row their conscious experience will be partial as well, but since they del so confident that they are seeing letters they mistakenly report that they consciously see all of the letters. All of this can be said without having to endorse the notion of phenomenological overflow. All in all then, the no overflow view is the most parsimonious; a conclusion with which I totally agree! 🙂
Via István Aranyosi; for more info visit the conference website: http://minds.bilkent.edu.tr/
Conference Announcement and 1st CALL FOR PAPERS
Minds, Bodies, and Problems —
A philosophy of mind conference
hosted by Bilkent University, Ankara, 7-8 June, 2012.
High-quality submissions are invited on the many aspects of the mind-body problem.
Some suggested topics include: naturalistic/physicalistic reduction of intentionality and/or phenomenal consciousness, the potential constitutive role of the body in mental states, the extended mind hypothesis, the potential conceptual role of the Peripheral Nervous System in the characterization of mental states/processes, body and mental causation, body/brain and free will, consciousness related topics in neuro- and bio-ethics, potential novel philosophical implications of focusing on less studied sense modalities: olfaction, proprioception, interoception, kinesthesia, etc.
Self-standing papers are preferred rather than papers responding to/commenting on another paper or book. Each talk will be 45 minutes long, including Q&A.
Keynote speakers:
Prof. Murat Aydede (University of British Columbia)
Prof. David Chalmers (Australian National University/New York University)
Prof. Tim Crane (Cambridge University)
Prof. Katalin Farkas (Central European University)
Prof. Shaun Gallagher (U. of Memphis/U. of Hertfordshire)
Interested speakers should submit an extended abstract (500-1000 words) by uploading it to the system to be found on the website of the conference:
Submissions will be blindly refereed by a group of people comprising some of the keynote speakers, some of the faculty members of the Department of Philosophy at Bilkent University, and some members of the Turkish philosophical community.
We will select 8-10 speakers based on the submitted abstracts, and every effort is made to publish the final versions of the papers in an edited volume. The criteria of selection are both the perceived quality of the papers and the maximization of the conference’s overall diversity as far as the topics are concerned.
Abstract submission deadline: 15 January, 2012.
Expected date of a decision: 1 March, 2012.
Registration details:
Selected speakers will be asked to pay a conference fee of 160 EUR, which will cover the following:
– Three nights’ accommodation (6, 7, 8 June, 2012) in on-campus guest apartments.
– Lunches and dinners on 7 and 8 June, 2012.
– Breakfast on 8 June, 2012.
– Coffee, tea, and refreshments during the two conference days.
There will also be a two-day post-conference trip (9-10 June, 2012) to Cappadocia, which interested participants will have to pay for separately at a concession rate (approximately 100 EUR) which will cover transportation, tour guide, 4-star hotel accommodation, breakfast, dinner, and two lunches. For information on Cappadocia, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadocia
The conference fee will also cover a fourth night at Bilkent upon return from Cappadocia, for of those who opt for joining us on that trip.
Payment details will be available to selected speakers by the time the final decision on the program will have been made.
The conference is open to the public, but the University is not able to arrange for accommodation and meals for non-speaker participants.
Two more reminders of the call for papers will be sent out: on 30 November, 2011, and on 30 December, 2011.
————
Organization
Organizing department/institution: Department of Philosophy/Bilkent University
Organizer: Dr. István Aranyosi (Bilkent University)
Program Committee:
Prof. Varol Akman (Bilkent University)
Dr. Sandy Berkovski (Bilkent University)
Dr. Hilmi Demir (Bilkent University)
Dr. Kourken Michaelian (Bilkent University)
Assoc. Prof. Erdinç Sayan (Middle East Technical University)
Dr. Simon Wigley (Bilkent University)
Dr. Bill Wringe (Bilkent University)
From over at the Smoker I learn that David Morrow and Chris Sula have started a Jobs Board to ‘supplement’ that of the apa. Please spread the word!
I recently was saddened to discover that a former professor of mine, John J. Glanville at SF State University, passed away. Dr. Glanville, as I knew him (he referred to me a Mr. Brown, saying he would call me ‘Richard’ after I had earned my M.A.), was one of those professors who you either loved or hated. He had very high standards and was not squeamish about hurting one’s feelings if he thought one’s answers/work was sub-par. I was one of the one’s that loved him (I took 5 class with him, where I learned everything I know about Ancient Philosophy. He would often remark that for someone with my modern interests I gave “unusual attention to the history of Ancient and Medieval philosophy”) so I thought I would take a couple of minutes to reflect on his influence on me.
I transfered to SF State as an undergraduate in the Spring of 1997. Coming from a community college, I was very excited to be at a four-year school and to be taking classes in my major. In the Fall of 1997 I took Ancient Philosophy and History of Christian Thought, both with Dr. Glanville. Dr. Glanville was a very intimidating figure in the classroom, always asking questions about the readings and chastising those who did not know the answers. But he was also a teacher who took his job seriously and I have never had so much feedback on papers and exams as I did from him. I would turn in 10 double-spaced pages and get back the same 10 pages with copious notes in the margin and between the lines full of challenges, comments, queries, encouragement, etc. All written in tiny print and in pencil. He once famously wrote on one of my classmate’s papers (who shall remain nameless), “I have stopped reading for fear of what I might find,” a testament to his blunt no-nonsense approach. It was the first time I had ever felt like someone was taking my work seriously. For me it was a tremendous feeling. But beyond this gruff task master exterior lay an intellect and wit that was hard to surpass. He could be quite funny in the class, often making jokes that dated him, and it was obvious that he kept up with the literature, often making a comment about a new book or article on Parmenides or Democritus. As tough as he was on our work, he was twice as hard on his own work. We read a couple of his papers in grad seminars and they were excellent. He would say ‘I’ll send them off when they are better’ and we would be blown away; how could they be better? I surmise that there must be several books worth of material lying around in his house. I hope these come out some day and he is recognized for the tremendous scholar that he was.
I remember one particular incident in the History of Christian Thought class I took with him. I was to give a presentation on the section of Acts (I don’t recall the specific passage) where they discuss an encounter with Greek philosophy. Those who know me know that I am agnostic about the existence of God but I am not, nor have I ever been, agnostic about extant religions. I find that they have been a major force for evil in the history of Human Beings, well, at any rate, the point is that I started that presentation by writing on the board a quote from Neitzsche: “There is only one Christian and he died on the cross”. I then proceeded to criticize the metaphysical and epistemological principles of Christianity, arguing that they lost the argument with the Greek philosophers. I later found out that Dr. Glanville was deeply religious but he did not stop me or show anger of any kind (some annoyance seeped out as I recall ;). Rather, he engaged with the arguments that I was presenting in a serious way, trying to show me that I did not quite have it right, and that some of what I said was apt, etc. Now, as an instructor myself, I can only imagine what his real thoughts must have been!
In spite of all this Dr. Glanville ended up writing me a letter of recommendation when I applied to PhD programs in late 2001. He sent me a copy of the letter with a short handwritten note on it. I still to this day find it to be some of the nicest things ever said about me and one of the greatest compliments I have ever received. I here quote a short bit of the letter,
Brown has a lively imagination which he knows how to apply in the service of philosophy. This put him in sync with the thought experiments found in the Pre-Socratics and the response in kind needed by modern readers to test their hypotheses. I am reminded of Heisenberg’s observation on the challenge to his imagination in arousing his mind to a life of work in theoretical physics –the challenge offered, he says, by his study of the Pre-Socratics on the Gymnasium level of German education. –Just the sort of stimulus so often missing in the education of our American youth.
In my considered judgment Richard Brown will one day make significant contributions in the area of Philosophical Psychology. His record of talks and publications already portend that, as does his MA record with us at SFSU.
Dr. Glanville then hand wrote on the letter “Richard, now you have to live up to it!” (This was the first time he had ever called me ‘Richard’, by the way). I used to joke that my 2006 paper “What is a Brain State?” which was published in the journal Philosophical Psychology had discharged this obligation. I always thought I would run into him at some apa meeting and get to make that joke in person. Sadly I won’t get that opportunity. Nor will I get the opportunity to thank him in person for his belief in me, his patience with my ignorance, his stern criticisms of my sloppiness, and his impact on my life. But I like to think he knows already. I am sure he had that level of impact on countless students. We should all be so lucky.
Rest in Peace Dr Glanville.
On Monday I attended a discussion of James Stazicker‘s paper Attention, Visual Knowledge, and Psychophysics. I have talked about Block’s argument before that recent experimental work on attention suggests that there is mental paint (i.e. that there is more to phenomenology than what’s in the world or in our representations of it). In this paper Stazicker wanted to offer an account of the representational contents of vision that denied any kind of illusion (like Block) but at the same time rejected Block’s argument for mental paint (Stazicker says that his view is compatible with mental paint but not with the argument that Block gives for it).
The basic idea that Stazicker wants to develop is that vision represents determinable properties rather than determinate properties. That is to say that our visual representations while we are looking at a line of (say) 5 centimeters will be something to the effect of a line that is, say, 4.5-5.25 centimeters long. If this is right then there are many different ways of veridically representing the line of 5 cm length. We could represent it, as above, or as 4.75-5.5 or many others. Stazicker wants to maintain that these two different representations will produce different phenomenologies but that each is perfectly veridical. If this is what happens in Carrassco type cases then we can still say that our belief are veridical even though we agree that attention changes our phenomenology. He also argues that we have independent reason to think that vision does deal in determinable representations stemming from considerations about the limited spatial resolution of our representations.
Block is aware of this kind of objection and responds to it in Attention and Mental Paint. As he says,
The problem with this proposal is that it if the phenomenology of perception flows from representational content, then indeterminacy in content would have to be reflected in an indeterminacy of look. But there need be no such indeterminacy.
If our experience represents something indeterminately as, say, 4.5-5.25 cm in length then we should expect the phenomenology to be indeterminate as well, but since our phenomenology isn’t this way we have some evidence that there is more to it than the indeterminate representation; there is also the phenomenological mode of presentation, that is what it is like for the subject to have that conscious experience.
Stazicker responds to this line of argument in the paper. He argues that there is no problem with saying that our phenomenology is indeterminate. He denies that saying that conscious experience is indeterminate is the same as saying that it is blurry (though blurriness does involve indeterminacy, it also involves something else, something like the phenomenology of blurriness), nor is it the same as representing a disjunct of possibilities. He rather appeals to notions of seeing things in the distance. When one sees something that is far away one’s representations are indeterminate but without being burry or fuzzy or disjointed.
During the discussion Dan Shargel brought up the issue of how we can tell if our normal conscious vision is blurry or not. He reported an experience of having his prescription updated on his glasses. Suddenly he realized that his vision had been blurry before but had not realized that it was that way before the update. Perhaps that is what conscious vision is like for us. Block argued that there is a phenomenological difference between seeing a clear image blurrily and seeing a blurry image clearly. In each case one would be tempted to say that a subject would draw the same ‘pixel array’ even though there is a distinct phenomenological difference (the difference between feeling like you see it clearly or blurrily). Block also argued that one could not cash this out merely in terms of determinable versus determinate contents. Chalmers suggested that you might be able to capture that difference representationally in the following way. In the case of seeing the blurry image clearly one has a visual experience which represents the various smudges in a very determinate way (so one has a determinate representation of the indeterminate thing itself), whereas when one see a clear image blurrily one has an indeterminate visual experience in that one represents the determinate thing in a smudged way. Block insisted that this did not meet his objection since one would end up drawing the same thing in both cases.
I have to admit that I lean towards Block view here. It does seem to me that conscious visual experience presents things as being some determinate way. So, when I look at the frame of a painting it seems to me that the frame has some determinate length even though I am unsure what that length is. One interpretation I have long been attracted to is to see higher-order thought-like states as (phenomenal) modes of presentations for first-order sensory qualities. The higher-order states may very well represent the indeterminate first-order states as being determinate. This would allow one to endorse Block’s view that experience doesn’t seem indeterminate while also taking the empirical evidence to suggest that first-order states are indeterminate.
Three years ago today I (successfully) defended my dissertation. A lot has happened in those three years and though I have been blogging less ever since I started my tenure-track job, this blog has been a great place to work out ideas. Thanks to everyone who has participated along the way!
Richard Brown 