SpaceTimeMind

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You may (or may not) have noticed that Pete Mandik and Richard Brown (me) have started a podcast, called SpaceTimeMind, where we talk about tax law updates for 2014, uh, I mean, er, we talk about space and time and mind!

The first episode is up now (and has been positively reviewed by Eric Schwitzgebel (and also one iTunes user who described Quiet Karate Reflex perfectly as ‘weird but intriguing music’!!)) and the second should be up soonish. Our goal is to have two episodes a month. In the future we hope to have guests and talk about various interesting things (suggestions on both welcome).

In addition to being available on iTunes, there is a blog with notes and links, and there is a spacetimemind youtube channel where you can watch the live unedited conversation between Pete and I (tune in Wednesday Mornings at 8:00 a.m. (e.s.t.) to catch us all the way live!).

The Geometrical Structure of Space and Time

Richard Brown 2 Comments

I have been sitting in on Tim Maudlin‘s philosophy of physics course at nyu where we are reading his recent book (and a couple of others). I was planning on going today but in light of the storm that is whopping us I may end up staying in and playing Naruto Shippuden 3 (and possibly watching some of the Naruto series in general). So I thought I might spend a little time reflecting on what has happened so far.

One of the immediate questions that arises is why anyone would ever want or need to posit a geometrical structure for space or time. Using Aristotle and Newton as example Maudlin makes the case that the answer is that they need to appeal to a certain structure in order to make sense of motion. So, for example, Aristotle’s claim that objects made of Earth move down towards the center of the universe naturally leads us to think of the universe as a bounded circle or sphere.

In Newton’s case he needs absolute space and time to have certain geometrical properties in order to make sense of the first and second laws of motion. The first law tells us that an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless it is acted on by an outside force (and an object at rest tends to stay at rest, etc). Similarly the second law tells us what happens when we apply forces to these objects. We will only be able to make sense of acceleration if we have a grip on uniform motion. All of this requires that space have a certain structure. Namely, roughly the structure of Euclidian space. This requires, specifically, that space be immovable and everywhere the same over time. If space is a constant then we can define motion relative to it. Uniform motion is when you cover the same amount of space in equal amounts of time, acceleration a deviation from this.

As Maudlin points out all of this has to do with the geometrical structure of space and time but if one looks at physics as it is done today one does not find it presented in terms of geometry (as Newton himself did) but finds that it is presented in algebraic form. Thus we are used to seeing representations of the second law as F=mA rather than presented in geometrical terms. This is done by associating ordered sets of numbers from the real number line R with points in space and time via a coordinate system. The most easily recognizable coordinate system is Cartesian coordinates. In such a coordinate system we have an axis for each dimension and ordered n-tuples of numbers then can stand for or represent points in space with (0,0,0) as the origin (in a three dimensional space). Maudlin then suggests that though this is useful because it allows us to solve geometrical problems using the tools of arithmetic it obscures the central fact that the arithmetic is merely representing the geometrical properties, and even worse, it can mislead us about those properties by encoding information that is merely arithmetical (see page 27 of his book).

I think this is an interesting and important point. On thing that is kind of suggestive is that this idea, which for the most part as far as I know was initiated by Descartes (I seem to remember a story about Descartes watching a fly buzzing around and getting the idea of graphing functions), might be seen as a kind of precursor to the notion of duality that looks to be playing an important role in contemporary physics. We might say that Newton’s Euclidean and geometric theory is dual to our modern Algebraic/arithmetic theory. It is not the same thing as what we find in string theory where we see that theories with very large distance scales are dual to theories that have very short distance scales nor is it close to the idea that you can capture all of a theory at a higher-dimension in a theory pitched at a lower level.

Another interesting thought, which might be a corollary of the above thought, is that ultimately the arithmetic conception might be right, or at least more fundamental. If space and time are emergent phenomena then the fundamental nature of reality may best be captured arithmetically and the geometrical structure emerge as convenient shorthand at macroscopic distances.

This is all very interesting but it is mostly a digression from the text and the course. At this point we have been talking about the debate between those who think all there is to space are the relations between objects (championed by Leibiniz) those who think that space exists independently of all of these relations (Newton and Clarke). His aim there is to develop, and ultimately try to solve, a puzzle. The puzzle is this. On the one hand we have good reason to think that there are absolute rotations (basically due to Newton’s Bucket), but we also have good reason to think there can’t be absolute motion (it results in postulating motions which cannot be experimentally tested or detected). But then how do we make sense of absolute rotation?

These interesting questions will have to wait so I can check on the weather and take the dog out…

Self-Selecting for Rationality

Richard Brown 1 Comment

I just read this interview with Plantinga conducted by Gary Gutting for the Stone and I had a couple of thoughts I wanted to jot down.

First, while it was nice to see Plantinga pushing the argument for agnosticism against the atheist, it is disappointing that he doesn’t seem to see that the very same reasoning should push the theist towards agnosticism as well.

Second, it was interesting to see Plantinga’s informal take on his argument that evolution plus physicalism is self-undermining. I caught myself wondering if we can accept Plantinga’s conclusion in a way that would not be so disturbing to the atheist physicalist. His claim, roughly, is that there is no evolutionary reason to expect that we would end up with rational creatures like ours with beliefs that are produced by reliable mechanisms and which are mostly true. False beliefs get you around the world just fine. Suppose that we agree that *natural selection* wouldn’t do the trick. Is that all there is?

Plantinga assumes the only alternative is *artificial selection* done by a Deity (why not via a simulated world?). But that doesn’t seem to me to be the only option. Another possibility is that we have been exerting selective pressures on ourselves, most likely via culture and civilization. In fact it turns out there may be some evidence for this claim.

I for one find it very plausible that evolution would produce a creature like Plantinga describes and that this creature might in turn then selectively cultivate certain traits resulting in the semi-rational creature that we know and love today. In fact I would go so far as to say that we are still in the process of self-selecting. Viewed this way the abstract idea or concept of God can be seen as a sort of ideal limit or goal towards which the self-section might aim. Of course one need not invoke God for this; an ‘ideal reasoner’ in general will suffice.

I am not saying this is the only way to answer Plantinga, and I am not entirely convinced that natural selection couldn’t do the trick, but even so I think this is an interesting idea. I wonder if anyone has explored this issue before?

The Design Argument for Simulation Hypothesis

Richard Brown 3 Comments

I have always felt that the Fine-Tuning argument was the most serious of the empirical arguments for God’s existence. It is not merely that there is tuning but there is exquisite fine-tuning. Of course anthropic concerns are relevant. It is obvious that we will only be around to observe universes that have the requisite fine-tuning so maybe we shouldn’t be that surprised. Still, it seems reasonable to ask how and why the universe is fine-tuned. If it is by chance then that is amazing! Of course if there is a multiverse then we have a pretty satisfying explanation for why there is a fine-tuned universe at all. But whether there is or isn’t a multiverse is highly controversial. Overall then it seems to me that fine-tuning presents some (small, defeasible) evidence for design in nature.

Philosophers have known for some time that all design arguments suffer from the same basic flaw and that is that one needs to do a lot more work to get from ‘there is evidence for design’ to ‘God as traditionally conceived is the designer’. It is quite fun to imagine the various other possibilities, and as Hume points out, the more seriously one takes the analogy between nature and man made machines the more one starts to think that the designer is not perfect.

For my money the most compelling argument that God as traditionally conceived could not be the designer is the argument from evil (the fact that we are not photosynthetic pretty much cinches the deal for me). Of course there are responses, the necessity of moral freedom and the possibility of transworld saints to the logical problem and unknown motivations/ends to the inductive problem). But just as in the fine-tuning case I think that overall it is reasonable to conclude that the problem of evil provides defeasible evidence that God as traditionally conceived could not be the designer of the universe.

One possibility that immediately comes to mind is that the universe is designed because it is simulated. Bostrom’s simulation argument is well known and interesting but I think there is an interesting argument for the simulation hypothesis that stems from the above considerations. One way that a less than perfect being could design a universe is through simulation. To the extent that we find design inferences plausible, and to the extent that we find the problem of evil problematic, we have reason take the simulation hypothesis seriously.

Pretend Numbers

Richard Brown 9 Comments

As part of my Cosmology, Consciousness, and Computation course I have lately been thinking a lot about Zeno’s paradoxes and the ‘standard solution’ to them that we get from calculus and thinking about motion as a ‘completed infinity’, limits, etc (next week we start quantum mechanics and I am starting to wonder about how Zeno’s paradoxes might relate or not to that, but one thing at a time!). Take the function g(x)=1/x, as x approaches zero the function trends towards infinity (both positive and negative infinity depending on the direction one is going in). We put this by saying that the function’s limit is ∞ (in both directions), but ‘infinity’ is not a real number. So a different way of putting this point would be to say that there is no real number that is the limit of this function.

This got me to thinking. There may be no real number but does that mean that there is no number at all? Suppose that we introduced them on the lines of imaginary numbers. In homage to this let us call them ‘pretend numbers’. 1/0 will then be equal to some pretend number. I will use ‘Þ’ for pretend numbers, so ‘pretend one’ will be ‘Þ1‘. What is Þ1? It is the pretend number that when multiplied by real 0 will give you real 1. We can then define n/0 as follows:

where N≠0,

N⁄0=Þn,

N⁄Þn=0,

Þnx0=N.

These numbers are not on the real number line, or on the imaginary extension of that line. They are on a further pretend extension. Admittedly 0/0 is still tricky and I am not sure what to say about it but putting that to one side, do pretend numbers exist?

The Nature of Consciousness

Richard Brown Leave a comment

A couple of exciting developments today. First, over at Brains the symposium on Paul Churchland’s Matter and Consciousness 3rd edition is underway. It features commentary by Amy Kind, Pete Mandik, and William Ramsey. It will run through mid-Setember so be sure to check it out and get involved in the discussion!

In other news, today is the 5th anniversary of my dissertation defense. It’s kind of hard to believe that it has already been five years but there it is. Does this mean that I am not a junior faculty member anymore? That would be nice. Anyway, this time last year I gave the opening talk at the Graduate Center’s philosophy colloquium (see here for the post I wrote on it afterwards). Since then I have been very very busy but I have recently got back to writing up the paper which that talk was based on. It is still very much a rough draft but as usual feedback is appreciated!

Introspection, Acquaintance, and Higher-Order Representations

Richard Brown 4 Comments

Over at Brains Wayne Wu has been posting about, among other things, introspection and attention. One of the interesting things to come out of the discussion was the notion of ‘cognitive attention’ which consists in directing one’s thoughts. If this is truly a kind of attention then perhaps we can see higher-order thought and AIR theories as invoking different kinds of attention while both accept the transitivity principle. I hope to come back to this issue because I think it is time to start thinking about the connections between these two theories (and especially how we might experimentally differentiate them) but I will have to put that off. In this post I want to argue that higher-order theories are compatible with the acquaintance approach (see Brie Gertler’s comment for some links to some papers on this).

Before we begin we should note a potential confound here that may result in people talking past one another. Typically introspection is thought of as producing thoughts of the form ‘I am in pain now’ or ‘pain is instantiated in me now’ (see Brie Gertler’s paper in the link above for instance). And, of course, it is exactly these kinds of thoughts that higher-orer thought theories invoke to explain phenomenal consciousness in the first place. But of course by ‘pain’ the opponent to higher-order theories simply means what we would call ‘conscious pain’ and so we should reinterpret the above introspective claims as ‘I am in conscious pain now’ or ‘conscious pain is instantiated in me now’. They take the ‘conscious pain’ bit to actually be the phenomenal property of pain itself. A large art of the project that I have been engaged in recently has been to show that there is a way of thinking of higher-order thought theory that lets us, if we want, keep all of the benefits of the first-order theorist. On this view phenomenal consciousness consists in instantiating the right kind of higher-order representation. In particular one that attributes mental states and properties to the subject of the experience. This is what I have called the HOROR theory of phenomenal consciousness and it is metaphysically neutral.

In fact it looks like Dave endorses a non-physical version of this kind of theory in his response to Benj Hellie that he mentions in the discussion. There he says,

In effect, our phenomenology involves both a foreground awareness of redness and a background acquaintance with our awareness of redness. I think the most plausible line here is that phenomenal awareness is an acquaintance-involving relation by its very nature: in virtue of the nature of awareness, to be aware of x entails being acquainted with one’s awareness of x

and in the footnote he continues,

This is a relative of higher-order representation theories of consciousness, and especially of the Brentano-style self-representational views of consciousness that have become popular in recent years (see e.g. Kriegel and Williford 20xx). Some differences: the background awareness should be understood as Russellian instance-acquaintance rather than as a standard form of representation (this immediately avoids all objections from higher-order misrepresentation as well as from oversophistication), and the view does not lend any support to reductive views of consciousness. The awareness relation that the view appeals to is irreducibly a phenomenal relation. Of course someone might attempt to turn this into a reductive theory by identifying the awareness relation by a relation understood in functional terms, say. But just as in the case of first-order representationalism (discussed in chapter 8 of TCC), this move requires an additional and independent functionalism about the phenomenal, a view that is no more plausible here than elsewhere, and which leads to an explanatory gap that is as wide as ever.

Now here he is talking about phenomenal consciousness and not introspection and I am not sure whether the view is that this entire complex gets embedded in an introspective judgement or whether introspecting involves the background awareness coming to the foreground but either way is compatible with the HOROR theory. So, consider the way that Gertler lays out the Acquaintance Approach. She sums it up in the following three theses,

[Acquaintance Approach] Some introspective knowledge consists in judgments that
(1) are directly tied to their truthmakers;
(2) depend, for their justification, only on the subject’s conscious states at the time of the judgment; and
(3) are more strongly justified than any empirical judgments that do not meet conditions (1) and (2).

To be ‘directly tied’ on her account involves demonstrative attention and though that is not a requirement of the view I am happy enough with it. So, on the HOROR theory what will be required is that we deploy demonstrative attention to the proper higher-order representation and is compatible with (1). The term ‘conscious state’ in (2) should be interpreted as the appropriate higher-order representation and so the claim is just that some introspective judgements are justified solely by certain higher-order representations, which is compatible with HOROR theory and because of (1) and (2) these judgments are more strongly justified than other that don’t meet (1) and (2).

So not only is the HOROR theory compatible with introspective acquaintance it is also compatible with ‘same-order’ acquaintance.

The Argument from Photosynthesis

Richard Brown 10 Comments

Though I very much enjoy the taste of food I have always thought that the actual act of eating is very primitive and mildly repulsive. Described abstractly eating involves the mastication of organic substances which are then broken down in digestive acids to produce sugars that are then used to fuel metabolic activity. The mastication process involves mechanically breaking down the organic substances and mixing them with saliva and in the process the organic substance is rubbed over the taste buds in our tongues and released gasses interact with the olfactory receptors via the nasal passages.

Now compare this process with the process of photosynthesis. In photosynthesis light energy is converted to sugar with oxygen as a waste product. This process is more elegant and much cleaner than eating (eating/digestion has excrement as its waste product versus oxygen for photosynthesis). However, the naturally evolved photosynthesis we find here on Earth is not very efficient (it captures somewhere in the area of 3-6% of the energy available in sunlight) and as a result we do not find vertebrates that use photosynthesis, though there is recent evidence that salamanders have photosynthetic cells and we might have an invertebrate or two that uses it.

So is it possible that humans might be able to someday use photosynthesis? Some have recently argued that we have a moral obligation to get rid of meat eating animals and replace them with herbivores. But herbivores are carnivores as well in the strict sense. While I don’t think that eating plants is as morally problematic as eating animals I still think it would be nice to free ourselves from eating all together. At least I would like to be able to do so for myself. So might I ever be able to? As it stands it looks like it would be difficult to do because extant photosynthetic processes are relatively inefficient and so even if we did successfully integrate photosynthetic cells over the entire area of our skin we would need to be exposed to dangerous amounts of radiation to meet our energy demands. Still it is certainly possible to improve photosynthesis and in fact scientists are working on it now and so while it doesn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon it certainly seems possible that there could be photosynthetic humans at some point in the future. We might not be able to quit eating all together, we might still do it for pleasurable experiences of taste etc or we might have to eat some limited amount to supplement the energy from photosynthetic process, but still it is not physically impossible that this could happen and it does seem morally and aesthetically preferable to what we have now.

Aside from this bioethical issue I think this raises issues for those who think that there is evidence for design in the human body and it also puts new light on the problem of evil. Certainly if it is conceivable that we could produce a photosynthetic animal, human or not, then it must be possible for God to have created such a creature. But if so then why aren’t we photosynthetic? I mean God could have made it so that we run on solar energy, and even had the pleasurable taste and ‘mouthfeel’ experiences that makes eating enjoyable (perhaps different wavelengths and/or frequencies of light would produce different gustatory experiences). Doing this 1.) seems like a much better design. It is simpler and more elegant than eating is and 2.) seems much more humane. The sheer amount of suffering produced by eating meat over the course of evolution is nearly unimaginable. It seems to me that this argument from photosynthesis is as decisive as one can get in this area and I wonder why it has not received more attention…or maybe it has and I just haven’t found it yet?

Consciousness and its Place in Physical Reality

Richard Brown 1 Comment

In the Spring 2013 semester I initiated a new course at LaGuardia that had the theme Cosmology, Consciousness, and Computation. The basic idea was to explore issues relating to physicalism. Intuitively, physicalism is the view that everything that exists is physical but what is the nature of physical reality? The idea I had was to have the couse divided into three sections. In the first section we would do a conceptual physics course talking about the development of physics from the ancient world to the present day. Then we would turn to issues about consciousness and mind and where they fit in the physical picture we have so far developed. After that we turn to issues about computation; Is the universe computable? Or perhaps does it instantiate some computation? Is consciousness computational? Are we living in a simulation? Is the universe a hologram?

In my quest to have low cost book options for students I have adopted the Terminator book I co-edited and have supplemented that with readings from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and other online material. The reception to the course was very good and I am really looking forward to doing it a second time in Fall 2013. I have updated the syllabus and, as usual, would welcome any suggestions or feedback.

Week I: Introduction
• →Richard Brown on What is Philosophy? – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySS0bNeWZOg

Week 2: Early Attempts to Understand Mind and Physical Reality
• →Terminator Ch 10: The Nature of Time and the Universe
• Time- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/
• Richard Brown on Pre-Socratic Philosophy- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfLgRotdcKI&list=PLfR0qhtOKP6eYkUoW7DH8qdjwEyQnsbPJ&index=2
• Pre-Socratic Philosophy- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/presocratics/
• Ancient Theories of the Soul- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-soul/
• Parmenides- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/parmenides/
• Zeno’s Paradoxes- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/
• Ancient Atomism- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atomism-ancient/
• Democritus- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/democritus/
• Intentionality in Ancient Philosophy- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intentionality-ancient/
• Time- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/

Week 3: Modern Philosophy and Modern Science
• →Terminator Ch 2 –Animal consciousness, Descartes, and Emotions
• Descartes’ Physics- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-physics/
• Descartes’ Epistemology- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/
• Descartes’ Theory of Ideas- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-ideas/
• Other Minds- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/
• Animal Consciousness- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-animal/
• Locke on Real Essence- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/real-essence/
• Locke’s Philosophy of Science- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-philosophy-science/
• Newton’s Philosophy- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-philosophy/
• Isaac Newton- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton/
• Newton’s Views on Space, Time, and Motion- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-stm/
• The Contents of Perception- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-contents/
• The Problem of Perception- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/

Week 4: Relativity Physics
• →Terminator Ch 8: paradoxes of time travel
• Einstein for Everyone: http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/index.html
• Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe on NOVA- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/elegant-universe.html#elegant-universe-einstein.html
• Time Travel and Modern Physics- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time-travel-phys/
• Time Machines- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time-machine/
• The Equivalence of Mass and Energy- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equivME/
• The Hole Argument- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-holearg/
• David Lewis’ The Paradoxes of Time Travel- http://www.csus.edu/indiv/m/merlinos/Paradoxes%20of%20Time%20Travel.pdf

Week 5: Quantum Mechanics
• Brian Greene’s The Fabric of the Cosmos on NOVA- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/fabric-of-cosmos.html
• Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/
• Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-manyworlds/
• The Uncertainty Principle: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-uncertainty/
• Quantum Entanglement and Information: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-entangle/
• The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument in Quantum Theory- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-epr/
• Measurement in Quantum Theory: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-measurement/
• Quantum Mechanics- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm/
• Richard Feynman on Double Slit Experiment- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUJfjRoxCbk&list=PLfR0qhtOKP6eYkUoW7DH8qdjwEyQnsbPJ&index=3

Week 6: The Nature and Origin of the Universe
• →The Scale of the Universe- http://htwins.net/scale2/
• Hubble Deep Field: http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/hubble_deep_field/
• Cosmology and Theology- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmology-theology/
• Atheism and Agnosticism- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/
• Religion and Science- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-science/
• Teleological Arguments for God’s Existence- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleological-arguments/
• Cosmological Argument- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/
• The Possible Parallel Universe of Dark Matter- http://discovermagazine.com/2013/julyaug/21-the-possible-parallel-universe-of-dark-matter#.UhDhPRbtaz6

Week 7: The Possibility of Life Beyond Earth
• Life- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life/
• Molecular Biology- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/molecular-biology/
• Finding Life Beyond Earth- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVzmGaGCqP8

Week 8: Consciousness in the Physical World?
• Consciousness- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/
• Representational Theories of Consciousness- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-representational/
• Functionalism- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/functionalism/
• The Mind/Brain Identity Theory- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/
• Dualism- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/
• Zombies- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/

Week 9: Beyond Physicalism?
• Eliminative Materialism- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/
• Folk Psychology as a Theory- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/folkpsych-theory/
• The Philosophy of Neuroscience- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neuroscience/
• Panpsychism- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/

Week 10: Transhumanism
• →Terminator Ch 4: Extended Mind, Transhumanism
• A History of Transhumanist Thought- http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/documents/journal_publications/al/nick_bostrom
• Biohackers: A Journey into Cyborg America- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0WIgU7LRcI&list=PLfR0qhtOKP6eYkUoW7DH8qdjwEyQnsbPJ&index=48
• Tim Cannon on Potential Benefits of Sensory Augmentation- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ1KCpSL51E&list=PLfR0qhtOKP6eYkUoW7DH8qdjwEyQnsbPJ&index=46
• Aubrey de Grey on Defeating Aging- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1FBJGl2c-Y&list=PLfR0qhtOKP6eYkUoW7DH8qdjwEyQnsbPJ&index=17

Week 11: A.I. and The Singularity
• →Terminator Ch 1: A.I., Chinese Room, Transhumanism
• →Terminator Ch 3: Why always with the killing?
• The Chinese Room Argument- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/
• The Turing Test- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/
• The Frame Problem- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frame-problem/
• David Chalmers’ The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis- http://consc.net/papers/singularity.pdf
• David Chalmers on Simulation and Singularity- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FafHdF_D8gA&list=PLfR0qhtOKP6eYkUoW7DH8qdjwEyQnsbPJ&index=13

Week 12: The Simulation Argument & The Holographic Hypothesis
• Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Argument Website- http://www.simulation-argument.com
• Nick Bostrom on The Simulation Argument- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnl6nY8YKHs&list=PLfR0qhtOKP6eYkUoW7DH8qdjwEyQnsbPJ&index=24
• David Chalmers’ The Matrix as Metaphysics- http://consc.net/papers/matrix.html
• Leonard Susskind on The World as a Hologram- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DIl3Hfh9tY&list=PLfR0qhtOKP6eYkUoW7DH8qdjwEyQnsbPJ&index=16

The Phenomenology of HOT

Richard Brown 1 Comment

I am happy to announce that Pete Mandik and I have finished our co-authored paper on higher-order thought theories of consciousness and cognitive phenomenology, which is forthcoming in the issue of Philosophical Topics that features participants from the 4th Online Consciousness Conference. Check it out!