Showing posts with label I'm begging you. Show all posts
Showing posts with label I'm begging you. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Ectoplasmic Electron and the Ghost Beef

The results so far of my New Year's poll concerning whether cubes are necessarily physical is that 66.7% say they aren't. And I must admit I'm a bit shocked at the numbers.

I wonder how much depends on the specific example. So let's do this again, this time without cubes. How about electrons? Or five pounds of ground beef?
  1. True or False? Necessarily, for all x, if x is an electron, then x is physical.
  2. True or False? Necessarily, for all x, if x is five pounds of ground beef, then x is physical.
How many Brain-Hammer Heads think there are worlds with ectoplasmic electrons? Ghost beef?

Friday, January 1, 2010

Are cubes physical?

Sitting through several antireductionist talks at the Eastern APA made
me wonder about just how much divergence there is in contemporary
philosophers' intuitions about physicality. In the spirit of intuition
calibration, I am hereby surveying Brain-Hammer Heads on the following:

True or false? Necessarily, for all x, if x is cube (or approximately
cubic) then x is physical.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Wanted: Functionalist Group-Mind Affirmers

Dear Brain Hammer-heads,

I'm looking to round up a pile of citations of functionalists who have explicitly endorsed, in response to Ned Block's Chinese Nation argument from "Troubles with Functionalism," that an appropriately organized Chinese population would give rise to a solitary group mind.

Thanks in advance,

Pete