Lock Step

Lock Step
Originally uploaded by Ray Gunn

Another new Ray Gunn photo that I'm totally digging.

Gaper's Delay

Gaper's Delay
Originally uploaded by Ray Gunn

Ray Gunn took this pic when we were in Vegas together a few weeks ago celebrating my 40th birthday.

Dennett's "The Part of Cognitive Science That Is Philosophy"

Daniel C. Dennett. The Part of Cognitive Science That Is Philosophy.
Topics in Cognitive Science 1 (2009) 231–236
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/tops_1015.pdf

Abstract: There is much good work for philosophers to do in cognitive science if they adopt the constructive attitude that prevails in science, work toward testable hypotheses, and take on the task of clarifying the relationship between the scientific concepts and the everyday concepts with which we conduct our moral lives.

Supervenience and Neuroscience

My paper "Supervenience and Neuroscience" has just today made the transition from sorta-mostly-accepted for publication in Synthese to totally-definitely-accepted for publication in Synthese. Many Brain-Hammer Heads were very helpful in suffering through earlier versions. Thanks, all y'all!

Here's a link to the latest version: [link].

Abstract: The philosophical technical term “supervenience” is frequently used in the philosophy of mind as a concise way of characterizing the core idea of physicalism in a manner that is neutral with respect to debates between reductive physicalists and nonreductive physicalists. I argue against this alleged neutrality and side with reductive physicalists. I am especially interested here in debates between psychoneural reductionists and nonreductive functionalist physicalists. Central to my arguments will be considerations concerning how best to articulate the spirit of the idea of supervenience. I argue for a version of supervenience, “fine-grained supervenience,” which is the claim that if, at a given time, a single entity instantiates two distinct mental properties, it must do so in virtue of instantiating two distinct physical properties. I argue further that despite initial appearances to the contrary, such a construal of supervenience can be embraced only by reductive physicalists.

SEP iPhone app

I am totally geekin' out over the iPhone app for the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Here's my review: it's really good. Free,
too.

Screenshot: "Philosophy of Neuroscience" by Bickle, Mandik, & Landreth.

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?

Indeterminate Determinables in Reality, Belief, and Experience

Here are three theses concerning determinates, determinables, and beliefs and experiences thereof:

1. There are instances of determinables that aren't instances of any of that determinable's determinates.
2. There are beliefs that a determinable is instantiated that aren't beliefs about any of that determinable's determinates being instantiated.
3. There are perceptual experiences of a determinable being instantiated that aren't experiences of any of that determinable's determinates being instantiated.

Remarks:

R1. If there were any examples of 1, one might be a shape that was polygonal without being any particular kind of polygon. I'm guessing 1 is widely held to be false. If anyone has advocated the truth of something like 1 in print, I'd love to hear about it.

R2. I'm guessing that 2 is widely held to be true. I believe that there's a car parked outside that's painted a color, but there's no particular color that I believe it to be painted.

R3. Of 1-3, is 3 the most controversial? I tend to go for 3, but I had a couple of conversations recently with some strongly anti-3 philosophers. If anyone knows of an argument, in print, that, for instance, something can't be seen to be green without being seen to be some determinate shade of green, I'd love to hear about it.

UltraRed and InfraPurple

Suppose we made the following modifications to a normal human perceiver while, as much as possible, keeping all else the same: We increase the sensitivity range of the relevant photoreceptors to allow for the transduction of both higher-frequencies and lower-frequencies of EM than normal, thus expanding the visible spectrum into the infrared and the ultraviolet. Which of the following is the most reasonable prediction about what it would be like to see the new colors?:

1. The hue circle for modifieds would gain one new hue located between violet and red. Further, for modifieds, red would not look as similar to violet as it does to normals. Red would look more similar to the new hue than it does to violet.
2. The hue circle for modifieds would gain two new hues, roughly corresponding to infrared and ultraviolet. Red and violet would look even more different than each other than in option (1), with two distinct hues separating them on the hue circle.
3. Something else entirely.

The Doxastic Voluntarism Paradox

The following strikes me as paradox-ish, if not outright paradoxical:

(DVP): Jennifer refuses to beleive in doxastic voluntarism.

Remarks and assumptions:

1. S can refuse to believe that P only if doxastic voluntarism is true
(seems prima facie reasonable).

2. Jennifer believes 1 (I hereby stipulate that).

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.