Blog Profile / Brain Hammer
| URL : | http://www.petemandik.com/blog/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Academics / Philosophy | |
| Posts on Regator: | 98 | |
| Posts / Week: | 0.4 | |
| Archived Since: | March 17, 2008 | |
Blog Post Archive
Brain Hammer has moved
Brain Hammer has moved to http://petemandik.blogspot.com/. Please manipulate your control surfaces accordingly. Running Brain Hammer on Wordpress hosted at Globat has been a giant nightmare. For instance, comments got closed by gremlins, not me. Also, I think a chupacabra has been nibbling on some wires. Anyway, hopefully the brain juices will flow more freely now that [...]
Nomological Psychosemantics in the Swamp
In the swamp.
To see why Nomological is incompatible with Mary’s prerelease ignorance, it helps to first notice a very natural account that Nomological is able to give for knowledge of unobservables. Unobservable entities like electrons and radio waves are not detectable by the unaided senses. We may just as well [...]
Swamp Mary and the Psychosemantic Challenge
Swamp swamps swamp swamp swamps.
There are two general approaches to the psychosemantics of phenomenal knowledge in normal subjects that are quite easy to see as totally doomed to fail to account for the psychosemantics of Swamp Mary’s phenomenal knowledge. The first approach imposes as a necessary condition phenomenal representation (the [...]
Putting the Physicalism in Gappy Physicalism
Physicalism: efficacy and complexity.
I’ve already said what is gappy about gappy physicalism [link]. I turn now to say a few key remarks about the physicalism of gappy physicalism. It is difficult to give a satisfactory full account of what physicalism is supposed to consist in. (This has been pointed out by several authors. See, e.g., [...]
There’s Something About Swamp Mary
Phenomenal fact fight.
In this, the second post in the series, “Swamp Mary Semantics: A Case for Physicalism Without Gaps,” I spell out some further crucial details of the central thought experiment.
Given the trouble I claim to be raised for gappy physicalists by Swamp Mary, it is natural to consider possible grounds that gappy physicalists might [...]
Gold and Roskies on Philosophy of Neuroscience
The following link [link] is to a Google books version of the following overview of the philosophy of neuroscience by Ian Gold and Adina Roskies: Gold, I., & Roskies, A. (2008). Philosophy of Neuroscience. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Biology (pp. 349-380): Oxford University Press.
Swamp Mary Semantics: A Case for Physicalism Without Gaps
Welcome to my weird adventure.
Here begins the first post in the serialization of my work in progress, “Swamp Mary Semantics: A Case for Physicalism Without Gaps,” sequel to “Swamp Mary’s Revenge: Deviant Phenomenal Knowledge and...Show More Summary
Philosophy of Neuroscience on PhilPapers
I am now PhilPapers editor for the philosophy of neuroscience and most of its subcategories. I urge Brain Hammer readers with pertinent research to make sure it’s included. See links below. Also, heed the words of Cartman. .pp_xlnksShow More Summary
Swamp Mary vs. The Anti-Physicalists
Ignore the part about the hoax.
It’s Swamp Mary Season here at Brain Hammer. Starting very soon, I’ll be serializing my new paper, “Swamp Mary Semantics: A Case for Physicalism Without Gaps.” But before jumping into that, I here offer a précis of the paper that it’s a sequel to, “Swamp Mary’s Revenge: Deviant Phenomenal Knowledge [...]
A brain in the hand
This post is mostly just to test out the WordPress for iPhone app. Also, here’s a screenshot from the free app, Brain Tutor.\n\n\n
i know, i totally did that on purpose
Re: Mandik (2009) “Beware of the Unicorn” Journal of Consciousness Studies, Matt Hutson (@SilverJacket): Mandik repeatedly refers to his Unicorn Argument as “the Unicorn,” creating sentences such as, “In sections 4 and 7, I examine and reject proposals that HORs and FORs may save themselves from the Unicorn by embracing the Direct Reference hypothesis (DR).” The [...]
Writers on writing
I’ve found the following remarks especially useful regarding writing, and applicable to academic writing even though they come from fiction writers: Stephen King: [link] Cory Doctorow: [link]
Students who take philosophy courses…
…but do not declare philosophy as a major shall henceforth be called “phi-curious.” Spread the word.
What Should We Do with Our Brain?
My review of Catherine Malabou’s What Should We Do with Our Brain? is now up at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
Melville’s Neurophilosophy
Moby-Dick or, The Whale.
“Moreover, while in most other animals that I can now think of, the eyes are so planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so as to produce one picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar position of the whale’s eyes, effectually divided as they [...]
The Varieties of Externalism
externalism, the view of the mental states of an individual that they (the mental states) may have, as their physical SUPERVENIENCE bases, something of greater spatiotemporal extent than the individual himself or herself. Alternately, any view that holds that either mental states themselves or the factors determinative of a state’s CONTENT, extend beyond the physical [...]
Mind Spill in Aisle Nine
I’m going to side with Fodor a bit in the following remarks about Andy Clark’s response to Fodor’s LRB review of Supersizing the Mind. There’s a worry of Fodor’s, or kind of like a worry of Fodor’s, that seems to me insufficiently addressed by Clark. To put it in a very cute and short way, the [...]
Transcending Zombies Draft
I’ve posted a draft of my paper, “Transcending Zombies,” (link) which had previously been serialized as Brain Hammer posts. I’m very grateful to those of you who left comments, they will be reflected in a later draft. I’m pretty happy with how these serializations have been going, and will be doing it again soon. Stay [...]
What is a Transcendental Argument?
transcendental argument, a kind of argument, most closely associated with Immanuel KANT (though, arguably, there are examples that pre-date Kant’s) that has (1) as one of its premises an allegedly obvious claim about EXPERIENCE, KNOWLEDGE, or some other feature of one’s own mind (for example, the grasp of certain CONCEPTS or the capacity [...]
Postscript on Diachronic Discrimination Failure
This postscript to the Transcending Zombies series is primarily a follow-up to the remarks on Raffman-style nonconceptualism. Would my objection to the Raffman-style case against conceptualism be defeated by an experimental design that tried to better control for possible context effects of the presentations of the colors? The sort of redesign I here have in [...]