For anyone interested, I've written up a brief critique of this paper at Philosophy, et cetera.

You are definitely right in your skepticism about the possibility of the unification of many micro-consciousnesses into macro-consciousness. However, it is surprising for me that overhelming majority of philosophers ignore the possibility that human consciousness is among these micro-consciousnesses. In my paper http://philpapers.org/rec/ARGNCO I argue that even a single electron might contain the whole current human experience (without long- and mid-term memory). I suggest a hypothesis, where such electrons might be located in a real brain

First, thank you to the authors for providing their paper online!

            The problem with most forms of representationalism is that they do not actually close the explanatory gap. “Tracking representationalism” does not seem to be an exception. Beside the various possible objections explored in the paper, there remains the further objection that tracking representationalism, like its cousins, simply does not do what it aims to. It does not explain phenomenal consciousness, or why there is anything it is like to be in a mental state. The reason for this is that “what it is like” is a first-person experience, whereas talk of mental states, intentionality, tracking, etc., are third-person descriptions of events in the world, not of the phenomenal experience to which they correspond. What is missing is some strategy that can bridge the gap from third to first-person accounts—some way to “walk in the shoes of the brain”. To explain ... (read more)

I am delighted that someone of Kitcher's ability has tackled the meta-ethical implications of understanding morality as an evolutionary adaptation. Further, Christine Clavien has advanced that good cause by providing an inspiringly insightful and clear review of important implications of his work. 

However, the science of the matter actually supports a much stronger hypothesis than Kitcher's "morality evolved to overcome altruism failures".That stronger hypothesis may have different meta-ethical implications.

Relevant criteria for scientific truth regarding morality as an evolutionary adaptation Include explanatory power for descriptive facts and puzzles, no contradiction with known facts, simplicity, and integration with the rest of science. By these criteria, a superior hypothesis can be stated as "morality overcomes a universal cooperation-exploitation dilemma by motivating or advocating altruistic cooperation strategies". That is, morality is composed of assemblies of biolog ... (read more)

Your work is technically very interesting neverthless I have some remarks.

1/ I don't always understand the claim that the Fitch Paradox threatens Anti-Realist philosophy.
If everybody accepts the Knowability Principle restricted to basic propositions,
it sounds more like a victory than a defeat for the knowability advocates.
It seems that what is threatened is more the capacity of modal logic to represent the knowability.

2/ In your intuitionistic frame, as you say in proposition 5.8, it is impossible to have 'A' and 'not K A' in the same world.
So the Fitch Paradox is avoided but the result is a very poor epistemic logic where you cannot express that some truths are unknown.

3/ more technically in the figure below the proposition 5.7
I don't understand what happens in the world y.
You have      y R_k y ;    y R_k z ;    y: p ;    z: not p
but you have not    'y: not K p' .
Does it stand that 'y: not not K p' ?
It is very counterintuitive.

Else I wrote a dissertation on these points.
I have published a - maybe insufi ... (read more)

Excellent paper first and foremost Mr. MacLeod! As I was reading your thoughts on plurality and the nature of the individual conscious, it made me think of the ideal of Solipsism. For those who don't know, Solipsism is defined as: The view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist. Would you say that your case for a plurality of consciousness "immediately present." defeats the ideal of a Solipsistic Philosophy? 

The metaphysical context of normative issues, public policy, etc, from the time that Darwin had just published and Christianity was only constructively recollecting what it feared it would lose, was provided by The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (Bergson 1932). The extent to which cognitive characteristics can be affected by policies, in his view, if I am correct, is determined by our "duality of origin", in which the knowing organism and the sensed environment reflect- and independently confirm each other. 

The evolution of human cognition or creative evolution as Bergson calls it, is like the intertwining of electricity and magnetism in light, reflectively sensing what is sensed and knowing what is reflectively known, unfolding in realization (know what is sensed) and intuition (sense what is known), valuing (intuit what is realized) and trying (realize what is intuited) and acting (try what is valued) and reacting (value what is tried), in interaction. This is mainly my own inte ... (read more)

I have a question...

A classical, Tarskian system standardly contains homophonic definitions as the base clauses, e.g.,

'G' denotes Gs.

This is understood to be a sentence of the metalanguage (ML) which defines a predicate of the object language (OL). And when ML contains OL, the standard assumption is that the expression 'G' used on the right-hand side is identical to the expression mentioned on the left...so that numerically one expression, 'G', is an expression of both ML and of OL.

However, if homophonic definitions are admissible, then (given the compositionality of negation) the following sentence also seems admissible into the system as a definition:

'G' denotes x iff x is ~G.

But such an interpretation suffices for paradox in OL. For instance,  'Socrates is G' will be true in OL iff it is not true in OL (contra PNC). So apparently the second definition is not admissible in a classical system. But (again by the compositionality of negation) that means the former cannot b ... (read more)

Many of you would have been aware of the increasing use of randomised evaluations in Social Science research and for public policy reasons. Taking an epistemological look, I give a robust argument on why the claims of randomised evaluations actually evade the problem of induction. Hope to get your thoughts. Thanks in advance !

1. Introduction

The usage of randomised evaluations in social inquiry has been recent and responses to them have been wide ranging. Some have described it as the “gold standard” in empirical research, (Duflo, Glennerster,&Kremer, 2006) while others though have been more critical of their value in making predictions. (Deaton, 2009)

Randomised evaluations[1] (REs) seek to make predictions on the impact of an intervention, when it is attempted in a new situation. REs work by first determining the impact of the intervention. Subsequently, for the new situation it is expected that the impact would be similar.

To determine an intervention’s impact, numerous subjects are ... (read more)

Hello

Please could someone help me with the above question.

For example, is there a difference between the propositions:

Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland.

and 

The proposition 'Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland' is true.

?

Given that the second proposition is a proposition about the first proposition, it seems to me that they can't be the same proposition.

Derrick

Another point that I brought up and then discussed later with Mohan had to do with the multiple senses of space and time that might be relevant to the discussion. It is normally thought that space and time serve as a sort of matrix for experience, but it would not be true to say that this matrix serves as the glue to all experience since we sometimes have experiences outside of a space-time matrix. That is, experiences may be "here" and "now" without being experienced as at a particular time or at a particular spatial location. They have extension in space and time but not location. If we are talking about this second sense of space and time then I might agree that experience is held together by such extension. However, I did not get the sense that this difference was appreciated by the discussants. I suspect that the "here-ness" and "now-ness" of experience will be best defined with respect to the experiencer, or subject of experience, rather th ... (read more)

Here's an argument that you can't suppose the Liar, where the Liar is, basically, "this very sentence is false."

If you can't suppose the liar, then one common way of setting forth the argument leading to paradox won't work--since it requires you to suppose the liar.

(It's more common, probably, for it to require you to suppose the liar is true. Whether the below argument successfully extends to that supposition isn't something I've thought through yet.)

What do you think of the argument?

I worry about line 4. What do we know (or what do different people think they know) about how to individuate thoughts?

Should I be worrying about any of the other three premises?

Thanks for any comments. It's outside my field (as you can probably tell!) and doesn't really engage directly, as far as I can see, with any of the technical material people usually (need to) discuss when dealing with the liar paradox--which is probably a bad thing I'm afraid.

1.   A =­_def  A is false. (definition)<?xml:namespace prefi ... (read more)

notation : I use ! for 'not'

Perhaps you can avoid paradox but you have to admit this very strange proposition :
K !K x ->  !P K x
If you know that you ignore (x) it's impossible that you know (x)

I don't see how it could be compatible with the knowability principle :
x ->  P K x
else you can't have
(x) and (K !K x)

(excuse me if this message is out of place, I ignore the policy of tis forum,
excuse also my probable mistakes in english)

I am posting an explanation of this on my blog. It's drawn from my eprint

The Many Computations Interpretation (MCI) of Quantum Mechanics
http://arxiv.org/abs/0709.0544

but I expect to make a shorter paper just on this more limited topic.

My question is: is the explanation I give and purpose of what I am doing clear? Comments on the validity of the ideas are also welcome. Thanks.

So far I have the following posts on it (and see the main blog for more context related to QM):

Basic idea of an implementation
http://onqm.blogspot.com/2011/10/basic-idea-of-implementation.html

The Putnam-Searle-Chalmers Theorem
http://onqm.blogspot.com/2011/10/putnam-searle-chalmers-theorem.html

Restrictions on mappings 1: Independence and Inheritance
http://onqm.blogspot.com/2011/10/restrictions-on-mappings-1-independence.html

Ok, I collected all the historical evidence I could find that Michael Behe should have considered before making his claims about mousetraps and irreducible complexity.

Some of you may get lost because of technicalities concerning traps or my rambling style. But the main result is that taking a closer look at mousetrap history reveals similar patterns as taking a closer look at some organism's natural history. In the face of this evidence ID proponents can only revert to the same old strategies of emphasising gaps in the record etc. as we are used from their dealing with biological systems. In my opinion, nothing of the suggestive power of Behe's mousetrap analogy remains, if the real historical record is brought into consideration.

In fact, Hooker's patent of 1894 alone suffices to destroy Behe's mousetrap case for irreducible complexity. For a short and simple blog entry concerning Behe's mousetrap nemesis see: <http://historiesofecology.blogspot.com/2011/08/michael-beh ... (read more)

I couldn't find Tim's email so am instead posting here a link to my critical discussion of his paper (which may also be of interest to other readers):
Moral Judgments, 2Dism, and Attitudinal Commitments.


Cheers,
Richard

Hello,

Does anyone think that the subcategories for this category need to be refined? It seems that many entries can be shoved into Concepts of Information, though I am not sure if this is optimal.

For example, there are many articles focusing on Logic and Information. Should these be lumped together with general articles concerning conceptions of information? Or is it possible to have a cross-reference to another section under the logic category.

Another example: there are many articles concerning Information and Epistemology. Should there be a subcategory for this? There is another related section for this, namely:

Philosophy of Mind > Intentionality > Naturalizing Mental Content > Information-Based Accounts of Mental Content.


- Simon

What DSM seems to show is that sensation is non epistemic and that perception is a cognitive process. The sensory as non-epistemic, merely bare,
non-conscious occurrences, represent nothing until some perceiving, useful
or mistaken, has gone on.

Just wondering if the irony of an article about the high quality of open science research being situated behind a pay wall was lost on anybody...

What is the role of memory in the dancing qualia scenario?

It strikes me that i cannot perform direct comparisons between my conscious experiences at different points in time - no more than i can directly compare my experiences to those of others.

In claiming that my experience of a red apple has remained the same "redness" over time, i must be comparing a perceptual experience *now* against the experience *now* of a memory of a previous experience.

The reductio asks us to imagine there being a difference in experience just due to differences in the material substrate of cognition. It seems plausible to me that when an experience is serialized while running on one substrate and deserialized while on another, the difference should go unnoticed. For example, the red experience of a neural system could be remembered as a blue experience when invoked on a silicon circuit, so that the comparison always succeeds.

Put differently, i wonder in what way the following scenario is not analogous to da ... (read more)