Last Friday, in the SMUmind reading group, we read Karen Bennett’s excellent “Exclusion Again” (forthcoming in a OUP collection entitled “Being Reduced”, J.Hohwy & J.Kallestrup, eds.), where she offers a clear characterisation of the Exclusion Problem (EP) about mental causation as arising from the inconsistency of the following five doctrines:
1. DISTINCTNESS: mental events are distinct [...]
I’m a little wary of the insistance that physicalism be construed as a contingent thesis, in part because epistemological problems seem to ensue. How do we know there aren’t crowds of ghosts in this world, silent spectators to the mortal drama? But perhaps we should let epistemology sweep its own floors. It occurs to me that there might be at least one other issue….
We think that moral evaluation often involves an evaluation of someone’s psychology. Facts about an agent’s intentions and beliefs give us a sense of the agent’s motives and motive seems to bear upon first- or second-order moral judgments. Psychological attribution seems to be a purely non-normative affair. Our ability to use folk psychological [...]
At Lafayette College October 13-15 2006.
http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~realizationconference/
This conference explores the concept of realization, arguably the most widely invoked concept used to specify the relationship between the mind and the body. While central to contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of mind, the concept of realization is largely unexplored. Its significance extends far beyond functionalism, the original home of [...]
SSPP Conference 2007: Submit a Paper!
Just a quick post to encourage people to submit papers to the SSPP
conference, April 5-7th 2007, in Atlanta (deadline Nov. 15th). Everyone
knows how good the SPP conference is, but I think folks are less aware
of the recent rejuvenation of the Southern Society for Philosophy and
Psychology. In recent years, the contributed [...]
Congrats to Philippe and Sally on the birth of their daughter Mathilde!
Here’s to lots of brains, with minimal pains!