Bah Humbug!

So, I am heading back to California for some much needed R&R…I am also looking forward to getting my Playstation 3!!! I can’t wait until they release Fallout 3, but until then I will be catching up on all of the PS3 games that I have missing out on! Very exciting…so posting around here should [...]

Case Dismissed: Definite Descriptions are not Ambiguous

In  The Case for Referential Descriptions Michael Devitt presents his case for the claim that definite descriptions like, for instance, ‘the author of Naming and Necessity’, are semantically ambiguous between  referential and attributive uses. The alternative to this is the Russellian view which treats definite descriptions as semantically equivelent to quantifier phrases (‘there is someone who [...]

Oh, the Humanity!

So, as you may or may not know, I have made several lame attempts at humor one of which is my very lame-brained ideas for various skits…sort of like a super-ultra-nerdy version of Monty Python…well inspired by one of these terrible ideas one of my (former) students from Brooklyn College wrote this…pleased to enjoy…

Conceptual Atomism, Functionalism, and the Representational Theory of Mind

There was once optimism among philosophers that functionalism could give a complete account of the mind. Today philosophers are a lot less sure of this due mostly to the arguments expounded by Block in his now classic “Troubles with Functionalism,” (Block 1993), as well as his later “Inverted Earth” (Block 1997), where he argued that [...]

59th Philosophers’ Carnival

is Here

No Doubt About It

Via the Lieter Reports I learned about this article that clearly and decisively shows that waterboarding is torture as well as the moral and pragmatic consequences of our continued use of it as an interrogation method.

Unconscious Change Detection, Priming, and the Function of Consciousness

So, if you have been around here lately you will have noticed that I have been talking a lot about priming, change blindness and the function of conscious mental states in the higher-order theory. I have been arguing that some recent results on priming effects in change blindness suggest that there is some function for [...]

Priming, Change Blindness, and the Function of Consciousness

This Wednesday David Rosenthal will be giving  a talk at the Graduate Center entitled ‘The Poverty of Consciousness’. If you happen to be in the New York Area and you have a hankering for some hot and heavy philosophy of consciousness, come on down! (see the Cog Blog for some details). I have been thinking about [...]

Yes, but what’s wrong with that?

Just in case you don’t read Leiter’s blog please do yourself a favor and check out this Kant attack ad…I love it!!

Some Cool Links

(via David Pereplyotchik) Below are links to some examples of talks that fall well within the cognitive science arena. I’ve found, however, that many of the non-cogsci talks are more interesting, because they introduce one, often in a vivid way, to a subject matter that is less familiar. (For instance, Wade Davis’s talk on anthropological [...]