The Semester Begins

So the semester is starting up at the Graduate Center again (though not at LaGuardia, which though a CUNY school, is on a different schedule. Our semester starts March 1st…don’t ask). If everything goes according to plan this will technically be my last semester of graduate school! That is a very exciting prospect…though I am [...]

And Another One…

Some of you may know about my penchant for writing utterly ridiculous philo-gangsta rap tunes…some of you may even have heard that I have been working on a new one on Descartes…well, it’s finally here! Go and check it out, if you dare… In my previous attempts I have written the music myself and I was [...]

New Virtual Presentation!!

So, I just got a recording of my What is a Brain State? talk which I gave at the 2006 Towards a Science of Consciousness conference. I used that to record the narration to the powerpoint slides, and voila! A new virtual presentation. The conference uses a service called ‘conference recordings’ and it was easy [...]

More Good News!!!

 (Moving to the front; see update) I just found out that it looks like I will be presenting my paper Language, Thought, Logic, and Existence at the APA Pacific Division meeting in March! Sweet! I say ‘looks like’ because I have not recieved my official letter of acceptance yet, but I have seen the preliminary [...]

The Connectome

Researchers at Harvard have develped a device that allows them to slice brain tissue ultra-thin and then scan it with an electron microscope in order to create a complete mapping of the cell kinds and connections in a mouse brain (wired story here). The resulting map is called a connectome…very cool. This kind of research [...]

Music is Good

Ever wonder what I do what I am not teaching, writing, grading, or flitting about pedaling my philosophical wares? Mostly I like to play the drums…no, not in Rock Band; actual drums! Anyways, I just updated some music stuff and so I thought I would share… For a while I was playing with a group [...]

To 10 Posts of 2007

 –Runner-Up– Reason and The Nature of Obligation 10. Does God Know about Quantuum Mechanics? 9. Bah Humbug! 8. Priming, Change Blindness, and the Function of Consciousness 7. Freedom and Evil 6. Stop your Quining! 5. A Simple Argument for Moral Realism 4. Why Must we Worship God? 3. There is No Santa 2. Fuck You, [...]

61st Philosophers’ Carnival

Here  Celebrate MLK jr. day by wasting time on line! This issue of the carnival looks especially interesting

There’s Something about Jerry

 Here is how I describe Jerry in the earlier post… Given that we think that there could be unconscious beliefs, consider the following super-scientist Jerry. Imagine that Jerry has been raised in a special room, much like Mary and Gary, but instead of never seeing red (Mary) or never having a desire (Gary), Jerry has [...]

Pain Asymbolia and Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness

I was reading this NDPR review of  Feeling Pain and Being in Pain (reviewed by Murat Ayede, who wrote the pain entry at SEP). It is a nice review and actually convinced me to buy the book. This is mostly because it reminded me of something I had heard about a long time ago but [...]