Announcing Consciousness Online

Call for Papers: Consciousness Online: The First Cyber Consciousness Conference February 20-27, 2009 Please post and distribute widely; appologies for cross-posting Following the success of the On-Line Philosophy Conference I am pleased to announce Consciousness Online: The first cyber consciousness conference. Invited talk by David Rosenthal. Papers in any area of consciousness studies are welcome and should be [...]

The Reverse-Knowledge Argument

I was thinking about my reverse-zombie argument from zoombies and shombies today when I suddenly remembered a remark that Chalmers made somewhere to the effect that the knowledge argument, the zombie argument, and Kripke’s modal argument are all of apiece and all stand or fall together (I was thinking about this partly because I am working [...]

Second Thoughts on Pain Asymbolia

I am trying to figure out what the hell is going on in pain asymbolia. I talked about this briefly a couple of time before, but I still find myself puzzled by it. Here are  a list of facts about pain asymbolia. 1. Pain asymbolics have damage to a specific area of the brain but [...]

Why Multiple Realization Arguments don’t Refute Physicalism

Over at Brains

Nothing New Under the Sun

I have been working on my paper, inspired by discussion on this blog, The Reverse-Zombie Argument against Dualism. I just found out that the shombie argument was anticipated by Keith Frankish (he calls them anti-zombies). Ah well; a good argument is a good argument no matter who discovers it. Frankish doesn’t appeal to zoombies and he argues [...]

Dead Philosophers

Gentlemen, it is a fact that every philosopher of eminence for the last two centuries has either been murdered, or, at the least, been very near it, insomuch that if a man calls himself a philosopher, and never had his life attempted, rest assured there is nothing in him; and against Locke’s philosophy in particular, [...]

Zoombies & Shombies

Some of you may remember the Zombie Wars from earlier in the summer, those of you who don’t can be spared the gory details. The dispute was initiated by what I called my Reverse-Zombie argument against dualism. The basic idea is simple. The dualist claims that zombies are conceivable therefore possible therefore physicalism is false. [...]

Moogles, and Chocobos, and…Kripke? Oh My!

I have completed a rough draft of my contribution to Final Fantasy and Philosophy (here). Comments welcome!

The Philosophical Method

It seems to me that philosophy is distinguished from other endeavors by the method that it adopts. This is not unusual, as science is usually identified by the scientific method. But what is the philosophical method? This question is obviously controversial but I think a good case can be made that the philosophical method involves [...]

Is this for Real?

Sadly it is.