Why Thoughts Cannot be Chemical Events The usual kinds of theoretical identity exhibit a common feature: we can give a compositional analysis of the thing being identified in terms of what it is being identified with. Thus in the case of “water is H2O” we can analyze water as composed […]
Turing Tests The classic Turing test involves a robot that passes for a conscious thinking human being. The examiner spends time with the robot, asking questions, interacting, and the question is whether it presents a convincing enough appearance of intelligence and consciousness. It is like an audition for playing the part […]
Transspeciesism Western society has grown extremely tolerant of a large variety of what we might call “life-ways”—ways in which people desire to live, by choice or genetic destiny. Unmarried parents, interracial marriage, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, bisexuals, transsexuals, and transvestites—all are now regarded as legitimate life-ways, to be respected and protected. […]
Polyamory and Identity Suppose I take myself to be in love with a single person but in reality there are two people that are the recipients of my affection. What I think to be one person is really a pair of identical twins; they have just never disclosed this fact […]
Possible Minds It is fair to say that today much of Freudian theory is not generally regarded as true (though it was believed to be true for most of the twentieth century–ardently so). Nevertheless, I think it would be accepted even by Freud’s contemporary critics (including myself) that his […]
A Picture of Mind How in the most general terms should we characterize the mind, animal or human? If the body has a respiratory system, a digestive system, and a reproductive system, what systems does the mind have? How does it divide up? What is its fundamental structure? I suggest the […]
That should do it for uploading my unpublished work (for the moment). There may be some duplications when I couldn’t keep track of what was already up there. Now I don’t need to worry if I pop off tomorrow!
Zombie Worlds Is a purely physical world possible? Our world contains mental attributes, but suppose we strip them completely away, so that nothing mental remains: will the world that is left be purely physical? I don’t mean will it actually lack all mental attributes—by hypothesis it will; I mean will it lack […]
The Selfish Molecule We have got used to speaking of the selfish gene, a unit much smaller than the individual organism (or the group or species). The genes create bodies that ensure their survival down the generations: the more effective a gene is at producing bodies that survive to reproduction the […]
Word and Subject The advent of language on our planet changed the natural history of consciousness. Before language existed animal consciousness was confined to sensation, perception, memory, emotion, and will—extensive but not exhaustive features of mind. What went through an animal’s mind was limited by these forms of basic consciousness—sights […]