Daniel Dennett: Can We Know Our Own Minds?

Daniel Dennett explains various limitations on our introspective understanding of our own consciousness. Your Thoughts?

David Chalmers On “The Singularity”

What happens when machines get smarter than humans?  Presumably, they will build machines smarter than themselves which will build machines smarter than themselves and onward towards infinity. Philosophy Bites interviews David Chalmers, a leading philosopher of mind, about the concept and its possible realization. Thanks to 3QuarksDaily for the heads up. Your Thoughts?

Neuroplasticity

In May 2009, Margaret Throsby interviewed Norman Doidge MD, research psychiatrist at the Columbia University Psychoanalytic Centre and the University of Toronto.  Here are a few nuggets from the fascinating, 40 minute long audio interview on neuroplasticity: a property of the brain which allows it to change its structure and its function as it goes [...]

98th Philosophers’ Blog Carnival

Kenny Pearce has the new Philosophers’ Blog Carnival. There is a link in the upper right corner of his page that says “view with boring colors” in case you find his all green writing on all black background unpleasant. Your Thoughts?

Disorderly Genius: How Chaos Drives The Brain

A really fascinating video: For more read the New Scientist article here and also take a listen to the last fascinating third of this episode of Radiolab on stochasticity. Your Thoughts?

Philosophy In-Joke Hilarity Galore

When you do philosophy for a living, philosophy novices are frequently inflicting on you the same small stock of stale and unimaginative philosophy jokes and overrated Monty Python philosophy related sketches. So that’s probably why I find this contemporary, philosophically acute, esoteric latest comic strip from Chaos Pet strip a  breath of fresh, hilarious air: [...]

Philosophers’ Blog Carnival

Welcome to The Philosophers’ Blog Carnival at Camels With Hammers! (via Peter Mandik’s Brain Hammer) First I want to kick things off with a super post not actually submitted to the carnival but worth your attention nonetheless.  Phil Goetz writes: The history of religions sometimes resembles the history of viruses.  Judaism and Islam were both highly virulent [...]

Vote For The Best Philosophy Blog Post Of The Year (And Take A Moment To Consider Peter Mandik’s Entry)

3 Quarks Daily is offering a relatively sizable prize ($1,000) for the best philosophy blog post of the year.  You can read the nominees (a great many of which were self-nominated) here and vote for your favorite here.  The finalists will be submitted to Daniel Dennett who will decide the winner.  Peter Mandik, who is [...]

Dennett On Evolution

This is a terrific video in which Dennett and Dawkins get further into the weeds discussing the dynamics of evolution, responsibility, how you can make living things out of dead stuff and conscious ones out of unconscious ones, the wonder of natural processes, the idea that we have souls—but they’re made of neurons, and many [...]

Character As Fate And Environment As Variability

In reply to this post from late last night in which I took a first pass at trying to sketch out my views on fate, George writes: Dan, Again I find myself thanking you for this blog. Good blogging is all for naught without good readers (and especially without good readers who contribute excellently and [...]

10 Recommended Philosophy Of Mind Articles

Anderson Brown gives a really interesting list of 10 classic articles in the philosophy of mind which cover (a couple more than) 10 pivotal arguments.   I’ve heard of almost all of them and all the philosophers on the list are extremely famous, major contributors to the field.  I especially love this one article’s point: [...]

Are Certain Beliefs and Desires The Same Things?

Eric Schwitzgebel makes an interesting case that in some cases believing and desiring may be the same thing, or at least close enough to each other as to be inseparable from each other: In the usual taxonomy of mental states (usual, that is, among contemporary analytic philosophers of mind) belief is one thing, desire quite [...]