Bits and pieces

• An initial announcement and call for papers has been issued for next year's "Toward a Science of Consciousness" conference in Tucson, April 8-12.  Confirmed plenary speakers at this point include: Andy Clark, Stan Dehaene, Alison Gopnik, Stuart  Hameroff, Christof Koch, Adrian Owen, Eric Schwitzgebel, Rupert Sheldrake, Susanna Siegel, Wolf Singer, Frank Tong, Michael Tye, and numerous others, with more still to come.


• Congratulations to the five current ANU graduate students -- Ben Blumson, Jacek Brzozowski, Yuri Cath, Ole Koksvik, and Dan Marshall -- who have had articles accepted at leading philosophy journals in the last month or two.  Berit has details.


• RIP Alex, the African Grey parrot trained by my Arizona ex-colleague Irene Pepperberg.  I'm now even sorrier that I didn't take up Irene's invitation to "meet the A-man" before she left for MIT.


• My philosophical humor page has been updated.  Additions include Rachael Briggs' modal logic version of "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend".

Comments

[bickbyro]

the times also has a good editorial on alex at www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/opinion/12wed4.html

also, it looks like nietzsche's tech support is down, but there's a mirror at home.tiac.net/~cri/1998/nietzsche.html

[Rachael Briggs]

Thanks! I'll relish my 15 minutes of fame.

And congratulations to the ANU students! Sounds like you guys are doing something right over there.

[Venkat]

I've been lurking on the periphery of the academic community around consciousness for a bit, so let me throw in my first conversation starter on a problem I am not sure has been considered in the community, something I call the problem of "indexical extent" (a term derived from the "indexical problem" notion in your book). Here goes Where is I?. Be gentle please. I am not a professional philosopher, and work more with a continental style introspective approach (which I'll admit, in my case, is sometimes code for 'sloppy'). Conversations welcome.

Apologies if this is a bit of a non sequitur with respect to this 'bits and pieces' post, but this is the only blog on the subject that I read regularly, and I didn't want the pointer to be buried in an older (though possibly more relevant) post.

Regards,

Venkat