fragments of consciousness

Online consciousness conference

The Online Consciousness Conference has been up and running for a few days now.  The conference, organized by Richard Brown, has a keynote paper by David Rosenthal and nine contributed papers, each followed by one or two commentaries, usually with both a video and a written version.  There are lively and high-quality discussions in the comment threads after each paper.  I'm a bit late to the party, having been out of town for the first few days of the conference.  But as it happens, six of the ten papers take my work as a primary target (Derek Ball on mysterianism, Kati Balog on the phenomenal concept strategy, Dave Beisecker also on the phenomenal concept strategy, Richard Brown on arguments for dualism, Barbara Montero on Russellian physicalism, Gualtiero Piccinini on first-person data), so I've posted comments in those six threads.  Other philosophers are encouraged to join in.

Travel wrap-up

I've recently returned from five weeks of philosophy travel: Seoul (for the World Congress of Philosophy), Beijing (a couple of lectures and some Olympics), Kirchberg (the Wittgenstein conference on Reduction on Elimination), Syracuse (the SPAWN conference on perception), Krakow (the European Congress of Analytic Philosophy), and Dubrovnik (a workshop on Consciousness and Thought).  I've put photos from the five conferences online: Seoul, Kirchberg, Syracuse, Krakow, Dubrovnik.  I've also put online photos from three July events in Australia: the AAP in Melbourne, a workshop on the representational and relational character of perceptual experience here at ANU, and the Jack Smart lecture by Brian Skyrms.

In addition, I've put online Powerpoint for the wrap-up talks I gave at the ANU and Dubrovnik conferences, R&R and The Critique of Pure Thought, and for the commentary I gave at Syracuse (on Jesse Prinz on attention): Is There Consciousness Outside Attention?  Some of these may turn into papers at some point, but for now the Powerpoint will do.

Back in the saddle

I'm back in Canberra after a month of traveling in the US and Canada: Pasadena, Buffalo, Toronto, Brown, New York, Rutgers, Texas, Arizona. The highlight was the consciousness conference in Tucson, which had superb sessions on consciousness vs attention, local vs global neural correlates of consciousness, brain imaging as mind reading, first-person methods and the richness of consciousness, and many others. Various blog posts on the conference have been posted by John Derbyshire, Anand Rangarajan, and Eric Schwitzgebel (and here). I've posted some photos here.

Having turned 42 since returning, I've also posted some photos from my Life, the Universe, and Everything party.

Expressivism, Pragmatism, and Representationalism

I've just gotten back from a road trip to Sydney for the "Expressivism, Pragmatism, and Representationalism" conference (along with half a day at the "Moral Cognition and Meta-Ethics" conference).  I've put some photos online, as have Berit and Joe.  Joe also has a report on the first day.

The purpose of the conference was to bring together various "pragmatist" and "expressivist" (e.g. those of Blackburn, Brandom, Gibbard, Price) approaches to truth and meaning, and to contrast them with more traditional "representational" approaches.  As a flat-footed representationalist, I thought that the conference would be something like going to an interesting foreign country, but what struck me was that most of what the pragmatists had to say was quite congenial to representationalism.  Some amateurish thoughts on these issues follow.

X-Phi meets A-Phi

The "Experimental Philosophy Meets Conceptual Analysis" last week was a lot of fun -- one of the most stimulating conferences I've been to for some time.  I've posted photos, and the Powerpoint for my wrap-up talk "X-Phi Meets A-Phi" (some of which is summarized below).  Here the A stands for "armchair" or "a priori", as you please.  See the experimental philosophy page and the experimental philosophy blog for some background on the issues, and see also Alex Plakias's conference recap on the Go Grue blog.

The conference had something of a tag-team wrestling format, alternating X-Phi speakers (in the 'red corner") with A-Phi speakers (in the blue corner).  The X-Phi speakers were Steve Stich (with a nice overview of his work on disagreement over the intuitions that analytic philosophers often appeal to, in epistemology, the philosophy of language, and ethics), Josh Knobe (who outlined experimental work on people's intuitions about consciousness, suggesting that they're willing to ascribe nonphenomenal states much more freely than phenomenal states), John Doris (who used empirical work on the role of social processes in moral thinking to support a socially-extended view of cognition), Alex Plakias (on empirical work on moral disagreement) and Adina Roskies (on the implications of acquired sociopathy for moral internalism).  The A-Phi speakers were Frank Jackson (on conceptual analysis as a kind of experimental philosophy), Michael Smith (on pure and applied conceptual analysis, responding to various aspects of the X-Phi critique), Farid Masrour (on the relevance of the distinction between prima facie and ideal intuitions), Jeanette Kennett (who responded to Adina on empirical arguments against internalism), and, I suppose, me.

In the end there was a lot more agreement than disagreement, though there were certainly some contentious issues along the way.  Given the emphasis on conceptual analysis, it's not surprising that different concepts of experimental philosophy were distinguished.  For a start, one needs to distinguish experimental philosophy from empirical philosophy simpliciter, where the key distinction is the focus on data about philosophically relevant intuitions and judgments.  Farid also usefully distinguished "positive" from "negative" experimental philosophy.  The former, typified by Josh Knobe's work on intentional action, tries to find interesting patterns in people's application of concepts to cases, drawing out conclusions about the way those concepts work.   The latter, typified by the work of Steve Stich and colleagues on Getter and Kripke intuitions, tries to find cross-group or cross-cultural differences in philosophically relevant intuitions, with a view to potentially undermining the appeal to these intuitions in traditional philosophy.

We also brought some experimental philosophy to bear on the relationship between experimental philosophy and conceptual analysis.   In my talk I presented a series of vignettes ranging from (a) someone asking a number of other people for judgments about intentional action to (b) someone asking one other person for such judgments to (c) someone asking themselves for such judgments, and polled the audience on whether each counts as experimental philosophy, or as conceptual analysis.  The numbers slid gradually from (a) to (c), suggesting a pretty strong continuity.  The moral is that positive experimental philosophy, at least, seems fairly continuous with conceptual analysis, though with more than one subject and performed in the third-person mode.

Conference wrap-up

I'm back now from two enjoyable weeks of conferences.  I've posted some photos from the Norms and Analysis conference in Sydney (along with the ANU-Sydney-Kyoto Probability workshop) and have also posted the Powerpoint for my talk, "Moral Relativism and Conceptual Analysis" (my first-ever venture into meta-ethics).  Kenny Easwaran has posted Rachael Briggs' marvelous limerick summary of the N&A conference, and Carrie Jenkins has also posted some comments.   In addition, I've posted photos from the Australasian Association of Philosophy conference, and have posted the Powerpoint for my presidential address, "From the Aufbau to the Canberra Plan".

Experimental Philosophy Meets Conceptual Analysis

This is advance notice of a conference on "Experimental Philosophy Meets Conceptual Analysis", to be held at ANU on July 18-20, 2007.  The focus of the conference will be on recent work on experimental philosophy, especially the experimental study of philosophical intuitions, and its relationship to more traditional philosophical methods such as conceptual analysis.  Speakers will include John Doris, Joshua Knobe, Stephen Stich, Frank Jackson, Michael Smith, and me.  The conference is open to all and attendance is free, but if you plan to attend, please e-mail Maire Ni Mhorda at maire [at] coombs.anu.edu.au.

The conference will be part of what is shaping up to be a very busy conference season in Australia.  At ANU alone, apart from this conference, there will likely be a conference on basic knowledge in late May or early June, a conference on reasons and rationality in August, and possibly something on perception in June.  At Sydney there will be conferences on Norms and Analysis on June 26-28, on Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism August 29-31, and on Moral Cognition and Meta-Ethics from August 31 to September 2.  Of course there is the Australasian Association of Philosophy, to be held on July 1-6.  There will also be the World Congress of Neuroscience in Melbourne July 12-17 and the International Society for Research on the Emotions in Brisbane July 11-15.  I'm sure there are many others I've missed -- feel free to make additions in the comments.

Cowboy ontology

Last week I was at the Arizona Ontology Conference, held at the White Stallion Ranch outside Tucson.  This was a memorable occasion, with some philosophy papers interspersed among the horseback riding, hiking, and other cowboy activities.  (As a bonus, there was a freak snowstorm on the Sunday evening, delaying my flight back by a day.)  Joe Salerno has put some great photos online, and I've put some online as well, while Berit Brogaard has a report on some of the philosophy.  Thanks to Laurie Paul for putting such an excellent event together.  (Update: still more photos from Brian Fiala, Andy Egan, and Benj Hellie and Jessica Wilson.)

I gave my paper on "Ontological Anti-Realism" at the conference, with excellent comments by Jonathan Schaffer (who has given permission to put them online).  One of Jonathan's points is that I "half succeed" because my view yields "half-realism": realism about the fundamental but not the nonfundamental.  I'm happy enough with the half-realism, as this is more or less the line I take in the paper.  But it's worth noting that the realism about the fundamental need only be a metaphysical realism, where reality objectively and determinately has a certain fundamental nature.  This needn't be an ontological realism, where this fundamental nature involves a domain of fundamental objects having fundamental properties (it might be, on some versions of the view, but the framework doesn't require it).

Jonathan also gives three interesting arguments against the distinction between ordinary and ontological existence assertions of a sentence, at least construed as involving a difference in truth-conditions (as opposed to pragmatic correctness conditions).  I think these arguments can be answered, but in any case it turns out that Jonathan and I were interpreting the claim that there is such a distinction in different ways: on my reading it's compatible with the claim that these assertions have different underlying logical form (e.g. involving covert variables), while on Jonathan's reading it is not.  So where Jonathan proposes what he takes to be an alternative to the distinction, involving covert variables for furnishing functions, I'd happily endorse this proposal as an implementation of the distinction as I construe it.  In any case the exchange and the discussion at the conference were very useful, and I hope to have a revised version of the paper online before long.

A month in Europe

I'm just back from a month in Europe: Cologne, Berlin, Lund, Copenhagen, Bristol, London, Paris, and Milan.  I've put photos online from three conferences along the way.  The summer school on my work in Cologne (photos) was especially enjoyable (Daniel Cohnitz has a little summary and a nice cartoon), despite my frying a laptop and losing a leather jacket, among other mishaps.  Thanks to Thomas Grundmann for organizing a memorable week.  The GAP conference in Berlin (photos) and the SIFA conference just north of Milan (photos) were also sources of much good philosophy and good cheer.  I'm now back at ANU for the rest of the year.

Time and consciousness

The Time and Consciousness conference in Sydney (here are some photos) yielded a lot of food for thought.  The talks focused on a number of different connections between the phenomena.  Barry Dainton and Philippe Chuard focused on the experience of time in perception, giving models to explain the experience of a "specious present".  Jenann Ismael and Jordi Fernandez focused on representation of time in memory, over scales up to a lifetime.  Craig Callender examined experimental studies of time perception to undermine arguments that appeal to temporal experience to support an A-theory ("flow") model of the metaphysics of time.  Steve Weinstein discussed models in physics that posit multi-dimensional time, and their implications for the experience of time.  Simon Haines focused on different conceptions of time in the history of philosophy and in the history of poetry.  Finally, Alex Byrne, Uriah Kriegel, and I gave summary presentations.

The issue most closely connected to my own interests is the representation of time in perceptual experience.  One connection: I think one can argue that at least at the level of representation, experience represents time as passing in a robust A-theoretic sense, so that Eden (the world where our experience is perfectly veridical) is a world of temporal passage, rather than a "block universe".  Of course this does not entail that our world is such a world: as with color experience, our temporal experience might be only imperfectly veridical.  I have seen people use temporal experience to support the A-theory more directly, by arguing that it is not just the case that experience represents A-time, but that the flow of experience itself involves the passage of A-time.  Here we are faced with the familiar issue of whether introspection reveals only properties represented by experience, but also nonrepresentational properties of experiences.

Getting clear on this issue, as most issues involving the relation between time and consciousness, involves understanding the relations between three vertices of a triangle: (TCC) the temporal contents of consciousness (time as represented in experience), (TPC) the temporal properties of consciousness (time in which experience takes place), and (TPW) the temporal properties of things in the world.  Of course TCC represents TPW, and TPC is an aspect of TPW. The crucial issues for understanding temporal consciousness seem to me to be understanding just what is built into TCC, and just what is the relationship between TCC and TPC.

Even once one distinguishes TCC from TPC, it remains tempting to think there is some closer connection between them than there is in the case of color and space, say.  It is not implausible that a being could have the same spatial phenomenology as me, despite a massive distortion or inversion of spatial properties of representations in its brain.  But could a being have the same temporal phenomenology as that of my stream of consciousness, despite undergoing my experience in reverse temporal order, or in assorted jagged bursts?  There is some intuition that the answer is no.  If this is right, then inferences from TCC to TPC may be somewhat more legitimate than in the case of color and shape.  If this is wrong, however, then one can make the familiar representationalist move saying that introspection tells us only about temporal contents of experience and not about temporal properties, in which case phenomenology will give relatively little guidance about the temporal metaphysics of experience.

The issue of TCC and its relationship to TPC is also central to the debate over different models of the perceptual experience of time, as discussed in the talks by Chuard and Dainton. Here the leading candidates include the "retention" model of Husserl and Broad, which postulates momentary experiences that represent not just present goings-on but momentarily preceding goings-on, and the "extension" model of Dainton and others, which postulates temporally extended experiences that represent goings-on over a brief period of time.  Both models allow that TCC involves representation of at least a brief period of time, but the extension model postulates a much closer connection between TCC and TPC than the retention model.  The "projection" model suggested at the conference by Chuard involves an interestingly different role for TPC.  According to this model, perceptual experience represents only a momentary state of the world, but the succession of experiences in time produces the cognitive illusion that perception represents more than this.  On this model, in effect, TCC is quite thin, but there is an illusion of thickness brought about by TPC.

In any case, this is all just scraping the tip of the iceberg of a very complex issue.  There are some good relevant papers in the time and consciousness section of my online papers directory. Sean Kelly  (also here) gives a nice introduction to the issue between the retention and extension (or "specious present") model, arguing for the former. Shaun Gallagher and Barry Dainton have an exchange that goes into great depth and detail on this issue in a PSYCHE symposium on Dainton's book Stream of Consciousness (the middle chapters of which are perhaps the best starting point for issues about time consciousness), arguing for the retention and extension models respectively.  Rick Grush discusses the relationship between models of temporal phenomenology and potential mechanisms in cognitive neuroscience. There's obviously a lot of room for further work here, and I'm looking forward to seeing how things develop in coming years.

AAP recap

The Australasian Association of Philosophy conference last week was excellent, as always.  Congratulations to Al and Renee Hajek for doing a great job with the organization.  I've put some photos from the conference online (including some from my end-of-conference party, where we got to wish David Armstrong a happy 80th birthday).  I see that there are also blog reports on aspects of the conference from Russell Blackford (plus here), Richard Chappell (plus here and here), Kate Devitt, Kenny Easwaran, and John Wilkins.  (Still waiting on reports from Gill and Matt.)

I've also put online the detailed handout from my talk at the conference: "Conceptual Analysis meets 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism'".  To a first approximation, this paper attempts to address Quine's arguments from revisability and holding-true-come-what-may in "Two Dogmas", focusing on the issue of conceptual change, using tools drawn from 2D-style conditional conceptual analysis and Bayesian confirmation theory.  As always, any comments are welcome.

Epistemic Modality

The Epistemic Modality conference last week was pretty enjoyable.  Two talks (by Frank Jackson and me) on the space of epistemic possibilities -- worlds vs scenarios, 2D contents, epistemic rigidity, etc -- bookending four talks (by Andy Egan, Jonathan Schaffer, Matt Weiner, and Seth Yalcin) on the semantics of epistemic modals -- relativism vs contextualism vs no truth-conditions, etc.  No photos for this one -- I'm saving those for the AAP next week.  For reports and commentary, see the postings on the conference by Richard Chappell and Kenny Easwaran.

Australasian Association of Philosophy

The annual conference of the Australasian Association of Philosophy will be held here at ANU from July 2-7.  The deadline for submitting an abstract is this coming Wednesday, May 17.  Submissions are very much encouraged -- most serious submissions are accepted, and the AAP is always a very enjoyable conference.  This year there will be a special stream devoted to the philosophy of consciousness, as well as streams on probability, the philosophy of biology, logic, applied philosophy, women in philosophy, history and philosophy and science.  But as always, submissions in all areas of philosophy are welcome.

In addition, the Centre for Consciousness website now has information on the conference on Epistemic Modality to be held at ANU on June 22-23, and the conference on Time and Consciousness to be held in Sydney on July 22-24.  The second conference will be co-sponsored with Huw Price's Centre for Time, which is also holding a conference on The Origins and Functions of Causal Thinking immediately beforehand.  All are welcome.

Online Philosophy Conference

The Online Philosophy Conference got underway a week ago, and has just entered its second round.  This week, my paper "Probability and Propositions" is under discussion, along with a commentary by David Braun and my reply.  In addition, there are three other papers in the philosophy of mind: Brie Gertler on externalism, Benj Hellie on sensations, and Uriah Kriegel on narrow content.  Then there are two papers on metaphilosophy --  Swain, Alexander, and Weinberg on intuitions and Amie Thomasson on metaontology -- along with papers by John Fischer on free will and Thomas Hurka on friendship.  It looks like a great group of papers.  It would be good to get lively discussion going, so everyone is encouraged to contribute.

Upcoming conferences

Things have been quiet here due to various writing projects.  But conference season is coming up, so I'll post a list of some upcoming events.  Mostly these are events I'm involved with, along with a few others that I've been asked to post about.

• Probability (ANU, March 2-4)
• Pacific APA (Portland, March 22-26)
• Intermountain West Student Conference (Salt Lake City, March 30 - April 1)
• Toward a Science of Consciousness (Tucson, April 4-8)
• Central APA (Chicago, April 26-29)
• Online Philosophy Conference (April)
• Society for Philosophy and Psychology (St.Louis, June 1-4)
• Epistemic Modality (ANU, June 21-23)
• Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (Oxford, June 23-26)
• Australasian Association of Philosophy (ANU, July 2-7)
• Time and Consciousness (Sydney, July 22-24)
• Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference (Bellingham, July 30 - August 3)
• Summer School in Philosophy (Cologne, September 4-8)
• German Analytic Philosophy (Berlin, September 11-14)
• Brains, Persons, and Society (Milan, September 26-30)

I'll probably be at all of these but SPP, ASSC, and Bellingham.  The epistemic modality and time/consciousness conferences are both sponsored by the ANU Centre for Consciousness (the latter jointly with the Sydney Centre for Time) and will have their own websites shortly.  I call people's attention particularly to the AAP here in Canberra in July.  It should be a very enjoyable event, as always.  Also, the Cologne Summer School is mostly devoted to the sort of topics that get discussed on this weblog, so people interested in those topics might take note.

Online Philosophy Conference

The first annual Online Philosophy Conference will take place in April.  It looks like I'll be taking part, with a paper on "Probability and Propositions" (which I'll be posting here shortly), as will lots of other junior and senior philosophers.  As well as having invited papers, they are considering submitted articles by untenured philosophers and graduate students.  The deadline for submission has been extended to January 31, so there is still time to submit something.  It should be an interesting event.

New Zealand AAP

Last week I was in Dunedin for the meeting of the Australasian Association of Philosophy, New Zealand division, at the University of Otago.  Highlights included taking a float plane into Fiordland, taking a train ride into Taieri Gorge, giving my paper on "Ontological Indeterminacy" at 9am on the morning after the banquet (with bleary eyes for all concerned), and lots of philosophy all round.  I've put some photos online.

Revelation and Humility recap

The workshop last Friday on "Revelation and Humility" was very enjoyable.  Some materials from the workshop are now available: the detailed handout for Daniel Stoljar's talk on revelation, Derk Pereboom's paper on humility (plus handout), and the Powerpoint for my talk on revelation and humility.  Note that all of these are very much works in progress.  Uriah Kriegel posted summaries of and comments on the talks (Stoljar, Pereboom, Chalmers) at Desert Landscapes shortly after they happened, breaking new frontiers in philosophical live-blogging.  My own brief recap here, three days after the event, is belated by comparison.

In Daniel's talk, "Lewis on Revelation" he characterized the revelation thesis for a property as requiring that subjects know all essential properties of that property, under certain conditions.  He argued that this captures the notion relevant to Lewis's "Identification Thesis" in "Should a Materialist Believe in Qualia?", but he argued contra Lewis that folk psychology is not committed to revelation about qualia (since it requires subjects to be metaphysicians of qualia, among other reasons), and that neither is Kripke in "Naming and Necessity". I suggested in discussion that one might read Lewis as invoking a weaker notion of revelation (along the lines of the 2D thesis discussed in my paper below), and that it's not implausible that Kripke is committed something in the vicinity of this thesis.  Daniel agreed that something like this might capture Lewis's notion, but doubted all the same that Kripke or folk psychology is committed to this claim.

Derk's talk, "Physicalism and Absolutely Intrinsic Properties", gave a detailed treatment of the thesis of humility regarding intrinsic physical properties, in the different forms in which it arises in Leibniz, Locke, and Kant.  He especially emphasized the need for substantival intrinsic properties, not just any old intrinsic properties, to ground other properties of physical substances, focusing especially on the notion of solidity.  And he brought this to bear on the contemporary discussion of the mind-body problem by pointing to these subsantival intrinsic properties as a promising place for the Russell-style physicalist to focus.  Discussion focused especially on whether and how we might possess a notion of "perfect solidity" (akin to Edenic perfect redness), and on whether some sort of inference to the best explanation (from physics and/or phenomenology) could ground knowledge of intrinsic properties.

My talk, "Revelation, Humility, and the Structure of the World" attempted to characterize "revelatory" and "humble" concepts and their role in our conception of the world.  I then looked at links between these notions and issues concerning Russell's and Carnap's structuralism and Lewis's Ramsey-style program. Both the Russell/Carnap and Lewis programs tend to lead to humility about intrinsic properties, and both have a threat of vacuity (Newman's problem, Putnam's model-theoretic argument) at least for their pure forms (pure structuralism, global Ramsification).  The vacuity problem can be avoided either by an appeal to natural properties or better, by grounding their description of the world in revelatory concepts (primitive relations, fundamental O-terms).  I explored a couple of forms of this weak structuralism: spatiotemporal structuralism (not far from Lewis's view?) and nomic/phenomenal structuralism (a view I have sympathy with).  In the final bit I threw caution to the winds by linking all this to the Kantian distinction between the phenomenal world (the world of revelation) and the noumenal world (the world of humility).  Here, I like the idea that the phenomenal world (here construed as an intentional world) stands to the noumenal world roughly as Eden stands to the Matrix.  Derk pointed out afterwards that Kant's phenomenal world is really driven as much or more by what we have scientific access to as by what is revealed in phenomenology.  So one might instead make a three-way distinction between the phenomenological world (Eden), the noumenal world (the Matrix), and the scientific world (the realm of nomic/phenomenal structure).

Thanks to all who participated for a very interesting day.

Revelation and Humility

We'll be having a one-day workshop on "Revelation and Humility: Our Knowledge of Mental and Physical Properties" at the ANU National Europe Centre on Friday November 18.  Revelation (concerning a property) is the thesis that the nature of that property is revealed to us, or at least that it is knowable under certain conditions.  Humility (concerning a property) is the thesis that the nature of that property is not knowable by us, or at least that it is not knowable by certain methods.  Many philosophers hold revelation about mental properties, and many philosophers hold humility about fundamental physical properties.  Sometimes the theses are combined, with consequences for the mind-body problem.  The papers at the conference will discuss the revelation and humility theses, separately and together.

The speakers will be Daniel Stoljar (10am-noon) on "Lewis on Revelation", Derk Pereboom (1:30pm-3:30pm) on "The Nature of Fundamental Intrinsic Properties", and me (4pm-6pm) on "Revelation, Humility, and the Structure of the World".  (My own talk will be fairly closely related to the topic of my recent post on Russell and Newman.)  Registration is free, but if you plan to attend (and are outside ANU), please e-mail Karen Downing (karend at coombs.anu.edu.au).

Phenomenological disputes

I've just returned from a quick hop to Syracuse for the SPAWN conference on consciousness, organized by Bob van Gulick.  (Visuals: My photos are now online, and Murat Aydede has put together a photo-movie.  Uriah Kriegel has a conference report, including a summary of the papers.)  This is the first of a series of conferences aimed at highlighting new work by up-and-coming researchers in a given field of philosophy, with papers supplied in advance by relatively junior researchers, commentaries on these papers by relatively senior researchers, and a number of overview sessions to pull things together.  (Here's the program.)  It's a great model for a conference, and the conference was memorable in a number of respects.  Here I'll mention a few themes that came up along the way, especially in the overview sessions.

The first overview session mostly involved a look back at the last 15 years.  Most entertaining was Alex Byrne's division of researchers in the field into advocates of the "inner" perspective and the "outer" perspective on consciousness.  "Innies" and "outies", as they came to be known, were given different pithy one-line views on a number of the main issues in the field.  The conference attendees seemed fairly evenly divided between innies and outies: by my count, the nine senior commentators were divided 4-5 (in favor of outies) and the junior paper-givers were divided 6-3 (in favor of innies).  Also memorable in this session was a leading senior researcher's heartfelt declaration that there's a serious danger of the field becoming too driven by the latest empirical discoveries and losing touch with enduring philosophical issues.  Needless to say, this view wasn't shared by everyone.

For the second evening, I was commissioned to give an after-dinner talk on challenges for the philosophy and the science of consciousness in the next 15 years.  Fortunately I was helped in this by President Bush's announcement earlier that day of a major 15-year research project aimed at building a consciousness meter (motivated inter alia by the Terri Schiavo case and by the need to deal with uncooperative foreign prisoners).  After the president's proposed "Putin method" was rejected ("I looked into his eyes and saw his soul"), it was decreed that the project would need both neuroscientists and physicists to design a perfect brain scanner, and philosophers to interpret the results.  The latter part involved a number of key subprojects, each aided by a key advisor of the president.  The project on analyzing criteria for the ascription of consciousness was to be headed by Bill Frist; the project on verbal reports by Karl Rove; the project on the epistemology of consciousness by Donald Rumsfeld (well-known advocate of the KK thesis); the project on the relation between phenomenal states and intentional states by Condoleeza Rice (the Secretary of States); and, of course, the project on central executive function was headed by Dick Cheney. (This last project led to a familiar-sounding debate about whether George Bush is epiphenomenal, or plays an as yet unknown causal role, or is just wheeled out occasionally for press conferences, as on Dan Dennett's old theory.  Some advocated eliminativism about the concept of the presidency, some advocated analytic functionalism, but most seemed to favor adopting Ned Block's distinction between the phenomenal president, who is mostly for show, and the access president, who does all the work.)  There was also discussion of the CIA's proposal for a zombie army, of inattentional blindness (explaining nuclear weapons in North Korea?) and change blindness (explaining why no WMDs have yet been found in Iraq -- they're moved every time we saccade), of the development of new language (cf. "misunderestimate" and "strategery") for formalizing conscious states, and of many other crucial topics.

Methodology wrap-up

Methodology week is now over: here are some photos.  The conference was a success, with a number of interesting talks.  Not all of the speakers put methodology front and center, but there were a lot of different approaches to philosophical methodology presented explicitly and implicitly.  A recurring theme, present one way or another in all the papers, was the role of a priori methods in philosophy: their strengths and limitations, and their continuity or otherwise with empirical methods.  In effect, two of the speakers challenged a priori methods, two of the speakers defended them, and two of the speakers questioned their distinctiveness.

Adelaide Festival of Ideas

After the AAP I went to Adelaide for the Festival of Ideas, held from Thursday July 7 to Sunday July 10.  This biennial event brings together about thirty speakers from around Australia and the world for a series of talks and panels to anyone who's interested.  (Some audio recordings of sessions, though not yet any of the sessions below, are available from the Radio Adelaide website.)  It's a marvelous event with enormous participation from the people of Adelaide.  Apart from catching up with family and old friends, I gave a talk on consciousness and was on three panels, each memorable in its way. 

The first panel was on "mind games" and involved me, Germaine Greer (!), Susan Greenfield (the British neuroscientist), and Nigel Rapport (a British social anthropologist), with Ian Ravenscroft (the Flinders philosopher of mind) as chair.  I talked about the mind and humor, Susan talked about the brain, but Germaine blew everyone offstage by talking about Clive James's mental confabulations and her experiences with friends' and relatives' mental illness.  (Here's a photo taken just after the session.)  Afterwards there was a very nice lunch where my sister-in-law Alison bonded with Germaine over poetry and English teaching.

The second panel was on the "brain drain", involving four social scientists with expertise on the subject (including John Quiggin, who it was nice to meet), and me, with no expertise, just personal experience.  At least I was able to tell the story about U.T. Place devising the mind-brain identity theory while at Adelaide, then leaving for England, and then bequeathing his brain post-humously to the University of Adelaide, where it can now be found in the Anatomy Museum.  One small reversal of the brain drain!

The third panel was on "designing the universe".  Fortunately I had been designing a universe just the previous evening, when my five-year-old nephew Tom introduced me to the joys of SimCity 4.  First he designed mountains, valleys, trees, farms, towns, roads, and so on.  Then he got to the fun part, bringing in floods, fires, meteors, tornados, and volcanos to destroy everything he'd built up.  Finally I understood the God of the Old Testament!  This was a nice way in to the issue of designing virtual universes, possibly for ourselves to inhabit, and to the question of whether our own universe might have been designed -- if not by a deity with a white beard, then by a five-year-old playing SimUniverse.  The session ended up degenerating into an entertaining bunfight over whether science is good or evil between Susan Greenfield and John Carroll (Latrobe sociologist), with me, Peter Doherty, and Robert Matthews caught somewhere in the middle.

All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable event.  Congratulations to the organizers for putting it on.  It would be nice if events like this caught on all over the place.

Methodology week at ANU

"Methodology week" is coming up at the ANU.  The conference on philosophical methodology, organized by Daniel Stoljar, is taking place Wednesday July 20 to Friday July 22, with speakers including Martin Davies, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Sally Haslanger, Frank Jackson, Tim Williamson, and Stephen Yablo.  In addition, there will be a pre-conference workshop on Tuesday July 19, with presentations by Martin Davies and Daniel Stoljar (on Carnap's "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology"), Alan Hajek (on philosophical heuristics), and me (on terminological disputes).  This workshop was set up for a group of visiting undergraduates from around Australia, but everyone is welcome to attend.  In addition, Justin Fisher (Arizona) is giving a relevant talk in the PhilSoc series at 4pm on Monday July 18, on "pragmatic conceptual analysis" and scientific explanation.  And there will be copious associated social activities.  So it will be a big week.  Those who are coming in for the conference might think about staying around for a while.

AAP 2005

The Australasian Association of Philosophy conference in Sydney last week was superb.  It was the best AAP I've been to, with high quality papers and a great atmosphere from start to finish.  Congratulations to the organizers for a terrific job.  The next meeting, here at ANU in July 2006, will have a hard act to follow.

I've put some photos online.  The photos include a couple of shots of the philosophy joke contest at the banquet, compered somewhat chaotically by me, and won by Kenny Easwaran with a joke involving some ethicists, some decision theorists, and a train ticket.   The contest also featured the unveiling of Charles Pigden's "Karen Sketch", featuring the new-style Australian philosophy department populated by Karens (and Aisling) instead of Bruces (and Michael).

I gave my paper on terminological disputes and got some excellent discussion both inside and outside the session.  I've put the Powerpoint online here.

Ontological Indeterminacy

The conference on Metametaphysics here at ANU has just finished.  It was a highly enjoyable conference, with a number of excellent talks and a good airing of the issues.  Ted Sider argued for ontological realism; Steve Yablo and I set out (very different) ways of understanding how there can be no fact of the matter in some ontological debates; Amie Thomasson argued for a sort of lightweight realism where existence facts are sortal-relative and to be determined by conceptual analysis; Karen Bennett argued against Eli Hirsch's thesis that debates about composition involve verbal disputes and suggested that the right answers in the composition and coincidence debates may involve unknowable facts; and Huw Price discussed the Quine-Carnap debate over ontology, arguing that Quine's ontological realism is a lot closer to a pragmatic Carnapian view than it is sometimes taken to be.  Lots of good discussion after every paper.  I've put some photos online.

I've also uploaded the Powerpoint for my own talk, "Ontological Indeterminacy".  There I first try to set out the issues and make some distinctions, and then try to state and defend a broadly Carnapian view where the truth-value of many ontological assertions is indeterminate.  This involves a bit of semi-technical apparatus toward the end, involving "furnishing functions" that map possible worlds onto "furnished worlds" (which have built-in domains).  There's even some supervaluation and some contextualism, for those who like that sort of thing.  This should turn into a real paper one of these days, but in the meantime, comments are welcome.

Arizona consciousness webcourse

The Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona is running a webcourse on consciousness, directed by Bernard Baars and Katharine McGovern, from June 12 to September 25 this year.    It should give an excellent background in the field (especially on the cognitive science side) for people who don't have courses like this at their own university, or who are outside the academic system.  The rates are pretty reasonable, especially if you register by May 25.

Plans are also well underway for the next Tucson conference on Toward a Science of Consciousness, to be held April 4-8, 2006.  Speakers will include Antonio Damasio, Paul Davies, Walter Freeman, Douglas Hofstadter, David Rosenthal, Oliver Sacks, John Searle, and many others.

Metametaphysics conference

A conference on Metametaphysics: Do Ontological Questions have Determinate Answers? will be held at the ANU on June 30 and July 1 this year, organized by the Centre for Consciousness.  The idea is to focus on the debate between broadly realist and broadly deflationary approaches to metaphysical questions of existence: is there always a fact of the matter about whether mereological sums exist, say, or about whether numbers exist?  Lewis vs. Carnap, one might say.  Speakers will include Karen Bennett, Huw Price, Ted Sider, Amie Thomasson, Steve Yablo, and me.  It should be a lot of fun.

Note that the conference will be held just before the Australasian Association of Philosophy conference, which will be July 3-8 in Sydney.  Later in July, there will be a conference on Philosophical Methodology at the ANU on July 20-22, organized by Daniel Stoljar, and featuring Martin Davies, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Sally Haslanger, Frank Jackson, Tim Williamson, and Steve Yablo.  Tim Williamson is also giving the Jack Smart Lecture on July 26, on "Philosophy, Conceptual Analysis, and the World".  It looks like it will be a busy winter of philosophy in Australia.

65,536 definitions of physicalism

I'm now back in Canberra.  The US trip was very enjoyable (apart from the indictment).  I've been intending to post a few things related to activities along the way.  For now, I'll link to photos and papers from the Bowling Green conference on physicalism.  The conference was mostly devoted to the issue of how physicalism should be formulated: what is it to be a core physical property, and what relation does everything in the world need to bear to these for physicalism to be true?  In my wrap-up talk (which won't be published elsewhere) I tried to give some perspective on the previous talks and (applying my favorite philosophical methodology) figure out which of these issues are terminological and which are substantive.  The Powerpoint is here: 65,536 Definitions of Physicalism.

Update: See the discussion of the paper by Brian Weatherson and others here.  Update 2: This has turned into a really interesting and helpful discussion (for me, at least) of terminological disputes and some underlying foundational issues.  This is something I'm currently writing a paper on, so if anyone would like to follow up e.g. in the comments here or there, or by e-mail, feel free.

Pacific APA pinch-hitter

Terry Horgan and Galen Strawson have had to withdraw from the session on Phenomenology at the Pacific APA next week in San Francisco, so I'm filling in.  (N.B. All this was arranged before and is independent of the fracas involving a labor dispute at the conference hotel.)  The session will take place on Saturday March 26 from 2pm to 5pm.  The speakers will be Charles Siewert on "The Relevance of Phenomenology", and me on "Perception and the Fall from Eden" (with separate discussion periods, as the topics are pretty different).  The printed program still shows the original lineup, so fans of Terry and Galen are hereby forewarned.

Upcoming conferences

Some upcoming conferences that might be of interest.

• Perception and the External World.  ANU, February 24. 
• Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness.  Tucson, AZ, March 18-20.
• Defining Physicalism.  Bowling Green, OH, April 1-3. 
• Society for Philosophy and Psychology.  Winston Salem, NC, June 9-12. 
• Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness.  Pasadena, CA, June 24-27. 
• Australasian Association of Philosophy.  Sydney, July 3-8.
• Toward a Science of Consciousness 2005: Methodological and Conceptual Issues.  Copenhagen, August 17-20.

I'll be at the first three and at the AAP (also the Pacific APA, but I didn't bother listing that one).  Note that SPP, ASSC, and AAP accept submissions (the SPP deadline is in a few days, while the others are further away).  Overseas philosophers are encouraged to come out for the AAP: most serious submissions are accepted, the conference is great, and Sydney is very pleasant in July.  Watch out for notice of a number of further conferences (e.g. on the foundations of metaphysics, on philosophical methodology, and on inheritance in biology) at the ANU in June through August.