fragments of consciousness

PhilPapers

I'm pleased to announce the launch of PhilPapers, a virtual environment for philosophical research.  David Bourget and I have been working on this project for a year or two now, with significant help from Wolfgang Schwarz.  PhilPapers is an outgrowth of the MindPapers project in the philosophy of mind, but it is much greater in scope and ambition.  PhilPapers encompasses all areas of philosophy, and it has many features that MindPapers lacks.

The core of PhilPapers is a database of close to 200,000 articles and books in philosophy.  Around this database, the site has all sorts of tools for accessing the articles and books online wherever possible, for discussing them in discussion forums, for classifying them in relevant areas of philosophy, for searching and browsing in many different ways, for creating personal bibliographies and personal content alerts, and much more.

The best way to get an idea of what PhilPapers can do is to go to the site and try it yourself (we've compiled a basic introduction to some of the features).  Even a casual browser can browse listings for new and old papers, search for papers in a given area or by a specific author, read the discussion forums, and so on.  However, we encourage you to create a user account, which enables many more sophisticated features.  If you do this, you'll have a profile page from which you can set up personal research tools such as bibliographies, filters, and content alerts (via RSS or email).  Your profile page will include a list of your own work (compiled via name matching), which you can edit where appropriate.  With a user account, you can also submit new entries (giving publication information and/or a link, and optionally uploading a paper to our repository), edit and categorize existing entries, and contribute to discussion forums.

Postdocs at ANU

The following ad for a couple of postdocs at ANU has just gone up on the APA Jobs for Philosophers website (it won't appear in the printed version).  A full ad and an online application procedure are on the ANU website, and informal details are on my website.

The Philosophy Program, Research School of Social Sciences, seeks to appoint two or more research-only Postdoctoral/Research Fellows (Level A/B). The fellows will be appointed in association with projects directed by Professors David Chalmers and Jonathan Schaffer. Candidates should hold a Ph.D. in philosophy or a related discipline prior to appointment, and should specialize in metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and/or the philosophy of language. Appointment will be for up to three years. The Program will consider proposals to fill the positions by secondment, and particularly welcomes applications from women.  Full details, including details on how to apply, are available at http://consc.net/fellows.html. Closing date: December 15, 2008.

Congrats to Jonathan Schaffer

Congratulations to my colleague Jonathan Schaffer, who has been awarded the APA's 2008 article prize for the best article published by someone under 40 in the last two years, for his article "Knowing the Answer".  In addition, Jonathan has been awarded the AAP's prize for the best article published in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy in 2007, for "From Nihilism to Monism".  That's quite a double!

Jonathan is the second ANU philosopher to win the APA article prize in the last few years, following Alan Hajek in 2004.  Once one combines this with Kim Sterelny's Jean Nicod Prize, Bob Goodin's election to the British Academy, Daniel Stoljar's acclaimed book and forthcoming PPR book symposium, and Frank Jackson's election as a Companion of the Order of Australia, these are good times for ANU philosophers.  Our new junior philosophers are no slouches either, with Susanna Schellenberg having papers accepted to Journal of Philosophy and Mind, and Nic Southwood having papers accepted to Ethics and Nous and a book accepted by Oxford University Press, both within about a year of getting their Ph.D.

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.

Jobs at ANU

Two advertisements for positions at ANU have just appeared in Jobs for Philosophers.    The first is for post-doctoral fellowships associated with the Centre for Consciousness:

The Philosophy Program, Research School of Social Sciences, seeks to appoint one or more research-only Postdoctoral/Research Fellows (Level A/B). The fellows will be appointed in association with Professor David Chalmers’ Federation Fellowship project on ‘The Contents of Consciousness’, and/or in association with other projects in the Program in related areas. Candidates should hold a Ph.D. in philosophy or a related discipline prior to appointment, and should specialize in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and/or epistemology. Appointment will be for up to three years. The Program will consider proposals to fill the positions by secondment, and particularly welcomes applications from women. Send applications (reference: CASS4400), preferably by e-mail (Word, rtf, or pdf format) to jobs@anu.edu.au, or by mail to: Applications Officer, Human Resources Division, Chancelry 10A, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia. Full details are available at http://consc.net/fellows.html. [Formal information is available here and here.]  Closing date: November 30, 2007.

The second is for continuing positions in the RSSS Philosophy Program (abbreviated version here):

The Philosophy Program, Research School of Social Sciences, seeks to make continuing appointments, 1 or 2 depending on rank.  Appointment will be offered at Levels B through E2 (Assistant to Full Professor, salary package: $66,764-$131,929 plus 17% super), depending on qualifications and experience.  This is an opportunity for outstanding scholars to take up an ongoing research position in a program with a major international profile and a very strong graduate program.  Applications are invited in any area of philosophy consonant with work currently being done in the Philosophy Program, but preference for one of the positions may be given to Social & Political Theory. Applicants must, except in exceptional circumstances, be willing and able to make a major contribution to one or more of the overarching themes  around which the work of the School is organized.  The Research School of Social Sciences particularly welcomes applications from women. The beginning dates are negotiable. Further particulars are available here.

Re the continuing positions: these full-time permanent research positions (tenurable after a few years, in the case of a junior appointment) are of course very attractive, and applications/enquiries from distinguished philosophers are encouraged. The information regarding rank of the continuing positions in the ad and on the ANU website is confusing, but these should be treated as an open rank positions.   The JFP ad doesn't list a closing date, but the ANU ad lists a closing date of November 19 (9 days from now).  I don't know how serious this closing date is, but it would be a good idea to send applications as soon as possible.  Note that e-mail applications are accepted for both positions.

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".

Susan Hurley

Susan Hurley died yesterday.  Susan was a creative philosopher and a force of nature.  She was a major contributor to the philosophy of mind, the foundations of cognitive science, and social and political philosophy.  Her 1998 book Consciousness in Action is full of ideas and insights that can't be found elsewhere.

I first met Susan at the Tucson and Brussels consciousness conferences in 2000, and got to know her better on visits to Oxford and at the Santa Cruz summer institute in 2002 (here's a photo).  We agreed on very little, but she was terrific company, and her ideas always repaid close attention.  My paper with Tim Bayne, "What is the Unity of Consciousness?", started life in part as a commentary on Susan's work in a symposium at the Brussels ASSC conference in 2000.   She was a frequent visitor to the ANU, and last year was offered a professorship here, although to our disappointment she ended up moving to Bristol instead. At the time of her death Susan had a contract for a book on the boundaries of the mind, co-authored with Alva Noe, in the book series I edit at Oxford University Press.  I suppose that this book will now never see the light of day.

Susan was passionate about everything that she did, and had an unquenchable appetite for living and thinking.  She treated her repeated battles with cancer as inconveniences that should not get in the way of doing philosophy.  A month before she died, Susan organized a big conference on perception, action, and consciousness at Bristol, which by all accounts was a big success.  She was due to visit ANU in early September and give a talk.  Characteristically, she kept up this plan until near the end.  It was only last Sunday that she e-mailed me to cancel, saying "I still hope that maybe I can make it there someday, but that may not be probable given my illness".  She will be missed.

Canberra update

I've been back in Canberra for a while now.  The month away was a lot of fun, with the highlight being a memorable week in the Caribbean (including a marvelous match between the West Indies and England in Barbados in front of a full house of local fans), and the lowlight being the loss of my laptop in Atlanta airport.  As a result, I've lost my photos from the (excellent) Boise conference on metametaphysics and from the Caribbean, but I've posted some photos from the subsequent conference on formal epistemology in Oklahoma.

Here at ANU, conference season is warming up.  Last Friday saw an enjoyable workshop on "The Epistemology of Experience" with talks by Carrie Jenkins, Jim Pryor, Declan Smithies, and Nico Silins.  Carrie has posted a summary and Ole Koksvik has posted some photos.  Coming up June 15 is a workshop on "Phenomenology and Intentionality" featuring Bill Lycan, Adam Pautz, and Susanna Siegel.  The conference on "Experimental Philosophy Meets Conceptual Analysis" will be July 18-20, preceded by an undergraduate workshop July 17.  Interested undergraduates from Australasian universities should e-mail me.  In addition, there are a small number of open 20-minute slots for submitted papers at the main conference.  People with suitable papers on experimental philosophy should get in touch with me.  There are also a number of other conferences coming up in other bits of Australasia.  The AAP website has a fairly extensive list.  Note that the AAP conference in Armidale July 1-6 (at which I'm supposed to give the presidential address, tentatively entitled "From the Aufbau to the Canberra Plan") has extended its deadline for submissions to May 31.

Elsewhere on the web: I recently did a video interview with John Horgan (author of The End of Science and various other books and articles), which has just been posted on the Bloggingheads website.  My webcam skills are revealed to be fairly shaky, but otherwise the interview seems to have come out OK.  It's also worth checking out Jerry Fodor's entertaining review of the "Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism?" collection by Galen Strawson et al, in which Fodor comes surprisingly close to endorsing a form of property dualism with fundamental laws connecting physical processes and consciousness.

A month in the north

I'm about to head off for a month in the northern hemisphere.  The itinerary includes Boise (for the Metametaphysics conference), San Francisco (for the APA), UC Riverside, UC Davis, Harvard/MIT, Yale, NYU, the Caribbean, Georgia State, and Oklahoma (for the "Why Formal Epistemology?" conference).  Apart from the two new states at the end, the highlight will be a week in the West Indies for the World Cup, taking in matches in Grenada (Australia vs New Zealand), Barbados (England vs West Indies), and St. Lucia (semi-final).  Fingers crossed for no more murders!

Consciousness in the news

The mind-body problem has been in the news lately.  A couple of weeks ago, Time magazine had a special issue on mind and brain, with a lead story by Steven Pinker on the mystery of consciousness, along with brief sidebar articles on consciousness by Bernard Baars, Dan Dennett, Antonio Damasio, Michael Gazzaniga, Colin McGinn.  Now the New Yorker has just published a long article by Larissa MacFarquhar on Pat and Paul Churchland (not online, unfortunately), with a lot of nice biographical and sociological background and some philosophical discussion along the way.  I talked to Larissa for this article a year or two ago, when it was a general article on the problem of consciousness, and a fair amount of philosophical background on consciousness has survived into the final version.

Job ads

As mentioned earlier, 2-3 permanent research positions in the Philosophy Program in the ANU Research School of Social Sciences are being advertised.  The ad is now available.  Inquiries and applications are welcome.  The deadline is March 1.

Another job ad: PSYCHE, the e-journal on consciousness, has been taken under the wing of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness.  It is now looking for two executive editors, one for broadly philosophical and/or theoretical work, the other for empirical work.  The deadline is February 15.

Jobs at ANU

A number of positions are being advertised at ANU.  We are about to advertise 2-3 permanent positions in the RSSS Philosophy Program. These positions will be advertised as open rank, and while permanent RSSS positions typically go to senior candidates, a more junior appointment is not out of the question.  Of course these research-only positions are almost unique within philosophy, and the academic environment in the Philosophy Program is unmatched.  Inquiries from distinguished philosophers are welcome -- feel free to send an e-mail to me or to other members of the Program.

At the same time, we are also advertising 2-3 postdoctoral positions in the Centre for Consciousness.  Two of these positions will be attached to my Federation Fellowship project on "The Contents of Consciousness", and one will be attached to a newly-funded ARC project on "The High-Level Structure of Consciousness", directed by me, Ned Block, and Susanna Siegel.  More details about these positions can be found here.  (Note in particular that these positions aren't limited to people working directly on consciousness or even to philosophers of mind.  Note also the misprinted reference number in the JFP ad.)  Again, inquiries are welcome.

All this terrific news for ANU philosophy comes in combination with the good news that Frank Jackson is stepping down as director of the Research School of Social Sciences to once again become a regular member of the Philosophy Program, where he will be full-time apart from a period each year in Princeton (as Brian Leiter reports).  Frank has done an extraordinary job as director, but it will be great to have him around more.  After a recent review of the whole RSSS, it is good to see that things are moving in such a positive direction.

Fifty years of the identity theory

U.T. Place's pioneering article on the mind-brain identity theory, "Is Consciousness a Brain Process?", was published fifty years ago this year.  As part of a special focus on 1956, the ABC Radio show "All in the Mind" has just done an episode devoted to the identity theory: "The Mind-Body Problem Down Under".    Natasha Mitchell, who has done a great job with the show the last few years, interviews Jack Smart, David Armstrong, Gerard O'Brien, and me.  The ABC website has the audio and a transcript.  The University of Adelaide website has Place's brain.

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.

Fields medals

The winners of the latest round of Fields Medals have just been announced.  I was delighted to see that one of the winners was Terry Tao, from my home city of Adelaide.  I used to tutor Terry a bit when he was an 8- or 9-year old mathematical prodigy training for the International Mathematical Olympiad, and I was 18 -- though it has to be said that he didn't need much help.  (The Sydney Morning Herald has a nice article.)  I might also have met Grigori Perelman, the reclusive Russian who proved the Poincare conjecture and declined a medal, at the IMO in Budapest in 1982, though I can't say I have any specific recollection.  (I discovered this connection when an enterprising journalist e-mailed me to see if I had any photos of Perelman.  Alas, I couldn't find any.)

I've often wondered whether success in mathematics at these early stages correlates strongly with success in the field later on (it didn't for me, as a mathematics dropout), so it's great to see Terry and other ex-youngsters doing so well.  Incidentally, the register of former Australian IMO participants indicates that three have gone on to become professional philosophers: me, Brian Weatherson, and Kevin Davey.  It would be interesting to know whether there are others from other countries with the same trajectory.

Road trip

As of Wednesday, I'm away for six weeks in the US.  Destinations include Portland, Wyoming, Utah, Tucson, Boston (and vicinity), Detroit, and Chicago.  The high point this time will be Wyoming, which will be #41 on my visited states list (where the criterion is giving a talk in the state).  Residents of Alaska, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia are advised that there's still a bit of free space on the schedule in mid-April!

Meantime, elsewhere on the web, check out the new PSYCHE symposia on Alva Noë's book Action in Perception and Thomas Metzinger's book Being No One.

Magazine madness

The Bulletin, the Australian counterpart of Newsweek, has a weekly feature where a reporter has lunch with some idiosyncratic figure.  I was lunch in last week's issue: here's the article, by Diana Bagnall.  As is common with this sort of thing, it has to be taken with a reasonably large grain of salt.  I'm credited with a bit too much, and various sentiments are attributed to me that I didn't express and don't quite endorse.  (E.g. "What matters is to be in there, among the action", "We'll know exactly what patients in a coma are thinking" -- the latter of which is run as a highlighted quote in the printed version, even though the words are Diana's and not mine!)  The "thinker" pose was the photographer's idea, but at least the bigger photos in the printed version make clearer that it's supposed to be ironic rather than pretentious!  On the plus side, there's a nice shout-out to the Desert Landscapes thread on philosophers' songs.  Overall, I'd say that Diana did an excellent job presenting some tricky issues very clearly.  Like the Festival of Ideas, this is another instance of a welcome degree of engagement with intellectual issues in Australian popular culture.

While on the theme of magazines, the magazine What is Enlightenment? recently ran a long feature article on the science of consciousness, with interviews with yours truly and many others, centering on last year's Tucson consciousness conference.  Overall, the article (by Craig Hamilton) is excellent.  There's also a web feature (including an audio interview with me), although much of that requires registration.  Finally, I'm told that the July 4 issue of the New Yorker has an article on death by Adam Gopnik that discusses ideas about consciousness at length and mangles my views in passing.  (Joe Levine, who was called as a fact-checker on the article, tells me that his fact-checking was to no avail.)  That article isn't available online and I haven't seen it, however.

Zombies in Cambodia

BBC News story: zombies in Cambodia!

Congrats to Alan Hajek

Congratulations to my colleague Alan Hájek for a remarkable double: winning the APA article prize (for best philosophical article published in 2002 or 2003 by someone 40 or younger) for his 2003 paper "What Conditional Probability Could Not Be", and having his paper "Waging War on Pascal's Wager" selected for the 2004 Philosopher's Annual (for the ten best papers published in 2003).  There's an obvious threat of contradiction here, but perhaps one can escape by deducing that Al turned 40 during 2003 and that oldsters write many better papers than youngsters!

On the road

As of today I'm in the US for five weeks.  Posting to this weblog may be somewhat intermittent during this period, though I should be able to post from time to time.  Destinations include UCLA, Tucson, San Francisco, NYU, Bowling Green, Bates College, and Maui Community College.  I'm particularly excited about the last two, having never given talks in Maine or Hawaii before.  That just leaves ten states to go (Alaska, both Dakotas, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina, West Virginia, Wyoming) to collect the full fifty.

Matrix philosophy

The Ultimate Matrix Collection was recently released on DVD.  It's a 10-DVD box set that includes the movies and all sorts of ancillary material.  Disk 8 is "The Roots of the Matrix", consisting of two hour-long documentaries: Return to Source: Philosophy and the Matrix and The Hard Problem: The Science Behind the Fiction.  These documentaries mostly involve interviews with philosophers and scientists intercut with clips from the movies.  The philosophers include Andy Clark, Dan Dennett, Julia Driver, Bert Dreyfus, Richard Hanley, Colin McGinn, John Searle, Cornel West, and a few others.  The first documentary focuses especially on issues about epistemology, free will, and religion (with quite a lot of history of philosophy), while the second focuses especially on issues about AI and consciousness.  My bits are slightly annoying, but I was pleased that they included my theory on why the real Christ figure in the movie is Agent Smith (go to the bonus "Easter egg" page that you can reach from the main menu and pick the rightmost Easter egg).  Overall, the documentaries are pretty well done.

Also, the articles from the philosophy section of the Matrix website are collected in a book to be published in a few months by Oxford University Press: Philosophers Explore the Matrix, edited by Chris Grau.  Papers by most of the people mentioned above are included, as well as a few classic readings from Plato, Descartes, Berkeley, Putnam, and Nozick.  I'm guessing it will work well for the general public and should be of interest to professional philosophers too (my own piece is dead serious, despite the topic).  It might be especially useful for introductory courses in philosophy. In all these enterprises, most of the credit goes to Chris Grau (both philosopher and former producer at Redpill, the movies' production company) for bringing high-quality philosophy to a broad audience.

While on the topic of Matrix philosophy, I should note that Peter Lloyd has posted a detailed response to my paper "The Matrix as Metaphysics", mostly from a Berkeleyan perspective.  People interested in these things might check it out.  Lloyd is also in the documentaries mentioned above, and comes across as the star of them: although he's not a professional philosopher, his lucid explanations of philosophical ideas put the professionals to shame.  He has a fine career ahead of him as a philosophical talking head.

Then, of course, there's the Meatrix.

Centre for Consciousness

There's now a website for the new ANU Centre for Consciousness.  The Centre is located in the RSSS Philosophy Program at ANU.  I'm director, and various other ANU faculty and post-docs are involved.  The Centre (see its mission statement) focuses especially on the nature of consciousness, the nature of intentionality, and the connection between the two.  But the idea is that it will take a broad approach, bringing in all sorts of work from elsewhere in philosophy and cognitive science where it's relevant.

The Centre is a sort of sibling of the Arizona Center for Consciousness Studies, except (i) spelling, (ii) the ANU Centre will be somewhat more philosophy-centric than the Arizona Center (mostly because there aren't as many relevant people in psychology and neuroscience at ANU), and (iii) it won't be organizing regular huge conferences along the lines of the biennial "Toward a Science of Consciousness" conference in Tucson, though there are rumours of some sort of big event to be held in Sydney or Canberra in mid-2007.

The Centre will be holding regular small conferences and workshops, as well as talks (mostly held as part of the regular RSSS Philosophy talk series), and will host regular visitors.  The first small conference (an inaugural conference on The Contents of Consciousness) was held in October, and two more are coming up: Concepts and Conceptual Analysis on January 20-21, 2005, and Perception and the External World on (probably) February 24, 2005.

Thanks to Karen Downing, the Centre's administrator and webmaster, for the excellent website design.  Aficionados will notice the homage to the Coombs building in the lower left corner of the main page.

Hello world

I've taken the leap and started a weblog.  Despite various reservations, this seems a useful thing for various practical purposes, such as announcing upcoming events, noting changes to my website, and so on.  I also hope to do a bit of philosophy here from time to time.  For example, the sort of thing I put on my page for responses will fit here pretty naturally.  More generally, I enjoy bite-sized philosophy, but the papers I write tend to be anything but bite-sized.  So maybe this forum will be an outlet for some of that.  It's also a way to help stay in touch with friends and colleagues in various parts of the planet.  I expect that the pace of posting will be uneven, and I don't expect to be nearly as prolific as the likes of Brian and Brian.  (There probably won't be much politics or philosophical sociology, either.)  But we'll see how things develop.

From time to time there may be some material here of interest to a broad audience, but I'm conceiving of this as a fairly academic weblog whose primary audience consists especially of philosophers.  I wasn't sure whether to enable comments.  I like the high-quality comments on some other philosophy weblogs, but at the same time my website has a fairly wide audience that includes people with all sorts of backgrounds and all sorts of temperaments with all sorts of ideas (at least judging by my e-mail).  In the end I decided to enable comments but to moderate them when necessary for quality, topicality, and tone.  We'll see how that goes.