fragments of consciousness

MindPapers

I'm pleased to announce the launch of MindPapers, an online bibliography of around 18,000 published papers and online papers in the philosophy of mind.  The site grew out of a combination of my old bibliography and my old page of online papers, but it is much bigger than both, and it has many new capabilities.

The expansion and new capabilities are thanks to David Bourget -- ANU graduate student, pure representationalist pioneer, and programmer extraordinaire.  David added many new tools (which are outlined here, along with a history of the site) for importing papers from various sources, and also added many new tools for using the website.  Some of the tools available to users of the website include (i) links and citation information throughout, (ii) highly flexible navigation, display, and search options, (iii) the ability to submit and edit entries, (iv) automated off-campus proxy access to commercial sites, and (v) a lot of cool statistical information.

The bibliography has also roughly doubled in size.  There is an all-new section on the philosophy of perception, and the other sections are restructured and expanded throughout.  The philosophy of mind parts include new subsections on such topics as what it is like, conceptual analysis and a priori entailment, Searle's biological naturalism, neutral monism, idealism and phenomenalism, phenomenal intentionality, conscious thought, temporal consciousness, consciousness of agency, bodily experience, attention and consciousness, unconscious states, thinking, interpretivism, intentional objects, collective intentionality, formulating physicalism, realization, various subtopics of personal identity, mental acts, various subtopics of self-knowledge, robotics, folk concepts and folk intuitions, language and thought, various subtopics of the philosophy of neuroscience, as well as around 50 subtopics of the philosophy of perception.  In the science of consciousness section, there are new subsections on binocular rivalry, visual pathways, neglect and extinction, schizophrenia, anosognosia, vegetative states and coma, the minimally conscious state, synesthesia, hypnosis, meditation, drugs and consciousness, other altered states, verbal reports and heterophenomenology, Eastern and contemplative approaches, and a few others.

Although MindPapers subsumes the old page of online papers, we have retained a distinct front-end for Online Papers on Consciousness, both for continuity with the old version, and because this site has a somewhat different emphasis: free online papers only, and structured in a way that is somewhat more oriented to issues about consciousness and cognitive science, and somewhat less to academic philosophy.  Everything available under online papers can also be found under MindPapers, however, by setting the viewing options appropriately.

I encourage everyone to try things out.  There will certainly be errors, bugs, and missing items: if you find these, please notify us using the tools on the site.  People with published and/or online papers in relevant areas might start by searching on their own names to see if there's anything we've missed.  Any suggestions for further development are welcome.

Update: The site went down for a while overnight, probably due to all the traffic from around the web, but it's up and running again now.

More people with online philosophy

It's been about a year since I posted an update here concerning the page of people with philosophy papers online.  In the meantime, the list has grown a lot, thanks as ever to Ming Tan's help.  The new additions include some well-known philosophers working on consciousness, such as Janet Levin, Joe Levine, Martine Nida-Rümelin, and Scott Sturgeon.  Other additions include Brad Armendt, Lynne Rudder Baker, Berit Brogaard, Ruth Chang, David Christensen, Eros Corazza, Garrett Cullity, Stephen Davies, Eric Dietrich, Ron Endicott, Peter Gardenfors, Carl Gillett, Clark Glymour, Chris Grau, Paul Griffiths, Alan Hajek, Lloyd Humberstone, Peter van Inwagen, Kevin Kelly, Berel Dov Lerner, Peter Lipton, Pascal Ludwig, David Macarthur, Ishani Maitra, Genoveva Marti, Alyssa Ney, Mark van Roojen, Joe Salerno, Samuel Scheffler, Gila Sher, Mandy Simons, Peter Slezak, Isidora Stojanovic, Patrick Suppes, Charles Travis, Kadri Vihvelin, Joan Weiner, Josh Weisberg, and Dean Zimmerman.  Plus many others, along with many updated and moved pages.

For another source of online papers on consciousness (both science and philosophy), check out the ASSC ePrints server.

Searching for photos

By now there are around 1500 photos in the photo gallery on my website.  Clearly, a search engine is needed, and the remarkable David Bourget has just produced one.  You can now search an individual's name (first, last, or both), and all photos matching that name will show up.  There's some flexibility in the names (e.g. 'Dave' and 'David' are equivalent), and in many cases a photo is returned even when the person in question is only in the background.  Give it a try -- search here for yourself or your favorite philosopher, and see what shows up.

In addition, I have a request.  This archive of photos has grown to be comprehensive enough that I would like to extend it backward in time, if I can.  I started taking photos at conferences in early 2001.  It would be great to be able to include photos from conferences before then: for example, the various Tucson and ASSC consciousness conferences, SPP and Metaphysical Mayhem conferences, and many others.  (To keep things under control, I'll restrict the list to conferences I attended.  I don't have a full list of these, but there's a list of conferences at which I've given papers under "Conference Presentations" in my CV.)  Obviously I don't have many photos taken at those conferences, but others may.  If you have photos from these events and wouldn't object to their being used on my website, or if you know of others who have such photos, please let me know.

New people with online papers

Some additions to the page of people with online papers in philosophy, since the last update: Ken Aizawa, Michael Anderson, David Barnett, Robert Batterman, Gordon Belot, Alexander Bird, Jason Bridges, David Brink, John Carroll, Nancy Cartwright, Tony Chemero, Robert Cummins, Justin D'Arms, John Dupre, Marc Ereshefsky, Elizabeth Harman, Jakob Hohwy, Henry Laycock, Peter Lewis, Elisabeth Lloyd, Kris McDaniel, Peter Milne, Jessica Moss, Eddy Nahmias, Lucy O'Brien, Christopher Peacocke, Simon Prosser, Paul Raymont, Michael Ridge, Richard Samuels, Bradford Skow, Peter Smith, Robert Stern, Chris Swoyer, Amie Thomasson, Raimo Tuomela, Kendall Walton, Caroline West, John Williams, Robert Williams, Kenneth Williford, Robert Wilson.  As always, thanks especially to Ming Tan.
 

Australasian philosophy family tree

In an earlier post, I mentioned Josh Dever's philosophy family tree project.  To help out with this project, I've now compiled an Australasian philosophy family tree.  Thanks to many Australian and New Zealand philosophers for their help with this.  Of course it is still incomplete, but I think it is probably well over halfway by now.  It's very interesting to see the various lineages, even though they are highly imperfect mirrors of influence.  If you have any additions or corrections, please let me know here or by e-mail.

Bibliography update

I have just uploaded a major update to my philosophy of mind bibliography.  This is the first update since 2001.  It's expanded from 5700 entries to 8130 entries, and should be up-to-date for now.  The six-part structure is the same, but I've added many new subsections, including self-represenational approaches to consciousness, nonconceptual content, phenomenal concepts, beliefs, desires, social externalism, two-dimensionalism about content, the extended mind, naturalism and intentionality, meaning skepticism, rule-following, the normativity of content, theory of mind, the theory theory, evolution of cognition, psychopathology, imagery and imagination, change/inattentional blindness, consciousness and action, and introspection and reportability.  The bibliography still desperately needs a new part on the philosophy of perception, and maybe one on the philosophy of action, but those will have to wait.

The biggest change involves some new features implemented by David Bourget, a philosopher of mind at the University of Toronto.  First, the bibliography is now searchable by author and keyword.  Second, the bibliography entries now include links to online texts wherever possible.  For the latter, David wrote a script that finds a JSTOR link for papers in the relevant journals, and that queries Google Scholar for links to other papers.  Right now, around a third of the entries have links to online texts (a few links are false positives, a trade-off of the automated process), but presumably that will increase as more online material becomes available.  As a bonus, citation information has been inserted where it's available.  David has also added a feature that automates the (often annoying) process of accessing restricted online texts via your library, by having users insert relevant information which is then stored in a cookie and used automatically to access those texts.

All of this will make the bibliography enormously more useful.  I'm very grateful to David for doing it all, and for his general research assistance in updating the bibliography. If you notice any glitches, please note them in the comments or by e-mail.

Website updates

I've been overhauling various bits of my website over the past month or so.

• The pages of online papers on consciousness have been expanded from around 2000 papers to almost 2500 papers, with a few new sections split off (e.g. phenomenal concepts, nonconceptual content, externalism and self-knowledge).  The first of its three pages (on the philosophy of consciousness) has been cleansed of dead links (thanks to Karen Downing for this), and the other two should soon follow.
• The page of online discussions of my work has been overhauled so that the 100 or so papers there are organized by finer-grained categories.
• The page of people with online papers in philosophy has grown so much (1044 people) that as an experiment, I've tried splitting off a few finer-grained categories from some of the biggest categories there (metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science).  The new categories include philosophy of time, causation and laws, formal epistemology, and decision theory.  I'm not sure whether some of these are getting too fine-grained -- any thoughts on this matter (or any of the above changes) are welcome.
• Finally, look out out for a major update to the philosophy of mind bibliography soon.

 

Martin Davies papers

My colleague Martin Davies has made the leap into cyberspace in a big way, putting around 40 (!) papers online.  These are divided into papers on the philosophy of cognitive science (including delusions, mental simulation, neuropsychology, and other topics) and papers on epistemology, language, and mind (including armchair knowledge, externalism, two-dimensionalism, and a couple of papers on consciousness).

New additions to the page of people with online papers also include a number of other philosophers of mind (thanks as usual to Ming Tan for most of these): Rocco Gennaro, Mark Greenberg, Jennifer Hornsby, Paul Livingston, Eric Marcus, Mike Martin (including four chapters of an unpublished book), and a new and expanded page from John Campbell.  Additions in other areas include Michael Bishop, Fred Feldman, Duncan Pritchard, Rupert Read, Jonathan Schaffer, Wayne Waxman, and a bunch of others.

Online papers

A few new links to sites with online papers.  FIrst, and particularly relevant, is the page for the NYU Consciousness Seminar run by Ned Block and Tom Nagel this semester, with a number of new papers on the philosophy and science of consciousness, and more to be added in coming weeks.  In addition, I've added some new people to my page of people with online papers (with most of the additions courtesy of Ming Tan, as always).  Today's additions include Daniel Bonevac, Mark Sainsbury (with two online books!), and three researchers from the very active LOGOS group in Barcelona: Jose Diez, Mario Gomez-Torrente, and Dan Lopez de Sa.  Some other additions in recent months include George Bealer, Cristina Bicchieri, Susanne Bobzien, Radu Bogdan, Emma Borg, Bill Brewer, Herman Cappelen, David Copp, Tim Crane, Naomi Eilan, Evan Fales, Michael Gill, John Greco, Nadeem Hussain, Rosanna Keefe, Angelika Kratzer, Philip Kremer, Jennifer Lackey, Marc Lange, Edouard Machery, Adam Morton, John O'Dea, Samir Okasha, Eric Olson, Graham Oppy, David Owens, Jeff Pelletier, Peter Roeper, Rob Stainton, Stephen Stich, David Sobel, Evan Thompson, J.D. Trout, Peter Vallentyne, and John Worrall.  As always, if you know of others who should be on the list, please let me know.

New photos

Now that I've figured out photo exporting in the OS X environment, I've made some additions to my photo gallery.  There are photos from the recent Concepts and Conceptual Analysis conference, and from conferences on The Extended Mind and on Mental Causation in Sydney last year.  Of more localized interest, I've uploaded a few new family and party photos.

Guide to the philosophy of mind

I've set up a new page on my website: Guide to the philosophy of mind.  This mostly involves the philosophy of mind entries from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, for which I've been philosophy of mind editor since 1997 (with Daniel Stoljar joining as co-editor a year ago).  It seems useful to gather all of these in one place.  Of course the SEP is a perpetual work in progress, but it's attained critical mass by now, with around two-thirds of the commissioned entries in philosophy of mind completed, and almost all of the rest completed at least in draft (e.g. in the near future, look out for Leopold Stubenberg on neutral monism, Alec Hyslop on other minds, and Susanna Siegel on the contents of perception).  I've also included links to some other relevant SEP entries, and at some point I might also add some other reference articles from elsewhere on the web.

Website move

My website has now moved from Arizona to ANU.  The address for the main page is http://consc.net/chalmers/.  The address for every other page is as before, except with the base part of the address

    http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/
or
    http://jamaica.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/

replaced by

   http://consc.net/.

I'd been using the consc.net address already for e.g. journal citations, but previously it just forwarded to the Arizona URL.  It's now serving as the official address for the site (though the pages are actually located on an ANU server).   Hopefully this will be a permanent address, meaning that if I ever move again, the same URL will keep working at the new location.  (I'm also counting on it to save a large number of keystrokes, and therefore to help save me from RSI.)  Note that only the home page address, and none of the other addresses, contains "/chalmers". For now the simple address http://consc.net/ also forwards to my home page, but the official address for the home page is http://consc.net/chalmers/, both for informativeness and also to leave open the possibility of eventually putting something else on the base page.

The Arizona pages will keep working for a while (forwarding to the new location), but they probably won't keep working indefinitely.  So if you have any links to those pages, please update them now.

There's also the question of updating the thousands of links to these pages from around the web.  There must be some sort of notification program that automatically finds pages that link to a given website, extracts e-mail addresses from those pages, and e-mails those people with a message about the move.  If anyone knows of such a program (or something similar), let me know.