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In this audio file from Philosophy Bites, philosopher of mind Tim Crane discusses what philosophical and psychological methods there are for potentially figuring out what kinds of minds and thoughts animals might have. He has the most to say about chimps, monkeys, and dogs. He is the author of The Mechanical Mind: A Philosophical Introduction to Minds, Machines and Mental Representation,Elements [...]
Archive for the ‘Philosophy of Mind’ Category
What Are Monkeys’, Chimps’, and Dogs’ Thoughts Like?
November 20th, 2011 
Daniel Fincke Mimicking the Brain in Silicon
November 20th, 2011 Daniel Fincke MIT researchers make progress towards a potentially amazing accomplishment: For decades, scientists have dreamed of building computer systems that could replicate the human brain’s talent for learning new tasks. MIT researchers have now taken a major step toward that goal by designing a computer chip that mimics how the brain’s neurons adapt in response to [...]
Are Supernaturalists Actually Super-materialists?
September 25th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Ophelia plucks and highlights a comment so good and philosophically interesting from PZ’s comments section that I just have to reproduce it too. For the background, Colin Tudge falsely claimed that in Richard Dawkins’s new introduction to science for children, The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True, Dawkins dogmatically imposes on children a “crude materialism” that [...]
Posted in 'Nuff Said, 'Nuff Said, 'Nuff Said, Love, Love, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, PZ Myers, PZ Myers 
Tags: Ophelia Benson, Richard Dawkins 
12 Comments »How Does Language Shape Our Color Experiences?
September 18th, 2011 Daniel Fincke A fascinating video, via PZ, who also offers some analysis. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b71rT9fU-I&feature=player_embedded#! Your Thoughts?
What It Means To Me To Be Free
September 13th, 2011 Daniel Fincke I think that in some meaningful ways, human beings are free. In a couple of previous posts and in subsequent comments in their comments sections, I have been arguing for the ways that we are not free in a libertarian sense, i.e., our actions are not “undetermined” by forces outside our fundamental control. We are [...]
Posted in Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Ethics, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind Tags: Free Will, Libertarian Free Will, Mind, Mind/Body, Self, Soft Determinism, Soft Determinism's Free Will 5 Comments »Internecine War At Freethought Blogs: Philosopher vs. “Redneck” Edition: Free Will And The Real World Smackdown
September 10th, 2011 Daniel Fincke As far as I have noticed, there has not been a blog war between any of the Freethought Blogs (or, er, since we all moved here anyway) so I was a little trepidatious of going and picking apart the every word of a quick comment on one of my posts by my new favorite blogger, Hank [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheism, Autonomy, Autonomy, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Ethics, Ethics, Faith, Faith, God, God, Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, Metaethics, Metaethics, Metaphysics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Psychology, Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Psychology Tags: Free Will 19 Comments »The Singularity as Religion
April 11th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart I think much of the culture and discourse around the singularity is religious. I say this based in part on my reading of David Noble’s book The Religion of Technology and my reading of Robert Geraci’s Apocalyptic AI. Both are fantastic books. And I’ve compiled a long list of articles and books [...]
Dennett: Darwin Had The Single Greatest Idea Anyone Ever Had
February 12th, 2011 Daniel Fincke This is a terrific video in which Dennett and Dawkins get further into the weeds discussing the dynamics of evolution, responsibility, how you can make living things out of dead stuff and conscious ones out of unconscious ones, the wonder of natural processes, the idea that we have souls—but they’re made of neurons, and many [...]
Posted in Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Biology, Biology, Daniel Dennett, Daniel Dennett, Evolution, Evolution, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Science, Science, Videos Tags: Charles Darwin, Complexity, Daniel Dennett, Meaning, Purpose, Richard Dawkins, Teleology 2 Comments »Non-Reductionistic Analysis Of Values Into Facts
January 27th, 2011 Daniel Fincke I have recently been arguing that the term good: must be cashed out in fact terms lest it just be a projection of our preferences and nothing more. [And] if it means anything objective, it means effectiveness. In reply, James Gray accuses me of reductionism: One, “good” does not have be defined in non-good terms. [...]
Posted in Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Ethical Pluralism, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Metaethics, Metaethics, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Naturalistic Fallacy, Naturalistic Fallacy, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Teleology, Teleology Tags: Good, Immoralism, Intrinsic Goods, Metaphysics of Value, Natural Good, Non-Good Terms, Non-Reductionism, Reductionism, Values 8 Comments »A Philosophers’ Blog Carnival!
August 31st, 2010 Daniel Fincke This month, the New York Times featured numerous philosophers’ opinions on the “experimental philosophy” movement which has garnered increasing attention in the last couple of years. In response, at Thoughts Arguments and Rants, Brian Weatherson tries to discern what precisely makes “experimental philosophy” any different than the many other scientifically aware philosophical approaches that have existed [...]
Posted in Ethics, Ethics, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind Tags: Brian Weatherson, David Chalmers, Eric Thomson, Torbjörn Tännsjö 4 Comments »On The Intrinsic Connection Between Being And Goodness
July 8th, 2010 Daniel Fincke All things, insofar as they are, have goodness. This is because, for any existent thing whatsoever, to be is necessarily better than not being (regardless of whether a given existent thing consciously acknowledges this or is even capable of thinking about it at all). This goodness is partly a function of the fact that every [...]
Typical Mind Fallacy: The Limits Of Generalizing From One Example
July 8th, 2010 Daniel Fincke “Everyone generalizes from one example. At least, I do.” – Vlad Taltos (Issola, Steven Brust) My old professor, David Berman, liked to talk about what he called the “typical mind fallacy”, which he illustrated through the following example: There was a debate, in the late 1800s, about whether “imagination” was simply a turn of phrase [...]
Posted in Daniel Dennett, Daniel Dennett, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Historical Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind Tags: Behaviorists, Berkeley, David Berman, Generalization, Gilbert Ryle, Less Wrong, Typical Mind Fallacy No Comments »Unconscious Influences
July 2nd, 2010 Daniel Fincke Time ticks off some observed ways in which people have been shown to be susceptible to irrational subconscious influences: Studies have found that upon entering an office, people behave more competitively when they see a sharp leather briefcase on the desk, they talk more softly when there is a picture of a library on the [...]
Deciding Without Knowing It?
July 1st, 2010 Daniel Fincke In the paper “Predicting Persuasion-Induced Behavior Change from the Brain” from The Journal of Neuroscience , UCLA researchers reveal that they were better able to predict test subjects’ behavior days in advance by monitoring activity in the medial prefrontal cortex than by asking them what they would do. Psyorg.com explains: The new study by Lieberman [...]
Beyond Agnosticism: More Details About How I Know Various Kinds Of Gods Do Not Exist, Based On Scientific And Philosophical Reasons
June 30th, 2010 Daniel Fincke While I agree with, and vigorously defend, the notion that there is an important difference between lacking a belief in gods (as an agnostic atheist) and believing there are no gods (as a gnostic atheist), I also think that atheists should not, based on the best available scientific evidence and philosophical arguments, merely lack belief [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Christianity, Christianity, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Featured, God, God, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Problem of Evil, Problem of Evil, Religion, Religion, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, Skepticism, Skepticism, Why I Am Not A Christian, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Agnosticism, Personal God 9 Comments »Daniel Dennett: Can We Know Our Own Minds?
June 20th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Daniel Dennett explains various limitations on our introspective understanding of our own consciousness. Your Thoughts?
David Chalmers On “The Singularity”
June 17th, 2010 Daniel Fincke What happens when machines get smarter than humans? Presumably, they will build machines smarter than themselves which will build machines smarter than themselves and onward towards infinity. Philosophy Bites interviews David Chalmers, a leading philosopher of mind, about the concept and its possible realization. Thanks to 3QuarksDaily for the heads up. Your Thoughts?
Neuroplasticity
May 27th, 2010 Daniel Fincke In May 2009, Margaret Throsby interviewed Norman Doidge MD, research psychiatrist at the Columbia University Psychoanalytic Centre and the University of Toronto. Here are a few nuggets from the fascinating, 40 minute long audio interview on neuroplasticity: a property of the brain which allows it to change its structure and its function as it goes [...]
98th Philosophers’ Blog Carnival
October 20th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Kenny Pearce has the new Philosophers’ Blog Carnival. There is a link in the upper right corner of his page that says “view with boring colors” in case you find his all green writing on all black background unpleasant. Your Thoughts?
Disorderly Genius: How Chaos Drives The Brain
September 29th, 2009 Daniel Fincke A really fascinating video: For more read the New Scientist article here and also take a listen to the last fascinating third of this episode of Radiolab on stochasticity. Your Thoughts?
Posted in Philosophy of Mind, Psychology, Science, Videos Tags: Brain, Chaos To Order, Cognitive Neuroscience, Mind, Thinking No Comments »Philosophy In-Joke Hilarity Galore
September 29th, 2009 Daniel Fincke When you do philosophy for a living, philosophy novices are frequently inflicting on you the same small stock of stale and unimaginative philosophy jokes and overrated Monty Python philosophy related sketches. So that’s probably why I find this contemporary, philosophically acute, esoteric latest comic strip from Chaos Pet strip a breath of fresh, hilarious air: [...]
Posted in Comic Strips, Hilarious, Parody, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind Tags: Chaos Pet, Philosophy of Mind Zombies No Comments »Philosophers’ Blog Carnival
September 28th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Welcome to The Philosophers’ Blog Carnival at Camels With Hammers! (via Peter Mandik’s Brain Hammer) First I want to kick things off with a super post not actually submitted to the carnival but worth your attention nonetheless. Phil Goetz writes: The history of religions sometimes resembles the history of viruses. Judaism and Islam were both highly virulent [...]
Posted in Featured, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind Tags: Andrew Bernardin, Bertrand Russell, Blog Carnival, Brains, Brian Leiter, Chaos Pet, Creationists, David Chalmers, David Gross, Einstein, Eric Thomson, Hard Problem For Consciousness, Heisenberg, John Ku, Karl Popper, Kenny Pearce, Kierkegaard, Neuroscience, Phil Goetz, Philosophers' Blog Carnival, Prior Adams, Richard B. Hoppe, Ruby Quines, Scientific Curiosity, Xenia 9 Comments »Vote For The Best Philosophy Blog Post Of The Year (And Take A Moment To Consider Peter Mandik’s Entry)
September 4th, 2009 Daniel Fincke 3 Quarks Daily is offering a relatively sizable prize ($1,000) for the best philosophy blog post of the year. You can read the nominees (a great many of which were self-nominated) here and vote for your favorite here. The finalists will be submitted to Daniel Dennett who will decide the winner. Peter Mandik, who is [...]
Dennett On Evolution
September 2nd, 2009 Daniel Fincke This is a terrific video in which Dennett and Dawkins get further into the weeds discussing the dynamics of evolution, responsibility, how you can make living things out of dead stuff and conscious ones out of unconscious ones, the wonder of natural processes, the idea that we have souls—but they’re made of neurons, and many [...]
Posted in Biology, Daniel Dennett, Evolution, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Teleology, Teleology Tags: Charles Darwin, Meaning, Mind, Richard Dawkins No Comments »
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