Alex Byrne and Skepticism About the External World
I recently read Alex Byrne's paper Skepticism About the Internal World (PDF warning), and in this post I want to focus on the first part of the paper, where he…
Machines and Understanding
This recent blog post by Thomas Dietterich has received much well-deserved attention. And while the title What does it mean for a machine to "understand"? sounds like a philosophical work,…
Infallibility, Inflation, and Explosion
In this very interesting discussion between Richard Brown, Keith Frankish, and Philip Goff, Frankish makes the point that the core of his illusionist view is the denial of a phenomenal…
Richard Brown and Keith Frankish on Illusionism
I'm glad I listened to this discussion between Richard Brown and Keith Frankish on Consciousness Live, as Brown seems to have many of the same questions about illusionism that I…
Qualia Taste Test
I found that Keith Frankish's paper Quining Diet Qualia (PDF warning) was very helpful for understanding the Illusionist research program. In the paper, he lays out a few conceptions of…
Kripke and Dualism
I wanted to write a bit about Saul Kripke because I figured there are many people who have encountered him through linguistics and logic, but are unfamiliar with how his…
Conceivability Arguments
I was recently listening to this great discussion on consciousness between Philip Goff and Richard Brown, and when they got to a discussion of conceivability arguments (e.g. zombie conceivability), Goff…
Illusionism and Bad Intuitions
I've posted about illusionism a couple of times, e.g. here and here. In this post, I want to discuss the frequent claim by illusionists that they are just "rejecting bad…
Does Idealism Need an External Agent?
I thought this was an interesting but odd tweet by the philosopher Stathis Psillos: https://twitter.com/StathisPsillos/status/1169913170779136000 I'm not sure whether he means ontological idealism (the ultimate foundations of reality are mental)…
Strawson’s Mary-Go-Round
I posted a couple of times recently about the Knowledge Argument (KA). In the first, I summarized my view as follows: 1. I’m not convinced this argument refutes physicalism.2. I…