- Artificial Empatelligence - When computers get personal.
- Are Brains Computers? - discusses the implications of the Halting theorem.
- Psychic Powers - the exciting new technology of Brain-Computer interface
- No Regrets - Brain region responsible for feelings of 'regret' has been identified.
- Truth Machines - some thoughts about lie detectors
- Personality Tests - The best on the web, what it shows, and my results.
- The Cost of Thought - Biologically speaking, intelligence isn't always as great as we think.
- Conscious Robots - On hedonism, genetic determinism, and other such sillyness.
- Genes, Brains, and Behaviour - Correcting an over-simplified view of evolution and its importance.
- Infinite Knowledge - Can mere dispositions count as beliefs, or must an actual thought be 'tokened'?
- The Speed of Thought - Is it limited by verbal speed?
- Modal Cognition - My cognitive psychology project.
- Intrinsic Motivation - What is it? Could it possibly not exist?
- Social Psychology - an introductory essay.
- The Physical Mind - Highlighting our common-sense commitment to dualism.
Personhood & Personal Identity:
- Soulless Materialism - On the importance of higher cognitive function.
- Personal Identity - what am 'I'? What makes me the same person I was yesterday?
- Vague Identities - argues that questions of personal identity sometimes have no determinate answer.
- A Self Divided - Thought experiments involving split-brain patients.
Consciousness and Subjectivity:
- Dreams and Sensations - on whether the latter occur in the former
- Sensations, Beliefs, & Subjectivity - are sensations purely subjective things? How about beliefs? Could you have one without realising it? Could you think you have one, when really you don't?
- Private Languages - Do purely subjective phrases have any meaning? (My version of) Wittgenstein's argument suggests not.
- Public Minds - Are the contents of our minds truly - in principle - private?
- Illusions and Zombies - on whether non-conscious people ('zombies') would be fooled by optical illusions
- The Cartesian Theatre - outlines Dennett's arguments against the common-sense view that there is a place in the brain where "it all comes together" and consciousness 'occurs'.
- Representing Time - We can represent time using a medium other than time itself, so the temporal order in subjective experience may differ from the objective order of events.
- Sensory Substitution - Tactile stimuli can give rise to visual experiences. The blind shall see...
- "Filling in" for presentation - Explaining the blind spot without positing extravagant mental 'paint'.
- Multiple Drafts - Overview of Dennett's theory of consciousness.
Free Will:
- Destiny & Determinism - warns against confusing determinism with fatalism.
- My initial free will post examined the basis of the free will debate.
- I go on to argue that we should choose determinism if we want freedom, though this is qualified by a post on Kane's indeterminism.
- To defend my compatibilist position, I offer a counterargument to Van Inwagen's incompatibilism. (Though for a much improved version, see my essay.)
- Just for fun, I also offer a tweaked version of Dennett's invalid "nobody knows..." argument, reconstructed in such a way that it becomes logically valid.
- A Practical Argument for Free Will - If you have a choice, then you can't go wrong by choosing to believe in free will!
Related Topics: Freedom is discussed further in some of my political philosophy, religion, and metaphysics posts.
Posts on Fiction (including our emotional response to fiction) are in the Semantics category.
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