ISSN 1358-2461
13 papers in the library · 61 citations · publishing 1991-2018
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement October 1, 2018 B. Earp
Abstract The moral enhancement (or bioenhancement) debate seems stuck in a dilemma. On the one hand, the more radical proposals, while certainly novel and interesting, seem unlikely to be feasible in practice, or if technically feasible then most likely imprudent. But on the other hand, the more sensible proposals – sensible in the sense of being both practically achievable and more plausibly...
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement October 1, 2010 Julian Kiverstein
AbstractOur perceptual experiences stretch across time to present us with movement, persistence and change. How is this possible given that perceptual experiences take place in the present that has no duration? In this paper I argue that this problem is one and the same as the problem of accounting for how our experiences occurring at different times can be phenomenally unified over time so...
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement July 7, 2010 Pierfrancesco Basile 33 citations
Abstract Although panpsychism has had a very long history, one that goes back to the very origin of western philosophy, its force has only recently been appreciated by analytic philosophers of mind. And even if many still reject the theory as utterly absurd, others have argued that it is the only genuine form of physicalism. This paper examines the case for panpsychism and argues that there are...
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement July 7, 2010 Kenneth Aizawa 13 citations
Abstract In the extended mind literature, one sometimes finds the claim that there is no neural correlate of consciousness. Instead, there is a biological or ecological correlate of consciousness. Consciousness, it is claimed, supervenes on an entire organism in action. Alva Noë is one of the leading proponents of such a view. This paper resists Noë's view. First, it challenges the evidence he...
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement July 7, 2010 Leemon B. McHenry 3 citations
Abstract Timothy Sprigge advanced an original synthesis of panpsychism and absolute idealism. He argued that consciousness is an irreducible, subjective reality that is only grasped by an introspective, phenomenological approach and constructed his ontology from what is revealed in the phenomenology. In defending the unique place of metaphysics in the pursuit of truth, he claimed that...
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement July 7, 2010 David Cockburn 1 citation
Abstract The paper is a criticism of the idea that a notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ has a significant role to play in the attempt to understand how the experience of change is possible. Discussion of such experience must give a significant place to its public and private manifestations. How should we picture the relationship between the experience of change and its manifestations? While...
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement July 7, 2010 The Editors
In a recent article entitled 'The Mind-Body Problem at Century's Turn', 1 one of the leading thinkers in contemporary philosophy of mind, Jaegwon Kim, observes that '[t]hrough much of the twentieth century, especially during the second half, debates over the mindbody problem were shaped by physicalism', that is, the metaphysical belief that 'all things that exist in this world are bits of...
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement September 1, 1996 Barrie Falk
There is a common view that as well as being conscious of the world in virtue of having thoughts about it, forming representations of its various states and processes, we are also conscious of it in virtue of feeling it. What I have in mind is not the fact that we have feelings about the world—indignation at this, pleasure at that—but that we sensorily feel its colours, sounds, textures and so...
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement March 1, 1993 Michael Tye 9 citations
One standard objection to the view that phenomenal experience is functionally determined is based upon what has come to be called ‘The Absent Qualia Hypothesis’, the idea that there could be a person or a machine that was functionally exactly like us but that felt or consciously experienced nothing at all (see Block, 1980; Block and Fodor, 1980; Campbell, 1980; Nagel, 1980). Advocates of this...
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement March 1, 1992 T. L. S. Sprigge 2 citations
In the postscript to The Varieties of Religious Experience William James distinguishes two types of belief in the supernatural, conceived as an essential component in religion, crass or piecemeal supernaturalism, on the one hand, and refined supernaturalism on the other.
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement March 1, 1992 Herbert McCabe
This title represents, I suppose, a kind of challenge; for there seems at first sight some incompatibility between the practice of logic and mysticism, a contrast between the rational and the intuitive, the tough minded and the tender-minded. In taking up this challenge, I propose to argue with the help of two thinkers commonly admired for their attention to logic and its rights. I shall refer...
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement March 1, 1992 Cyril Barrett
To talk of a logic of mysticism may sound distinctly odd. If anything, mysticism is alogical; it would be uncharitable if not false, on mature consideration, to call it illogical—though many, without due deliberation, might be tempted to use that term. Wittgenstein comes close to calling it illogical. In his lecture on ethics he draws attention to the logical oddity of statements of absolute...
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement September 1, 1991 Ted Honderich
It is the business of philosophy to deal without presupposition with the question of the general nature of the world and with the question of how or indeed whether we can know that nature. These are questions to which answers are given in the realism of ordinary belief, as it can be called, the phenomenalism of Berkeley, the pragmatism and the scientism of Quine, and the varieties of...