Philosophy of Mind

Two descriptions of the same episode, and why nobody has managed to fit them together

7 min

Splitting the mental into what gets processed and what gets felt, and why only one half looks tractable

9 min

Attitudes and their contents, states you are in and states you are merely disposed to, and what the categories are for

8 min

Why the ordinary view that we see objects has been so hard to hold on to

10 min

How good your access to your own mind is, once the traditional claims are separated and tested

10 min

What entitles anyone to think there is something behind anyone else's behaviour

9 min

Two ways of splitting mind from matter, and the pressure that causal closure puts on both

15 min

Analysing mental talk into behavioural dispositions, and why belief and desire cannot be separated for that purpose

14 min

Identifying pain with a brain state, and the retreat from type identity to token identity

15 min

Defining mental states by their causal role, and the octopus case that made type identity look parochial

17 min

How a state can be about something that does not exist, and what fixes which thing it is about

17 min

Treating belief and desire as the posits of a theory, and the argument that the theory is false

18 min

Thinking as symbol manipulation, the systematicity argument for a language of thought, and the connectionist reply

20 min

Searle's claim that symbol manipulation never yields understanding, and the replies that locate understanding elsewhere

14 min

Sense data, adverbialism, intentionalism, and naive realism, judged by what they say about the good case and the bad

19 min

A colour scientist who knows every physical fact and still learns something on leaving the black and white room

16 min

Running from what we can coherently imagine to what is metaphysically possible, and where that step can be blocked

18 min

Two thought experiments showing that environment and community, not the head alone, fix what a thought is about

23 min

What separates an action from a mere bodily movement, and why the answer keeps coming back to what caused it

18 min

Locke's memory criterion, Butler's charge that it presupposes the identity it was meant to define, and Reid's officer who both is and is not the boy

18 min

Why explaining every cognitive function can leave the question of experience untouched

22 min

Denying that phenomenal properties exist, and explaining instead why we are so sure they do

22 min

Making a state conscious by being represented by another state, and the trouble raised by states with no target

20 min

Two empirical theories assessed philosophically: what each measures, and whether either addresses experience or only its correlates

24 min

Reducing what an experience is like to what it represents, with transparency for it and spectrum inversion against

22 min

Reversing the usual order of explanation: content derived from experience rather than experience from content

22 min

Whether thinking a thought has a felt character of its own, or only the sensory imagery that accompanies it

20 min

Disjunctivism about perceptual experience, the causal argument against it, and the screening-off worry

22 min

Putting experience at the bottom to avoid emergence, then facing the question of how small subjects make a large one

21 min

Physics describes structure and leaves the intrinsic nature of matter open, and consciousness is offered as the filler

20 min

Naturalizing content through indication and biological function, and the misrepresentation cases every version has to survive

26 min

Treating perception as controlled hypothesis testing, and asking what survives of representation under the free energy story

22 min

Otto's notebook, the parity principle, and the bloat objection that follows from taking it seriously

21 min

Kim's argument that a sufficient physical cause leaves no work for a mental one, unless overdetermination is accepted

24 min

The right mental cause producing the right movement the wrong way, and the worry that on this story nobody acts at all

22 min

Answering whether you believe it by looking at the world rather than at yourself, and what Moore's paradox shows about the asymmetry

21 min

Why experiences at a time come as one field, and what split-brain patients do to that claim

21 min

Deciding how far consciousness extends when the only evidence is behaviour and structural similarity

23 min