Rudy Garns's Library tagged AZB →  View Popular, Search in Google

Here, I’ll explain why neuroscience is not the death of free will and does not “wreak havoc on our sense of moral and legal responsibility,” extending a discussion begun in Gary Gutting’s recent Stone column.  I’ll argue that the neuroscientific evidence does not undermine free will. 

freewill neuroscience 110 AZB

Gazzaniga's book

Gazzaniga freewill brain neuroscience 110 AZB

"Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives. In this standard, broad sense of the term, it is difficult to deny that there are qualia. Disagreement typically centers on which mental states have qualia, whether qualia are intrinsic qualities of their bearers, and how qualia relate to the physical world both inside and outside the head. The status of qualia is hotly debated in philosophy largely because it is central to a proper understanding of the nature of consciousness. Qualia are at the very heart of the mind-body problem."

qualia consciousness mind Tye AZB

in list: Androids, Zombies and Brains

change-blindness azb

azb global-workspace consciousness

"Dennett has various targets in his book; they all seem to get lumped together, but in fact some seem distinct from others. Here are three that it might be useful to distinguish." Curtis Brown

Dennett cartesian-theater consciousness AZB

"The multiple drafts model of consciousness (Dennett, 1991, 1996, 1998, Dennett and Kinsbourne, 1992) was developed as an alternative to the perennially attractive, but incoherent, model of conscious experience Dennett calls Cartesian materialism, the idea that after early unconscious processing occurs in various relatively peripheral brain structures "everything comes together" in some privileged central place in the brain–which Dennett calls the Cartesian Theater --for "presentation" to the inner self or homunculus. There is no such place in the brain, but many theories seem to presuppose that there must be something like it." (Dennet & Akins, Scholarpedia)

consciousness mind grue AZB multiple-drafts

in list: Androids, Zombies and Brains

"The central "Cartesian" claim Dennett targets is that there is a specific location in the brain "arrival at which is the necessary and sufficient condition for conscious experience" (p. 106). His argument consists mainly in denying that there's always a fact of the matter about when, exactly, an experience occurs, if one considers events at very small time scales (on the order of tenths of a second). He appears to draw from this argument what seems to be the fairly radical anti-"Cartesian" conclusion that there are, in general, no definitive facts of the matter about the flow of conscious experiences independent of the changing "narratives" we construct about them." The Splintered Mind

Dennett consciousness cartesian-theater AZB

"Dennett maintains that cognitive discriminations need only be made once. The information does not then need to travel to any special area of the brain in order to become conscious. Without the 'theatre', there is no need for such a 'presentation' to take place." - Philosophy, et cetera

Dennett multiple-drafts consciousness AZB

Response to Glicksohn and Salter in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 18, no. 4, 1995, pp. 810-11.

"We have learned that the issues we raised are very difficult to think about clearly, and what "works" for one thinker falls flat for another, and leads yet another astray. So it is particularly useful to get these re-expressions of points we have tried to make. Both commentaries help by proposing further details for the Multiple Drafts Model, and asking good questions. They either directly clarify, or force us to clarify, our own account. They also both demonstrate how hard it is for even sympathetic commentators always to avoid the very habits of thought the Multiple Drafts Model was designed to combat. While acknowledging and expanding on their positive contributions, we must sound a few relatively minor alarms. "

multiple-drafts Dennett consciousness AZB

Neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran outlines the fascinating functions of mirror neurons. Only recently discovered, these neurons allow us to learn complex social behaviors, some of which formed the foundations of human civilization as we know it.

mirror-neurons ramachandran gandi-neurons empathy self 150 AZB neuroethics

Dutch psychologists now report that different types of synaesthetic experiences are associated with different brain mechanisms, providing a rare glimpse into the workings of the black box.

synesthesia cogsci grue brain AZB

What I think my incompatability argument shows is that this "paradox of phenomenal judgment" is wider than Chalmers may have realized. It is not simply a paradox of phenomenal judgment. It is a paradox of judgment, period. Specter of Reason

zombie mind philosophy grue consciousness AZB

Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing Chalmers in action live at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He didn’t talk about zombies, telling us instead his thoughts about the so-called Singularity, the alleged moment when artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence, resulting in either all hell breaking loose or the next glorious stage in human evolution — depending on whether you typically see the glass as half empty or half full. The talk made clear to me what Chalmers’ problem is (other than his really bad hair cut): he reads too much science fiction, and is apparently unable to snap out of the necessary suspension of disbelief when he comes back to the real world. Let me explain.

singularity chalmers AZB grue

...As of November 2009, the world's fastest supercomputer was the Cray Jaguar located at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, operating at 1.8 petaflops (1.8 x 1015 flops). Unlike human brain capacity, supercomputing capacity has been growing exponentially. In June 2005, the world's fastest supercomputer was the IBM Blue Gene/L at Los Alamos National Laboratory, running at 0.1 petaflops. In less than five years, the Jaguar represents an order of magnitude increase, the latest culmination of capacity doublings each few years. Broader Perspective

intelligence supercomputing computation AZB grue processing

in list: Informatics

...David Chalmers defends what he calls a principle of organizational invariance according to which if a system has conscious experiences then any other system with the same fine-grained functional organization will have qualitatively identical experiences. His main arguments for this principle are his "Fading Qualia" and "Dancing Qualia" arguments. The Splintered Mind

mind qualia AZB grue self-knowledge

NYTimes.com

sleep AZB consciousness cogsci

Yesterday I attended Dave Chalmers’ session of the Mind and Language Seminar where we discussed his new paper on the singularity. I have previously seen him give this talk at CUNY and I was looking forward to the commentary from Jesse and Ned and the discussion that followed.

brains singularity AZB Chalmers

Abstract thinking may date back further than previously thought. : Scientific American

neandertal symbolism AZB grue human-evolution

The computer metaphor has served brain science well as a tool for comprehending neural systems. Nevertheless, we propose here that this metaphor be replaced or supplemented by a new metaphor, the "Internet metaphor," to reflect dramatic new network theoretic understandings of brain structure and function. [J Cogn Neurosci. 2010]

brain internet computation cogsci AZB

in list: Informatics