Been There/ Done That

Survey on Publishing in Philosophy

2009-11-17T18:12:00.001Z

On behalf of the Women in Philosophy Task Force:

All professional philosophers are invited to participate in a survey on publishing in philosophy. It should take about 10 minutes. It will be useful to have your CV handy as you fill it out. Please go here to find it:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=TXA9uBYCaq4MtU_2bwLhLADQ_3d_3d
If all goes well, Sally Haslanger will report on the results at the December APA in the symposium on philosophy publishing (Wednesday December 30th, 11:15-1:15).
Thanks for your help. Please spread the word.

We are living in a material world

2008-07-25T20:41:00.002+01:00

Sorry for the long hiatus!! I have been moving around a lot: from Sheffield to Murcia, from Murcia to Barcelona (where I spent 4 marvelous months at LOGOS), and then back to Murcia briefly to pack, and finally, I moved to Winnipeg just on time for Canada Day! Things are going very well here so far. I love my new city and my new job! Some highlights: we are having a summer reading group, and just now we are reading Jennifer Saul's book "Simple Sentences, Substitution, and Intuitions", which is a lot of fun to read and discuss. I hope to post some comments on this soon...
But in the meantime, I just wanted to share some good news: my paper "We are living in a material world (and I am a material girl)" has been accepted by Teorema (in a special issue on Phenomenal Consciousness and Naturalism). This issue looks very interesting, and I look forward to seeing it!

New Job

2008-02-23T16:01:00.003Z

More good news: I have just accepted a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba, starting in July 2008. I am very excited about this job, and I really look forward to moving to Winnipeg and joining all my new colleagues in my new Department!

In the meanwhile, I will spend the next few months as a Visitor in Logos - Logic, Language and Cognition Research Group (University of Barcelona). I'm sure it will be a lot of fun, and good philosophy!

My first publication!

2008-01-26T20:42:00.000Z

I have great news: my paper "Defending the Phenomenal Concept Strategy" has been accepted for publication by the Australasian Journal of Philosophy!! I am very pleased! You can find the penultimate draft of the paper here.

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

2008-01-18T18:03:00.000Z

I am flying to Winnipeg (Manitoba, Canada) tomorrow, for a campus visit at the University of Manitoba!! I am very excited about it. I will be giving a talk and also having lunch with students, among other activities. Look forward to it!!

VIVA the VIVA

2007-10-07T17:42:00.000+01:00

I have great news: I just passed my viva and got my PhD!!! So I am finally a Doctor!!!

The viva took place on the 4th of October (2007). The examiners were Jennifer Saul and Manuel García-Carpintero, both of whom were great examiners. I was recommended to pass the viva with no corrections (although the PhD will not be officially awarded until the Dean duly certifies so).

The viva went very well, and the discussion was terribly interesting. I hope to post on some of the issues raised there soon, once the celebrations are over...

It feels great to finally have finished such a tremendous task! When I started this blog, about a year ago, I still had a long way ahead, and I am glad that everything turned out so well at the end. I learned a lot this year and this blog had a little bit to do with that. I was looking forward to this moment when I can finally say, with respect to finishing my thesis, submitting it and passing the viva: Been There, Done That!!

Boundage and Submission

2007-08-28T13:53:00.000+01:00

I have finished my PhD! Or at least, I have finished writing my dissertation, and I just printed and took it to the binders. I will submit it this Thursday. You can check out the final version here. (Now I have to prepare for the viva voce...)

Thanks to all the people who have read, commented and supported this blog during these months! I will keep blogging about all matters conscious and two-dimensional (more often that before, I hope) when I come back from my holidays in Spain.

The Quotational Model of Phenomenal Concepts

2007-08-06T19:45:00.000+01:00

For a while, I planned to write something of the quotational account of phenomenal concepts (suggested in Papineau's "Thinking about Consciousness") and on why I think that it is less convincing than Loar's recognitional account. Today I have been working on it, and now I am not sure about what I think.

One the one hand, I had this point against the quotational model:

Papineau (2002) has put forward a “quotational” model of phenomenal concepts, which, I think, cannot provide a successful account of the reference-fixing mechanisms at work in the case of phenomenal concepts. According to this model, phenomenal concepts are formed by entering an experience “into the frame provided by a general experience operator ‘the experience: ---’. For example, we might apply this experience operator to a state of visually classifying something as red (…) and thereby form a term which refers to the phenomenal experience of seeing something red. (…) Very roughly speaking, we refer to a certain experience by producing an example of it” (2002: 116). I think that this quotational model of phenomenal concepts is a plausible account of how we acquire new phenomenal concepts, but as an account of the reference-fixing of phenomenal concepts it is insufficient, for the following reason: if a phenomenal concept of kind K refers to such a kind K just by virtue of producing a token of K, how could we distinguish between concepts of kind K and concepts of a sub-kind K*? Plausibly, both concepts could be formed by entering a token of K* into the operator ‘the experience: ---’. So, according to the quotational account, both concepts would be identical: they would refer to concepts that resemble that token of K*. But this seems false: we have two different concepts, one refers to kind K and the other refers to the more specific kind K*. On my view, we can easily explain this by appealing to the recognitional dispositions that are associated with our concepts: the phenomenal concept of kind K is associated with a more general recognitional disposition, whereas the phenomenal concept of kind K* is associated with a finer-grained recognitional disposition.

So far so good. But Papineau adds that the quotational character of phenomenal concepts is not enough for explaining the reference-fixing of such concepts. He argues that we would need to supplement such an account with an additional semantic theory which explains how a given phenomenal concept can refer to the corresponding phenomenal property (a token of which is incorporated into the concept). Papineau suggests that we can appeal to theories of content such as Fodor's causal account or Millikan's teleological account .

I was wondering whether the problem I explain above still affects this or not. According to Papineau, “the phenomenal concept will refer to a type of experience whose instances bear a certain resemblance to the ‘quoted’ exemplar. (…) Phenomenal concepts refer to items that resemble their ‘fillings’ because applications of these concepts are typically caused by those items, or because it is the function of such concepts to track those items” (2002: 119-21).

How should we understand this? If phenomenal concepts are supposed to fix their referents by virtue of some (more or less complex) relation between the concept and a property-exemplar, then I think we will have the same problem again. But if the point is that the concept fixes the referent by means of a relation between the concept and the corresponding property, then we could solve the problem, because then phenomenal concepts K and K* will be connected with different properties, K and K*.

I was also wondering whether this is really different from the recognitional account. On the recognitional account, what fixes the reference is our disposition to recognise tokens of a certain property. This sounds like a causal theory: the concept refers to that property tokens of which causally trigger the concept to be applied. I guess that we will need to supplement this view with a teleological account, if we want to allow for misrepresentation.

So maybe the recognitional and the quotational models are not so different after all, and maybe they both need a bit of biosemantics to keep going!

Challenge to Lesbian Rights

2007-07-29T13:25:00.000+01:00

I am having a little break from the final corrections to my PhD to post about this story:

"A judge in Spain has stripped a mother of custody of her two daughters because she is a lesbian, media said on Monday, in a ruling that has sparked an outcry in the gay community and brought disciplinary action against him.
In a ruling last month in the southeast region of Murcia, Judge Fernando Ferrin handed the girls over to their father's care, arguing that a homosexual environment threatened their education and upbringing.
He said a gay environment increased the "risk" that the children would also grow up homosexual.
"The mother has to choose between her daughters and the new partner," Ferrin was quoted as saying in his June 6 ruling which has only now come to light.

"Children have a right to a father and a mother, but not to two mothers or two fathers," "It is a homosexual atmosphere that harms minors and substantially increases the risk that they will turn that way too," the judge added.

The decision provoked outrage among Spain's gay community, which said it ran contrary to the constitution, and prompted Murcia's Supreme Court to open disciplinary proceedings against Ferrin.

The same judge, in a separate case, already faces a probe into attempts to block the adoption of a girl by her mother's gay partner.

Homosexuals in Spain benefit from some of Europe's most liberal gay rights legislation following decades of repression, including imprisonment, under conservative dictator Francisco Franco.
Homosexuality was legalized in 1979 and two years ago the Socialist government made Spain only the third country in the world to legalize gay marriage." © Reuters 2007

These laws, brought in by the government of Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in 2005, allow for same-gender marriages and for same-sex couples to adopt children. Unfortunately, actions such as those by Ferrin Calamita still pose serious obstacles for lesbian couples and their families.

My new website!

2007-06-16T00:22:00.000+01:00

I have got a new website! Actually, it's my first web page ever, so I'm quite proud, since I did it all with my fingertips, even if it's still quite simple and austere...

And in addition, I have finished a complete draft of my thesis!! (I guess I was waiting to finish this in order to get my own web...). Do check out the section about my thesis on my web! I have put all my chapters online. I suppose I will have to make more changes before submitting, but anyway, they are quite close to the real deal (I hope!). I will upload the final (final!) version when I submit.

I also have some papers online and plans for future research. Enjoy! ;)

Exceptionalism, to what extent?

2007-06-12T23:40:00.000+01:00

Here is something that I have been thinking about, for the chapter I am revising at the moment:

In my thesis, I focus on these two formulations of the conceivability argument:

The Two-Dimensional Argument against physicalism
(1): P&~Q is conceivable
(CP): If S is (ideally) conceivable, then S is primarily possible
(2): If P&~Q is conceivable, P&~Q is primarily possible
(3): If P&~Q is primarily possible, either P&~Q is secondarily possible or Russellian (type-F) monism is true
(4): If P&~Q is secondarily possible, Physicalism is false
-----------
(5) Either Physicalism is false or Russellian (type-F) monism is true

The Two-Dimensional Argument against Type-identities
(1) The identity-statement ‘Pain=C-fibre firing’ is a posteriori
(2) If an identity statement A=B is a posteriori, then the terms A and B have different primary intensions (DPIM)
(3) Therefore , ‘pain’ and ‘C-fibre firing’ have different primary intensions
(4) The primary and secondary intension of ‘pain’ coincide
(5) The primary and secondary intension of ‘C-fibre firing’ coincide
(6) Therefore, ‘pain’ and ‘C-fibre firing’ have different secondary intensions
(7) If ‘pain’ and ‘C-fibre firing’ have different secondary intensions, then ‘pain=C-fibre firing’ is false.
---------------
(8) ‘Pain=C-fibre firing’ is false.

My critique focuses on premises CP (conceivability-possibility link) and DPIM (distinct primary intension model), as a good type-B materialist would have it.

In particular, I defend the following view concerning concepts:

(Non-reductive Ascriptivism) For any concept C, there is an application conditional like this: (AC): ‘If x is F, then x falls under C’, where for most concepts C from level n, feature F is described using same-level concepts.

If this view is correct, then it follows that sentences such as 'If microphysical truths are so and so, then water is H20' will not be a priori true, since we will not be able to deduce truths involving macroscopic concepts such as WATER from lower-level truths merely a priori. Then, we can use such conditional as a counterexample to CP, since it will plausibly be an a posteriori but 1-necessary conditional (ignoring some complications involving 'totalities' and 'indexicalities'. See Chalmers & Jackson "Conceptual Analysis and Reductive Explanation", Philosophical Review 2001, for further discussion).

But on my view there is an asymmetry concerning CP and DPIM: notice that the view I call non-reductive ascriptivism does not entail that DPIM is false (at least, when we focus on standard sentences not involving phenomenal concepts). For standard cases of a posteriori necessities still seem to fit DPIM. Consider the following examples: 'Water = H20'; 'Heat= molecular motion'. For these cases of a posteriori necessities, the different terms in each identity seem to be associated with different primary intensions.

Then, it seems that a strategy against conceivability arguments that relies upon non-reductive ascriptivism exclusively, still has to face the challenge posed by the two-dimensional argument against identity theses above. True, it is widely accepted that physicalism is not committed to an identity thesis. Still, such argument can prove to be lethal for many positive views about consciousness that want to identify phenomenal properties with some sort of complex physical-functional properties.

On my view, such theorists should appeal to the so-called phenomenal concept strategy, or exceptionalist strategy, according to which DPIM is correct in general but not when it comes to phenomenal concepts.

This sort of strategy (non-reductive ascriptivism plus phenomenal concept strategy) is what I call a mixed strategy against conceivability arguments. Notice that, according to this view, CP is incorrect in general, whereas DPIM is incorrect only when it comes to phenomenal concepts. In my thesis, I try to defend something like that.

Any thoughts are more than welcome!

Feminist Philosophers

2007-05-20T17:44:00.001+01:00

I have just found (thanks to TAR) this new blog on feminist issues: Feminist Philosophers, which will be posting on "news feminist philosophers can use". It is a very welcome addition to the blogosphere, and something I will definitely be checking out.

Mind and Metaphysics at Leeds

2007-05-20T17:25:00.000+01:00

I am very glad that I have been accepted to the 2nd annual CMM graduate conference at Leeds. I will be presenting my paper "Defending the Phenomenal Concept Strategy", which I have previously discussed here. (Thanks to the organizers of the conference for making the papers available online). This paper is mainly a reply to Daniel Stoljar's "Physicalism and Phenomenal Concepts".
The conference looks like a lot of fun. My Sheffield colleague and friend, Julien Murzi, is also presenting a paper there. I am looking forward to the whole event!

Plans for the future

2007-05-17T16:16:00.000+01:00

I have recently put together a research proposal for a postdoc position I have applied for. My new project is on consciousness and conceivability arguments, once again, but this time I plan to develop and defend a new strategy of my own, which I label 'the primitive account'. If you want to know more, just keep reading...

The phenomenal concept strategy is one of the most attractive responses to what is perhaps the main challenge to physicalism in contemporary philosophy, namely, the so-called conceivability arguments. Many versions of this strategy have recently been proposed, but on my view none of them is completely satisfactory. In this project, I aim to elaborate and defend an original version of the phenomenal concepts strategy which, I will argue, can successfully defeat conceivability arguments and therefore contribute to the defence of physicalism.
Conceivability arguments focus on phenomenal consciousness, that is, the aspect of our conscious mental states that has to do with what our mental states are like for us. Conceivability arguments attempt to show that since we can conceive of individuals (or possible worlds) physically identical to us but with different phenomenal properties, then it follows that these individuals (or worlds) are indeed possible, and therefore that physicalism is false. A crucial step in these arguments is the inference from conceivability to possibility.
The phenomenal concept strategy proceeds by attacking this inference from conceivability to possibility. Whereas advocates of conceivability arguments claim that the best explanation of the conceivability of zombies (i.e. physical duplicates of us who lack phenomenal consciousness) involves the possibility of such individuals, the advocates of the phenomenal concept strategy argue that there is an alternative explanation of such conceivability, which does not involve the possibility of zombies. This alternative explanation crucially appeals to the special features of our phenomenal concepts, that is, the concepts that we use to refer to our phenomenal states and properties, by virtue of what they are like for us.
The advocates of the phenomenal concept strategy argue that those features of phenomenal concepts are responsible for the fact that zombies are conceivable. This explanation usually works like this: it is claimed that phenomenal concepts have some psychological feature X such that all concepts with feature X will not be a priori connected to physical concepts. Then, this a priori disconnection between physical and phenomenal concepts explains why we are able to imagine zombies, without finding any a priori contradiction in such scenario. Since phenomenal and physical concepts lack the appropriate sort of psychological connection, they are not a priori connected, and therefore the hypothesis that their referents are separated is perfectly coherent.
In my recent work in my PhD (in which I explore several strategies against conceivability arguments) I have defended the phenomenal concept strategy from general objections that would affect any version of it, and I have also compared the different versions available in the literature. In this new project I want to further advance the discussion, by developing and defending my own version of the strategy, which substantially differs from the previous accounts. The main idea of this new account, which I label “the Primitive Account”, is that there is no need for the phenomenal concept strategy to postulate a psychological property X such that all phenomenal concepts possess it and which entails that, if a concept has it, then that concept is not a priori connected to physical concepts. The motivation for this view is twofold: on one hand, I will argue that current accounts of what such property X might amount to are incorrect, and on the other hand, I will argue that we do not need to appeal to any property X of phenomenal concepts, other than their conceptual isolation from physical concepts, in order to successfully explain the conceivability of zombies.
My defence of the primitive account will go through three steps, which will give rise to three different papers, as follows:
“Phenomenal Concepts: Recognitional or Quotational?”
In this paper, I will argue that a recent and influential account of what that property X of phenomenal concepts amounts to, namely, the Quotational Account of phenomenal concepts (suggested by Papineau and Chalmers, among others) is incorrect. This account claims that each phenomenal concept is associated with a token of the phenomenal kind it refers to. I will argue that this account cannot explain the fact that some phenomenal concepts refer to general phenomenal kinds, such as ‘sensation of seeing blue’ whereas other phenomenal concepts refer to more fine-grained kinds, such as ‘sensation of seeing indigo blue’. For each phenomenal token instantiates many phenomenal properties, both general and fine-grained, and therefore a single token cannot determine what property a phenomenal concept refers to. I will also argue that the Recognitional Account of phenomenal concepts, according to which phenomenal concepts are associated with dispositions to re-identify tokens of a phenomenal kind, is a better account of the reference-fixing of phenomenal concepts, since these dispositions can be more or less fine-grained, as required.
“Recognitional Concepts and The Explanatory Gap”
Here, I will argue that although the Recognitional Account is more plausible than its contemporary rivals, as an account of the nature of phenomenal concepts, it also faces an important challenge, namely, that of offering a satisfactory explanation of why physical and phenomenal concepts are not a priori connected. I will go through the different possible explanations of such conceptual disconnection that the recognitional account might appeal to, and I will argue that they are all unsatisfactory. On my view, these difficulties suggest that there might be no interesting feature X of phenomenal concepts which explains their conceptual isolation from physical concepts. Rather, this conceptual disconnection between physical and phenomenal facts might very well be a primitive fact about concepts, that is, a fact that does not have an explanation in terms of more basic psychological features of our concepts. This does not mean that there is no explanation of such conceptual disconnection whatsoever: there will very likely be a physical explanation, but this leaves open the possibility that there is no further explanation in terms of a feature X of phenomenal concepts of the sort proposed by philosophical accounts of phenomenal concepts.
“The Phenomenal Concept Strategy Revisited: The Primitive Account”
In this final paper, I want to explore the possibility that I suggest at the end of the previous paper, namely, that there is no philosophically interesting explanation of the conceptual disconnection between physical and phenomenal concepts (this is what I call “the primitive account” of such conceptual disconnection). If we assume that this account is correct, what would follow? On my view, we could still formulate a successful version of the phenomenal concept strategy against conceivability arguments. I will argue that this strategy is not ad hoc (since it can be independently motivated) and that it satisfies the criteria that are necessary in order to provide an alternative explanation of the conceivability of zombies, so that the inference from such conceivability to their possibility would be unwarranted. In particular, I will argue that, once we pay attention to the dialectics at play in conceivability arguments, it is clear that we can defeat them by merely formulating a coherent account of phenomenal concepts which entails that zombies are conceivable. It is not necessary to explain the conceivability of zombies via any further property of phenomenal concepts.

Scientifically proven: I am a materialist

2007-04-14T19:22:00.000+01:00

I was reading old posts at Chalmers' blog (you might be wondering why...) and found this. I had to try it, of course, to find what my world's view really is, and I was very pleased (and relieved) to learn that I am a 100% materialist! Now I can go on with my thesis, knowing that I am defending the claim that my inner self really believes...
My details results are these:

You scored as Materialist.

Materialism stresses the essence of fundamental particles. Everything that exists is purely physical matter and there is no special force that holds life together. You believe that anything can be explained by breaking it up into its pieces. i.e. the big picture can be understood by its smaller elements.

Materialist
100%
Modernist
75%
Existentialist
63%
Romanticist
56%
Postmodernist
44%
Cultural Creative
38%
Fundamentalist
25%
Idealist
13%

PhD Planning

2007-03-09T16:22:00.000Z

Hi there! I'm back, after a long hiatus... I have been busy, settling in at my new apartment, and above all, writing my thesis! I have been mainly concerned with the first, expositive part, and this hasn't given rise to many controversial issues to discuss here, I guess.
Well, it's going pretty well, so far. I thought that it would be a nice idea to post my new planning here, so that everyone can see what I am up to. I will be editing this entry, updating the status of the different chapters as I go along, so that I can review my own progress! This could add some extra motivation! ;)

So, here it is:

Consciousness, Conceivability and Concepts

0. Introduction

Part I: Consciousness, Conceivability Arguments and Physicalism

1. What is physicalism? (final draft)

2. Epistemic arguments against Physicalism I: the Conceivability Argument (final draft)
a. The zombie argument
b. Notions of conceivability
c. Kripkean counterexamples to the conceivability-possibility link
d. The 2-dimensional argument

3. Epistemic arguments against Physicalism II (final draft)
a. Kripke’s modal argument
b. The property dualism argument
c. The knowledge argument

Part II: The Non-exceptionalist strategy

4. Concepts, Conceptual Analysis and Physicalism (final draft)
a. Chalmers & Jackson on concepts, a priori entailment and physicalism
b. A reply to Chalmers & Jackson: a critique of ambitious conceptual analysis

Part III: The Exceptionalist strategy

5. The Phenomenal Concept Strategy (first draft)
a. The phenomenal concept strategy, explained
b. Phenomenal Concepts: The Accounts
(i) The Recognitional Model
(ii) The Quotational Model
(iii) The Indexical Model

6. Problems for the phenomenal concept strategy I (revised draft)
a. Chalmers’ dilemma: phenomenal concepts and the explanatory gap
b. Reply: explaining the explanatory gap

7. Problems for the phenomenal concept strategy II (revised draft)
a. Stoljar on the recognitional account
b. Reply: the recognitional account, revisited
c. Stoljar on the conceivability argument against behaviourism
d. Reply: two conceivability arguments distinguished

Part IV: Conclusion

8.Exceptionalism vs. Non-exceptionalism? A defence of a mixed account

So this is it! Sounds like fun? Well... just wait and see!

All comments very welcome!

New Year, New TIF

2007-01-15T15:10:00.000Z

I am back, after all the season festivities are done.
This year we enjoyed another lively and productive TIF workshop, this time at the incomparable location of the University of Girona's Facultat de Lletres. There were many enjoyable papers and discussions. I was lucky enough to have Marta Moreno writing a reply to me. She rose many interesting issues on my paper on the phenomenal concept strategy. This paper was a reply to Stoljar's 'Phenomenal concepts and physicalism".
Marta expressed some doubts concerning my claim that the phenomenal concept strategy's aim is to offer an alternative explanation of the aposteriori status of the conditional 'If P, then Q'. In particular, I claimed that it would suffice, given the purposes of the strategy, to offer an account of phenomenal concepts that entailed that 'If P, then Q' is aposteriori. Marta suggested that the advocates of conceivability arguments could also agree with such accounts, given that they agree that the conditional is indeed a posteriori. Marta wondered whether offering such account and showing that it entails the aposteriority of the conditional would be enough for the strategy to succeed.
I think this is an interesting point. My reply would be the following:
The conceivability argument proceeds by inferring that 'P&~Q' is possible from the fact that it is conceivable. In order to motivate this, they put forward a model which explains apriority and aposteriority in general, such as 2D (i.e. S is a priori iff S is necessary). That is, they explain the fact that a sentence is a posteriori by appealing to some possible world which falsifies the sentence.
The phenomenal concept strategy, on the other hand, offers an alternative explanation of such aposteriority, which is indeed independent of any modal fact. The explanation appeals only to certain facts about phenomenal concepts.
How does the strategy work exactly, then?
Well, it depends on the structure of the CA. Some argue that 2D is the only available explanation of the aposteriority of 'If P, then Q'. Against this, it is clear that offering any coherent alternative explanation would suffice.
Some argue that 2D is the best explanation of the aposteriority of 'If P, then Q'. Against this, the advocate of the phenomenal concept strategy would have to argue that her explanation is at least as good as the two-dimensionalist's.
In any case, I think that, given an alternative explanation of the aposteriority of 'If P, then Q', the CA is in jeopardy. Some people say that the burden of proof is in the phenomenal concept strategy's camp, since it is intuitive that if S is conceivable, then it is possible, unless this prima facie evidence is defeated. Therefore, it could be argued (and I think this was Marta's point), that given a neutral explanation of the aposteriority of 'If P, then Q', that is, one that is neutral concerning the modal status of the conditional, it would be more natural to say that the conditional is not necessary, unless we can prove otherwise.
However, I think that this line if reasoning seems plausible only if we already accept something such as 2D. The point of the phenomenal concept strategy is to argue that there are alternative models to 2D. Then, given a conceivable sentence, it is not justified to infer that it is possible. Therefore, the fact that 'If P, then Q' is conceivable, would not be evidence at all for the claim that it is possible, if we had an account of phenomenal concepts which entailed that 'If P, then Q' is aposteriori. Which was exactly my claim.
Again, thanks to Marta for carefully reading my paper, and for discussion.
And thanks also to the audience, for many interesting questions, and for their sense of humour.
I will finish this post with Madonna's cryptic words, which I quoted in my talk:
"Do you know what it feels like for a girl? Do you know what it feels like in this world for a girl?" (Madonna (2001): What it feels like for a girl).
No doubt, she is a type-B materialist!

Sexist Bias in Language?

2006-12-05T18:21:00.000Z

Today I have been talking with some friends about a possible sexist bias having to do with the term 'female ejaculation'. On the one hand, some facts concerning the research on the phenomenon of female ejaculation seem to involve sexist bias. For instance, the wikipedia entry on female ejaculation notices that "Up until the 1980s female ejaculation was largely ignored by the medical community...While many in the medical and scientific communities are now acknowledging the existence of female ejaculation, there remains a large void when it comes to solid scientific data explaining the process of ejaculation in females or the source of the fluid itself." It seems clear that this lack of serious research until quite recently, can be explained in terms of sexist bias, concerning what sort of phenomena are taken to be scientifically interesting and what phenomena aren't. In addition, I was shocked to hear that "In the United Kingdom, the British Board of Film Classification denies the existence of the phenomenon of female ejaculation, regarding it instead as urination during sex, thus banning its depiction under its rules."
In any case, I am more interested in another type of bias which might be involved here, having to do not with research on the phenomenon, nor with misunderstandings concerning its nature, but rather with the very terms that are used to refer to it and to its male counterpart, 'ejaculation'. We have a generic term, 'ejaculation', that seems to refer only to male ejaculation, whereas a more specific term is used to refer to the corresponding female phenomenon, namely, 'female ejaculation'. I was wondering whether this linguistic fact could be a case of sexist bias. Why not having a generic term, 'ejaculation', that refers to both processes, and two more specific terms to refer to each of them? Does it matter how we use language in these cases? That is, does it matter for the purposes of eliminating discrimination with regards to sex?
These are all difficult questions, I think. One possibility would be to say that such asymmetry concerning the terms we use to refer to male and female ejaculation could be seen as just a symptom of sexist bias. It could also be argued that such asymmetry contributes to perpetuate certain wrong beliefs concerning the nature of female ejaculation, and female sexuality in general. It seems more controversial to claim that such asymmetry not only shows or causes, but also, and crucially, constitutes, sexist bias. In any case, maybe we do not need this stronger claim to motivate a change in the way the words are used. Perhaps the defense of the weaker claim that the way we use words is both caused by sexist bias and in turn serves to perpetuate such a sexist bias can suffice to motivate an alternative way of using the words.

Could you pass me the salt?

2006-11-30T13:05:00.000Z

Jennifer Saul is organizing a very interesting workshop here in Sheffield, on semantics and pragmatics. The programme looks very exciting. I will be helping her a little bit with the registration and stuff on Saturday, but I hope that, in spite of that, it will be a success! ;-)

Apart from that, I have been quite busy recently, sending papers to journals (for the first time ever!), and applying for jobs. So, now, and after waiting for so long, I can say, with respect to all these things: Been there/done that. (Hopefully, one day I'll be able to say that with respect to being published and getting a job. Fingers crossed!).

The weak, the strong, the local and the global

2006-11-18T22:36:00.000Z

This has been a bit quiet recently. I have been busy, working on, among other things, my first, introductory chapter. These days I have been drafting the section on physicalism (see some earlier discussion on this here). I have introduced the main notions of supervenience that are invoked on the debate on physicalism. So far, I have talked about weak, strong, local and global supervenience, characterised as follows:

(Weak supervenience): A-properties supervene on B-properties if and only if, for any individuals x and y in the actual world, if x and y are identical concerning B-properties, they are also identical concerning A-properties.

(Strong Supervenience): A-properties supervene on B-properties if and only if, if anything has property F in A, then there is at least one property G in B such that that thing has G, and necessarily everything that has G has F.

(Local Supervenience): A-properties supervene on B-properties if and only if, for any individuals x and y and any possible worlds v and w, if x at v and y at w are identical concerning B-properties, they are also identical concerning A-properties.

(Global Supervenience): A-properties supervene on B-properties if and only if, for any possible worlds v and w, if v and w are identical concerning B-properties, they are also identical concerning A-properties.

Well, there is enough food for the brain here. There has been a lot of discussion on the relation among all these notions. I am not an expert at all, but at any rate, these are my reactions (any comments or criticisms are more than welcome!). It seems to be widely held that weak supervenience is too weak for the purposes of defining physicalism, and I agree with that. Many people hold that local supervenience is stronger than global supervenience, and in particular, that there are truths that do not supervene locally on the physical, but supervene globally. I guess this depends on how you characterise the physical properties of individuals x and y (when these are the B-properties, in the schema of the definition of local supervenience above). If we allow the physical properties of x and y be broad enough, then any property P that supervenes globally will supervene locally too.
I was also wondering whether strong and local supervenience are equivalent or not. At first sight, they do seem the same thing to me, but I do not know whether this assumes something that might be controversial (you can never be too careful...). So I would like to know what other people think.

In any case, it's a relieve to think that I can be neutral on all this, for the purposes of my thesis. It does not really matter what of these notions you use to define physicalism (excluding weak supervenience, obviously): the other three resulting definitions of physicalism seem to be committed to global supervenience. And this is what conceivability arguments seek to refute. On my view, unsuccessfully. But that's another day's story...

Acting like a Zombie

2006-11-08T17:25:00.000Z

Daniel Stoljar has a new paper, "Two Conceivability Arguments Compared", forthcoming in PAS. There, he compares these two arguments:

The Zombie Argument:

Z1. Zombies (physical duplicates of us, with different phenomenal properties) are conceivable
Z2. If zombies are conceivable, zombies are possible
Z3. Ergo, zombies are possible

The Actor Argument:

A1. Actors (behavioural duplicates of us, with different phenomenal properties) are conceivable
A2. If actors are conceivable, actors are possible
A3. Ergo, actors are possible

The Zombie Argument (ZA) is used to defeat physicalism. The Actor Arguments (AA) is used to defeat behaviourism, or so Stoljar claims. He argues that reflection on the similarities among these arguments can pose problems for the phenomenal concept strategy.

Stoljar assumes that AA is a good argument against behaviourism. He points out that AA is usually presented to undergraduate students as a sound refutation of behaviourism. He also assumes that AA and ZA are of the same kind, that is, they are both concerned with the inference from conceivability to possibility, and the relation between phenomenal and (some or all) physical truths.

Using these two assumptions, Stoljar argues that the phenomenal concept strategy is committed to rejecting AA. The PC strategy claims that Z1 does not entail Z3, because Z1 has an alternative explanation which does not entail Z3. Stoljar argues that if AA and ZA are of the same kind, then the PC strategy would have to say that A1 has an alternative explanation which does not entail A3, so that AA would not be sound. But AA is sound, he assumes. So the PC strategy is incorrect.

I am working on a response to this argument. My thought is that we can disambiguate AA in two ways:

A1*: Actors are conceivable
A2*: If S is conceivable, S is possible
A3*: If actors are conceivable, then actors are possible
A4*: Ergo, actors are possible

A1': Actors are conceivable
A2': If actors are conceivable, actors are possible
A3': Ergo, actors are possible

I think that Stoljar's argument equivocates on these two readings of the actor argument. For there is no single reading of it that makes both of his assumptions plausible:

Assumption 1 (AA and CA are of the same kind) is plausible only under reading AA*. That is, advocates of ZA take it that the conceivability of zombies entails the possibility of zombies because conceivability entails possibility in general.
Assumption 2 (AA is sound) is plausible only under reading AA'. AA' will be sound if the argument is valid and all the premises are true. Under reading AA' it is uncontroversial that AA' is sound, since it is uncontroversial that A1' and A3' are true. And since A2' is just a material conditional, if the consequent is true, the conditional is true. So it is uncontroversial that AA' is sound. But it is not uncontroversial that AA* is sound: premise A2* is precisely what is at issue in these debates.

Could Stoljar understand ZA in a similar way to AA', so that both assumptions involve the actor argument in the sense of AA'? Let's see:

ZA*:
Z1*: Zombies are conceivable
Z2*: If S is conceivable, S is possible
Z3*: If zombies are conceivable, zombies are possible
Z4*: Ergo, zombies are possible

ZA':
Z1': Zombies are conceivable
Z2': If zombies are conceivable, zombies are possible
Z3': Ergo, zombies are possible

If we consider ZA' and AA', then we can safely assume that the zombie argument and the actor argument are of the same kind, and we can also assume that the actor argument is sound. Does this pose a problem for the PC strategy?
Well, not really. Because the PC strategy is not committed to saying that AA' is unsound, even if they do claim that ZA' is unsound. The strategy entails that conceivability of zombies is not a reliable guide to the possibility of zombies. It also entails that the conceivability of actors is not a reliable guide to the possibility of actors. But, of course, this is compatible with the claim that actors are both conceivable and possible.

Putting the point in a different way: when we compare ZA* and AA*, if we assume that AA* is sound, then the PC strategy is in trouble because their response against ZA* entails that AA* is unsound too: they will deny Z2* and A2* (which are the same). But, of course, it is very controversial to claim that AA* is sound. In my paper, I plan to argue that Putnam and Block's arguments against behaviourism are not of the form AA*.

Explaining what?

2006-10-31T22:17:00.000Z

I have almost finished the final version of my paper "Can phenomenal concepts explain the explanatory gap?". As I have said before, it is a reply to Chalmers' "Phenomenal Concepts and the Explanatory Gap", which poses a big dilemma for the phenomenal concept strategy. In my paper I try to find a way out of the dilemma.

The PC strategy aims to offer an alternative explanation of the explanatory gap in terms of the features of phenomenal concepts. A key issue is how to characterize the explanatory/ epistemic gap to be explained. Chalmers says that what has to be explained is our epistemic situation with regards to consciousness. But this seems too much: what poses the problem for physicalism is the fact that we can conceive of zombies, or more in general, P&~Q (where P is a physical description and Q is a phenomenal description of the world). So, what the PC strategy aims to explain is precisely this conceivability.

However, Chalmers insists that we should understand the epistemic gap between P and Q as involving beliefs about Q that are true and justified. Why? Well, the answer seems to be that the conceivability argument against physicalism requires Q to be true, because only then can the possibility of P&~Q be a problem for physicalism. But, why does this entail that the epistemic gap involves the truth and justification of our beliefs about Q? I don't see why.

Chalmers said (in response to my talk in Milan) that he understands the epistemic gap to be explained, in a topic-neutral way, that is, it does not involve phenomenal states. However, it does seem to involve phenomenal knowledge. There are different options here. One could say that if you characterise this "phenomenal" knowledge topic-neutrally, even a zombie could have that kind of knowledge. Another option is to say that that notion of phenomenal knowledge involves phenomenal states, by definition, otherwise it would not be phenomenal knowledge. What Chalmers wants is a third option: phenomenal knowledge is characterised topic-neutrally but zombies cannot have it, because they are not conscious. I tend to believe this is not plausible.
To sum up, there are two problems with Chalmers' argument. 1) It is not clear why the epistemic gap involves the truth and justification of Q, in addition to the inferential disconnection between P and Q. And 2), it is not clear that Chalmers can have the cake and eat it: he needs a notion of "phenomenal" knowledge that is topic-neutral but that zombies cannot have, but this seems dubious.

Taller in Girona

2006-10-25T20:28:00.000+01:00

Today I have learned that my paper has been accepted at the IX Taller d'Investigació en Filosofia, to take place at the University of Girona on 8-9 January 2007. I'm very pleased, because the previous "Talleres" have been very enjoyable, and this one looks to be even better! The TIF (as it is usually known) is a small but very fruitful graduate workshop organized in Spain every year, just after the Christmas break, in some University in Catalonia or Valencia (whose philosophy departments have people involved in either Logos or Phrónesis, two very active research groups in Spain).

This year, the talks look very interesting: a lot of philosophy of mind and language, and above all, lots of friends! It seems that the TIF is becoming more and more international, and that's great! I can't wait!

My talk will be entitled ""Do you know what it feels like for a girl?" (Defending the Phenomenal Concept Strategy)", and it is part of my long-going project of using lines from Madonna's songs as titles for my papers (or whatever). ;-)
My first attempt was, of course "We are living in a material world (and I am a material girl)". There, I argued that Madonna herself is a materialist. In this new paper, I argue that, since she seems to have doubts about the possibility of inferring phenomenal truths (such as what it feels like for a girl to do X) from a physical description of the world, she must be a type-B materialist! Which is great, because type-B materialism just needs a big icon to become more popular.

(A bit) more seriously, my paper is a reply to Stoljar's "Physicalism and Phenomenal Concepts", and again, my aim is to defend the phenomenal concept strategy from his objections. Well! I am so fond of that strategy, and it is usually so misunderstood...

Maybe tomorrow I'll say a bit more about the paper (and the content).

Phenomenal Concepts, This and That

2006-10-23T14:58:00.000+01:00

This morning I have been revising (once more...) my reply to Chalmers' "Phenomenal Concepts and the Explanatory Gap". In this paper, Chalmers poses an important objection against the phenomenal concept strategy, and in my reply I try to defend the strategy.
The phenomenal concept strategy tries to respond to conceivability arguments in this way. Remember that CA say that a sentence such as (1) 'if the physical facts are such and such, then Luce is in pain', if a posteriori, has to be false at some possible world. The PC strategy replies by saying that the aposteriority of such sentence can be explained merely in psychological terms, independently of the modal status of the sentence. That is, the sentence is a posteriori because of the nature of the concepts involved, not because it is contingent.

I think this is a very promising strategy. The problem comes when we try to give an account of the difference between physical and phenomenal concepts, so that it follows that sentences such as (1) are a posteriori.

In my paper, I was trying to explain Hill & McLaughlin account (in their (1999) paper, in PPR), but it is not easy to explain it clearly and briefly!
One thing they seem to say is that phenomenal concepts are self-presenting (that is, we can apply them just by virtue of being in the state they refer to), whereas physical concepts are not so. This seems right, but why should this explain that phenomenal concepts are not a priori connected to physical concepts? It seems that more needs to be said in order to infer the a priori disconnection between physical and phenomenal concepts from the fact that the norms we use to justifiably apply physical and phenomenal concepts are different. I'm not sure how to motivate this move.
Another thing they say is that the mechanisms we use to fix the reference of physical and phenomenal concepts are psychologically different. This could explain why concepts such as 'C-fibre firing' and 'pain' are a posteriori related. Still, what are those reference-fixing mechanisms, and why do they have the consequence that the corresponding concepts are not a priori related? H&M say that we fix the reference of 'pain' by means of a recognitional disposition, and the reference of 'C-fibre firing' by means of a physical-theoretical description. This seems right. Is this enough to explain why those two concepts are not a priori connected? This seems more promising to me: there could be an explanation hidden there, somewhere! This is something I'll attempt to flesh out in my thesis.

However, I prefer to take (what I take to be) Loar's line: being a priori connected is a psychological property, which either holds or does not hold between two concepts, and it is just a brute psychological fact that they are so (un)connected. I guess that "a brute psychological fact" is a psychological fact that cannot be explained in psychological terms, but rather in terms of a lower-level (neurobiology, or whatever).
So the crucial claim of this version of the strategy might be the following: it is possible (and plausible) that our cognitive systems are such that physical and phenomenal concepts are not a priori connected (this psychological fact might just be a consequence of structural facts about the realization of our cognitive systems). Then, this explains why sentences such as (1) above a posteriori. This explanation is compatible with (1) being necessary. So (1) being a posteriori does not entail that (1) is false at some possible world. So the conceivability argument fails.
I think this is very promising line of reply. Notice that it is not committed to (1) being necessarily true. It just says that there are plausible claims about our concepts that, if true, would entail that (1) being a posteriori has nothing to do with it being contingent. Therefore, inference from a posteriority to contingency is not warranted, unless one shows that those plausible claims about our concepts are wrong.

Picture from the Milan conference

2006-10-21T13:50:00.000+01:00

Well, I'm learning to post images! Let's see if this works...
This picture was taken by Sistemas Complejos, in Cesano Maderno (Milan), at the 7 Sifa conference. I presented there my reply to Chalmers' paper "Phenomenal Concepts and the Explanatory Gap", and Chalmers himself was kind enough to be among the audience, and come to talk to me after my presentation. (A very distant ancestor of my paper is here). It was a very useful discussion (and photo session) ;-).

On Metaphysics, Free Will and Folk Concepts

2006-10-19T16:35:00.000+01:00

Thinking about philosophy is the new hobby for philosophers: what is philosophy about; how should it be done; is there a fact of the matter; can any progress be made; has any progress ever been made; etc?

Chalmers himself has an interesting view on some of these questions. He gave a talk at the Milan conference I attended recently, about what is a terminological dispute and how can we know whether a given philosophical dispute is terminological or not, and why it matters. It was fascinating!

I was thinking a bit about this yesterday at the Graduate Seminar. Jules gave a very interesting talk about Feminist Perspectives on Free Will. Her main aim was to suggest that feminist concerns intersect with the discussion on the metaphysics on free will. She was arguing (if I remember correctly) that some feminists put forward accounts of free agency that are incompatible with the libertarian notion of free will. Jules suggested then that this might motivate an argument against libertarianism.

There was some discussion about whether there were different notions of free agency involved in that argument or not, and about the connection between the "folk" notion of free will and the "metaphysical" notion of free will. I was thinking that if we accept a view of metaphysics such as the one advocated by Frank Jackson in 'From Metaphysics to Ethics' (and elsewhere), then we can maybe answer some of those questions.
Let me explain this a little bit. According to Jackson (and many more, I believe), conceptual analysis is very relevant for metaphysics. In particular, if you want to investigate the metaphysics of X, you have to do two things: (i) you have to offer a conceptual analysis of the concept of X, in terms of, say, the role that X plays (R). Then, you have to (ii) find out what facts about the world, if any, satisfy description R. Then, we can answer questions such as 'are there any Xs in the world?' or 'is entity Y a case of X?'. For instance, if you are a physicalist, and you want to find out whether there is free will, then you have to offer an analysis of 'free will' in terms of D, and find out whether D is satisfied by any physical facts. If you want to find out whether a particular action is free or not, you have to find out whether it satisfies D or not.

Simple enough. So, what is the bearing of this on yesterday's discussion? Well, I think that we can see the metaphysical problem of free will in that way. There are two central questions, then: (I) what is the correct analysis of FREE WILL, and (II), for a given analysis, is it realized in the physical, deterministic world? (if we endorse physicalism and determinism, as we should!) ;-)

So I think it is clear that, if we understand the issue in this guise, Jules was right in that feminists concerns are relevant here. If they are offering a new analysis of the notion of free will, then they are participating in the debate about (I). For instance, Jules said that it follows from some feminist analyses that free agency is not an all or nothing matter, but it comes in degrees. If this is true, then the libertarian analysis of free agency (according to which a free agent is an uncaused cause) has to be wrong, because if it was true, free agency would not come in degrees.

One possibility, though, is that there is nothing such as THE concept of free will. Maybe the term is just used in different, incompatible ways by different users or in different situations. But in any case, it seems that the methodology suggested in (I) and (II) is still going to be very useful here, for each of those different notions.

This is where I thought of Chalmers' proposal. He said that when we do not know whether a dispute about X is terminological or not, maybe we should forget about X for a while, and discuss instead about the other concepts on the vicinity (applying (i) and (ii) to them). If everyone agrees on these other questions, then the former dispute was terminological indeed. However, I think that it is unlikely that such an agreement is forthcoming is this area! Which is good, after all. So, good news for feminists: they have lots of things to say about free will!!

On Physicalism (I)

2006-10-16T18:25:00.000+01:00

I have been reading some interesting papers on the proper characterization of physicalism. A good one is 'Physicalism' by Andrew Melnyk, from the Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Mind. Another one was 'Varieties of Supervenience', by Robert Stalnaker, in Philosophical Perspectives 1996.
Melnyk introduces physicalism as the thesis that all entities (objects, properties, events, etc) are either physical in a narrow sense (physical_N), that is, entities posited by physics, or physical in a broad sense (physical_B), which are appropiately related to the physical_N. Of course, the central question is how to characterize that relation between physical_N and physical_B. One important candidate is the notion of supervenience: A supervenes on B iff, any possible world that is B-identical to the actual world is A-identical.
Melnyk argues that this notion of (global) supervenience might be a necessary condition for physicalism, but not a sufficient one, because there are accounts of, say, the mental, such that mental (globally) supervenes on the physical_N but is not, intuitively, physical_B, since on that account, the mental and the physical_N are distinct entities, causally related. These accounts satisfy global supervenience, but they do not seem to be physicalist accounts.
Melnyk suggests to complement supervenience with a realization claim. A kind X is realized by the physical_N iff X is a functional kind and some physical_N entity satisfies the functional role associated with X.
Melnys argues that realization seems to be a possible explanation of supervenience.
I think this sounds plausible. However, conceivability arguments are just committed to supervenience being a necessary condition for physicalism. In other words, CA assume that physicalism entails a supervenience claim, which is compatible with a realization-based notion of physicalism (since, plausibly, realization of X by the physical_N entails supervenience of X on the physical_N).

On Zombies

2006-10-14T22:05:00.000+01:00

Ok, I will say a bit more about my thesis.

Where were we? Yes, I said the other day that conceivability arguments aim to refute physicalism? How? Well, physicalism is committed to the claim that any possible world that is physically identical to the actual world must be identical in all respects. One version of conceivability arguments is the Zombie Argument. It starts by suggesting that we can conceive of a possible world that is physically identical to the actual one, molecule per molecule, but where no-one is conscious, that is, everyone is a Zombie (they lack phenomenal states). The first premise of the argument claims that this is a conceivable scenario, that is, there is no contradiction in the description of such a world. From this, it is inferred that such a world is indeed possible. Then, it follows that there is at least a possible world physically identical to the actual one, which differs in other respects, namely, with respect to the phenomenal facts. So physicalism would be false.

My focus in my thesis is on the inference from conceivability to possibility. I argue that this inference is not warranted. In particular as I said the other day I explore and defend two strategies: the exceptionalist and the non-exceptionalist. The non-exceptionalist strategy argues that the conceivability-to-possibility inference is wrong in general: for all cases of sentences, for all domains, it is wrong to infer from the conceivability of S that S is possible. Exceptionalists, on the other hand, claim that the conceivability-to-possibility inference is ok in most cases, unless phenomenal concepts are involved. In particular, when we have sentences that involve both physical and phenomenal concepts, since these two are so radically different, any inference from conceivability to possibility is going to be unreliable. The burden of this strategy is to explain what the relation between physical and phenomenal concepts is, such that it brings about this exceptional feature.

Well, this is a very brief introduction! More is forthcoming in the near future...

On Penguins

2006-10-14T21:31:00.000+01:00

Doing a PhD is not just about writing a PhD. Fortunately, you can distract yourself with other philosophical activities, that are supposed to be good for you, so that you don't feel so guilty for not being at home working on your thesis in that very moment.
So a good source of educative distraction are the Friday Seminars in my Department. Yesterday it was specially interesting and touching, since we had a Sheffield graduate doing the seminar. It was my good old friend David Liggins, who was a PhD student not long ago, and yesterday he was an invited speaker at the seminar! Quite an event. He suggested a very interesting and somehow intriguing view about how we can communicate using matehmatical statements. For instance, we can communicate something by using the sentence 'The number of penguins at Ely is zero' (which, according to nominalists, is false since it is committed to the existence of numbers), because we all share the belief 'The number of penguins at Ely is Zero iff there are no penguins at Ely'. Therefore, when we hear the former, we can come to believe that there are no penguins at Ely.
This sounds plausible, but I was puzzled by one consequence of the view: if you are a philosopher who does not believe in numbers, then you do not share such a belief, because you think that the right-hand sentence is true while the left-hand sentence is false. Then, this view is not supposed to be true of the very same people that propose it, becase they do not believe in the existence of numbers!

My thesis plan

2006-10-12T19:04:00.000+01:00

Today, to get our hands dirty, but not too much, I will explain very briefly what my thesis is about.

Ok, so there is a metaphysical claim, called 'physicalism' that says that everything is physical. Simple enough? Not quite: it's quite hard to formulate precisely. But putting that aside.There are many philosophers that deny physicalism. One important source of problems for physicalism are the so-called conceivability arguments (against physicalism). So in my thesis I examine these arguments and argue they do not work, that is, they don't succeed in refuting physicalism. So this is my modest contribution to the defense of physicalism...

The thesis is in 6 chapters, as follows:

(O. Introduction (Why not?))
1. Conceivability arguments (where I explain what these are).
2. Strategies against conceivability arguments (where I introduce the two main strategies: exceptionalism and non-exceptionalism, and I also propose a new classification of conceivability arguments).
3. The non-exceptionalist strategy against conceivability arguments (where I defend this strategy from Chalmers and Jackson's attacks).
4. The exceptionalist strategy I (where I explain the different versions and argue for my favourite one).
5. The exceptionalist strategy II (where I defend the exceptionalist strategy from Chalmers' objections).
6. The exceptionalist Strategy III (where I defend this strategy from Stoljar's objections).
7. Conclusion (where I recapitulate and suggest that the best way to block the conceivability arguments is by means of a mixed strategy, with aspects of both. So we can all be happy).

Well, maybe it does not sound very exciting like this... but I will try to flesh that out a bit more soon!

In-Sight

2006-10-12T18:53:00.000+01:00

If you want to write a good thesis, one important thing is to have Good Sight. So today I went to have an Eye Test. The result: I need new glasses, so I ordered a new pair (which will be ready, hopefully, in one week). And, since I was there and it was easy, I decided to change my style. So I ordered new frames also. So with my new glasses and my new style, maybe I'll get some inspiration to continue re-writing chapter 1...

Been There? Done That?

2006-10-11T13:33:00.000+01:00

Ok, this is it. The Beginning, at least.
So, what's the purpose of this blog?

Well, the main reason is that a have a PhD thesis to finish, in one year. In this academic year. In Philosophy. More preciseley, I have to rewrite the 50,000-words draft that I already have. Anyway, I still have to produce a complete and final version, from the first word to the last. Although I guess I will use a lot of the material I already have. Or maybe not so much... who knows? It's a big journey, a big adventure. And this is supposed to be the journal of that journey. I will write about how it's going, how it is NOT going, about all the things that get me going during this period, about what I will go through...Do you want to know more? Then drop by, sometimes, if you fancy... Comments, suggestions, tips, advice, criticisms, jokes, etc. are more than welcome.

So, what's with the title of this blog? First, it's bit ironic, since writing a thesis is THE thing I haven't done, THE place I haven't been yet. But hopefully, we will also treat more familiar topics and domains as we go along. And secondly, this title reflects the fact that I tried to get a blog once before, but it didn't quite work... hopefully this one will live longer!

One last thing that you might be wondering: what is the title of such an opus magnum, e.g., my thesis? The provisional title by now is 'Consciousness, Conceivability and Concepts'. Or Con Con Con. Or C C C, for the super keen.

Maybe tomorrow I'll explain what it is about...