Philosophy
Metazoa
I’ve just learned that philosopher of science Peter Godfrey-Smith addresses my view on independently conscious brain regions in his evocative 2020 book, Metazoa: Animal Life And The Birth of The Mind.
Experimenting with Adelson’s Checkerboard Illusion
Can you change how things seem? Phenomenological slideshow test below! Scroll past all the text (if you must). Edward H. Adelson’s (1995) Checkerboard Illusion, or “Checkershadow Illusion”, remains one of the best lessons on how deceptive our perceptions can be, and it affords a great opportunity for phenomenological experimentation, which I promote with a slideshow…
The Wada Test for Philosophers: What is it like to be a proper part of your own brain losing and regaining other proper parts of your brain?
Evidently, good answers to this question are not confined to the wilds of science fiction and thought experiment. In fact, I think there are actually people with a pretty good idea: patients of the Wada test. These are people who have had their brain hemispheres anesthetized one at a time so that the rest of…
Interactionist Dualism as a Scientific Hypothesis
I’d like to show here that interactionist substance dualism (ISD) is a scientific hypothesis in the sense that typical versions of it are testable through observation. That is to say that we can describe conditions of evidence under which it would be reasonable for scientists to accept ISD.
Misunderstanding the Hard Problem of Consciousness
At interdisciplinary conferences and forums about consciousness, I’ve noticed that more than a few scientists seem to seriously misunderstand the Hard Problem of Consciousness (HPC). In fact, I’ve begun to wonder whether misunderstanding the HPC is closer to the norm among scientists interested in consciousness.
James C. Blackmon 