This week the Brains Blog will host a series of posts by Heidi Maibom about her exciting new book, The Space Between: How Empathy Really Works! Please join us for the posts and engage in discussion in the comments board! …
Elms, Beeches, and Olive Branches
[embedded content]Jimmy Dean sings about JFK as commander of the PT-109 in WW2. At around 2:20 he says: ‘Now, who could guess, or who could possibly know, that this same man, named Kennedy, would be the leader of the nation…’ …
Abortion in Wonderland
Jane: Eh? He distinguished Aksu and Lewit from Heidi and Aidan’s case on the basis that: .He went on to observe that the perception of the appellants that the present state of the law devalued them ‘cannot itself constitute or …
Simulate Your True Self
Written by Muriel Leuenberger One dimension of authenticity entails that you should know yourself, not be self-deluded, and face uncomfortable truths. Living in a simulation is inauthentic if it is done to escape reality. Alice’s friend Bunny is aware that …
There is no such thing as a purely logical argument
Wilkinson usefully distinguishes between “rational consolation” and “psychological consolation”, the former referring to when “philosophical analysis leads to the conclusion that it would be rational to care less about death than we currently do” and the latter to when “philosophical …
The Non-Rationality of Radical Human Enhancement and Transhumanism
(P3) Human enhancements can constitute and/or give rise to transformative experiences. The article can be accessed in its entirety via Open Access here. The conclusion we draw is that (C) it can in some cases be in principle impossible for …
Let’s Talk About Paderewski
Link to the book. In the philosophy of language and mind, Paderewski’s name became well known because Saul Kripke used this example to illustrate or argue for certain ideas about proper names and reference. In Chapter 7 of Talking About, …
Nudges and Incomplete Preferences
Nudges have become increasingly popular, but there are many objections to their widespread use. Some allege that nudges do not actually benefit people, while others suspect that they do not really respect autonomy. Although there are many ways of making …
Mind and Action
I propose to do at least three things with this distinction. First, attitude ascriptions will tend to resist substitution of coreferential expressions only when we have in mind representational acts. Second, reference should be thought of as an act, an …
Confusion and Reference
My major claim in Chapter 2 of Talking About is that there is a characteristic way in which this phase of production can fail. So, just like we have malapropisms or tip-of-the-tongue phenomena at later stages of production, the normal …