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Can you really upload your mind?

Radio discussion on ABC’s The Philosopher’s Zone Self/less— a film currently doing the rounds—entertains the idea of digital immortality. It might be a work of science fiction but what it portrays is gaining serious traction in the real world. A number of philosophers, neuroscientists, and assorted futurists believe that by mid century a safe form…

What Mary Didn’t Know

If the title and the video has no resonance then check out Jackson’s later eponymously titled paper. For a conspectus of the industry generated by Jackson’s thought experiment see Qualia: The Knowledge Argument. Most will probably know Dorian Electra from her video “I’m in Love with Friedrich Hayek” (see second vid): the Mary video is infinitely sharper,…

WAKING, DREAMING, BEING

Evan’s latest reviewed in the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews beingBuddhismconsciousnessDreamingenactivismEvan Thompsonidentitymeditationmind-bodyneurophenomenologyneurosciencephenomenologyPhilosophy of mindselfsituated cognitionwaking

The American Evasion of Pragmatism: Souls, Science, and The Case of Walker Percy

Here’s a very good article by Rob Chodat It is the scientist’s “being-in-the-world” that allows her to describe planets and bacteria, “things and subhuman organisms,” but the “being-in-the-world” of the layman occupies what Percy calls a “different sort of reality,” resting upon the linguistic and social ties that constitute a “non-material, non-measurable entity.” And what holds…

Being in the World

Here’s a film that I chanced upon (I haven’t seen it yet). Once upon a time there was a world full of meaning, focused by exemplary figures in the form of gods and heroes, saints and sinners. How did we lose them, or, might they still be around, in the form of modern day masters,…