Any Brain Hammer-heads that anticipate spending today being in or near that very special part of New Jersey we know as William Paterson University should swing by and check out my talk “Swamp Mary’s Revenge: Deviant Phenomenal Knowledge and Physicalism” at 3:30pm - 5:00pm in 126 Atrium. Here’s a link to the paper (forthcoming in Philosophical Studies): link.
ABSTRACT: Deviant phenomenal knowledge is knowing what it’s like to have experiences of, e.g., red without actually having had experiences of red. Such a knower is a deviant. Some physicalists have argued and some anti-physicalists have denied that the possibility of deviants undermines both anti-physicalism and the Knowledge Argument. The current paper presents new arguments defending the deviant-based attacks on anti-physicalism. Central to my arguments are considerations concerning the psychosemantic underpinnings of deviant phenomenal knowledge. I argue that only physicalists are in a position to account for the conditions in virtue of which states of deviants constitute representations of phenomenal facts.
Swampy?
I am Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Coordinator of the Cognitive Science Laboratory at William Paterson University in New Jersey. This blog largely concerns my interests in the Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Neuroscience, but also contains evidence of my messing around with art, photography, fiction, and robotics. Find out way more about me and my work