By
Next Tuesday (24 Nov)
I of course meant 1st December.
Begin forwarded message:
Next Tuesday (24 Nov), the Macquarie philosophy work-in-progress
talk will be given by Mel Rosen (Macquarie), who'll be telling us why
Dreams are Narrow Minded.
11-12 in the philosophy seminar room, W6A, Macquarie University. All
welcome.
Abstract:
Alva Noe proposes a radical extended mind view, which he refers to
as the extended substrate thesis. The majority of philosophers who
argue that the mind is partially constituted by objects external to
the brain limit their thesis to certain cognitive functions such as
memory and mathematic ability, excluding phenomenal experience from
the scope of their thesis. Noe, on the other hand, argues that we
have no reason to discount the possibility that phenomenal states
are partially externally constituted. In particular, Noe rejects the
argument that dreams are a reasonable counter example to such a
radical thesis. In this paper I shall evaluate his view and propose
that dreams, in particular lucid dreams, provide a more convincing
counterargument than he allows. I shall consider three main strands
of Noe’s argument. Firstly, the fact that dreams may involve no
interaction with the external environment makes it unlikely that
dreams are conscious experiences at all. Secondly, we have good
reason to consider dreaming and waking experiences to be different
types of consciousness, so that whatever is true of dreams, waking
experiences may be partially constituted by things outside the head.
Thirdly, dreaming experiences seem to be restricted to amalgamations
of waking experiences, so there is not good reason to think even
dreams are entirely restricted to the head. I shall in turn argue
that these three arguments do not disprove that dreams are instances
of full blown consciousness that exist in the head alone.
***
This will be the last regular work-in-progress seminar this year,
although we have a special one-off seminar coming up on Dec 15, when
Neil Sinhababu (Singapore) will be talking on The Trouble With
Double Effect. Details on that will follow.
See you there,
Mark
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