Philosophy

The extended mind hypothesis (EM) claims that some of our mental states/processes extend outside our heads and into objects in our environment. To date, attention has focused on mental extension into otherwise non-mental artefacts (notebooks, diaries, iPhones). However, arguments for EM appear to support extension, not only into non-mental artefacts, but also into the minds of other people.

I will have two central goals in the first part of this talk, which explores the relevance of latest research on mind-wandering for theories of consciousness. First, conceptually, and in opposition to what many philosophers following Descartes and Kant traditionally have liked to believe, I will argue for the claim that conscious thought actually is a subpersonal process, only rarely a form of mental action, but rather an unintentional form of mental behaviour, and demonstrably for more than two thirds of our conscious life-time.

I argue that certain mental states realise dialetheias. There is a well known psychological phenomenon (noted, for example, by Plato in the Republic) in which something is so repulsive that one is compelled to look at it. One is attracted and repelled. Prima facie, that is a contradiction. I argue that that is exactly what it is. This contradiction captures the phenomenological content of one’s experience, though this does not mean that the underlying brain states are themselves contradictory.

Consider Rescue:

Rescue: Alice and Bryony are drowning in a lake. Passer-By can pull only one to safety. She can do so at no risk to herself. She can toss a coin before saving either Alice or Bryony, giving each an equal chance of rescue.

As far as our experience goes, we live in a dynamic present. Those two phenomenal features of experience -- presentness and dynamism -- are obviously connected. However, how they are connected is not obvious at all. In this talk, I criticize the view according to which the former can explain the latter, which I call Sophisticated Representationalism. My criticism will be based on the distinction between the perspectival aspect of tenses and the dynamic aspect of tenses. I take the distinction to be of independent interest not only for philosophy of mind, but also for metaphysics.

How do considerations of egalitarian justice bear on how many children individuals may or should have in a just society? Most theorists of justice neglect this question by assuming that the principles they formulate apply to a group of individuals whose size is taken as given. This assumption seems unjustified, however, since how many children individuals have affects the size of everyone's just shares.

Modal Logic, originally conceived as the logic of necessity and possibility, has developed into a powerful mathematical discipline that deals with (restricted) description languages for talking about various kinds of relational structures.

Advances in Modal Logic is a biennial international conference and book series in Modal Logic. The aim of the conference series is to report on important new developments in pure and applied modal logic, and to do so at varying locations throughout the world. The book series is based on the conferences.