Readings

I have just finished re-reading Dretske's Naturalizing the Mind, an interesting defense of representationism and phenomenal externalism; definitely, the last chapter contains some material on which I would like to write: Dretske's dilemma (if phenomenal experiences are thoughtlike entities, then they are externally grounded; if they are distinguished from thoughts, then one may be completely unaware of one's qualia, because qualia remain inaccessible until one acquires the conceptual resources for becoming aware of them), the Internalist Intuition (the quality of experience supervenes on the constitution, read physical constitution for materialists, of the experiencer), the supervenience on historical events and processes that shape an animal's current control circuits, and the apparent conflict between the extrinsicness of the mental and its explanatory relevance. I find Dretske's main externalist point, that experiences are not in the head (or anywhere else, for that matter, at least not necessarily) in the sense in which stories are not in the books in which they are printed, too metaphysical and irrelevant, it seems to me, with respect to research on the neural correlates of experiences. However, it would be interesting to explore more the presumed non-spatiality of conscious experiences or mental events in general (see also McGinn's ideas on the subject), although the general picture in connection to empirical research on consciousness is a skeptical one.
Other interesting remarks to reflect upon in Dretske's book are those on higher-order (experience, thought) theories of consciousness.

Ned Block will come to give a talk on The Methodological Puzzle of the Neural Basis of Phenomenal Consciousness on December the 1st. It will be a good occasion to discuss with him on the topic, and I want to write at least one good paper before his coming, for some feedback.

I continue reading Stoljar's Ignorance and Imagination, as well as Devitt's Ignorance of Language.

I read a few weeks ago Hurley's "Varieties of Externalism" paper, and I think there are some nice arguments within, in need of a riposte. I want to work on that these days, perhaps write a small paper.

Comeback

Long time, no see. Many things occurred during the interval. I obtained an M.A. in Philosophy from Paris IV, with a thesis on the phenomenal character of thought, and finished the course with appropriate French grades (minimum 17, I even got a 19). I am currently compiling an application for a PhD scholarship offered to Ecole Normale Supérieure graduates.

I got to visit Hungary (i.e. Budapest) and Japan (i.e. Tokyo) during the summer (2+2 weeks), in July and the beginning of August, with a short, one week intermezzo in Romania (Bucharest, Turnu Magurele and Sutesti). I participated at a summer school on the philosophy of physics at Central European University and at a summer school on cognitive neuroscience at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Wako-shi, near Tokyo. I went afterwards to Romania until the end of August and I returned to Paris on September the 1st.

If everything goes well, I will go in January to New York University, as a visiting scholar, remaining there until the beginning of May.

I have many more (and long-range) ideas about my academic career, but I keep these for me for the moment.

I started reading some fresh philosophy books, such as Devitt's "Ignorance of Language" and Stoljar's "Ignorance and Imagination". The first interests me from the point of view of the relations between language and thought (there are some new discussions on the map theory of thought as well), while the second is interesting from the point of view of phenomenal concepts and consciousness-physicalism discussions.

The topic of my PhD project is Externalism and Phenomenal Experience. I am finally making my way from work on thoughts to work on consciousness. I want to evaluate consciousness externalism, mainly in a critical vein, and propose consciousness and intentional internalism across the board, modulo intentional vehicle internalism. Intentional vehicle externalism seems plausible to me.

Perhaps I'll write with more regularity in this weblog in the coming months.