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.