The Inaugural Address: Why There Couldn't Be Zombies

Philosophical zombies are exactly as physicalists suppose we are, right down to the tiniest details, but they have no conscious experiences. (It is presupposed that all explicable physical events are explicable physically.) Are such things even logically possible? My aim is to contribute to showing not only that the answer is 'No', but why. (I concede that systems superficially like human beings might exist and lack consciousness.)
My strategy has two prongs: a fairly brisk argument which demolishes the zombie idea; followed by an attempt to throw light on how something can qualify as a conscious perceiver. The argument to show that zombies are impossible exploits the point that in order to be able to detect our own 'qualia' we should have to be somehow sensitive to them; which the zombie idea rules out. The attempt to make clear why my zombie twin must be conscious exploits the idea that we have a reasonably clear grasp of a 'Basic Package' of psychological concepts.     

Why Numbers Are Sets

I follow standard mathematical practice and theory to argue that the natural numbers are the finite von Neumann ordinals. I present the reasons standardly given for identifying the natural numbers with the finite von Neumann's (e.g., recursiveness; well-ordering principles; continuity at transfinite limits; minimality; and identification of n with the set of all numbers less than n). I give a detailed mathematical demonstration that 0 is { } and for every natural number n, n is the set of all natural numbers less than n. Natural numbers are sets. They are the finite von Neumann ordinals.     

Why Gamers Are Not Performers

I argue that even if video games are interactive artworks, typical video games are not works for performance and players of video games do not perform these games in the sense in which a musician performs a musical composition (or actors a play, dancers a ballet, and so on). Even expert playings of video games for an audience fail to qualify as performances of those works. Some exemplary playings may qualify as independent “performance‐works,” but this tells us nothing about the ontology of video games or playings of them. The argument proceeds by clarifying the concepts of interactivity and work‐performance, drawing particularly on recent work by Dominic Lopes, Berys Gaut, and David Davies.     

Why Brains Are Not Computers,Why Behaviorism Is Not Satanism,and Why Dolphins Are Not Aquatic Apes

Modern psychology has, to all intents and purposes, become synonymous with cognitive psychology, with an emphasis on the idea that the brain is a form of computer, whose job is to take in sensory input, process information, and produce motor output. This places the brain at a remove from both the body and environment and denies the intimate connection that exists between them. As a result, a great injustice is done to both human and nonhuman animals: On the one hand, we fail to recognize the distinctive nature of nonhuman cognition, and on the other hand, we continue to promote a somewhat misleading view of human psychological capacities. Here, I suggest a more mutualistic, embodied, enactive view might allow us to ask more interesting questions about how animals of all kinds come to know their worlds, in ways that avoid the (inevitable) anthropocentric baggage of the cognitivist viewpoint.     

Why There Still Are No People

This paper argues that there are no people. If identity isn't what matters in survival, psychological connectedness isn't what matters either. Further, fissioning cases do not support the claim that connectedness is what matters. I consider Peter Unger's view that what matters is a continuous physical realization of a core psychology. I conclude that if identity isn't what matters in survival, nothing matters. This conclusion is deployed to argue that there are no people. Objections to Eliminativism are considered, especially that morality cannot survive the loss of persons.     

Why Pains Are Not Mental Objects

Philosophical Studies -     

Human Zombies are Metaphysically Impossible

Chalmers (The Conscious Mind, Oxford Unversity Press, Oxford 1996) has argued for a form of property dualism on the basis of the concept of a zombie (which is physically identical to normals), and the concept of the inverted spectrum. He asserts that these concepts show that the facts about consciousness, such as experience or qualia, are really further facts about our world, over and above the physical facts. He claims that they are the hard part of the mind-body issue. He also claims that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the world like mass, charge, etc. He says that consciousness does not logically supervene on the physical and all current attempts to assert an identity between consciousness and the physical are just as non-reductive as his dualism. They are simply correlations and are part of the problem of the explanatory gap. In this paper, three examples of strong identities between a sensation or a quale and a physiological process are presented, which overcome these problems. They explain the identity in an a priori manner and they show that consciousness or sensations (Q) logically supervene on the physical (P), in that it is logically impossible to have P and not to have Q. In each case, the sensation was predicted and entailed by the physical. The inverted spectrum problem for consciousness is overcome and explained by a striking asymmetry in colour space. It is concluded that as some physical properties realize some sensations or qualia that human zombies are not metaphysically possible and the explanatory gap is bridged in these cases. Thus, the hard problem is overcome in these instances.     

The Zombies Among Us

Philosophers disagree about whether there could be “zombies”: beings physically identical to normal human people but lacking consciousness. Establishing their possibility would refute physicalism. But it is seldom noted that the popular “constitution view” of human people implies that our bodies actually are zombies. This would contradict several widely held views in the philosophy of mind.     

Why Even Kim-Style Psychophysical Laws Are Impossible

If the mental is subject to indeterminacy, does this rule out the possibility of psychophysical laws? One might think so. However, Jaegwon Kim has argued for the existence of a kind of psychophysical law that is not obviously susceptible to problems posed by indeterminacy. I begin by introducing a weak and relatively uncontroversial indeterminacy thesis. Then, by appealing to constraints on theories of strong supervenience and to general considerations about the nature of indeterminacy, I argue that even Kim’s laws cannot accommodate indeterminacy. The result is an argument against the possibility of Kim-Style psychophysical laws.     

Critiques of Casuistry and Why They Are Mistaken

Casuistic methods of reasoning in medical ethics have been criticized by a number of authors. At least five main objections to casuistry have been put forward: (1) it requires a uniformity of views that is not present in contemporary pluralistic society; (2) it cannot achieve consensus on controversial issues; (3) it is unable to examine critically intuitions about cases; (4) it yields different conclusions about cases when alternative paradigms are chosen; and (5) it cannot articulate the grounds of its conclusions. Two main versions of casuistry have been put forward, and the responses to these objections depend in part on which version one is defending. Jonsen has advocated a version modeled on the approach to casuistry used by moral theologians in the 15th and 16th century, involving comparison of the case at hand with a single paradigm and a lineup of cases. The present author has advocated another version, drawn from experience with cases in clinical ethics, which involves comparing the case at hand with two or more paradigms. Four of the five objections are unsuccessful when directed against Jonsen'sapproach, and all of them are unsuccessful when directed against the approach involving comparison with two or more paradigms.     

Why Monte Carlo Simulations Are Inferences and Not Experiments

Monte Carlo simulations arrive at their results by introducing randomness, sometimes derived from a physical randomizing device. Nonetheless, we argue, they open no new epistemic channels beyond that already employed by traditional simulations: the inference by ordinary argumentation of conclusions from assumptions built into the simulations. We show that Monte Carlo simulations cannot produce knowledge other than by inference, and that they resemble other computer simulations in the manner in which they derive their conclusions. Simple examples of Monte Carlo simulations are analysed to identify the underlying inferences.     

Why All Banding Procedures in Personnel Selection Are Logically Flawed

In this article, I first demonstrate that statistical significance testing of differ- ences between predictor scores (whether based on the standard error of mea- surement or any other statistic) is irrelevant to, and inconsistent with, the traditional, optimizing selection model. Second, I demonstrate that all band- ing procedures used in (or advocated for) personnel selection, including the sliding-band procedures advocated by Cascio, Outtz, Zedeck, and Goldstein (1991-this issue), are fatally flawed logically. I show that, when the number of applicants is large, all banding procedures logically lead to the absurd con- clusion that the only justifiable form of selection is random selection. Third, I present evidence that the empirical data set used by Cascio et al. to evaluate differmt selection strategies is anomalous and leads to results very different from those to be expected in typical and representative data. Specifically, the effect is to produce misleadingly small differences between the strategies in mean test scores of selectees and, therefore, in selection utility. In particular, selection utility losses from all forms of banding, in comparison to topdown selection, are understated. Finally, I show that, apart from the lethal logical flaw in banding procedures, Cascio et al. misinterpreted the meaning and na- ture of statistical significance testing.     

Why There Are No Conservative Professors and Why Do Conservatives Care: Implications for Christian Scholarship

The dearth of conservative professors in many disciplinary fields in higher education has been the concern, oddly enough, of liberal scholars. Perhaps one of the most prolific apologists of the liberal professorate has been professor of sociology Neil Gross at the University of British Columbia. Gross attributes the abundance of liberal professors in certain fields to political typing, a process of self-selection based on preconceived and self-perpetuating biases regarding the epistemological assumptions of disciplinary domains. This study offers a more pedestrian account of the liberal bias on the university campus and proposes implications for Christian scholarship.