The Conservative Philosopher is a new group philosophy blog. The only philosopher I recognize is Roger Scruton, whom I usually find interesting and readable, but that doesn't mean much. I mean, before he'd started blogging I'd never heard of Brian Weatherson, and Thoughts, Arguments, and Rants got me started blogging about philosophy.
Tip of the hat Marginal Revolution
Posted by joshua at February 1, 2005 09:02 AMThis is a comment on your March 16th 2004 blog on motion induced blindness... there you say:
"Is it conceivable that the zombie sees but isn't really aware of seeing the yellow dot, and also sees but isn't really aware of not seeing the yellow dot, and yet somehow still can distinguish objectively between the two states (so it can describe the illusion) just like someone with a mind?"
I have a problem here with your definition of "seeing". Actually, in the brain, there are differences between the state of "seeing" the yellow dot and not "seeing" it during motion induced blindness. And that's precisely what neuroscientists are trying to pin down so as to find the neural correlates of visual perception. Back to your zombie argument, a zombie could in principle, given the change in neural activity, signal the appearance and disappearance of the yellow dot without a qualitative state associated to it. Of course here I am not at all defending the logical possibility of zombies; just pointing out that motion induced blindness can't be used to target the zombie argument.
Okay, so who are your all time, desert-island, top 5 philosophers? I'll go first.
1) Marcus Aurelius
2) Alain de Botton
3) Ludwig Wittgenstein
4) A. A. Milne
5) Robert Heinlein
Cheers,
-MP