Time and the Unity of Consciousness

It is not that I have anything interesting to say about these tough stuffs; it is a conference again, and at Harvard again. One thing NYC is so great academically is that places such as Harvard, MIT, Rutgers, and Princeton are all within reach. Of course it is not as if I can incorporate most resources from them. Philosophy is very different from parties; it takes a lot of time, and showing up in many events does not mean one learns much. That said, I still think it is good to reach these resources, especially in my first year.

So I will meet Sean Kelly and Susanna Siegel again, and I look forward to meeting Adam Pautz, Fiona Macpherson, Ian Phillips, Geoffrey Lee (again), L. A. Paul, Berit Brogaard, among others. Again, philosophy is not like fasion shows; to talk to philosophers one admires does not mean that one learns much, especially at a one-day conference. But still I will try my best to learn. So far the most important message from this semester is that I still have a very long way to go. Philosophy is so damn hard.

In addition to this exciting event and other ones, I am finishing two term papers entitled "On Believing That" and "Meaning, Communication, and Minimal Propositions." As I wrote in the previous reminder, I do not believe one seminar can turn anyone into an expert or anything like that in an area. They are just term papers; no matter how hard I work, they look just amateur.

New Project: Reviewing THE CHARACTER OF CONSCIOUSNESS

David Chalmers, a highly systematic philosopher, recently compiled his works concerning consciousness into a huge book. By huge here I mean around 600 pages. It can be roughly divided into the problems, the science, the metaphysics, the concepts, the contents, and the unity of consciousness. It is hard to imagine that in this era a single philosopher can manage to cover all these grounds, especially given that he also has big theories in semantics and metaphysics.

I am lucky enough to have a chance to write a review for this "monsterpiece" (Bill Lycan uses this term to describe Making It Explicit), though the journal is far from first-rate. But it is good enough for me at this stage. My tentative plan is to situate the book into larger contexts: the first will be the relations between mind, language, and metaphysics, and the second will be the debate between empiricists and rationalists.

Chalmers has developed a sophisticated version of two-dimensional semantics since more than a decade ago, and he systematically applies it to his views on consciousness and metaphysics. This is extraordinary. He sometimes postulates a third kind of content, for example the Edenic content in perception. This is related to his commitment of "semantic pluralism."

I think it is even more interesting if we place Chalmers into the empiricist-rationalist debate. This debate has lasted for several centuries, so it is impossible to do justice to all aspects of it when talking about it, but roughly, we can say that typical rationalists defend innateness in mind, analyticity in language, necessity in metaphysics, and apriority in epistemology. Empiricists tend to deny one or more of them. Representatives for this debate in the twentieth century are Quine (empiricist) and Kripke (rationalist). In the long run, it seems that it is Kripke who wins the game: in particular, his revival of modality animates tons of projects in later analytic philosophy. Contemporary rationalists, including Brandom, Peacocke, and many others, have successfully and fruitfully developed their projects based on modality. Now I propose that Chalmers is one among them. He is often classified as a philosopher of mind specializing in consciousness, but I think this conception of his projects is far too narrow. I think a correct conception of his projects is to view him as a rationalist, who theorizes about modality and related notions, with an emphasis on issues concerning consciousness.

Do I believe in rationalism broadly construed? I don't know. This question is too big for someone like me to answer. All I can say is that to understand more about the empiricist-rationalist debate will be my main life project. In the past few years, I was educated in the empiricist tradition: I started with Quine, and spent some time on Davidson, and ended up writing a long thesis on McDowell. For now, I am still a minimal empiricist. However, in the course of this education, I have been thinking about whether we can really do without necessity and apriority, or even analyticity. Now I am in the East Coast, and here is definitely rationalistic, at least by my own judgment (and contemporary empiricism is pretty weak anyway; Davidson attempts to kill empiricism in his dismantling of scheme-content dualism, and though McDowell insists on empiricism, he is too often to be dismissed by the main stream analytic philosophy). I treasure this environment, since it forces me to take rationalists more seriously: in the past, I did not dismiss them (I am not that arrogant), but I simply did not have a chance to study them more. Now I am able to do that. The first step is to study Chalmers more, and I do so by forcing myself with a deadline: a deadline for the review.

The Self and Spatial Perception

They are not necessarily (in the epistemic sense) related, but they are the themes of the two conferences interesting me most in this semester. The former is the topic of the 62nd Northwest Philosophy Conference, with Galen Strawson and Richard Moran as keynote speakers. I presented a paper on self-identification and somatoparaphrenia there, and now it is also accepted as a poster by the Pacific APA 2011. I defend a minimal version of "immunity to error through misidentification" in that paper, but now I am not sure I like it. As for the keynote addresses, they are far too difficult and abstract for me to summarize here.

I look forward even more to the Harvard conference on spatial perception. Philosophers I would like to meet there including Michael Tye, Brad Thompson, Robin Jeshion, Sean Kelly, and Susanna Siegel, among others. This topic is not very available in my current intellectual niche, so I am really excited about it. I will post the afterthought later, since the conference is on Halloween!

Reminders

Don't think that you can become an expert of something through one or two seminars.

Don't be hurried; philosophy just can't be.

Desperate, So Far

I cease to attend Kripke's Frege and Pryor's Lambda seminar, as expected. I will keep Longuenesse's Third Critique; it is even better than I expected. And Mind&Language is fantastic as well, especially they have a preparation seminar for students.

Still, I am even more desperate about applications. First about the letters. Last year I really thought my letters were going to help me, but that was a big mistake. Now I even suspect that they hurt my applications. But what can I do? For one thing, I have no way to confirm my hypothesis, and secondly, even if we assume it is correct, how can I repair the situation? Before this round I only have one complete semester or less, and that will not help me too much as far as the letters are concerned.

And I am worried about the sample as well. My best try is to use the term paper for "Linguistic Pragmatism" (Devitt), but the time is just not enough. Worse still, recently I am reading Insensitive Semantics by Cappelen and Lepore, and try to meet some of their challenges. They are tough. These days I finally came up with some ideas, with a tentative title "Context Sensitivity and Indirect Discourse." Unfortunately, when I randomly browse the latest PPR I found there is an article "Context Sensitivity and Indirect Reports," and the author is also arguing against C&L at exactly the same point. What an unhappy coincidence for me.

The only thing I can be happy about is that I thereby avoid a possible plagiarism accusation.

Fall 2010 Schedule: Language, language, and Language

So finally I pick the following three:

The Nature of Semantic Content, Nathan Salmon
Linguistic Pragmatism, Michael Devitt
Modal Logic, Melvin Fitting and Richard Mendelsohn

I am determined to force myself into philosophy of language this whole term. These days I started to read/re-read some materials, and still find them hard. Philosophy of language always makes me like a novice, no matter when I come back to it. This time, however, I will be more strict to myself.

I might want to sit in Kripke's Frege seminar, and I will definitely attend the Mind & Language seminar at NYU by Ted Sider and David Chalmers. Also, I will attend the Cognitive Science Symposium led by David Rosenthal. Maybe too much, but I really want them all.

There are two I will go for the first week, but probably the first week only. They are Beatrice Longuenesse's Kant (Third Critique), and Jim Pryor's Lambda seminar, co-taught with Chris Barker (http://lambda.jimpryor.net/). The former is only remotely related to my interests, and the latter is too advanced. Another one I really want to attend is Akeel Bilgrami's seminar on self-knowledge. Time just doesn't allow me to do so.

And at the beginning of Oct., I will present a paper at the 62nd Northwest Philosophy Conference, with "The Self" as the annual theme (http://www.willamette.edu/cla/philosophy/nwpc/). I am not sure whether I can be accepted by more conferences, but we will see.

Hard-Core Philosophy of Language

I need it, but I am also afraid of it. In this coming semester, I might take Professor Nathan Salmon's "Topics in the Nature of Semantic Content" and Professor Michael Devitt's "Linguistic Pragmatism." The former will concentrate on the various puzzles about substitution and belief ascription made popular by Frege, Putnam, Church, Kripke, Soames, and Salmon himself. The latter will concentrate on another strand in philosophical studies in language, namely the Grice-Austin tradition. These two can give me quite balanced education, I believe.

But I am afraid of philosophy of language, narrowly construed. To be sure, it was philosophy of language that led me to academic philosophy in the first place (another urge was provided by Kant's first Critique). However, whenever it goes to certain level of complexity, I get lost. I hope this only shows I have not wrought hard enough, but I am not sure. I am interested in those puzzles, but I am quite content with the solutions provided by the transparent/opaque readings distinction. I guess this is out of my naivete. This coming semester is crucial to me, since I want to know how far I can go, and I need guidance.

And I also need it anyway. My primary interest has always been philosophy of mind, and after these years I have come to believe that deep ideas concerning philosophy of mind have to come from either philosophy of language or natural sciences. I might be wrong. But assuming its truth, then I have no choice. I am too old to start doing serious sciences, so all there left is philosophy of language. I don't know how much I will need, but I know what I understand is so far from the goal. Without deep understandings and commitments in certain issues in philosophy of language (or sciences), it is practically impossible to have deep thoughts in philosophy of mind, or so I believe.

I will try hard. I am not very young, so I do not have much time running away from the truth. I need to be more sophisticated in philosophy of language. And I need to be quick.

I still need to register another seminar for the status of full-time student. Professor Kripke's one on Frege would be suitable for my purpose, but I don't know.