There are two lectures coming up here at Harvard that you may be interested in attending:

• Brains, Computers, and Minds with Professor Daniel Dennett.  April 21, 22, & 23, 4-6pm in Yenching Auditorium, Harvard University, 2 Divinity Ave, Cambridge, MA
• Mozart’s Skull: Looking for Genius (in all the Wrong Places), by Professor Peter Kivy, Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers University.  Harvard Review of Philosophy 5th Annual Guest Lecture.  April 24, 2 pm, Emerson 210, Harvard University.

Via Garrett Eastman’s Library News & Notes, a fascinating interview by Gordy Slack of Salon.com with philosopher Alva Noë, on why Noë thinks that certain reductionist accounts of the brain are problematic.

Those interested in epistemology, neuroscience, psychology, and related fields might find this group of TED Talks to be of interest.

Speakers include Philip Zombardo, Steven Pinker, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Dan Gilbert, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and many more.

Enjoy!

Here are the January 2009 Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.  Though collection development is on hold for the time being at Robbins, are any of these worth considering for purchase at a later date?

Aesthetics

• Alexander Nehamas, Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art, Reviewed by Martin Donougho, University of South Carolina-Columbia
• Noël Carroll, On Criticism, Reviewed by Alan H. Goldman, College of William & Mary
• Richard Eldridge, Literature, Life, and Modernity, Reviewed by Robert Pippin, University of Chicago
• Garry L. Hagberg (ed.), Art and Ethical Criticism, Reviewed by Richard Eldridge, Swarthmore College
• John Gibson, Wolfgang Huemer, Luca Pocci (eds.), A Sense of the World: Essays on Fiction, Narrative, and Knowledge, Reviewed by Allen Speight, Boston University

Philosophers

• Michael Frauchiger, Wilhelm K. Essler (eds.). Representation, Evidence, and Justification: Themes from Suppes, Reviewed by Kenny Easwaran, University of Southern California/Australian National University
• Robert Wicks, Schopenhauer, Reviewed by Robert Guay, Binghamton University
• Thomas Parker, Volition, Rhetoric, and Emotion in the Work of Pascal, Reviewed by Michael Moriarty, Queen Mary, University of London
• Andrew Janiak, Newton as Philosopher, Reviewed by Richard Arthur, McMaster University

Metaphysics

• Joanna Hodge, Derrida on Time, Reviewed by Linnell Secomb, University of Greenwich
• Jacqueline Mariña, Transformation of the Self in the Thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Reviewed by C. Jeffery Kinlaw, McMurry University
• Marc A. Hight, Idea and Ontology: An Essay in Early Modern Metaphysics of Ideas, Reviewed by Monte Cook, University of Oklahoma

Epistemology

• Daniel N. Robinson, Consciousness and Mental Life, Reviewed by Sam Coleman, University of Hertfordshire
• Sanford C. Goldberg, Anti-Individualism: Mind and Language, Knowledge and Justification, Reviewed by Jonathan E. Adler, Brooklyn College/CUNY Graduate Center
• Marc Djaballah, Kant, Foucault, and Forms of Experience, Reviewed by Johanna Oksala, University of Dundee

History of Philosophy

• Pauliina Remes, Neoplatonism, Reviewed by Peter Adamson, King’s College London
• Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Philosophical Legacies: Essays on the Thought of Kant, Hegel, and Their Contemporaries, Reviewed by James R. Walker, Union College

Moral & Political Philosophy

• Christopher O. Tollefsen, Biomedical Research and Beyond: Expanding the Ethics of Inquiry, Reviewed by John McMillan, University of Hull
• David Owen, Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality, Reviewed by Peter Poellner, University of Warwick
• Ronna Burger, Aristotle’s Dialogue with Socrates: On the Nicomachean Ethics, Reviewed by Steven Skultety, University of Mississippi
• Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics, Reviewed by Thomas Hurka, University of Toronto
• Tamsin Shaw, Nietzsche’s Political Skepticism, Reviewed by Brian Leiter, University of Chicago
• Mark E. Button, Contract, Culture, and Citizenship: Transformative Liberalism from Hobbes to Rawls, Reviewed by Anna Stilz, Princeton University
• Stephen R. Brown, Moral Virtue and Nature: A Defense of Ethical Naturalism, Reviewed by Emer O’Hagan, University of Saskatchewan
• Philip Pettit, Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, Reviewed by Alan Nelson and Matthew Priselac, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Philosophy of Law

• Larry Alexander, Emily Sherwin, Demystifying Legal Reasoning, Reviewed by Dan Priel, University of Warwick

Philosophy of Religion

• Adam C. English, The Possibility of Christian Philosophy: Maurice Blondel at the Intersection of Theology and Philosophy, Reviewed by Oliva Blanchette, Boston College

Philosophy of Science

• David Bostock, Space, Time, Matter, and Form: Essays on Aristotle’s Physics, Reviewed by Inna Kupreeva, University of Edinburgh

I received this announcement yesterday — those interested in cognitive science, philosophy of mind, epistemology and consciousness may find it of interest:

Here is the blurb from the e-mail:

This February we have three great talks coming up: Christof Koch will revisit his stance on consciousness and attention, tying it in with Tononi’s theory, Steve Grossberg will tackle the Mind-Body Problem, and Ted Gibson will discuss his work on language comprehension…. See http://www.neuphi.com. For updates, contact organizers@neuphi.com.

We’ve just received the latest issue of The Monist — Monist 91(2), April 2008 — and the general topic for this issue is “Intentionality and Phenomenal Consciousness.”

Here is the Table of Contents:

• Amie L. Thomasson, Phenomenal Consciousness and the Phenomenal World
• Joseph Levine, Secondary Qualities: Where Consciousness and Intentionality Meet
• Colin McGinn, Consciousness as Knowingness
• Adam Pautz, The Interdependence of Phenomenology and Intentionality
• Katalin Farkas, Phenomenal Intentionality Without Compromise
• Itay Shani, Against Consciousness Chauvinism
• James Tartaglia, Intentionality, Consciousness, and the Mark of the Mental: Rorty’s Challenge
• Terry Horgan & Uriah Kriegel, Phenomenal Intentionality Meets the Extended Mind

The issue should be available electronically at some point in the near future, but is not, at the moment.  (You’ll need your Harvard PIN and ID to login.)

Regular readers may remember that I wrote a post about the Honderich/McGuinn feud earlier this year.  While browsing through Bookforum.com a few days ago, I found a link to an article that appeared earlier this year, in the Journal of Consciousness Studies:

Ross, J.A. (2008). Hitting on Consciousness: Honderich Versus McGinn.   Journal of Consciousness Studies 15(1): 109-128

Ross’ article provides some background to the feud, along with summaries of the arguments being discussed, reviews of Honderich’s book, and summaries of the exchanges between Honderich and McGinn.

Ross’ conclusion is interesting:

There is much to be learned about the current state of academic philosophy of mind in this unseemly tale. For me, the main lesson is that professional philosophers have no monopoly of wisdom in consciousness studies, either in writing books about consciousness or in reviewing the efforts of their peers. The JCS illustrates with its judicious balance of peer-reviewed articles and other texts (such as the present metareview) that consciousness studies can be enriched by reaching beyond conventional academic work.

Spare a final moment to consider the longer implications of the cat fight you have just witnessed. Googling ‘Honderich’or ‘McGinn’ will regularly find the two names paired with each other for the rest of digital eternity. Whether they like it or not, the two prickly protagonists are now sparring partners in cyberspace, bound in a fellowship of reciprocal contempt and vituperation. Perhaps future generations of philosophers will amuse themselves with animatronic replays of the Ted and Colin show, where photorealistic avatars trade vile words with heated fluency in comic clips.

In any case, the philosophical soil in which this debate is rooted will soon be ploughed over. I suspect that neither radical externalism nor the new mysterianism will attract much attention once we witness the arrival of the first conscious robots.

I’m not so sure about the possibility of conscious robots, but Ross may be on to something — much in the way that Kierkegaard is forever linked with the war of words surrounding the Corsair affair, so too Honderich and McGinn in their feud.

In any event, it’s an interesting article for those who follow such things, and who are interested in philosophical practice, consciousness, philosophy of mind, and the like.