Theo Todman's Web Page - Notes Pages
Status Reports
Status: Personal Identity (2017 - September)
(Text as at 09/10/2017 23:25:26)
*** THIS IS NOT THE LATEST VERSION OF THIS NOTE ***
(For the live version and other versions of this Note, see the tables at the end)
Rationale for this Project
- I am researching the subject of Personal Identity primarily because of its intrinsic interest and importance. It is really a sub-topic in my Philosophy of Religion1 project, with its penultimate chapter considering the metaphysical possibility of resurrection.
- While I’m interested in the topic of my research in its own right, I think when I’ve sorted it out a bit, and have something to say, I’ll want to engage with other philosophers active in this field – and re-starting a PhD at Birkbeck or elsewhere might be the only effective way to do this.
- While a PhD is not an end in itself, and certainly not the ultimate aim of my doing philosophy, it’s still true that a PhD would teach me research techniques, provide focus and direction, and furnish a professional qualification should I want to publish any results in this or any other area of philosophy.
- The jumping-off point for my thesis is here2, and a progress dashboard is here3.
- Maybe a better place to find my current views is here4.
Summary of Progress during July - September 2017
- I spent 340 hours in 3Q17 on my Thesis or Thesis-related work (828 hours YTD, where for “YTD” – Year to Date – I mean the (academic) year that commenced in October 2016). That’s 185% of the planned effort (113% YTD). Overall, 48% of my Project effort in the Quarter was directed towards this project (making 31% YTD) – as against 26% planned (27% YTD).
- I’d slightly reduced my planned effort, but in fact doubled the time I’d spent on this project in the previous quarter. This was enabled because of the amount of time liberated as a result of my abandonment of Bridge. About time too, I might add. Maybe unfortunately, this free time and more besides was spent on the item below.
- As last quarter, a considerable amount of time was spent on papers issued under the aegis of Aeon, including sorting out the filing system and the summary Note5. These are very interesting, and of wide scope. Not many of them are strictly germane to my research interests, but – as in the last two quarters – I continued to read – and where possible remark on – the one or two of interest that appear daily. I have found this very satisfying and it has raised a lot of issues across a broad range of topics, many relevant to my research.
- A lead from the above was the work of Elselijn Kingma on the metaphysics of pregnancy, and the possible implications for animalism.
- I completely re-wrote the Note describing my Current Beliefs6 on the topic of Personal Identity. I found this a very useful exercise, and it is also useful in determining which other Notes require urgent progression. I sent this to Pete for review, and have received some interesting feedback. Sophie Botros has agreed to review it as well, when I’ve licked it into shape.
- Sophie got me to update her website to announce her new book, published towards the end of September, "Botros (Sophie) - Truth, Time and History: A Philosophical Enquiry". She invited me to a Salon run by Oliver Black at his house in Spittalfields and at which she gave a talk on the topic. She gave me a copy of the book which is of some relevance to my research. I’ve been added to the list of regular invitees to the Salon.
- Somehow, I got to look into the controversy raised by "Smith (Quentin) - Marcus, Kripke, and the Origin of The New Theory of Reference", probably via "Holt (Jim) - Whose Idea Is It Anyway? A Philosophers' Feud", though how I came across this paper is forgotten. I did some digging into Ruth Barcan Marcus and got hold of all her papers as far as they are available on-line (mostly in JSTOR), as well as the papers related to the controversy. I’d like to review my write-up on "Kripke (Saul) - Naming and Necessity" and complete its conversion to Notes, as this is related to my research, but there’s no time at the moment.
- I completed reading "Kasparov (Garry), Greengard (Mig) - Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins", and a review – "Rowson (Jonathan) - Deep Thinking?", which I ought to re-read so that I can discuss it intelligently with Chris who alerted me to it.
- Came across "Lebens (Samuel) & Goldschmidt (Tyron) - The Promise of a New Past", and studied most of it. I’d like to discuss it with Sophie (and maybe with Michael J. Alter) once I’ve completed it.
- Read most of "Loose (Jonathan) - Constitution and the Falling Elevator: The Continuing Incompatibility of Materialism and Resurrection Belief", which relates a couple of my Thesis topics.
- I updated quite a number of my Notes. In particular, those on Time7, Computers8, Dualism9 and Fetuses10 and researched their reading-lists.
- Progress between reports can be obtained from the relevant section of my Summary Task List11.
- More detail follows:-
Thesis (Total Hours = 171.5)
- Thesis - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 140.5)
- "Baskin-Sommers (Arielle) - Psychopaths have feelings: can they learn how to use them?" (Read, 0.5 hours)
- "Botros (Sophie) - Truth, Time and History: A Philosophical Enquiry" (Read / Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Broome (John) - Indefiniteness in Identity" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Broome (John) - The Badness of Death and the Goodness of Life" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Burgess (John P.) - Marcus, Kripke, and Names" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Burgess (Matt) - Holding AI to account" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Charlton (Anna E.) & Francione (Gary) - A humanely killed animal is still killed – and that’s wrong" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Damschen (Gregor), Gomez-Lobo (Alfonso) & Schonecker (Dieter) - Sixteen Days? A Reply to B. Smith and B. Brogaard on the Beginning of Human Individuals" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "De Waal (Frans) - Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Delistraty (Cody) - The coming-of-age con" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Epstein (Robert) - The empty brain" (Read, 1 hour)
- "Evenden (Ian) - Quantum computing comes of age" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Feldman (Fred) - Death and the Disintegration of Personality" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Finn (Suki) - Bun or bump?" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Flora (Carlin) - Indescribable you" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "French (A.P.) - Special Relativity" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Gallow (J. Dmitri) - Summary of Wolf - 'The Meanings of Lives'" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Gelernter (David) - Mirror Worlds" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Gelernter (David) - The Muse in the Machine - Computers and Creative Thought" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Gerrans (Philip) & Letheby (Chris) - Model hallucinations" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Gilmore (Cody) - When Do Things Die" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Godfrey-Smith (William) - Special Relativity and the Present" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Grossmann (Tobias) - How we learn to read another’s mind by looking into their eyes" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Hawks (John) - Human evolution is more a muddy delta than a branching tree" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Holt (Jim) - Whose Idea Is It Anyway? A Philosophers' Feud" (Read / Write, 3.25 hours)
- "Horowitz (Tamara) - Philosophical intuitions and psychological theory" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Howsepian (Avak Albert) - Lockwood on human identity and the primitive streak" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Howsepian (Avak Albert) - Who or What Are We?" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Huenemann (Charlie) - If I teleport from Mars, does the original me get destroyed?" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Jennings (Carolyn Dicey) - I attend, therefore I am" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Kahneman (Daniel) & Tversky (Amos) - Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Kasparov (Garry), Greengard (Mig) - Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins" (Read, 13 hours)
- "King (Barbara J.) - The pig on your plate" (Read, 0.75 hours)
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - BUMP: Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy (B1)" (Read / Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - BUMP: Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy (B2)" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Lebens (Samuel) & Goldschmidt (Tyron) - The Promise of a New Past" (Read / Write, 3.5 hours)
- "Little (Margaret Olivia) - Abortion, Intimacy, and the Duty to Gestate" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Loose (Jonathan) - Constitution and the Falling Elevator: The Continuing Incompatibility of Materialism and Resurrection Belief" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Macedo (Stephen) - Introduction to 'Meaning in Life and Why It Matters' by Susan Wolf" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "MacKay (Donald) - Computer Software and Life After Death" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Marcus (Ruth Barcan) - A Philosopher's Calling" (Read, 4 hours)
- "Markosian (Ned) - Time" (Read / Write, 6 hours)
- "Marsa (Linda) - The longevity gap" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Miller (Kenneth D.) - Will You Ever Be Able to Upload Your Brain?" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Minerva (Francesca) & Rorheim (Adrian) - What are the ethical consequences of immortality technology?" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Misner (Charles W.), Thorne (Kip S.) & Wheeler (John Archibald) - Gravitation" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Mitchell (David X.) - Almost everything I’d been told about my son’s autism was wrong" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Nagel (Thomas) - Searle: Why We Are Not Computers" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Naiman (Rubin) - Falling for sleep" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Neale (Stephen) - No Plagiarism Here - The Originality of Saul Kripke" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "O'Connell (Mark) - To be a Machine" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Pinto (Yair) - When you split the brain, do you split the person?" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Popkin (Gabriel) - What the death of an oak tree can teach us about mortality" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Pross (Addy) - Life’s restlessness" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Rindler (Wolfgang) - Introduction to Special Relativity" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Rose (Hilary) & Rose (Steven) - Prometheus Inc" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Rowlands (Mark) - The kindness of beasts" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Rowson (Jonathan) - Deep Thinking?" (Read / Write, 3 hours)
- "Scharf (Caleb) - Where do minds belong?" (Read, 0.5 hours)
- "Schutz (Bernard) - A First Course in General Relativity" (Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Schwitzgebel (Eric) - We have greater moral obligations to robots than to humans" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Schwitzgebel (Eric) & Garza (Mara) - A Defense of the Rights of Artificial Intelligences" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Searle (John) - Can Computers Think?" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Searle (John) - Minds, Brains, and Programs" (Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Simon-Lewis (Alexandra) - Is it dangerous to recreate flawed human morality in machines?" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Simons (Geoff) - Are Computers Alive? Evolution and New Life Forms" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Smith (Barry) & Brogaard (Berit) - Sixteen Days" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Smith (Quentin) - Marcus and the New Theory of Reference: A Reply to Scott Soames" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Smith (Quentin) - Marcus, Kripke, and the Origin of The New Theory of Reference" (Read, 0.75 hours)
- "Stitt (Jennifer) - Before you can be with others, first learn to be alone" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Taylor (Edwin F.) & Wheeler (John Archibald) - Spacetime Physics - Introduction to Special Relativity" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Theil (Stefan) - Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong - and How to Fix It" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Tobia (Kevin Patrick) - Change becomes you" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Animal Rights" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Commissurotomy" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Computers" (Write, 4.5 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Current Position" (Write, 12.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Death" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Dualism" (Write, 4 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Duplication" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Embryo" (Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Endurantism" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Exdurantism" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Fetuses" (Write, 5.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Leibniz" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Pregnancy" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Properties" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Replication" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Soul Criterion" (Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Souls" (Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Temporary Intrinsics" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Time" (Write, 7 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Time Travel" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Uploading" (Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Zygote" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Wolf (Susan) - Ban Cloning? Why NBAC Is Wrong" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Wolf (Susan) - Meaning in Life and Why It Matters" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Wolf (Susan) - Moral Saints" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Wolf (Susan) - Morality and Partiality" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Wolf (Susan) - Self-Interest and Interest in Selves" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Wolf (Susan) - The Meanings of Lives" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Zimmerman (Jess) - Young blood" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- Thesis - Discussions (Total Hours = 3.25)
- Thesis - Lectures (Total Hours = 6)
- Thesis - Research Repositioning (Total Hours = 14.75)
- Thesis - Seminars (Attendance)
- Sophie's Salon - Sophie's Talk + Discussion (2.5 hours)
- Thesis - Seminars (Reading)
- Sophie's Salon - Journey + Planning (2.25 hours)
- Thesis - Seminars (Writing)
- Sophie's Salon - Follow-up (2.25 hours)
Thesis Background (Total Hours = 168.25)
- Thesis Background - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 148)
- "Adamson (Peter) - Arabic translators did far more than just preserve Greek philosophy" (Read, 0.5 hours)
- "Adelman (Jeremy) - Don’t look away" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Adomako (Andrea) - Black stories matter: on the whiteness of children’s books" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Ahmad (Muhammad Aurangzeb) - This is the Muslim tradition of sci-fi and speculative fiction" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Allen (Benjamin) - Global cooperation depends on the strength of local connections" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Andersen (Ross) - In the beginning" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Anderson (Mark) - Enter halophytes" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Arendt (Hannah) - Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Armstrong (John) - La bella vita" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Aronson (Polina) - Mrs Myself" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Asma (Stephen) - Imagination is ancient" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Ayer (A.J.) - More of My Life" (Read, 1.5 hours)
- "Ball (Philip) - Quantum common sense" (Read, 1 hour)
- "Bambini (Valentina), Gentili (Claudio) & Pietrini (Pietro) - On Cultural Constraints on Pirahã Grammar" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Bartlett (Jamie) - Return of the city-state" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Bechtel (William) - Decomposing the Mind-Brain: A Long-Term Pursuit" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Begley (Christopher) - Ancient ruins keep being ‘discovered’: were they ever lost?" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Berlinger (Nancy) - More than just sanctuary, migrants need social citizenship" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Borel (Brigid) - I’d rather be dissected" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Boyle (Rebecca) - The end of night" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Bradatan (Costica) - Everyone fails, but only the wise find humility" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Bradatan (Costica) - Philosophy has a lot to learn from film" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Butler (Isaac) - Why Is Othello Black?" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Butterworth (Jon) - How the rainbow illuminates the enduring mystery of physics" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Camporesi (Silvia) & Knuckles (James) - The solution to doping is to extend the blame beyond athletes" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Chabal (Emile) - Les anglo-saxons" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Craiutu (Aurelian) - Moderation may be the most challenging and rewarding virtue" (Read, 0.5 hours)
- "Dalton (Clayton M.) - There is nothing inevitable or natural about chronic disease" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Damore (James) - Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Dixon (Thomas) - The waterworks" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Dorren (Gaston) - Talking gibberish" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Douglas (Tom) - Should a rapist get Viagra or a robber get a cataracts op?" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Dreger (Alice) - You might be in a medical experiment and not even know it" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Dresser (Sam) - How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Dunsworth (Holly) & Buchanan (Anne) - Sex makes babies" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Edmonds (David) & Eidinow (John) - Wittgenstein's Poker" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Edwards (Stassa) - From Aesop to doge" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Ekroll (Vebjorn) - Now you see it, now you…" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Epstein (Robert) - The empty brain" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Evans (Jules) - Dissolving the ego" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Everett (Daniel) - Chomsky, Wolfe and me" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Everett (Daniel) - Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Everett (Daniel) - On Cultural Constraints on Pirahã Grammar: A Reply" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Fawcett (Edmund) - Liberalism: The Life of an Idea" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Fawcett (Edmund) - Reclaiming liberalism" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Finn (Ed) - Art by algorithm" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Fitch (W. Tecumseh), Hauser (Marc D.) & Chomsky (Noam) - The evolution of the language faculty: Clarifications and implications" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Flora (Carlin) - Praise them!" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Fox (Douglas) - Aliens in our midst" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Frampton (Saul) - Agony in the agora" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Freud (Sigmund) - Project for a Scientific Psychology" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Freud (Sigmund), Lunbeck (Elizabeth) - The herd instinct" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Frith (Christopher D.) - Our illusory sense of agency has a deeply important social purpose" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Fry (Alexander B.) - In the dark" (Read, 0.5 hours)
- "Furedi (Frank) - The ages of distraction" (Read, 0.75 hours)
- "Gao (Jie), Etc. - Learning the rules of the rock–paper–scissors game: chimpanzees versus children" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Gershon (Ilana) - The quitting economy" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Gibson (Edward) - The unexpected benefits of getting lost in translation" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Giubilini (Alberto) - Why vegetarians should be prepared to bend their own rules" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Glinert (Lewis) - Language dreams: an ancient tongue awakens in a Jewish baby" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Goff (Philip) - Is taxation theft?" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Goodman (Rob) & Soni (Jimmy) - The bit bomb" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Green (Nile) - Islam’s forgotten bohemians" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Green (Nile) - What happened when a Muslim student went to Cambridge in 1816" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Haddon (Mark) - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul) - Aeon: A-B (& General)" (Read / Write, 30.5 hours)
- "Hanink (Johanna) - Even the ancient Greeks thought their best days were history" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "The Week, Harris (Robert) - The Heroic Appeaser" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Hartman (Robert J.) - Moral Luck" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Haussmann (Alexander) - Rainbows in nature: recent advances in observation and theory" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Heinze (Eric) - Free speech debates are more than ‘radicals’ vs ‘liberals’" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Heneghan (Liam) - We have a new word for that feeling when travel makes everything new" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Hossenfelder (Sabine) - The superfluid Universe" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Hughes (Nick) - Do we matter in the cosmos?" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Humphrey (Nicholas) - Humans are the only animals who crave oblivion through suicide" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Jao (Carren) - Sonifying the world" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Jones (Christopher) - New tech only benefits the elite until the people demand more" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Kaiser (David) - Operation: neutrino" (Read, 1 hour)
- "Kavanagh (Christopher) - People are intensely loyal to groups which abuse newcomers. Why?" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Kelly (Lynne) - This ancient mnemonic technique builds a palace of memory" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Kenny (Kevin) - The Irish diaspora" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Kind (Amy) - Imagination is a powerful tool: why is philosophy afraid of it?" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Kochanek (Christopher) - What high-speed astronomy can tell us about the galactic zoo" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Krishna (Nakul) - Enid Blyton, moral guide" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Kwak (Nancy) - This striking feature of Manila makes it an emblematic global city" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Laqueur (Thomas) - Ghosts and ghouls haunt the living with a message about life" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Lawton (Rebecca) - The healing power of nature" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Levi (Primo) & Angier (Carole) - Cerium" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Lewis (Marc) - The addiction habit" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Lilienfeld (Scott O.) - Microaggressions?" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Malinowska (Kasia) & Medley (Bethany) - Want to reduce drug use? Listen to women drug users" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Marshall (Richard) & Broome (John) - John Broome: Weighing goods and people" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Mayyasi (Alex) - Of money and morals" (Read, 0.75 hours)
- "McCumber (John) - America’s hidden philosophy" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "McEwen (Bruce) - When is stress good for you?" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "McIlvenna (Una) - Old-school news: sensational, moralistic and, above all, sung" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Millard (Chris) - Fatal nurture: what a rare disorder says about ‘bad mothers’" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Montero (Barbara Gail) - Against flow" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Morioka (Masahiro), Ed. - Nihilism and the Meaning of Life - A Philosophical Dialogue with James Tartaglia" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Moyer (Melinda Wenner) - Against the grains" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Nadler (Steven) - Why Spinoza still matters" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Neiman (Susan) - History and guilt" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Nevins (Andrew), Pesetsky (David) & Rodrigues (Cilene) - Pirahã Exceptionality: A Reassessment" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Okrent (Arika) - Is linguistics a science?" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Park (Seungbae) - The Unificatory Power of Scientific Realism" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Pennycook (Gordon) - Why bullshit is no laughing matter" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Pennycook (Gordon), Etc. - On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Peters (Benjamin) - The Soviet InterNyet" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Petty (Adrienne) - Populism now divides, yet once it united the working class" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Phillips (Jonathan) - ‘But you can’t do that!’ Why immoral actions seem impossible" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Pigliucci (Massimo) - Must science be testable?" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Puchner (Martin) - Readers of the world unite" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Purcell (Sebastian) - What the Aztecs can teach us about happiness and the good life" (Read, 0.5 hours)
- "Ramin (Cathryn Jakobson) - Where pain lives" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Reay (Barry) - A handy history" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Reeve (C.D.C.) - The anger of Achilles" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Roeder (Oliver) - There is no difference between computer art and human art" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Ropeik (David) - Fear of radiation is more dangerous than radiation itself" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Sassi (Maria Michela) - The sea was never blue" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Saunders (David) - The history of brainwashing is a red flag for techno-therapy" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Saxton (Tamsin) - Keeping it in the family: why we pick the partners we do" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Schwitzgebel (Eric) - A theory of jerks" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Scoles (Sarah) - Earth’s aliens" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Sharpe (Jim) - Spoiling for a fight" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Shrage (Laurie) - We need a contract for co-parenting, not just for marriage" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Simon (Ed) - How ‘white people’ were invented by a playwright in 1613" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Skibba (Ramin) - To find aliens, we must think of life as we don’t know it" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Smith (David Livingstone) - Freud the philosopher" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Sober (Elliott) - Why is simpler better?" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "The Week, Srinivasan (Amia) - The Friendly Aliens of the Deep" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Stein (Alexandra) - How totalism works" (Read, 0.75 hours)
- "Stone (Dan) - Concentration camps reveal the nature of the modern state" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Strauss (Michael) - Our Universe is too vast for even the most imaginative sci-fi" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Switek (Brian) - Keeping kids frenetically entertained is ruining our museums" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Talbot (Michael) - The Holographic Universe" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Tampio (Nicholas) - Teaching ‘grit’ is bad for children, and bad for democracy" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Tessman (Lisa) - Sometimes giving a person a choice is an act of terrible cruelty" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Thomas (Ben) - Far-distant days: the past has a dizzying power to ground us" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Tobia (Kevin Patrick) - The Phineas Gage effect" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Torrengo (Giuliano) - The Myth of Presentism’s Intuitive Appeal" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Tracy (Gene) - Sky readers" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Ungar (Peter S.) - It’s not that your teeth are too big: your jaw is too small" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Wareham (Christopher) - How can life-extending treatments be available for all?" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Weiscott (Eric) - The 13th-century revolution that made modern poetry possible" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Wheelwright (Julie) - Mata Hari uncovered" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Whitcroft (Katherine) - Scents and sensibility" (Read, 0.75 hours)
- "Whiteson (Daniel) - The most wonderful words in science: ‘We have no idea… yet!’" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Wiles (Will) - Creepypasta" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Wolf (Susan) - Good-for-Nothings" (Read / Write, 3.25 hours)
- "Woollaston (Victoria) & Moldrich (Curtis) - How Bitcoin works" (Read / Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Yong (Ed) - Coincidental killers" (Read, 0.5 hours)
- "Zacks (Jeffrey M.) - Getting smarter" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Zaretsky (Robert D.) - Return of the grotesque" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Zarkadakis (George) - The economy is more a messy, fractal living thing than a machine" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- Thesis Background - Books Admin (Total Hours = 17.25)
- Thesis Background - Status
Plans for the Near Future – Top Priority Tasks
- I now have a clear idea of what I want to do over the next 12 months12, which is to complete a skeleton thesis13 to my own satisfaction. As such I require rigorous focus on the priority tasks, books and papers. Lower-priority reading is not likely to get a look in, so will be cut.
- First of all, revise the Note describing my Current Beliefs14 on the topic of Personal Identity in the light of Pete’s comments, and ensure the associated Notes have some text. Let Sophie have a look at it, and consider submission to Aeon.
- An “ideal” next step (and one previously suggested) is to ensure that everything of relevance that I have actually read is written up and incorporated in my Notes database and only later – and secondly – consider anything that I have not yet read. This would require discipline, in that interesting new stuff is always turning up, and would be an iterative process. Further, given I’m not getting any younger, it could also be wasting time which should be focussed on using the most relevant materials.
- So, if what I’ve read and written on – in the form of particular papers on a particular topic – is most relevant, I’ll “process” that, but otherwise will start anew.
- As far as effort is concerned, I’ve increased the plan to 22 hours / week. This is still ludicrously inadequate for what I want to achieve.
- So, despite the above caveat, the primary tasks for the next quarter will be to
→ Continue my analysis of "Olson (Eric) - The Human Animal - Personal Identity Without Psychology", and
→ Complete a full review and update of the Notes I’ve created on Personal Identity, focusing on those with least content.
- Following that, the focus (if you can call it that) will be on the following bumper list:-
- Continue with my Thesis15; in particular fill out those sections that I can write something on without further research.
- Make progress on specific Chapters, using the materials below …
- Chapter 216 (What Are We?). Focussing on:-
- Human Beings: "Johnston (Mark) - 'Human Beings' Revisited: My Body is Not an Animal".
- Selves:-
- "Dainton (Barry) - Self: Philosophy In Transit",
- "O'Hear (Anthony), Ed. - Mind, Self and Person".
- Chapter 617 (Animalism). Focussing on:-
- "Olson (Eric) - The Human Animal - Personal Identity Without Psychology", my core text,
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Objects and Persons",
- "Bailey (Andrew M.) - The Elimination Argument",
- "Olson (Eric) - On Parfit's View That We Are Not Human Beings",
- "Olson (Eric) - The Metaphysical Implications of Conjoined Twining",
- "Olson (Eric) - The Role of the Brainstem in Personal Identity",
- "Shoemaker (Sydney) - Persons, Animals, and Identity",
- "Snowdon (Paul) - Persons, Animals, Ourselves",
- Review the work of Elselijn Kingma.
- Chapter 718 (The Constitution View):-
- Start a serious review of "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View", my other core text.
- Read and review "Corcoran (Kevin) - Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul".
- Write a Note on "Loose (Jonathan) - Constitution and the Falling Elevator: The Continuing Incompatibility of Materialism and Resurrection Belief".
- Chapter 1019 (Thought Experiments):-
- Investigate Transhumanism20.
- In particular,
→ Briefly review "O'Connell (Mark) - To be a Machine",
→ Read "Bostrom (Nick) - Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies",
→ Review "Rowson (Jonathan) - Deep Thinking?",
→ Detailed review of "Graziano (Michael) - Endless fun".
- Chapter 1121 (Resurrection):-
- Start a thorough review of "Martin (L. Michael) & Augustine (Keith) - The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death",
- Start a review of "Luper (Steven), Ed. - The Cambridge Companion to Life and Death", especially
→ "Olson (Eric) - The Nature of People",
- Start a review of "Bradley (Ben), Feldman (Fred) & Johansson (Jens) - The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death", especially
→ "Zimmerman (Dean) - Personal Identity and the Survival of Death",
- Read and review
→ "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Death and the Afterlife", and
→ "Corcoran (Kevin) - Dualism, Materialism and the Problem of Post Mortem Survival".
- As background tasks:-
- Convert old PDF-précis, Etc22. to Notes,
- Complete cataloguing the books downloaded from Springer,
- Continue with "Marshall (Richard) - Philosophy at 3:AM: Questions and Answers with 25 Top Philosophers",
- Read "Botros (Sophie) - Truth, Time and History: A Philosophical Enquiry".
- Complete "Erber (Joan T.) & Szuchman (Lenore T.) - Great Myths of Aging",
- Complete "Lebens (Samuel) & Goldschmidt (Tyron) - The Promise of a New Past", and send to Sophie
- Continue reading and reviewing23 papers issued by Aeon,
- Keep up with the Journals via JSTOR24.
Summary of Progress to Date
This was hived off to a separate Note25 back in 2010, and hasn’t changed much since.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 12:
- Hopefully, I may complete, or get stuck, earlier.
- By “12 months”, I mean the period ending on my 65th birthday – ie. 13/11/2018. This is not to slip!
- On the plus side, I’m already much further advanced than would be expected of someone commencing a PhD.
- On the minus side, I want to go into much greater depth, and have other projects on the go – most notably Bridge and my Web-tools project.
- The reason for deferring to my 65th birthday is that this is when I get my State Pension. This may not be much, but it’ll make a significant contribution towards the fees and expenses, which I can’t currently afford.
Footnote 13:
- This used to say “complete a thesis …”, which is obviously impossible, given that my idea of a thesis is way in excess of what is required.
Footnote 23:
- Try to keep up to date, but only read those that are strictly relevant – park the rest!
- At present I have a relatively small reading-backlog, and a much larger reviewing-backlog.
- Try to add a brief comment for each paper – maybe at the expense of reading the full text!
Live Version of this Archived Note
Table of 12 Earlier Versions of this Note (of 66)
Table of 12 Later Versions of this Note (of 32)
Summary of Notes Links from this Page
To access information, click on one of the links in the table above (if any).
Summary of Note Links to this Page
To access information, click on one of the links in the table above (if any).
Text Colour Conventions
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026