Theo Todman's Web Page - Notes Pages
Status Reports
Status: Personal Identity (2024 - March)
(Text as at 15/04/2024 00:34:34)
*** 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. But 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 best place to get an overview of my current views is here1.
- The jumping-off point for my thesis is here2, though follow the links from the Chapter Abstracts for the real work, and a (currently not very helpful) progress dashboard is here3.
Summary of Progress during January - March 2024
- I spent 361.5 hours in 24Q1 on this Project, or related work (682.75 hours YTD, where for "YTD" - Year to Date - I mean the (academic) year that commenced in October 2023). That's 110.9% of the planned effort (102.7% YTD). Overall, 45.6% of my Project effort in the Quarter was directed towards this project (making 45.4% YTD) - as against 40.3% planned (44.3% YTD).
- The – then upcoming – King’s College Cambridge 50th Anniversary Reunion on 12th August 2023 put in my head the question ‘what have I done with my life?’. One thing I’ve not done is complete my researches into Personal Identity. Nor will I ever complete a PhD without a radical change of priority. So, I decided at the end of July effectively to mothball, the important or enjoyable distractions – Bridge4, Languages5, Philosophy of Religion6 – and try to focus exclusively on my Thesis, though with increased attention in the short term to my Web Tools project insofar as it is necessary to support my philosophy.
- I’ve retained the above bullet from last quarter’s report as a reminder, because – yet again – while I am indeed focusing more on my Thesis, things haven’t quite gone to plan.
- As can be seen, I spent 10% more than my time allowance, but this was largely a reflection of getting my Aeon reading under control. I did very little that was directly related to my Thesis.
- My immediate focus needs to be a very detailed analysis of "Olson (Eric) - What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology" now that I have at least finished reading the book.
- As previously noted, I got slightly stuck on the analysis of Chapter 3 ("Olson (Eric) - What Are We? Constitution") because I think Olson misunderstands Baker, not that Baker is right, of course.
- Having completed a thorough analysis of "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Materialism with a Human Face", the lessons learnt need to be applied both to my Thesis text and Notes and to Olson’s Chapter 3.
- A major recent diversion – albeit a useful one – has been from a detailed consideration of Teletransportation7 as exemplified in Star Trek. This still needs some tidying-up.
- Last quarter, there were three other major diversions:-
- An alert – by my friend Pete – to "Thompson (Jon W.) - Personal Identity and Resurrection: Early Modern Philosophical Perspectives" and to follow-up items.
- Also alerted by my friend Pete, a review ("Ward (Keith) - Review - Goff - Why? The Purpose of the Universe") of "Goff (Philip) - Why? The Purpose of the Universe".
- Alerted by King’s Cambridge – "Harari (Yuval Noah) - Disruption, Democracy & the Global Order".
- To control the various links within my Thesis, I’ve created and maintained a PID Note Usage8 Page, though this didn’t get much of a look in this Quarter.
- Progress between reports can be obtained from the relevant section of my Summary Task List9.
- A full list of items worked on in the quarter appears below:-
Thesis (Total Hours = 344.5)
- Thesis - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 343.75)
- "Aeon - Video - Go incredibly fast" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Aeon - Video - The bees that can learn like humans" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- Aeon: Farris - A man beyond categories (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
→ See "Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul) - Aeon: 2019+" (0.25 hours)
- "Agadjanian (Alexander) - If racial identity can be fluid, who changes their race?" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Andersen (Timothy) - Quantum Wittgenstein" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Andrews (Kristin) & Birch (Jonathan) - What has feelings?" (Read / Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Atkinson (Thomas) - Human organisms and the survival of death: a systematic evaluation of the possibility of life after death given animalism" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Avigad (Jeremy) - Principia" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Ayers (Michael R.) - Locke's Theory of Personal Identity" (Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Ayers (Michael R.) - Personal Identity Before the Essay" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Baggini (Julian) - Goodbye Pixel" (Read / Write, 3.25 hours)
- "Banks (Jennifer) - What awaits us?" (Read / Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Barash (David P.) - Anthropic arrogance" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Barash (David P.) - Stuck with the soul" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Barnes (Luke A.) - A reasonable little question : a formulation of the fine-tuning argument" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "BBC, Bragg (Melvyn) - In Our Time - Panpsychism" (Read / Write, 3.5 hours)
- "Bellitto (Christopher M.) - The medieval notion that shows why even experts should be humble" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Bering (Jesse M.) & Bjorklund (David F.) - The Natural Emergence of Reasoning about the Afterlife as a Developmental Regularity" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Berry (Erica) - An animal myself" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Besley (Tina) - Theorizing Teacher Responsibility in an Age of Neoliberal Accountability" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Blagrove (Mark) - The reason we dream might be to bring us closer together" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Bloom (Paul), Etc - Do 5-month-old infants see humans as material objects?" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Boeker (Ruth) - Locke on Personal Identity: A Response to the Problems of His Predecessors" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Boeker (Ruth) - The Moral Dimension in Locke’s Account of Persons and Personal Identity" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Borkenhagen (David) - Octopus time" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Browning (Heather & Birch (Jonathan) - Animal sentience" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Cain (Susan) - The immortalists have got it wrong – here’s why we need death" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "FT, ChatGPT - Five Books - The Best Books on Artificial Intelligence" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Chen (Eddy Keming) - Fundamental Nomic Vagueness" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Clark (Andy) - The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Code (Alan) - What Is It To Be An Individual?" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Cohn-Gordon (Reuben) - Cathedrals of convention" (Read / Write, 2.75 hours)
- "Costandi (Moheb) - Rethinking the homunculus" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "FT, Coyne (Jerry A.) - Five Books - The Best Books on Evolution" (Write, 1.25 hours)
- "de Bres (Helena) - Both one and yet distinct" (Read / Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Demopoulos (William) & Friedman (Michael) - Bertrand Russell's The Analysis of Matter: Its Historical Context and Contemporary Interest" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Dempsey (Liam P.) - A Compound Wholly Mortal: Locke and Newton on the Metaphysics of (Personal) Immortality" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Dostoyevsky (Fyodor), Magarshack (David) - The Brothers Karamazov" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Drescher (Jack) - What are Personality Disorders?" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Eddington (Arthur) - The Nature of the Physical World" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Edmonds (David) - Would You Kill the Fat Man? The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us about Right and Wrong" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Englert (Alexander T.) - We’ll meet again" (Read / Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Evans (Gavin) - There was no Jesus" (Read / Write, 5 hours)
- "Furth (Montgomery) - Transtemporal Stability in Aristotelian Substances" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Gardner (Dan) - Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Godfrey-Smith (Peter) - If not vegan, then what?" (Read / Write, 3.75 hours)
- "Goff (Philip) - A Change of Heart on Fine-Tuning" (Read / Write, 3.25 hours)
- "Goff (Philip) - Is the Universe a conscious mind?" (Read / Write, 4 hours)
- "Goff (Philip) - Panpsychism is crazy, but it’s also most probably true" (Read / Write, 4 hours)
- "Goff (Philip) - Purposeful universe" (Read / Write, 3.5 hours)
- "Goff (Philip) - Why religion without belief can still make perfect sense" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Goff (Philip) - Why? The Purpose of the Universe" (Write, 4.75 hours)
- "Grant (Colin) - My blackness" (Read / Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Green (Toby) - After slavery" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Greve (Sebastian Sunday) - AI’s first philosopher" (Read / Write, 3 hours)
- "Guerrini (Anita) - The rights of the dead" (Read / Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Hanley (Richard) - The Metaphysics of Star Trek: To Beam or Not to Beam?" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Harari (Yuval Noah) - Disruption, Democracy & the Global Order" (Read / Write, 15.5 hours)
- "Hart (David Bentley) - The myth of machine consciousness makes Narcissus of us all" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Hershovitz (Scott) - How to do philosophy with kids" (Read / Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Huston (Matt) - There’s a growing case for renaming ‘personality disorders’" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Jabbari (Alexander) - After the mother tongues" (Read / Write, 2.25 hours)
- "O'Connor (Timothy) & Jacobs (Jonathan D.) - Emergent individuals and the resurrection" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Jaekl (Philip) - Human magnetism" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Jarrett (Christian) - Five ways to take control of your dreams" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Knight (Chris) - Decoding Chomsky: Science and Revolutionary Politics" (Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Knight (Chris) - The two Chomskys" (Read / Write, 3.75 hours)
- "Kobie (Nicole) - Quantum computing is here … with one small caveat" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Kremer (Elmar), Ed. - The Great Arnauld, and Some of his Philosophical Correspondents" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Lande (Kevin) - Do you compute?" (Read / Write, 3.75 hours)
- "Law (Stephen) - The evil-god challenge" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Lazar (Seth) - Frontier AI ethics" (Read / Write, 3.25 hours)
- "Leidenhag (Joanna) - Panpsychism and God" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Lencz (Todd) & Carmi (Shai) - Selected before birth" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Leong (Ruth) & Chee (Michael) - How to nap" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "LePoidevin (Robin) - Religious Fictionalism" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Levin (Michael) & Dennett (Daniel) - Cognition all the way down" (Read / Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Liggins (David) - This essay isn’t true" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Locke (John) - Of Identity and Diversity" (Write, 3.5 hours)
- "Locke (John), Bennett (Jonathan) - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding - Book II: Ideas" (Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Loose (Jonathan) - Constitution and the Falling Elevator: The Continuing Incompatibility of Materialism and Resurrection Belief" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Loose (Jonathan) - Materialism Most Miserable The Prospects for Dualist and Physicalist Accounts of Resurrection" (Read / Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Love (Shayla) - Innovative three-year-olds expose the limits of AI chatbots" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Love (Shayla) - Rubber hand illusions shed new light on our bodily sense of self" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Love (Shayla) - When the human tendency to detect patterns goes too far" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Lucci (Diego) - Reconciling Locke’s Consciousness-Based Theory of Personal Identity and His Soteriology" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Lupyan (Gary) - Review: Understanding the Allure and Pitfalls of Chomsky's Science" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Machek (David) - What’s a life worth living? For the ancients, it depends" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Magarshack (David) - The Brothers Karamazov: Translator's Introduction" (Write, 9 hours)
- "Marcus (Gary) - Face It, Your Brain Is a Computer" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Martinho-Truswell (Antone) - How like the kiwi we are" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "McDonald (Lucy) - The magic of the mundane" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "McElvenny (James) - Our language, our world" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "McGuigan (James Camien) - Meaning beyond definition" (Read / Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Mireault (Gina) - Born that way" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Misgar (Umar Lateef) - Wielding death" (Read / Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Mizrahi (Moti ) - What’s so bad about Scientism?" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Mizrahi (Moti) - Why not scientism?" (Read / Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Monti (Alessandro) - A stable sense of self is rooted in the lungs, heart and gut" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Morch (Hedda Hassel ) - Non-physicalist Theories of Consciousness" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Mumford (Peter) - Legacy of the Scythians" (Read / Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Nagel (Thomas) - Panpsychism" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Nehamas (Alexander) - Eristic, Antilogic, Sophistic, Dialectic: Plato's Demarcation of Philosophy from Sophistry" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Nicholson (Arwen E.) & Haywood (Raphaelle D.) - There’s no planet B" (Read / Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Norena (Carlos) - Guide to a foreign past" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "O'Dwyer (Rachel) - The cruelty of crypto" (Read / Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Olson (Eric) - Immanent Causation and Life After Death" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Olson (Eric) - Life After Death and the Devastation of the Grave" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Olson (Eric) - What Are We? Constitution" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Olson (Jay) - Capturing the cosmos" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Orvell (Ariana) & Lebron-Cruz (Alexa) - Essentialism is insidious – but it might also be helpful" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Pas (Heinrich) - All is One" (Read / Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Pierce (Jessica) - Where went the wolf?" (Read / Write, 3 hours)
- "Plantinga (Alvin) - On Existentialism" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Platts-Mills (Ben) - Animal, vegetable, mineral" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Polansky (David) - The battles over beginnings" (Write, 2.75 hours)
- "Price (Huw) & Wharton (Ken) - Untangling entanglement" (Read / Write, 3 hours)
- "Prum (Richard O.) - Artists of our own lives" (Read / Write, 3 hours)
- "Read (Rupert) & Mariqueo-Russell (Atus) - Reviews: What Kind of Creatures Are We? by Noam Chomsky: Decoding Chomsky by Chris Knight" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Reames (Robin) - Ancient Greek antilogic is the craft of suspending judgment" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Reed (Philip) - Why so many plagiarists are in denial about what they did wrong" (Read / Write, 2.75 hours)
- "Rees (Martin) - Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Rees (Martin) - Just Six Numbers - Coincidence, providence - or multiverse?" (Read / Write, 5.75 hours)
- "Rees (Martin) - Just Six Numbers - The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe" (Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Rees (Martin) - What We Still Don't Know" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Rouighi (Ramzi) - Race on the mind" (Read / Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Salmon (Peter) - A philosophy of secrets" (Read / Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Saraceni (Mario) - The problem with English" (Read / Write, 3.5 hours)
- "Sartwell (Crispin) - The post-linguistic turn" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Sartwell (Crispin) - What my mother’s sticky notes show about the nature of the self" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Schaffer (Jonathan) - Monism: The Priority of the Whole" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Schneider (Susan) - Artificial You" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Schneider (Suzanne) - Who bears the risk?" (Read / Write, 4.5 hours)
- "Schofield (Philip) - Jeremy Bentham's ‘Nonsense upon Stilts’" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Scruton (Roger) - Human Rights: Nonsense On Stilts?" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Sepielli (Andrew) - Ethics has no foundation" (Read / Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Sheldon (Kennon) - The three reasons why it’s good for you to believe in free will" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Simon (Ed) - If animals are persons, should they bear criminal responsibility?" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Simoneau-Gilbert (Virginie) & Birch (Jonathan) - The dangers of AI farming" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Singer (Peter) - The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Srinivasan (Krithika) & Pearson (Chris) - The free dogs of India" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Star (Christopher) - How the ancient philosophers imagined the end of the world" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Stavrinaki (Maria) - Prehistory in the atomic age" (Read / Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Stenger (Victor J.), Lindsay (James A.) & Boghossian (Paul) - Physicists Are Philosophers, Too" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Strickland (Lloyd) - Review - Forstrom: John Locke and Personal Identity" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Stump (Eleonore) - Resurrection and the Separated Soul" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Sunstein (Cass R.) - Risk and Reason: Safety, Law, and the Environment" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Szegofi (Akos ) - Beware climate populism" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Taiwo (Olufemi) - It never existed" (Read / Write, 7.5 hours)
- "Temkin (Moshik) - The mythos of leadership" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Terzian (Giulia) & Corbalan (M. Ines) - Do you have a duty to tell people they’re wrong about carrots?" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Thaler (Richard H.), Sunstein (Cass R.) & Balz (John P.) - Choice Architecture" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Thompson (Jon W.) - Individuation, Identity, and Resurrection in Thomas Jackson and John Locke" (Read / Write, 10.75 hours)
- "Thompson (Jon W.) - Personal Identity and Resurrection: Early Modern Philosophical Perspectives" (Read / Write, 23.75 hours)
- "Titelbaum (Michael G.) - How to think like a Bayesian" (Read / Write, 4.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Androids" (Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Psychological Continuity - Forward" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Torres (Emile P.) - The ethics of human extinction" (Read / Write, 3.5 hours)
- "Uzan (Elad) - Moral mathematics" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Uzgalis (William) - Relative Identity and Locke's Principle of Individuation" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - The Possibility of Resurrection" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Walker (Sara) & Cronin (Lee) - Time is an object" (Read / Write, 3.25 hours)
- "Waltner-Toews (David) - Kinship" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Ward (Keith) - Review - Goff - Why? The Purpose of the Universe" (Write, 9 hours)
- "Webb (Claire Isabel) - Cosmic vision" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "White (Roger) - Fine-Tuning and Multiple Universes" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Williamson (Timothy) - The patterns of reality" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Worsnip (Alex) - What is incoherence?" (Read / Write, 2.75 hours)
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Bodily Resurrection: The Falling Elevator Model Revisited" (Read, 0.5 hours)
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - The Compatibility of Materialism and Survival: The “Falling Elevator” Model" (Read, 2.75 hours)
- Thesis - Research Repositioning
Thesis Background (Total Hours = 17)
- Thesis Background - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 10.25)
- Aeon: Dalal - Inventing Hindu supremacy (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Forbes - How to think about time (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Love - What is it like to remember all the faces you’ve ever seen? (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Saul - Beyond dogwhistles – racists have a new rhetorical trick (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Woodward - Terrifying vistas of reality (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Yaden - William James was right about our strange inner experiences (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Yu, Liao & Kruger - What does switching from paper to screens mean for how we read? (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
→ See "Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul) - Aeon: 2019+" (1.75 hours)
- "FT, Baggini (Julian), Warburton (Nigel) - Five Books - The Best Books on How To Think (Like a Philosopher)" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul) - Aeon: 2019+" (Write, 6.5 hours)
- Interaction - Sikh optician & Wikipedia: Eckhart Tolle (Read, 0.5 hours)
→ See "Interaction - Philos-List" (0.5 hours)
- Thesis Background - Books Admin
- Thesis Background - Status
Plans for the Near Future – Top Priority Tasks
- One thing that repeatedly occurs to me is that I’ve got into the habit of collecting stuff – masses of it – and loosely engaging with it, but not doing so seriously enough because of a scatter-gun approach.
- Also, I very seldom write anything of my own without close reference to what others have written. In a sense this is a good thing but is destructive of creativity.
- So, I intend to spend at least an hour each and every day writing my own stuff. This isn’t enough, but we’ll see how things go. Sadly, it hasn’t gone anywhere much in the last academic year.
- So, I have set myself a challenge: write a full-length paper on what I consider to be the critical issue in the philosophy of personal identity: the difference between forward and backward psychological continuity10. Sadly, this hasn’t got far yet. I also want to write a full-length paper on the persistence of Androids11, which might be easier to accomplish.
- I have a skeleton thesis12 in place. This now needs to be filled out.
- Continually review the Note describing my Current Beliefs13 on the topic of Personal Identity, and ensure the associated Notes have some text. Maybe expand it into a proper paper, let Sophie have a look at it and consider submission to Aeon.
- In the coming quarter I hope to
- Ensure that all recently acquired Books and pdfs are logged to my database and appear in the relevant Thesis Chapters, as appropriate.
- Complete my commentary on "Olson (Eric) - What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology".
- Complete outstanding work on Teletransportation14.
- As far as effort is concerned, I’ve had to maintain the plan at 25 hours / week15 rather than increasing it as I’d like.
- Most of what I’m working on appears in the reading lists for the Thesis chapters. Items below16 are either those that don’t, or which require particular focus:-
- Detailed Task List
- Continue with my Thesis17; in particular
- Spend at least an hour a day writing something original; namely, essays on:-
→ The difference between Forward and Backward Psychological Continuity18.
→ The persistence of Androids19.
- Continue filling out those sections of my Thesis that I can write something on without further research, using books / papers already analysed.
- Continually review the Note describing my Current Beliefs20 on the topic of Personal Identity.
- Regularly review and update of the Notes I’ve created on Personal Identity, focusing on those directly referenced by my Current Beliefs21.
- Adjust, Create and Complete new PID Notes as seems necessary:-
- Aristotle: Set up
- Epistemology / Knowledge: Set up
- Language of Thought22: Convert to Language (with LOT as a subsection)
- Metaphilosophy23: Complete draft
- Names: Set up
- Panpsychism: Set up (or include under another Note: Mind or Consciousness. See below)
- Rationality: Set up
- Thought24: Complete draft
- Truth: Set up
- Make progress on specific Chapters of my Thesis, using the tasks outlined in my Thesis Dashboard25, using the materials listed26 in the Chapters and underlying Notes.
- Ensure the following foundational Books27 required for my Thesis are fully annotated28. In particular:-
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View",
- "Olson (Eric) - The Human Animal - Personal Identity Without Psychology", and
- "Olson (Eric) - What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology".
- Read / review the following fall-out items from my review of "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Materialism with a Human Face":-
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Why Constitution is Not Identity"
- "Burke (Michael) - Copper Statues and Pieces of Copper: A Challenge to the Standard Account"
- "Burke (Michael) - Persons and Bodies: How to Avoid the New Dualism"
- "Forsey (Jane) - Humans and Dumb Animals"
- "Gibbard (Allan) - Contingent Identity"
- "Johnston (Mark) - Constitution is Not Identity"
- "Noonan (Harold) - Constitution Is Identity"
- "Olson (Eric) - Reply to Lynne Rudder Baker"
- "Phillips (Patrick) - Talking to the Animals"
- "Snowdon (Paul) - Persons, Animals, and Ourselves"
- "Wells (J'aime) - Language-Using Apes"
- Draw up a further SHORT list of books that MUST be studied in great detail. I'll add them in as they arise in the analysis of the above books.
- "Hawley (Katherine) - How Things Persist",
- "Heller (Mark) - The Ontology of Physical Objects: Four-Dimensional Hunks of Matter",
- "Hoffman (Joshua) & Rosenkrantz (Gary) - Substance: Its Nature and Existence",
- "Hudson (Hud) - A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person",
- "Mellor (D.H.) - Real Time II",
- "Noonan (Harold) - Personal Identity",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Material Beings",
- "Sider (Ted) - Four-dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time",
- "Wiggins (David) - Sameness and Substance Renewed", and
- "Wilson (Jack) - Biological Individuality - The identity and Persistence of Living Entities"
- Read and comment on29 the following remaining PhD Theses relevant to my own Thesis:-
- "Baggini (Julian) - Psychological Reductionism About Persons: A Critical Development",
- "Eddebo (Johan) - Death and the Self: A Metaphysical Investigation of the Rationality of Afterlife Beliefs in the Contemporary Intellectual Climate",
- "Ferner (Adam) - Metaphysics and biology: a critique of David Wiggins’ account of personal identity",
- "Gendler (Tamar Szabo) - Imaginary Exceptions: On the Powers and Limits of Thought Experiment",
- "Keles (Serap) - Personal identity and persistence over time : the hybrid view with regard to hylomorphism",
- "Kotak (Aakash) - The Hybrid Theory of Personal Identity" (MPhil Thesis)
- "Lechthaler (Manuel) - Composition and Identities",
- "Lybaert (Fauve) - Personal Identity and the Formal Self",
- "Paez (Eze) - Abortion: What We Ought to Believe - An Ontological and Normative Analysis",
- "Parsons (Josh) - Theories of Persistence",
- "Rau (Philipp) - The Author, Not the Tale: Memory, Narrative, and the Self",
- "Skow (Bradford) - Once Upon a Spacetime",
- "Southgate (Susan Jane) - Personal Identity: The Simple View",
- "Trakas (Marina) - Personal Memories", and
- "Woods (Evan Thomas) - The Problems of the Many".
- Apply the issues raised by recently-read PhD Theses relevant to my own Thesis to my various Notes:-
- "Atkinson (Thomas) - Human organisms and the survival of death: a systematic evaluation of the possibility of life after death given animalism", see also the Section on Resurrection below
- "Hodson (Sommer) - A Hybrid View of Personal Identity",
- Follow up on Keith Augustine's comments on my review of "Hershenov (David) - Review of Nancey Murphy's 'Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?'".
- Follow up on Wayne Stewart's comments on my Note on Closest Continuers30, including reading and reviewing the following:-
- "Clark (Tom) - Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity"
- "Clark (Tom) - A Notable Theoretical Convergence",
- "Epstein (Dmitry) - What if We’re Still Here? A Selfish Reason to Care for Future Generations",
- "Stewart (Wayne) - Metaphysics by Default",
- "Stewart (Wayne) - Metaphysics by Default - Chapter 09: Existential Passage",
- "Stewart (Wayne) - Uzgalis: Accidentally Opening a Transmigration Window by Nixing the Proper Continuer",
- "Robert (David) - The Existential Passage Hypothesis",
- "Uzgalis (William) - Review - Dainton - The Phenomenal Self",
- "Science Unbound - Teleporters: The Death Machines You Don't Want": Complete reading / reviewing relevant passages in these follow-up items, incorporating lessons into my Note on Teletransportation31:-
- "Hanley (Richard) - The Metaphysics of Star Trek"
- "Gribbin (John) - Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality"
- "Kaku (Michio) - Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation and Time Travel"
- "Krauss (Lawrence M.) - The Physics of Star Trek"
- "Penrose (Roger) - The Emperor's New Mind"
- "YouTube - Video - The Trouble with Transporters"
- Resurrection32
- "Atkinson (Thomas) - Human organisms and the survival of death: a systematic evaluation of the possibility of life after death given animalism", a PhD Thesis noted above
- "Ayers (Michael R.) - Locke's Theory of Personal Identity",
- "Ayers (Michael R.) - Personal Identity Before the Essay",
- "Gasser (Georg), Ed. - Personal Identity and Resurrection: How Do We Survive Our Death?",
- "O'Connor (Timothy) & Jacobs (Jonathan D.) - Emergent individuals and the resurrection",
- "Locke (John) - Of Identity and Diversity",
- "Loose (Jonathan) - Constitution and the Falling Elevator: The Continuing Incompatibility of Materialism and Resurrection Belief",
- "Loose (Jonathan) - Materialism Most Miserable The Prospects for Dualist and Physicalist Accounts of Resurrection",
- "Olson (Eric) - Immanent Causation and Life After Death",
- "Olson (Eric) - Life After Death and the Devastation of the Grave",
- "Thompson (Jon W.) - Individuation, Identity, and Resurrection in Thomas Jackson and John Locke",
- "Thompson (Jon W.) - Personal Identity and Resurrection: Early Modern Philosophical Perspectives",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - The Possibility of Resurrection",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - The Compatibility of Materialism and Survival: The “Falling Elevator” Model",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Bodily Resurrection: The Falling Elevator Model Revisited"
- Complete analysing the following papers33:-
- "FT, Baggini (Julian), Warburton (Nigel) - Five Books - The Best Books on How To Think (Like a Philosopher)", **New**
- "FT, ChatGPT - Five Books - The Best Books on Artificial Intelligence", **New**
- "Cofnas (Nathan) - Research on group differences in intelligence: A defense of free inquiry",
- "Corabi (Joseph) & Schneider (Susan) - The Metaphysics of Uploading",
- "Frary (Mark) - Beyond Repair",
- "Galton (Francis) - Visualised Numerals",
- "Giusti (Elena) & Derbew (Sarah) - Decolonizing Blackness, alongside the Classics Curriculum: A conversation with Dr Sarah Derbew",
- "Gradesaver - The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie: Study Guide - Introduction", Etc.
- "Hume (David) - Treatise I.IV.VI: Of Personal Identity",
- "Kobie (Nicole) - Neuralink: an old idea that could be the future of medicine",
- "Korhonen (Anna), Woodward (Sarah) - This idea must die: 'AI will outsmart the human race'",
- "Middleton (Anna), Welford (Megan) - The Ethics of Genomics"
- "Moreno Figueroa (Monica), Jolin (Lucy) - A world without oppression to you",
- "Mulhall (Stephen), LRB - Non-Identity Crisis", **New**
- "Olson (Eric) - The Central Dogma Of Transhumanism",
- "Paris (J.J.) & Elias-Jones (A.C.) - Do we murder Mary to save Jodie?",
- "Peckham (Jeremy) - AI, humanity and Christian ministry",
- "Putnam (Hilary) - Brains in a Vat",
- "Stenger (Victor J.), Lindsay (James A.) & Boghossian (Paul) - Physicists Are Philosophers, Too", **New**
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Materialism and the Psychological-continuity Account of Personal Identity",
- "Walker (Robert) - Mary And Jodie – The Case Of The Conjoined Twins",
- "Watkin (Christopher) - Christianity and critical race theory",
- "Wikipedia - Large language model", and
- "Zangwill (Nick) - Our Moral Duty to Eat Meat"
- Consciousness34
- Dismantle the above report
- Transfer historic Actuals to Thesis
- Transfer text to:-
→ This Status Report,
→ My Note on Consciousness35.
- Aeon36: Read & annotate papers as they arise, especially ...
- "Chittka (Lars) & Wilson (Catherine) - Bee-brained": Write-up
- "Frankish (Keith) - The Consciousness Illusion": Write-up
- "Frohlich (Joel) - Frames of consciousness": Read & write-up
- "Parks (Tim) & Manzotti (Riccardo) - You are the world": Read & write-up
- "Pigliucci (Massimo) - Consciousness is real": Read & write-up
- "Seth (Anil Kumar) - The real problem": Read & write-up
- "Seth (Anil Kumar) - How we build perception from the inside out": Write-up
- Panpsychism:-
- Set op Note on Panpsychism (as above)
- "BBC, Bragg (Melvyn) - In Our Time - Panpsychism": Review / revise.
- "Goff (Philip) - A Change of Heart on Fine-Tuning": Re-read & comment
- "Goff (Philip) - Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness": Book. Read.
- "Goff (Philip) - Is the Universe a conscious mind?": Re-read & comment
- "Goff (Philip) - Panpsychism is crazy, but it’s also most probably true": Re-read & comment
- "Goff (Philip) - Purposeful universe": Re-read & comment
- "Goff (Philip) - Why? The Purpose of the Universe": Book. Read.
- "JCS - Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 13, Issue 10-11 (2006)": Book. Read.
- Action the following Books and Papers:-
- "Crane (Tim) - Elements of Mind - An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind": Re-read and review notes.
- "Dehaene (Stanislas) - Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts": Read.
- "Dennett (Daniel) - Illusionism as the Obvious Default Theory of Consciousness": Read.
- "Donald (Merlin) - A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness": Read.
- "Eliot (Lise) - What's Going On in There?: How the Brain And Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life": Read.
- "Godfrey-Smith (Peter) - Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life": Read on Kindle
- "Kammerer (Francois) - The Hardest Aspect of the Illusion Problem - and How to Solve it": Read.
- "Metzinger (Thomas), Ed. - Conscious Experience": Burst out Papers and add Metzinger's Abstracts
- "Seth (Anil Kumar) - Being You: A New Science of Consciousness": Read.
- "Shapiro (Lawrence) - The Mind Incarnate": Read.
- "Strawson (Galen) - The Consciousness Deniers": Read & write-up
- "Tegmark (Max) - Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence": Write up Chapter 8: Consciousness
- Ensure the annotations from recently-read Papers are added to the relevant Notes:-
- "Ayers (Michael R.) - Locke on Living Things"
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Materialism with a Human Face"
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Review of 'What Are We? A Study in Personal Ontology' by Eric T. Olson"
- As background tasks:-
- Ensure all items in:-
- "Various - Papers on Desktop", and
- "Various - Papers in Desk Drawer"
are either addressed or re-filed.
- Maintain "Various - Papers & Books Yet To Be Logged", and log papers therein if they become important.
- Convert old PDFs to Notes:-
- Review the two reports:-
- PDF-précis,
- PDF-essays37.
- Determine how the first is produced, and why the pdfs aren't highlighted, and compare with Write-ups Notes Jump Table
- Convert outstanding Essays & Précises.
- Complete cataloguing the books downloaded from Springer,
- Continue / complete reading / annotating various books38 that have landed in my in-tray:-
- "Barash (David P.) - Through a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Our Species as We Really Are",
- "Blatti (Stephan) & Snowdon (Paul), Eds. - Animalism: New Essays on Persons, Animals, and Identity",
- "Bostrom (Nick) - Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies",
- "Bradley (Ben), Feldman (Fred) & Johansson (Jens) - The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death",
- "Clark (Andy) - The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality",
- "Dennett (Daniel) - Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking",
- "Edmonds (David) - Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality",
- "Edmonds (David) - Would You Kill the Fat Man? The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us about Right and Wrong",
- "Erber (Joan T.) & Szuchman (Lenore T.) - Great Myths of Aging",
- "Evans (Gavin) - Skin Deep: Dispelling the Science of Race",
- "Green (Joel B.) - Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible",
- "Hasker (William) - The Emergent Self",
- "Hofstadter (Douglas) & Dennett (Daniel), Eds. - The Mind's I - Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul",
- "Kagan (Shelly) - How to Count Animals, more or less",
- "Korsgaard (Christine) - Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals",
- "Loke (Andrew Ter Ern) - The Origin of Humanity and Evolution: Science and Scripture in Conversation",
- "Levitin (Daniel) - The Changing Mind: A Neuroscientist's Guide to Ageing Well",
- "Lyons (Siobhan) - Death and the Machine: Intersections of Mortality and Robotics",
- "Marshall (Richard) - Philosophy at 3:AM: Questions and Answers with 25 Top Philosophers",
- "Martin (L. Michael) & Augustine (Keith) - The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death",
- "Miller (Kristie) - Issues in Theoretical Diversity: Persistence, Composition, and Time",
- "Peckham (Jeremy) - Masters or Slaves?: AI And The Future Of Humanity",
- "Ricard (Matthieu) - A Plea for the Animals: The Moral, Philosophical, and Evolutionary Imperative to Treat All Beings with Compassion",
- "Rowlands (Mark) - The Philosopher and the Wolf",
- "Schneider (Susan) - Artificial You",
- "Seung (Sebastian) - Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are",
- "Singer (Peter) - The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty",
- "Walker (Matthew P.) - Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams",
- "Wyatt (John) - Matters of Life and Death".
- Continue reading and reviewing papers issued by Aeon39 (and the occasional spin-off). In particular, complete write-ups40 for the following 79 items:-
- "Andersen (Timothy) - All possible worlds" (Date Logged = 2023-11-18)
- "Andersen (Timothy) - Quantum Wittgenstein" (Date Logged = 2024-01-13)
- "Andrews (Kristin) & Birch (Jonathan) - What has feelings?" (Date Logged = 2024-01-24)
- "Avigad (Jeremy) - Principia" (Date Logged = 2024-03-20)
- "Baggini (Julian) - Goodbye Pixel" (Date Logged = 2024-01-07)
- "Banks (Jennifer) - What awaits us?" (Date Logged = 2024-02-16)
- "Barash (David P.) - Anthropic arrogance" (Date Logged = 2024-03-20)
- "Barash (David P.) - Stuck with the soul" (Date Logged = 2024-02-16)
- "Borkenhagen (David) - Octopus time" (Date Logged = 2024-02-15)
- "Butterworth (Brian) - A basic sense of numbers is shared by countless creatures" (Date Logged = 2023-12-28)
- "Cain (Susan) - The immortalists have got it wrong – here’s why we need death" (Date Logged = 2024-01-04)
- "Callcut (Daniel) - Wrestling with relativism" (Date Logged = 2023-10-29)
- "Cleary (Anne) - Déjà vu" (Date Logged = 2023-11-06)
- "Cohn-Gordon (Reuben) - Cathedrals of convention" (Date Logged = 2024-03-22)
- "Curry (Devin Sanchez) - Why academia should embrace ‘Grandma’s metaphysics’" (Date Logged = 2023-12-28)
- "de Bres (Helena) - Both one and yet distinct" (Date Logged = 2024-03-14)
- "Evans (Gavin) - The myth of mirrored twins" (Date Logged = 2023-11-17)
- "Evans (Gavin) - There was no Jesus" (Date Logged = 2024-02-15)
- "Forbes (Graeme A.) - How to think about time" (Date Logged = 2024-04-07)
- "Francione (Gary) - We must not own animals" (Date Logged = 2022-09-30)
- "Francione (Gary) & Charlton (Anna E.) - The case against pets" (Date Logged = 2022-09-30)
- "Frankish (Keith) - The mind isn’t locked in the brain but extends far beyond it" (Date Logged = 2024-04-13)
- "Friston (Karl) - Karl Friston: Embodied cognition" (Date Logged = 2022-09-30)
- "Godfrey-Smith (Peter) - If not vegan, then what?" (Date Logged = 2024-01-26)
- "Goff (Philip) - Why religion without belief can still make perfect sense" (Date Logged = 2024-02-24)
- "Grant (Colin) - My blackness" (Date Logged = 2024-01-10)
- "Greve (Sebastian Sunday) - AI’s first philosopher" (Date Logged = 2024-03-16)
- "Ham (Paul) - Censoring offensive language threatens our freedom to think" (Date Logged = 2024-04-13)
- "Hart (David Bentley) - The myth of machine consciousness makes Narcissus of us all" (Date Logged = 2024-03-04)
- "Hassett (Brenna) - How to grow a human" (Date Logged = 2023-11-16)
- "Hershovitz (Scott) - How to do philosophy with kids" (Date Logged = 2024-01-07)
- "Hoeg (Mette Leonard) - Aphantasia can be a gift to philosophers and critics like me" (Date Logged = 2023-11-18)
- "Humphrey (Nicholas) - Seeing and somethingness" (Date Logged = 2022-10-13)
- "Jaarsma (Ada) - Choose your own birth" (Date Logged = 2023-08-17)
- "King (Barbara J.) - Human exceptionalism imposes horrible costs on other animals" (Date Logged = 2023-12-28)
- "King (Rachael Scarborough) & Rudy (Seth) - The ends of knowledge" (Date Logged = 2023-11-09)
- "Knight (Chris) - The two Chomskys" (Date Logged = 2024-03-14)
- "Lachmann (Michael) & Walker (Sara) - Life ≠ alive" (Date Logged = 2022-09-30)
- "Lande (Kevin) - Do you compute?" (Date Logged = 2024-03-20)
- "Lazar (Seth) - Frontier AI ethics" (Date Logged = 2024-02-23)
- "Levin (Michael) & Dennett (Daniel) - Cognition all the way down" (Date Logged = 2024-03-22)
- "Liggins (David) - This essay isn’t true" (Date Logged = 2024-01-01)
- "Love (Shayla) - What is it like to remember all the faces you’ve ever seen?" (Date Logged = 2024-04-05)
- "Lupyan (Gary) - What colour do you see?" (Date Logged = 2023-12-21)
- "Machek (David) - What’s a life worth living? For the ancients, it depends" (Date Logged = 2024-02-01)
- "Marino (Lori) - Happy the person" (Date Logged = 2022-09-30)
- "McDonald (Lucy) - The magic of the mundane" (Date Logged = 2024-03-31)
- "McElvenny (James) - Our language, our world" (Date Logged = 2024-02-18)
- "Metzinger (Thomas) - Are you sleepwalking now?" (Date Logged = 2022-09-30)
- "Mireault (Gina) - Born that way" (Date Logged = 2024-01-13)
- "Nicholson (Arwen E.) & Haywood (Raphaelle D.) - There’s no planet B" (Date Logged = 2024-01-10)
- "Olson (Jay) - Capturing the cosmos" (Date Logged = 2024-03-09)
- "Orvell (Ariana) & Lebron-Cruz (Alexa) - Essentialism is insidious – but it might also be helpful" (Date Logged = 2024-03-14)
- "Pas (Heinrich) - All is One" (Date Logged = 2024-03-01)
- "Polansky (David) - The battles over beginnings" (Date Logged = 2024-03-30)
- "Price (Huw) & Wharton (Ken) - Untangling entanglement" (Date Logged = 2024-01-18)
- "Prum (Richard O.) - Artists of our own lives" (Date Logged = 2024-02-03)
- "Reed (Philip) - Why so many plagiarists are in denial about what they did wrong" (Date Logged = 2024-02-16)
- "Requarth (Tim) - Our chemical Eden" (Date Logged = 2023-12-27)
- "Sartwell (Crispin) - What my mother’s sticky notes show about the nature of the self" (Date Logged = 2024-03-31)
- "Schneider (Suzanne) - Who bears the risk?" (Date Logged = 2024-03-29)
- "Schwenkler (John) - What does it take for someone to become a ‘different person’?" (Date Logged = 2022-09-30)
- "Sebo (Jeff) - Against human exceptionalism" (Date Logged = 2022-09-30)
- "Sebo (Jeff) & Schukraft (Jason) - Don’t farm bugs" (Date Logged = 2022-09-30)
- "Sepielli (Andrew) - Ethics has no foundation" (Date Logged = 2024-03-14)
- "Shapiro (James A.) - Evolution without accidents" (Date Logged = 2023-11-16)
- "Simon (Ed) - If animals are persons, should they bear criminal responsibility?" (Date Logged = 2024-01-07)
- "Sunar (Neesa) - I have no mind's eye: let me try to describe it for you" (Date Logged = 2023-07-08)
- "Taiwo (Olufemi) - It never existed" (Date Logged = 2024-01-14)
- "Terzian (Giulia) & Corbalan (M. Ines) - Do you have a duty to tell people they’re wrong about carrots?" (Date Logged = 2024-01-04)
- "Torres (Emile P.) - The ethics of human extinction" (Date Logged = 2024-01-29)
- "Uzan (Elad) - Moral mathematics" (Date Logged = 2024-01-01)
- "Waltner-Toews (David) - Kinship" (Date Logged = 2024-03-04)
- "Williamson (Timothy) - The patterns of reality" (Date Logged = 2024-03-01)
- "Worsnip (Alex) - What is incoherence?" (Date Logged = 2024-01-31)
- "Wyatt (Jeremy) & Ulatowski (Joseph) - How to think about truth" (Date Logged = 2023-12-31)
- "Young (Nick) - Time doesn’t flow like a river. So why do we feel swept along?" (Date Logged = 2023-12-28)
- "Zangwill (Nick) - Why you should eat meat" (Date Logged = 2022-09-30)
- "Zeman (Adam) - When the mind is dark, making art is a thrilling way to see" (Date Logged = 2023-12-28)
- Keep up with the Journals via JSTOR & Cambridge Core.
- Update my Journals Note41: Review the journals I have access to; more are available as a Cambridge Alumnus.
- Keep up with the philosophical world by regular reviews of "Interaction - Philos-List", but only seriously pursue items relevant to my research.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 15:
- 25 hours / week – while still ludicrously inadequate for what I want to achieve – is approximately what would be expected of a part-time research student. So, planning to exceed this is ‘a good thing’ provided I use the time wisely and efficiently.
Footnote 16:
- This list is absurdly long, and cannot represent what I’m really working on. It’s really an aide memoir.
Footnote 26:
- I used to itemise in this Note an ever-growing list of items accummulated over time, broken down by Chapter and Note.
- However, now both Chapters and Notes are getting into shape, there is no need to list these items again here, so they have been cut after checking they are covered in their place elsewhere.
Footnote 27:
- This list could get very long, so restrict it to 3 books!
- I'll replace these with new ones when completed.
Footnote 28:
- This is extremely time-consuming, and will not be possible for all books and papers of interest.
Footnote 29:
- There are rather a lot of these, so some will have to be skimmed.
- There were a few more on less central topics.
- I hope to whittle these down as time goes by!
Footnote 33:
- This list used to get inordinately long and has been culled.
- Ensure this doesn't happen again!
Footnote 38:
- This list is getting ludicrously long, and either needs addressing or pruning!
Footnote 40:
- I've managed to reduce the backlog of 'Priority 1' items on my Aeon page to the required 10 items.
- To achieve this in an acceptable timeframe, as well as restricting the new additions, I've been either downgrading the priorities or reading the papers on my Kindle and then adding brief comments and logging them to my database.
- Consequently, most of them then get added to this list for more detailed investigation.
- I'll now - hopefully - start whittling down this list of 79 items, but there's a risk that it'll continue to grow.
Live Version of this Archived Note
Table of 12 Earlier Versions of this Note (of 91)
Table of the 6 Later Versions of this Note
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