Theo Todman's Web Page - Notes Pages
Status Reports
Status: Personal Identity (2024 - September)
(Text as at 10/10/2024 00:47:31)
*** 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 July - September 2024
- I spent 216.25 hours in 24Q3 on this Project, or related work (1180.5 hours YTD, where for "YTD" - Year to Date - I mean the (academic) year that commenced in October 2023). That's 79% of the planned effort (93.4% YTD). Overall, 32.2% of my Project effort in the Quarter was directed towards this project (making 40.2% YTD) - as against 40.4% planned (42.4% YTD).
- As can be seen, I only spent around 80% of my time allowance on this project in 24Q3, though over 90% YTD.
- I’ve removed most of the comments on current and planned activities that appeared in the previous report. The last quarter was a bit of a mish-mash, though some interesting stuff was covered:-
- I read "Birch (Jonathan) - The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI". Many interesting ideas. While this wasn’t central to the book, there was a useful survey on the philosophy of Consciousness4.
- I read several items on the philosophy of Resurrection5 by various Christian philosophers.
- I followed up on issues of co-location following on from the Constitution View6.
- Read and started commenting on "Chapman (Colin) - The Israel-Hamas war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict". Not sure why it was booked to this project!
- Read or acquired sundry works on Life7.
- Read and started commenting on "Fox-Leonard (Boudicca) - The Buck Stops Here", related to Animal Rights8.
- Reviewed sundry stuff on the philosophy of Pregnancy9, in particular "Geddes (Alexander) - Pregnancy, Parthood and Proper Overlap".
- Came across the author of "Lawrance (John) - Hosting Andrew" while dog-walking in Norfolk. A variant of Locke’s ‘Prince and the Cobbler” Thought Experiment10.
- Read "McGrath (James F.) - Why 'Life Begins at Conception' Is Simply Not True". Important in the philosophy of Abortion11, but contains some muddles about Origins12.
- I completed reading "Vonnegut (Kurt) - Slaughterhouse 5, or The Children's Crusade - A Duty-dance with Death", which has some interesting ideas on the philosophy of Time13.
Most of these items require further work.
- To control the various links within my Thesis, I’ve created and maintained a PID Note Usage14 Page, though this didn’t get much of a look in this Quarter. However, I intend it to be a major focus in the near future.
- Progress between reports can be obtained from the relevant section of my Summary Task List15.
- A full list of items worked on in the quarter appears below:-
Thesis (Total Hours = 187.75)
- Thesis - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 162.25)
- "Alma (Sam) - The problem of erring animals" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Ball (Philip) - How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology" (Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Ball (Philip) - In Retrospect: What Is Life?" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Baron (Teresa) - A lost cause? Fundamental problems for causal theories of parenthood" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Baron (Teresa) - Nobody puts Baby in the container: the foetal container model at work in medicine and commercial surrogacy" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Birch (Jonathan) - The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI" (Read / Write, 48.25 hours)
- "Burke (Michael) - Persons and Bodies: How to Avoid the New Dualism" (Read, 1.25 hours)
- "Burke (Michael) - Preserving the Principle of One Object to a Place: A Novel Account of the Relations Amongst Objects, Sorts, Sortals, and Persistence Conditions" (Read / Write, 5 hours)
- "Chapman (Colin) - The Israel-Hamas war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" (Read / Write, 8.75 hours)
- "Desmond (Abigail) & Haslam (Michael) - What is intelligent life?" (Read / Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Finn (Suki) - Methodology for the metaphysics of pregnancy" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Finn (Suki) - The Metaphysics of Surrogacy" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Fox-Leonard (Boudicca) - The Buck Stops Here" (Read / Write, 5.5 hours)
- "Freedman (Sam) - Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It" (Read / Write, 5 hours)
- "Geddes (Alexander) - Pregnancy, Parthood and Proper Overlap" (Read / Write, 4.5 hours)
- "Gerits (Frank) - The route to progress" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Glaser (Eliane) - Me versus myself" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Gribbin (John) - Schrodinger's Kittens: Teletransportation" (Read / Write, 3 hours)
- "Grose (Jonathan) - How many organisms during a pregnancy?" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Harari (Yuval Noah) - Disruption, Democracy & the Global Order" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Harris (Charles B.) - Time, Uncertainty, And Kurt Vonnegut, Jr - A Reading Of Slaughterhouse-Five" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Hedebrant (Kare) & Herlitz (Agneta) - In more prosperous societies, are men and women more similar?" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Kakkar (Hemant) & Brady (Garrett L.) - How a ‘dominance’ mindset encourages leaders to put others at risk" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Kelly (Daniel) & Westra (Evan) - Moral progress is annoying" (Read / Write, 4 hours)
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - Biological Individuality, Pregnancy, and (Mammalian) Reproduction" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - BUMP: Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy" (Write, 7.75 hours)
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - Functions and health at the interface of biology and technology" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - Were You Part of Your Mother?" (Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Kingma (Elselijn) & Finn (Suki) - Neonatal Incubator or Artificial Womb? Distinguishing Ectogestation and Ectogenesis using the Metaphysics of Pregnancy" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Krznaric (Roman) - The disruption nexus" (Read / Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Kunze (Peter C.) - For the Boys - Masculinity, Gray Comedy, and the Vietnam War in Slaughterhouse Five" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Lawrance (John) - Hosting Andrew" (Read / Write, 3.5 hours)
- "Mallapaty (Smriti) - Human embryo models are getting more realistic — raising ethical questions" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Mavrodes (George I.) - The Life Everlasting and the Bodily Criterion of Identity" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "McGrath (James F.) - Why 'Life Begins at Conception' Is Simply Not True" (Read / Write, 3.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - One or two? A Process View of pregnancy" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Noble (Raymond) & Noble (Denis) - Understanding Living Systems" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Penrose (Roger) - The Emperor's New Mind: Teletransportation & Fission" (Write, 2 hours)
- "Phillips (Patrick) - Talking to the Animals" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Quinn (Philip L.) - Personal Identity, Bodily Continuity and Resurrection" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Quinn (Philip L.) - Some Problems about Resurrection" (Read / Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Schrodinger (Erwin) - What is Life?" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Seldon (Anthony) - The Conservative Effect, 2010–2024: 14 Wasted Years?" (Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Thucydides, Crawley (Richard), Warrington (John) - The History of the Peloponnesian War" (Read / Write, 3.25 hours)
- "Velleman (David) - So It Goes" (Read / Write, 3.25 hours)
- "Venkataraman (Vivek V.) - Lessons from the foragers" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Vonnegut (Kurt) - Slaughterhouse 5, or The Children's Crusade - A Duty-dance with Death" (Read / Write, 7.75 hours)
- "Wallingford (John) - Building embryos" (Read, 0.5 hours)
- "Wells (J'aime) - Language-Using Apes" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Wexler (Anna) & Feinsinger (Ashley) - Ethical challenges in translating brain–computer interfaces" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Woollard (Fiona) - ‘Utilitarianism for animals: deontology for people’ and the doing/allowing distinction" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Woollard (Fiona) - Mother Knows Best: Pregnancy, Applied Ethics, and Epistemically Transformative Experiences" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Woollard (Fiona) - Philosophy can explain what kind of achievement it is to give birth" (Read / Write, 3.75 hours)
- "Zinn (Anna K.) - You have multiple ‘social identities’ – here’s how to manage them" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- Thesis - Research Repositioning (Total Hours = 25.5)
Thesis Background (Total Hours = 28.5)
- Thesis Background - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 22.5)
- Thesis Background - Books Admin
- Thesis Background - Status
Plans for the Near Future – Top Priority Tasks
- As far as effort is concerned, I’ve had to greatly reduce the already reduced plan to 16 hours / week16 rather than increasing it as I’d like. This is on account of a perceived need to focus on my Web-Tools project.
- 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 continuity17. Sadly, this hasn’t got far yet. I also want to write a full-length paper on the persistence of Androids18, which might be easier to accomplish.
- I have a skeleton thesis19 in place. This now needs to be filled out.
- I need to continually review the Note describing my Current Beliefs20 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.
- Create and correct the Notes in the list below.
- Most of what I’m working on appears in the reading lists for the Thesis chapters. Items below21 are either those that don’t, or which require particular focus:-
- Detailed Task List
- Continue with my Thesis22; in particular
- Spend at least an hour a day writing something original; namely, essays on:-
→ The difference between Forward and Backward Psychological Continuity23.
→ The persistence of Androids24.
- 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 Beliefs25 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 Beliefs26.
- Adjust, Create and Complete new PID Notes as seems necessary:-
- Aristotle: Set up
- Connectionism: Set up
- Epistemology / Knowledge: Set up
- Innateness: Set up
- Language of Thought27: Convert to Language (with LOT as a subsection)
- Metaphilosophy28: Complete draft
- Modularity (of Mind): Set up
- Names: Set up
- Panpsychism: Set up (or include under another Note: Mind or Consciousness. See below)
- Paradox: Set up
- Rationality: Set up
- Thought29: Complete draft
- Truth: Set up
- Make progress on specific Chapters of my Thesis, using the tasks outlined in my Thesis Dashboard30, using the materials listed31 in the Chapters and underlying Notes.
- Ensure the following foundational Books32 required for my Thesis are fully annotated33. 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"
- "Burke (Michael) - Preserving the Principle of One Object to a Place: A Novel Account of the Relations Amongst Objects, Sorts, Sortals, and Persistence Conditions"
- "Gibbard (Allan) - Contingent Identity"
- "Johnston (Mark) - Constitution is Not Identity"
- "Noonan (Harold) - Constitution Is Identity"
- "Olson (Eric) - Reply to Lynne Rudder Baker"
- "Snowdon (Paul) - Persons, Animals, and Ourselves"
- On human exceptionalism:-
→ "Forsey (Jane) - Humans and Dumb Animals"
→ "Phillips (Patrick) - Talking to the Animals"
→ "Wells (J'aime) - Language-Using Apes"
- Also:-
→ "Hurley (Susan) & Nudds (Matthew) - Rational Animals?"
→ "Savage-Rumbaugh (E.Sue) & Lewin (Roger) - Kanzi: Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind"
- 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 on34 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 Continuers35, 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) - Metaphysics by Default - Chapter 17: Application to Other Species",
- "Stewart (Wayne) - Metaphysics by Default - Chapter 20: Proof and Speculation",
- "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",
- Teletransportation36 (Update Note using the following):-
- "Science Unbound - Teleporters: The Death Machines You Don't Want": Complete reading / reviewing relevant passages in these follow-up items
- "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"
- Resurrection37
- "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?",
- "Graves (Shawn), Hereth (Blake) & John (Tyler M.) - In Defense of Animal Universalism",
- "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",
- "Mavrodes (George I.) - The Life Everlasting and the Bodily Criterion of Identity",
- "Mooney (Justin) - The possibility of resurrection by reassembly",
- "O'Donnell (Patrick S.) - Death & Dying: A Select bibliography",
→ Also "O'Donnell (Patrick S.) - Human Nature, Personhood, and Personal Identity: A Select bibliography",
- "Olson (Eric) - Immanent Causation and Life After Death",
- "Olson (Eric) - Life After Death and the Devastation of the Grave",
- "Quinn (Philip L.) - Personal Identity, Bodily Continuity and Resurrection",
- "Quinn (Philip L.) - Some Problems about Resurrection",
- "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"
- BUMP: Follow up on papers from "Kingma (Elselijn) - BUMP: Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy":-
- "Baron (Teresa) - A lost cause? Fundamental problems for causal theories of parenthood".
- "Baron (Teresa) - Nobody puts Baby in the container: the foetal container model at work in medicine and commercial surrogacy".
- "Finn (Suki) - Bun or bump?".
- "Finn (Suki) - Methodology for the metaphysics of pregnancy".
- "Finn (Suki) - The Metaphysics of Surrogacy".
- "Geddes (Alexander) - Pregnancy, Parthood and Proper Overlap".
- "Grose (Jonathan) - How many organisms during a pregnancy?".
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - Biological Individuality, Pregnancy, and (Mammalian) Reproduction".
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - BUMP: Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy (B1)".
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - BUMP: Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy (B2)".
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - Functions and health at the interface of biology and technology".
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - Lady Parts: The Metaphysics of Pregnancy".
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - Nine months".
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - Were You Part of Your Mother?".
- "Kingma (Elselijn) & Finn (Suki) - Neonatal Incubator or Artificial Womb? Distinguishing Ectogestation and Ectogenesis using the Metaphysics of Pregnancy".
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - One or two? A Process View of pregnancy".
- "Woollard (Fiona) - Mother Knows Best: Pregnancy, Applied Ethics, and Epistemically Transformative Experiences".
- "Woollard (Fiona) - Philosophy can explain what kind of achievement it is to give birth".
- "Woollard (Fiona) - ‘Utilitarianism for animals: deontology for people’ and the doing/allowing distinction".
- Complete analysing the following papers38:-
- "Cofnas (Nathan) - Research on group differences in intelligence: A defense of free inquiry",
- "Corabi (Joseph) & Schneider (Susan) - The Metaphysics of Uploading",
- "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**
- "FT, Coyne (Jerry A.) - Five Books - The Best Books on Evolution",
- "FT, Dennett (Daniel) & Warburton (Nigel) - Five Favorite Books",
- "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.
- "Harari (Yuval Noah) - Disruption, Democracy & the Global Order" (update in the light of YouTube video and CSER summary),
- "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",
- "Velleman (David) - Beyond Price", **New**
- "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"
- Consciousness39
- Dismantle the above report
- Transfer historic Actuals to Thesis
- Transfer text to:-
→ This Status Report,
→ My Note on Consciousness40.
- Aeon41: 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 up 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.
- Modularity, Connectionism & Innateness: update Note42 using the following:-
- "Clark (Andy) - Microcognition – Philosophy Cognitive Science & Parallel Distributed Processing",
- "Fodor (Jerry) - There and Back Again: A Review of Annette Karmiloff-Smith's Beyond Modularity",
- "Fodor (Jerry) & Pylyshyn (Zenon) - Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture: A Critical Analysis",
- "Elman (Jeffrey), Bates (Elizabeth), Johnson (Mark), Karmiloff-Smith (Annette), Parisi (Domenico) & Plunkett (Kim) - Rethinking Innateness",
- "Karmiloff-Smith (Annette) - Beyond Modularity",
- "Plunkett (Kim) & Elman (Jeffrey) - Exercises in Rethinking Innateness - A Handbook for Connectionist Simulations",
- "Pylyshyn (Zenon) - Computation and Cognition: Toward a Foundation of Cognitive Science",
- "Rowlands (Mark) - Connectionism and the Language of Thought",
- Action the following Books and Papers:-
- "Birch (Jonathan) - The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI": Burst out Papers; Read
- "Bonhomme (Vincent), Etc. - General Anesthesia: A Probe to Explore Consciousness": Read & write-up
- "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.
- "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-essays43.
- 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 books44 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) - 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",
- "Green (Joel B.) - Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible",
- "Heyam (Kit) - Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender",
- "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",
- "Lawrance (John) - Hosting Andrew",
- "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",
- "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",
- "Price (Huw) - Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time",
- "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",
- "Shermer (Michael), Gould (Stephen Jay) - Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time",
- "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",
- "Vonnegut (Kurt) - Slaughterhouse 5, or The Children's Crusade - A Duty-dance with Death",
- "Walker (Matthew P.) - Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams",
- "Wasserman (Ryan) - The Paradoxes of Time Travel", and
- "Wyatt (John) - Matters of Life and Death".
- Continue reading and reviewing papers issued by Aeon45 (and the occasional spin-off). In particular, complete write-ups46 for the following 117 items: Follow this Link47.
- Keep up with the Journals via JSTOR & Cambridge Core.
- Update my Journals Note48: 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 16:
- 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 21:
- This list is absurdly long, and cannot represent what I’m really working on. It’s really an aide memoir.
Footnote 31:
- 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 32:
- This list could get very long, so restrict it to 3 books!
- I'll replace these with new ones when completed.
Footnote 33:
- This is extremely time-consuming, and will not be possible for all books and papers of interest.
Footnote 34:
- 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 38:
- This list used to get inordinately long and has been culled.
- Ensure this doesn't happen again!
Footnote 44:
- This list is getting ludicrously long, and either needs addressing or pruning!
Footnote 46:
- 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 117 items, but there's a risk that it'll continue to grow.
- To help with the 'whittling' I've added both the date the item was added to this list and its current status, which is to progress down the following list:-
→ 1. Read, or ...
→ 2. Re-read
→ 3. Draft 'Paper' Notes
→ 4. Read Aeon Comments
→ 5. Update 'Paper' Notes
→ 6. Apply to PID Notes
- Above '2. Re-read' is a little directionless. It usually means 'Re-read with the intention of performing one or more of actions 3, 5 and 6.'
Live Version of this Archived Note
Table of 12 Earlier Versions of this Note (of 93)
Table of the 4 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