Philosophy of Mind « Philosophy TV

Kate Padgett Walsh and Laura Papish

Kate Padgett Walsh and Laura Papish on love and freedom in Frankfurt and Hegel.

Harry Frankfurt defends a view of love of a species of care. In this conversation, Walsh and Papish discuss Frankfurt’s view and compare it to a Hegelian alternative. They begin (1:21) with Walsh’s argument that Frankfurt’s view cannot adequately account […]

Al Mele and Eddy Nahmias

Al Mele and Eddy Nahmias on free will and science.

Mele and Nahmias start by explaining how they first became seriously interested in the relationship of free will to science. Then (12:44) they discuss the infamous Libet experiments, which are often interpreted as evidence that our conscious decisions are determined by earlier nonconscious brain […]

Justin Sytsma and Adam Arico

Justin Sytsma and Adam Arico on folk intuitions about phenomenal experience.

Note: This is the final entry in a series of PTV discussions involving contributors to Machery and O’Neill (eds.), Current Controversies in Experimental Philosophy (2014)

Sytsma and Arico begin with an overview of empirical investigations of folk intuitions about phenomenal consciousness. Then (15:03) […]

Gregg Caruso and Neil Levy

Gregg Caruso and Neil Levy on consciousness and moral responsibility.

It seems that consciousness and moral responsibility are somehow connected. For example, intuitively, a person who is completely unconscious—e.g., a sleepwalker, or a person in a coma—cannot be responsible for what she does or fails to do. Levy has recently argued that moral responsibility […]

Gregg Caruso and Bruce Waller

Gregg Caruso and Bruce Waller on free will and moral responsibility.

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Most people believe that we can and should be held morally responsible for our actions. Caruso and Waller both hold that this belief is not only false, but harmful. They recommend that we abandon the notion of […]

Amy Kind and Angela Mendelovici

Amy Kind and Angela Mendelovici on representationalism about moods.

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Note: This is the first in a series of collaborations between Philosophy TV and Routledge.

Representationalism is the view that the phenomenal character of any given mental state (what it is like to be in that state) is (or […]

Philip Goff and David Papineau

Philip Goff (left) and David Papineau (right) on physicalism.

Goff rejects physicalism. Papineau accepts it. In this episode, they examine the arguments on each side. They consider the much-discussed “knowledge argument” against physicalism (10:28), explore Goff’s own reasons for rejecting physicalism (17:23), weigh the dualist arguments of Chalmers and Jackson (27:21), discuss Papineau’s reasons […]

Kristin Andrews and Robert Lurz

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Part 2:

Kristin Andrews (left) and Robert Lurz (right) on animals and mindreading.

In this two-part conversation*, Andrews and Lurz discuss whether (and to what extent) non-human animals are able to mindread, i.e., understand others’ mental states. In Part 1, they begin with a review of the history of inquiry into […]

Shaun Gallagher and Karsten Stueber

Shaun Gallagher (left) and Karsten Stueber (right) on empathy.

Most people possess a substantial (although also limited) ability to know and understand the actions, intentions, and desires of other people. In this conversation, Gallagher and Stueber examine the notion of empathy and its importance for debates in the philosophy of mind. They ask: What […]

Jonathan Weisberg and Kenny Easwaran

Jonathan Weisberg (left) and Kenny Easwaran (right) on full and partial belief.

An epistemic agent might be more deeply committed to some of her beliefs (e.g., that 2+2=4) than others (e.g., that Obama will be re-elected in 2012). In light of this, many philosophers want to distinguish between full and partial belief. But what […]