Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Ned Block on consciousness

Daniel Tippens interviews philosopher Ned Block about his work on the relationship between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness.
So the one that I’m most interested in is what I call phenomenal consciousness, which some people cash out as the redness of red, what it’s like to see or smell or hear, that internal experience that you get when you have a sensation or images in your mind. That’s what I call phenomenal consciousness. Now, I think that’s something we share with animals — certainly other mammals. And you know I believe that it does not require language or much in the way of cognition — maybe nothing in the way of cognition.

Another sense of conscious and consciousness is the one in which we are conscious of things. We are conscious of our own thoughts. We can be conscious of our pains, of our perceptions. That involves some notion of monitoring, some feedback and maybe some awareness of yourself. So that is another notion. That’s called monitoring consciousness or self-consciousness.

Another idea is what I call access consciousness. And that’s when you have an episode of phenomenal consciousness and it is available to your cognitive systems. So you can think about it. You can reason about it. So you smell a certain smell — smoke. And that fact of your smelling smoke can be used by you to think about calling the fire department, or to think about investigating the source of the smoke. That’s what I call access consciousness.
Ned Block on phenomenal consciousness, part I | Scientia Salon

Thursday, May 14, 2015

Reviving the Female Canon

Émilie Du Châtelet is just one of many important historically important female philosophers.
In his first work, published in 1747, Immanuel Kant cites the ideas of another philosopher: a scholar of Newton, religion, science, and mathematics. The philosopher, whose work had been translated into several languages, is Émilie Du Châtelet. Yet despite her powerhouse accomplishments—and the shout-out from no less a luminary than Kant—her work won’t be found in the 1,000-plus pages of the new edition of The Norton Introduction to Philosophy. In the anthology, which claims to trace 2,400 years of philosophy, the first female philosopher doesn’t appear until the section on writing from the mid-20th century. Or in any of the other leading anthologies used in university classrooms, scholars say.
Reviving the Female Canon - The Atlantic

Sunday, May 03, 2015

Congratulations 2015 SAP Student Award Winners!


SAP Departmental Student Awards


OUTSTANDING STUDENT IN ANTHROPOLOGY

Brittany High

AWARD OF ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE IN ANTHROPOLOGY

Helena Sizemore

OUTSTANDING STUDENT IN CELTIC STUDIES

Helena Sizemore

OUTSTANDING STUDENT IN ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS

Aaron Jacobson

OUTSTANDING STUDENT IN NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES

Nicholas Thaxton

2014/15 MERT FREUDENBERG SCHOLARSHIP

Kaitlyn Ragland

OUTSTANDING GRADUATING SENIOR IN SOCIOLOGY

Lauren James        Caitlin Harrah

OUTSTANDING SOCIOLOGY MAJOR IN APPLIED SOCIOLOGY

David Perez

OUTSTANDING SOCIOLOGY MINOR IN APPLIED SOCIOLOGY

Rachel Ellison

OUTSTANDING SOCIOLOGY GRADUATE IN COMMUNITY OUTREACH AND SERVICE

Caitlin Harrah

OUTSTANDING STUDENT IN PHILOSOPHY

Mark Kennedy

OUTSTANDING STUDENT IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Jim Fletcher

ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE IN PHILOSOPHY

Jenni Cattran        Nicollette Carmack

ACCOMPLISHED STUDENT IN PHILOSOPHY

Jonathan Cordova

PHILOSOPHY VOLUNTEERS AWARD

Cory Clark        Ashley Poe

Student Award Winners for 2015 SAP Photo Essay Contest:

Zachary Nothstine
Kaitlyn Ragland
Lindsey Meador
Jack Lowe
Andrea Carter

Student Award Winners for 2015 SAP Undergraduate Photo Essay Project:

Tara Pennington
Stefan Kienzle
Kaitlyn Ragland
Nicole Crawford



Congratulations to all of the winners and to all graduates this year!!