Dear All, Tomorrow (30th), Peter Hacker, from the University of Oxford, will give a talk entitled 'Demystifying Consciousness'. An abstract is attached below.
The meeting will start at 5.15pm and will be held in the Fisher Building of St. John's College in either the Boys Smith Room, the Dirac Room, or the Castlereagh Room. As usual, the speaker will present for no longer than 45 minutes, followed by a discussion until 7.00pm. If you would like to join Peter for dinner after the talk, then please let Arif know by responding to his earlier email. The termcard is available online: http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/news_events/moral_sci.html Regards, Daniel Brigham Secretary of the Moral Sciences Club Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge *** Consciousness has been high on the philosophical and cognitive scientific agenda for the last two decades. It is generally held to be mysterious. It is held to be mysterious in as much as no one can say what it is; it is held to be a mystery how consciousness can emerge from mere matter; it is a mystery what it is for and what its evolutionary value can be. It will be argued that these are mystifications, not mysteries. They result from misconceptions about the nature of consciousness. Characterizing consciousness as the 'what-it's-likeness of experience' is a blunder. The idea of 'zombies' is no more cogent than Mickie Mouse. Once the nature of consciousness is clarified, and the pseudo-mysteries are dismantled, the questions are seen to be either absurd or simple to answer. _____________________________________________________ Sent by the CamPhilEvents mailing list. To unsubscribe or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents Posts are archived here: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive
