Dear all,
This Thursday (Oct 29) at the Serious Metaphysics Group, Alex Moran will be giving his talk entitled On the Thinking Parts Problem (abstract below). The seminar will be at 1.00-2.30pm, at the Philosophy Faculty Board Room. You are welcome to bring along your lunch, if you are arriving from another talk/lecture beforehand. For the rest of the Michaelmas term card, please do have a look here: http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/seminars-phil/SMG [1] Best wishes, Li Li --- Abstract The thinking parts problem poses a serious threat to our conception of ourselves as material beings. The problem is this: there is an argument to show that if we really are material things--for instance animals or brains--then each of us contains a mighty host of conscious proper parts within our borders. However, this conclusion is absurd! It is just not the case that, within my boundaries, there are myriad conscious beings, each with their own subjective mental lives! The thinking parts problem, therefore, threatens to reduce to absurdity the claim that we human persons are material things. Fortunately, I think we can handle the thinking parts problem (albeit with some difficulty). In this talk, I first set out the problem, and then briefly explain why the extant responses fail. I then spend the rest of the talk sketching some new ways to handle the problem. -- Li Li Tan PhD (Probationary) in Philosophy St Catharine's College Links: ------ [1] http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/seminars-phil/SMG _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
