Dear all, this is to remind you that Jonathan Schaffer (Rutgers) will be giving a paper on 'Ground Functionalism' at tomorrow's Moral Sciences Club, and that there is still time to sign up for the dinner.
Here is the abstract of the talk: *I offer a conception of the place of the mind in the material world, which synthesizes analytic functionalism with a grounding-based approach to metaphysical structure, by seeing phenomenal states as grounded via functional role. According to ground functionalism, a subject is in pain because she is in a state that plays the pain-role, and in general a subject is in a given phenomenal state because she is in some state that plays the corresponding functional role. (The phenomenal state is neither identified with nor defined via the functional role; rather what is asserted is that there is a grounding relation.) I argue that re-conceiving functionalism via grounding permits a materialist explanation of conscious experience, and overall preserves the core insights while avoiding the worst problems of analytic functionalism.* The meeting will be held on Tuesday 16th October at 2:30 until 4:15, in the Jane Harrison Room at Newnham College, and will be followed by tea and coffee. If you would like to have dinner with the speaker in the evening following the talk at the Moral Sciences Club, please email the secretaries of the club (mscsecretar...@gmail.com) by midday on Monday. This dinner is open to anyone who has attended the talk and it will take place at around 7pm at a location to be determined (those who sign up for dinner will be notified of the details by email closer to the time). Best, -- Annie Bosse, Benjamin Marschall and Lucy McDonald Secretaries of the Moral Sciences Club Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge msc...@hermes.cam.ac.uk http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/seminars-phil/seminars-msc _____________________________________________________ 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.
