John F Symons

Logic class week 1

John Symons — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 23:15:35 +0000

Philosophy of Mind: The Identity Theory: U.T. Place, Is Consciousness a Brain Process? (September 2010)

John Symons — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 02:21:52 +0000

This set of clips discusses U.T Place’s (1956) ‘Is Consciousness a Brain Process’. Introducing some basic points about identity. Talks about Place’s criticism of what he calls the phenomenological fallacy.

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Philosophy of Mind (aug 2010): Logical Behaviorism

John Symons — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:33:55 +0000

These clips cover logical behaviorism with special focus on Putnam’s ‘Brains and Behavior’ paper.

a logical behaviorism 1

b l behaviorism turing test

c behavior and phenom sources of evidence

d behavioral evidence

e dipositions to behave

f dispositions to behave 2

g defeasability of behavioral defs

h defeasability 2

i super spartans and their brains

Philosophy of Mind: Descartes and the mind-body problem (aug.2010)

John Symons — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 04:23:31 +0000

This set of clips contains discussion of Descartes’ first and second meditation and introduces the problem of the interaction of mind and body

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The individuality of artifacts and organisms.

John Symons — Sat, 01 May 2010 02:52:40 +0000

Symons – the individuality of organisms and artifacts

Some Comments on Susana Badiola’s “Necessity and the A priori: a Traditional Link Revisited”

John Symons — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 21:44:42 +0000

Comments on Susana Badiola’s paper for NMWT 2010

Game Theoretical Semantics as the Basis of a General Logic (With Jaakko Hintikka)

John Symons — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:28:54 +0000

Game theoretical semantics as the basis of a general logic march15 2010

Logic and formal semantics for epistemology

John Symons — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:51:42 +0000

LogicandFormalSemanticsforEpistemologyLongversion

Lehigh faculty seminar in philosophy – The completeness of metaphysical fundamentalism

John Symons — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 02:49:41 +0000

This was a talk I gave on February 12th 2010 to the Lehigh philosophy department’s faculty seminar.
Lehigh Faculty Seminar Audio

The Individuality of Organisms and Artifacts

John Symons — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:45:05 +0000

In recent decades, advances in molecular biology have made the artificial selection of biological functions a familiar part of contemporary civilization: Just as we can whittle a stick into a spear, biologists can now modify an organism to become a factory for fuel or pharmaceuticals. The success of genetic engineering may encourage us to see the distinction between artifacts and organisms as a vestige of our benighted vitalist past. However, in spite of the impressive power of contemporary bio-engineering, our old intuitions concerning the difference between organisms and artifacts still have some content. This paper argues that there is a meaningful difference between organisms and artifacts, that this difference involves the character of their individuality.