Keith Frankish

The lost languages of ancient humans: Listen to stone-age chat The fossilised bones of our ancestors remain silent. So, how can we possibly imagine what our earliest languages sounded like?

The lost languages of ancient humans: Listen to stone-age chat www.bbc.com/future/artic...

Bob Dylan invites his New York neighbour Katharine Hepburn to a party.

Play for Today - Comedians (1979) FULL FILM by Trevor Griffiths & Richard Eyre YouTube video by Play For Forever

This play by Trevor Griffiths is one of the great plays of the twentieth century. It doesn't flatter or comfort its audience; it seizes their attention, shakes them awake, and makes them think. youtu.be/RmHFDVM4k_4

'E were allus a bit intense, our David.

Right-wing authoritarianism is linked to belief in the paranormal, independent of cognitive style New research suggests that people who endorse right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance are more likely to believe in the paranormal. This connection persists even when accounting for a person'...

Well, well, well. Right-wing authoritarianism is linked to belief in the paranormal, independent of cognitive style www.psypost.org/right-wing-a...

Humans Sketched Oddly Precise Geometric Patterns Onto Ostrich Eggs 60,000 Years Ago Prehistoric humans had a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of geometric rules, as this study suggests.

Humans Sketched Oddly Precise Geometric Patterns Onto Ostrich Eggs 60,000 Years Ago gizmodo.com/humans-sketc...

All things bright and beautiful
All creatures great and small

Moon with clouds, foto taken from the roof of my apartment

Cretan nights
(Dedicated to James Baldwin and Keith Frankish)

An old friend, clad in clouds
In a dance that outwhrils imagination.
Keep on whrling, old friend.
May we never forget the light
You shed at night.

Looking for some good readings for a graduate student who is interested in the philosophy and cognitive science of music #perception. Any recommendations—philosophical or otherwise? #PhilPerception #PhilQ

A system can know its own state, but to do so it needs some capacity for self-monitoring.

Brilliant. An expat im Dubai has a startling revelation, by @stephencollins.bsky.social

I imagine an Octopus's garden would be very well kept. What with their having eight arms and all.

We didn't come to firm conclusions, but we talked over lots of interesting ideas, particularly about the role on subpersonal inner speech. But Daniel is the one to ask about this. He's the one actually doing the research!

For me to observe something, my brain needs to detect it. (Unless I am something other than my embodied brain, of course)

I just don't understand how I could be aware of the intrinsic character of physical states within me. Is my laptop aware of the intrinsic character of the memory chips within it?

But are the reports differentially sensitive to the intrinsic character of those states? What ensures that the intrinsic character of the brain state that produces reports of pain and other pain reaction is painfulness? How can we tell it's not something else?

But what reason do you have to think it obtains, if phenomenal facts are fundamentally distinct from physical ones? If you say it's intuitively obvious that it obtains, I'll reply that that's evidence that the two sets of facts are not fundamentally distinct.

how is the system able to respond to this aspect and make reports about it? what causal difference does the phenomenal aspect make to the working of the system?

So how do you know about it?

Shifty characters, these panpsychists ...

How does the brain know what its states are like from the inside?

So we shouldn't take the problem of psychophysical harmony seriously, then? (You can't have it both ways!)

What reason is there to think that people's public testimony accurately reflects the character of their private consciousness? Do our brains have qualia detectors?

I learned a lot too! We'll look forward to that cappuccino!

It's subjective in the sense that it's yours not mine. But so is your body. It doesn't follow that I can't (in principle) know everything about it. (Phenomenal realists deny that. They think that your private mental world is fundamentally distinct from the public physical one.)

I have now!

Subjectivity is one's personal take on the world, constituted by a complex set of psychological reactions, many of them very subtle. Since these reactions are all, in principle, publicly detectable & describable, subjectivity can be fully described in 3rd person terms. The illusion is that it can't!

It will come back. Just give it time!

How then are they detectable at all? How does the brain detect them?