Theo Todman's Web Page - Notes Pages
Status Reports
Status: Personal Identity (2025 - March)
(Text as at 07/04/2025 00:15:50)
Rationale for this Project
- I am researching the subject of Personal Identity primarily because of its intrinsic interest and importance. But I think when I’ve sorted it out a bit, and have something to say, I’ll want to engage with other philosophers active in this field and re-starting a PhD at Birkbeck or elsewhere might be the only effective way to do this. While a PhD is not an end in itself, and certainly not the ultimate aim of my doing philosophy, it’s still true that a PhD would teach me research techniques, provide focus and direction, and furnish a professional qualification should I want to publish any results in this or any other area of philosophy.
- The best place to get an overview of my current views is here1.
- The jumping-off point for my thesis is here2, though follow the links from the Chapter Abstracts for the real work, and a (currently not very helpful) progress dashboard is here3.
Summary of Progress during January - March 2025
- I spent 172.75 hours in 25Q1 on this Project, or related work (391.75 hours YTD, where for "YTD" - Year to Date - I mean the (academic) year that commenced in October 2024). That's 82.8% of the planned effort (93.9% YTD). Overall, 21.6% of my Project effort in the Quarter was directed towards this project (making 25.3% YTD) - as against 25.8% planned (25.8% YTD).
- To make way for important work on my Web-Tools Project, I’d retained the time allowance on this project in 25Q1 at the somewhat reduced allocation of 16 hours / week. I expended somewhat less than this, as can be seen above.
- My reading of Aeon had got into a bit of a mess. I’d read a lot of papers, but made no comments on them. So, I stopped adding papers to the database for most of the quarter while I caught up with the commentaries, which took quite an effort. I’ve consequently now got a backlog, but only intend to add new items when I have time both to read and comment on them.
- Consequently, I didn’t make as much progress on the consolidated version of my Thesis - Personal Identity4 as I’d hoped. I intend to work this into a Thesis-proper, with the rest of the website as supporting material.
- To control the various links within my Thesis, I’ve created and maintained a PID Note Usage5 Page, though this didn’t get much of a look in this Quarter. However, I intend it to be a major focus in the near future.
- Progress between reports can be obtained from the relevant section of my Summary Task List6.
- A full list of items worked on in the quarter appears below:-
Thesis (Total Hours = 139.75)
- Thesis - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 136.75)
- "Aeon - Video - Can you transplant a head to another body?" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Aeon - Video - Shattering stars" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Aeon - Video - The ancient hookup that changed humanity" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Aeon - Video - The life of an (extra)ordinary Roman soldier" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- Aeon: Cooperrider - Gesture talks (Comments; Read, 1 hour)
- Aeon: Huenemann - If I teleport from Mars, does the original me get destroyed? (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Lacaux - The brain’s twilight zone: when you’re neither awake nor asleep (Comments; Read, 0.25 hours)
→ See "Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul) - Aeon: 2019+" (1.5 hours)
- "Aftab (Awais) - What a psychiatric diagnosis means – and what it doesn’t mean" (Read / Write, 2.75 hours)
- "Baggott (Jim) - Calculate but don’t shut up" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Bayne (Tim) - The stories of Daniel Dennett" (Read / Write, 2.5 hours)
- BBC: R4 - Human Intelligence - Collectors - Sei Shōnagon (Read, 0.25 hours)
- BBC: R4 - Human Intelligence - Travellers - Aristotle (Read, 0.25 hours)
→ See "BBC - Miscellaneous iPlayer and Podcasts" (0.5 hours)
- "Bernhardt-Radu (Stefan) - The eugenicist of UNESCO" (Read / Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Berns (Gregory) - What It's Like to Be a Dog: And Other Adventures in Animal Neuroscience" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Carroll (Sean M.) - Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime" (Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Carroll (Sean M.) - Splitting the Universe" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "De Waal (Frans) - Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Dennett (Daniel) - I've Been Thinking" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Everett (Hugh) - 'On the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics,' short thesis as defended, 1957" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Everett (Hugh), Wheeler (John Archibald), Etc. - 'The Theory of the Universal Wave Function,' long thesis as published, 1973" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Fassberg (Teddy) - I am an article about the speaking objects of ancient Greece" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Giordano (Guido), Etc. - Unique formation of organic glass from a human brain in the Vesuvius eruption of 79 CE" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Goldin-Meadow (Susan) - Expert tips on using gestures to think and talk more effectively" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Gotlib (Anna) - Main character syndrome" (Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Hayward (Mark) - If you hear voices, here are some empowering ways to respond" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Hochuli (Alex) - Utopia brasileira" (Read / Write, 3 hours)
- Howtown: The real danger of alcohol (Read, 0.25 hours)
→ See "BBC - Miscellaneous iPlayer and Podcasts" (0.25 hours)
- "Hubert (Mario) - The nature of natural laws" (Read, 1.75 hours)
- "Huenemann (Charlie) - If I teleport from Mars, does the original me get destroyed?" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Jennings (Colin) - A linkless internet" (Read / Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Johansson (Jens) - Parfit on fission" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Kensinger (Elizabeth) & Budson (Andrew) - How to get better at remembering" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Kent (Adrian) - Our quantum problem" (Read / Write, 4.25 hours)
- "Kirsch (Robert) & Ray (Emily) - Bunkerised society – why prepping for end times is so American" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Koch (Christof) - Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist" (Read, 3.5 hours)
- "Krakauer (David C.) & Kempes (Chris) - Problem-solving matter" (Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Kuhn (Robert Lawrence) & Stump (Eleonore) - Video - Eleonora Stump on the problem of evil" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Lau (Nathan T.T.) & Sokolowski (H. Moriah) - If you think you are ‘just not a math person’ then think again" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Lerner (Eric) - The Big Bang Never Happened" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Linden (Ingemar Patrick) - As a society, we’re not death phobic, we’re death complacent" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Linford (Daniel) - Exploding the Big Bang" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Marston (Paul) - After Death: The Intermediate State" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Marston (Paul) - Can Dead Believers Interact with the Living?" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Marston (Paul) - Death and ‘Hell’: What the New Testament Does and Does Not Teach" (Read / Write, 4.5 hours)
- "Marston (Paul) - Hellfire and Destruction: What Does the Bible Really Say about Hell?" (Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Mercedes (Leoni) - Late autism diagnosis: it’s a relief, but who’s behind the mask?" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Misak (Cheryl) - The underground university" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Morton (Jennifer M.) - The spectre of insecurity" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Mulhall (Stephen), LRB - How complex is a lemon?" (Read / Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Noe (Alva) - Rage against the machine" (Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Oderberg (David) - Life makes mistakes" (Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Qureshi-Hurst (Emily) - Is the Problem of Evil Made Worse by the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics?" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Qureshi-Hurst (Emily) - Many Worlds and Moral Responsibility" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Qureshi-Hurst (Emily) - Many worlds, many selves" (Read / Write, 5.25 hours)
- "Qureshi-Hurst (Emily) - The Many Worries Of Many Worlds" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Rosenberger (Robert) - The reason that even hands-free calls are risky for drivers" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Sacks (Oliver) - Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain" (Read, 0.75 hours)
- "Salmon (Wesley) - The Uniformity of Nature" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Sandford (Stella) - Seeing plants anew" (Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Schechtman (Marya) - Staying Alive: Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Sedivy (Julie) - Why every utterance you make begins with a leap of faith" (Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Sharma (Kanika) - What’s in the rule of law?" (Read / Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Simecek (Karen) - Your life is not a story: why narrative thinking holds you back" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Smith (J.B.) - Living without mental imagery may shield against trauma’s impact" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Stephenson (Abi) - The cochlear question" (Read / Write, 4 hours)
- "Stiefel (Klaus M.) - The tentacles of language are always on the move" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Sutton (Isabel) - Dementia is not a death. For some, it marks a new beginning" (Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Thompson (Evan) - Clock time contra lived time" (Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Thompson (Evan) - Dying: What Happens When We Die?" (Read / Write, 4.5 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Intelligence" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Mind" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Organisms" (Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Personal Identity" (Write, 17 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Scattered Objects" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Society" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Tolhurst (Bryony) - You can think like an animal by silencing your chattering brain" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Uria-Recio (Pedro) - How AI Will Shape Our Future" (Write, 1 hour)
- Veritasium - What Game Theory Reveals About Life, The Universe, and Everything (Read, 0.5 hours)
- Veritasium: The Man Who Took LSD and Changed The World (Read, 0.75 hours)
→ See "BBC - Miscellaneous iPlayer and Podcasts" (1.25 hours)
- "Vyazovskiy (Vladyslav) - Could humans hibernate?" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Walker (Lydia) - What is decolonisation?" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Williams (Ruth) - Three ways to get in touch with your Shadow self" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Wohlleben (Peter) - The Inner Life of Animals: Surprising Observations of a Hidden World" (Read / Write, 3.5 hours)
- "Zellmer (Jacob) - Baffled by human diversity" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- Thesis - Research Repositioning
Thesis Background (Total Hours = 33)
- Thesis Background - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 26.75)
- Aeon: de Sutter - The stagnation of physics (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Goddu - Suffused with causality (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Goettlich - Could conquest return? (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Jacobs - True solidarity requires Burke’s ‘sympathetic revenge’ (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Lau - The ‘panzoic effect’: the benefits of thinking about alien life (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Majeed - Does national humiliation explain why wars break out? (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Mills - Requeering Wilde (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Moravec - Ghosts among the philosophers (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Plakias - Adjust your disgust (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Ross & Doherty - How do we start learning to ‘read’ other people’s minds? (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Tahar-Malaussena - Why the cat wags her tail (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Wallace - Legacy of the angels (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul) - Aeon: 2019+" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Interaction - Philos-List" (Read, 2.75 hours)
- "LRB - London Review of Books" (Read, 20 hours)
- Thesis Background - Books Admin
- Thesis Background - Status
Plans for the Near Future – Top Priority Tasks
- As far as effort is concerned, I’ve had to retain the greatly reduced plan at 16 hours / week7 rather than increasing it as I’d like. This is on account of a perceived need to focus on my Web-Tools project.
- I have a skeleton thesis8 in place. This now needs to be filled out, based on the consolidated version: Thesis - Personal Identity9. However, there’s a lot of work getting this in shape first.
- I need to continually review the Note describing my Current Beliefs10 on the topic of Personal Identity, and ensure the associated Notes have some text. Maybe I should expand it into a proper paper, let Sophie have a look at it and consider submission to Aeon.
- Most of what I’m working on appears in the reading lists for the Thesis chapters. Items below11 are either those that don’t, or which require particular focus:-
- Detailed Task List
- Continue with my Thesis12; in particular
- Spend an hour a day updating the Thesis Document13 itself.
- Spend half an hour a day writing something original; namely, essays on:-
→ The difference between Forward and Backward Psychological Continuity14.
→ The persistence of Androids15.
- Continue filling out those sections of my Thesis that I can write something on without further research, using books / papers already analysed.
- Continually review the Note describing my Current Beliefs16 on the topic of Personal Identity.
- Regularly review and update of the Notes I’ve created on Personal Identity, focusing on those directly referenced by my Current Beliefs17.
- Adjust, Create and Complete new PID Notes as seems necessary:-
- Aristotle: Set up
- Connectionism: Set up
- Epistemology / Knowledge: Set up
- Innateness: Set up
- Language of Thought18: Convert to Language (with LOT as a subsection)
- Metaphilosophy19: Complete draft
- Modularity (of Mind): Set up
- Names: Set up
- Panpsychism: Set up (or include under another Note: Mind or Consciousness. See below)
- Paradox: Set up
- Rationality: Set up
- Thought20: Complete draft
- Truth: Set up
- Make progress on specific Chapters of my Thesis, using the tasks outlined in my Thesis Dashboard21, using the materials listed22 in the Chapters and underlying Notes.
- Ensure the following foundational Books23 required for my Thesis are fully annotated24. In particular:-
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View",
- "Olson (Eric) - The Human Animal - Personal Identity Without Psychology", and
- "Olson (Eric) - What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology".
- Read / review the following fall-out items from my review of "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Materialism with a Human Face":-
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Why Constitution is Not Identity"
- "Burke (Michael) - Copper Statues and Pieces of Copper: A Challenge to the Standard Account"
- "Burke (Michael) - Persons and Bodies: How to Avoid the New Dualism"
- "Burke (Michael) - Preserving the Principle of One Object to a Place: A Novel Account of the Relations Amongst Objects, Sorts, Sortals, and Persistence Conditions"
- "Gibbard (Allan) - Contingent Identity"
- "Johnston (Mark) - Constitution is Not Identity"
- "Noonan (Harold) - Constitution Is Identity"
- "Olson (Eric) - Reply to Lynne Rudder Baker"
- "Snowdon (Paul) - Persons, Animals, and Ourselves"
- On human exceptionalism:-
→ "Forsey (Jane) - Humans and Dumb Animals"
→ "Phillips (Patrick) - Talking to the Animals"
→ "Wells (J'aime) - Language-Using Apes"
- Also:-
→ "Hurley (Susan) & Nudds (Matthew) - Rational Animals?"
→ "Savage-Rumbaugh (E.Sue) & Lewin (Roger) - Kanzi: Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind"
- Draw up a further SHORT list of books that MUST be studied in great detail. I'll add them in as they arise in the analysis of the above books.
- "Hawley (Katherine) - How Things Persist",
- "Heller (Mark) - The Ontology of Physical Objects: Four-Dimensional Hunks of Matter",
- "Hoffman (Joshua) & Rosenkrantz (Gary) - Substance: Its Nature and Existence",
- "Hudson (Hud) - A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person",
- "Mellor (D.H.) - Real Time II",
- "Noonan (Harold) - Personal Identity",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Material Beings",
- "Sider (Ted) - Four-dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time",
- "Wiggins (David) - Sameness and Substance Renewed", and
- "Wilson (Jack) - Biological Individuality - The identity and Persistence of Living Entities"
- Read and comment on25 the following remaining PhD Theses relevant to my own Thesis:-
- "Baggini (Julian) - Psychological Reductionism About Persons: A Critical Development",
- "Eddebo (Johan) - Death and the Self: A Metaphysical Investigation of the Rationality of Afterlife Beliefs in the Contemporary Intellectual Climate",
- "Ferner (Adam) - Metaphysics and biology: a critique of David Wiggins’ account of personal identity",
- "Gendler (Tamar Szabo) - Imaginary Exceptions: On the Powers and Limits of Thought Experiment",
- "Keles (Serap) - Personal identity and persistence over time : the hybrid view with regard to hylomorphism",
- "Kotak (Aakash) - The Hybrid Theory of Personal Identity" (MPhil Thesis)
- "Lechthaler (Manuel) - Composition and Identities",
- "Lybaert (Fauve) - Personal Identity and the Formal Self",
- "Paez (Eze) - Abortion: What We Ought to Believe - An Ontological and Normative Analysis",
- "Parsons (Josh) - Theories of Persistence",
- "Rau (Philipp) - The Author, Not the Tale: Memory, Narrative, and the Self",
- "Skow (Bradford) - Once Upon a Spacetime",
- "Southgate (Susan Jane) - Personal Identity: The Simple View",
- "Trakas (Marina) - Personal Memories", and
- "Woods (Evan Thomas) - The Problems of the Many".
- Apply the issues raised by recently-read PhD Theses relevant to my own Thesis to my various Notes:-
- "Atkinson (Thomas) - Human organisms and the survival of death: a systematic evaluation of the possibility of life after death given animalism", see also the Section on Resurrection below
- "Hodson (Sommer) - A Hybrid View of Personal Identity",
- Follow up on Keith Augustine's comments on my review of "Hershenov (David) - Review of Nancey Murphy's 'Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?'".
- Follow up on Wayne Stewart's comments on my Note on Closest Continuers26, including reading and reviewing the following:-
- "Clark (Tom) - Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity"
- "Clark (Tom) - A Notable Theoretical Convergence",
- "Epstein (Dmitry) - What if We’re Still Here? A Selfish Reason to Care for Future Generations",
- "Stewart (Wayne) - Metaphysics by Default",
- "Stewart (Wayne) - Metaphysics by Default - Chapter 09: Existential Passage",
- "Stewart (Wayne) - Metaphysics by Default - Chapter 17: Application to Other Species",
- "Stewart (Wayne) - Metaphysics by Default - Chapter 20: Proof and Speculation",
- "Stewart (Wayne) - Uzgalis: Accidentally Opening a Transmigration Window by Nixing the Proper Continuer",
- "Robert (David) - The Existential Passage Hypothesis",
- "Uzgalis (William) - Review - Dainton - The Phenomenal Self",
- Teletransportation27 (Update Note using the following):-
- "Science Unbound - Teleporters: The Death Machines You Don't Want": Complete reading / reviewing relevant passages in these follow-up items
- "Hanley (Richard) - The Metaphysics of Star Trek"
- "Gribbin (John) - Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality"
- "Kaku (Michio) - Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation and Time Travel"
- "Krauss (Lawrence M.) - The Physics of Star Trek"
- "Penrose (Roger) - The Emperor's New Mind"
- "YouTube - Video - The Trouble with Transporters"
- Resurrection28
- "Atkinson (Thomas) - Human organisms and the survival of death: a systematic evaluation of the possibility of life after death given animalism", a PhD Thesis noted above
- "Ayers (Michael R.) - Locke's Theory of Personal Identity",
- "Ayers (Michael R.) - Personal Identity Before the Essay",
- "Gasser (Georg), Ed. - Personal Identity and Resurrection: How Do We Survive Our Death?",
- "Graves (Shawn), Hereth (Blake) & John (Tyler M.) - In Defense of Animal Universalism",
- "O'Connor (Timothy) & Jacobs (Jonathan D.) - Emergent individuals and the resurrection",
- "Locke (John) - Of Identity and Diversity",
- "Loose (Jonathan) - Constitution and the Falling Elevator: The Continuing Incompatibility of Materialism and Resurrection Belief",
- "Loose (Jonathan) - Materialism Most Miserable The Prospects for Dualist and Physicalist Accounts of Resurrection",
- "Mavrodes (George I.) - The Life Everlasting and the Bodily Criterion of Identity",
- "Mooney (Justin) - The possibility of resurrection by reassembly",
- "O'Donnell (Patrick S.) - Death & Dying: A Select bibliography",
→ Also "O'Donnell (Patrick S.) - Human Nature, Personhood, and Personal Identity: A Select bibliography",
- "Olson (Eric) - Immanent Causation and Life After Death",
- "Olson (Eric) - Life After Death and the Devastation of the Grave",
- "Quinn (Philip L.) - Personal Identity, Bodily Continuity and Resurrection",
- "Quinn (Philip L.) - Some Problems about Resurrection",
- "Thompson (Evan) - Dying: What Happens When We Die?",
- "Thompson (Jon W.) - Individuation, Identity, and Resurrection in Thomas Jackson and John Locke",
- "Thompson (Jon W.) - Personal Identity and Resurrection: Early Modern Philosophical Perspectives",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - The Possibility of Resurrection",
- "Zeleznikow-Johnston (Ariel) - The Future Loves You: How and Why We Should Abolish Death",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - The Compatibility of Materialism and Survival: The “Falling Elevator” Model",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Bodily Resurrection: The Falling Elevator Model Revisited"
- BUMP: Follow up on papers from "Kingma (Elselijn) - BUMP: Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy":-
- "Baron (Teresa) - A lost cause? Fundamental problems for causal theories of parenthood".
- "Baron (Teresa) - Nobody puts Baby in the container: the foetal container model at work in medicine and commercial surrogacy".
- "Finn (Suki) - Bun or bump?".
- "Finn (Suki) - Methodology for the metaphysics of pregnancy".
- "Finn (Suki) - The Metaphysics of Surrogacy".
- "Geddes (Alexander) - Pregnancy, Parthood and Proper Overlap".
- "Grose (Jonathan) - How many organisms during a pregnancy?".
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - Biological Individuality, Pregnancy, and (Mammalian) Reproduction".
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - BUMP: Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy (B1)".
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - BUMP: Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy (B2)".
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - Functions and health at the interface of biology and technology".
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - Lady Parts: The Metaphysics of Pregnancy".
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - Nine months".
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - Were You Part of Your Mother?".
- "Kingma (Elselijn) & Finn (Suki) - Neonatal Incubator or Artificial Womb? Distinguishing Ectogestation and Ectogenesis using the Metaphysics of Pregnancy".
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - One or two? A Process View of pregnancy".
- "Woollard (Fiona) - Mother Knows Best: Pregnancy, Applied Ethics, and Epistemically Transformative Experiences".
- "Woollard (Fiona) - Philosophy can explain what kind of achievement it is to give birth".
- "Woollard (Fiona) - ‘Utilitarianism for animals: deontology for people’ and the doing/allowing distinction".
- Complete analysing the following papers29:-
- "Cofnas (Nathan) - Research on group differences in intelligence: A defense of free inquiry",
- "Corabi (Joseph) & Schneider (Susan) - The Metaphysics of Uploading",
- "FT, Baggini (Julian), Warburton (Nigel) - Five Books - The Best Books on How To Think (Like a Philosopher)", **New**
- "FT, ChatGPT - Five Books - The Best Books on Artificial Intelligence", **New**
- "FT, Coyne (Jerry A.) - Five Books - The Best Books on Evolution",
- "FT, Dennett (Daniel) & Warburton (Nigel) - Five Favorite Books",
- "Frary (Mark) - Beyond Repair",
- "Galton (Francis) - Visualised Numerals",
- "Giusti (Elena) & Derbew (Sarah) - Decolonizing Blackness, alongside the Classics Curriculum: A conversation with Dr Sarah Derbew",
- "Gradesaver - The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie: Study Guide - Introduction", Etc.
- "Harari (Yuval Noah) - Disruption, Democracy & the Global Order" (update in the light of YouTube video and CSER summary),
- "Hume (David) - Treatise I.IV.VI: Of Personal Identity",
- "Kobie (Nicole) - Neuralink: an old idea that could be the future of medicine",
- "Korhonen (Anna), Woodward (Sarah) - This idea must die: 'AI will outsmart the human race'",
- "Middleton (Anna), Welford (Megan) - The Ethics of Genomics"
- "Moreno Figueroa (Monica), Jolin (Lucy) - A world without oppression to you",
- "Mulhall (Stephen), LRB - Non-Identity Crisis", **New**
- "Noble (Raymond) & Noble (Denis) - Understanding Living Systems", **New**
- "Olson (Eric) - The Central Dogma Of Transhumanism",
- "Paris (J.J.) & Elias-Jones (A.C.) - Do we murder Mary to save Jodie?",
- "Peckham (Jeremy) - AI, humanity and Christian ministry",
- "Putnam (Hilary) - Brains in a Vat",
- "Stenger (Victor J.), Lindsay (James A.) & Boghossian (Paul) - Physicists Are Philosophers, Too", **New**
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Materialism and the Psychological-continuity Account of Personal Identity",
- "Velleman (David) - Beyond Price", **New**
- "Walker (Robert) - Mary And Jodie – The Case Of The Conjoined Twins",
- "Watkin (Christopher) - Christianity and critical race theory",
- "Wikipedia - Large language model", and
- "Zangwill (Nick) - Our Moral Duty to Eat Meat"
- Consciousness30
- Dismantle the above report
- Transfer historic Actuals to Thesis
- Transfer text to:-
→ This Status Report,
→ My Note on Consciousness31.
- "JCS - Journal of Consciousness Studies (Consolidated List)":
- This is a large project – I need to sort out all the volumes associated with author JCS. Some I have in hard copy. Others were once on-line for free, but now seem to have disappeared. Some I claim to have downloaded.
- For volumes I have in either hard copy or electronic form I need to 'burst' them into their constituent papers (at the least for the usual suspects).
- Ingenta seems to have the latest issue of JCS for free download: Ingenta - JCS.
- Imprint Academic - Journal of Consciousness Studies says its archive is available on Ingenta and is free for current subscribers. So, If I wanted to go ahead with this, it might be best to subscribe for a year (£102; £122 including print [not worth it]); but only if I can spare the time to address the archive!
- Aeon32: Read & annotate papers as they arise, especially ...
- "Chittka (Lars) & Wilson (Catherine) - Bee-brained": Write-up
- "Frankish (Keith) - The Consciousness Illusion": Write-up
- "Frohlich (Joel) - Frames of consciousness": Read & write-up
- "Parks (Tim) & Manzotti (Riccardo) - You are the world": Read & write-up
- "Pigliucci (Massimo) - Consciousness is real": Read & write-up
- "Seth (Anil Kumar) - The real problem": Read & write-up
- "Seth (Anil Kumar) - How we build perception from the inside out": Write-up
- Panpsychism:-
- Set up Note on Panpsychism (as above)
- "BBC, Bragg (Melvyn) - In Our Time - Panpsychism": Review / revise.
- "Goff (Philip) - A Change of Heart on Fine-Tuning": Re-read & comment
- "Goff (Philip) - Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness": Book. Read.
- "Goff (Philip) - Is the Universe a conscious mind?": Re-read & comment
- "Goff (Philip) - Panpsychism is crazy, but it’s also most probably true": Re-read & comment
- "Goff (Philip) - Purposeful universe": Re-read & comment
- "Goff (Philip) - Why? The Purpose of the Universe": Book. Read.
- "JCS - Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 13, Issue 10-11 (2006)": Book. Read.
- Modularity, Connectionism & Innateness: update Note33 using the following:-
- "Clark (Andy) - Microcognition – Philosophy Cognitive Science & Parallel Distributed Processing",
- "Fodor (Jerry) - There and Back Again: A Review of Annette Karmiloff-Smith's Beyond Modularity",
- "Fodor (Jerry) & Pylyshyn (Zenon) - Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture: A Critical Analysis",
- "Elman (Jeffrey), Bates (Elizabeth), Johnson (Mark), Karmiloff-Smith (Annette), Parisi (Domenico) & Plunkett (Kim) - Rethinking Innateness",
- "Karmiloff-Smith (Annette) - Beyond Modularity",
- "Plunkett (Kim) & Elman (Jeffrey) - Exercises in Rethinking Innateness - A Handbook for Connectionist Simulations",
- "Pylyshyn (Zenon) - Computation and Cognition: Toward a Foundation of Cognitive Science",
- "Rowlands (Mark) - Connectionism and the Language of Thought",
- Action the following Books and Papers:-
- "Birch (Jonathan) - The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI": Burst out Papers; Read
- "Bonhomme (Vincent), Etc. - General Anesthesia: A Probe to Explore Consciousness": Read & write-up
- "Crane (Tim) - Elements of Mind - An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind": Re-read and review notes.
- "Dehaene (Stanislas) - Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts": Read.
- "Dennett (Daniel) - Illusionism as the Obvious Default Theory of Consciousness": Read.
- "Donald (Merlin) - A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness": Read.
- "Eliot (Lise) - What's Going On in There?: How the Brain And Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life": Read.
- "Kammerer (Francois) - The Hardest Aspect of the Illusion Problem - and How to Solve it": Read.
- "Koch (Christof) - Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist": Read.
- "Koch (Christof) - The Quest for Consciousness: A Nurobiological Approach": Read.
- "Metzinger (Thomas), Ed. - Conscious Experience": Burst out Papers and add Metzinger's Abstracts
- "Seth (Anil Kumar) - Being You: A New Science of Consciousness": Read.
- "Shapiro (Lawrence) - The Mind Incarnate": Read.
- "Strawson (Galen) - The Consciousness Deniers": Read & write-up
- "Tegmark (Max) - Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence": Write up Chapter 8: Consciousness
- "Veit (Walter) - A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness": Read.
- Ensure the annotations from recently-read Papers are added to the relevant Notes:-
- "Ayers (Michael R.) - Locke on Living Things"
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Materialism with a Human Face"
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Review of 'What Are We? A Study in Personal Ontology' by Eric T. Olson"
- As background tasks:-
- Ensure all items in:-
- "Various - Papers on Desktop", and
- "Various - Papers in Desk Drawer"
are either addressed or re-filed.
- Maintain "Various - Papers & Books Yet To Be Logged", and log papers therein if they become important.
- Convert old PDFs to Notes:-
- Review the two reports:-
- PDF-précis,
- PDF-essays34.
- Determine how the first is produced, and why the pdfs aren't highlighted, and compare with Write-ups Notes Jump Table
- Convert outstanding Essays & Précises.
- Complete cataloguing the books downloaded from Springer,
- Read and comment on35 the Short Stories in "Somerset Maugham (W.) - Collected Short Stories: Volume 2".
- Continue / complete reading / annotating various books36 that have landed in my in-tray:-
- "Ball (Philip) - How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology",
- "Barash (David P.) - Through a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Our Species as We Really Are",
- "Berns (Gregory) - What It's Like to Be a Dog: And Other Adventures in Animal Neuroscience",
- "Blatti (Stephan) & Snowdon (Paul), Eds. - Animalism: New Essays on Persons, Animals, and Identity",
- "Bostrom (Nick) - Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies",
- "Bradley (Ben), Feldman (Fred) & Johansson (Jens) - The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death",
- "Clark (Andy) - The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality",
- "De Waal (Frans) - Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?",
- "Dennett (Daniel) - Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking",
- "Dennett (Daniel) - I've Been Thinking",
- "Edmonds (David) - Would You Kill the Fat Man? The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us about Right and Wrong",
- "Erber (Joan T.) & Szuchman (Lenore T.) - Great Myths of Aging",
- "Harman (Graham) - Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything",
- "Green (Joel B.) - Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible",
- "Hofstadter (Douglas) & Dennett (Daniel), Eds. - The Mind's I - Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul",
- "Kagan (Shelly) - How to Count Animals, more or less",
- "Korsgaard (Christine) - Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals",
- "Lawrance (John) - Hosting Andrew",
- "Loke (Andrew Ter Ern) - The Origin of Humanity and Evolution: Science and Scripture in Conversation",
- "Levitin (Daniel) - The Changing Mind: A Neuroscientist's Guide to Ageing Well",
- "Lyons (Siobhan) - Death and the Machine: Intersections of Mortality and Robotics",
- "Martin (L. Michael) & Augustine (Keith) - The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death",
- "Miller (Kristie) - Issues in Theoretical Diversity: Persistence, Composition, and Time",
- "Peckham (Jeremy) - Masters or Slaves?: AI And The Future Of Humanity",
- "Price (Huw) - Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time",
- "Ricard (Matthieu) - A Plea for the Animals: The Moral, Philosophical, and Evolutionary Imperative to Treat All Beings with Compassion",
- "Rowlands (Mark) - The Philosopher and the Wolf",
- "Sapolsky (Robert) - Determined: The Science of Life Without Free Will",
- "Schechtman (Marya) - Staying Alive: Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life",
- "Schneider (Susan) - Artificial You",
- "Shermer (Michael), Gould (Stephen Jay) - Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time",
- "Seung (Sebastian) - Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are",
- "Singer (Peter) - The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty",
- "Uria-Recio (Pedro) - How AI Will Shape Our Future",
- "Walker (Matthew P.) - Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams",
- "Wasserman (Ryan) - The Paradoxes of Time Travel",
- "Wohlleben (Peter) - The Inner Life of Animals: Surprising Observations of a Hidden World",
- "Wyatt (John) - Matters of Life and Death", and
- "Yong (Ed) - An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us".
- Continue reading and reviewing papers issued by Aeon37 (and the occasional spin-off). In particular,
- Complete write-ups38 for 172 items: Follow this Link39.
- Add new items to the database as and when I have time to read and comment thereon, maintaining a 'top ten' Priority 1 items.
- Keep up with the Journals I have access to as a Cambridge Alumnus via via JSTOR, Cambridge Core & Project Muse. Update my Journals Note40.
- Keep up with the philosophical world by regular reviews of "Interaction - Philos-List", but only seriously pursue41 items relevant to my research.
- London Review of Books: update my LRB42 Note to reflect the fact that I've downloaded all relevant items up to the end of 2024. Develop a method of importing them into my database.
In-Page Footnotes:
Footnote 7:
- 25 hours / week – while still ludicrously inadequate for what I want to achieve – is approximately what would be expected of a part-time research student. So, planning to exceed this is ‘a good thing’ provided I use the time wisely and efficiently.
Footnote 11:
- This list is absurdly long, and cannot represent what I’m really working on. It’s really an aide memoir.
Footnote 22:
- I used to itemise in this Note an ever-growing list of items accummulated over time, broken down by Chapter and Note.
- However, now both Chapters and Notes are getting into shape, there is no need to list these items again here, so they have been cut after checking they are covered in their place elsewhere.
Footnote 23:
- This list could get very long, so restrict it to 3 books!
- I'll replace these with new ones when completed.
Footnote 24:
- This is extremely time-consuming, and will not be possible for all books and papers of interest.
Footnote 25:
- There are rather a lot of these, so some will have to be skimmed.
- There were a few more on less central topics.
- I hope to whittle these down as time goes by!
Footnote 29:
- This list used to get inordinately long and has been culled.
- Ensure this doesn't happen again!
Footnote 35:
- This was supposed to be holiday reading, but there's little chance of me completing this project (and the two other volumes) unless I get a move on!
- My intention is to read and review a Story after each 'General' book read.
Footnote 36:
- This list is getting ludicrously long, and either needs addressing or pruning!
Footnote 38:
- I had managed to reduce the backlog of 'Priority 1' items on my Aeon page to the required 10 items (though it has now got out of hand again).
- To achieve this in an acceptable timeframe, as well as restricting the new additions, I've been either downgrading the priorities or reading the papers on my Kindle and then adding brief comments and logging them to my database.
- Consequently, most of them then get added to this list for more detailed investigation.
- I'll now - hopefully - start whittling down this list of 172 items, but there's a risk that it'll continue to grow ... as indeed it has.
- To help with the 'whittling' I've added both the date the item was added to this list and its current status, which is to progress down the following list:-
→ 1. Read, or ...
→ 2. Re-read
→ 3. Draft 'Paper' Notes
→ 4. Read Aeon Comments
→ 5. Update 'Paper' Notes
→ 6. Apply to PID Notes
- Above '2. Re-read' is a little directionless. It usually means 'Re-read with the intention of performing one or more of actions 3, 5 and 6.'
Footnote 41:
- Sadly, looking through the list diligently wastes too much time - there's very litle of relevanmce to my research - which is good to know.
- So - as of mid-February 2025 - I've decided just to dip in now and then to see what's going on.
- Philosophy seems very 'engaged' at the moment. Lots of conferences on AI and Climate Change.
Table of the Previous 12 Versions of this Note: (of 95)
| Note last updated |
Reference for this Topic |
Parent Topic |
| 07/04/2025 00:15:50 |
518 (Status: Personal Identity (2025 - March)) |
Status: Summary (2025 - March) |
Summary of Notes Referenced by This Note
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Summary of Notes Citing This Note
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Authors, Books & Papers Citing this Note
| Author |
Title |
Medium |
Extra Links |
Read? |
| Chapman (Colin) |
The Israel-Hamas war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict |
Paper  |
|
Yes |
| Todman (Theo) |
Thesis - The Form of the Argument |
Paper  |
|
Yes |
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- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025