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Status Reports - Status: Summary (2020 - December)
Rationale for this Report- This is a summary report with links to my various on-going projects. Detailed progress is shown on the sub-reports.
- This summary report should highlight whether my focus has become unbalanced or otherwise inappropriate to the achievement of my major goals.
- As these reports are rather a pain to generate, I now produce them quarterly, rather than monthly. I’ve also improved the automation, and am reducing the amount of narrative comment.
Projects in Progress- I have ten projects on which I would like to spend my time, which is too many. I currently split them into three groups.
- The first two groups always have effort planned, but the final group in general does not, though in the first quarter of the academic year – as this time – they have a token one hour per week each.
- The first group relates to my primary (project) life-goals; the second relates to lesser things I really want to address; the final group1 relates to those I’d like to look into if I get ahead on the other projects.
Primary Projects- Personal Identity2: This is the subject that ought to grab most of my attention, as it is the topic of my yet-to-be-completed PhD Thesis3. I need to achieve something in philosophy, as this is the only one of my endeavours that promises a professional outcome (in the sense of being one of more than merely personal interest).
- Web-tools4: This project is intended to assist with the prosecution of philosophical research. It is fundamentally an enabling project, though one I hope will have general metaphilosophical implications. The other two projects in this group are test cases of the method, as well as worthwhile studies in their own right.
Secondary Projects- Philosophy of Religion5: On and off, this represents the main preoccupation of my adult life (work and family aside). Eventually, I intend to follow up in some detail interesting topics from the Philosophy of Religion module from the MA in Philosophy and Religion at Heythrop College, London University that I tasted at the end of 2010, though nothing much has happened in the last decade!
- Music6: Improve my competence as an oboist. I have managed regular oboe-practice in my new den for some time now, and recommenced oboe lessons – approximately fortnightly – in September 2018. I have also purchased an electronic piano – also installed in my den – so hopefully some progress will be made on piano-playing, though there’s little time for it.
- Languages7: Gain at least a rudimentary understanding of 24 diverse languages – for practical and philosophical purposes.
- Consciousness Studies8: A supporting project for both Personal Identity and Philosophy of Religion. An essential element of any critique of transhumanism.
Other Projects- Bridge9: I still want to become an expert player but have recognised that this isn’t going to happen without it becoming my main priority, so I’m effectively just playing for fun. I’ve expanded my horizons to include three partners and the occasional tournament.
- Chess10: I returned to the chess scene in September 2018 and play regularly for the Billericay first team in the Southend and North Essex Leagues. My ultimate aim is to improve my standard of play so I can perform acceptably, but I’m currently just treading water.
- Mathematics11: Revive / improve my mathematical competence with a view to the use of mathematics as a tool in my various other projects. Also – now that I’m 66 – useful for keeping various bits of my brain functioning12.
- HiQ13: Enjoy and contribute to the intellectual society of ISPE and Mensa. Mostly in abeyance, though I re-joined ISPE14 in 2017 and have maintained my membership into 2020, but can spare no time to speak of for taking part.
- These projects are (approximately, in their respective groups) in order of decreasing priority, yet in practise the amount of effort expended on them has failed to respect this.
- I have ignored the various infrastructural elements of my life in these reports – in particular family life (including the grandchildren!), household management, general reading, culture, current affairs, walking the dog and such like.
- However, these “non-project” items continue to be time-consuming. The situation with the house15 turned out to be much worse than we first thought and we appointed Bakers of Danbury (https://bakersofdanbury.co.uk/) to sort it out. Things have gone well, and the first two phases of the work have been completed, with the third phase started in December 2020 and now about 40% through. We’ve given up seeking redress from the surveyor.
- This report and the sub-reports obtained by following the links immediately above show the current status. The report headings show the period the reports are for. Earlier reports can be found by following the links in the “Table of Previous Versions of this Note” further down this report, or in the sub-reports.
Actuals & Planning- Actuals
- In 20Q4 I spent across my various projects 679 hours (679 hours YTD) – where by "YTD" - Year to Date - I mean the academic year commencing in October 2020. "Actual versus plan" was 96.5%, (96.5% YTD).
- Overall, I worked hard in 20Q4 and marginally failed to achieve my time-budget, mainly on account of the Christmas period, circumscribed though this was, and the third wave of work on the house. I’m doubtless being too selfish – usually described as ‘focused’.
- The balance of the various projects against plan was mostly as I’d like, with the minor projects losing out. However, I only spent half the time planned on Music – mostly on account of loss of enthusiasm – the effort shifting to Languages.
- The tables of actual versus plan are on separate pages, accessible below16:-
- For detailed breakdowns of time spent this year, by month and by study location, follow this link.
- For a report by sub-project of time expended since my records began, follow this link.
- For tables of Actual versus Plan, together with the high-level plan for the next quarter, see this page19.
PlanningI’ve retained the average weekly total plan at 54 hours (8 hours a day during the week, 7 hours at weekends). The planned effort for my Thesis – at 24 hours / week – is more or less what it ought to be20.Chess and Bridge remain at “Priority 3”, as they should be, and Languages and Consciousness Studies at “Priority 2”. Religion remains at “Priority 2”.A point of continual but useless regret is that – at 20 hours / week – the time allocated to my relatively unimportant priority 2 & 3 projects is more than half the 34-hours’ effort devoted to my priority 1 projects, though has reduced now that Chess and Bridge are in abeyance. Unfortunately, time isn’t available at the moment – given my other commitments – to spend as much time on Philosophy of Religion as I would like and the weekly allocation has been reduced further to only 1 hour / week. I’ve decided to continue to try to play the oboe properly, and improve my general musicianship, and have maintained my Music allowance at 7 hours / week. I now have the enthusiasm – and stamina – as an oboist to achieve this, but not the extra 2 hours allocated previously for Theory and Aural. My intention was always to restrict the effort on Bridge, and focus on the philosophy of Personal Identity. Historically, this resolve has seldom come to anything, except when I’ve stopped playing bridge altogether, though I now believe that for me Bridge is sufficiently enjoyable and relaxing to be self-justifying. However, as the clubs are shut, and I’m not playing on-line, I’ve slashed the planned effort to 1 hour / week for occasional study and interaction. I’ve increased the time allocated to Languages to 7 hours / week, and the bulk of this will be otherwise “fallow” time while walking Henry the dog. I’ve decided to continue to down-prioritise Chess, and have scheduled only 1 hour / week. Other projects continue to have a notional hour / week. So, the weekly plan (retained at 54 hours) for the next quarter is as below:-
- Priority 1: 34 hours
- Personal Identity: 24 hours.
- Web Tools: 10 hours.
- Priority 2: 16 hours
- Philosophy of Religion: 1 hour.
- Music: 7 hours.
- Consciousness Studies: 1 hour.
- Languages: 7 hours.
- Priority 3: 4 hours
- Bridge: 1 hour.
- Chess: 1 hour.
- Mathematics: 1 hour.
- HiQ: 1 hour.
Follow this link for a categorised list of recently21 purchased books. As the categorisation has got out of hand, follow this link for an alternative list of recent acquisitions22.
Detailed Interim Activities
- As these reports are now quarterly, at best, I’m including a link to a brief uncommented list of what I’ve been working on since the last report (ie. this one). It is generated automatically from my time-recording system.
- I’ve recently added a fuller YTD List24, useful for getting a handle on what – if anything – has been happening to the minor projects.
- Their main utility (to me, at any rate) is as a quick jumping-off point for the various writings in progress or recently completed.
- The lists will, in general, be updated every few days.
Plans for the Near Future25
- Thesis
- Website
- Religion
- Music
- Languages
- Consciousness
- Bridge
- Chess
- Mathematics
- HiQ
- Thesis26 (24 hours per week)
- Continue with my Thesis27; in particular
- Spend at least an hour a day writing something original.
- Fill out those sections that I can write something on without further research.
- Rework the structure so that Level-1 or -2 print produces the thesis with the correct reading-list.
- Continually review the Note describing my Current Beliefs28 on the topic of Personal Identity.
- Complete a full review and update of the Notes I’ve created on Personal Identity, focusing on:-
- Those directly referenced by my Current Beliefs29,
- Those without a reading list: Evolution30, Person31, Physicalism32, Psychological View33, Religion34, Semantics35, Soul Criterion36, Souls37, Unity of the Person38.
- Those not yet in the latest standard format.
- Make progress on specific Chapters of my Thesis, using the materials below →
- Chapter 139 (Introduction). Focussing on:-
- Locke40
→ "Duncan (Matt) - I Think, Therefore I Persist", Complete Write-up
→ "Maurer (Nicholas) - Too Many Persons, or None At All?", Write-up
→ "Strawson (Galen) - 'The Secrets of All Hearts': Locke on Personal Identity", Read
→ "Strawson (Galen) - 'Where our responsibility lies': Locke on personal identity", Read - Introductory and General Works
→ "Unger (Peter) - Identity, Consciousness and Value", Re-read and write up comments
→ "Unger (Peter) - Precis of 'Identity, Consciousness and Value'", Re-read ... also other items from the symposium
- Chapter 241 (What Are We?). Focussing on:-
- General: "Olson (Eric) - What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology", a core text!
- Brains42: "Mitchell (Kevin J.) - Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are", Read & review
- Human Beings43: Review the Symposium between:-
→ "Robinson (Denis) - Human Beings, Human Animals, and Mentalistic Survival", Read and Write-up
→ "Johnston (Mark) - 'Human Beings' Revisited: My Body is Not an Animal", Complete Write-up - Persons44:-
- "Cottingham (John) - Why we are not 'persons'", Complete Write-up
- "Kuhn (Robert Lawrence), Ed. - Closer to Truth: Personal Identity", Watch and write up
- "Kuhn (Robert Lawrence), Ed. - Closer to Truth: Persons and Selves", Watch and write up
- Selves45:-
- "Arikha (Noga) - The Interoceptive Turn", Read and Write-up
- "Dainton (Barry) - Self: Philosophy In Transit", Read and Write-up
- "Dainton (Barry) - The Phenomenal Self", Read and Write-up46
- "O'Hear (Anthony), Ed. - Mind, Self and Person", Complete Reading and Write-ups
- Chapter 347 (What Is A Person48?).
- General:-
→ "Noller (Jorg) - A Transformative Account of Personal Identity", Read and write-up
→ "Noller (Jorg) - Person", Read and write-up - Free Will49
→ "Ellis (George F.R.), Etc - From Chaos to Free Will": Complete review & analysis
→ "Gazzaniga (Michael S.) - Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain", Read
→ "Murphy (Nancey), O'Connor (Timothy) & Ellis (George F.R.) - Downward Causation and the Neurobiology of Free Will": Quick review & analysis
→ "Murphy (Nancey) & Brown (Warren) - Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?": Quick review & analysis
→ "Nanay (Bence) - Catching Desires": Complete write-up - Personites50, develop Note, using:-
→ "Olson (Eric) - Ethics and the Generous Ontology", Write-up, then …
→ "Eklund (Matti) - The Existence of Personites", Read and write-up
→ "Johnston (Mark) - The Personite Problem: Should Practical Reason Be Tabled?", Read and write-up
→ "Johnston (Mark) - Personites, Maximality and Ontological Trash", Read and write-up
→ "Kaiserman (Alexander) - Stage Theory and the Personite Problem", Read and write-up
→ "Pautz (Adam) - Johnston’s Puzzle about Personites", Read and write-up.
- Chapter 451 (Basic Metaphysical Issues). Focus on:-
- General: "Hazlett (Allan) - New Waves in Metaphysics", Read
- Existence52: "Williams (Christopher) - Death and Other Difficulties", Read and write-up
- Logic of Identity53
- Partial Identity54
→ "Baxter (Donald L.M.) - Temporary and Contingent Instantiation as Partial Identity", Read and write-up
→ "Hawley (Katherine) - Almost Identical, Almost Innocent", Read and write-up. - Artifacts55
→ "Han (Byung-Chul) - The copy is the original", Write-up
→ "Han (Byung-Chul) - Shanzhai: Deconstruction in Chinese", Read and write-up - "Loose and Popular" vs "Strict and Philosophical" senses of identity
→ "Noonan (Harold) - Identity, Constitution and Microphysical Supervenience", Write-up56
- Parfit57
→ "Colen (J.A.) - In Memoriam Derek Parfit (1942-2017)", Write-up
→ "Funkhouser (Eric) - Notes on Parfit, 'Personal Identity'", Write-up
→ "Korsgaard (Christine) - Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian Response to Parfit", Read and write-up
→ "McDowell (John) - Reductionism and the First Person", Write-up58=46
→ "Perry (John) - Time, Fission, and Personal Identity", Read and write-up
→ "Parfit (Derek) - Personal Identity", Write-up
→ "Parfit (Derek) - Prudence, morality, and the prisoner's dilemma", Read and write-up, Note59
→ "Parfit (Derek) - Who do you think you are?", Write-up
→ Complete run-through of the Parfit reading-list - Simple View60
→ "Duncan (Matt) - A Challenge to Anti-Criterialism"
→ "Duncan (Matt) - A Renewed Challenge to Anti-Criterialism"
→ "Duncan (Matt) - Dualists Needn’t Be Anti-Criterialists (Nor Should They Be)" - Vague Identity61
→ "Broome (John) - Indefiniteness in Identity",
→ "Noonan (Harold) - Vague Identity Yet Again" - Narrative Identity62 / Race63. Obtain a balanced view64 Focussing On65:-
- Race and Racism66
→ "Boxill (Bernard), Ed. - Race and Racism: Oxford Readings in Philosophy"
→ "Brues (Alice M.) - People and Races"
→ "Curran (Andrew) - Facing America's History Of Racism Requires Facing The Origins Of 'Race' As A Concept"
→ "Glasgow (Joshua) - Another Look at the Reality of Race, By Which I Mean Race-f"
→ "Mac Donald (Heather) - The Diversity Delusion"
→ "Rutherford (Adam) - How to Argue With a Racist: History, Science, Race and Reality"
→ "Saini (Angela) - Superior: The Return of Race Science" - The British Empire & its 'Crimes': obtain a balanced view67=64 from the following list:-
→ "Brendon (Piers) - The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire"
→ "Darwin (John) - Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain"
→ "Eaton (Richard M.) - India in the Persianate Age: 1000-1765"
→ "Lawrence (James) - Rise And Fall Of The British Empire"
→ "Tharoor (Shashi) - Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India"
- Chapter 568 (Persistence69 and Time70). Focussing on:-
- General
- "Sider (Ted), Hawthorne (John) & Zimmerman (Dean), Eds. - Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics",
- Persistence71
- "Haslanger (Sally) & Kurtz (Roxanne), Eds. - Persistence : Contemporary Readings",
- "Hawley (Katherine) - Persistence and Determination",
- "Wiggins (David) - Continuants: Their Activity, Their Being, and Their Identity", especially
→ "Noonan (Harold) - Review of Wiggins's 'Continuants'", and
→ "Wiggins (David) - Identity, Individuation, and Substance"
- Time72
- "Boccardi (Emiliano), Ed. - Manuscrito vol. 39 no.4: Recent Trends in the Philosophy of Time: An Introduction to Time and Reality - I", and
- "Boccardi (Emiliano), Ed. - Manuscrito vol. 40 no.1: The Passage of Time and its Enemies: An Introduction to Time and Reality - II"
- "Botros (Sophie) - Truth, Time and History: A Philosophical Enquiry", Re-read & Annotate ... also especially
→ "Botros (Sophie) - Truth, Time and History - A Philosophical Inquiry with Dr Sophie Botros", Complete analysis - "Bourne (Craig) - A Future for Presentism",
- "Buonomano (Dean) - Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time",
- "Correia (Fabrice) & Rosenkranz (Sven) - Unfreezing the Spotlight: Tense Realism and Temporal Passage",
- "Costa (Damiano), Gilmore (Cody) & Calosi (Claudio) - Relativity and Three Four-Dimensionalisms",
- Natalja Deng: Various papers, starting with
→ "Deng (Natalja) - One Thing After Another: Why the Passage of Time is Not an Illusion", - Mauro Dorato: Various papers,
→ "Dorato (Mauro) - Presentism / Eternalism and Endurantism / Perdurantism: why the unsubstantiality of the first debate implies that of the second",
→ "Dorato (Mauro) - Presentism and the Experience of Time",
→ "Dorato (Mauro) - The Irrelevance of the Presentist / Eternalist Debate for the Ontology of Minkowski Spacetime". - "Fischer (Florian) - Philosophy of time: A slightly opinionated introduction",
- "Friebe (Cord) - Eternalism and the Temporal Content of Persistence", and
- "Friebe (Cord) - Metametaphysics: the Ontology of Spacetime and the Presentist/Eternalist Debate".
- "Lebens (Samuel) & Goldschmidt (Tyron) - The Promise of a New Past": Complete and send to Sophie Botros & Michael J. Alter,
- "LePoidevin (Robin) - Travels in Four Dimensions: The Enigmas of Space and Time",
- "LePoidevin (Robin) & MacBeath (Murray), Eds. - The Philosophy of Time: Oxford Readings in Philosophy",
- "Mellor (D.H.) - Review of Michael Tooley: 'Time, Tense, and Causation'", Read & review
- "Miller (Kristie) - Issues in Theoretical Diversity: Persistence, Composition, and Time",
- "Roselli (Andrea) - How Long is Now? A New Perspective on the Specious Present",
- "Rovelli (Carlo) - The Order of Time",
- "Sattig (Thomas) - The Flow of Time in Experience",
- "Savitt (Steven) - Presentism and Eternalism in Perspective",
- "Skow (Bradford) - Objective Becoming",
- "Torrengo (Giuliano) - Time and Simple Existence",
- "Thomas (Emily) - Before, now, and next", Expand review
- "Thomas (Emily) - Does the Future Exist?", Expand review
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Presentism and the Space-Time Manifold"
- Chapter 673 (Animalism74). Focussing on:-
- Animals75:
- "Chittka (Lars) & Wilson (Catherine) - Bee-brained", Write up
- "Keim (Brandon) - I, cockroach", Write up
- "Rachlin (Howard) - Teleological behaviourism or what it means to imagine a lion", Complete Write-up
- "Ross (Don) - Consciousness, language, and the possibility of non-human personhood: Reflections on elephants", Write up
- "Wilson (Jack) - Biological Individuality - The identity and Persistence of Living Entities", Complete Write-up
- "Woodruff (Michael) - The face of the fish", Write up
- Animalism76
- "Hershenov (David) - Review of David DeGrazia’s Human Identity and Bioethics",
- "Madden (Rory) - Human Persistence",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Objects and Persons",
- "Olson (Eric) - The Human Animal - Personal Identity Without Psychology", my core text,
- "Shoemaker (Sydney) - Persons, Animals, and Identity",
- "Snowdon (Paul) - Persons, Animals, Ourselves",
- Hybrid Theory77
- "Kotak (Aakash) - The Hybrid Theory of Personal Identity", Read and evaluate carefully
- Life78
- "Al-Khalili (Jim) & McFadden (Johnjoe) - Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology", Expand file-note
- "DiFrisco (James) & Mossio (Matteo) - Diachronic Identity in Complex Life Cycles: An Organizational Perspective",
- "Lachmann (Michael) & Walker (Sara) - Life ≠ alive",
- "Noble (Denis) - The Music of Life: Biology Beyond Genes", Read
- "Noble (Denis) - Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity", Read
- "Rose (Steven) - Précis of 'Lifelines: Biology, Freedom, Determinism'", Read
- "Schrodinger (Erwin) - What is Life?"
- Phase-sortal Animalism
- "Sauchelli (Andrea) - The animal, the corpse, and the remnant-person", Read and evaluate carefully
- Process Animalism79
- "DiFrisco (James) & Mossio (Matteo) - Diachronic Identity in Complex Life Cycles: An Organizational Perspective", Read
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) & Dupre (John) - Biological Identity: Why Metaphysicians and Philosophers of Biology Should Talk to One Another", Read
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Human Persons – A Process View", Read
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Persons as Biological Processes: A Bio-Processual Way Out of the Personal Identity Dilemma", Read
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Processual Animalism: Towards a Scientifically Informed Theory of Personal Identity", Read
- "Noller (Jorg) - Beyond Animalism and Constitutionalism: The Person as A Form of Life", Read
- Chapter 780 (The Constitution View81):-
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View": My other core text. Start a serious review.
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder), Etc. - E-Symposium on 'Persons & Bodies: A Constitution View'": Write up reviews of papers,
- "Corcoran (Kevin) - Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul": Read and review,
- "Loose (Jonathan) - Constitution and the Falling Elevator": Write a Note
- "Mellor (D.H.) - Micro-composition": Read
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Can Mereological Sums Change their Parts": Read
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Inside and outside the ontology room": Read
- "Zahavi (Dan) - Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective": Write-up.
- Chapter 882 (Arguments against Animalism83):-
- "Bailey (Andrew M.) - The Elimination Argument",
- Brainstem
- "Olson (Eric) - The Role of the Brainstem in Personal Identity",
- "Tzinman (Rina) - Against the Brainstem View of the Persistence of Human Animals"
- Dicephalus & Conjoined Twins84
- "Buchanan (Rachael) - The battle to separate Safa and Marwa"
- "Campbell (Tim) & McMahan (Jeff) - Animalism and the Varieties of Conjoined Twinning"
- "Olson (Eric) - The Metaphysical Implications of Conjoined Twining"
- "Stone (James L.) & Goodrich (James T.) - The craniopagus malformation: classification and implications for surgical separation"
- "Wikipedia - Craniopagus twins"
- "Ferner (Adam) - Metaphysics and biology: a critique of David Wiggins’ account of personal identity"
- "Olson (Eric) - On Parfit's View That We Are Not Human Beings",
- Pregnancy85
- "Damschen (Gregor), Gomez-Lobo (Alfonso) & Schonecker (Dieter) - Sixteen Days? A Reply to B. Smith and B. Brogaard on the Beginning of Human Individuals",
- Elselijn Kingma. Especially
→ "Finn (Suki) - Bun or bump?",
→ "Kingma (Elselijn) - Lady Parts: The Metaphysics of Pregnancy", and
→ "Kingma (Elselijn) - Were You Part of Your Mother?". - "Gomez-Lobo (Alfonso) - Sortals and Human Beginnings",
- "Isaac (Sasha) - Is artificial-womb technology a tool for women’s liberation?",
- "Oderberg (David) - The Metaphysical Status of the Embryo: Some Arguments Revisited",
- "Paez (Eze) - Abortion: What We Ought to Believe - An Ontological and Normative Analysis",
- "Smith (Barry) & Brogaard (Berit) - Sixteen Days".
- "Tzinman (Rina) - Memory, Organisms and the Circle of Life".
- Chapter 1086 (Thought Experiments87):-
- "Nielsen (Lasse) - Reconstructing Thought Experiments in Personal Identity", Read & Write-up
- "Searle (John), Etc. - Minds, Brains, and Programs", Annotate
- "Wilson (James) - The trolley problem problem", Write-up
- Investigate Transhumanism88. In particular,
- "Alexander (Denis) - Healing, enhancement and the human future": Read,
- "Awad (Edmond), Etc. - The Moral Machine experiment": Read,
- "Ball (Philip) - Sim ethics": Write up,
- "Bostrom (Nick) - Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies": Read,
- "Bridle (James) - New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future": Read,
- "Clark (Andy) & Kuhn (Robert Lawrence) - Aeon: Video - Andy Clark - Virtual immortality": Review write-up89,
- "Contera (Sonia) - Nano Comes to Life": Read,
- "da Cunha (Rui Vieira) - Will I ever Be a Cyborg?": Read,
- "Davies (Sally) - Women’s minds matter" (and papers cited / resisted)
- "Francis (Matthew) - Is this life real?", Write-up
- "Fry (Hannah) - Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine": Read & review,
- "Graziano (Michael) - Endless fun": Detailed review,
- "Hanson (Robin) - The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule the Earth", Read
- "Harari (Yuval Noah) - Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow": Review, especially Chapter 8,
- "Kent (Adrian) - Replication Ethics": Read,
- "Liao (S. Matthew) - Twinning, Inorganic Replacement, and the Organism View": Read,
- "Kobie (Nicole) - Quantum Supremacy is here - So what?": Complete write-up,
- "Madary (Michael) & Metzinger (Thomas) - Real Virtuality: A Code of Ethical Conduct": Read,
- "Marshall (Richard) & Metzinger (Thomas) - Thomas Metzinger: All About the Ego Tunnel": Read,
- "Midgley (Mary) - Biotechnology and Monstrosity: Why We Should Pay Attention to the 'Yuk Factor'": Complete,
- "O'Connell (Mark) - To be a Machine": Briefly review,
- "Otsuka (Michael) - Personal Identity, Substantial Change, and the Significance of Becoming": Read,
- "Schneider (Susan) - Artificial You": Read,
- "Shipley (G.J.) - Review of Andy Clark's 'Natural-Born Cyborgs'": Complete review,
- "Smith (Wilfred Cantwell) - The Promise of Artificial Intelligence": Read,
- "Tegmark (Max) - Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence": Read,
- "Wyatt (John) - Artificial intelligence and simulated relationships": Write-up.
- Chapter 1190 (Resurrection91):-
- Death92
- "Baillie (James) - We all know that we will die, so why do we struggle to believe it?": Complete review
- "Bradley (Ben), Feldman (Fred) & Johansson (Jens) - The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death": Start a review, especially
→ "Zimmerman (Dean) - Personal Identity and the Survival of Death", - "Kaufman (Sharon) - Neither person nor cadaver", Review
- "Luper (Steven), Ed. - The Cambridge Companion to Life and Death": Start a review, especially
→ "Olson (Eric) - The Nature of People", - "Stone (Alison) - Thinking about one’s birth is as uncanny as thinking of death": review
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Dualism and Materialism: Athens and Jerusalem?": Read & review
- "Veatch (Robert M.) - Would a Reasonable Person Now Accept the 1968 Harvard Brain Death Report? A Short History of Brain Death": review
- Makropulos Case93
- "Moore (Adrian W.) - Is the quest for immortality worse than death?": Detailed analysis
- "Moore (Adrian W.) - Williams, Nietzsche, and the Meaninglessness of Immortality": Read and review
- Reincarnation94
- "Barua (Ankur) - Revisiting the Rationality of Reincarnation-Talk": Write a file-note.
- "MacIntosh (J.J.) - Reincarnation and Relativized Identity": Read and review
- "Noonan (Harold) - The Possibility of Reincarnation": Read and review
- Resurrection95
- "Badham (Paul) - Christian Beliefs About Life After Death": Read and review
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Death and the Afterlife": Read and review
- "Corcoran (Kevin) - Dualism, Materialism and the Problem of Post Mortem Survival": Read and review
- "Martin (L. Michael) & Augustine (Keith) - The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death": Start a thorough review,
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - The Compatibility of Materialism and Survival: The “Falling Elevator” Model": Read and review
- 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 Yet To Be Logged", and log papers therein if they become important.
- Convert old PDFs to Notes:-
- Review the two reports:-
→ PDF-précis,
→ PDF-essays96. - Determine how the first is produced, and why the pdfs aren't highlighted, and compare with Write-ups Notes Jump Table
- Re-read & enhance recent Précis conversions, ie:-
→ "Skyrms (Brian) - The Goodman Paradox and the New Riddle of Induction"
→ "Woolhouse (Roger) - Spinoza and Substance" - Convert outstanding Essays.
- Complete cataloguing the books downloaded from Springer,
- Continue with "Marshall (Richard) - Philosophy at 3:AM: Questions and Answers with 25 Top Philosophers",
- Complete reading (or make notes on):-
- "Ball (Philip) - Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Quantum Mechanics is ... Different",
- "Barker (Jonathan) - Debunking Arguments and Metaphysical Laws",
- "Borges (Jorge Luis) - Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings",
- "Bregman (Rutger) - Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There",
- "Bregman (Rutger) - Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers",
- "Dennett (Daniel) - The Mind's I - Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul: Introduction",
- "Erber (Joan T.) & Szuchman (Lenore T.) - Great Myths of Aging",
- "Everett (Daniel) - Did Homo erectus speak?",
- "Fine (Cordelia) - Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society",
- "Greene (Brian) - The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos",
- "Hoffman (Donald D.) - The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes",
→ "Gefter (Amanda) & Hoffman (Donald D.) - The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality"
→ "O'Grady (Jane) - Donald Hoffman’s 'The Case Against Reality' is hard to get your head around" - "Hofstadter (Douglas) - Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid - A Metaphorical Fugue on Minds and Machines in the Spirit of Lewis Carroll",
- "Howson (Colin) & Urbach (Peter) - Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach",
- "Lee (Daniel) - The SS Officer's Armchair: In Search of a Hidden Life",
- "Ord (Toby) - The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity",
- "Paxman (Jeremy) - Friends in High Places: Who Rules Britain",
- "Rovelli (Carlo) - Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity",
- "Shand (John) - Central Issues of Philosophy",
- "Vedral (Vlatko) - Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information".
- Complete my Note on "Smith (Martin) - Why Throwing 92 Heads in a Row Is Not Surprising" and discuss with Pete & Mike.
- Economics:-
- "Sowell (Thomas) - Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy",
- "Susskind (Daniel) - A World Without Work: Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond",
- "Reiss (Julian) - Philosophy of Economics: A Contemporary Introduction".
- Continue reading and reviewing papers issued by Aeon97,
- Keep up with the Journals via JSTOR & Cambridge Core.
- Update my Journals Note98: Review the journals I have access to; more are available as a Cambridge Alumnus.
- Keep up with the philosophical world by regular reviews of "Interaction - Philos-List", but only seriously pursue items relevant to my research.
- Website99 (10 hours per week)
- Own Website: Priority 1 Items By Category:-
- Architecture
- Compact and Repair Problems
- On compacting and repairing my main database I sometimes get the error "The query cannot be completed. Either the size of the query result is larger than the maximum size of a database (2 GB), or there is not enough temporary storage space on the disk to store the query result".
- It happens 3 times while the database is re-opening.
- There is lots of space, and the database is only 600Mb (and the error started when it was under 500Mb).
- This mostly happens after I've run long processes, so I usually close the database, re-open it and then try the compact and repair. Usually this works, but not always. But I then try again and the message disappears.
- I strongly suspect that this is MS Access itself re-indexing tables, and blowing up a temporary database, but I can’t find any evidence for this on-line. Or help, other than suggestions to split databases and do other sensible things. Given that the error occurs when the database is re-opening, with no temporary file visible, is very strange.
- 17/04/20 - set MaxLocksPerFile to 1,000,000 (from the default 9,500). Sadly, it doesn't seem to have made a difference.
- Complete XRef-re-engineering project:-
- Ensure all links and link-pages use the new XRef table, and pension off the old tables.
- Look into writing out specific object-identifiers, and linking thereto for Citations, rather than paragraph references. An issue is multiple instances of the same object in a document.
- Check all link-types still work and fix any errors.
- Complete the auto-triggering of regeneration of “associated” link pages.
- Fix update bug in Convert_Webrefs.
- Fix Bug whereby PaperSummary pages seem to have “Works-” and “Books/Papers-” Citings that refer to the same link-pages.
- Document the process!
- Document100, Repair & update my Website site-map
- Review effectiveness of hyperlinking method in the light of PhD and Philosophy of Religion experience.
- Where possible, use ID rather than NAME for in-page hyperlinks
- Backups
- Investigate Record-count discrepancies:-
- How do website files work as far as counts are concerned?
- Why aren't they recorded in Backup_History, nor the fact that the website was backed up?
- Different counts depending on whether new or old laptop is backed up. Investigate 63k discrepancy - lower on new laptop.
- Review architecture to improve performance; Need to document first
- Books
- Further improve the time to regenerate Book Summaries. Took about 22 minutes on 01/01/2021, but should be under 5 minutes!
- Books/Papers
- Investigate whether multiple Subject/Topic/Subtopic usage leads anywhere (ie. are just the first (of 3) actually used). Fix anything amiss.
- Reformat the BookCitings and PaperCitings pages:-
- Detail PaperCitings Pages: Include only useful information on the detail pages; but if there are multiple links from the same object, include them on the same line as 'extra links' as in BookCitings (copy the code: or, better, combine the two subs).
- Summary (Author Letter) pages: Include counts (as in Authors' Citations).
- Ensure uses the Cross_Reference table.
- Document!
- Bridge
- Develop auto-reconciliation routines vs EBU results download
- Documenter
- Investigate the error reports from the Documenter, especially unused variables & queries.
- Provide Functional Documentation for Website Generator (using Notes)
- Education
- "Sitepoint (Learnable) - Sitepoint Learnable Web Development Courses": Membership cancelled, but plan what to do with the eBooks in my possession.
- Read "PC Pro - Computing in the Real World".
- Read "White (Ron) & Downs (Timothy Edward) - How Computers Work: The Evolution of Technology".
- Infrastructure
- iCloud for Windows: Re-install & solve 'The upload folder for iCloud Photos is missing' problem. Try on new Laptop.
- Notes
- Add "Note Alternates" to Note pages.
- Allow the option to concatenate Notes in the Printed version (ie. linearly embed them essay-style), rather than treating the hyperlinks as footnotes – but still keep the hyperlink & cross-referencing in place.
- For use as "disclaimers" - eg. for "Plug Notes".
- For Thesis / essays: the difficulty here is the need for linking passages to make the text run smoothly.
- As part of the Cross-Referencing project, check out the consistent treatment of Note 875101, which should be universally ignored. Recently, links to it appeared on Book-Summaries, Book_Paper_Abstracts and Note_Book_Links, as a Note referencing a Book. The critical item was a row on the Note_Book_Links table.
- Determine why very long printable notes (eg. Level 3+ for Note 170102) are being truncated. Probably suppress them in any case, as they take far too long to load.
- Enhance Functors to work for selected non-temp Notes so that up-to-date stats can be incorporated. This is complex as I want to avoid production of an Archived Note each time a non-Temp Note is regenerated. I also want to ensure that Notes whose variable text consists entirely of Functors get archived correctly (which they might not if I removed Functor-generated text from Notes before saving them to the Notes table).
- Fix bugs in multi-level footnoting in Printable Notes – the referencing is going wrong.
- Investigate Note_Links: Section references seem to be incorrect
- Printable Notes: fix the bug whereby the “private” flag is round the wrong way.
- Split Aeon Page103 into multiple sub-pages (either by topic or by priority)
- Suppress the publication of the Printable versions of Temp Notes
- Upgrade Auto_Reference_Notes to reference Sub-Notes: Currently only affects one note - Somerset Maugham - so not yet urgent
- Papers
- The monthly regeneration process for Paper Abstracts was still taking just over 5 hours. I thought it could not be fixed until the cross-referencing project is fully complete and documented. However, it spontaneously improved to 1.6 hours in the August 2020 run. Monitor! Last run: 1.72 hours on 01/01/2021.
- Photos
- Develop software & procedure to make adding more content to the photos pages easier to undertake.
- Timeline software: Add photos for Holidays & Family History
- Process
- Determine why Recalculation & Changed Book/Papers produce unneeded regeneration.
- Spider
- Analyse the results of the data collection exercise and design a plan of campaign to fix broken Internal links and prevent recurrence.
- Correct the code so the problems discovered by the Spider don’t recur.
- Delete 'orphan pages' that are never linked to, ie. Use the Spider to prune redundant pages104 automatically where possible.
- Fix the historical data where errors are uncovered by the Spider. An easier task now the site has a full-regen function.
- Technology
- Look into Sistrix Smart105. Errors and warnings itemised are:-
- Duplicate content: seems to be variants on theotodman.com
- Title Tags: Empty, too long, identical
- Page Not Found
- Filesize in excess of 1Mb
- Meta-Description: Empty
- Few words on Page
- H1: Not used, used multiple times per page, identical across pages
- Pictures: Alt attribute missing
- WebRefs
- Webrefs_Update failing because IE loops with Aeon / Psyche pages. Currently doing manual checking - try to find an automated solution.
- Documentation & Bug-fixes: Phase 2
- Re-document the procedures in the light of recent changes.
- Resolve issues generated / revealed by the spider.
- Investigate - and fix where possible - broken links.
- Find a way of recording Missing Webrefs other than debug.print: create table, then suppress message for known problems
- Investigate items flagged as defunct. Populate Defunct_Explanation in WebRefs_Table. Consider use of FairUse (Link - Fair Use) for documents no longer available that I'd downloaded.
- Investigate WebRefs with Issue = 'URL Translated OK': does the translation really work? How?
- Other Websites: Priority 1 Items By Category:-
- Bridge
- Regular updates to the Hutton Bridge Club (https://www.bridgewebs.com/hutton.html) Website.
- Regular updates to the Mountnessing Bridge Club (https://www.bridgewebs.com/mountnessingbc/) Website.
- Enigma
- Termly updates to the Enigma Ensemble (http://www.enigmaensemble.co.uk/) Website.
Religion106 (1 hour per week)- Philosophy of Religion:
- "Antony (Louise M.) - Philosophers without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life": Continue reading,
- "Ferguson (Matthew) - Κέλσος": Continue reading the Blog,
- "Howard-Snyder (Daniel) - The Skeptical Christian": Read,
- "Howard-Snyder (Daniel) - Does Faith Entail Belief": Read,
- "Insole (Christopher J.) - Realism and Anti-Realism": Read,
- "Plantinga (Alvin) & Dennett (Daniel) - Science and Religion: Are They Compatible?": Read.
- Resurrection: Continue reviewing107
- "Alter (Michael J.) - The Resurrection: A Critical Inquiry", and
- "Alter (Michael J.) - The Resurrection & Christian Apologetics: A Critical Inquiry Volume 2".
- Essays:
- "Todman (Theo) - Philosophy of Religion Essay 1: Can God's necessity establish the existence of God?", Review - what's the latest version?
- Background:
- Aeon (https://aeon.co/): Read & annotate papers as they arise
- "Finkelstein (Israel) & Silberman (Neil Asher) - The Bible Unearthed": Continue reading
- "Lennox (John C.) - Where Is God in a Coronavirus World?": Review in Blog
- "Levine (Amy-Jill) & Brettler (Marc Zvi), Eds. - The Jewish Annotated New Testament": Continue reading
- "Thomson (Oliver) - A History of Sin": Continue reading
- "Taylor (Joan E.) - Jesus and Brian: Exploring the Historical Jesus and His Times Via Monty Python's Life of Brian": Review KCL Conference videos
- "Watts (Edward) - The Final Pagan Generation: Rome's Unexpected Path to Christianity": Continue reading
Music108 (7 hours per week)- Oboe:-
- Practice the oboe for two 30-minute sessions each and every day109 – focussing on the items below and …
- Occasionally combine into an hour-long session to build up stamina further.
- Work through, and perfect, scales & arpeggios110 for Grades I-VIII, using
→ "Trinity Guildhall - Trinity Guildhall Scales & Arpeggios for Oboe (Grades 1–8)", and
→ "ABRSM - Scales and Arpeggios for Oboe, Grades 1-8 (ABRSM Scales & Arpeggios)". - Improve sight-reading by playing through
→ "Trinity Guildhall - Sound at Sight Oboe Grades 1-8", and
→ "Davies (John) & Harris (Paul) - 80 Graded Studies for Oboe: Book 1". - Occasionally review Grade VI pieces, in particular
→ "Boni (Giovanni) - Sonata in G" (Prelude, but also 2nd, 3rd & 4th movements for interest),
→ "Davies (John) & Harris (Paul) - 80 Graded Studies for Oboe: Book 2" (Blatt - Study No. 52),
→ "Morricone (Ennio) - Gabriel's Oboe (Piano Solo Or Oboe/Piano)"
→ "Miller (Vojislav) & Liebermann (Winfried), Eds. - Test Pieces for Orchestral Auditions (Orchester Probespiel) - Oboe" (Eroica, Aida, Der Freischutz),
→ "Nielsen (Carl) - Two Fantasy Pieces, Op. 2" (Romanze only) - Prepare Grade VII pieces, in particular111
→ "Albinoni (Tomaso) - Concerto in D Minor Op. 9/2 for Oboe & Piano", 1st movement (but also 2nd & 3rd for interest)
→ "Bach (J.S.) - 105 Difficult Passages from the Works of J. S. Bach. For oboe", Items 49 & 70
→ "Cimarosa (Domenico) - Oboe Concerto in C minor", All, but particularly 1st & 4th movements
→ "Davies (John) & Harris (Paul) - 80 Graded Studies for Oboe: Book 2" (Ferling - Study No. 62)
→ "Fiocco (J.H.) - Arioso - Oboe + Piano",
→ "Head (Michael) - Presto for Oboe & Piano",
→ "Hinke (Gustav Adolf) - Elementary Method For Oboe", Items 14 & 18
→ "Miller (Vojislav) & Liebermann (Winfried), Eds. - Test Pieces for Orchestral Auditions (Orchester Probespiel) - Oboe" (Mozart Jupiter, Tchaikovsky Pathetique, Stravinsky Pucinella),
→ "Mower (Mike) - The Good Tempered Oboe" (Nos. 28 & 35: 'Jauntless Jig' & 'May The Fourth Be With You'; also No. 30: 'Answer the Question'),
→ "Nielsen (Carl) - Two Fantasy Pieces, Op. 2" (Humoresque),
→ "Saint-Saens (Camille) - Sonata Op.166 in D Major for Oboe & Piano" (1st Movement),
→ "Schumann (Robert) - 3 Romances, Op. 94 for Oboe and Piano" (1st & 3rd Movements; 2nd for interest). - Prepare Grade VIII pieces, in particular112
→ "Bach (J.S.) - 105 Difficult Passages from the Works of J. S. Bach. For oboe", Items 62, 66 and 28
→ "Davies (John) & Harris (Paul) - 80 Graded Studies for Oboe: Book 2" (Harris - Study No. 74; Luft - Study No. 77)
→ "Miller (Vojislav) & Liebermann (Winfried), Eds. - Test Pieces for Orchestral Auditions (Orchester Probespiel) - Oboe" (try various),
→ "Mower (Mike) - The Good Tempered Oboe" (No. 44 - 'Dop Dop Doobah'; also No. 45: 'Enlightenment'),
→ "Saint-Saens (Camille) - Sonata Op.166 in D Major for Oboe & Piano" (2nd & 3rd Movements), - Read and apply oboe practice techniques recommended by:-
→ Martin Schuring, and
→ "Benedetti (Nicola) - My five tips for learning an instrument". - Read "Caplan (Stephen) - Oboe: The Breathing Book".
- Piano: Try to develop some minimal competence as an aid to theory, so:-
- Continue practicing "Rhodes (James) - How to Play the Piano" (Bach's Prelude #1),
- Work through "ABRSM - Selected Piano Exam Pieces 2009-2010: Grade 1", and
- Try to play by ear, using for inspiration:-
→ "Cannel (Ward) & Marx (Fred) - How to Play the Piano Despite Years of Lessons: What Music Is and How to Make It at Home".
- Theory: Prepare for Grade 5 Theory, so:-
- Study
→ "Taylor (Eric) - The AB Guide to Music Theory - Part 1", and
→ "Taylor (Eric) - The AB Guide to Music Theory - Part 2", - Whiz through113 the exercises in
→ "Taylor (Eric) - Music Theory in Practice: Grade 1",
→ "Taylor (Eric) - Music Theory in Practice: Grade 2",
→ "Taylor (Eric) - Music Theory in Practice: Grade 3",
→ "Taylor (Eric) - Music Theory in Practice: Grade 4", and
→ "Taylor (Eric) - Music Theory in Practice: Grade 5",
- Aural:
- Run through:-
→ "Trinity Guildhall - Trinity College London Aural Tests Book 1 (Initial to Grade 5) 2017", and
→ "Trinity Guildhall - Trinity College London Aural Tests Book 2 (Grades 6 to 8) 2017". - Get a grip on the process of ear-training by
→ Reading "Deutsch (Diana) - Absolute Pitch", and related material114, and
→ Try out "Earmaster - Ear Training & Sight-singing". - Try out "Boytim (Joan Frey) - The First Book Of Baritone/Bass Solos".
- Also follow up items in:-
→ "Various - Music - Aural - Various On-line Training".
Languages115 (7 hours per week)- General:
→ Brief Thoughts on Language & Languages116 - Arabic:
→ "Abdul-Rauf (Muhammad) - Arabic for English-Speaking Students",
→ "Wightwick (Jane) & Gaafar (Mahmoud) - Mastering Arabic",
→ "Ling - Learn Arabic" - Armenian:
→ "Andonian (Hagop) - Beginner's Armenian"
→ "Ling - Learn Armenian" - Chinese:
→ "Newman (Richard) - About Chinese"
→ "Ling - Learn Chinese" - Danish:
→ "Koefoed (H.A.) - Teach Yourself Danish"
→ "Ling - Learn Danish" - Dutch:
→ "Shetter (William) - Introduction to Dutch - A Practical Grammar"
→ "Ling - Learn Dutch" - German:
→ "Tenberg (Reinhard) & Ainslie (Susan) - Deutsch Plus"
→ "Ling - Learn German" - Greek (Modern):
→ "Matsukas (Aristarhos) - Complete Greek Course"
→ "Ling - Learn Greek" - Hebrew (Modern):
→ "Glinert (Lewis) - Modern Hebrew: An Essential Grammar"
→ "Ling - Learn Hebrew" - Hindi:
→ "Snell (Rupert) - Beginner's Hindi Script"
→ "Ling - Learn Hindi" - Italian:
→ "Freeth (Mariolina) & Checketts (Giuliana) - Contatti 1: A First Course in Italian"
→ "Ling - Learn Italian" - Japanese:
→ "Lammers (W.P.) - Japanese the Manga Way: An Illustrated Guide to Grammar and Structure"
→ "Ling - Learn Japanese" - Latin:
→ "Duolingo - Duolingo Latin" - Persian:
→ "Farzad (Narguess) - Complete Modern Persian"
→ "Ling - Learn Persian" - Portuguese:
→ "Whitlam (John) - Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar: A Practical Guide"
→ "Ling - Learn Portuguese" - Russian:
→ "West (Daphne) - Russian"
→ "Ling - Learn Russian" - Spanish:
→ "Gordon (Ronni L.) & Stillman (David M.) - The Ultimate Spanish Review and Practice"
→ "Ling - Learn Spanish" - Swahili:
→ "Wood (Laurence) & Shadrack (Jaba Tumaini) - Learn Swahili Quickly and Easily: The theory made simple"
→ "Ling - Learn Swahili" - Swedish:
→ "McClean (R.J.) - Swedish: A Grammar of the Modern Language"
→ "Ling - Learn Swedish" - Thai:
→ "Becker (Benjawan Poomsan) - Thai for Beginners",
→ "Ling - Learn Thai", - Turkish:
→ "Celen-Pollard (Asuman) & Pollard (David) - Turkish (Teach Yourself Complete Courses)"
→ "Ling - Learn Turkish" - Urdu:
→ "Delacy (Richard) - Read and Write Urdu Script"
→ "Ling - Learn Urdu"
Consciousness117 (1 hour per week)- Aeon118: 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 - "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.
- "Papineau (David) - Introducing Consciousness": Re-read and write notes.
- "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
Bridge119 (1 hour per week)- Bridge "at the table" is on hold. Only play on-line if pressurised by clubs or partners.
- Review hands from National Masters Pairs in March 2020.
- Investigate RealBridge (https://realbridge.online/).
- Bridge Admin: Committee and Website involvement for Mountnessing and Hutton.
- Re-read Hand-counting papers, focussing on
→ Papers in Counting the Hands120,
→ "Bourke (Tim) & Smith (Marc), Bird (David) - Countdown to Winning Bridge", and
→ "Lawrence (Mike) - How to read your opponents' cards: The bridge expert's way to locate missing high cards"
→ "Lawrence (Mike) - How to Play Card Combinations" - Read "Klinger (Ron) - Five-card Majors".
- Read "Reading - Bridge - Magazines".
Chess121 (1 hour per week)- Why Play Chess:
→ Seriously consider the issues raised by "Ramon y Cajal (Santiago) - On Chess".
→ Counter this with responsibiity to the local chess scene now I've made contact - Chess Study:-
→ "Gufeld (Eduard) - The Sicilian for the Tournament Player",
→ "Hansen (Carsten) - The Full English Opening: Mastering the Fundamentals",
→ "Ris (Robert) - Crucial Chess Skills for the Club Player: Volume 1",
→ "Ris (Robert) - Crucial Chess Skills for the Club Player: Volume 2",
→ "Sadler (Matthew) & Regan (Natasha) - Game Changer: AlphaZero's Groundbreaking Chess Strategies and the Promise of AI",
→ "Speelman (Jon), Tisdall (Jon) & Wade (Bob) - Batsford Chess Endings",
→ "van der Sterren (Paul) - FCO - Fundamental Chess Openings", and
→ "Willemze (Thomas) - The Chess Toolbox: Practical Techniques Everyone Should Know". - Chess Training:-
→ Chess.com (https://www.chess.com/) (game analysis & occasional 10-minute game),
→ Investigate122 LiChess.org (https://lichess.org/)
→ "Chess - Chess - YouTube Videos",
→ Complete review of 2018/19 season's games,
→ Complete review of 2019/20 season's games. - Club Play & Participation:
- Over-the-Boad Play: Participation123 if and when play resumes in Billericay Chess Club:-
→ Club Nights
→ NECL matches
→ Southend League matches - Attend weekly Billericay Virtual Chess Club (https://lichess.org/team/billericay-virtual-chess-club) (using Discord (https://discord.com/channels/693153803276517397/693153803276517401))
Mathematics124 (1 hour per week)- Aeon125: Read papers as they arise.
- "Gowers (Timothy), Barrow-Green (June) & Leader (Imre), Eds. - The Princeton Companion to Mathematics": Browse.
- "Polya (George), Stewart (Ian) - How to Solve IT: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method": Read.
- Try the puzzles in
→ "Polya (George) & Kilpatrick (Jeremy) - The Stanford Mathematics Problem Book: With Hints and Solutions", and
→ "UKMT, du Sautoy (Marcus) - The Ultimate Mathematical Challenge". - "Shapiro (Stewart) - Thinking about Mathematics - The Philosophy of Mathematics": Complete reading.
- "Smith (Martin) - Why Throwing 92 Heads in a Row Is Not Surprising": Analyze.
- "Spiegelhalter (David) - The Art of Statistics: Learning from Data": Read.
- "Wilmott (Paul) - Machine Learning: An Applied Mathematics Introduction": Read.
HiQ126 (1 hour per week)- ISPE
- Mensa
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 1: - Since the contents of the groups changes over time, this justification for their segregation isn’t entirely accurate.
Footnote 12: - Mind you, the mathematical bits didn’t function very well in my youth, so what hope is there now?
Footnote 14: - Due to administrative confusion, I needlessly took their latest entrance test. After chasing them up I was told I “passed with flying colours”, but could get no more information.
Footnote 15: - Coxes Farm hails from the 16th century, or possibly earlier, and is very “wonky”, requiring continual maintenance.
- In December 2017, a base to roof crack appeared in the render at the front.
- Subsequent investigations revealed that the frame at the front – which had been added in the 17th century – has rotted away, so the front façade was held up by the brick infill and an impervious cement render, the cause of the rot.
- The front of the house has now been rebuilt, as has ¾ of the rear. A third project – currently about 40% through – is to rebuild the lower part of two side walls.
- I’ve written a Blog Item on this saga, with some theoretical thoughts, which I hope to have published in the Listed property Owners Club Magazine due course.
Footnote 16: - If these link to the wrong version, ie. the current one, you’ll need to go the “previous versions” and select the correct one.
Footnote 20: - 25 hours / week represents the amount of time that I’d need to spend if I were pursuing my research part-time at Birkbeck – which would be something like 5 hours / day, 5 days a week.
Footnote 21: - As my purchasing has now dropped to a relative trickle, I’ve extended the selection range to cover the last 6 months.
- Some of these are random purchases from charity shops, or presents. Others are selectively purchased in support of my various projects.
- Poverty and lack of space is severely curtailing my purchasing power.
Footnote 22: - Or at least those recently added to my database, in the case of electronic items that sometimes arrive too fast to be catalogued immediately.
Footnote 25: - In the light of the segregation of my projects into three tiers, items for tertiary projects are only to be addressed if everything of higher priority is in shape.
- If there are any changes to this list between quarters, they will appear in the Priority Task List.
Footnotes 46, 58: Footnote 56: - This paper covers the 'Loose and Popular' vs 'Strict and Philosophical' senses of identity, amongst much else.
Footnote 59: Footnotes 64, 67: - This list will hopefully diminish over time, as I read the works, so will no longer look balanced.
Footnote 65: - Neither sub-topic is really part of my research into the metaphysics of personal identity, but it's become such an important topic of late - one on which I'm largely ignorant and need to have a considered opinion.
Footnote 89: - Also look through other works by Andy Clark to get a handle on what he means by 'patterns in information space'.
Footnote 104: - Note that Backup_Prune_Ctrl deletes (relevant) pages that weren't regenerated in the last full site-regen, but this isn't the same thing.
Footnote 105: - See Sistrix (https://www.sistrix.com/smart/)
- This used to be called Optimizr, see Optimizr - Defunct (which now auto-forwards to Sistrix).
- A quick look doesn’t show it to be an obvious scam, but I need to double-check.
- An unsolicited analysis of my site turned up monthly from Optimizr from January 2015 to October 2017, listing a large number of “problems” that I think I know about, but which are in the queue to address.
- It restarted in February 2018, under the Sistrix name (this seems to have been associated with Optimizr since November 2015).
- The free version of this software is restricted to 1,000 pages, which is a very small proportion of my Site, though I may be able to point it to difference base-URLs.
- But I do need to address the problems validly itemised, and a sub-set is still useful.
Footnote 107: - While I couldn't submit to Michael Alter's deadlines and the amount of work required, I ought to at least read these books.
Footnote 109: - Well, maybe with the occasional holiday, and excluding days on which I have a lesson or the Enigma Ensemble (currently in hibernation).
Footnote 110: - I don't intend to present these for the Trinity exams, as I can present Orchestral Audition pieces instead; but they are essential for technique.
Footnote 111: - I've yet to decide which to present for the Exam, so this long list will get whittled down in due course.
Footnote 112: - These are just the ones from the Trinity schedule that I happen to have. Some look rather fearsome.
- The only one I've had assigned is the Second Movement of the Saint-Saens.
Footnote 113: - The earlier grades are very elementary, but I need practice writing musical notation.
Footnote 114: Ie. The following:- Footnote 122: - And consider migrating from Chess.com (https://www.chess.com/), though I renewed my membership at the end of August 2020, but downgraded from Diamond, costing about £80, to Gold, costing about £24.
Footnote 123: - This used to say "full participation", but I've let the team captain know that my 'mind games' focus is Bridge, and that - while I'm willing to "fill a board" - I don't want to take the place of anyone more enthusiastic.
- In any case, there's now no 'over the board' chess to be had.
Note last updated: 04/01/2021 19:40:48
Footnote 2: (Status: Personal Identity (2020 - December))
Rationale for this Project- I am researching the subject of Personal Identity primarily because of its intrinsic interest and importance. It is really a sub-topic in my Philosophy of Religion project, with its penultimate chapter considering the metaphysical possibility of resurrection.
- While I’m interested in the topic of my research in its own right, 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 find my current views is here.
- The jumping-off point for my thesis is here, and a progress dashboard is here, though neither of these has changed for some considerable time.
Summary of Progress during October - December 2020- I spent 339.5 hours in 20Q4 on this Project, or related work (339.5 hours YTD, where for "YTD" - Year to Date - I mean the (academic) year that commenced in October 2020). That's 108.5% of the planned effort (108.5% YTD). Overall, 50% of my Project effort in the Quarter was directed towards this project (making 50% YTD) - as against 44.4% planned (44.4% YTD).
- I worked hard and comfortably exceeded my quarterly time budget.
- The main success of the quarter was to complete adding reading lists to all my Notes on Personal Identity. This will allow me to push on with the text of my Thesis.
- I’ve got further behind on reading Aeon, but at the expense of “real work” on my Thesis.
- Progress between reports can be obtained from the relevant section of my Summary Task List.
- A full list of items worked on in the quarter appears below.
Thesis (Total Hours = 190.5)- Thesis - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 187.25)
- Aeon: Autry - Sociology’s race problem (https://aeon.co/essays/urban-ethnographers-do-harm-in-speaking-for-black-communities) (Comments; Read, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Elliot - Origin story (https://aeon.co/essays/physics-and-information-theory-give-a-glimpse-of-lifes-origins) (Comments; Read, 2.5 hours)
- Aeon: Limburg - Am I disabled? (https://aeon.co/essays/what-does-it-mean-to-consider-yourself-a-disabled-person) (Comments; Read, 0.75 hours)
- Aeon: Video - Don't think twice (https://aeon.co/videos/as-dementia-trims-the-tree-of-knowledge-in-johns-brain-music-holds-firm) (Comments; Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
→ See "Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul) - Aeon: 2019+" (4.25 hours) - "Aloni (Mari) - Disjunction" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Attwood (Tony) - Could It Be Aspergers?" (Read, 1 hour)
- "Bapteste (Eric) & Dupre (John) - Towards a processual microbial ontology" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Black (Jeremy) - A Brief History of Slavery" (Read / Write, 3.25 hours)
- "Blackmore (Vernon) & Page (Andrew) - Evolution: The Great Debate" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Cabrera (Miguel A. Badia) - Hume's Reflection On Religion" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Calvin (William H.) - The Ascent of Mind: Ice Age Climates and the Evolution of Intelligence" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Calvo (Paco) - The philosophy of plant neurobiology: a manifesto" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Calvo (Paco) - What Is It Like to Be a Plant?" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Cangelosi (Angelo) & Parisi (Domenico), Eds. - Simulating the Evolution of Language" (Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Collyer (John V.) - Creation, Evolution & Science: Is Creation Credible? Is Evolution a Science?" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Craig (William Lane) - Divine Timelessness and Personhood" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Craig (William Lane) - God, Time, and Eternity" (Write, 2 hours)
- "Craig (William Lane) - Reasonable Faith - Website" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Cullmann (Oscar) - Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead?" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Dawkins (Richard) - Gaps in the Mind" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "De Haan (Daniel D.) - Hylomorphic Animalism, Emergentism, and the Challenge of the New Mechanist Philosophy of Neuroscience" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "De Haan (Daniel D.) - Hylomorphism And The New Mechanist Philosophy In Biology, Neuroscience, And Psychology" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "De Haan (Daniel D.) - The Interaction of Noetic and Psychosomatic Operations in a Thomist Hylomorphic Anthropology" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "De Jesus (Paulo) - Autopoietic Enactivism, Phenomenology and the Deep Continuity Between Life and Mind" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Dennett (Daniel) - Review - Varela, Thompson and Rosch - The Embodied Mind - Cognitive Science and Human Experience" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Denton (Michael) - Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Di Muzio (Gianluca) - Reincarnation and infinite punishment in hell" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Dupre (John) & Nicholson (Daniel J.), Eds. - Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Dyson (Freeman) - Origins of Life" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Eldredge (Niles) - Life Pulse - Episodes from the Story of the Fossil Record" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Eldredge (Niles) - Reinventing Darwin - The Great Evolutionary Debate" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Eldredge (Niles) - The Miner's Canary - Unravelling the Mysteries of Extinction" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Eldredge (Niles) & Gould (Stephen Jay) - Punctuated Equilibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Flew (Antony) - Darwinian Evolution" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Gagliano (Monica) - The mind of plants: Thinking the unthinkable" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Goodwin (Brian) - How the Leopard Changed its Spots - The Evolution of Complexity" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Gosling (Samuel D.) - Personality in Non-human Animals" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Hoffman (Donald D.) - The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Jaeger (Johannes) & Monk (Nick) - Everything flows: A process perspective on life" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Jaeger (Johannes), Irons (David) & Monk (Nick) - The Inheritance of Process: A Dynamical Systems Approach" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Johnson (George) - Soul Searching" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Jones (Steve) - Almost Like a Whale - The Origin of Species Updated" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Karaca (Caglar) - Relational Basis Of The Organism’s Self-Organization" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Koslicki (Kathrin) - Aristotle's Mereology and the Status of Form" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Lamont (John) - The Justice and Goodness of Hell" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Little (Margaret Olivia) - Abortion and the Margins of Personhood" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Self, Agency and Mental Causation" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Machamer (Peter), Darden (Lindley) & Craver (Carl F.) - Thinking about Mechanisms" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Marmodoro (Anna) - Aristotle’s Hylomorphism without Reconditioning" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Maynard Smith (John) - Evolutionary Genetics" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Mayr (Ernst) - Towards a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Autopoiesis, Biological Autonomy and the Process View of Life" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Bio-Agency and the Possibility of Artificial Agents" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Bio-Agency: Can Organisms Act?" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Body or Organism? Eric T. Olson’s Charge of Cartesianism against the Bodily Criterion of Personal Identity" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Dispositionalism: Between Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Do Human Embryos Have a Disposition to Personhood?" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - How to stay the same while changing" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Human Persons – A Process View" (Read / Write, 10.75 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Metaphysics: On the Being-There of What There Is" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - On the Battlefield of Metaphysics" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Personal Identity Without Personality? Remarks on a Neglected Relation" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Personality and Personal Identity - Challenging a Substance Theoretical Presumption" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Potentiality and Disposition in the Discussion about the Moral Status of Human Embryos" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Powers, Persistence and Process" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Review of Chauncey Maher's 'Plant Minds'" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Systems or Bodies? On How (Not) to Embody Autopoiesis" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Without Metaphysics, please!? Transtemporal Personal Identity as Practical Reality" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Menary (Richard) - Introduction to the special issue on 4E cognition" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Midgley (Mary) - Persons and Non-Persons" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Mitchell (Robert) - Humans, Nonhumans and Personhood" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Moreland (J.P.) & Rae (Scott) - Human Persons in Naturalistic & Complementarian Perspectives" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Murray (Douglas) - The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity" (Read / Write, 14.25 hours)
- "Nolan (Daniel) - Realism and Reductive Materialism About the Mind" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Olson (Eric) - What Are We?" (Write, 4.25 hours)
- "Olson (Eric) - What Are We? Contents + References" (Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Olson (Eric) - What Are We? The Question" (Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Patterson (Francine) & Gordon (Wendy) - The Case For the Personhood of Gorillas" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Peacocke (Christopher), Ed. - Objectivity, Simulation and the Unity of Consciousness" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Ridley (Mark) - The Problems of Evolution" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg) - Characters, Persons, Selves, Individuals" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg) - Persons and Personae" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg) - Persons, Policies, and Bodies" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg) - The Transformation of Persons" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - Aping Persons - Pro and Con" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - Are Animals Moral Beings?" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - Groundwork for a Subjective Theory of Ethics" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - In Defense of the Pig" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - Moral Community and Animal Rights" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - Moral Relativism: A Causal Interpretation and Defense" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - Speciesism, Painism, and Morality" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - The Debate Over Eating Meat" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Seibt (Johanna) - Beyond Endurance and Perdurance: Recurrent Dynamics" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Seymour (Charles) - A Craigian Theodicy of Hell" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Seymour (Charles) - A Theodicy of Hell" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Sidzinska (Maja) - Not One, Not Two: Toward an Ontology of Pregnancy" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Simons (Peter) - Processes and Precipitates" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Skewes (Joshua) & Hooker (Cliff) - Bio-Agency and the Problem of Action" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Surovell (Jonathan) - But for the Grace of God: Abortion and Cognitive Disability, Luck and Moral Status" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Swinburne (Richard) - Dualism Intact" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Animals" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Bundle Theories" (Write, 3.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Christian Materialism" (Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Clones" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Duplication" (Write, 2 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Evolution" (Write, 8.75 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Hybrid Theories" (Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Person" (Write, 17.5 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Physicalism" (Write, 16.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Plants" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Psychological View" (Write, 2 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Quantum Mechanics" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Race" (Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Religion" (Write, 7.75 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Semantics" (Write, 2 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Society" (Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Soul Criterion" (Write, 5.5 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Souls" (Write, 6 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Unity of the Person" (Write, 5.5 hours)
- "Trewavas (Anthony) - Aspects of Plant Intelligence" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Trewavas (Anthony) - Plant intelligence: Mindless mastery" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Uzgalis (William) - The Immateriality of the Soul and Personal Identity" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Varela (Francisco J.) - Neurophenomenology: A Methodological Remedy for the Hard Problem" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Varela (Francisco J.) - Organism, Cognitive Science and the Emergence of Selfless Selves" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Varela (Francisco J.) - Patterns of Life: Intertwining Identity and Cognition" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Varela (Francisco J.) & Maturana (Humberto) - Mechanism and Biological Explanation" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Welford (Megan) - Always on my mind" (Read / Write, 3.5 hours)
- "Wilson (Jack) - Generation and Corruption" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Wilson (Jack) - Identity and Sortals: Why Relative Identity Is Self-Contradictory" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Wilson (Jack) - Individuality and Equivocation" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Wilson (Jack) - Personal Identity Naturalized: Our Bodies, Our Selves" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Wilson (Jack) - The Biological and Philosophical Roots of Individuality" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Wilson (Jack) - The Necessity of Biological Origin and Substantial Kinds" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- Thesis - Discussions
- Thesis - Research Repositioning
Thesis Background (Total Hours = 119.75)- Thesis Background - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 99.25)
- Aeon: Baggini - In a pandemic we learn again what Sartre meant by being free (https://psyche.co/ideas/in-a-pandemic-we-learn-again-what-sartre-meant-by-being-free) (Comments; Read, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Callcut - What are we? (https://aeon.co/essays/living-the-life-authentic-bernard-williams-on-paul-gauguin) (Comments; Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- Aeon: Dahl - Young children use reason, not gut feelings, to decide moral issues (https://psyche.co/ideas/young-children-use-reason-not-gut-feelings-to-decide-moral-issues) (Comments; Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Hazrat - A history of punctuation (https://aeon.co/essays/beside-the-point-punctuation-is-dead-long-live-punctuation) (Comments; Read, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Muecke - What Aboriginal people know about the pathways of knowledge (https://psyche.co/ideas/what-aboriginal-people-know-about-the-pathways-of-knowledge) (Comments; Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- Aeon: Nadler - When to break a rule (https://aeon.co/essays/judgment-is-an-exercise-in-discretion-circumstances-are-everything) (Comments; Read, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Ogden - Being eaten (https://aeon.co/essays/fear-of-being-eaten-shapes-brains-behaviour-and-ecosystems) (Comments; Read, 1.5 hours)
- Aeon: Simpson - When is it ethical to vote for ‘the lesser of two evils’? (https://psyche.co/ideas/when-is-it-ethical-to-vote-for-the-lesser-of-two-evils) (Comments; Read / Write, 1 hour)
- Aeon: Taiwo - Who gets to feel secure? (https://aeon.co/essays/on-liberty-security-and-our-system-of-racial-capitalism) (Comments; Read, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Video - In dog years (https://aeon.co/videos/the-joys-and-heartbreaks-of-loving-a-creature-who-ages-faster-than-you) (Comments; Read, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Video - Mary Beard: Women in power (https://aeon.co/videos/to-understand-the-aversion-to-powerful-women-look-to-the-greeks-says-mary-beard) (Comments; Read, 1 hour)
- Aeon: Video - Palenque (https://psyche.co/films/the-steady-drumbeat-of-life-in-the-first-free-town-in-the-americas) (Comments; Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- Aeon: Video - Teaching Philosophy to Children (https://aeon.co/videos/teaching-philosophy-at-school-isnt-just-good-pedagogy-it-helps-to-safeguard-society) (Comments; Write, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Video - The greatest Briton? (https://aeon.co/videos/hero-or-scoundrel-an-iconoclastic-biography-of-winston-churchill) (Comments; Read / Write, 3 hours)
- Aeon: Video - Why are we so attached to our things? (https://aeon.co/videos/feeling-connected-to-objects-is-a-fundamental-and-fraught-part-of-human-nature) (Comments; Read, 0.25 hours)
→ See "Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul) - Aeon: 2019+" (14.25 hours) - "Ball (Philip) - Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Quantum Mechanics is ... Different" (Read, 3 hours)
- "Collins Maps - Collins World Atlas" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Dalziel (Nigel) - The Penguin Historical Atlas of the British Empire" (Read / Write, 13.5 hours)
- "Dennett (Daniel) - True Believers: The Intentional Strategy and Why it Works" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Eaton (Richard M.) - India in the Persianate Age: 1000-1765" (Read / Write, 8.5 hours)
- "Fairbank (John King), Reischauer (Edwin O.), Craig (Albert M.) - East Asia: tradition and transformation" (Read, 0.5 hours)
- "Lee (Daniel) - The SS Officer's Armchair: In Search of a Hidden Life" (Read / Write, 8.5 hours)
- "MacKay (Charles) - Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Marshall (Tim) - Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics" (Read / Write, 14.75 hours)
- "Nagel (Thomas) - Moral Luck" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Nagel (Thomas) - Moral Luck: Response to Bernard Williams" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Overy (Richard), Ed. - The Times Complete History of the World" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Paxman (Jeremy) - Empire: What Ruling the World Did to the British" (Read / Write, 5 hours)
- "Paxman (Jeremy) - Friends in High Places: Who Rules Britain" (Read, 15 hours)
- "Reiss (Julian) - Philosophy of Economics: A Contemporary Introduction" (Read / Write, 5.5 hours)
- "Smart (Ted) - The Times Concise Atlas of the World" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Somerset Maugham (W.) - Collected Short Stories: Volume 1" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Sowell (Thomas) - Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy" (Write, 2 hours)
- "Susskind (Daniel) - A World Without Work: Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond" (Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Autobiography" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Williams (Bernard) - Moral Luck" (Read, 1 hour)
- Thesis Background - Books Admin (Total Hours = 18)
- Thesis Background - Status
Thesis (Aeon) (Total Hours = 29.25)- Aeon: Cox - When does a human embryo have the moral status of a person? (https://psyche.co/ideas/when-does-a-human-embryo-have-the-moral-status-of-a-person) (Comments; Read, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Hansen - Vikings in America (https://aeon.co/essays/did-indigenous-americans-and-vikings-trade-in-the-year-1000) (Comments; Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- Aeon: Video - Birth of a bee (https://aeon.co/videos/from-egg-to-the-air-21-days-of-bee-development-condensed-into-one-mesmerising-minute) (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Video - Daily life in Egypt: ancient and modern (https://aeon.co/videos/stunning-century-old-footage-of-the-nile-valley-carries-echoes-from-the-ancient-past) (Comments; Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- Aeon: Video - De artificiali perspectiva, or anamorphosis (https://aeon.co/videos/the-renaissance-art-illusion-that-proved-everything-is-a-matter-of-perspective) (Comments; Read, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Video - My name is Anik (https://aeon.co/videos/its-a-clash-of-cultures-when-aniks-granddaughter-comes-home-to-learn-kurdish) (Comments; Read, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Video - Roger Penrose: Why did the universe begin? (https://aeon.co/videos/a-cyclical-forgetful-universe-nobel-prizewinner-roger-penrose-details-an-astonishing-origin) (Comments; Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- Aeon: Video - The Big Bang (https://aeon.co/videos/was-there-any-before-before-the-big-bang) (Comments; Read, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Video - The five-minute museum (https://aeon.co/videos/fast-forward-through-a-history-of-human-artefacts-from-arrowheads-to-plastic-toys) (Comments; Read, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Video - The sound of gravity (https://aeon.co/videos/how-science-finally-caught-up-with-einsteins-prediction-of-gravitational-waves) (Comments; Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Video - Visitors (https://aeon.co/videos/in-a-remote-town-near-area-51-ufo-believers-and-locals-contemplate-the-beyond) (Comments; Read, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Wooley - The language of love in a 12th-century English law book (https://psyche.co/ideas/the-language-of-love-in-a-12th-century-english-law-book) (Comments; Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul) - Aeon: 2019+" (Comments; Write, 22.75 hours)
Plans for the Near Future – Top Priority Tasks - One thing that has occurred to me is that I’ve got into the habit of collecting stuff – masses of it – and loosely engaging with it, but not doing so seriously enough because of a scatter-gun approach. Also, I very seldom write anything of my own without close reference to what others have written. In a sense this is a good thing, but is destructive of creativity.
- So, I intend to spend at least an hour each and every day writing my own stuff. This isn’t really enough, but we’ll see how things go. Sadly, it hasn’t gone anywhere much in the last academic year.
- So, I have set myself a challenge: write a full-length paper on what I consider to be the critical issue in the philosophy of personal identity: the difference between forward and backward psychological continuity.
- Further, now I’ve got my skeleton Notes into some sort of shape, I should allocate them to the Thesis text and see how this re-shapes my research.
- Otherwise … as before … I have a clear idea of what I want to do over the current academic year7, which is to complete a skeleton thesis8 to my own satisfaction. As such I require rigorous focus on the priority tasks, books and papers. Lower-priority reading is not likely to get a look in, so will be cut.
- First of all, continually review the Note describing my Current Beliefs on the topic of Personal Identity, and ensure the associated Notes have some text. Let Sophie have a look at it, and consider submission to Aeon.
- An “ideal” next step (and one previously suggested) is to ensure that everything of relevance that I have actually read is written up and incorporated in my Notes database and only later – and secondly – consider anything that I have not yet read. This would require discipline, in that interesting new stuff is always turning up, and would be an iterative process. Further, given I’m not getting any younger, it could also be wasting time which should be focussed on using the most relevant materials.
- So, if what I’ve read and written on – in the form of particular papers on a particular topic – is most relevant, I’ll “process” that, but otherwise will start anew.
- As far as effort is concerned, I’ve maintained the plan at 24 hours / week10.
- So, the primary tasks for the next quarter will be to complete a full review of my Thesis in the light of the Notes I’ve created on Personal Identity, focusing on those directly referenced by my Current Beliefs.
- Following that, the focus (if you can call it that) will be on the following bumper list13:-
- Continue with my Thesis; in particular
- Spend at least an hour a day writing something original.
- Fill out those sections that I can write something on without further research.
- Rework the structure so that Level-1 or -2 print produces the thesis with the correct reading-list.
- Continually review the Note describing my Current Beliefs on the topic of Personal Identity.
- Complete a full review and update of the Notes I’ve created on Personal Identity, focusing on:-
- Those directly referenced by my Current Beliefs,
- Those without a reading list: Evolution, Person, Physicalism, Psychological View, Religion, Semantics, Soul Criterion, Souls, Unity of the Person.
- Those not yet in the latest standard format.
- Make progress on specific Chapters of my Thesis, using the materials below →
- Chapter 1 (Introduction). Focussing on:-
- Locke
→ "Duncan (Matt) - I Think, Therefore I Persist", Complete Write-up
→ "Maurer (Nicholas) - Too Many Persons, or None At All?", Write-up
→ "Strawson (Galen) - 'The Secrets of All Hearts': Locke on Personal Identity", Read
→ "Strawson (Galen) - 'Where our responsibility lies': Locke on personal identity", Read - Introductory and General Works
→ "Unger (Peter) - Identity, Consciousness and Value", Re-read and write up comments
→ "Unger (Peter) - Precis of 'Identity, Consciousness and Value'", Re-read ... also other items from the symposium
- Chapter 2 (What Are We?). Focussing on:-
- General: "Olson (Eric) - What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology", a core text!
- Brains: "Mitchell (Kevin J.) - Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are", Read & review
- Human Beings: Review the Symposium between:-
→ "Robinson (Denis) - Human Beings, Human Animals, and Mentalistic Survival", Read and Write-up
→ "Johnston (Mark) - 'Human Beings' Revisited: My Body is Not an Animal", Complete Write-up - Persons:-
- "Cottingham (John) - Why we are not 'persons'", Complete Write-up
- "Kuhn (Robert Lawrence), Ed. - Closer to Truth: Personal Identity", Watch and write up
- "Kuhn (Robert Lawrence), Ed. - Closer to Truth: Persons and Selves", Watch and write up
- Selves:-
- "Arikha (Noga) - The Interoceptive Turn", Read and Write-up
- "Dainton (Barry) - Self: Philosophy In Transit", Read and Write-up
- "Dainton (Barry) - The Phenomenal Self", Read and Write-up33
- "O'Hear (Anthony), Ed. - Mind, Self and Person", Complete Reading and Write-ups
- Chapter 3 (What Is A Person?).
- General:-
→ "Noller (Jorg) - A Transformative Account of Personal Identity", Read and write-up
→ "Noller (Jorg) - Person", Read and write-up - Free Will
→ "Ellis (George F.R.), Etc - From Chaos to Free Will": Complete review & analysis
→ "Gazzaniga (Michael S.) - Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain", Read
→ "Murphy (Nancey), O'Connor (Timothy) & Ellis (George F.R.) - Downward Causation and the Neurobiology of Free Will": Quick review & analysis
→ "Murphy (Nancey) & Brown (Warren) - Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?": Quick review & analysis
→ "Nanay (Bence) - Catching Desires": Complete write-up - Personites, develop Note, using:-
→ "Olson (Eric) - Ethics and the Generous Ontology", Write-up, then …
→ "Eklund (Matti) - The Existence of Personites", Read and write-up
→ "Johnston (Mark) - The Personite Problem: Should Practical Reason Be Tabled?", Read and write-up
→ "Johnston (Mark) - Personites, Maximality and Ontological Trash", Read and write-up
→ "Kaiserman (Alexander) - Stage Theory and the Personite Problem", Read and write-up
→ "Pautz (Adam) - Johnston’s Puzzle about Personites", Read and write-up.
- Chapter 4 (Basic Metaphysical Issues). Focus on:-
- General: "Hazlett (Allan) - New Waves in Metaphysics", Read
- Existence: "Williams (Christopher) - Death and Other Difficulties", Read and write-up
- Logic of Identity
- Partial Identity
→ "Baxter (Donald L.M.) - Temporary and Contingent Instantiation as Partial Identity", Read and write-up
→ "Hawley (Katherine) - Almost Identical, Almost Innocent", Read and write-up. - Artifacts
→ "Han (Byung-Chul) - The copy is the original", Write-up
→ "Han (Byung-Chul) - Shanzhai: Deconstruction in Chinese", Read and write-up - "Loose and Popular" vs "Strict and Philosophical" senses of identity
→ "Noonan (Harold) - Identity, Constitution and Microphysical Supervenience", Write-up43
- Parfit
→ "Colen (J.A.) - In Memoriam Derek Parfit (1942-2017)", Write-up
→ "Funkhouser (Eric) - Notes on Parfit, 'Personal Identity'", Write-up
→ "Korsgaard (Christine) - Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian Response to Parfit", Read and write-up
→ "McDowell (John) - Reductionism and the First Person", Write-up45=33
→ "Perry (John) - Time, Fission, and Personal Identity", Read and write-up
→ "Parfit (Derek) - Personal Identity", Write-up
→ "Parfit (Derek) - Prudence, morality, and the prisoner's dilemma", Read and write-up, Note46
→ "Parfit (Derek) - Who do you think you are?", Write-up
→ Complete run-through of the Parfit reading-list - Simple View
→ "Duncan (Matt) - A Challenge to Anti-Criterialism"
→ "Duncan (Matt) - A Renewed Challenge to Anti-Criterialism"
→ "Duncan (Matt) - Dualists Needn’t Be Anti-Criterialists (Nor Should They Be)" - Vague Identity
→ "Broome (John) - Indefiniteness in Identity",
→ "Noonan (Harold) - Vague Identity Yet Again" - Narrative Identity / Race. Obtain a balanced view51 Focussing On52:-
- Race and Racism
→ "Boxill (Bernard), Ed. - Race and Racism: Oxford Readings in Philosophy"
→ "Brues (Alice M.) - People and Races"
→ "Curran (Andrew) - Facing America's History Of Racism Requires Facing The Origins Of 'Race' As A Concept"
→ "Glasgow (Joshua) - Another Look at the Reality of Race, By Which I Mean Race-f"
→ "Mac Donald (Heather) - The Diversity Delusion"
→ "Rutherford (Adam) - How to Argue With a Racist: History, Science, Race and Reality"
→ "Saini (Angela) - Superior: The Return of Race Science" - The British Empire & its 'Crimes': obtain a balanced view54=51 from the following list:-
→ "Brendon (Piers) - The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire"
→ "Darwin (John) - Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain"
→ "Eaton (Richard M.) - India in the Persianate Age: 1000-1765"
→ "Lawrence (James) - Rise And Fall Of The British Empire"
→ "Tharoor (Shashi) - Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India"
- Chapter 5 (Persistence and Time). Focussing on:-
- General
- "Sider (Ted), Hawthorne (John) & Zimmerman (Dean), Eds. - Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics",
- Persistence
- "Haslanger (Sally) & Kurtz (Roxanne), Eds. - Persistence : Contemporary Readings",
- "Hawley (Katherine) - Persistence and Determination",
- "Wiggins (David) - Continuants: Their Activity, Their Being, and Their Identity", especially
→ "Noonan (Harold) - Review of Wiggins's 'Continuants'", and
→ "Wiggins (David) - Identity, Individuation, and Substance"
- Time
- "Boccardi (Emiliano), Ed. - Manuscrito vol. 39 no.4: Recent Trends in the Philosophy of Time: An Introduction to Time and Reality - I", and
- "Boccardi (Emiliano), Ed. - Manuscrito vol. 40 no.1: The Passage of Time and its Enemies: An Introduction to Time and Reality - II"
- "Botros (Sophie) - Truth, Time and History: A Philosophical Enquiry", Re-read & Annotate ... also especially
→ "Botros (Sophie) - Truth, Time and History - A Philosophical Inquiry with Dr Sophie Botros", Complete analysis - "Bourne (Craig) - A Future for Presentism",
- "Buonomano (Dean) - Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time",
- "Correia (Fabrice) & Rosenkranz (Sven) - Unfreezing the Spotlight: Tense Realism and Temporal Passage",
- "Costa (Damiano), Gilmore (Cody) & Calosi (Claudio) - Relativity and Three Four-Dimensionalisms",
- Natalja Deng: Various papers, starting with
→ "Deng (Natalja) - One Thing After Another: Why the Passage of Time is Not an Illusion", - Mauro Dorato: Various papers,
→ "Dorato (Mauro) - Presentism / Eternalism and Endurantism / Perdurantism: why the unsubstantiality of the first debate implies that of the second",
→ "Dorato (Mauro) - Presentism and the Experience of Time",
→ "Dorato (Mauro) - The Irrelevance of the Presentist / Eternalist Debate for the Ontology of Minkowski Spacetime". - "Fischer (Florian) - Philosophy of time: A slightly opinionated introduction",
- "Friebe (Cord) - Eternalism and the Temporal Content of Persistence", and
- "Friebe (Cord) - Metametaphysics: the Ontology of Spacetime and the Presentist/Eternalist Debate".
- "Lebens (Samuel) & Goldschmidt (Tyron) - The Promise of a New Past": Complete and send to Sophie Botros & Michael J. Alter,
- "LePoidevin (Robin) - Travels in Four Dimensions: The Enigmas of Space and Time",
- "LePoidevin (Robin) & MacBeath (Murray), Eds. - The Philosophy of Time: Oxford Readings in Philosophy",
- "Mellor (D.H.) - Review of Michael Tooley: 'Time, Tense, and Causation'", Read & review
- "Miller (Kristie) - Issues in Theoretical Diversity: Persistence, Composition, and Time",
- "Roselli (Andrea) - How Long is Now? A New Perspective on the Specious Present",
- "Rovelli (Carlo) - The Order of Time",
- "Sattig (Thomas) - The Flow of Time in Experience",
- "Savitt (Steven) - Presentism and Eternalism in Perspective",
- "Skow (Bradford) - Objective Becoming",
- "Torrengo (Giuliano) - Time and Simple Existence",
- "Thomas (Emily) - Before, now, and next", Expand review
- "Thomas (Emily) - Does the Future Exist?", Expand review
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Presentism and the Space-Time Manifold"
- Chapter 6 (Animalism). Focussing on:-
- Animals:
- "Chittka (Lars) & Wilson (Catherine) - Bee-brained", Write up
- "Keim (Brandon) - I, cockroach", Write up
- "Rachlin (Howard) - Teleological behaviourism or what it means to imagine a lion", Complete Write-up
- "Ross (Don) - Consciousness, language, and the possibility of non-human personhood: Reflections on elephants", Write up
- "Wilson (Jack) - Biological Individuality - The identity and Persistence of Living Entities", Complete Write-up
- "Woodruff (Michael) - The face of the fish", Write up
- Animalism
- "Hershenov (David) - Review of David DeGrazia’s Human Identity and Bioethics",
- "Madden (Rory) - Human Persistence",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Objects and Persons",
- "Olson (Eric) - The Human Animal - Personal Identity Without Psychology", my core text,
- "Shoemaker (Sydney) - Persons, Animals, and Identity",
- "Snowdon (Paul) - Persons, Animals, Ourselves",
- Hybrid Theory
- "Kotak (Aakash) - The Hybrid Theory of Personal Identity", Read and evaluate carefully
- Life
- "Al-Khalili (Jim) & McFadden (Johnjoe) - Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology", Expand file-note
- "DiFrisco (James) & Mossio (Matteo) - Diachronic Identity in Complex Life Cycles: An Organizational Perspective",
- "Lachmann (Michael) & Walker (Sara) - Life ≠ alive",
- "Noble (Denis) - The Music of Life: Biology Beyond Genes", Read
- "Noble (Denis) - Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity", Read
- "Rose (Steven) - Précis of 'Lifelines: Biology, Freedom, Determinism'", Read
- "Schrodinger (Erwin) - What is Life?"
- Phase-sortal Animalism
- "Sauchelli (Andrea) - The animal, the corpse, and the remnant-person", Read and evaluate carefully
- Process Animalism
- "DiFrisco (James) & Mossio (Matteo) - Diachronic Identity in Complex Life Cycles: An Organizational Perspective", Read
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) & Dupre (John) - Biological Identity: Why Metaphysicians and Philosophers of Biology Should Talk to One Another", Read
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Human Persons – A Process View", Read
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Persons as Biological Processes: A Bio-Processual Way Out of the Personal Identity Dilemma", Read
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Processual Animalism: Towards a Scientifically Informed Theory of Personal Identity", Read
- "Noller (Jorg) - Beyond Animalism and Constitutionalism: The Person as A Form of Life", Read
- Chapter 7 (The Constitution View):-
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View": My other core text. Start a serious review.
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder), Etc. - E-Symposium on 'Persons & Bodies: A Constitution View'": Write up reviews of papers,
- "Corcoran (Kevin) - Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul": Read and review,
- "Loose (Jonathan) - Constitution and the Falling Elevator": Write a Note
- "Mellor (D.H.) - Micro-composition": Read
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Can Mereological Sums Change their Parts": Read
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Inside and outside the ontology room": Read
- "Zahavi (Dan) - Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective": Write-up.
- Chapter 8 (Arguments against Animalism):-
- "Bailey (Andrew M.) - The Elimination Argument",
- Brainstem
- "Olson (Eric) - The Role of the Brainstem in Personal Identity",
- "Tzinman (Rina) - Against the Brainstem View of the Persistence of Human Animals"
- Dicephalus & Conjoined Twins
- "Buchanan (Rachael) - The battle to separate Safa and Marwa"
- "Campbell (Tim) & McMahan (Jeff) - Animalism and the Varieties of Conjoined Twinning"
- "Olson (Eric) - The Metaphysical Implications of Conjoined Twining"
- "Stone (James L.) & Goodrich (James T.) - The craniopagus malformation: classification and implications for surgical separation"
- "Wikipedia - Craniopagus twins"
- "Ferner (Adam) - Metaphysics and biology: a critique of David Wiggins’ account of personal identity"
- "Olson (Eric) - On Parfit's View That We Are Not Human Beings",
- Pregnancy
- "Damschen (Gregor), Gomez-Lobo (Alfonso) & Schonecker (Dieter) - Sixteen Days? A Reply to B. Smith and B. Brogaard on the Beginning of Human Individuals",
- Elselijn Kingma. Especially
→ "Finn (Suki) - Bun or bump?",
→ "Kingma (Elselijn) - Lady Parts: The Metaphysics of Pregnancy", and
→ "Kingma (Elselijn) - Were You Part of Your Mother?". - "Gomez-Lobo (Alfonso) - Sortals and Human Beginnings",
- "Isaac (Sasha) - Is artificial-womb technology a tool for women’s liberation?",
- "Oderberg (David) - The Metaphysical Status of the Embryo: Some Arguments Revisited",
- "Paez (Eze) - Abortion: What We Ought to Believe - An Ontological and Normative Analysis",
- "Smith (Barry) & Brogaard (Berit) - Sixteen Days".
- "Tzinman (Rina) - Memory, Organisms and the Circle of Life".
- Chapter 10 (Thought Experiments):-
- "Nielsen (Lasse) - Reconstructing Thought Experiments in Personal Identity", Read & Write-up
- "Searle (John), Etc. - Minds, Brains, and Programs", Annotate
- "Wilson (James) - The trolley problem problem", Write-up
- Investigate Transhumanism. In particular,
- "Alexander (Denis) - Healing, enhancement and the human future": Read,
- "Awad (Edmond), Etc. - The Moral Machine experiment": Read,
- "Ball (Philip) - Sim ethics": Write up,
- "Bostrom (Nick) - Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies": Read,
- "Bridle (James) - New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future": Read,
- "Clark (Andy) & Kuhn (Robert Lawrence) - Aeon: Video - Andy Clark - Virtual immortality": Review write-up76,
- "Contera (Sonia) - Nano Comes to Life": Read,
- "da Cunha (Rui Vieira) - Will I ever Be a Cyborg?": Read,
- "Davies (Sally) - Women’s minds matter" (and papers cited / resisted)
- "Francis (Matthew) - Is this life real?", Write-up
- "Fry (Hannah) - Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine": Read & review,
- "Graziano (Michael) - Endless fun": Detailed review,
- "Hanson (Robin) - The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule the Earth", Read
- "Harari (Yuval Noah) - Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow": Review, especially Chapter 8,
- "Kent (Adrian) - Replication Ethics": Read,
- "Liao (S. Matthew) - Twinning, Inorganic Replacement, and the Organism View": Read,
- "Kobie (Nicole) - Quantum Supremacy is here - So what?": Complete write-up,
- "Madary (Michael) & Metzinger (Thomas) - Real Virtuality: A Code of Ethical Conduct": Read,
- "Marshall (Richard) & Metzinger (Thomas) - Thomas Metzinger: All About the Ego Tunnel": Read,
- "Midgley (Mary) - Biotechnology and Monstrosity: Why We Should Pay Attention to the 'Yuk Factor'": Complete,
- "O'Connell (Mark) - To be a Machine": Briefly review,
- "Otsuka (Michael) - Personal Identity, Substantial Change, and the Significance of Becoming": Read,
- "Schneider (Susan) - Artificial You": Read,
- "Shipley (G.J.) - Review of Andy Clark's 'Natural-Born Cyborgs'": Complete review,
- "Smith (Wilfred Cantwell) - The Promise of Artificial Intelligence": Read,
- "Tegmark (Max) - Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence": Read,
- "Wyatt (John) - Artificial intelligence and simulated relationships": Write-up.
- Chapter 11 (Resurrection):-
- Death
- "Baillie (James) - We all know that we will die, so why do we struggle to believe it?": Complete review
- "Bradley (Ben), Feldman (Fred) & Johansson (Jens) - The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death": Start a review, especially
→ "Zimmerman (Dean) - Personal Identity and the Survival of Death", - "Kaufman (Sharon) - Neither person nor cadaver", Review
- "Luper (Steven), Ed. - The Cambridge Companion to Life and Death": Start a review, especially
→ "Olson (Eric) - The Nature of People", - "Stone (Alison) - Thinking about one’s birth is as uncanny as thinking of death": review
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Dualism and Materialism: Athens and Jerusalem?": Read & review
- "Veatch (Robert M.) - Would a Reasonable Person Now Accept the 1968 Harvard Brain Death Report? A Short History of Brain Death": review
- Makropulos Case
- "Moore (Adrian W.) - Is the quest for immortality worse than death?": Detailed analysis
- "Moore (Adrian W.) - Williams, Nietzsche, and the Meaninglessness of Immortality": Read and review
- Reincarnation
- "Barua (Ankur) - Revisiting the Rationality of Reincarnation-Talk": Write a file-note.
- "MacIntosh (J.J.) - Reincarnation and Relativized Identity": Read and review
- "Noonan (Harold) - The Possibility of Reincarnation": Read and review
- Resurrection
- "Badham (Paul) - Christian Beliefs About Life After Death": Read and review
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Death and the Afterlife": Read and review
- "Corcoran (Kevin) - Dualism, Materialism and the Problem of Post Mortem Survival": Read and review
- "Martin (L. Michael) & Augustine (Keith) - The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death": Start a thorough review,
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - The Compatibility of Materialism and Survival: The “Falling Elevator” Model": Read and review
- 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 Yet To Be Logged", and log papers therein if they become important.
- Convert old PDFs to Notes:-
- Review the two reports:-
→ PDF-précis,
→ PDF-essays. - Determine how the first is produced, and why the pdfs aren't highlighted, and compare with Write-ups Notes Jump Table
- Re-read & enhance recent Précis conversions, ie:-
→ "Skyrms (Brian) - The Goodman Paradox and the New Riddle of Induction"
→ "Woolhouse (Roger) - Spinoza and Substance" - Convert outstanding Essays.
- Complete cataloguing the books downloaded from Springer,
- Continue with "Marshall (Richard) - Philosophy at 3:AM: Questions and Answers with 25 Top Philosophers",
- Complete reading (or make notes on):-
- "Ball (Philip) - Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Quantum Mechanics is ... Different",
- "Barker (Jonathan) - Debunking Arguments and Metaphysical Laws",
- "Borges (Jorge Luis) - Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings",
- "Bregman (Rutger) - Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There",
- "Bregman (Rutger) - Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers",
- "Dennett (Daniel) - The Mind's I - Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul: Introduction",
- "Erber (Joan T.) & Szuchman (Lenore T.) - Great Myths of Aging",
- "Everett (Daniel) - Did Homo erectus speak?",
- "Fine (Cordelia) - Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society",
- "Greene (Brian) - The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos",
- "Hoffman (Donald D.) - The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes",
→ "Gefter (Amanda) & Hoffman (Donald D.) - The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality"
→ "O'Grady (Jane) - Donald Hoffman’s 'The Case Against Reality' is hard to get your head around" - "Hofstadter (Douglas) - Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid - A Metaphorical Fugue on Minds and Machines in the Spirit of Lewis Carroll",
- "Howson (Colin) & Urbach (Peter) - Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach",
- "Lee (Daniel) - The SS Officer's Armchair: In Search of a Hidden Life",
- "Ord (Toby) - The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity",
- "Paxman (Jeremy) - Friends in High Places: Who Rules Britain",
- "Rovelli (Carlo) - Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity",
- "Shand (John) - Central Issues of Philosophy",
- "Vedral (Vlatko) - Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information".
- Complete my Note on "Smith (Martin) - Why Throwing 92 Heads in a Row Is Not Surprising" and discuss with Pete & Mike.
- Economics:-
- "Sowell (Thomas) - Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy",
- "Susskind (Daniel) - A World Without Work: Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond",
- "Reiss (Julian) - Philosophy of Economics: A Contemporary Introduction".
- Continue reading and reviewing papers issued by Aeon,
- Keep up with the Journals via JSTOR & Cambridge Core.
- Update my Journals Note: Review the journals I have access to; more are available as a Cambridge Alumnus.
- Keep up with the philosophical world by regular reviews of "Interaction - Philos-List", but only seriously pursue items relevant to my research.
Summary of Progress to Date
This was hived off to a separate Note back in 2010, and hasn’t changed much since.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 7: - Hopefully, I may complete, or get stuck, earlier.
- I had hoped to complete this phase of my research by my 65th birthday – ie. by 13/11/2018. Previously, I’ve remarked “This is not to slip!” Unfortunately, the distraction of the problems with Coxes Farm – as well as a general lack of focus – have meant that it has!
- On the plus side, I’m already much further advanced than would be expected of someone commencing a PhD.
- On the minus side, I want to go into much greater depth, and have other projects on the go – most notably Music, Philosophy of Religion, Bridge, Chess and – particularly – my Web-tools project.
- The original reason for deferring to my 65th birthday was that this is when I became eligible for my State Pension. This may not be much to live on – but it is a quite generous supplement which would make a significant contribution towards the fees and expenses, which prior thereto I couldn’t afford.
- Unfortunately, my state pension (and Julie’s, for that matter) has been more than gobbled up by payments on the – now four – mortgages I’ve had to take out to cover the repairs to Coxes Farm. We’ll be repaying that until 2031, by which time I’ll be 77.
Footnote 8: - This used to say “complete a thesis …”, which is obviously impossible, given that my idea of a thesis is way in excess of what is required.
Footnote 10: - This is still ludicrously inadequate for what I want to achieve, but is approximately what would be expected of a part-time research student.
Footnote 13: - This is obviously far too long, and keeps getting items “carried forward” tacked on to it.
- Maybe I’ll prune it next time.
Footnote 33: Footnote 43: - This paper covers the 'Loose and Popular' vs 'Strict and Philosophical' senses of identity, amongst much else.
Footnote 45: Footnote 46: Footnote 51: - This list will hopefully diminish over time, as I read the works, so will no longer look balanced.
Footnote 52: - Neither sub-topic is really part of my research into the metaphysics of personal identity, but it's become such an important topic of late - one on which I'm largely ignorant and need to have a considered opinion.
Footnote 54: - This list will hopefully diminish over time, as I read the works, so will no longer look balanced.
Footnote 76: - Also look through other works by Andy Clark to get a handle on what he means by 'patterns in information space'.
Note last updated: 04/01/2021 19:40:48
Footnote 4: (Status: Web-Tools (2020 - December))
Rationale for this Project- This Project was alluded to briefly in a footnote on research methodology in my original Research Proposal under the head Research - Internet Technology. When last at Birkbeck, I wrote a more extensive paper defending the Project and describing its rationale. Now that my PhD is in suspense, I have decided to take this Project further. There’s a lot to do: still quite a few items on the “wish list”. It is fairly critical as an enabler for my research, so I need to get a move on as I want it all out of the way before I re-start4 formal research.
- For documentation on my website (currently password protected) follow the links below:-
- Functional5 Documentation.
- Technical7 Documentation.
- Other Websites
- Active
- I’ve created and continue to maintain a small website for a music group Julie and I attend – the Enigma Ensemble (http://www.enigmaensemble.co.uk/).
- I established the Hutton Bridge Club (https://www.bridgewebs.com/hutton.html) Website in 11Q4 using the standard Bridgewebs service, but with a couple of competitions using my own routines. This was handed over in 15Q3, but I’ve taken it on again as of March 2020, not that there’s currently much to do. It needs a spring clean, but I’m waiting to see whether the club (and its members) survive the coronavirus pandemic.
- In 16Q3 I created the Mountnessing Bridge Club Archive (http://mountnessing.theotodman.com/index.shtml) website, using the vast bulk of the pages from their legacy site, as the club had moved to Bridgewebs and lost its historical data. As of March 2020 I’ve taken over the aforementioned Mountnessing Bridge Club (https://www.bridgewebs.com/mountnessingbc/) website itself.
- Inactive
- Sometime around 2005, I created a website for Dr. Sophie Botros (https://sophiebotros.com/), one of my supervisors at Birkbeck, but we then lost touch and it got maintained (very badly) by some desktop support outfit. In 15Q2 I took it back on again and spruced it up a bit, and maintain it periodically until 19Q3, when it was taken on by a professional outfit, Bookswarm (https://bookswarm.co.uk/). The “Sophie Botros” link in this bullet is now to their version of the site.
- I created and / or ran a multitude of other bridge websites, but as of January 2018 I have either handed them over or mothballed them9:-
- In 15Q1, I took over the support and development of the Essex Contract Bridge Association (https://www.bridgewebs.com/essex/) (ECBA) website, which also uses Bridgewebs, but is very much larger. I wrote a lot of code10 to make this job less tedious. The site was handed over in 17Q4.
- For several years, I collected data11 on bridge activity in the Billericay/Brentwood area (initially needed for a project to set up a new consolidated club) by “scraping” data off web pages, consolidating it into a database and modelling it in various ways.
- I used this data to generate websites with a multitude of ladders for small clubs (Essex Bridge Results (http://www.theotodman.com/Bridge/index.htm)). These are now mothballed.
- I created and maintained a new website for the First Class Bridge (https://www.bridgewebs.com/firstclassbridge/) Academy, giving it “small clubs” ladders (Bernie's Ladders Archive (https://www.bridgewebs.com/cgi-bin/bwom/bw.cgi?club=firstclassbridge&pid=display_page10)) as these were easy to maintain with little intervention.
- In 16Q3 I created the Mountnessing Bridge Club Archive (http://mountnessing.theotodman.com/index.shtml) website, using the vast bulk of the pages from their legacy site, as the club had moved to Bridgewebs and lost its historical data.
- I created a website12 for displaying the textual and grammatical analyses and appendices of Pete’s PhD on the Acts of the Apostles: Acts: Test Site (http://www.theotodman.com/Petes_PhD/index.htm).
Summary of Progress during October - December 2020- I spent 128.75 hours in 20Q4 on this Project, or related work (128.75 hours YTD, where for "YTD" - Year to Date - I mean the (academic) year that commenced in October 2020). That's 98.8% of the planned effort (98.8% YTD). Overall, 19% of my Project effort in the Quarter was directed towards this project (making 19% YTD) - as against 18.5% planned (18.5% YTD).
- I was just about on budget in 20Q4 Time well spent, too.
- Completed items included:-
- Own Website:
- Books/Papers
- Modified CreatePapersWebTable to show BookPaperAbstract for Papers that are really Books
- Changed CreateBookPaperAbstractsWebPages so that - while a full re-gen uses the new method - re-gen for a particular book uses the old method (without the materialised view). This is so cmdRecalculate_Click - which takes several minutes - doesn't need to be run beforehand. Created BookPaperAbstracts_List_Regen_Old.
- Notes
- Upgrade Auto_Reference_Notes to save Notes_To_Regen to a new table prior to the run, add new rows to this table, and copy it back after the run. Finally, allow the option of regenerating these Notes. In the interim, use Notes_To_Regen to create Note 874, then clear it before the copy-back.
- Created Language Animadversion Note & Functors (Functor_21, Options 11 & 12)
- Amended OutputNotesWebPage to suppress 'Summary of Note Links to this Page' for internal links. Involved changes to SQL within the Sub. Also, needed to suppress links from the paper used to record time on this Note: Amended Notes_Cited_By_Papers_List. It might have been best to suppress these lins being created in the first place; not sure of the ramifications.
- Upgraded Auto_Translate_Reference_Notes to log actions to Auto_Translate_Reference_Notes_Actions & report using query Auto_Translate_Reference_Notes_Actions_List for action
- Add option in Auto_Reference_Notes to automatically ignore words containing certain strings that include the key-word (eg. ignore 'grace' and 'trace' when indexing 'race')
- Added option in Auto_Reference_Notes to allow an updating run restricted to 'Read' (or at least half-read) Books / Papers only (useful for very long lists)
- Created a Functor that reports which Notes which Functors (including which options) appear in, in both Functor and Note sequence. For use in Website Generator Documentation - Functors.
- Spider
- System Resources Exceeded - "Run Time Error 3035" - re-emerged in Full_Link_Same_Directory_Gen. Last month I had replaced query Full_Link_Same_Directory_Updt with identical SQL, which had worked OK. This time I removed the "WHERE" statements and put them in the code itself. Seems fine.
- Status
- Website - Progress to Date: Group items in the same period / category together, as in Status: Priority Task List. Ie.
- Functor_02 - Completed Items - Date Sequence
- Functor_05 - Completed Items - Category Sequence
- Website - Outstanding Developments: Group items in the same period / category together, as in Status: Priority Task List. Ie.
- Functor_03 - Completed Items - Priority Sequence
- Functor_04 - Outstanding Items - Category Sequence
- Technology
- Consolidated Site-Hits:
- Reviewed Webalizer Methodology & Consolidated Stats
- Aggregated Robot URLs
- Other Websites:
- Full details for 20Q4 are given below20:-
Website (Total Hours = 127)- Website - Development (Total Hours = 110.5)
- Todman (Theo) - Tottering Towers & Listing Buildings: Add / annotate photos of Coxes Farm to Timeline (2.75 hours)
→ See "Todman (Theo) - Tottering Towers & Listing Buildings" (2.75 hours) - Website - Generator - Page for Oboe practice: Add Audio Links (2.5 hours)
- Website - Generator - Auto_Reference_Notes: allow updating run restricted to 'Read' Books / Papers (0.25 hours)
- Website - Generator - Regen_Note_Links failing for Note 1170 (1.5 hours)
- Website - Generator - Add extra links to Summary Time Status Reports (1 hour)
- Website - Generator - Add option in Auto_Reference_Notes to allow an updating run restricted to 'Read' Books / Papers only (1.25 hours)
- Website - Generator - Add option in Auto_Reference_Notes to automatically ignore words containing certain strings (15.5 hours)
- Website - Generator - Add option in Auto_Reference_Notes to avoid duplicate key on Auto_Reference_Notes_Actions (0.5 hours)
- Website - Generator - Amend Auto_Reference_Notes to avoid HTML Tags (1.25 hours)
- Website - Generator - Amend Auto_Reference_Notes to use Notes_To_Regen_Temp (0.75 hours)
- Website - Generator - Amend OutputNotesWebPage to suppress 'Summary of Note Links to this Page' for internal links (1 hour)
- Website - Generator - Consolidated Site-Hits: Aggregate Robot URLs (3.75 hours)
- Website - Generator - Consolidated Site-Hits: Review Webalizer Methodology & Consolidate Stats (10.75 hours)
- Website - Generator - Create Language Animadversion Note & Functors (Functor_21, Options 11 & 12) (21 hours)
- Website - Generator - Document Auto-Cross-Referencing (8.25 hours)
- Website - Generator - Document Functors (2.25 hours)
- Website - Generator - Explanatory Note for zero-time 'Read' items (2.5 hours)
- Website - Generator - Fix Year-End roll-over issues (2 hours)
- Website - Generator - Fixes re Broken Links revealed by Spider (1.75 hours)
- Website - Generator - Functors: Document (Issues with Nesting, Etc) (9 hours)
- Website - Generator - Group items in the same category together in Website Progress Reports (9.75 hours)
- Website - Generator - Improve CreateBookPaperAbstractsWebPages efficiency for single book (2 hours)
- Website - Generator - Modify CreatePapersWebTable to show BookPaperAbstract for Papers that are really Books (4 hours)
- Website - Generator - Spider - Recreate WebRefs_Mapper Msgbox Suppression (0.25 hours)
- Website - Generator - Spider - System Resources Exceeded - "Run Time Error 3035"; SQL in Full_Link_Same_Directory_Gen (0.75 hours)
- Website - Generator - Update Development Log in the light of recent activities (0.5 hours)
- Website - Generator - Upgraded Auto_Translate_Reference_Notes to log actions to Auto_Translate_Reference_Notes_Actions (3.75 hours)
→ See "Software Development - Website - Development" (107.75 hours)
- Website - Education
- Website - Infrastructure (Total Hours = 9.75)
- Microsoft Windows 10 / MS Office - Releases, Bugs & Periodic Re-boots (2.75 hours)
- PC Backups / OneDrive (1 hour)
- Problems with Kaspersky Password manager - Uninstalled (1 hour)
- Reboots: Mouse problems! (0.25 hours)
- Renew Kaspersky on own & Julie's laptops (0.25 hours)
→ See "Admin - Website - Admin & Maintenance" (5.25 hours) - Upgrade & Re-install PDFElement (0.5 hours)
- XMas Mug - photos & formatting (0.5 hours)
- XMas Newsletter - photos & formatting (3.5 hours)
→ See "Software Development - Website - Development" (4.5 hours)
- Website - Maintenance (Total Hours = 5.75)
- 20Q3 Status Reports (1.25 hours)
- Website - Periodic Full Regeneration (2.75 hours)
- Website - Run Web Spider (1.75 hours)
Website Others (Total Hours = 1.75)- Website Others - Hutton DBC Maintenance
- Website Others - Mountnessing DBC Maintenance
Plans for the Near Future
The Plan below is taken automatically from the Priority 1 items on my Development Log, as published in my Outstanding Developments Report. I’ve maintained the weekly allocation at 10 hours. This is to allow further work on my Cross-Referencing project.
- Own Website: Priority 1 Items By Category:-
- Architecture
- Compact and Repair Problems
- On compacting and repairing my main database I sometimes get the error "The query cannot be completed. Either the size of the query result is larger than the maximum size of a database (2 GB), or there is not enough temporary storage space on the disk to store the query result".
- It happens 3 times while the database is re-opening.
- There is lots of space, and the database is only 600Mb (and the error started when it was under 500Mb).
- This mostly happens after I've run long processes, so I usually close the database, re-open it and then try the compact and repair. Usually this works, but not always. But I then try again and the message disappears.
- I strongly suspect that this is MS Access itself re-indexing tables, and blowing up a temporary database, but I can’t find any evidence for this on-line. Or help, other than suggestions to split databases and do other sensible things. Given that the error occurs when the database is re-opening, with no temporary file visible, is very strange.
- 17/04/20 - set MaxLocksPerFile to 1,000,000 (from the default 9,500). Sadly, it doesn't seem to have made a difference.
- Complete XRef-re-engineering project:-
- Ensure all links and link-pages use the new XRef table, and pension off the old tables.
- Look into writing out specific object-identifiers, and linking thereto for Citations, rather than paragraph references. An issue is multiple instances of the same object in a document.
- Check all link-types still work and fix any errors.
- Complete the auto-triggering of regeneration of “associated” link pages.
- Fix update bug in Convert_Webrefs.
- Fix Bug whereby PaperSummary pages seem to have “Works-” and “Books/Papers-” Citings that refer to the same link-pages.
- Document the process!
- Document, Repair & update my Website site-map
- Review effectiveness of hyperlinking method in the light of PhD and Philosophy of Religion experience.
- Where possible, use ID rather than NAME for in-page hyperlinks
Backups- Investigate Record-count discrepancies:-
- How do website files work as far as counts are concerned?
- Why aren't they recorded in Backup_History, nor the fact that the website was backed up?
- Different counts depending on whether new or old laptop is backed up. Investigate 63k discrepancy - lower on new laptop.
- Review architecture to improve performance; Need to document first
Books- Further improve the time to regenerate Book Summaries. Took about 22 minutes on 01/01/2021, but should be under 5 minutes!
Books/Papers- Investigate whether multiple Subject/Topic/Subtopic usage leads anywhere (ie. are just the first (of 3) actually used). Fix anything amiss.
- Reformat the BookCitings and PaperCitings pages:-
- Detail PaperCitings Pages: Include only useful information on the detail pages; but if there are multiple links from the same object, include them on the same line as 'extra links' as in BookCitings (copy the code: or, better, combine the two subs).
- Summary (Author Letter) pages: Include counts (as in Authors' Citations).
- Ensure uses the Cross_Reference table.
- Document!
Bridge- Develop auto-reconciliation routines vs EBU results download
Documenter- Investigate the error reports from the Documenter, especially unused variables & queries.
- Provide Functional Documentation for Website Generator (using Notes)
Education- "Sitepoint (Learnable) - Sitepoint Learnable Web Development Courses": Membership cancelled, but plan what to do with the eBooks in my possession.
- Read "PC Pro - Computing in the Real World".
- Read "White (Ron) & Downs (Timothy Edward) - How Computers Work: The Evolution of Technology".
Infrastructure- iCloud for Windows: Re-install & solve 'The upload folder for iCloud Photos is missing' problem. Try on new Laptop.
Notes- Add "Note Alternates" to Note pages.
- Allow the option to concatenate Notes in the Printed version (ie. linearly embed them essay-style), rather than treating the hyperlinks as footnotes – but still keep the hyperlink & cross-referencing in place.
- For use as "disclaimers" - eg. for "Plug Notes".
- For Thesis / essays: the difficulty here is the need for linking passages to make the text run smoothly.
- As part of the Cross-Referencing project, check out the consistent treatment of Note 875, which should be universally ignored. Recently, links to it appeared on Book-Summaries, Book_Paper_Abstracts and Note_Book_Links, as a Note referencing a Book. The critical item was a row on the Note_Book_Links table.
- Determine why very long printable notes (eg. Level 3+ for Note 170) are being truncated. Probably suppress them in any case, as they take far too long to load.
- Enhance Functors to work for selected non-temp Notes so that up-to-date stats can be incorporated. This is complex as I want to avoid production of an Archived Note each time a non-Temp Note is regenerated. I also want to ensure that Notes whose variable text consists entirely of Functors get archived correctly (which they might not if I removed Functor-generated text from Notes before saving them to the Notes table).
- Fix bugs in multi-level footnoting in Printable Notes – the referencing is going wrong.
- Investigate Note_Links: Section references seem to be incorrect
- Printable Notes: fix the bug whereby the “private” flag is round the wrong way.
- Split Aeon Page into multiple sub-pages (either by topic or by priority)
- Suppress the publication of the Printable versions of Temp Notes
- Upgrade Auto_Reference_Notes to reference Sub-Notes: Currently only affects one note - Somerset Maugham - so not yet urgent
Papers- The monthly regeneration process for Paper Abstracts was still taking just over 5 hours. I thought it could not be fixed until the cross-referencing project is fully complete and documented. However, it spontaneously improved to 1.6 hours in the August 2020 run. Monitor! Last run: 1.72 hours on 01/01/2021.
Photos- Develop software & procedure to make adding more content to the photos pages easier to undertake.
- Timeline software: Add photos for Holidays & Family History
Process- Determine why Recalculation & Changed Book/Papers produce unneeded regeneration.
Spider- Analyse the results of the data collection exercise and design a plan of campaign to fix broken Internal links and prevent recurrence.
- Correct the code so the problems discovered by the Spider don’t recur.
- Delete 'orphan pages' that are never linked to, ie. Use the Spider to prune redundant pages29 automatically where possible.
- Fix the historical data where errors are uncovered by the Spider. An easier task now the site has a full-regen function.
Technology- Look into Sistrix Smart30. Errors and warnings itemised are:-
- Duplicate content: seems to be variants on theotodman.com
- Title Tags: Empty, too long, identical
- Page Not Found
- Filesize in excess of 1Mb
- Meta-Description: Empty
- Few words on Page
- H1: Not used, used multiple times per page, identical across pages
- Pictures: Alt attribute missing
WebRefs- Webrefs_Update failing because IE loops with Aeon / Psyche pages. Currently doing manual checking - try to find an automated solution.
- Documentation & Bug-fixes: Phase 2
- Re-document the procedures in the light of recent changes.
- Resolve issues generated / revealed by the spider.
- Investigate - and fix where possible - broken links.
- Find a way of recording Missing Webrefs other than debug.print: create table, then suppress message for known problems
- Investigate items flagged as defunct. Populate Defunct_Explanation in WebRefs_Table. Consider use of FairUse (Link - Fair Use) for documents no longer available that I'd downloaded.
- Investigate WebRefs with Issue = 'URL Translated OK': does the translation really work? How?
Other Websites: Priority 1 Items By Category:- - Bridge
- Regular updates to the Hutton Bridge Club (https://www.bridgewebs.com/hutton.html) Website.
- Regular updates to the Mountnessing Bridge Club (https://www.bridgewebs.com/mountnessingbc/) Website.
- Enigma
- Termly updates to the Enigma Ensemble (http://www.enigmaensemble.co.uk/) Website.
Summary of Progress to Date
This is hived off to various separate documents, which have now been harmonising and / or consolidated:- - Summary of Progress to Date.
- Outstanding Developments,
- Functional Documentation,
- A summary of time expended across the years developing my website34 is at "Software Development - Website - Development".
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 4: - Well, in a sense, I’ve missed the boat as I’m now putting effort into my research, though in an informal basis, so will need to continue with both projects in parallel.
- This was always likely to be necessary, as new features will always arise in use. It’s a prototype methodology, after all.
Footnote 5: - This is very tedious to produce and consequently is both incomplete and out of date.
Footnote 7: - This is much more fun, as it’s a purely technical task.
- I’ve written a vastly-improved general-purpose technical documenter for MS Access.
Footnote 9: - It’s a shame to abandon the “mini websites” with all their ladders, as it’s rather well done.
- However, I couldn’t waste time on these after I’d abandoned bridge.
Footnote 10: - In particular, for the ECBA “Victor Ludorum” competition.
- I cannot hand any of this code over, so the tedium will return, though not to me!
Footnote 11: - I had agreed to share this data sometime early in 2018
- But will wait until asked again, as I doubt it’ll be of any real use to anyone.
Footnote 12: - It used to exist in two versions, live and test.
- Pete decided not to renew the license for the live site, now it has achieved its purpose, so only the test site remains.
Footnote 20: - Note that where fixes or small enhancements are made to a previously “completed” development, I don’t announce it again against the list of “completed” items above, though the work appears in the full list for the quarter.
Footnote 29: - Note that Backup_Prune_Ctrl deletes (relevant) pages that weren't regenerated in the last full site-regen, but this isn't the same thing.
Footnote 30: - See Sistrix (https://www.sistrix.com/smart/)
- This used to be called Optimizr, see Optimizr - Defunct (which now auto-forwards to Sistrix).
- A quick look doesn’t show it to be an obvious scam, but I need to double-check.
- An unsolicited analysis of my site turned up monthly from Optimizr from January 2015 to October 2017, listing a large number of “problems” that I think I know about, but which are in the queue to address.
- It restarted in February 2018, under the Sistrix name (this seems to have been associated with Optimizr since November 2015).
- The free version of this software is restricted to 1,000 pages, which is a very small proportion of my Site, though I may be able to point it to difference base-URLs.
- But I do need to address the problems validly itemised, and a sub-set is still useful.
Footnote 34: - As distinct from developing other peoples’ websites – time which is also recorded against this project, but not against this task.
Note last updated: 04/01/2021 19:40:48
Footnote 10: (Status: Chess (2020 - December))
As this project is substantially in abeyance, this report is mostly generated automatically, with minor textual additions at the end of each academic year.
Rationale for this Project- For years I’d been thinking of returning to chess after a very long lay-off; effectively since my school days. Now, it seems, I’ve actually done so.
- For further information, see my Chess Page.
- I have played – as and when selected – for the Billericay A & B Teams in the North Essex Chess League (http://www.necl.org.uk/) Divisions 1 & 4 and for the Billericay I Team in Southend & District Chess League (http://www.southendchessclub.co.uk/league/), Division 1. Also, in the Billericay Chess Club Championship (https://www.billericaychessclub.org.uk/club_championship.html) and any KO competitions Billericay may enter.
- After a decent start in 18Q4, my results have been rather poor, and I lost a bit of confidence towards the end of the 2018/19 season, drawing with – and in one case losing to – a string of weak players. Blunders!
- Last season, my results were terrible, and I had stopped playing even before the whole chess scene (at least “over the board”) went into lock-down mid-March 2020 on account of the coronavirus pandemic.
- My grade started off as a fairly respectable 151, but has since dropped to a disgraceful 128, lower than when I first played as a 14-year-old. The ECF have recently moved to monthly ELO ratings (ECF Monthly Rating Database (https://www.ecfrating.org.uk/v2/new/list_players.php)).
- I seem to have two main problems:-
- Firstly, my opening theory is non-existent, and this has resulted in cramped positions as black, or conceding quick equality as white.
- Secondly, in attempting to play in a more open manner than the stodgy and careful approach of my youth, I’ve left myself open to “tactics” that have resulted in the loss of a piece on many occasions. Sometimes these have arisen where I was routinely winning, and just failed to look at what my opponent was threatening.
- There’s no quick fix to either of these.
- The first requires opening preparation. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t do this.
- There ought to be a “quick fix” to the second, but “just concentrate” is easier said than done. It is said that blitz play sharpens your tactics, so I started to try this out – using 10-minute games against human opponents – on Chess.com (https://www.chess.com/) – but have not continued. I need to!
- I’ve purchased three books on general strategy and tactics for the club player – I just need to read them!
- While I do review my games – see2 my Consolidated Results – I’ve not spent much time on study or training.
Summary of Progress during October - December 2020- I spent 4.75 hours in 20Q4 on this Project, or related work (4.75 hours YTD, where for "YTD" - Year to Date - I mean the (academic) year that commenced in October 2020). That's 36.4% of the planned effort (36.4% YTD). Overall, 0.7% of my Project effort in the Quarter was directed towards this project (making 0.7% YTD) - as against 1.9% planned (1.9% YTD).
- Chess (Total Hours = 4.75)
- Chess - Reading / Writing
- Chess - Admin (Total Hours = 3)
- Chess - Training
Summary of Progress during October 2020 – Date (YTD Activity3)- Chess (Total Hours = 5)
- Chess - Reading / Writing
- Chess - Admin (Total Hours = 3.25)
- Chess - Training
- I’ve been so fed up with the game I’ve put it on ice.
- Progress (if any) in the current quarter can be obtained from the relevant section of my Summary Task List.
Plans for the Near Future: - I don’t want a repeat of the experience of my youth, so need to allocate a serious amount of effort to learn the theory of the game in order to play properly.
- Unfortunately, given a poor run of form, and because there’s no chess to be had over the board, I’ve reduced the allocation of time yet further to a measly 1 hour / week. Just to keep things ticking over for now while I decide what to do next.
- So, the following list is nonsense, but I can’t be bothered to waste time updating it:-
- Why Play Chess:
→ Seriously consider the issues raised by "Ramon y Cajal (Santiago) - On Chess".
→ Counter this with responsibiity to the local chess scene now I've made contact - Chess Study:-
→ "Gufeld (Eduard) - The Sicilian for the Tournament Player",
→ "Hansen (Carsten) - The Full English Opening: Mastering the Fundamentals",
→ "Ris (Robert) - Crucial Chess Skills for the Club Player: Volume 1",
→ "Ris (Robert) - Crucial Chess Skills for the Club Player: Volume 2",
→ "Sadler (Matthew) & Regan (Natasha) - Game Changer: AlphaZero's Groundbreaking Chess Strategies and the Promise of AI",
→ "Speelman (Jon), Tisdall (Jon) & Wade (Bob) - Batsford Chess Endings",
→ "van der Sterren (Paul) - FCO - Fundamental Chess Openings", and
→ "Willemze (Thomas) - The Chess Toolbox: Practical Techniques Everyone Should Know". - Chess Training:-
→ Chess.com (https://www.chess.com/) (game analysis & occasional 10-minute game),
→ Investigate5 LiChess.org (https://lichess.org/)
→ "Chess - Chess - YouTube Videos",
→ Complete review of 2018/19 season's games,
→ Complete review of 2019/20 season's games. - Club Play & Participation:
- Over-the-Boad Play: Participation6 if and when play resumes in Billericay Chess Club:-
→ Club Nights
→ NECL matches
→ Southend League matches - Attend weekly Billericay Virtual Chess Club (https://lichess.org/team/billericay-virtual-chess-club) (using Discord (https://discord.com/channels/693153803276517397/693153803276517401))
Summary of Progress to Date (since October 2018)- I have now produced statistics similar to those for Bridge, my Consolidated Results. Follow the PGN links for the actual games.
- Also, see what comes “free” with The ECF Grading Database (http://www.ecfgrading.org.uk/new/menu.php) (though this has now been superseded by ECF Monthly Rating Database (https://www.ecfrating.org.uk/v2/new/list_players.php)).
- Enough of an indication of progress has been given above, though see also my Chess Page.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 2: - Setting this page up was a useful advance in 19Q2, when I enabled the use of pgn4web Board Generator (http://pgn4web-board-generator.casaschi.net/board-generator.html).
- I found out how to link to analysis on Chess.com (https://www.chess.com/) in 19Q4.
Footnote 3: - As this project is substantially inactive, I don’t update the text quarterly as for the active projects, but only at the end of the academic year.
- YTD figures and tasks are somewhat redundant at the end of the first Quarter, but it saves remembering to update the report in future quarters.
- However, while the Quarterly figures appear against that plan and are “as at” the end of the last Quarter, the YTD figures and tasks are as at the date of production of the report.
- The YTD Activity-list is to make the end-year task easier, and to give a clearer idea of what – if anything – has been going on in the interim.
Footnote 5: - And consider migrating from Chess.com (https://www.chess.com/), though I renewed my membership at the end of August 2020, but downgraded from Diamond, costing about £80, to Gold, costing about £24.
Footnote 6: - This used to say "full participation", but I've let the team captain know that my 'mind games' focus is Bridge, and that - while I'm willing to "fill a board" - I don't want to take the place of anyone more enthusiastic.
- In any case, there's now no 'over the board' chess to be had.
Note last updated: 04/01/2021 19:40:48
Footnote 11: (Status: Mathematics (2020 - December))
As this project is substantially in abeyance, this report is mostly generated automatically, with minor textual additions at the end of each academic year.
Rationale for this Project- This is rather an eccentric activity, partly an attempt to exorcise some ancient demon – the rather bruising experience of reading mathematics at King’s College Cambridge back in the mid 1970’s.
- However, any modern educated person should be reasonably up to date with the mathematical sciences, and statistical and probability theory are essential tools for evaluating evidence, and are useful in Bridge! If only advanced mathematics wasn’t such a difficult subject.
- This project is diverging from Mathematics per se to the Philosophy of Mathematics and other related subjects. For instance, Philosophy of Mathematics features in Philosophy of Religion by providing an analogy or model of the sort of necessary existence that God is supposed to have.
Summary of Progress during October - December 2020- I spent 6.5 hours in 20Q4 on this Project, or related work (6.5 hours YTD, where for "YTD" - Year to Date - I mean the (academic) year that commenced in October 2020). That's 49.9% of the planned effort (49.9% YTD). Overall, 1% of my Project effort in the Quarter was directed towards this project (making 1% YTD) - as against 1.9% planned (1.9% YTD).
-
Mathematics (Total Hours = 6.5)
- Mathematics - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 5)
- Mathematics - Admin
- Mathematics - Lectures (Total Hours = 0.5)
Summary of Progress during October 2020 – Date (YTD Activity1)- Mathematics (Total Hours = 7.25)
- Mathematics - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 5.5)
- Mathematics - Admin (Total Hours = 1.25)
- Mathematics - Lectures (Total Hours = 0.5)
- As can be seen from the list above, this project has been mostly inactive over the last period.
- Progress (if any) in the current quarter can be obtained from the relevant section of my Summary Task List, and YTD in the current & future “automatic” editions of this report.
Plans for the Near Future:
Mathematical Resources
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 1: - As this project is substantially inactive, I don’t update the text quarterly as for the active projects, but only at the end of the academic year.
- YTD figures and tasks are somewhat redundant at the end of the first Quarter, but it saves remembering to update the report in future quarters.
- However, while the Quarterly figures appear against that plan and are “as at” the end of the last Quarter, the YTD figures and tasks are as at the date of production of the report.
- The YTD Activity-list is to make the end-year task easier, and to give a clearer idea of what – if anything – has been going on in the interim.
Footnote 4: - These are not left over from my Cambridge days as these few books were given away to my sister’s high-school in Gloucester by my mother during my brief sojourn with the Carthusians.
- Rather, I found them going cheap in bulk at a local second-hand bookshop.
- They are accessible via …this link.
Note last updated: 04/01/2021 19:40:48
Footnote 19: (Status: Summary - Actual versus Plan (2021 - January))
This page shows the following tables (which are unlikely to be of any interest to anyone other than myself). Click on the links, or scroll down:-- Plan versus Actual Effort Summary - Split (Current Quarter & YTD)
- Plan versus Actual Effort Summary - Actual (Current Quarter & YTD)
- Plan Summary (Next Quarter & Full Year)
- Actual & Plan Summary (2007 - Current Year)
For convenience, here are links to the other reports in this set. Clicking on the link takes you from this page to the relevant report:- - Click Here for Actual Detail Summary (2007 - 2020) by Sub-Project
- Click Here for (by Project)
- Summary of Effort YTD & QTD
- Time Analysis (YTD by Study-location)
Plan versus Actual Effort Summary - Split (Current Quarter & YTD)
Summary figures against the QTD (January - March 2021) Plan, and for the YTD (2020/21) Academic Year, are as below. This table shows the actual %age split of work (YTD & QTD) as against the planned %age split of work. The second table below compares the amount of work done, as against plan:-
Project | Planned Weekly Hours | Planned QTD %age | QTD Actual % | Planned YTD %age | YTD Actual % | QTD Actual Hours | YTD Actual Hours |
---|
Bridge | 1 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 2 | | 12 |
Chess | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | | 5 |
Consciousness | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | | 5 |
HiQ | 1 | 2 | 4 | 2 | | 1 | 2 |
Languages | 7 | 13 | 22 | 9 | 18 | 4 | 125 |
Mathematics | 1 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 8 |
Music | 7 | 13 | 14 | 13 | 7 | 3 | 50 |
Religion | 1 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 2 | | 14 |
Thesis | 24 | 44 | 18 | 44 | 49 | 4 | 343 |
Website | 10 | 19 | 28 | 19 | 19 | 6 | 134 |
| | | | | | | |
TOTALS | 54 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 20 | 699 |
| | | | | | | |
Comparisons | 4 days | 96 days | 91% | | 95% | 22 | 732 |
Notes- All figures above are rounded to the nearest unit.
- The bottom row - "Comparisons" - in the above table is non-standard.
→ The first two columns show the number of days in the current reporting Quarter and YTD, and
→ the last two columns show the hours planned (according to the latest quarterly plan) for the current reporting Quarter and pro-rata YTD.
→ The middle non-empty columns show %age actual vs plan (actuals taken from the Total row) for the Quarter and YTD. - In principle this allows monitoring of total effort vs plan, as well as the distribution of effort across projects.
Plan versus Actual Effort Summary - Effort (Current Quarter & YTD)
Summary figures against the QTD (January - March 2021) Plan, and for the YTD (2020/21) Academic Year, are as below. This table shows the actual percentage against plan:-
Project | QTD Planned Hours | YTD Planned Hours | QTD Actual Hours | YTD Actual Hours | QTD Actual % v Plan | YTD Actual % v Plan |
---|
Bridge | 0.4 | 27 | | 13 | 118 | 47 |
Chess | 0.4 | 14 | | 5 | 118 | 38 |
Consciousness | 0.4 | 14 | | 5 | 118 | 36 |
HiQ | 0.4 | 14 | 1 | 2 | 177 | 15 |
Languages | 3 | 70 | 4 | 125 | 152 | 179 |
Mathematics | 0.4 | 14 | 1 | 8 | 236 | 55 |
Music | 3 | 96 | 3 | 50 | 93 | 52 |
Religion | 0.4 | 27 | | 15 | 118 | 54 |
Thesis | 10 | 329 | 4 | 343 | 34 | 104 |
Website | 4 | 137 | 6 | 134 | 130 | 98 |
|
| | | | | | |
TOTALS | 22 | 732 | 20 | 699 | 91% | 95% |
Notes- All figures above are rounded to the nearest unit.
Plan Summary (Next Quarter & Full Year)
The plan for the distribution of effort, in hours / week, for the coming Quarter & Academic Year is as below. As the year goes by, estimates are replaced by actuals, and re-estimates are made. In the final quarter of the academic year (July - September) this table just shows the plan for the next academic year. In the light of the above "re-focusing" decisions, Secondary Projects have no time estimated for them:-
Project | Planned Hours / Week Next Qtr | Planned %age Next Qtr | Full Year Planned %age | Planned Hours Next Qtr | Full Year Planned Hours | Full Year Actual + Planned Hours | Comparison (%ages) |
---|
Bridge | 1 | 2 | 2 | 13 | 65 | 51 | 78 |
Chess | 1 | 2 | 2 | 13 | 52 | 44 | 84 |
Consciousness | 1 | 2 | 2 | 13 | 52 | 43 | 83 |
HiQ | 1 | 2 | 2 | 13 | 52 | 40 | 78 |
Languages | 7 | 13 | 12 | 91 | 339 | 394 | 116 |
Mathematics | 1 | 2 | 2 | 13 | 52 | 46 | 88 |
Music | 7 | 13 | 13 | 91 | 365 | 319 | 87 |
Religion | 1 | 2 | 2 | 13 | 65 | 53 | 81 |
Thesis | 24 | 44 | 44 | 312 | 1251 | 1265 | 101 |
Website | 10 | 19 | 19 | 130 | 521 | 519 | 99 |
| | | | | | | |
TOTALS | 54 | 100 | 100 | 702 | 2816 | 2774 | 99 |
All figures above are rounded to the nearest unit.
Actual & Plan Summary (2007 - 2021)
Below is a table showing the split amongst my various projects of time expended or planned over a 14-year period. :-
Project | 2007/08 (Actuals) | 2008/09 (Actuals) | 2009/10 (Actuals) | 2010/11 (Actuals) | 2011/12 (Actuals) | 2012/13 (Actuals) | 2013/14 (Actuals) | 2014/15 (Actuals) | 2015/16 (Actuals) | 2016/17 (Actuals) | 2017/18 (Actuals) | 2018/19 (Actuals) | 2019/20 (Actuals) | 2020/21 (Actual + Plan) | Total | %age |
---|
Bridge | 776 | 632 | 757 | 796 | 1062 | 934 | 941 | 380 | 662 | 870 | 61 | 382 | 463 | 51 | 8767 | 25.81 |
Chess | | 29 | 16 | 14 | 6 | 6 | 11 | 49 | 6 | 11 | 59 | 275 | 62 | 44 | 589 | 1.73 |
Consciousness | | 41 | 76 | 30 | 1 | 52 | 19 | 16 | 14 | 42 | 17 | 6 | 31 | 43 | 388 | 1.14 |
HiQ | | | | 17 | 14 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 40 | 103 | 0.3 |
Languages | 234 | 331 | 232 | 268 | 95 | 25 | 64 | 29 | 29 | 12 | 46 | 13 | 146 | 394 | 1918 | 5.65 |
Mathematics | 23 | 28 | 84 | 55 | 1 | 8 | 6 | 2 | 8 | 4 | 18 | 15 | 28 | 46 | 326 | 0.96 |
Music | 63 | 132 | 144 | 6 | 18 | 3 | 23 | 71 | 68 | 179 | 278 | 412 | 319 | 319 | 2036 | 5.99 |
Religion | 91 | 198 | 412 | 849 | 203 | 305 | 248 | 116 | 108 | 60 | 148 | 35 | 71 | 53 | 2897 | 8.53 |
Thesis | 608 | 453 | 349 | 477 | 180 | 402 | 735 | 896 | 561 | 828 | 1142 | 921 | 1181 | 1265 | 9999 | 29.44 |
Website | 67 | 198 | 181 | 204 | 348 | 651 | 494 | 947 | 1117 | 664 | 643 | 430 | 476 | 519 | 6939 | 20.43 |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
TOTALS | 1862 | 2042 | 2250 | 2718 | 1928 | 2394 | 2542 | 2507 | 2574 | 2675 | 2420 | 2494 | 2784 | 2774 | 33962 | 100 |
Note last updated: 04/01/2021 18:46:05
Footnote 24: (Status: Summary Task List (YTD: 20Q4 - 21Q1))
This is a list of the tasks performed on my various projects since the beginning of the 2020-21 academic year. It is automatically generated from my time-recording system, so is fairly crude. See also the Quarterly Report. This Annual Report is mostly for use for the "inactive" projects for which commented Quarterly Status reports are not produced. Projects are in priority sequence, broken down by sub-project where appropriate. If the project name has a superscript, clicking on the name will take you to the last published report for this project. To jump to the Project task-lists, click on the links in the list below:-- Thesis (For the latest Status Dashboard, Click Here)
- Thesis Background
- Thesis (Aeon)
- Website
- Website Others
- Religion
- Religion Background
- Music
- Languages
- Consciousness
- Bridge
- Chess
- Mathematics
- HiQ
Links to the latest time-analyses are given first. - Total Time outstanding this period = 679 hours
- Click Here for Actual Detail Summary (2007 - 2021) by Sub-Project
- Click Here for (by Project)
- Summary of Effort YTD & QTD
- Time Analysis (YTD by Study-location)
- Click Here for (by Project)
- Plan versus Actual Effort Summary - Split (Previous Quarter & YTD)
- Plan versus Actual Effort Summary - Actual (Previous Quarter & YTD)
- Plan Summary (Next Quarter & Full Year)
- Actual & Plan Summary (2007 - 2021)
Project 1: Thesis (Total Hours = 190.5)- Thesis - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 187.25)
- Aeon: Autry - Sociology’s race problem (https://aeon.co/essays/urban-ethnographers-do-harm-in-speaking-for-black-communities) (Comments; Read, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Elliot - Origin story (https://aeon.co/essays/physics-and-information-theory-give-a-glimpse-of-lifes-origins) (Comments; Read, 2.5 hours)
- Aeon: Limburg - Am I disabled? (https://aeon.co/essays/what-does-it-mean-to-consider-yourself-a-disabled-person) (Comments; Read, 0.75 hours)
- Aeon: Video - Don't think twice (https://aeon.co/videos/as-dementia-trims-the-tree-of-knowledge-in-johns-brain-music-holds-firm) (Comments; Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
→ See "Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul) - Aeon: 2019+" (4.25 hours) - "Aloni (Mari) - Disjunction" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Attwood (Tony) - Could It Be Aspergers?" (Read, 1 hour)
- "Bapteste (Eric) & Dupre (John) - Towards a processual microbial ontology" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Black (Jeremy) - A Brief History of Slavery" (Read / Write, 3.25 hours)
- "Blackmore (Vernon) & Page (Andrew) - Evolution: The Great Debate" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Cabrera (Miguel A. Badia) - Hume's Reflection On Religion" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Calvin (William H.) - The Ascent of Mind: Ice Age Climates and the Evolution of Intelligence" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Calvo (Paco) - The philosophy of plant neurobiology: a manifesto" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Calvo (Paco) - What Is It Like to Be a Plant?" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Cangelosi (Angelo) & Parisi (Domenico), Eds. - Simulating the Evolution of Language" (Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Collyer (John V.) - Creation, Evolution & Science: Is Creation Credible? Is Evolution a Science?" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Craig (William Lane) - Divine Timelessness and Personhood" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Craig (William Lane) - God, Time, and Eternity" (Write, 2 hours)
- "Craig (William Lane) - Reasonable Faith - Website" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Cullmann (Oscar) - Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead?" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Dawkins (Richard) - Gaps in the Mind" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "De Haan (Daniel D.) - Hylomorphic Animalism, Emergentism, and the Challenge of the New Mechanist Philosophy of Neuroscience" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "De Haan (Daniel D.) - Hylomorphism And The New Mechanist Philosophy In Biology, Neuroscience, And Psychology" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "De Haan (Daniel D.) - The Interaction of Noetic and Psychosomatic Operations in a Thomist Hylomorphic Anthropology" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "De Jesus (Paulo) - Autopoietic Enactivism, Phenomenology and the Deep Continuity Between Life and Mind" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Dennett (Daniel) - Review - Varela, Thompson and Rosch - The Embodied Mind - Cognitive Science and Human Experience" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Denton (Michael) - Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Di Muzio (Gianluca) - Reincarnation and infinite punishment in hell" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Dupre (John) & Nicholson (Daniel J.), Eds. - Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Dyson (Freeman) - Origins of Life" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Eldredge (Niles) - Life Pulse - Episodes from the Story of the Fossil Record" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Eldredge (Niles) - Reinventing Darwin - The Great Evolutionary Debate" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Eldredge (Niles) - The Miner's Canary - Unravelling the Mysteries of Extinction" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Eldredge (Niles) & Gould (Stephen Jay) - Punctuated Equilibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Flew (Antony) - Darwinian Evolution" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Gagliano (Monica) - The mind of plants: Thinking the unthinkable" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Goodwin (Brian) - How the Leopard Changed its Spots - The Evolution of Complexity" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Gosling (Samuel D.) - Personality in Non-human Animals" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Hoffman (Donald D.) - The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Jaeger (Johannes) & Monk (Nick) - Everything flows: A process perspective on life" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Jaeger (Johannes), Irons (David) & Monk (Nick) - The Inheritance of Process: A Dynamical Systems Approach" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Johnson (George) - Soul Searching" (Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Jones (Steve) - Almost Like a Whale - The Origin of Species Updated" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Karaca (Caglar) - Relational Basis Of The Organism’s Self-Organization" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Koslicki (Kathrin) - Aristotle's Mereology and the Status of Form" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Lamont (John) - The Justice and Goodness of Hell" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Little (Margaret Olivia) - Abortion and the Margins of Personhood" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Self, Agency and Mental Causation" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Machamer (Peter), Darden (Lindley) & Craver (Carl F.) - Thinking about Mechanisms" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Marmodoro (Anna) - Aristotle’s Hylomorphism without Reconditioning" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Maynard Smith (John) - Evolutionary Genetics" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Mayr (Ernst) - Towards a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Autopoiesis, Biological Autonomy and the Process View of Life" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Bio-Agency and the Possibility of Artificial Agents" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Bio-Agency: Can Organisms Act?" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Body or Organism? Eric T. Olson’s Charge of Cartesianism against the Bodily Criterion of Personal Identity" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Dispositionalism: Between Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Do Human Embryos Have a Disposition to Personhood?" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - How to stay the same while changing" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Human Persons – A Process View" (Read / Write, 10.75 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Metaphysics: On the Being-There of What There Is" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - On the Battlefield of Metaphysics" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Personal Identity Without Personality? Remarks on a Neglected Relation" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Personality and Personal Identity - Challenging a Substance Theoretical Presumption" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Potentiality and Disposition in the Discussion about the Moral Status of Human Embryos" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Powers, Persistence and Process" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Review of Chauncey Maher's 'Plant Minds'" (Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Systems or Bodies? On How (Not) to Embody Autopoiesis" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Without Metaphysics, please!? Transtemporal Personal Identity as Practical Reality" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Menary (Richard) - Introduction to the special issue on 4E cognition" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Midgley (Mary) - Persons and Non-Persons" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Mitchell (Robert) - Humans, Nonhumans and Personhood" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Moreland (J.P.) & Rae (Scott) - Human Persons in Naturalistic & Complementarian Perspectives" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Murray (Douglas) - The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity" (Read / Write, 14.25 hours)
- "Nolan (Daniel) - Realism and Reductive Materialism About the Mind" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Olson (Eric) - What Are We?" (Write, 4.25 hours)
- "Olson (Eric) - What Are We? Contents + References" (Write, 2.5 hours)
- "Olson (Eric) - What Are We? The Question" (Write, 1.25 hours)
- "Patterson (Francine) & Gordon (Wendy) - The Case For the Personhood of Gorillas" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Peacocke (Christopher), Ed. - Objectivity, Simulation and the Unity of Consciousness" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Ridley (Mark) - The Problems of Evolution" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg) - Characters, Persons, Selves, Individuals" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg) - Persons and Personae" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg) - Persons, Policies, and Bodies" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg) - The Transformation of Persons" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - Aping Persons - Pro and Con" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - Are Animals Moral Beings?" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - Groundwork for a Subjective Theory of Ethics" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - In Defense of the Pig" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - Moral Community and Animal Rights" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - Moral Relativism: A Causal Interpretation and Defense" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - Speciesism, Painism, and Morality" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - The Debate Over Eating Meat" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Seibt (Johanna) - Beyond Endurance and Perdurance: Recurrent Dynamics" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Seymour (Charles) - A Craigian Theodicy of Hell" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Seymour (Charles) - A Theodicy of Hell" (Read / Write, 1 hour)
- "Sidzinska (Maja) - Not One, Not Two: Toward an Ontology of Pregnancy" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Simons (Peter) - Processes and Precipitates" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Skewes (Joshua) & Hooker (Cliff) - Bio-Agency and the Problem of Action" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Surovell (Jonathan) - But for the Grace of God: Abortion and Cognitive Disability, Luck and Moral Status" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Swinburne (Richard) - Dualism Intact" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Animals" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Bundle Theories" (Write, 3.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Christian Materialism" (Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Clones" (Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Duplication" (Write, 2 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Evolution" (Write, 8.75 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Hybrid Theories" (Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Person" (Write, 17.5 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Physicalism" (Write, 16.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Plants" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Psychological View" (Write, 2 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Quantum Mechanics" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Race" (Write, 1.5 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Religion" (Write, 7.75 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Semantics" (Write, 2 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Society" (Write, 2.25 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Soul Criterion" (Write, 5.5 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Souls" (Write, 6 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Unity of the Person" (Write, 5.5 hours)
- "Trewavas (Anthony) - Aspects of Plant Intelligence" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Trewavas (Anthony) - Plant intelligence: Mindless mastery" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Uzgalis (William) - The Immateriality of the Soul and Personal Identity" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Varela (Francisco J.) - Neurophenomenology: A Methodological Remedy for the Hard Problem" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Varela (Francisco J.) - Organism, Cognitive Science and the Emergence of Selfless Selves" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Varela (Francisco J.) - Patterns of Life: Intertwining Identity and Cognition" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Varela (Francisco J.) & Maturana (Humberto) - Mechanism and Biological Explanation" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Welford (Megan) - Always on my mind" (Read / Write, 3.5 hours)
- "Wilson (Jack) - Generation and Corruption" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Wilson (Jack) - Identity and Sortals: Why Relative Identity Is Self-Contradictory" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Wilson (Jack) - Individuality and Equivocation" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Wilson (Jack) - Personal Identity Naturalized: Our Bodies, Our Selves" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Wilson (Jack) - The Biological and Philosophical Roots of Individuality" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- "Wilson (Jack) - The Necessity of Biological Origin and Substantial Kinds" (Write, 0.25 hours)
- Thesis - Discussions
- Thesis - Research Repositioning
Project 2: Thesis Background (Total Hours = 121.5)- Thesis Background - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 100.75)
- Aeon: Baggini - In a pandemic we learn again what Sartre meant by being free (https://psyche.co/ideas/in-a-pandemic-we-learn-again-what-sartre-meant-by-being-free) (Comments; Read, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Callcut - What are we? (https://aeon.co/essays/living-the-life-authentic-bernard-williams-on-paul-gauguin) (Comments; Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- Aeon: Dahl - Young children use reason, not gut feelings, to decide moral issues (https://psyche.co/ideas/young-children-use-reason-not-gut-feelings-to-decide-moral-issues) (Comments; Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Hazrat - A history of punctuation (https://aeon.co/essays/beside-the-point-punctuation-is-dead-long-live-punctuation) (Comments; Read, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Muecke - What Aboriginal people know about the pathways of knowledge (https://psyche.co/ideas/what-aboriginal-people-know-about-the-pathways-of-knowledge) (Comments; Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- Aeon: Nadler - When to break a rule (https://aeon.co/essays/judgment-is-an-exercise-in-discretion-circumstances-are-everything) (Comments; Read, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Ogden - Being eaten (https://aeon.co/essays/fear-of-being-eaten-shapes-brains-behaviour-and-ecosystems) (Comments; Read, 1.5 hours)
- Aeon: Simpson - When is it ethical to vote for ‘the lesser of two evils’? (https://psyche.co/ideas/when-is-it-ethical-to-vote-for-the-lesser-of-two-evils) (Comments; Read / Write, 1 hour)
- Aeon: Taiwo - Who gets to feel secure? (https://aeon.co/essays/on-liberty-security-and-our-system-of-racial-capitalism) (Comments; Read, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Video - In dog years (https://aeon.co/videos/the-joys-and-heartbreaks-of-loving-a-creature-who-ages-faster-than-you) (Comments; Read, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Video - Mary Beard: Women in power (https://aeon.co/videos/to-understand-the-aversion-to-powerful-women-look-to-the-greeks-says-mary-beard) (Comments; Read, 1 hour)
- Aeon: Video - Palenque (https://psyche.co/films/the-steady-drumbeat-of-life-in-the-first-free-town-in-the-americas) (Comments; Read / Write, 1.75 hours)
- Aeon: Video - Teaching Philosophy to Children (https://aeon.co/videos/teaching-philosophy-at-school-isnt-just-good-pedagogy-it-helps-to-safeguard-society) (Comments; Write, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Video - The greatest Briton? (https://aeon.co/videos/hero-or-scoundrel-an-iconoclastic-biography-of-winston-churchill) (Comments; Read / Write, 3 hours)
- Aeon: Video - Why are we so attached to our things? (https://aeon.co/videos/feeling-connected-to-objects-is-a-fundamental-and-fraught-part-of-human-nature) (Comments; Read, 0.25 hours)
→ See "Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul) - Aeon: 2019+" (14.25 hours) - "Ball (Philip) - Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Quantum Mechanics is ... Different" (Read, 3 hours)
- "Collins Maps - Collins World Atlas" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Dalziel (Nigel) - The Penguin Historical Atlas of the British Empire" (Read / Write, 13.5 hours)
- "Dennett (Daniel) - True Believers: The Intentional Strategy and Why it Works" (Read / Write, 2 hours)
- "Eaton (Richard M.) - India in the Persianate Age: 1000-1765" (Read / Write, 9 hours)
- "Fairbank (John King), Reischauer (Edwin O.), Craig (Albert M.) - East Asia: tradition and transformation" (Read, 0.5 hours)
- "Lee (Daniel) - The SS Officer's Armchair: In Search of a Hidden Life" (Read / Write, 9.25 hours)
- "MacKay (Charles) - Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" (Write, 1 hour)
- "Marshall (Tim) - Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics" (Read / Write, 14.75 hours)
- "Nagel (Thomas) - Moral Luck" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Nagel (Thomas) - Moral Luck: Response to Bernard Williams" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Overy (Richard), Ed. - The Times Complete History of the World" (Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- "Paxman (Jeremy) - Empire: What Ruling the World Did to the British" (Read / Write, 5 hours)
- "Paxman (Jeremy) - Friends in High Places: Who Rules Britain" (Read, 15.25 hours)
- "Reiss (Julian) - Philosophy of Economics: A Contemporary Introduction" (Read / Write, 5.5 hours)
- "Smart (Ted) - The Times Concise Atlas of the World" (Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Somerset Maugham (W.) - Collected Short Stories: Volume 1" (Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Sowell (Thomas) - Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy" (Write, 2 hours)
- "Susskind (Daniel) - A World Without Work: Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond" (Write, 1.75 hours)
- "Todman (Theo) - Autobiography" (Write, 0.5 hours)
- "Williams (Bernard) - Moral Luck" (Read, 1 hour)
- Thesis Background - Books Admin (Total Hours = 18)
- Thesis Background - Status (Total Hours = 2.75)
Project 3: Thesis (Aeon) (Total Hours = 29.75)- Aeon: Cox - When does a human embryo have the moral status of a person? (https://psyche.co/ideas/when-does-a-human-embryo-have-the-moral-status-of-a-person) (Comments; Read, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Hansen - Vikings in America (https://aeon.co/essays/did-indigenous-americans-and-vikings-trade-in-the-year-1000) (Comments; Read / Write, 1.5 hours)
- Aeon: Video - Birth of a bee (https://aeon.co/videos/from-egg-to-the-air-21-days-of-bee-development-condensed-into-one-mesmerising-minute) (Comments; Write, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Video - Daily life in Egypt: ancient and modern (https://aeon.co/videos/stunning-century-old-footage-of-the-nile-valley-carries-echoes-from-the-ancient-past) (Comments; Read / Write, 0.75 hours)
- Aeon: Video - De artificiali perspectiva, or anamorphosis (https://aeon.co/videos/the-renaissance-art-illusion-that-proved-everything-is-a-matter-of-perspective) (Comments; Read, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Video - My name is Anik (https://aeon.co/videos/its-a-clash-of-cultures-when-aniks-granddaughter-comes-home-to-learn-kurdish) (Comments; Read, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Video - Roger Penrose: Why did the universe begin? (https://aeon.co/videos/a-cyclical-forgetful-universe-nobel-prizewinner-roger-penrose-details-an-astonishing-origin) (Comments; Read / Write, 1.25 hours)
- Aeon: Video - The Big Bang (https://aeon.co/videos/was-there-any-before-before-the-big-bang) (Comments; Read, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Video - The five-minute museum (https://aeon.co/videos/fast-forward-through-a-history-of-human-artefacts-from-arrowheads-to-plastic-toys) (Comments; Read, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Video - The sound of gravity (https://aeon.co/videos/how-science-finally-caught-up-with-einsteins-prediction-of-gravitational-waves) (Comments; Read / Write, 0.5 hours)
- Aeon: Video - Visitors (https://aeon.co/videos/in-a-remote-town-near-area-51-ufo-believers-and-locals-contemplate-the-beyond) (Comments; Read, 0.25 hours)
- Aeon: Wooley - The language of love in a 12th-century English law book (https://psyche.co/ideas/the-language-of-love-in-a-12th-century-english-law-book) (Comments; Read, 0.25 hours)
- "Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul) - Aeon: 2019+" (Comments; Write, 23 hours)
Project 4: Website (Total Hours = 132.25)- Website - Development (Total Hours = 111.25)
- Todman (Theo) - Tottering Towers & Listing Buildings: Add / annotate photos of Coxes Farm to Timeline (2.75 hours)
→ See "Todman (Theo) - Tottering Towers & Listing Buildings" (2.75 hours) - Website - Generator - Page for Oboe practice: Add Audio Links (2.5 hours)
- Website - Generator - Auto_Reference_Notes: allow updating run restricted to 'Read' Books / Papers (0.25 hours)
- Website - Generator - Regen_Note_Links failing for Note 1170 (1.5 hours)
- Website - Generator - Add extra links to Summary Time Status Reports (1 hour)
- Website - Generator - Add option in Auto_Reference_Notes to allow an updating run restricted to 'Read' Books / Papers only (1.25 hours)
- Website - Generator - Add option in Auto_Reference_Notes to automatically ignore words containing certain strings (15.5 hours)
- Website - Generator - Add option in Auto_Reference_Notes to avoid duplicate key on Auto_Reference_Notes_Actions (0.5 hours)
- Website - Generator - Amend Auto_Reference_Notes to avoid HTML Tags (1.25 hours)
- Website - Generator - Amend Auto_Reference_Notes to use Notes_To_Regen_Temp (0.75 hours)
- Website - Generator - Amend OutputNotesWebPage to suppress 'Summary of Note Links to this Page' for internal links (1 hour)
- Website - Generator - Consolidated Site-Hits: Aggregate Robot URLs (3.75 hours)
- Website - Generator - Consolidated Site-Hits: Review Webalizer Methodology & Consolidate Stats (10.75 hours)
- Website - Generator - Create Language Animadversion Note & Functors (Functor_21, Options 11 & 12) (21 hours)
- Website - Generator - Document Auto-Cross-Referencing (8.25 hours)
- Website - Generator - Document Functors (2.25 hours)
- Website - Generator - Error in Functor_08 if roll-over before reporting but not reporting for previous Academic Year (0.25 hours)
- Website - Generator - Explanatory Note for zero-time 'Read' items (2.5 hours)
- Website - Generator - Fix Year-End roll-over issues (2 hours)
- Website - Generator - Fixes re Broken Links revealed by Spider (1.75 hours)
- Website - Generator - Functors: Document (Issues with Nesting, Etc) (9 hours)
- Website - Generator - Group items in the same category together in Website Progress Reports (9.75 hours)
- Website - Generator - Improve CreateBookPaperAbstractsWebPages efficiency for single book (2 hours)
- Website - Generator - Modify CreatePapersWebTable to show BookPaperAbstract for Papers that are really Books (4 hours)
- Website - Generator - Spider - Recreate WebRefs_Mapper Msgbox Suppression (0.25 hours)
- Website - Generator - Spider - System Resources Exceeded - "Run Time Error 3035"; SQL in Full_Link_Same_Directory_Gen (0.75 hours)
- Website - Generator - suppress MsgBox error in PaperCatalogPhilosophyFullCategorised (0.5 hours)
- Website - Generator - Update Development Log in the light of recent activities (0.5 hours)
- Website - Generator - Upgraded Auto_Translate_Reference_Notes to log actions to Auto_Translate_Reference_Notes_Actions (3.75 hours)
→ See "Software Development - Website - Development" (108.5 hours)
- Website - Education
- Website - Infrastructure (Total Hours = 10.25)
- Microsoft Windows 10 / MS Office - Releases, Bugs & Periodic Re-boots (2.75 hours)
- PC Backups / OneDrive (1.5 hours)
- Problems with Kaspersky Password manager - Uninstalled (1 hour)
- Reboots: Mouse problems! (0.25 hours)
- Renew Kaspersky on own & Julie's laptops (0.25 hours)
→ See "Admin - Website - Admin & Maintenance" (5.75 hours) - Upgrade & Re-install PDFElement (0.5 hours)
- XMas Mug - photos & formatting (0.5 hours)
- XMas Newsletter - photos & formatting (3.5 hours)
→ See "Software Development - Website - Development" (4.5 hours)
- Website - Maintenance (Total Hours = 9.75)
- 20Q3 Status Reports (1.25 hours)
- 20Q4 Status Reports (0.25 hours)
- Website - Periodic Full Regeneration (6.25 hours)
- Website - Run Web Spider (2 hours)
Project 5: Website Others (Total Hours = 1.75)- Website Others - Hutton DBC Maintenance
- Website Others - Mountnessing DBC Maintenance
Project 6: Religion (Total Hours = 6.75) Project 7: Religion Background (Total Hours = 7.5)- Religion Background - Admin (Total Hours = 1.25)
- Religion Background - Discussions (Total Hours = 6.25)
Project 8: Music (Total Hours = 48.5)- Music - Administration (Total Hours = 10.25)
- Music - Aural
- Music - Oboe (Total Hours = 36.5)
- Albinoni (Tomaso) - Concerto in D Minor Op. 9/2 for Oboe & Piano - 1st Movt (Allegro e no presto) (0.5 hours)
- Albinoni (Tomaso) - Concerto in D Minor Op. 9/2 for Oboe & Piano - 2nd Movt (Adagio) (0.5 hours)
- Albinoni (Tomaso) - Concerto in D Minor Op. 9/2 for Oboe & Piano - 3rd Movt (Allegro) (0.75 hours)
→ See "Albinoni (Tomaso) - Concerto in D Minor Op. 9/2 for Oboe & Piano" (1.75 hours) - Bach (J.S.) - 105 Difficult Passages from the Works of J. S. Bach. For oboe: No. 28 (1 hour)
- Bach (J.S.) - 105 Difficult Passages from the Works of J. S. Bach. For oboe: No. 49 (0.5 hours)
- Bach (J.S.) - 105 Difficult Passages from the Works of J. S. Bach. For oboe: No. 62 (1 hour)
- Bach (J.S.) - 105 Difficult Passages from the Works of J. S. Bach. For oboe: No. 66 (0.75 hours)
- Bach (J.S.) - 105 Difficult Passages from the Works of J. S. Bach. For oboe: No. 70 (0.5 hours)
→ See "Bach (J.S.) - 105 Difficult Passages from the Works of J. S. Bach. For oboe" (3.75 hours) - Boni (Giovanni) - Sonata in G - 1st Mvmt (Preludio - Largo) (0.25 hours)
- Boni (Giovanni) - Sonata in G - 2nd Mvmt (Allegro) (0.25 hours)
- Boni (Giovanni) - Sonata in G - 3rd Mvmt (Alla Siciliana) (0.25 hours)
- Boni (Giovanni) - Sonata in G - 4th Mvmt (Allegro) (0.25 hours)
→ See "Boni (Giovanni) - Sonata in G" (1 hour) - Cimarosa (Domenico) - Oboe Concerto in C minor - 1st Movt (Introduzione: Larghetto) (1.5 hours)
- Cimarosa (Domenico) - Oboe Concerto in C minor - 2nd Movt (Allegro) (1.5 hours)
- Cimarosa (Domenico) - Oboe Concerto in C minor - 3rd Movt (Siciliana) (1.25 hours)
- Cimarosa (Domenico) - Oboe Concerto in C minor - 4th Movt (Allegro giusto) (1.25 hours)
→ See "Cimarosa (Domenico) - Oboe Concerto in C minor" (5.5 hours) - Davies (John) & Harris (Paul) - 80 Graded Studies for Oboe: Book 2 - Blatt - Study No. 52 (0.25 hours)
- Davies (John) & Harris (Paul) - 80 Graded Studies for Oboe: Book 2 - Ferling - Study No. 62 (0.25 hours)
- Davies (John) & Harris (Paul) - 80 Graded Studies for Oboe: Book 2 - Harris - Study No. 74 (0.5 hours)
→ See "Davies (John) & Harris (Paul) - 80 Graded Studies for Oboe: Book 2" (1 hour) - "Fiocco (J.H.) - Arioso - Oboe + Piano" (0.25 hours)
- "Head (Michael) - Presto for Oboe & Piano" (0.25 hours)
- Hinke (Gustav Adolf) - Elementary Method For Oboe: Study No. 14 (0.25 hours)
- Hinke (Gustav Adolf) - Elementary Method For Oboe: Study No. 18 (0.25 hours)
→ See "Hinke (Gustav Adolf) - Elementary Method For Oboe" (0.5 hours) - Miller (Vojislav) & Liebermann (Winfried), Eds. - Test Pieces for Orchestral Auditions (Orchester Probespiel) - Oboe - G6 (1.25 hours)
- Miller (Vojislav) & Liebermann (Winfried), Eds. - Test Pieces for Orchestral Auditions (Orchester Probespiel) - Oboe - G7 (0.75 hours)
- Miller (Vojislav) & Liebermann (Winfried), Eds. - Test Pieces for Orchestral Auditions (Orchester Probespiel) - Oboe - G8 (0.25 hours)
→ See "Miller (Vojislav) & Liebermann (Winfried), Eds. - Test Pieces for Orchestral Auditions (Orchester Probespiel) - Oboe" (2.25 hours) - "Morricone (Ennio) - Gabriel's Oboe (Piano Solo Or Oboe/Piano)" (0.25 hours)
- Mower (Mike) - The Good Tempered Oboe - 'Answer the Question' (0.5 hours)
- Mower (Mike) - The Good Tempered Oboe - 'Dop Dop Doobah' (0.25 hours)
- Mower (Mike) - The Good Tempered Oboe - 'Enlightenment' (0.5 hours)
- Mower (Mike) - The Good Tempered Oboe - 'Jauntless Jig' (0.5 hours)
- Mower (Mike) - The Good Tempered Oboe - 'May The Fourth Be With You' (0.5 hours)
→ See "Mower (Mike) - The Good Tempered Oboe" (2.25 hours) - Nicholas (Morgan): Rhapsody for Oboe and Piano (0.25 hours)
→ See "Practice - Oboe - General Practice" (0.25 hours) - Nielsen (Carl) - Two Fantasy Pieces, Op. 2 for Oboe and Piano: Humoresque (0.25 hours)
- Nielsen (Carl) - Two Fantasy Pieces, Op. 2 for Oboe and Piano: Romanze (0.25 hours)
→ See "Nielsen (Carl) - Two Fantasy Pieces, Op. 2" (0.5 hours) - "Oosthuizen (Jemima) & Oosthuizen (Amanda) - Intermediate Classic Duets for Two Oboes" (3.75 hours)
- "Oosthuizen (Jemima) & Oosthuizen (Amanda) - The Excellent Oboe Book of Wicked Duets for Intermediate Oboes" (10.75 hours)
- "Puscoiu (Costel) - Easy Duets for Violin" (0.75 hours)
- Saint-Saens (Camille) - Sonata Op.166 in D Major for Oboe & Piano - 1st Movement (0.25 hours)
- Saint-Saens (Camille) - Sonata Op.166 in D Major for Oboe & Piano - 2nd Movement (0.25 hours)
- Saint-Saens (Camille) - Sonata Op.166 in D Major for Oboe & Piano - 3rd Movement (0.5 hours)
→ See "Saint-Saens (Camille) - Sonata Op.166 in D Major for Oboe & Piano" (1 hour) - Schumann (Robert) - 3 Romances, Op. 94 for Oboe and Piano: No. I (0.25 hours)
- Schumann (Robert) - 3 Romances, Op. 94 for Oboe and Piano: No. II (0.25 hours)
- Schumann (Robert) - 3 Romances, Op. 94 for Oboe and Piano: No. III (0.25 hours)
→ See "Schumann (Robert) - 3 Romances, Op. 94 for Oboe and Piano" (0.75 hours)
- Music - Piano (Total Hours = 0.5)
Project 9: Languages (Total Hours = 122)- Languages - Admin (Total Hour = 1)
- Languages - All (Total Hours = 6)
- Languages - Arabic (Total Hours = 6.5)
- Languages - Armenian (Total Hours = 8)
- Languages - Chinese (Total Hours = 8.5)
- Languages - Danish (Total Hours = 5)
- Languages - Dutch (Total Hours = 3.75)
- Languages - German (Total Hours = 7)
- Languages - Greek (Modern) (Total Hours = 8.25)
- Languages - Hebrew (Modern) (Total Hours = 2.75)
- Languages - Hindi (Total Hours = 6)
- Languages - Italian (Total Hours = 3.75)
- Languages - Japanese (Total Hours = 9.25)
- Languages - Latin
- Languages - Persian (Total Hours = 6.25)
- Languages - Portuguese
- Languages - Russian (Total Hours = 4.25)
- Languages - Sanskrit
- Languages - Spanish (Total Hours = 4)
- Languages - Swahili (Total Hours = 8)
- Languages - Swedish (Total Hours = 4)
- Languages - Thai (Total Hours = 3.25)
- Languages - Turkish (Total Hours = 4.25)
- Languages - Urdu (Total Hours = 8.25)
Project 10: Consciousness (Total Hours = 4.75) Project 11: Bridge (Total Hours = 12.25)- Bridge - Reading / Writing
- Bridge - Admin (Total Hours = 9.25)
Project 12: Chess (Total Hours = 5)- Chess - Reading / Writing
- Chess - Admin (Total Hours = 3.25)
- Chess - Training
Project 13: Mathematics (Total Hours = 7.25)- Mathematics - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 5.5)
- Mathematics - Admin (Total Hours = 1.25)
- Mathematics - Lectures (Total Hours = 0.5)
Project 14: HiQ (Total Hours = 1.5)- 20Q3 Status Reports (1 hour)
- 20Q4 Status Reports (0.25 hours)
- Admin - HiQ Societies - ISPE - Membership Dues (0.25 hours)
→ See "Admin - HiQ Societies - ISPE" (1.5 hours)
Note last updated: 04/01/2021 18:46:05
Footnote 27: (Thesis - Introduction)
- The Thesis seems to fall naturally into three sections (other than the Introduction and the Conclusion); namely,
- Setting up the problem (Chapters 2-5),
- Olson and Baker’s views contrasted (Chapters 6-9); and
- Testing the preferred solution (Chapters 10-11).
- General Notes
- For convenience, brief abstracts (as currently intended) of the Thesis chapters are given below.
- In order to maintain the structure of the Thesis once it is printed out, I’ve refrained – in this Note – from hyperlinking to any Notes other than the Chapter Notes themselves, which should be followed up for further information.
- For the Printable versions of the Thesis, see the links below this text.
- Each Chapter follows a standard format, though there may be additions or omissions in particular cases:-
- Chapter Abstract: as given below.
- Research Methodology: How I intend to pursue research on the Chapter in question. There’s a lot of commonality between Chapters in this regard, though most of this narrative is segregated to a further document.
- Notes Referenced: My background research has been broken down into over 200 other Notes . Those most relevant to the Chapter in hand are listed.
- Chapter Introduction: This will explain why I’ve undertaken this research, and encourage the reader to continue.
- Chapter Main Text
- Concluding Remarks: Including a motivating link to the next Chapter, where relevant.
- Books and Papers Referenced: Or “to be addressed”.
- I’m piloting the idea of providing a “cut”, ie. dividing between
→ Works that have or will be addressed
→ Works that might have been addressed but on which a decision has been made to omit them for the time being. - These works – where not cited directly in the Main Text – are derived from the Notes in the list above. These Notes further segregate Works cited into:-
→ Those read.
→ Those still to be read, or on which reading is incomplete.
- Chapter Abstracts
- Introduction: Provides a motivating statement for the study of the particular path through the topic of Personal Identity I intend to pursue and a brief historical survey of the subject to situate my particular stance.
- What are We: The topic “personal identity” has historically presupposed that we are (in the sense of “identical to”, or “most fundamentally”) persons, whereas I (along with other animalists) claim that we are identical to human animals. “We” requires explanation. This chapter will sort out the topic of discussion for the Thesis as a whole.
- What is a Person?: This chapter will canvass the various views and consider how important issues in this area are to my main concern of our identity.
- Basic Metaphysical Issues: We must consider the logic of identity, as non-standard logics are favourite means of escaping from some of the puzzle cases. We ask – along with Parfit – whether identity matters. Substances and sortals are central to the persistence of anything, and define their persistence conditions. In particular my claim is that persons are phase sortals of human animals (the substances). The question of Kinds – and in particular Natural Kinds – are related to those of Substance, and are important in considering whether PERSON is a natural kind concept. Metamorphosis might be important if it is claimed that we can change kind.
- Persistence and Time: A number of thought experiments that feature in Chapter 10 seem to fail if perdurantism is true (because the reduplication objections fail). Depending on whether any of these are critical to my arguments, I may need to consider the impact of perdurantism. But this complex area may be a step too far within a fairly limited word-count. I’m also unsure whether it should feature before or after the account of Thought Experiments.
- Animalism and Arguments for it: This Chapter describes what Animalism is, with an excursus on animals and organisms and their persistence. It puts forward the arguments in favour of animalism, those against being reserved for a later Chapter. It focuses on the account of Eric Olson, the primary contemporary exponent of Animalism.
- The Constitution View and Arguments for it: This Chapter gives an account of Lynne Rudder Baker’s thesis that human persons are not identical to human animals, but are – temporarily at least – constituted by them.
- Arguments against Animalism: A discussion of the arguments against animalism, as given by those of anti-animalist persuasion and defended by the principal animalists (with a focus on Olson), with a critique.
- Arguments against the Constitution View: A discussion of the arguments against the Constitution View, focusing on the principal animalists, with a critique. In particular, I intend to critique Olson’s “thinking animal” argument against the Constitution View (though I think this argument is unnecessary for Olson to establish the case for Animalism).
- Thought Experiments: Any account of personal identity needs to give an account of what is going on in the various thought experiments that have been thought relevant to the topic. It’s also the area that’s most fun. Indeed, I think that the entire Thesis will be an exercise in inference to the best explanation. It needs to account for our intuitions (if there is a universal response) or explain them away as confused. I will firstly briefly consider the propriety of using thought experiments in this domain of enquiry, and then consider the usual suspects.
- Resurrection: If mind-body substance dualism is false, and we are identical to human animals, then the only possibility for post-mortem existence is some form of bodily resurrection. Since the body is destroyed at death, it would seem that any resurrected individual could only be a copy of the original. It might think of itself as the resurrected pre-mortem individual, but it would be wrong. Consideration of arguments by Peter Van Inwagen in this respect. This chapter is likely to be controversial, so needs to be very carefully argued, and factually correct concerning what is actually believed by intellectually-aware Christians and Muslims (unlike what seems to be the case with most swipes against religion). Maybe I should also cover reincarnation.
- Conclusion:
- We are human animals,
- Human persons fall under phase sortals of the concept HUMAN ANIMAL,
- The person is inseparable from the animal,
- The animal is utterly destroyed at death,
- Substance dualism is false, and
- Consequently (given the sort of thing we are) resurrection or any other post-mortem survival is impossible for us.
Note last updated: 18/04/2019 18:18:43
Footnote 28: (Thesis - Current Stance)
The purpose of this Note is to provide a periodic refocusing of what my thoughts and beliefs about the topic of Personal Identity currently are. Previous versions can be found from the list below. This version has links to the various other Notes that expand further on the issues raised, and supply extensive reading lists. While very often these Notes are of the “promissory” variety, the links will remind me to improve them as needed.
- What are we? This is one of the most important questions we need to ask ourselves. Just what kind of things are we? The question is closely related to a similar one: just what sort of adventures can individuals such as ourselves survive? This second question sheds light on the first for if there are certain contingencies that we think we would – or would not – survive, when a typical member of that kind would not – or would – survive, then that kind may not represent what we really think we are. Of course, we might be wrong in our estimations, but at least this will raise the question.
- Why is this not a trivial question? If we look at a dog, say, and ask what it is, the answer to such a question is obvious – it’s a dog! It may be our pet – with a name – a particular individual, but when we ask what kind of thing it is, it’s a member of the species canis lupus. So, when we look at ourselves, the obvious answer is that we are human beings – specifically human animals, members of the species homo sapiens. That is the answer posited by the Animalists, amongst whose number – broadly speaking – I place myself, who accept the biological view of personal identity.
- If this is true, then our persistence conditions – the necessary and sufficient conditions for us to continue in existence – are the same as those of other animals – the great apes, say, under which category we fall, biologically speaking. Why is this not the end of the story? Well, this is because – despite being a species of great ape – human beings are special in that we have enhanced cognitive capacities. We are morally accountable. In sum, we are persons, and have a “first person perspective” (FPP) on the world – something most philosophers deny to other animals – and care about our futures and – wantons apart – agonise over our past mistakes. Lynne Rudder Baker claims this perspective makes an ontological difference, rather than being – as I think – a special property of human beings that may or may not be had in particular cases. Baker accuses the animalists of not taking persons seriously. I might just note that there’s a facile and confusing answer to what we are, that is “people”. You may have noticed that I used the technical term “persons” as the plural of “person”. Some philosophers annoyingly use the term “people”, but this confuses the issue. When we say there are ten people in the room, while it is clear in normal circumstances what we mean – dogs don’t count, for instance – but if there happened to be a Klingon and a visiting angel, would they count as people or not? They are – we may suppose – persons, but they are not human persons
- Since at least John Locke, this fact of our mental exceptionalism has tempted philosophers to say that it’s our psychological continuity that is more important for our identity-preservation than our physical continuity. This view still has its supporters – not only for those such as Dean Zimmerman and Richard Swinburne who believe in immaterial souls – but for the many who think that psychological continuity and connectedness is constitutive of the identity of persons. It is also implicit in the ideas of the Transhumanists who think that – come the Singularity – we might be capable of being uploaded to computers and thereby live almost forever.
- Before proceeding further we have to say something brief and sketchy about identity and persistence. “Identity” – in the sense of “numerical identity” – is a relation a thing holds to itself and to nothing else. A is identical to B if A and B are the very same thing. It is an equivalence relation, being transitive, reflexive and idempotent; and, many of the sticking points in the philosophy of personal identity arise from this fact.
- It has nothing to do with “identity” as a sociological concept such as national identity, sexual identity or identification with a particular group.
- Also, John may be said “not to be the same person” since he took heroin, but he is still John and still the same individual; it’s just that his personality has changed.
- It also has nothing to do with “narrative identity” which is the story we tell about ourselves in an attempt to make sense of our lives.
- Finally, it has nothing to do with “exact similarity”: my television may be “identical” to yours, but that doesn’t mean I can have yours if mine breaks. They are – or were, when manufactured – exactly similar, but are distinct.
- “Persisting” is what a thing does in continuing in existence. As we noted above, there are what are called “persistence conditions” – specific to a kind of thing – that set out what vicissitudes a thing can survive if it is to remain that very same thing. There are sometimes hard cases, and there can seem sometimes that there is an element of convention: is a particular club still the same clubs after it has lost all its original members, changed its name, and so on? But we can’t accept that our own existence is a matter of convention, though this could seem the case with the once-dominant psychological view of personal identity: just how much psychological connection could I lose with my former self – philosophers wondered – and still be me? However, things seem simpler and more objective for organisms, which persist despite exchanging material with the environment and changing many of their properties, provided they are caught up in a complex and hopefully long drawn-out event (or process) known as a “life”.
- In the above I have assumed at least three things.
- Firstly, that “things” – or at least some things – exist. There’s a philosophical position known as “Process Metaphysics” (or “Naturalised Metaphysics”) that gives the focus to process rather than ontology, particularly in the case of organisms. I’m not sure how fatal this is to my approach, since I admit that animals are individuated by their lives, which are processes.
- Secondly, that we exist. This would seem hardly worth mentioning, other than that certain philosophers – nihilists – have argued that we (whatever we are) or – for similar reasons – various common things like hands – don’t exist.
- Finally, I assume that things do indeed persist, at least some of the time.
I can’t really address these foundational issues here, but will just say a few words on the second issue. There are a lot of interconnected issues to do with the philosophy of time and change, in particular the problem of temporary intrinsics. How can the leaf that was green yesterday be the same leaf if it is brown today? How can the old bald bloke I am today be the same individual as the hirsute teenager all those years ago? - Some philosophers – the exdurantists – say that there’s no relation of identity across time, but merely a weaker counterpart relation analogous to that between an individual and its counterpart in another possible world.
- Others – in particular Derek Parfit – have said that even if there is identity across time, it’s not what matters.
In what follows, I assume that we exist and that we continue to exist self-identically across time and that this identity relation is important. We could not carry on our lives without these assumptions even if – philosophically-speaking – they were false; but I think they are true: I don’t want to distinguish the “strict and philosophical” from the “loose and popular” senses of identity first raised by Joseph Butler. I also assume the standard logic of identity and reject all heretical accounts that are invented from time to time as radical solutions to the difficult questions of persistence. In particular, I reject the view – known as occasional identity that – while (say) I am not identical to my younger self – yet I was that person, just not any more. - Now back to the main thread. Most Anglophone philosophers these days are physicalists (though maybe most non-philosophers are unreflective dualists). This gives physicalist philosophers a problem if they have hopes of post-mortem survival. If the human organism is totally destroyed – eg. by cremation, explosion, or eating of worms – just how does the very same individual get from this life to the next? Christian Materialists have had a go at thinking this through, and acknowledge the difficulties. Peter Van Inwagen attempted to show that it is at least logically possible by having God snatch away the dying body immediately pre-mortem, replacing it with a simulacrum. Dean Zimmerman – while himself a dualist – has suggested a “falling elevator” model to help out his materialist friends, whereby there is immanent causation (by some unknown natural or supernatural process) between the dying body and the resurrection one so that the dying individual escapes in the nick of time to the next world without loss of numerical identity. Others claim that God’s omnipotence is sufficient and is sovereign even over the laws of logic, so that problems raised by identity being an equivalence relation can be overcome by brute force. Maybe so, but without the constraints of logical possibility, we have no way of arguing the matter, so let’s not bother.
- However, most Christian materialists prefer an alternative. They recognise that getting from here to the next world with temporal or spatial gaps raises difficult questions as to whether the numerical identity of the individual is preserved but adopt an alternative solution – the Constitution View. On this thesis, the person is distinct from the human animal – “just as” the statue is distinct from its constituting marble – so that the very same person – tagged by the unique “first person perspective” noted above – can be constituted first by its earthly body, and subsequently by its heavenly one.
- Some Animalists have what they think of as a knock-down argument against the Constitution View. Eric Olson calls it the “Thinking Animal” argument. If the person and the animal are distinct things, albeit co-located, there are too many thinkers – because the animal can certainly think, as can the person, so we have two thinkers where we thought we had one – which is one problem; and there’s another – how do we know which we are, the person or the animal? I’m not impressed by this argument. There are several “multiple occupancy” conundrums that have been claimed at one time or another to deny the existence of things we are sure do exist. Dion and Theon, Tib and Tibbles, the “problem of the many” and so on. We just need to sort out our rules for counting. Also, the whole question of three- versus four-dimensionalism (4D) – whether a persisting thing is wholly present at a time – or whether only a temporal part is present, the thing as a whole being a “space-time worm” – bears on the question of counting. If different things can share stages – say the person and the human animal, or the statue and the clay – then we have to be careful how we count. In the case of a future fission – whereby two space-time worms share their past stages, but will ultimately diverge – we might not know how many to count at a time, but this will often not matter for practical purposes.
- I think the idea of a first-person perspective is important. It is this that provides the pull against animalism when linked to various thought experiments (TEs) that we’ll come on to presently. However, I still don’t like the Constitution View. My objection is that the FPP is a property of something else – like a smile – in this case of a human animal, though the smile might belong to a cat. You can’t take the very same smile from one cat and place on another (it would be at best an exactly similar smile) – let alone have a disembodied smile like that of the Cheshire Cat. Similarly, you can’t take the very same FPP from one body and plop it onto another. True, it might be a qualitatively exactly similar FPP, but not the same one. What’s to stop that FPP being plopped on several resurrection bodies? Which would be numerically identical to me, given that they can’t all be, in the absence of 4D?
- What are the temptations for not sticking with the animalist approach – which ought these days to be the default position in the absence of anything more compelling? As noted, the apparent lack of rational expectation of an afterlife is one incentive to look elsewhere, so “elsewhere” is a favourite for those who can’t bear the thought of their selves expiring with their bodies. We’ve noted the Christian dualists and materialists, but what about the Transhumanists? There’s the relatively metaphysically uninteresting case of cryoscopy followed by repair and resuscitation; there we have material continuity, and no possibility of reduplication, though some might claim there is too much outside interference for identity to be preserved. But, what about the “hope” of “you” being uploaded to a computer? There seems to be an idea about that “we” are really software (or data), when we are clearly material beings. If we are software, it is said, then we might “run” on different hardware. I have two issues with this, apart from the immense technical obstacles to be overcome both in “scanning” the “real you” and providing a computer of sufficient power to run your program and the virtual world for you to experience, Matrix-like.
- Firstly, what sort of thing is a program? It’s an interesting question whether a program has persistence conditions. Is Windows 10 the same program as Windows 0? Whatever the answer to this question is, a program would seem to be a kind of universal rather than a particular, and “we” are particulars.
- This leads to the second issue – a reduplication objection. Say we developed a sophisticated program that could run on an open-ended number of exactly similar robots. No two of these would be numerically identical to one another – they would be distinct, though exactly similar. So, were the program to be a simulation of your brain, it could run – presumably – on an open-ended number of computers – and these computers (or computer partitions) would not be identical to one another, so none of them could be you, as you could only be one of them, and there’s no principled way of saying which. The same objection prevents Star Trek-like teletransportation – were it possible – being identity-preserving. I might also add that no “program” is – in itself – conscious, though a machine that runs it might conceivably be. Mind you, there are arguments here as well – originated by John Searle – at least for digital computers.
Incidentally, the transhumanists seem to imagine unending computer life as a secular heaven, but it could just as easily be a secular hell. - So, I remain wedded to my view that we are human animals with the persistence conditions of such. “Person” is not a substance term, but an honorific that refers to some substance during some periods of its existence when it has the requisite mental and moral properties to qualify. “Person” is a Phase Sortal (like “teacher”) that – in the case of “person” – applies to most humans most of the time, but need not apply to all humans all the time. There are ethical consequences for this view, but they are not as dramatic as is sometimes urged. Non-persons don’t have moral responsibilities, as is already recognised for demented or infant humans, and all non-human animals. The obverse – that persons allegedly have no moral obligations towards non-persons – or that non-persons have no rights – is the sticking point, and ought to be reflected in a more humane treatment of all non-persons rather than that we might contemplate sending human non-persons as well as non-human non-persons to the slaughter-house.
- So, what are the problems for animalists? There are several. Some – like the so-called “corpse problem” (is my corpse me – only dead – if not, where does it come from? It doesn’t have the persistence conditions of an organism) are probably relatively easy to overcome. Recently, I’ve discovered that animalists – like (but for different reasons) those who think we are essentially persons – allegedly have a “fetus problem”. Animalists – saying that we are essentially animals – have (it seems) to say that we were once foetuses – which appears to be what our animal once was. But was this fetus once a proper part of its mother? There’s work currently going on to suggest that this is so – and if so, just when did the new human animal come into existence? However, I don’t think any of this seriously threatens animalism. Maybe animalists should have considered the problem more than they have, but animals do come into existence sometime – presumably by the time of birth at the latest – and that’s enough for an animalist.
- The real problems for animalism stem from the force of thought experiments such as the “brain transplant intuition”. An animalist seems forced to say that I would not “go with my brain” in the circumstance where my brain is transplanted into another body, when it seems to most people that I would. The alleged reason for this is that at least some animalists consider the brain to be “just another organ” that we might lose like we might lose a kidney, provided the animal is kept alive. Doubts about this have led some to think that we are not “really” whole human animals but proper parts thereof, maybe not brains as such, but brains and a few other bits. This does seem comical. Just how large am I – would I fit into a hat-box, as Olson asks?
- My view is as follows. I am currently (thankfully) a whole human animal. My wife worked in the NHS with amputees, and I think it is right to say that they also are whole human animals, though they lack parts that most of us have. No doubt they could lose more parts – and some diabetics sadly do. So, we might view a “brain in a vat” – one ready for transplant – as a “maximally mutilated” human animal. Maybe – in the case of a brain transplant – a prior animal has fissioned (divided into two) when the brain is extracted and we now have a case of the fusion of two animals (the brain from one fusing with the body of the other). It might be argued that our identity-logic isn’t quite up to deciding who is who in such circumstances, but the stakes seem high enough to demand an answer, for which read on.
- I doubt whether the transhumanist hopes of augmenting our physical or mental attributes by effectively converting us into cyborgs is much of a threat to animalism. We don’t worry about our spectacles or our mobiles phones making us any less mammalian. Closer integration with AI applications is only the next step for the extended mind.
- So, is there any purchase in thought experiments that putatively have my first person perspective persisting in cases where there is no identity preservation. Could it be the case that “it seems to me” that I have survived some vicissitude – a cerebrum transplant, say – but I am mistaken? Some philosophers argue that this happens every night – I go to sleep, and when I wake up I just assume that I am identical to the individual who got into bed, but how do I know? I might be intellectually convinced by third parties – those other than the sleeper and the waker – one way or another, but how would this affect how it seems to me? Take the teletranportation case. Because of the reduplication objection (unless we are 4-dimensionalists), we should say that numerical identity is not preserved. But – if the technology works, and I am the teletransportee – the individual (or 77 duplicates) would (all) wake up convinced they were me, yet they must be deceived. Thankfully, reduplication is not a problem for whole-brain transplants, but it is for idempotent half-brain transplants, though I think the identity problem there occurs during the fissioning process rather than when the half-brains are implanted.
- I continue to think that there is a distinction to be made between forward and backward psychological continuity, though I don’t see how third parties – or even first or second parties – could tell the difference. It makes all the difference to me if I go to sleep and someone else wakes up thinking they are me – as against the normal case where I go to sleep and I wake up. In the former case – for me – there’s just an endless nothingness, of which I know nothing, while in the latter case my experiential life carries on. However, backward psychological continuity – what it feels like looking back – is the same for a survivor and one who only thinks he’s survived.
- In the case of the split brain transplant, however, how is it all supposed to work, experientially? Neurosurgery is – even today – carried out on substantially conscious patients, as that way there’s a quick feedback loop to tell the surgeon whether he’s destroying any important areas of cognitive function. What would it be like to “fission”? Maybe I lack the imagination, but it seems to me that my First Person Perspective would go along with whatever was the dominant hemisphere, assuming this “seat of consciousness” is initially located in one hemisphere or the other. If it is not, then it would presumably be destroyed and two new ones would be created in this miracle operation. Either way, this would sit comfortably with the logic of identity which would not be violated, as at most one of the recipients would be me. I can imagine being ripped apart psychologically, but I can’t imagine going two ways.
- Of course, there are physical and metaphysical issues with the whole idea of brain transplants – the physical structure of the brain reflects “its” body, and mental faculties are not fully localised, so it’s not just the immensely complex task of “wiring up” the brain to its new body that presents a challenge. Half-brain transplants are even more problematical as in the TEs the brain stem is not split, but only the cerebra are supposed to be transplanted. It’s not clear to me whether there is pervasive confusion here and that these thought experiments are underspecified to the degree of incoherence. Some philosophers – eg. Kathleen Wilkes – think TEs are unhelpful in the philosophy of personal identity, and that our concepts are not up to being probed in this way. I’m not so sure – the TEs are about us, not our concepts.
- There is finally the question whether there is any such thing as “the Self”, which is what is supposed to have this FPP. Some contemporary philosophers argue that the Self is an illusion that the brain generates. Others – such as David Hume – have argued; and others – such as Galen Strawson – do argue that when they introspect they find no evidence of a persisting Self. I don’t know where they are coming from, as I can’t think of anything more certain. But a Buddhist-inspired “no-self” view makes the animalist’s task easier, if maybe less interesting.
Note last updated: 04/04/2020 00:14:24
Footnote 30: (Evolution)
Plug Note- What has Evolution got to do with my Thesis on the topic of Personal identity? Well, not a lot, however …
- As I’m proposing a version of Animalism, one of the new arguments for Animalism (due to Stephan Blatti) is the that from our evolutionary origins. If we’ve evolved from animals, then it’s likely that’s what we are. This requires careful consideration, because it would seem to provide the default view of what we are – but then so does common sense.
- A possible objection might be that species evolve – both improving the characteristics of average exemplars of that species but also generating new species. So – prima facie – there’s no reason not to describe the emergence of human persons as “more of the same” from non-person hominids, ie. just tweaking their capacities – rather than as making an “ontological change” – as Baker argues.
- The persistence criteria for species also makes an interesting topic of research, as does deciding just what “species” are: for instance, are they concepts or universals or are they collections of concrete individuals? Is the evolution of a new species are form of metamorphosis
- There will be some considerable overlap between this Note and that on Homo Sapiens. I intend to segregate the text and reading lists more carefully in due course.
- There’s also an overlap between speculations on the future of human evolution and Transhumanism.
- Evolutionary Psychology has much to say (and much that is disputed) about what makes us tick – what makes us what we are in both a narrative and a metaphysical sense.
- There’s also the question of the evolution of consciousness; when, why and how did it evolve?
- I might add a discussion of cultural evolution11, and how this has made us what we are by extending our cognitive capacities.
- Of course, the topic is important and interesting in its own right, but I can’t spend much time on it. Any focus should be on human evolution.
- I can spare no time here on disputes about the truth of evolutionary theory, though if I’ve read anything significant on the subject, I’ve included it under “items read”.
- For a Page of Links to this Note, Click here. There are vastly too many references for an updating run, but this set of links – along with the categorised reading list below – give a lot of items to choose from.
- Works on this topic that I’ve actually read include the following:-
- "Alexander (Denis) - Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?", Alexander
- "Asma (Stephen) - Imagination is ancient", Asma
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Precis of 'Persons & Bodies: A Constitution View'", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Importance Of Being a Person", Baker
- "Barash (David P.) - Animal magnetism", Barash
- "Blackmore (Susan) - Dying to Live: Preface", Blackmore
- "Blackmore (Vernon) & Page (Andrew) - Evolution: The Great Debate", Blackmore & Page
- "Burkeman (Oliver) - Revolution in Evolution", Burkeman
- "Bloom (Paul) - Introduction to Psychology", Bloom
- "Buss (David M.) - Why women stray", Buss
- "Carruthers (Peter) & Chamberlain (Andrew), Eds. - Evolution and the Human Mind: Modularity, Language and Meta-Cognition", Carruthers
- "Collins (Francis) - The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief", Collins
- "Conway Morris (Simon) - Darwin’s Compass: How Evolution Discovers the Song of Creation", Conway Morris
- "Conway Morris (Simon) - Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (Preface)", Conway Morris
- "Currie (Adrian) & Turner (Derek) - The missing fossils matter as much as the ones we have found", Currie
- "Donald (Merlin) - A Mind So Rare: Prologue", Donald
- "Dawkins (Richard) - Climbing Mount Improbable", Dawkins
- "Dawkins (Richard) - River Out of Eden", Dawkins
- "Dawkins (Richard) - Selfish Genes and Selfish Memes", Dawkins
- "Dawkins (Richard) - The Blind Watchmaker", Dawkins
- "Dawkins (Richard) - The Selfish Gene", Dawkins
- "Fetzer (James) - The evolution of intelligence: TOC & Preface", Fetzer
- "Heyes (Cecilia M.) - Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking", Heyes
- "Hoffman (Donald D.) - The Case Against Reality (Aeon Video)", Hoffman
- "Jackendoff (Ray) - How did Language begin?", Jackendoff
- "Kitcher (Philip) - The Creationist Crusade", Kitcher
- "Krause (Johannes) - Our Ancestral Cave Gets More Crowded", Krause
- "Le Fanu (James) - The Queen of Beasts", Le Fanu15
- "McKie (Robin) - Out of Africa: The Sequel", McKie
- "Moody (Todd C.) - Conversations with Zombies", Moody
- "Morell (Virginia) - What do mirror tests test?", Morrell
- "Morris (John) - God and Ethics", Morris
- "Ogilvie (Daniel M.) - Soul Searching Project", Ogilvie
- "Olson (Eric) - Human People Or Human Animals", Olson
- "Plantinga (Alvin) - Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism - Preface", Plantinga
- "Rachels (James) - Created From Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism", Rachels
- "Richards (Janet Radcliffe) - Human Nature After Darwin: Introduction", Richards
- "Ridley (Mark) - The Problems of Evolution", Ridley
- "Seth (Anil Kumar) - How we build perception from the inside out", Seth
- "Skinner (Michael) - Unified theory of evolution", Skinner
- "Spencer (Nick) & Alexander (Denis) - Rescuing Darwin: God and Evolution in Britain Today", Spencer & Alexander
- "Spurgin (Lewis) - This island life", Spurgin
- "Sterelny (Kim) & Griffiths (Paul) - From Sociobiology to Evolutionary Psychology", Sterelny & Griffiths
- "Stewart-Williams (Steve) - Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: Darwin and the Big Questions", Stewart-Williams
- "Stewart-Williams (Steve) - On the Origin of Afterlife Beliefs by Means of Memetic Selection", Stewart-Williams
- "Thomas (Janice L.) - Criticisms of dualism: is substance dualism tenable?", Thomas
- "Walsh (Denis) - Naturalism, Evolution and Mind: Editor's Introduction", Walsh
- "Wilson (Jack) - Beyond Horses and Oak Trees: A New Theory of Individuation for Living Entities", Wilson
- A further reading list might start with:-
- "Barkow (Jerome), Cosmides (Leda) & Tooby (John), Eds. - The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture", Barkow, Cosmides & Tooby
- "Beilby (James), Ed. - Naturalism Defeated?: Essays on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism", Beilby
- "Blatti (Stephan) - A New Argument for Animalism", Blatti
- "Bostrom (Nick) - The Future of Human Evolution", Bostrom
- "Burling (Robbins) - The Talking Ape: How Language Evolved", Burling
- "Calvin (William H.) - The Ascent of Mind: Ice Age Climates and the Evolution of Intelligence", Calvin
- "Cangelosi (Angelo) & Parisi (Domenico), Eds. - Simulating the Evolution of Language", Cangelosi
- "Carruthers (Peter) - The Evolution of Working Memory", Carruthers
- "Carruthers (Peter), Fletcher (Logan) & Ritchie (J. Brendan) - The Evolution of Self-knowledge", Carruthers
- "Collyer (John V.) - Creation, Evolution & Science: Is Creation Credible? Is Evolution a Science?", Collyer
- "Cosmides (Leda) & Tooby (John) - Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer", Cosmides & Tooby
- "Coyne (Jerry A.) - Why Evolution is True", Coyne
- "Dawkins (Richard) - The Ancestor's Tale", Dawkins
- "Dawkins (Richard) - The Extended Phenotype", Dawkins
- "Dawkins (Richard) - The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution", Dawkins
- "Dennett (Daniel) - Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life", Dennett
- "Denton (Michael) - Evolution: A Theory in Crisis", Denton
- "Deutscher (Guy) - The Unfolding Of Language: The Evolution of Mankind's Greatest Invention", Deutscher
- "Donald (Merlin) - A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness", Donald
- "Eccles (John) - Evolution of the Brain, Creation of the Self", Eccles
- "Eldredge (Niles) - Life Pulse - Episodes from the Story of the Fossil Record", Eldredge
- "Eldredge (Niles) - Reinventing Darwin - The Great Evolutionary Debate", Eldredge
- "Eldredge (Niles) - The Miner's Canary - Unravelling the Mysteries of Exctinction", Eldredge
- "Fetzer (James) - The Evolution of Intelligence: Are Humans the Only Animals with Minds?", Fetzer
- "Flew (Antony) - Darwinian Evolution", Flew
- "Goodwin (Brian) - How the Leopard Changed its Spots - The Evolution of Complexity", Goodwin
- "Gribbin (John) & Gribbin (Mary) - Being Human: Putting People in an Evolutionary Perspective", Gribbin
- "Hoffman (Donald D.) - The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes", Hoffman
- "Hoyle (Fred) - The Intelligent Universe: A New View of Creation and Evolution", Hoyle
- "Johanson (Donald) & Shreeve (James) - Lucy's Child: The Discovery of a Human Ancestor", Johanson & Shreeve
- "Jones (Steve) - Almost Like a Whale - The Origin of Species Updated", Jones
- "Krebs (John R.) & Davies (Nicholas B.), Eds. - Behavioural Ecology - An Evolutionary Approach", Krebs
- "Le Page (Michael) - Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions", Le Page
- "Lieberman (Philip) - Eve Spoke - Human Language and Human Evolution", Lieberman
- "Maynard Smith (John) - Evolutionary Genetics", Maynard-Smith
- "Mayr (Ernst) - Towards a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist", Mayr
- "Midgley (Mary) - Evolution as a Religion - Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears", Midgley
- "Milner (Richard) - The Encyclopaedia of Evolution: Humanity's Search for Its Origins", Milner
- "Nevin (Norman C.) - Should Christians Embrace Evolution?", Nevin
- "Richards (Janet Radcliffe) - Human Nature After Darwin: A Philosophical Introduction", Richards
- "Ridley (Matt) - The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature", Ridley
- "Schick (Kathy D.) & Toth (Nicholas) - Making Silent Stones Speak: Human Evolution and the Dawn of Technology", Schick & Toth
- "Shreeve (James) - The Neanderthal Enigma - Solving the Enigma of Modern Human Origins", Shreeve
- "Simons (Geoff) - Are Computers Alive? Evolution and New Life Forms", Simons
- "Sober (Elliott) & Wilson (David) - Unto Others - The Evolution & Psychology of Unselfish Behaviour", Sober & Wilson
- "Stewart-Williams (Steve) - Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew", Stewart-Williams
- "Strickberger (Monroe W.) - Evolution", Strickberger
- "Swinburne (Richard) - The Evolution of the Soul", Swinburne
- "Tattersall (Ian), Delson (Eric) & Van Couvering (John), Eds. - Encyclopaedia of Human Evolution and Prehistory", Tattersall, Etc.
- "Trinkaus (Erik) & Shipman (Pat) - The Neanderthals - Changing the Image of Mankind", Trinkaus
- "Vannelli (Ron) - Evolutionary Theory and Human Nature", Vanelli
- "Wills (Christopher) - The Runaway Brain - The Evolution of Human Uniqueness", Wills
- "Wolpert (Lewis) - Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief", Wolpert
- This is mostly a place-holder.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 11: Footnote 15: - I don’t like Le Fanu’s angle on evolution; he’s a not-very-crypto creationist.
- Also, all what is his “gee-whiz” stuff about “animal wonders” supposed to mean? Their bodies do function fine in the real world, so they must satisfy the laws of physics. It’s not as though there’s a continuous miracle going on. He never says there is, but I suspect he thinks it.
Note last updated: 10/12/2020 21:23:02
Footnote 31: (Person)
Plug Note- This Note is intended to cover what a PERSON is, and not to stray into every other aspect of Personal Identity, which are covered by other Notes. In particular, there’s a division of labour between this Note and that on What We Are. That we are most fundamentally Persons is an assumption challenged by Animalism.
- My considered opinion is that human persons are phase sortals of human animals.
- As is clear from the above, I have a note on human persons. I also have a separate Note on Non-Human Persons. I have not been too careful to segregate the reading lists, nor – at this stage – the texts.
- I must first consider whether the debate on personal identity has been hijacked by a term (whose meaning has changed over time) that can now be dispensed with. Wiggins claims that the Greeks had no term for “person” (I need to re-read the paper by "Trendelenberg (Adolf) - A Contribution to the History of the Word Person" to double-check this). Have we always secretly been talking about human animal identity (probably referring to human beings rather than human animals) when we thought we were talking about something separate, namely persons?
- I need to start with some conceptual analysis, though this may lead to somewhat arbitrary (ie. merely semantic or culture-relative) conclusions if PERSON isn’t a natural kind concept.
- I accept Locke’s conceptual distinction between Human Beings (“Men”), Persons and Substances. I accept Locke’s assertion that the rational parrot would be a person, but not a man – the latter essentially involving particular physical characteristics, the former specific mental characteristics.
- Can any purely mentalistic definition of the concept PERSON, such as Locke’s definition of a person as
“a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places” ("Locke (John) - Of Identity and Diversity" - Essay II.27.2)
be correct? I suspect not, because of the corporeal aspects we take as being essential to our self-image. - But, when we think of ourselves in this corporeal way, is this qua ANIMAL or qua PERSON. But then, this “qua-ing” can lead to relative identity, and shows how difficult it is for me, at least, to maintain the strict logic of identity in these discussions.
- Some further, fairly random, thoughts:-
- We must not ignore potential differences between the Person, the Self and the Individual.
- I doubt the truth of the contention that one’s Self is the sum of one’s projects, one’s individual “identity”.
- We must also note the potential for degrees of personhood.
- Are persons essentially sentient? Or rational? And is rationality, like the mental generally, overstated by philosophers whose favourite habitat it is?
- What about temporal gaps in sentience & rationality in the life of an individual – does the person pop in and out of existence?
- What about legal persons: not companies, but the comatose, who still have estates (but then so do the deceased)?
- How important is “person”, as against “sentient being” in my research concerns? The Cartesians denied sentience to animals and until recently there has been a down-playing of the capacities of animals, particularly their emotional capacities. Consequently, the persistence criteria for sentient non-humans may not have been given the focus they ought. I suspect that many of the thought experiments work just as well if we drop some of the more onerous requirements of personhood in such contexts. Some of the thought experiments play on the thought of “being tortured tomorrow”. While animals may not have the concept TOMORROW, I presume the higher animals have some capacity for anticipating future goods or ills about to befall them – that’s how dog-training works29. I wonder whether my research concerns should be about all beings that care about the future, whether or not they have a clear concept of it as their future.
- I will probably start with Dennett’s six criteria of personhood (see "Dennett (Daniel) - Conditions of Personhood") …
- rationality,
- intentionality – “predicated of”
- intentionality – “adopted towards”
- reciprocation of the personal stance,
- verbal communication and
- consciousness
… in investigating what persons are. See the following essay on "Dennett (Daniel) - Conditions of Personhood" - Recently, it has come to my attention that a related term of art – PERSONITE – has been coined to refer to a temporal part of a person. See the Note for discussion.
- For a Page of Links to this Note, Click here. When including the cognate “personal”, this list had over 16k items, so I added this as an excluded cognate, but this only reduced the list to 11k, so I removed the exclusion. Either way, the list is vastly too long for an updating run, so I will simply use it to cherry-pick items of relevance. Unfortunately, this means that very many items are irrelevant, so for now I’ve just cherry-picked from the list with “person” (but not “personal”) in the title – there were still over 550 of these.
- Works on this topic that I’ve actually read include the following:-
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Brief Reply to Rosenkrantz's Comments on my 'The Ontological Status of Persons'", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons in the Material World", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Constitution View of Human Persons", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Importance Of Being a Person", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Ontological Status of Persons", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - When Do Persons Begin and End?", Baker
- "Belshaw (Christopher) - Review of Paul Snowdon's 'Persons, Animals, Ourselves'", Belshaw
- "Birhane (Abeba) - Descartes was wrong: ‘a person is a person through other persons’", Birhane
- "Bourgeois (Warren) - Ancient Philosophers' Views on Persons: Persons in Ancient Greece and Rome", Bourgeois
- "Bourgeois (Warren) - Ancient Philosophers' Views on Persons: The Mediaevals", Bourgeois
- "Bourgeois (Warren) - Modern Philosophers' Views on Persons: More Moderns", Bourgeois
- "Bourgeois (Warren) - Modern Philosophers' Views on Persons: The Renaissance and the Early Moderns", Bourgeois
- "Bourgeois (Warren) - Persons - Philosophical Background: So Who Cares?", Bourgeois
- "Bourgeois (Warren) - Persons - Philosophical Background: The Nature of Persons", Bourgeois
- "Burke (Michael) - Is My Head a Person?", Burke
- "Candlish (Stewart) - Review of Minds, Brains and People by T. E. Wilkerson", Candlish
- "Carruthers (Peter) - Boundaries of Persons", Carruthers
- "Cassam (Quassim) - Parfit on Persons", Cassam
- "Cottingham (John) - Why we are not 'persons'", Cottingham
- "DeGrazia (David) - Are we essentially persons? Olson, Baker, and a reply", DeGrazia
- "DeGrazia (David) - Great Apes, Dolphins, and the Concept of Personhood", DeGrazia
- "Dennett (Daniel) - Conditions of Personhood", Dennett
- "Frankfurt (Harry) - Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person", Frankfurt
- "Garrett (Brian) - Persons", Garrett
- "Garrett (Brian) - The Story of I: Some Comments on L.R.Baker 'Persons & Bodies'", Garrett
- "Hinton (J.M.) - Review of Minds, Brains and People by T. E. Wilkerson", Hinton
- "Hornsby (Jennifer) - Mind, Causation and Explanation - Introduction: Personal and Subpersonal Levels", Hornsby
- "Hornsby (Jennifer) - Ontological Questions - Introduction: Persons and Their States, and Events", Hornsby
- "Ikaheimo (Heikki) & Laitinen (Arto) - Dimensions of Personhood", Ikaheimo & Leitinen
- "Kagan (Shelly) - The nature of persons: dualism versus physicalism", Kagan
- "Kaufman (Sharon) - Neither person nor cadaver", Kaufman
- "Lizza (John) - Persons, Humanity, & the Definition of Death: Preface", Lizza
- "Longuenesse (Beatrice) - Kant on the identity of persons", Longuenesse
- "MacKay (Donald) - Brains, Machines & Persons", MacKay
- "McCall (Catherine) - Concepts of Person: Introduction", McCall
- "McDowell (John) - Reductionism and the First Person", McDowell
- "McGill (V.J.) - Review of Minds, Brains and People by T. E. Wilkerson", McGill
- "Meincke (Anne Sophie) - Human Persons – A Process View", Meincke
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Objects & Persons: Preface", Merricks
- "Midgley (Mary) - Persons and Non-Persons", Midgley
- "Moreland (J.P.) & Rae (Scott) - Establishing a Framework For Approaching Human Personhood", Moreland & Rae
- "Moreland (J.P.) & Rae (Scott) - Human Persons as Substances or Property-Things", Moreland & Rae
- "Nanay (Bence) - Catching Desires", Nanay
- "Noonan (Harold) - Arguments Against Animalism: Comments on L.R.Baker 'Persons & Bodies'", Noonan
- "Noonan (Harold) - Persons, Animals and Human Beings", Noonan
- "Olson (Eric) - Review of P. Snowdon, Persons, Animals, Ourselves", Olson
- "Olson (Eric) - Review of 'Persons: Human and Divine'", Olson
- "Parfit (Derek) - Reasons and Persons", Parfit
- "Petrus (Klaus) - Human Persons. Some Conceptual Remarks", Petrus
- "Pollock (John L.) - How to Build a Person: Preface", Pollock
- "Puccetti (Roland) - Human Persons", Puccetti
- "Pynes (Christopher A.) - Review of Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation by Gary L. Francione", Pynes
- "Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg) - The Identities of Persons: Introduction", Rorty
- "Rosenkrantz (Gary) - Reflections on the Ontological Status of Persons", Rosenkrantz
- "Savulescu (Julian) - Should a human-pig chimera be treated as a person?", Savulescu
- "Selling (Joseph) - The Human Person", Selling
- "Shaffer (Jerome) - Persons and Their Bodies", Shaffer
- "Shoemaker (David) - Personal Identity and Ethics - Introduction", Shoemaker
- "Shoemaker (Sydney) - Persons and Personal Identity", Shoemaker
- "Smart (Brian) - How can Persons be Ascribed M-Predicates?", Smart
- "Snowdon (Paul) - Persons, Animals, and Bodies", Snowdon
- "Snowdon (Paul) - Persons, Animals, and Ourselves", Snowdon
- "Snowdon (Paul) - Persons, Animals, Ourselves: Introduction", Snowdon
- "Steinhart (Eric) - Persons Versus Brains: Biological Intelligence in Human Organisms", Steinhart
- "Steiner (Gary) - Animals as Persons: Foreward", Steiner
- "Strawson (Peter) - Review of Minds, Brains and People by T. E. Wilkerson", Strawson
- "Trendelenberg (Adolf) - A Contribution to the History of the Word Person", Trendelenberg
- "Trettin (Kathe) - Persons and Other Trope Complexes. Reflections on Ontology and Normativity", Trettin
- "Wiggins (David) - The Person as Object of Science, as Subject of Experience, and as Locus of Value", Wiggins
- "Wilkes (Kathleen) - Real People: Personal Identity Without Thought Experiments", Wilkes
- "Williams (Bernard) - Are Persons Bodies?", Williams
- A further reading list might start with:-
- "Anderson (Susan Leigh) - Chisholm's Argument to Show that a Person Cannot be an Ens Successivum", Anderson
- "Ayer (A.J.) - The Concept of a Person", Ayer
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Human Persons", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - On Being One’s Own Person", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Other Things", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and the Extended-Mind Thesis", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and the Metaphysics of Resurrection", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and the Natural Order", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons in Metaphysical Perspective", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons: Natural, Yet Ontologically Unique", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Review of 'A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person' by Hud Hudson", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Review of 'Objects and Persons' by Trenton Merricks", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Technology and the Future of Persons", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - When Does a Person Begin?", Baker
- "Bar-On (Dorit) - Transparency, Epistemic Impartiality, and Personhood", Bar-On
- "Berniunas (Renatas) & Dranseika (Vilius) - Folk Concepts of Person and Identity: a Response to Nichols and Bruno", Berniunas & Dranseika
- "Bertocci (Peter A.) - The Essence of a Person", Bertocci
- "Black (Sam) - Altruism and the Separateness of Persons", Black
- "Bourgeois (Warren) - Persons: What Philosophers Say about You", Bourgeois
- "Braddon-Mitchell (David) & Miller (Kristie) - How To Be A Conventional Person", Braddon-Michell & Miller
- "Braine (David) - The Human Person: Animal and Spirit", Braine
- "Brennan (Andrew) - Concepts of a Person", Brennan
- "Brennan (Andrew) - Persons and their Brains", Brennan
- "Bringsjord (Selmer) - On Building Robot Persons: Response to Zlatev", Bringsjord
- "Brink (David) - Rational Egoism and the Separateness of Persons", Brink
- "Burke (Michael) - Persons and Bodies: How to Avoid the New Dualism", Burke
- "Burstein (Norman) - Strawson on the Concept of a Person", Burstein
- "Campbell (Scott) - Persons and Substances", Campbell
- "Campbell (Scott) - The Conception of a Person as a Series of Mental Events", Campbell
- "Carrithers (Michael), Collins (Steven) & Lukes (Steven) - The Category of the Person: Anthropology, philosophy, history", Carrithers, Etc.
- "Carter (William) - Once and Future Persons", Carter
- "Chappell (Tim), Chappell (Sophie Grace) - On the Very Idea of Criteria for Personhood", Chappell
- "Cherry (Christopher) - Machines as Persons?", Cherry
- "Chisholm (Roderick) - Person and Object", Chisholm
- "Christman (John) - Narrative Unity as a Condition of Personhood", Christman
- "Clayton (Philip) - Neuroscience, the Person, and God: An Emergentist Account", Clayton
- "Coburn (Robert) - Persons and Psychological Concepts", Coburn
- "Corcoran (Kevin) - Physical Persons and Postmortem Survival Without Temporal Gaps", Corcoran
- "Craig (William Lane) - Divine Timelessness and Personhood", Craig
- "Davies (Martin) - Persons and their Underpinnings", Davies
- "Dillon (Robin S.) - Arrogance, Self-Respect and Personhood", Dillon
- "Doepke (Frederick) - The Importance of the Metaphysics of Persons", Doepke
- "Eccles (John) - The Human Person", Eccles
- "English (Jane) - Abortion and the Concept of a Person", English
- "Evnine (Simon J.) - Epistemic Dimensions of Personhood", Evnine
- "Evnine (Simon J.) - Personhood and Future Belief: Two Arguments for Something like Reflection", Evnine
- "Feinberg (Todd) - Mything Persons", Feinberg
- "Forrester (Mary) - Persons, Animals, and Fetuses: An Essay in Practical Ethics", Forrester
- "Francione (Gary) - Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation", Francione
- "Francione (Gary) - Personhood, Property and Legal Competence", Francione
- "French (Peter) - Kinds and Persons", French
- "Garrett (Brian) - Persons and Values", Garrett
- "Gillett (Grant) - Reasoning About Persons", Gillett
- "Glover (Jonathan) - I: Philosophy and Psychology of Personal Identity: Introduction", Glover
- "Glover (Jonathan) - Persons and Self-Consciousness", Glover
- "Goodenough (Jerry) - The Achievement of Personhood", Goodenough
- "Graham (George) - Inside Persons", Graham
- "Graham (George) - Persons and Time", Graham
- "Green (Joel B.) - Restoring the Human Person: New Testament Voices for a Wholistic and Social Anthropology", Green
- "Green (Joel B.) - Scripture and the Human Person: Further Reflections", Green
- "Guenin (Louis M.) - The Nonindividuation Argument Against Zygotic Personhood", Guenin
- "Hanfling (Oswald) - Machines as Persons?", Hanfling
- "Harre (Rom) - Persons and Selves", Harre
- "Hasker (William) - Persons as Emergent Substances", Hasker
- "Hershenov (David) - Persons as Proper Parts of Organisms", Hershenov
- "Hershenov (David) & Koch-Hershenov (Rose J.) - Anscombe on Embryos and Persons", Hershenov x 2
- "Hudson (Hud) - The Criterion of Personal Identity", Hudson
- "Hudson (Hud) - A Portrait of the Human Person", Hudson
- "Hudson (Hud) - Pre-Persons, Post-Persons, Non-Persons, and Person-Parts", Hudson
- "Hudson (Hud) - Temporal Parts and Moral Personhood", Hudson
- "Ikaheimo (Heikki) - Asymmetric recognition II: Humans with reduced person-making capacities", Ikaheimo
- "Ikaheimo (Heikki) - Recognizing Persons", Ikaheimo
- "Ishiguro (Hide) - The Primitiveness of the Concept of a Person", Ishiguro
- "Kanzian (Christian) - Is 'Person' a Sortal Term?", Kanzian
- "Kitcher (Patricia) - Natural Kinds and Unnatural Persons", Kitcher
- "Kuhn (Robert Lawrence), Ed. - Closer to Truth: Persons and Selves", Kuhn
- "Laitinen (Arto) - Sorting Out Aspects of Personhood: Capacities, Normativity and Recognition", Laitinen
- "Larkin (William S.) - Persons, Animals, and Bodies", Larkin
- "Leiber (Justin) - Can Animals and Machines Be Persons? : A Dialogue", Leiber
- "Little (Margaret Olivia) - Abortion and the Margins of Personhood", Little
- "Lizza (John) - Persons, Humanity, & the Definition of Death", Lizza (especially Chapters 3-7)
- "Lockwood (Michael) - Of Persons and Organisms: A Reply to Howsepian", Lockwood
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Persons and Their Bodies", Lowe
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Real Selves: Persons as a Substantial Kind", Lowe
- "Lyon (Ardon) - On Remaining the Same Person", Lyon
- "Margolis (Joseph) - Persons: Notes on Their Nature, Identity and Rationality", Margolis
- "Margolis (Joseph) - Persons and Minds: Prospects of Nonreductive Materialism", Margolis
- "McCall (Catherine) - Concepts of Person: An Analysis of Concepts of Person, Self and Human Being", McCall
- "McInerney (Peter K.) - Conceptions of Persons and Persons through Time", McInerney
- "McInerney (Peter K.) - Persons and Psychological Systems", McInerney
- "McInerney (Peter K.) - The Nature of a Person-Stage", McInerney
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Objects and Persons", Merricks
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Precis of Objects and Persons", Merricks
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Replies (Book Symposium on Objects and Persons)", Merricks
- "Miller (Kristie) - Persons as Sui Generis Ontological Kinds: Advice to Exceptionists", Miller
- "Mitchell (Robert) - Humans, Nonhumans and Personhood", Mitchell
- "Moreland (J.P.) - Review of Hud Hudson 'A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person'", Moreland
- "Moreland (J.P.) & Rae (Scott) - Establishing a Framework For Approaching Human Personhood", Moreland & Rae
- "Moreland (J.P.) & Rae (Scott) - Human Persons in Naturalistic & Complementarian Perspectives", Moreland & Rae
- "Morton (Adam) - Why There Is No Concept of a Person", Morton
- "Noller (Jorg) - A Transformative Account of Personal Identity", Noller
- "Noller (Jorg) - Person", Noller
- "Noonan (Harold) - Persons, Animals and Human Beings (2010)", Noonan
- "Norris (Christopher) - Frankfurt on Second-Order Desires and the Concept of a Person", Norris
- "Olson (Eric) - Critical Notice of Trenton Merricks' 'Objects and Persons'", Olson
- "Olson (Eric) - Review of Lynne Baker's 'Persons And Bodies'", Olson
- "Olson (Eric) - Review of Tye's 'Consciousness and Persons - Unity and Identity'", Olson
- "Olson (Eric) - The Nature of People", Olson
- "Page (Edgar) - Neonates, Persons and the Right to Life", Page
- "Parfit (Derek) - A Response (to Gillett - Reasoning About Persons)", Parfit
- "Parfit (Derek) - Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons", Parfit
- "Parfit (Derek) - Persons, Bodies, and Human Beings", Parfit
- "Park (Desiree) - Persons", Park
- "Patterson (Francine) & Gordon (Wendy) - The Case For the Personhood of Gorillas", Patterson & Gordon
- "Peacocke (Arthur) & Gillett (Grant) - Persons and Personality: A Contemporary Inquiry", Peacocke & Gillett
- "Perry (John) - Personal Identity and the Concept of a Person", Perry
- "Persson (Ingmar) - Our Identity and the Separability of Person and Organism", Persson
- "Petrus (Klaus), Ed. - On Human Persons", Petrus
- "Plantinga (Alvin) - Things and Persons", Plantinga
- "Pollock (John L.) - How to Build a Person: A Prolegomenon", Pollock
- "Pollock (John L.) - How to Build a Person: The Physical Basis of Mentality", Pollock
- "Poole (Ross) - On Being a Person", Poole
- "Puccetti (Roland) - Persons: A Study of Possible Moral Agents in the Universe", Puccetti
- "Puhl (Klaus) - Review of Klaus Petrus's 'On Human Persons'", Puhl
- "Quinn (Philip L.) - On the Intrinsic Value of Human Persons", Quinn
- "Robinson (Daniel) - What Sort of Persons Are Hemispheres? Another Look at 'Split-Brain' Man", Robinson
- "Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg) - Characters, Persons, Selves, Individuals", Rorty
- "Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg) - Persons and Personae", Rorty
- "Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg) - Persons, Policies, and Bodies", Rorty
- "Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg) - The Transformation of Persons", Rorty
- "Ross (Don) - Consciousness, language, and the possibility of non-human personhood: Reflections on elephants", Ross
- "Russell (Robert John), Murphy (Nancey), Meyering (Theo C.), Arbib (Michael A.) - Neuroscience and the Person", Russell, Etc
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - A Critique of Personhood", Sapontzis
- "Sapontzis (Steve F.) - Aping Persons - Pro and Con", Sapontzis
- "Sider (Ted) - Review of Trenton Merricks' 'Objects and Persons'", Sider
- "Snowdon (Paul) - Animals and Persons", Snowdon
- "Snowdon (Paul) - The Nature of Persons and the Nature of Animals", Snowdon
- "Sprague (Elmer) - Persons and Their Minds: A Philosophical Investigation", Sprague
- "Stanley (Jason) - Persons And Their Properties", Stanley
- "Strawson (Peter) - Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics", Strawson, especially
→ "Strawson (Peter) - Persons" - "Strawson (Peter) - Persons", Strawson (not the same paper as above)
- "Stone (Jim) - Why there are still no people", Stone
- "Sturma (Dieter) - Person as Subject", Sturma
- "Taliaferro (Charles) - Review of Persons: Human and Divine by Peter van Inwagen & Dean Zimmerman", Taliaferro
- "Taylor (Charles) - Responsibility For Self", Taylor
- "Taylor (Richard), Chisholm (Roderick) - Chisholm's Idea of a Person", Taylor
- "Teichman (Jenny) - The Definition of Person", Teichman
- "Thatcher (Adrian) - Christian Theism and the Concept of a Person", Thatcher
- "Timmerman (Travis) & Fischer (Bob) - The Problem with Person-Rearing Accounts of Moral Status", Timmerman & Fischer
- "Tollefsen (Christopher) - Embryos, Individuals, and Persons: An Argument Against Embryo Creation and Research", Tollefsen
- "Tur (Richard) - The 'Person' in Law", Tur
- "Tye (Michael) - Consciousness and Persons: Unity and Identity", Tye
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - A Materialist Ontology of the Human Person", Van Inwagen
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) & Zimmerman (Dean) - Persons: Human and Divine", Van Inwagen & Zimmerman34
- "Vollmer (F.) - Persons", Vollmer
- "Von Eckardt (Barbara) - Margolis, Persons, and Nonreductive Materialism", von Eckardt
- "Wagner (Nils-Frederic) - Against Cognitivism About Personhood", Wagner
- "Weiss (Roslyn) - The Perils of Personhood", Weiss
- "Wiggins (David) - Sameness, Substance, and the Human Person", Wiggins
- "Wilkerson (T.E.) - Persons", Wilkerson
- "Williams (Bernard) - Persons, Character and Morality", Williams
- "Wilson (David C.) - Functionalism and Moral Personhood: One View Considered", Wilson
- "Wilson (Edgar) - Two Incompatible Models of Persons", Wilson
- This is mostly a place-holder.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 29: - This is – of course – a tricky area, given the long behaviorist tradition of training pigeons.
Footnote 34: - Most of the relevant Chapters have been separately itemised above.
Note last updated: 30/12/2020 10:58:05
Footnote 32: (Physicalism)
Plug Note- Basically, I reject any form of mind-body dualism or immaterialist monism. There are no souls, if a soul is an immaterial substance separable from a body.
- But, I need to investigate Dean Zimmerman’s recent “emergent dualism” (see "Zimmerman (Dean) - Reply to Baker's 'Christians Should Reject Mind-Body Dualism'"), despite the fact that his main motivation is a desire to conform to a traditionalist reading of Christian doctrine.
- There is a comparatively-recent move within certain Christian circles to adopt physicalism and focus on Resurrection – rather than the immortality of the soul – as a solution to most-mortem survival. See my Note on Christian Materialists.
- A minor terminological issue – countenanced above – is that “physicalism” is a more recent term for “materialism”, so I’ve included both terms in database searches for items relevant to the topic. I think the latter term was too specific about what “the physical” (as distinct from “the mental”) consisted in; a sort of nod to “mass/energy”, I suppose.
- Given my focus on physicalism, I will need to give some attention to the identity and persistence criteria of material objects as such.
- There are too many versions of physicalism for its endorsement to deliver much without clarification, so I will need to pursue the matter in some detail.
- For the moment, I simply wish to note (or claim) that:
- “The physical” encompasses both body and brain (ie. the physical criterion of personal identity would be satisfied if continuity of brain were essential for the persistence of the person).
- The brain is more important than other physical organs for the persistence of the human being or the human person.
- Consequently, I think it worthwhile to conduct a detailed investigation into the functional roles of the various parts of the brain, CNS (Central Nervous System) and PNS (peripheral ...) and how these and the residue of the body are coupled together.
- Such matters may be relevant to the realism of the various thought experiments about brain transplants, cerebrum transplants and such-like.
- It is, however, debatable how important these details are. For example, debates seem to continue about the possible identity of pain and C-fibre-firing, when it’s now acknowledged by all the participants in such debates that the physical realisation of pain-states in mammals requires a lot more than C-fibres17. The assumption seems to be that the details don’t matter and that similar arguments could be constructed whatever the physical realisation of mental states might be.
- There’s a risk of getting too far sucked into debates about Materialism and Physicalism in the philosophy of Mind irrespective of its consequences for Personal Identity. I need to be on the lookout.
- For a Page of Links to this Note, Click here. There were far too many links for a full updating run, but I ran “updating” for Notes and items I’d (substantially) read. No doubt some of the references to “materialism” are irrelevant as picking out items discussing “our materialist culture” (eg. of compulsive shopping rather than focusing on “spiritual things”).
- Consequently, I’ve not got round to producing a full reading list, but have simply listed relevant items in the – thankfully short – “categorised reading list”, items I’d (substantially) read or items with either of the two main key words in the title.
- Works on this topic that I’ve actually read, include the following:-
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - In Favour Of the Constitution View", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Precis of 'Persons & Bodies: A Constitution View'", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Review of 'Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?' by Nancey Murphy", Baker
- "Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David) - The PhilPapers Surveys: What Do Philosophers Believe?", Bourget & Chalmers
- "Brandon (Ed) - Review of Galen Strawson's 'Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism?'", Brandon
- "Brandon (Ed) - Review of David Lund's 'Persons, Souls and Death'", Brandon
- "Candlish (Stewart) - Review of Minds, Brains and People by T. E. Wilkerson", Candlish
- "Carruthers (Peter) - The Case For Physicalism", Carruthers
- "Carruthers (Peter) - After-Life for Physicalists", Carruthers
- "Chisholm (Roderick) - Which Physical Thing Am I? An Excerpt from 'Is There a Mind-Body Problem?'", Chisholm
- "Cooper (John) - Body, Soul and Life Everlasting: Preface to the Second Printing", Cooper
- "Corcoran (Kevin) - Soul, Body and Survival: Introduction - Soul or Body?", Corcoran
- "Crane (Tim) - Elements of Mind - An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind", Crane … ie. especially:-
→ Crane - Against the Identity Theory : Anti-reductionism
→ Crane - Emergence
→ Crane - Physicalism as the Source of the Mind-body Problem
→ Crane - Physicalism, Consciousness and Qualia
→ Crane - Physics and Physicalism
→ Crane - The Explanatory Gap
→ Crane - The identity theory
→ Crane - The Knowledge Argument Examined
→ Crane - The Problem of Mental Causation for Non-reductive Physicalism
→ Crane - Zombies - "Feldman (Fred) - A Materialist Conception of Death", Feldman
- "Gasser (Georg) - Personal Identity and Resurrection: Introduction", Gasser
- "Hershenov (David) - Review of Nancy Murphy's 'Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?'", Hershenov
- "Hinton (J.M.) - Review of Minds, Brains and People by T. E. Wilkerson", Hinton
- "Hornsby (Jennifer) - Physicalism, Events and Part-Whole Relations", Hornsby
- "Hornsby (Jennifer) - Physicalist Thinking and Conceptions of Behaviour", Hornsby
- "Hossack (Keith) - Vagueness and Personal Identity", Hossack
- "Hudson (Hud) - A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person: Introduction", Hudson
- "Jackson (Frank) - What Mary Didn't Know", Jackson
- "Kagan (Shelly) - The nature of persons: dualism versus physicalism", Kagan
- "Lavelle (Suilin) - Minds, Brains and Computers", Lavelle
- "Levine (Joseph) - Purple Haze: Introduction", Levine
- "Loose (Jonathan) - Constitution and the Falling Elevator", Loose
- "Maxwell (Grover) - Intentionality: Hardware, not software", Maxwell
- "McGill (V.J.) - Review of Minds, Brains and People by T. E. Wilkerson", McGill
- "Meister (Chad) & Taliaferro (Charles) - Neuroscience and the Soul - Philosophical Issues: Introduction", Meister & Taliaferro
- "Moody (Todd C.) - Conversations with Zombies", Moody
- "Murphy (Nancey) - Do Christians need souls? Theological and Biblical perspectives on human nature", Murphy
- "Murphy (Nancey) - I Cerebrate Myself: Is there a little man inside your brain?", Murphy
- "Olson (Eric) - Psychology and Personal Identity", Olson
- "Olson (Eric) - What Are We? The Question", Olson
- "Olson (Eric) - Review of Hud Hudson's 'A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person'", Olson
- "Nagasawa (Yujin) - Review of Levine's 'Purple Haze'", Nagasawa
- "Papineau (David) - Introducing Consciousness", Papineau
- "Papineau (David) - The Importance of Philosophical Intuition", Papineau
- "Pollock (John L.) - How to Build a Person: Preface", Pollock
- "Searle (John) - The Rediscovery of the Mind: Introduction", Searle
- "Slors (Marc) - Personal Identity and the Metaphysics of Mind: Preface", Slors
- "Snowdon (Paul) - Philosophy and the Mind/Body Problem", Snowdon
- "Thomas (Janice L.) - Criticisms of materialism - is the physical enough?", Thomas
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Plantinga’s Replacement Argument", Van Inwagen
- "Wiggins (David) - On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time", Wiggins
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Reply to Baker's 'Christians Should Reject Mind-Body Dualism'", Zimmerman
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Bodily Resurrection: The Falling Elevator Model Revisited", Zimmerman
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Christians Should Affirm Mind-Body Dualism", Zimmerman
- A further reading list might start with:-
- "Anders (Paul C.) - Material Being and the Survival of Death: A Dilemma for the Religiously Oriented Materialist", Anders
- "Armstrong (David) - A Materialist Theory of the Mind", Armstrong
- "Bailey (Andrew M.) - The Elimination Argument", Bailey
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Christian Materialism in a Scientific Age", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Materialism with a Human Face", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Nonreductive Materialism", Baker
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Review of 'A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person' by Hud Hudson", Baker
- "Bishop (Robert C.) - The hidden premiss in the causal argument for physicalism", Bishop
- "Blose (B.L.) - Materialism and Disembodied Minds", Blose
- "Bruntrup (Godehard) - Soul, Body and Survival: The Renaissance of Christian Materialism", Bruntrup
- "Chalmers (David) - The Two-Dimensional Argument Against Materialism", Chalmers
- "Churchland (Paul) - Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes", Churchland
- "Corcoran (Kevin) - Dualism, Materialism and the Problem of Post Mortem Survival", Corcoran
- "Corcoran (Kevin) - Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul", Corcoran
→ "Corcoran (Kevin) - Nothing-But Materialism" - "Crane (Tim) - Against Physicalism", Crane
- "Crane (Tim) & Mellor (D.H.) - There is No Question of Physicalism", Crane & Mellor
- "Dasgupta (Shamik) - The Possibility of Physicalism", Dasgupta
- "Davis (Stephen T.) - Physicalism and Resurrection", Davis
- "Eales (Evan) - Naturalism and Physicalism", Eales
- "Feyerabend (Paul) - Materialism and the Mind-body Problem", Feyarabend
- "Field (Hartry) - Physicalism", Field
- "Frances (Bryan) - Externalism, Physicalism, Statues, and Hunks", Frances
- "Goff (Philip) - The Cartesian Argument Against Physicalism", Goff
- "Hacking (Ian) - Comments on Wiggins - Identity, Necessity and Physicalism", Hacking
- "Herbert (R.T.) - Dualism/Materialism", Herbert
- "Hershenov (David) - Van Inwagen, Zimmerman, and the Materialist Conception of Resurrection", Hershenov
- "Hirsch (Eli) - Physical Identity", Hirsch
- "Horgan (Terence) - Physicalism", Horgan
- "Hornsby (Jennifer) - Physicalism, Conceptual Analysis and Acts of Faith", Hornsby
- "Hudson (Hud) - A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person", Hudson
- "Huttemann (Andreas) & Papineau (David) - Physicalism decomposed", Huttemann & Papineau
- "Kim (Jaegwon) - Physicalism and the Multiple Realizability of Mental States", Kim
- "Kim (Jaegwon) - Reductive and Non-Reductive Physicalism", Kim
- "Kim (Jaegwon) - The Myth of Nonreductive Materialism", Kim
- "Kirk (Robert) - From Physical Explicability to Full-Blooded Materialism", Kirk
- "Kirk (Robert) - Reply to Don Locke on Zombies and Materialism", Kirk
- "Kirk (Robert) - Zombies versus Materialists (I)", Kirk
- "Levine (Joseph) - Materialism: 'All In My Brain'", Levine
- "Lewis (David) - Should a Materialist Believe In Qualia?", Lewis
- "Lund (David) - Perception, Mind and Personal Identity: a Critique of Materialism", Lund
- "Madell (Geoffrey) - Materialism and the First Person", Madell
- "Marcus (Ruth Barcan) - Comments on Wiggins - Identity, Necessity and Physicalism", Marcus
- "Margolis (Joseph) - Persons and Minds: Prospects of Nonreductive Materialism", Margolis
- "Markosian (Ned) - What are Physical Objects?", Markosian
- "McGinn (Colin) - Philosophical Materialism", McGinn
- "Melnyk (Andrew) - Physicalism", Melnyk
- "Merricks (Trenton) - How to Live Forever Without Saving Your Soul: Physicalism and Immortality", Merricks
- "Merricks (Trenton) - The Word Made Flesh: Dualism, Physicalism, and the Incarnation", Merricks
- "Meyering (Theo C.) - Mind Matters: Physicalism and the Autonomy of the Person", Meyering
- "Miller (Kristie) & Loo (Jane Weiling) - Presentism, Passage, Phenomenology and Physicalism", Miller & Loo
- "Moreland (J.P.) - Review of Hud Hudson 'A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person'", Moreland
- "Murphy (Nancey) - Non-Reductive Physicalism: Philosophical Issues", Murphy
- "Murphy (Nancey) - Supervenience and the Downward Efficacy of the Mental: A Nonreductive Physicalist Account of Human Action", Murphy
- "Murphy (Nancey) - What are the philosophical challenges to physicalism? Human distinctiveness, divine action, and personal identity", Murphy
- "Nagel (Thomas) - Physicalism", Nagel
- "Nolan (Daniel) - Realism and Reductive Materialism About the Mind", Nolan
- "Papineau (David) - Physicalism and the Human Sciences", Papineau
- "Papineau (David) - Comments on Galen Strawson: 'Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism'", Papineau
- "Papineau (David) - The Rise of Physicalism", Papineau
- "Papineau (David) - The Case for Materialism", Papineau
- "Place (U.T.) - Materialism as a Scientific Hypothesis", Place
- "Post (Stephen G.) - A Moral Case for Nonreductive Physicalism", Post
- "Plantinga (Alvin) - Materialism and Christian Belief", Plantinga
- "Pollock (John L.) - The Physical Basis For Mentality", Pollock
- "Popper (Karl) - Materialism Criticized", Popper
- "Popper (Karl) - Materialism Transcends Itself", Popper
- "Post (Stephen G.) - A Moral Case for Nonreductive Physicalism", Post
- "Puccetti (Roland) - A Materialist Fallacy of Mind", Pucetti
- "Rosenthal (David), Ed. - Materialism and the Mind-Body Problem", Rosenthal
- "Scheman (Naomi) - Feminism in Philosophy of Mind: Against Physicalism", Scheman
- "Searle (John) - What's Wrong with the Philosophy of Mind?", Searle
- "Searle (John) - The Recent History of Materialism: The Same Mistake", Searle
- "Shoemaker (Sydney) - Personal Identity: a Materialist Account", Shoemaker
- "Slors (Marc) - The Vacuity of Physicalism and the Sui Generis Character of the Mental Order", Slors
- "Smart (J.C.C.) - Materialism", Smart
- "Snowdon (Paul) - On Formulating Materialism and Dualism", Snowdon
- "Sturgeon (Scott) - Physicalism and Overdetermination", Sturgeon
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - A Materialist Ontology of the Human Person", Van Inwagen
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Dualism and Materialism: Athens and Jerusalem?", Van Inwagen
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Dualism and Materialism: Athens and Jerusalem?", Van Inwagen
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Materialism and the Psychological-continuity Account of Personal Identity", Van Inwagen
- "Von Eckardt (Barbara) - Margolis, Persons, and Nonreductive Materialism", von Eckardt
- "Walsh (Denis) & Wiebe (Kayla) - The Being of Living Beings: Foundationalist Materialism versus Hylomorphism", Walsh & Wiebe
- "Wang (Hao) - On 'Computabilism' and Physicalism: Some Subproblems", Wang
- "Wiggins (David) - Identity, Necessity and Physicalism", Wiggins
- "Wiggins (David) - Reply to Comments by Marcus and Hacking on Wiggins - Identity, Necessity and Physicalism", Wiggins
- "Wilkerson (T.E.) - Science and Philosophy: Materialism", Wilkerson
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Materialism, Dualism, and “Simple” Theories of Personal Identity", Zimmerman
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - The Compatibility of Materialism and Survival: The “Falling Elevator” Model", Zimmerman
- This is mostly a place-holder.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 17:
Note last updated: 30/12/2020 10:58:05
Footnote 33: (Psychological View)
Plug Note- This – hereafter the PV – is the view, originating with Locke, that the matter of primary importance in matters of personal identity is psychological continuity (or maybe of psychological connectedness). Indeed, this view – which was dominant until fairly recently (and maybe still is, given the Bourget & Chalmers survey) – is stronger, in saying that psychological continuity and connectedness are constitutive of Personal Identity.
- No-one denies that our psychology is important to us, but making it constitutive of our identity has led to much confusion and paradox.
- I think, however, that Elselijn Kingma is incorrect in diagnosing the popularity of the PV as due to philosophers being intellectuals.
- In particular it encourages the idea that the same human being may not be the same person throughout its life, or that the same person may “hop” from one human being to another as has been considered in many TEs.
- I wish to deny both these possibilities.
- However, as my focus is on Animalism and the arguments for and against it, I do not want to get bogged down in the rival theory, except insofar as it impinges on Animalism.
- Hence, a reading list needs to be highly selective. I can’t really afford to spend too much time reading and commenting on material in favour of the PV, so items in the reading lists will tend either to be explicitly critical, or just raise the PV as a contrast to the view presented.
- For a Page of Links to this Note, Click here. The list was manageable and has been fully taken into account.
- Works on this topic that I’ve actually read, include the following:-
- "Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David) - The PhilPapers Surveys: What Do Philosophers Believe?", Bourget & Chalmers
- "Clark (Andy) & Kuhn (Robert Lawrence) - Aeon: Video - Andy Clark - Virtual immortality", Clark & Kuhn
- "Dainton (Barry) - Self: Philosophy In Transit: Prologue", Dainton
- "Duncan (Matt) - I Think, Therefore I Persist", Duncan
- "Ehring (Douglas) - Personal Identity and Time Travel", Ehring
- "Hershenov (David) - Review of Nancy Murphy's 'Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?'", Hershenov15
- "Johnston (Mark) - Human Beings", Johnston
- "Kingma (Elselijn) - Were You Part of Your Mother?", Kingma16=15
- "Liao (S. Matthew) - The Organism View Defended", Liao
- "Olson (Eric) - Persistence", Olson
- "Olson (Eric) - Psychology and Personal Identity", Olson
- "Olson (Eric) - Why We Need Not Accept the Psychological Approach", Olson
- A further reading list might start with:-
- "Agar (Nicholas) - Functionalism and Personal Identity", Agar
- "Beck (Simon) - Let's Exist Again (Like We Did Last Summer)", Beck
- "Brueckner (Anthony) - Branching in the psychological approach to personal identity", Brueckner
- "Campbell (Scott) - The Conception of a Person as a Series of Mental Events", Campbell
- "Dainton (Barry) - The Phenomenal Self", Dainton
- "DeGrazia (David) - Human Persons: Numerical Identity and Essence", DeGrazia
- "Francescotti (Robert) - Psychological Continuity and the Necessity of Identity", Francescotti
- "Hershenov (David) - Who Doesn't Have a Problem of Too Many Thinkers?", Hershenov
- "Johnston (Mark) - Is Heaven a Place We Can Get To?", Johnston
- "Robinson (Denis) - Constitution and the Debate between Animalism and Psychological Views", Robinson
- "Rovane (Carol) - Self-Reference: The Radicalization of Locke", Rovanne
- This is mostly a place-holder.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 15: Tangentially, in footnote(s).
Footnote 16: Tangentially, in footnote(s).
Note last updated: 12/12/2020 23:39:50
Footnote 34: (Religion)
Plug Note- This Note isn’t intended to relate directly to my studies in the Philosophy of Religion, which has its own quarterly Status Report, nor to my past life as a Christian, which has a set of pages3 on my website.
- Rather this Note has to do with the – historical and contemporary – ways in which religious questions and commitments have influenced philosophers in their discussions of personal identity.
- I disagree fundamentally with philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga that belief in God is “epistemologically basic”, but claim that philosophy asks questions that are prior to any others except, possibly, metaphilosophical questions4.
- But – it seems to me – Christians allow their prior beliefs to constrain what results of their philosophical endeavours are acceptable. Worse; having decided on pre-philosophical grounds what to believe, they use the techniques of philosophical argument to bolster these beliefs. They don’t follow an argument where it goes, but argue in a casuistical basis.
- Also, despite there being little agreement on Christian doctrine amongst the various denominations and sects, philosophers seem to just happen to find the arguments they’ve dreamt up for their own sectarian beliefs the most convincing.
- This even applies to “damnable doctrines” like Hell, which seems to be discussed academically and unselfconsciously on the pages of Faith and Thought, as well as to comfortable ones like Heaven. There has been some concern amongst Christian materialist philosophers as to whether heaven is a “place we can get to”. I’m not aware of the same concern for Hell, and just what metaphysics of the human person is needed to allow eternal conscious torment.
- Locke’s thoughts on personal identity were initially motivated by worries about the metaphysics of Resurrection, theodicy and other forensic concerns.
- I’ve noted elsewhere contemporary Christian Materialist Philosophers9 and their thoughts on the topic of personal identity.
- I’ve not yet made much of a study of Jewish views where these diverge from Christian views on the topic of personal identity and the future state.
- No doubt Muslim philosophers have similar concerns and motivations, but I have not investigated them (yet).
- I have, however, had a brief look at Hindu and Buddhist thought on the topic of Reincarnation and Karma, which are over-represented in the “items read” in the reading list below.
- For a Page of Links to this Note, Click here. This is a massive list of mostly irrelevant items. I can’t really prepare an adequate reading-list at this stage, but will add items, and text, to this Note as ideas crop up in my wider reading. I have, however, added quite a few works on the philosophy of religion, from which I intend to extract the relevant sections in due course.
- Works on this topic that I’ve actually read, include the following:-
- "Blum (Jason) - Bad things happen for a reason, and other idiocies of theodicy", Blum
- "Edwards (Paul) - Reincarnation, Karma, and Competing Doctrines of Survival", Edwards
- "Edwards (Paul) - The Law of Karma", Edwards
- "Lewis (Hywel David) - The Person of Christ", Lewis
- "Perry (John) - A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality", Perry
- "Peterson (Michael), Hasker (William), Reichenbach (Bruce) & Basinger (David) - Reason and Religious Belief: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion", Peterson, Hasker & Reichenbach
- "Rivers (Julian) - The Exile of the Mind: Christian Service in the Secular University", Rivers
- "Thomas (Janice L.) - Mind and Person in the Philosophy of Religion", Thomas
- "Todman (Theo) - Gay Marriage", Todman14
- "Vardy (Peter) & Arliss (Julie) - Evil in Eastern traditions", Vardy
- "Wiles (Maurice) - Providence and Personal Life", Wiles
- A further reading list might start with:-
- "Cabrera (Miguel A. Badia) - Hume's Reflection On Religion", Cabrera
- "Craig (William Lane) - God, Time, and Eternity", Craig
- "Craig (William Lane) - Divine Timelessness and Personhood", Craig
- "Craig (William Lane) & Sinnott-Armstrong (Walter) - God?: A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist", Craig & Sinnott-Armstrong
- "Craig (William Lane) & Smith (Quentin) - Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology", Craig & Smith
- "Cottingham (John) - The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value", Cottingham
- "Davies (Brian) - An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion", Davies
- "Davies (Brian) - Philosophy of Religion: A Guide and Anthology", Davies
- "Davies (Brian) - Philosophy of Religion: A Guide to the Subject", Davies
- "Deng (Natalja) - Metaphysics, science, and religion: a response to Hud Hudson", Deng
- "Deng (Natalja) - Religion for Naturalists", Deng
- "Deng (Natalja) - Religion for Naturalists and the Meaning of Belief", Deng
- "Dennett (Daniel) - Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon", Dennett
- "Flew (Antony) & MacIntyre (Alasdair), Eds. - New Essays in Philosophical Theology", Flew & MacIntyre
- "Geisler (Norman) & Corduan (Winfried) - Philosophy of Religion", Geisler & Corduan
- "Goetz (Stewart) - Belief in God Is Not Properly Basic", Goetz
- "Harris (James F.) - Analytic Philosophy of Religion", Harris
- "Hasker (William) - How Christian Can Philosophy Be?", Hasker
- "Hood (Bruce) - Supersense: From Superstition to Religion - The Brain Science of Belief", Hood
- "Howard-Snyder (Daniel) - Does Faith Entail Belief", Howard-Snyder
- "Howard-Snyder (Daniel), Ed. - The Evidential Argument from Evil", Howard-Snyder
- "Hume (David), Tweyman (Stanley), Ed. - Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion", Hume
- "Johnson (Raynor) - Preexistence, Reincarnation and Karma", Johnson
- "Johnston (Mark) - Saving God: Religion after Idolatry", Johnston
- "Kenny (Anthony) - Reason and Religion - Essays in philosophical Theology", Kenny
- "Koslowski (Peter), Ed. - The Origin and the Overcoming of Evil and Suffering in the World Religions", Koslowski
- "Kvanvig (Jonathan L.), Ed. - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion: Volume 1", Kvanvig
- "LePoidevin (Robin) - Arguing for Atheism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion", LePoidevin
- "Mackie (J.L.) - The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God", Mackie
- "Martin (L. Michael), Ed. - The Cambridge Companion to Atheism", Martin
- "Mawson (Tim J.) - The Divine Attributes", Mawson
- "Merricks (Trenton) - The Word Made Flesh: Dualism, Physicalism, and the Incarnation", Merricks
- "Michaud (Derek) - Review of 'Personal Identity and Resurrection: How do we Survive our Death?' Edited by Georg Gasser", Michaud
- "Midgley (Mary) - Evolution as a Religion - Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears", Midgley
- "Moreland (J.P.) & Craig (William Lane) - Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview", Moreland & Craig
- "Murphy (Nancey) - Non-Reductive Physicalism: Philosophical Issues", Murphy
- "Murray (Michael J.) & Rea (Michael) - An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion", Murray & Rea
- "Perrett (Roy W.) - Death and Immortality: Postscript and Appendix (Karma and the Problem of Suffering)", Perrett
- "Peterson (Michael), Hasker (William), Reichenbach (Bruce) & Basinger (David) - Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings", Peterson, Etc.
- "Peterson (Michael) & VanArragon (Raymond) - Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion", Peterson & VanArragon
- "Plantinga (Alvin) - On Taking Belief in God as Basic", Plantinga
- "Plantinga (Alvin) - Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism", Plantinga
- "Plantinga (Alvin) & Dennett (Daniel) - Science and Religion: Are They Compatible?", Plantinga & Dennett
- "Polkinghorne (John) - Science and Christian Belief: Theological Reflections of a Bottom-up Thinker", Polkinghorne15
- "Price (H.H.) - Essays in the Philosophy of Religion: Based on the Sarum Lectures 1971", Price
- "Puccetti (Roland) - Divine Persons", Puccetti
- "Quinn (Philip L.) & Taliaferro (Charles) - A Companion to the Philosophy of Religion", Quinn & Taliaferro
- "Rosner (Brian S.) - Known by God: A Biblical Theology of Personal Identity", Rosner
- "Rowe (William L.) & Wainwright (William), Eds. - Philosophy of Religion", Rowe & Wainwright
- "Seymour (Charles) - A Theodicy of Hell", Seymour16
- "Smythe (Ingrid Hansen) - Objections to Karma and Rebirth: An Introduction", Smythe
- "Stewart-Williams (Steve) - Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew", Stewart-Williams
- "Stump (Eleonore) & Murray (Michael J.) - Philosophy of Religion: The Big Questions", Stump & Murray
- "Tobia (Kevin Patrick) - Does Religious Belief Infect Philosophical Analysis?", Tobia
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) & Zimmerman (Dean) - Persons: Human and Divine", Van Inwagen & Zimmerman
- "Vardy (Peter) & Arliss (Julie) - The Thinker's Guide to Evil", Vardy
- "Vardy (Peter) & Arliss (Julie) - The Thinker's Guide to God", Vardy
- "Vardy (Peter) - What is Truth? Beyond Postmodernism and Fundamentalism", Vardy
- "Ward (Keith) - The Big Questions in Science and Religion", Ward
- "Yeffeth (Glenn), Ed. - Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix", Yeffeth
- This is mostly a place-holder.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 3: Footnote 4: - Which are also philosophical, so part of philosophy itself.
Footnote 9: - The Note on Christian Materialism also references other contemporary philosophers with Christian affiliation, and their thoughts on personal identity.
Footnote 14: - This is a Note – that needs sorting out a bit – that demonstrates the impact of religious doctrines on narrative identity.
- I’ve added it here partly because I’d forgotten all about it.
Footnote 15: Footnote 16:
Note last updated: 30/12/2020 10:58:05
Footnote 35: (Semantics)
Plug Note- I need to separate those issues in the topic of personal identity that turn on matters of fact, and those that just depend on the meaning of our words. Sometimes, it is not clear which of these options is assumed in any particular case.
- For instance, David Wiggins’s view (shared with many others) is that we should use the term Person of individuals who belong to a kind whose typical members have certain capacities.
- This will allow us to use the term of individuals who don’t presently possess these capacities – which may be correct in the case of temporary loss of function – but also of those who never have and – most likely – never will possess them.
- Then, if we accord certain rights to Persons in this sense, we may act differently to some of those designated Person than do those who only confer the title Person to those with present (or typically-present) capacities.
- So, there is a practical difference. But is this difference generated only by confusion over words? If we adopt the “typical members” definition., then might we not then say that not all Persons have the same rights, and introduce a new term “Person-Plus” for all of whose exemplars do deserve the rights? Of course, the “typical members” definition may be adopted to resist this slide (as it might be seen).
- This will depend on whether Person is a natural kind concept, and whether this kind strictly relates to Person or Person-Plus.
- My own view is that neither Person nor Person-Plus is a natural-kind concept, but is an honorific or description of properties possessed by a true natural-kind concept – Human Animal or Human Being.
- The above discussion overlaps with discussions in the following notes:-
→ Degrees of Personhood
→ Forensic Property - The topic of Semantics in Linguistics is highly technical and not relevant to my researches. I’ve in general ignored the technical works in the reading lists below, except where I’ve read them!
- For a Page of Links to this Note, Click here. Too many to be of much use, and almost all are irrelevant in any case.
- Works on this topic that I’ve actually read, include the following (which include some that only touch on the topic tangentially):-
- "Armstrong (David) - Introduction to Universals and Scientific Realism Vol. 1 (Nominalism and Realism)", Armstrong
- "Ayers (Michael R.) - Locke on 'Masses of Matter'", Ayers
- "Blackburn (Simon) & Simmons (Keith) - Truth: Introduction", Blackburn
- "Blatti (Stephan) - Review of 'The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self', by Raymond Martin and John Barresi", Blatti
- "Block (Ned) - What Intuitions about Homunculi Don't Show", Block
- "Cargile (James) - Review of Hintikka - Cogito, Ergo Sum: Inference or Performance?", Cargile
- "Dainton (Barry) - Time and Space: Pre