A good week. First, a thoroughly satisafactory result on my mid-term, made even more so by the fact that it was my first bit of classwork in 30+ years. Dennett’s class on Wednesday was about Kripke (“C-fibers and pain”, modal logic, essentialism reborn), and it was one of those lovely “ah-ha!” experiences. The account of the historic 1971 Irvine summer school was priceless. Great fun.
Then my classmate Richard Dub pointed me at the very useful Online Papers in Philosophy site, and from there I found my way to Megan Wallace’s’ delightful website and her provocative ideas about fictionalism and “slingshots” (not to mention the very useful Wussy/BadAss criterion and the priceless Acutetarianism).
And finally this afternoon I took some vacation time (I’ve accumulated a bit too much – use it or lose it) and went to hear Dennett deliver the 2005 Harvard Review of Philosophy Lecture at Emerson Hall. Excellent turn-out – probably around 200. The subject was familar (to those in his class): “Philosophers, Zombies, and Feelings: The Illusions of ‘First-Person’ Approaches to Consciousness.”. The Q&A afterwards showed how uncomfortable some people were with computational models of mind; how strong the need for human exceptionalism – or perhaps essentialism – is.