Philosophy of consciousness

Consciousness is a rather thorny issue, scientifically speaking. Don’t get me wrong – not particularly thornier than any other science, we’re just relatively early in its development as a mature body of knowledge. Importantly, that doesn’t mean we get to sit back and continue wondering about the marvels of consciousness – it means we have work to do.

My approach to philosophy of mind is decidedly pragmatic. I roll my eyes whenever someone utters the phrase the “hard problem,” and my brain has a particularly nasty quale reserved for the (thankfully rare) occasions when I hear about the “meta problem.”

Following these lines, my philosophical work tends to involve mathematically-informed revisions of concepts used to reason about consciousness, in the hope of making our vocabulary sharper, more correct, and more useful.

Suggested reading: