University of Arizona (August 2012) minor in Cognitive Science Arizona State University (May 2005) minor in Symbolic Systems

Transcription

1 BRIAN J. FIALA ( EMPLOYMENT : Visiting Lecturer Department of Philosophy University of Nebraska-Lincoln : James S. McDonnell Postdoctoral Research Fellow Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program Washington University in St. Louis EDUCATION Ph.D. B.A. University of Arizona (August 2012) minor in Cognitive Science Arizona State University (May 2005) minor in Symbolic Systems AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION AND COMPETENCE AOS: Philosophy of mind, cognitive and neuroscience, experimental philosophy AOC: Metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, moral psychology PUBLICATIONS B. Fiala, A. Arico, and S. Nichols You, Robot. In E. Machery ed., Current Controversies in Experimental Philosophy. Routledge. B. Fiala, A. Arico, and S. Nichols The Psychological Origins of Dualism. In E. Slingerland & M. Collard eds. Creating Consilience: Integrating Science and the Humanities. Oxford University Press. Reprinted in J. Knobe & S. Nichols eds. Experimental Philosophy Volume Oxford University Press. B. Fiala and S. Nichols Confabulation, Confidence, and Introspection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32: A. Arico, B. Fiala, S. Nichols, and R. Goldberg The Folk Psychology of Consciousness. Mind and Language 26(3): PAPERS SEEKING PUBLICATION B. Fiala. Minds, Swarms and Programs. B. Fiala. Debunking belief in an explanatory gap. B. Fiala. Against Jack s Conceptual Dualism: The Phenomenal Stance Resisted. PAPERS IN PREPARATION B. Fiala. Vagueness, Consciousness, and the Coherence of Strong-Borderline Cases. B. Fiala. Measuring Consciousness: Lessons from the History of Thermometry. B. Fiala. How (and why) we have underestimated plant intelligence. B. Fiala. The Mirror- Illusion -Illusion: Why our Mirror-Images Look Reversed. 1 of 5

2 REFERENCES Research: Terry Horgan, University of Arizona: Shaun Nichols, University of Arizona: Uriah Kriegel, Institut Jean Nicod: Ron Mallon, Washington U in St. Louis: Bernard Kobes, Arizona State University: kobes@asu.edu Teaching: Dan Russell, University of Arizona: danrussell@ .arizona.edu DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Title: Explaining the Explanatory Gap Committee: Terry Horgan (chair), Shaun Nichols, Uriah Kriegel, Bernard Kobes Abstract: I defend a deflationary account of the explanatory gap between consciousness and the physical world. The basic argument comes in three stages. First I argue that our intuitions about the irreducibility of consciousness are best understood as the product of psychological mechanisms. Second, I characterize the particular psychological mechanisms that produce the intuition of irreducibility. Third, I argue that while these mechanisms generally yield accurate outputs, in the case of consciousness they fail to track truth. The overall lesson is that the explanatory gap is a cognitive illusion, and poses no significant threat to physicalism. PROFESSIONAL SERVICE Referee for The Monist Referee for Oxford University Press Referee for Philosophical Psychology Referee for WIREs Cognitive Science Coordinator: Wash U PNP/Med School joint talk series (Fall Spring 2014) Coordinator: Arizona Consciousness Discussion Forum (Fall Spring 2008) Coordinator: Arizona Student Workshop in Philosophy (Fall 2006, 2007, 2009) Co-Coordinator: Arizona CogSci post-talk lunch group ( ) AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS Wash U PNP McDonnell Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (Fall 2012) Reisen Prize for best graduate student essay (Spring 2012) Fink Prize in recognition of distinguished graduate work (Fall 2010) Cognitive Science Research Grant (Spring 2010) Cognitive Science Research Assistantship (Fall 2008) Research Assistantship for OSCAR AI Project (Fall 2006 Spring 2007) 2 of 5

3 TALKS AND POSTER-PRESENTATIONS Measuring Consciousness: Lessons from Thermometry UNL Philosophy Department Colloquium. Lincoln, NE. October Minds, Swarms and Programs Second Annual Philosophers Cocoon Philosophy Conference. Tampa, FL. July Poster. Society for Philosophy and Psychology. Vancouver, Canada. June Person-perception and puppets: Why it s so easy to see inanimate objects as animated University of Leeds Experimental Aesthetics Workshop. Leeds, UK. May What does it take to build a consciousness meter? Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference. Tucson, AZ. April Can social neuroscience explain why philosophers are stumped by consciousness? Wash U PNP/Med School Brown Bag Series. St. Louis, MO. November Why it might not be crazy to think that collectives are conscious SUNY Potsdam Philosophy Colloquium. Potsdam, NY. October Toward a Debunking Account of the Explanatory Gap Washington University PNP Colloquium. St. Louis, MO. September Taking the Edge Off Type-A Materialism Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference. Tucson, AZ. April The Psychological Origins of Dualism (with Adam Arico) Poster. Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference. Tucson, AZ. April Newcomb s Problem Debunked and Debased University of Arizona Undergraduate Philosophy Club. Tucson, AZ, April The Phenomenology of Explanation and the Explanation of Phenomenology Southwest Graduate Conference in Philosophy. Tempe, AZ. March CUNY Cognitive Science Symposium Series. New York, NY. February Materialism and the Psychology of Explanation The Pacific Division Meeting of the APA. Pasadena, CA. March Virginia Tech Graduate Philosophy Conference. Blacksburg, VA. November University of Arizona Undergraduate Philosophy Club. Tucson, AZ. October The Folk Psychology of Consciousness (with Adam Arico) Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference. Tucson, AZ. April The Arizona Consciousness Discussion Forum. Tucson, AZ. February Arizona Symposium on Experimental Philosophy. Tucson, AZ. May Phenomenal Indeterminacy and the Bounds of Cognition CUNY Graduate Conference in Philosophy. New York, NY. April CU Boulder Graduate Conference in Philosophy. Boulder, CO. April Phenomenal Unity of Consciousness: One Experience or Many? Poster. Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference. Tucson, AZ. April Intermountain West Grad Conference in Philosophy. Salt Lake City, UT. April of 5

4 TEACHING AND ADVISING University of Nebraska-Lincoln PHIL101: Intro to Philosophy (fall 2014, fall 2015) PHIL216: Psychology and Philosophy (spring 2015, spring 2016) PHIL314: Problems in the Philosophy of Mind (spring 2015) PHIL414/814: Philosophy of Mind (fall 2014) Washington University in St. Louis PNP200: Introduction to Cognitive Science (fall 2012-spring 2014) Advisor, Undergraduate Honors Thesis Committees Jeremy Cohen (chair, 2013) Elizabeth Basow (advisor, 2013) Lauren Dubner (advisor, 2014) University of Arizona PHIL110: Logic and Critical Thinking (fall 2009) PHIL241: Consciousness and Cognition (fall 2011) PHIL345: Philosophy of Psychiatry (spring 2012) PHIL346: Minds, Brains and Computers (summer 2008 & 2009, spring 2011) PHIL451: Philosophy and Psychology (summer 2007, fall 2010) INDV101: Mind, Self, and Language (fall 2007) INDV102: Personal Morality (spring 2009) TRAD104: Justice and Virtue (spring 2008) Center for Consciousness Studies Webcourse (fall 2007) Arizona State University PHI101: Introduction to Philosophy (fall 2005, spring 2006) Grading Assistant PHI300: Philosophical Argument and Exposition (spring 2005) PHI316: Philosophy of Social Science (fall 2004) PHI317: Philosophy of Mind (spring 2005) John s Hopkins Center for Talented Youth ILOG101: Introduction to Logic (summer 2005) 4 of 5

5 DISSERTATION SUMMARY: EXPLAINING THE EXPLANATORY GAP How can cognitive science contribute to philosophical inquiry? On one conception of this relationship, empirical knowledge of the mind can contribute to philosophy in much the same way that linguistic analysis contributed to philosophy in the 20th century. By investigating the cognitive tools we use to frame and answer philosophical questions, we can often illuminate the nature of philosophical problems and identify constraints on their solutions. Thus I m interested in appealing to the psychology of philosophy to generate substantive contributions to philosophical debate. I adopted this broad approach in my dissertation, Explaining the Explanatory Gap. My overall case is a genetic argument that aims to undermine justification in the belief that conscious experience outstrips physical explanation. Arguments that aim to establish metaphysical dualism often proceed from an intuitive explanatory gap, which I call the gap-intuition. It is commonplace for philosophers to take intuitions as data to be explained by our philosophical theories. But we can also understand the gapintuition from the standpoint of psychology. I begin by making a case that treating the explanatory gap as a psychological phenomenon is a productive, desirable, and defensible approach to the problem. This approach contrasts with prevailing accounts, on which the gap-intuition is analyzed in purely a priori terms. The psychological approach is preferable because it is simpler, more conservative, more methodologically tractable, and more conducive to clear standards for adjudicating philosophical debate. To explain our inclination to dualism, I develop an account on which the gap-intuition is generated by a cluster of distinctive psychological capacities. First, the gap-intuition involves a failure to engage our low-level agent-detector, a perceptual capacity that is normally engaged by other humans and animals, but not by brains or informationprocesses described as such. Second, brains and information-processes fail to mesh with our capacity for wielding explanatory heuristics. We deploy these heuristics to quickly and automatically evaluate explanations on the basis of gut-level epistemic feelings, yielding judgments of epistemic adequacy (or inadequacy). I argue that the gap-intuition arises when our agent-detector mechanism systematically fails to categorize brains (and their information-processes) as persons, and consequently our explanatory heuristics generate the gut-level feeling that physicalist explanations are incomplete. I then parlay this psychological account into an undermining argument: the facts about the gap-intuition s origin impugn its epistemic status, and we should not trust it. While we have reason to believe that our capacities for agent-detection and explanatory heuristics are generally quite useful and often trustworthy, in the specific case of the gap-intuition these capacities do not yield truth-tracking outputs. They are prone to error in a manner analogous to visual illusions and biases in decision-making. The overall lesson is that the gap-intuition is a cognitive illusion in a quite literal sense. It would arise whether or not physicalist theories of consciousness are adequate, and would persist even if we came to accept a true physicalist theory of consciousness. Thus we should reject arguments for dualism that proceed from an intuitive explanatory gap. 5 of 5