An empirical case against materialism

Empirical arguments for materialism are highly circumstantial—based, as they are, upon inductions from our knowledge of the physical and upon the fact that mental phenomena have physical correlates, causes and effects. However, the qualitative characteristics of first-person conscious experience are empirically distinct from uncontroversially physical phenomena in being—at least on our present knowledge—thoroughly resistant to the kind of abstract, formal description to which the latter are always, to some degree, readily amenable. The prima facie inference that phenomenal qualities are, most probably, non-physical may be resisted either by denying their existence altogether or by proposing that they are properties of some peculiar sort of mysterious physical complexity, located, for example, within the functioning of the brain. It is argued here, however, that the first, eliminative hypothesis is empirically absurd—while the second is extravagant, vague, ad hoc and (for various additional reasons) profoundly implausible. Taken together, these considerations provide a compelling empirical case against materialism—yet its converse, mentalism, is usually regarded as subject to serious difficulties of its own. I conclude by suggesting empirical and theoretical desiderata, respectively, for the vindication of materialism and alternatively, for the development and defense of a potentially robust and viable mentalist theory of consciousness

The introspection game - or, does the Tin Man have a heart?

Eliminative functionalism is the view that mental attributes, of humans and other machines, consist ultimately in behavioural abilities or dispositions. Hence, ‘Strong AI’: if a machine consistently acts as if it were fully conscious, then conscious it is. From these assumptions, optimistic futurists have derived a variety of remarkable visions of our ‘post-human’ future; from widely-recognised ‘robot rights’ to ‘mind uploading’, immortality, ‘apotheosis’ and beyond. It is argued here, however, that eliminative functionalism is false; for at least on our present knowledge, the subjectively qualitative characteristics of conscious experience are neither deducible from, nor logically required to generate, the performance of any sort of overtly ‘intelligent’, or indeed, characteristically human behaviour. Thus, a machine could easily be designed to report awareness of phenomenal qualities, without necessarily possessing them; and Alan Turing’s ‘Imitation Game’ test for artificial thinking is unable to determine whether or not a machine is sentient. An alternative test is proposed, in which the machine is asked phenomenological questions under conditions designed to detect any form of cheating—whilst also, potentially revealing evidence for the occurrence of genuine qualitative experience

The age of austerity: the impact of welfare reform on people in the North East of England

According to Mark Carney the Governor of the Bank of England the United Kingdom economic outlook is getting brighter: "For the first time in a long time you don’t have to be an optimist to see the glass is half full. The recovery has finally taken hold (Carney 2013).” Unemployment is falling; as have interest rates and GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth has been upgraded from 2.5 per cent to 2.8 per cent for the year 2014. Despite these “green shoots of recovery”, the impact of government austerity measures and social policy decisions means the outlook for millions of citizens remains blea

Oral Health Advice for People With Serious Mental Illness

People with serious mental illness experience an erosion of functioning in day-to-day life over a protracted period of time. There is also evidence to suggest that people with serious mental illness have a greater risk of experiencing oral disease and have greater oral treatment needs than the general population. However, oral health has never been seen as a priority in people suffering with serious mental illness

A pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial of an oral health intervention for people with serious mental illness (three shires early intervention dental trial).

People with mental illness have poor oral health compared to those without due to medication side effects, issues with self-care, barriers to treatment and poor recognition of dental problems. Guidelines recommend giving oral health advice and monitoring oral health for people with mental illness, but this is not reflected in current practice and Cochrane reviews found no existing randomised trials of these interventions

Appearance of the Kashiwara-Saito singularity in the representation theory of pp-adic GL16\mathop{GL}_{16}

In 1993 David Vogan proposed a basis for the vector space of stable distributions on $p$-adic groups using the microlocal geometry of moduli spaces of Langlands parameters. In the case of general linear groups, distribution characters of irreducible admissible representations, taken up to equivalence, form a basis for the vector space of stable distributions. In this paper we show that these two bases, one putative, cannot be equal. Specifically, we use the Kashiwara-Saito singularity to find a non-Arthur type irreducible admissible representation of $p$-adic $\mathop{GL}_{16}$ whose ABV-packet, as defined in earlier work, contains exactly one other representation; remarkably, this other admissible representation is of Arthur type. In the course of this study we strengthen the main result concerning the Kashiwara-Saito singularity. The irreducible admissible representations in this paper illustrate a fact we found surprising: for general linear groups, while all A-packets are singletons, some ABV-packets are not