The Turing Test Page

The Turing Test Page
Useful page with bibliography on the Turing Test--and fun: scroll down to "talk to them" for links to chatterbots you can talk to, including Eliza, and many, many more. This site is maintained by a UCSD grad student in cog sci. Highly recommended.

Zombies on the web

Zombies on the web

Hollywood zombies, Haitian zombies and philosophical zombies with pictures and extensive links to zombie resources on the web. Check it out!

Parfit online!

We have online access to the full text of all Oxford University Press books in print--including Parfit's Reasons and Persons. To take advantage of this fabulous resource go to Oxford Scholarship Online and search for "Parfit" (or any other OUP author if you're interested). Hit the link to the section of Reasons and Persons on personal identity, click on full text and when prompted login is "seirtrials" and pw is "spring05"

Enjoy!

Thought Experiments

Thought Experiments
Thought experiments are "devices of the imagination used to investigate nature." They figure prominently in discussions of the problem of personal identity and other related issues: we imagine the statue and the clay, the individual whose brain hemispheres are transplanted into two different bodies, Locke's Day Man and Night Man and so on.

Lots of the scenarios that figure in philosophical thought experiments aren't, from the scientific point of view, possible. But that is not to say that philosophy is either unscientific or presents a point of view that's at odds with science. Philosophy is simply asking questions of a different sort--questions about what is "logically possible," and about how to understand concepts that figure in our ordinary way of viewing the world.

Thought experiments have also played a role in the sciences. For a discussion, hit the link.