Publications

• Parthemore, J. and B. Whitby (in press). "What makes any agent a moral agent?: Reflections on machine consciousness and moral agency", Journal of Machine Consciousness.
• Parthemore, J. (2011). "Of boundaries and metaphysical starting points: Why some version of the extended mind hypothesis cannot be so lightly dismissed", Teorema (special section: the extended mind), 30 (2), pp. 79-94.
• Parthemore, J. and A. Morse (2010). "Representations reclaimed: Accounting for the co-emergence of concepts and experience", Pragmatics and Cognition, 18 (2), pp. 273-312.
• Chrisley, R. and Parthemore, J. (2007). "Robotic specification of the non-conceptual content of visual experience", AAAI-2007 (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence).
• Chrisley, R. and Parthemore, J. (2007). "Synthetic phenomenology: exploiting embodiment to specify the non-conceptual content of experience", Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14 (7), pp. 44-58.
• Parthemore, J. and Taylor, J. (1992). "Charley: a linguistic formalism applied to writing environment design", Digital Creativity, 3 (2-3), pp. 85-92.

Book Reviews

I have, since mid 2006, been reviewing philosophy books periodically for Metapsychology Online.

• Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness, Nicholas Humphrey, 2011, Princeton University Press.
• Ten Years of Viewing from Within, Claire Petitmengin (ed.), 2009, Imprint Academic.
• The Mind's Provisions: A Critique of Cognitivism, Vincent Descombes, 2010, Princeton University Press.
• Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind, Robert D. Rupert, 2009, Oxford University Press.
• The Crucible of Consciousness: An Integrated Theory of Mind and Brain, Zoltan Torey, 2009, MIT Press.
• Doing Without Concepts, Edouard Machery, 2009, Oxford University Press.
• Humans, Animals, Machines: Blurring Boundaries, Glen A. Mazis, 2008, State University of New York Press.
• Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics, Richard Schusterman, 2008, Cambridge University Press.
• The Concept "Horse" Paradox and Wittgensteinian Conceptual Investigations: A Prolegomenon to Philosophical Investigations , Kelley Dean Jolley, 2007, Ashgate.
• Artificial Consciousness , Antonio Chella and Riccardo Manzotti (eds.), 2007, Imprint Academic.
• The Matter of the Mind: Philosophical Essays on Psychology, Neuroscience and Reduction, Maurice Schouten and Huib Looren de Jong (eds.), 2006, Blackwell.
• Does Consciousness Cause Behavior?, Susan Pockett, William P. Banks, and Shaun Gallagher (eds.), 2006, MIT Press.
• Like a Splinter in Your Mind: The Philosophy Behind the Matrix Trilogy, Matt Lawrence, 2004, Blackwell.

Thesis Chapters (Final)

This is the new, improved thesis, with the half dozen (minor) corrections or changes requested by my examiners at my viva on 16 March.

• I have moved the detailed response to Penrose from Chapter 5 into a new appendix ("Appendix A").
• I have corrected a misrepresentation of Russell on Page 96, where originally I had him saying that "the king of France is bald" is meaningless; of course, he said it was false, not meaningless.
• The final chapter (Chapter 9) is a page longer, as the examiners asked me to add more about the limitations of the unified conceptual space theory and more about avenues for further research.

The thesis is downloadable either in full or by chapter. The full version has the benefit of being bookmarked and hyperlinked (so e.g. all the entries in the table of contents and all the references are hyperlinks).

Concepts Enacted: Confronting the Obstacles and Paradoxes Inherent in Pursuing a Scientific Understanding of the Building Blocks of Human Thought

[ Full Version - A4 format (as submitted) ]

[ Full Version - A5 format ("paperback") ]

• Title Pages (including table of contents)
• Chapter 1: The Quest for Concepts
• Chapter 2: Toward an Ontology of Concepts
• Chapter 3: Conceptual Properties
• Chapter 4: Putting Concepts into a Context of Agents, Reference and Use
• Chapter 5: The Limits of Concepts and Conceptual Abilities
• Chapter 6: Extending Conceptual Spaces
• Chapter 7: The Co-Emergence of Concepts and Experience
• Chapter 8: From Theory to Practice: A Simple Application
• Chapter 9: Conclusions and Future Work
• Appendix A: Penrose's Argument, and a Response
• Bibliography

Conference Presentations and Posters

• "Representations, symbols, icons, concepts... and why there are no mental representations", Seventh Conference of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS), 6-8 May 2011, Lund, Sweden - [slides]
• "The limits of concepts and conceptual abilities", Toward a Science of Consciousness - 3-8 May 2011, Stockholm, Sweden - [slides].
• "From theory to practice: A simple mind-mapping program", SweCog Nationell Forskarskola i Kognitionsvetenskap Autumn Conference - [poster].
• "Putting conceptual abilities in an evolutionary perspective: Reflections on Merlin Donald's work on cognitive evolution in light of theories of concepts", European Society for the Study of Cognitive Systems Annual Workshop, 6-8 July 2010, London, UK. [abstract] - [slides].
• "Enactive representations", Enaction et Sciences Cognitives, 6-12 September 2007, Fréjus, France - [extended abstract] - [slides].
• "Conceptual structures and levels of consciousness", Toward a Science of Consciousness - 2007, 23-26 July 2007, Budapest, Hungary - [poster].
• "Getting to the heart of the concept CONCEPT", Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness - 11, 22-25 June 2007, Las Vegas, USA - [paper] - [poster].
• "The theory-implementation-theory iterative cycle: through the eye of an AIBO", Philosophers Rally, 26-27 April 2007, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands - [paper] - [slides].
• "Knowledge as personal: the representation of self in the representation of knowledge", Association for The Scientific Study of Consciousness - 10, 23-26 June 2006, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK - [paper] - [poster] .
• "Recovering resemblance: responding to common objections to resemblance-based theories of reference", Mind 2006, 15-16 June 2006, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, UK - [paper] - [slides].

Lectures and Seminar Presentations

• "Of boundaries and metaphysical starting points: Why the extended mind cannot be so lightly dismissed", 13 May 2011, guest lecture, master's-level cognitive neuroscience course, University of Skövde, Sweden. [slides].
• "Representations, symbols, icons, concepts... and why there are no mental representations", 25 November 2010, Centre for Cognitive Semiotics seminar series, Lund, Sweden. [abstract] - [slides].
• "Why some version of the extended mind hypothesis must be on the table!", 9 November 2010, Higher Seminar in Theoretical Philosophy, Lund, Lweden. [paper] - [slides].
• "Conceptual spaces, The unified conceptual space theory, and metaphor", presentation for application to postdoc position, 28 July 2010, Birmingham, UK. [abstract] - [slides].
• "Concepts: Introspectibility, articulability, publicity", E-Intentionality seminar series, [abstract] - [podcast] - [slides].
• "In search of the concept of concept", E-Intentionality seminar series, 17 May 2007 - [abstract] - [podcast] - [slides].
• "Representation without re-presentation: or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the whole picture", Life & Mind seminar series, 28 February 2007 - [slides].
• "Conceptual building blocks", E-Intentionality seminar series, 23 November 2006 - [abstract] - [podcast] - [slides].
• "Resemblance redux: salience, representation, reference, and resemblance-like relations", E-Intentionality seminar series, 6 July 2006 - [abstract] - [podcast] - [slides].
• "What to do with the king of france: truth, falsehood, and the limitations of bivalence", E-Intentionality seminar series, 4 May 2006 - [abstract] - [slides].
• "On the nature of levels and meta-levels: variations on a theme from flatland", E-Intentionality seminar series, 2 March 2006 - [abstract] - [slides].
• "Why we need to talk About developing nations and AI, Not AI and developing nations", AI and Developing Nations discussion group, 7 December 2005 - [slides].
• "Reassessing informational atomism: reflections on Jerry Fodor" , E-Intentionality seminar series, 24 November 2005 - [abstract] - [slides].