From: "Hans-Cees Speel" <hanss@zondisk.sepa.tudelft.nl>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 14:58:22 +0000
Subject: Special Issue of PSYCHE devoted to Animal Consciousness
forwarded by Hans-Cees
perhaps this is of importance to some of us
CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue on Animal Consciousness
The editors of the online journal PSYCHE are soliciting commentaries
and articles for a special issue dedicated to the topic of nonhuman
animal consciousness. Commentaries of 1000 words and up are invited
on Peter Carruthers' article, "Natural Theories of Consciousness."
Original papers that are concerned with the the issue of
consciousness in nonhuman animals will also be considered for
publication. All submissions will be peer reviewed.
Our goal is to foster discussion of evolutionary and ethological
approaches to the scientific study of animal consciousness. We are
interested in submissions from researchers in any relevant field,
including philosophers, psychologists, and biologists.
Colin Allen and Ann Wolfe will be managing editors for the issue
which is tentatively scheduled to go online in January or February
of 1999. Kevin Korb and Patrick Wilken are the executive editors of
PSYCHE (http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/) which is an online
peer-reviewed journal and an official journal of the Association for
the Scientific Study of Consciousness.
An extended abstract for the target article is available on the
PSYCHE Web Site at:
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v4/psyche-4-03-carruthers.html
The format for discussion of this paper is a little unusual in that
it is a collaboration between two academic journals. The target
article is to be published in August by the European Journal of
Philosophy (published by Blackwell). The commentaries and extended
abstract of the article will be published in PSYCHE with a link to
the original article. Prior to its publication in EJP, the full
paper is available online at:
http://www.shef.ac.uk/~phil/department/carruthers/natconc3.html
After August the paper will be available at the Blackwell website.
Submissions are due by August 1, 1998. Our expectation is that we
will allot two months for review of manuscripts and another two
months for revisions if they are requested. All submissions will
undergo a standard review process (i.e. double-blind peer-review).
Submissions should follow American Psychological Association Style
and should be of the order of 2000 to 4000 words long. Longer papers
will be considered. Articles that are accepted will be published in
two formats: a plain ASCII version will be emailed directly to
PSYCHE's 2500 subscribers, and an HTML version -- which can contain
graphics, links to raw data, or even movies -- made available on the
PSYCHE website.
We expect this to be an exciting forum that will include
commentaries from individuals in philosophy, psychology, and the
biological sciences. We hope that you will consider our invitation
to participate. If you are interested in submitting a paper, please
contact one of us as soon as possible.
A short abstract of the target article is included below. If you do
want to take part but would prefer to have a paper copy of the
target article, please contact us and we will arrange to have one
sent to you. If you intend to submit a paper to this volume, please
send email to animconsc@snaefell.tamu.edu.
SHORT ABSTRACT
Natural Theories of Consciousness
Peter Carruthers
Many people have thought that consciousness -- particularly
phenomenal consciousness, or the sort of consciousness which is
involved when one undergoes states with a distinctive subjective
phenomenology, or "feel" -- is inherently, and perhaps irredeemably,
mysterious. But equally, there have been a plethora of attempts by
philosophers at explaining consciousness in natural terms, many of
them quite recent. This paper surveys the prospects for success of
such attempts, focusing particularly on the recent books by Dretske
(1995), Tye (1995), Gennaro (1996) and Lycan (1996). But it is by no
means impartial; and it should be noted that I have my own axe to
grind in this exercise. My overt agenda is to convince the reader of
the merits of dispositionalist higher-order thought theories in
particular. I also argue that these theories imply that most species
of non-human animal will be incapable of phenomenal consciousness.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick Wilken http://www.cs.monash.edu.au/~patrickw/
Editor: PSYCHE: An International Journal of Research on Consciousness
Secretary: The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
http://psyche.csse.monash.edu.au/ http://www.phil.vt.edu/ASSC/
Theories come and go, the frog stays [F. Jacob]
-------------------------------------------------------
Hans-Cees Speel
Managing Editor "Journal of Memetics Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission"
http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit submit papers to JOM-EMIT@sepa.tudelft.nl
I work at:
|School of Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and management
|Technical University Delft, Jaffalaan 5 2600 GA Delft PO Box 5015 The Netherlands
E-mail hanss@sepa.tudelft.nl if that address fails try hanscs@usa.net or hanscs@xs4all.nl
http://www.sepa.tudelft.nl/webstaf/hanss/hanss.htm
usa mirror at
http://www.freeyellow.com/members2/hanss/index.htm
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