From faheyj2@rpi.eduWed Jul 16 16:23:31 1997 Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 15:55:21 -0400 From: James T Fahey To: Selmer Bringsjord Subject: Re: Bio Hi Selmer, Here is a Department Bio. JAMES FAHEY, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR (PhD University at Albany, SUNY) When "things happen," they CHANGE over TIME. When we "make" things happen, we CAUSE them to happen. The "very special way" in which MINDS CAUSE CHANGE is bound up with CONSCIOUSNESS. Unlike stones and thermometers, we think that MINDS ACT in accord with what they THINK, FEEL and PERCEIVE. My current work in the areas of Metaphysics, Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Mind investigates the closely bound natures of TIME, CHANGE, CAUSATION and CONSCIOUSNESS in an attempt to formulate a beginning answer to this biggest of questions. I am pleased to be ably assisted in this endeavor by my fellow members of Rensselaer's MINDS & MACHINES PROGRAM and likewise by the members of the RENSSELAER CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF CREATIVITY. Perhaps the M&M Bio should be a bit different: JAMES FAHEY - When "things happen," they CHANGE over TIME. When we "make" things happen, we CAUSE them to happen. The "very special way" in which MINDS CAUSE CHANGE is bound up with CONSCIOUSNESS. Unlike stones and thermometers, we think that MINDS ACT in accord with what they THINK, FEEL and PERCEIVE. The search for the true nature of MIND is the focus of the emerging discipline of Cognitive Science. Two broad currents of thought have begun to crystalize. REDUCTIVISTS of various stripes argue that appropriate accounts of MIND or CONSCIOUSNESS will show that it is "nothing but" some "more basic" feature of the world -- perhaps the aggregate of certain "brain states," or, more abstractly, perhaps MIND is "nothing but" the "computer program" that those "brain states" instantiate. NONREDUCTIVISTS argue instead that there is some important sense in which MIND is "irreducible." It cannot be analyzed as a neurophysiological aggregate nor in terms of a mere computer program and perhaps this is because MIND is "more than" a mere aggregate of brain states. My own research involving MINDS & MACHINES is an attempt to clarify and argue for a certain brand of NONREDUCTIISM called EMERGENTISM. Most recently, in "Emergentism: Dead Again?" Michael Zenzen and I argue that contemporary results in quantum physics support EMERGENTISM -- the view that the natures of some things are not of the aggregate natures of the things that constitute or give rise to them. In "Causal Kinds and Multiple Realizability: A Dilemma for the Nonreductive Physicalist," I continue my defense of emergentism as the most supportable NONREDUCTIVIST view of MIND/CONSCIOUSNESS.