The 253 Most Cited Works in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Last summer, Jordan Jackson and I scraped the bibliographies of all the main-page entries of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the leading source of review articles in mainstream Anglophone philosophy. Since 2010, I've been analyzing citation patterns in the SEP. Generally, I find SEP citation rates to more plausibly measure influence in mainstream Anglophone philosophy than other bibliometric measures, such those derived from Web of Science or Google Scholar. (For example, by the SEP method the top five most cited philosophers born 1900 or later are David Lewis, W.V.O. Quine, Hilary Putnam, John Rawls, and Saul Kripke.)

Most of my SEP-based analyses aggregate by author, but it's also revealing to aggregate by work cited, for a couple of reasons. First, my author-based analyses probably overstate the influence of authors with moderate impact across many fields compared to authors with transformative impact in just one or a few fields. Second, tracking influential works is an interesting project in its own right.

Before proceeding to the list, notes and caveats.

(1.) Each work counts once per main-page bibliographic entry in the SEP. Thus, a work with a total of 33 is cited in 33 different main page entries. Subpage entries are not included.

(2.) What counts as the "same work"? The distinction admits vague and contentious cases, and implementing it mechanically raises further problems. Here's what I did: To count as the same work, the work had to begin with exactly the same title words (excluding punctuation marks, "a", "an", or "the"). Later editions were counted as the same work as earlier editions (including a few cases of "such-and-such revisited" or the like) and articles republished in collections were counted as the same work if the particular article rather than the collection as a whole was cited. Also, works that appeared first as articles then later were expanded into books with the same or similar title were counted as the same work. Multi-volume works counted as the same work, unless the title was "Complete Works" or similar.

(3.) I only included works with publication dates from 1900-2024. Older works tend not to be cited in a consistent, easily scraped format, so results for those works are inaccurate and potentially misleading.

(4.) I did not attempt to match works cited both in English and in their original language. Some translated works make the list simply in virtue of citation under their English-language title; and some untranslated works make the list simply in virtue of citation under their original-language title. Obviously, this systematically undercounts works that are cited under both their English and original-language titles.

(4.) Citations in the role of editor are not included.

(5.) Please excuse the haphazard cut-and-paste formatting. Dates are sometimes first appearance, sometimes later appearance or edition or translation.

(6.) Technical details: The matching algorithm looked for matches in the first four letters of the author's name and the first five letters of the first text appearing after numbers, punctuation marks, "the", "an", or "a", which for standardly formatted entries is the title. I then alphabetically sorted and hand-checked all bibliographic lines with at least 15 exact matches of both of the two parameters. This took several hours and was probably imperfect, but was not as difficult as it might seem. Note also: The scrape was conducted last summer, so recent entries and recent updates won't figure into the totals.

(7.) Corrections welcome, as long as they are consistent with the principles above and don't constitute a general revision, unsystematically applied on one author's behalf, of the method described in the technical details.

(8.) I'll follow up, probably in the next week or two, with some reflections on the list.

(9.) You can see the 2020 results here.

[cover of Rawls's A Theory of Justice]

1. (127 citing entries) Rawls, John, 1971, A Theory of Justice
2. (92) Kripke, Saul, 1972, Naming and Necessity
3. (79) Parfit, Derek, 1984, Reasons and Persons
4. (72) Nozick, Robert, 1974, Anarchy, State, and Utopia
5. (71) Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1953 [2001], Philosophical Investigations
6. (70) Lewis, David, 1986, On the Plurality of Worlds
7. (69) Quine, W. V. O., 1960. Word and Object
8. (67) Scanlon, T. M., 1998, What We Owe to Each Other
9. (58) Kuhn, Thomas S., 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
10. (57) Rawls, John, 1996, Political Liberalism
11. (54) Chalmers, David J., 1996, The Conscious Mind
12. (49) Russell, Betrand, 1903, The Principles of Mathematics
13. (48) Lewis, David, 1973. Counterfactuals
13. (48) Sidgwick, Henry, 1907, The Methods of Ethics
13. (48) Williamson, Timothy, 2000, Knowledge and its Limits
16. (47) Kaplan, David, 1977, Demonstratives
16. (47) Moore, G.E., 1903, Principia Ethica
18. (45) Putnam, Hilary, 1975, The Meaning of "Meaning"
18. (45) Quine, W.V.O., 1951, Two Dogmas of Empiricism
20. (43) Jackson, Frank, 1998, From Metaphysics to Ethics
21. (41) Ayer, A.J., 1936, Language, Truth and Logic
22. (39) Carnap, Rudolf, 1956, Meaning and necessity
22. (39) Ross, W.D., 1931, The Right and the Good
22. (39) Ryle, Gilbert, 1949. The Concept of Mind
22. (39) van Fraassen, Bas C., 1980, The Scientific Image
26. (37) Dummett, Michael, 1973, Frege: Philosophy of Language
26. (37) Evans, Gareth, 1982, The Varieties of Reference
26. (37) Mackie, J. L., 1977, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong
26. (37) Russell, Bertrand, 1905, On Denoting
26. (37) Whitehead, Alfred North and Bertrand Russell, 1910-1913, Principia Mathematica
31. (36) Goodman, Nelson, 1954. Fact, Fiction and Forecast
32. (35) Popper, Karl R., 1959, The Logic of Scientific Discovery
32. (35) Wittgenstein, L., 1922, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
34. (34) Fodor, Jerry A., 1987, Psychosemantics
34. (34) Korsgaard, Christine M., 1996, Sources of Normativity
34. (34) Lewis, David K., 1969, Convention: A Philosophical Study
34. (34) Nozick, Robert, 1981, Philosophical Explanations
34. (34) Raz, Joseph, 1986, The Morality of Freedom
34. (34) Woodward, James, 2003, Making Things Happen
40. (33) Gauthier, David, 1986, Morals by Agreement
40. (33) McDowell, John, 1994, Mind and World
40. (33) Nagel, Thomas, 1986, The View from Nowhere
40. (33) Russell, Bertrand, 1912, The Problems of Philosophy
44. (32) Parfit, Derek, 2017, On What Matters
44. (32) Williams, Bernard, 1985, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy
46. (31) Davidson, Donald, 1980, Essays on Actions and Events
46. (31) Gibbard, Allan, 1990, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings
46. (31) Strawson, P.F., 1959. Individuals
49. (29) Finnis, John. M, 1980, Natural Law and Natural Rights
49. (29) Fricker, Miranda, 2007, Epistemic Injustice
49. (29) Longino, Helen E., 1990, Science as Social Knowledge
52. (28) Anscombe, G. E. M., 1957, Intention
52. (28) Brandom, Robert B., 1994, Making It Explicit
52. (28) Jackson, Frank, 1982, Epiphenomenal Qualia
52. (28) Pearl, Judea, 2000, Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference
52. (28) Plantinga, Alvin, 1974, The Nature of Necessity
52. (28) Quine, W. V. O., 1948, On What There Is
52. (28) Rawls, John, 2001, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement
52. (28) Sellars, Wilfrid, 1956, Empiricism and the philosophy of mind
52. (28) van Inwagen, Peter, 1990, Material Beings
61. (27) Armstrong, David M., 1997, A World of States of Affairs
61. (27) Butler, Judith, 1990, Gender Trouble
61. (27) Dennett, Daniel C., 1991, Consciousness Explained
61. (27) Dretske, Fred I., 1981, Knowledge and the Flow of Information
61. (27) Hare, R.M., 1952, The Language of Morals
61. (27) Lewis, David, 1983, New Work for a Theory of Universals
61. (27) Millikan, Ruth Garrett, 1984, Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories
61. (27) Nagel, Thomas, 1974, What is It Like to Be a Bat?
61. (27) Smith, Michael, 1994, The Moral Problem
61. (27) Young, Iris Marion, 1990, Justice and the Politics of Difference
71. (26) Carnap, Rudolf, 1950, Logical Foundations of Probability
71. (26) Frankfurt, Harry, 1971, Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person
71. (26) Grice, Herbert Paul, 1989, Studies in the Way of Words
71. (26) Jeffrey, Richard C., 1965 [1983], The Logic of Decision
71. (26) Kripke, Saul, 1982, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language
71. (26) Nussbaum, Martha C., 2006, Frontiers of Justice
71. (26) Searle, John R., 1983, Intentionality
78. (25) Anderson, Elizabeth S., 1999, What Is the Point of Equality?
78. (25) Armstrong, David M., 1968, A Materialist Theory of Mind
78. (25) Dworkin, Ronald, 1977, Taking Rights Seriously
78. (25) Fodor, Jerry A., 1975, The Language of Thought
78. (25) Hart, H.L.A., 1961, The Concept of Law
78. (25) Hempel, Carl G., 1965, Aspects of Scientific Explanation
78. (25) Kneale, William and Martha Kneale, 1962. The Development of Logic
78. (25) MacIntyre, Alasdair, 1984. After Virtue
78. (25) Nagel, Ernest, 1961, The Structure of Science
78. (25) Ramsey, Frank P., 1931, Truth and Probability
78. (25) Rawls, John, 1999, The Law of Peoples
78. (25) Russell, Bertrand, 1918/1919, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
78. (25) Stalnaker, Robert, 1984, Inquiry
78. (25) Williamson, Timothy, 2007, The Philosophy of Philosophy
92. (24) Blackburn, Simon, 1998, Ruling Passions
92. (24) Brink, David O., 1989. Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics
92. (24) Burge, Tyler, 1979, Individualism and the Mental
92. (24) Dupré, John, 1993, The Disorder of Things
92. (24) Fine, Kit, 1994, Essence and Modality
92. (24) Hare, R.M., 1981, Moral Thinking
92. (24) Lewis, D., 1986, Philosophical Papers
92. (24) Quine, W. V. O., 1970, Philosophy of Logic
100. (23) Carnap, Rudolf, 1950, Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology
100. (23) Cartwright, Nancy, 1983, How the laws of physics lie
100. (23) Gilligan, Carol, 1982, In a Different Voice
100. (23) Griffin, James, 1986, Well-Being: its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance
100. (23) Kitcher, Philip, 1993, The Advancement of Science
100. (23) Putnam, Hilary, 1981, Reason, Truth and History
100. (23) Savage, Leonard J., 1954, The Foundations of Statistics
100. (23) Searle, John R., 1969, Speech Acts
100. (23) Shafer-Landau, Russ, 2005, Moral Realism
100. (23) Spirtes, Peter, Clark Glymour, and Richard Scheines, 1993, Causation, Prediction, and Search
100. (23) Stalnaker, Robert C., 1968, A Theory of Conditionals
100. (23) Turing, Alan M., 1936 [1965], On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem
112. (22) Davidson, Donald, 1963. Actions, Reasons, Causes
112. (22) Dretske, Fred, 1995, Naturalizing the Mind
112. (22) Fodor, Jerry A., 1983, Modularity of Mind
112. (22) Machamer, Peter, Lindley Darden, and Carl F. Craver, 2000, Thinking about Mechanisms
112. (22) Street, Sharon, 2006, A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value
112. (22) van Fraassen, Bas C., 1989, Laws and Symmetry
112. (22) Zalta, Edward N., 1983, Abstract Objects
119. (21) Alcoff, Linda Martin, 2006. Visible Identities
119. (21) Brandt, Richard B., 1979, A Theory of the Good and the Right
119. (21) Cartwright, Nancy, 1999, The Dappled World
119. (21) Dawkins, Richard, 1976, The Selfish Gene
119. (21) Dworkin, Ronald, 1986, Law's Empire,
119. (21) Field, Hartry, 1989, Realism, Mathematics and Modality
119. (21) Fodor, Jerry A., 1974, Special Sciences (or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis)
119. (21) Gettier, Edmund L., 1963, Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?
119. (21) Longino, H. 2001, The Fate of Knowledge
119. (21) Nussbaum, Martha C., 2000. Women and Human Development
119. (21) Okin, Susan Moller, 1989, Justice, Gender, and the Family
119. (21) Sober, Elliott and David Wilson, 1998, Unto Others
119. (21) Strawson, Peter F., 1962, Freedom and Resentment
119. (21) Tye, Michael, 1995, Ten Problems of Consciousness
119. (21) Walzer, Michael, 1983, Spheres of Justice
119. (21) Wiggins, David, 1980, Sameness and Substance
135. (20) Austin, J.L., 1962, How to Do Things with Words
135. (20) Chisholm, Roderick M., 1957, Perceiving
135. (20) Dancy, Jonathan, 2004, Ethics Without Principles
135. (20) Darwall, Stephen, 2006. The Second-Person Standpoint
135. (20) Davidson, Donald, 1984, Inquiries into truth and interpretation
135. (20) Dennett, Daniel C., 1987, The Intentional Stance
135. (20) Dworkin, Ronald, 2000. Sovereign Virtue
135. (20) Feyerabend, Paul K., 1975, Against Method
135. (20) Gödel, Kurt, 1931, Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme I
135. (20) Husserl, Edmund, 1900-01, Logische Untersuchungen
135. (20) Quine, Willard Van Orman, 1953, From A Logical Point of View
135. (20) Reichenbach, Hans, 1938, Experience and Prediction
135. (20) Rorty, Richard, 1979, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
135. (20) Rosen, Gideon, 2010, Metaphysical Dependence
135. (20) Wright, Crispin, 1983, Frege's Conception of Numbers as Objects
135. (20) Zalta, Edward N., 1988, Intensional Logic and the Metaphysics of Intentionality
151. (19) Anderson, Alan and Nuel Belnap, 1975, Entailment: The logic of relevance and necessity
151. (19) Blackburn, Simon, 1984. Spreading the Word
151. (19) Blackburn, Simon, 1993, Essays in Quasi-Realism
151. (19) Chisholm, Roderick M., 1976, Person and Object
151. (19) Craver, Carl F., 2007, Explaining the Brain
151. (19) Fischer, John Martin and Ravizza, Mark, 1998. Responsibility and Control
151. (19) Grice, H. P., 1975, Logic and Conversation
151. (19) Hintikka, Jaakko, 1962, Knowledge and Belief
151. (19) Keynes, John Maynard, 1921, A Treatise on Probability
151. (19) Lewis, David, 1979, Attitudes De Dicto and De Se
151. (19) Parsons, Terence, 1980, Nonexistent Objects
151. (19) Pogge, Thomas, 2002 [2008], World Poverty and Human Rights
151. (19) Priest, Graham, 1987, In Contradiction
151. (19) Salmon, Nathan, 1986, Frege's Puzzle
151. (19) Sider, Theodore, 2001, Four-Dimensionalism
151. (19) Tarski, A., 1983, Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics
151. (19) Thomasson, Amie L., 1999, Fiction and Metaphysics
151. (19) Williamson, Timothy, 2013. Modal Logic as Metaphysics
169. (18) Armstrong, D., 1989, Universals: An Opinionated Introduction
169. (18) Barnes, Jonathan, 1982, The Presocratic Philosophers
169. (18) Chisholm, Roderick M., 1966, Theory of Knowledge
169. (18) Fodor, J., 1992, A Theory of Content and Other Essays
169. (18) Gibbard, Alan, 2003, Thinking How to Live
169. (18) Goodman, Nelson, 1968, Languages of Art
169. (18) Hacking, Ian, 1983, Representing and Intervening
169. (18) Harman, Gilbert, 1986, Change in View
169. (18) Hilbert, David and Wilhelm Ackermann, 1928, Grundzüge der Theoretischen Logik
169. (18) Kahneman, Daniel, 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow
169. (18) Kittay, Eva Feder, 1999, Love's Labor
169. (18) Lewis, David K., 1991, Parts of Classes
169. (18) Lewis, David, 1973, Causation
169. (18) Moore, G. E., 1912. Ethics
169. (18) Noë, Alva, 2004, Action in Perception
169. (18) Prior, Arthur N., 1967, Past, Present and Future
169. (18) Salmon, Wesley, 1984, Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World
169. (18) Schaffer, Jonathan, 2009, On What Grounds What
169. (18) Searle, John R., 1992, The Rediscovery of the Mind
169. (18) Stich, Stephen P., 1983, From folk psychology to cognitive science
169. (18) Taylor, Charles, 1989, Sources of the Self
169. (18) Walton, Kendall, 1990, Mimesis as Make-Believe
169. (18) Wright, Crispin, 1992, Truth and Objectivity
192. (17) Annas, Julia, 1993, The Morality of Happiness
192. (17) Anscombe, G.E.M., 1958, Modern Moral Philosophy
192. (17) Benacerraf, Paul, 1973, Mathematical Truth
192. (17) Carnap, Rudolf, 1928. Der logische Aufbau der Welt
192. (17) Davidson, Donald, 1970, Mental Events
192. (17) Dretske, Fred, 1988, Explaining behavior
192. (17) Field, Hartry, 1980, Science Without Numbers
192. (17) Goldman, Alvin, 1979, What is Justified Belief?
192. (17) Graham, Angus C., 1989, Disputers of the Tao
192. (17) Grice, H. P., 1957, Meaning
192. (17) Guthrie, W.K.C., 1962-1981, A History of Greek Philosophy
192. (17) Hooker, Brad, 2000, Ideal Code, Real World
192. (17) Howson, Colin and Peter Urbach, 2006, Scientific Reasoning
192. (17) Hull, David L., 1988, Science as a Process
192. (17) Kagan, Shelly, 1989, The Limits of Morality
192. (17) Kim, Jaegwon, 1998, Mind in a Physical World
192. (17) Kleene, Stephen Cole, 1952, Introduction to Metamathematics
192. (17) Lewis, David, 1980, A Subjectivist's Guide to Objective Chance
192. (17) List, Christian and Philip Pettit, 2011, Group Agency
192. (17) MacKinnon, Catherine, 1989, Towards a Feminist Theory of the State
192. (17) Marr, David, 1982, Vision
192. (17) Peacocke, Christopher, 1992, A Study of Concepts
192. (17) Plantinga, Alvin, 2000, Warranted Christian Belief
192. (17) Ross, W.D., 1939, Foundations of Ethics
192. (17) Russell, B., 1914, Our Knowledge of the External World
192. (17) Schneewind, J. B., 1998. The Invention of Autonomy
192. (17) Tarski, Alfred, 1935, The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages
192. (17) van Inwagen, Peter, 1983. An Essay on Free Will
192. (17) Von Neumann, John and Oskar Morgenstern, 1944, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior
221. (16) Adams, Robert Merrihew, 1994, Leibniz
221. (16) Armstrong, D. M., 1978, Universals and Scientific Realism
221. (16) Axelrod, Robert and William D. Hamilton, 1981, The Evolution of Cooperation
221. (16) Butler, Judith, 1993. Bodies That Matter
221. (16) Churchland, Paul M., 1981, Eliminative materialism and the propositional attitudes
221. (16) Clark, Andy and David J. Chalmers, 1998, The Extended Mind
221. (16) Dummett, Michael, 1991, The Logical Basis of Metaphysics
221. (16) Fine, Kit, 2001, The Question of Realism
221. (16) Frankfurt, Harry, 1988. The Importance of What We Care About
221. (16) Frege, Gottlob, 1918/1956, The Thought: A Logical Inquiry
221. (16) Geach, Peter, 1962, Reference and Generality
221. (16) Gödel, Kurt, 1944, Russell's Mathematical Logic
221. (16) Hare, R. M., 1963. Freedom and Reason
221. (16) Horgan, Terence and John Tienson, 2002, The Intentionality of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Intentionality
221. (16) Irwin, Terence. H., 2008, The Development of Ethics
221. (16) Joyce, James M., 1999, The Foundations of Causal Decision Theory
221. (16) Kane, Robert, 1996, The Significance of Free Will
221. (16) Lipton, Peter, 1971 [2003], Inference to the Best Explanation
221. (16) Lloyd, Genevieve, 1984, The Man of Reason
221. (16) McMahan, Jeff, 2002, The Ethics of Killing
221. (16) Mellor, D.H., 1981, Real Time
221. (16) Perry, John, 1979, The Problem of the Essential Indexical
221. (16) Popper, Karl, 1962. Conjectures and refutations
221. (16) Raz, J., 1990. Practical reason and norms
221. (16) Russell, Bertrand, 1927, The Analysis of Matter
221. (16) Sandel, Michael J., 1982. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice
221. (16) Scheffler, Samuel, 1982, The Rejection of Consequentialism
221. (16) Stalnaker, Robert, 1978, Assertion
221. (16) Stevenson, Charles L., 1944, Ethics and Language
221. (16) Swinburne, Richard, 1977, The Coherence of Theism
221. (16) Tye, Michael, 2000, Consciousness, Color, and Content
221. (16) Williams, Bernard, 1981, Moral Luck
221. (16) Williams, George C., 1966, Adaptation and Natural Selection

Writing Short Fiction: Suggestions for Academics

I've published fifteen short, philosophically-themed science fiction stories in pro and semi-pro magazines, including in some of the most prestigious venues. Recently, a colleague asked my advice for academics interested in publishing short fiction. I figured I'd oblige with a blog post.

Write and Discard

You're a beginner. You're a beginner with a head start, because you can already write decent academic prose. But still, you're a beginner. Don't expect your first few efforts to be a publishable stories. So don't work on them too hard; don't get too invested in them; don't devote months to them and then abandon the whole enterprise when they aren't published.

Instead, write quickly. Write part of a story as a sketch. Write a whole draft, give it to someone who will provide honest feedback, and learn from that feedback. Then move on to a different story.

Most short fiction writers have large "trunks" of unpublished stories: early efforts, creative experiments, stories that didn't quite work out, stories they couldn't publish.

Writing is a process of discovery. In the course of writing, as the story takes shape, you find out how good the idea really was.

You'll find your voice better, and you'll cook up more interesting ideas, if you write lots and fast than if you belabor and belabor the same few pages.

Cherish and Protect Your Joy in Writing

If the thought of writing and discarding discourages you, ask yourself: Do you want to write? Or do you want, instead, to be someone who has written? If it's mainly the latter, then your approach might be too instrumental. You'll find it difficult to practice and to cultivate the traits that will set you apart.

Writing fiction should be a joy, for three main reasons:

First, if it's a joy, then if you discard many of your efforts, well, at least you enjoyed yourself!

Second, if you write joyfully, your writing will carry your distinctive voice and style. We are more distinct and memorable in our joys than in our forced labors.

Third, joy is intrinsically good, and the instrumental value of your writing fiction is at this point (let's be honest with ourselves) probably dubious. So whatever joy you derive is the most secure ground of value here.

Writing joyfully doesn't mean that you need to wait to write until inspiration strikes. I accept the standard "butt-in-chair" writing advice: Planting yourself in a seat before a blank page for an hour or three at regular intervals can do wonders. So yes, you might need to needle yourself a bit to get rolling. But then, when the words start to flow, follow your joy.

Writing joyfully doesn't mean writing only for yourself. It doesn't mean not valuing publication. Just don't let instrumentality poison your process.

[from my author page at Clarkesworld]

Write for the 10%

I don't care for mariachi music. The world contains, I'm sure, many great mariachi bands -- but however great they are, I won't enjoy them. Your writing is mariachi music.

Most of your friends won't like your writing enough to want to read it. (Maybe they'll politely read one story and say something encouraging.) Forget them. Don't try to please them. Ignore advice from the majority of people. Instead, find the mariachi lovers -- the people who like the particular, narrow type of thing that you are doing -- and notice their reactions. Otherwise, you'll be like a mariachi band taking musical advice from a country-music fan.

Far, far better to write something that 10% of readers will love than something that 70% of readers will think is okay.

The worst is to read some writing guide, or take some writing course, then follow the advice to the letter, trying to write some generic "good" story according to a formula. How depressing. You might as well set ChatGPT on the job. Be weird. Have fun by being different, expressing your quirky self.

Expect Rejection; Where to Submit; Critiques

Expect many rejections. Leading fiction magazines have rejection rates far worse than leading academic journals, often well over 99%.

Notice where short stories you like have been published. Potentially more helpfully, notice other venues -- maybe less prestigious -- where authors you like have also recently published.

You might be interested in my annual ranking of the most prestigious science fiction and fantasy magazines -- a good list for starting to think about venues in that genre. I also highly recommend the Submission Grinder.

If you're interested in exchanging critiques with amateur aspiring writers, Critters Writers Workshop is a good resource. Once you've made your first "pro" sale (at the SFWA qualifying rate or at least $100 cumulatively), Codex Writers Forum is invaluable for community, critique-trading, news, and information.

The Emotional Rollercoaster of Fiction Writing

Writing academic prose is hard. Sometimes I think my stuff is great. Sometimes I grumpily cut and discard, feel disappointed with my work, restart. It varies considerably with mood. (And actually I think the mood fluctuations can be helpful.)

In writing fiction, the ups and downs are -- for me and most others, I think -- substantially more intense. Take heed.

This, plus the rejection, makes cultivating the joy both harder and more important. It can be easy to feel like everything you do is mediocre and you've wasted your time. Avoiding instrumentality is the most reliable cure. To repeat myself: Try to love the writing at least as much as the having written.

Also, look, even if it's bad, there's a lot to be said for the value of bad art, enjoyed by one or a few. I plan to write a post on this topic, but in the meantime, consider my daughter's art car and The Vengefull Kurtain Rods.

The Rhythm of Stories and Articles:
initial hook → engagement of interest → developing trust → satisfying resolution

You're already familiar with the intellectual arc of an academic article. Your title is your initial hook. Your introduction builds up interest. By several hundred words in, your reader should feel they are in competent, trustworthy hands, headed along the path of a worthwhile argument or exploration. By the end, the reader should feel that you've presented a satisfying overall package.

For a short story, you need to transpose that knowledge into a different key.

Initial hook: The initial hook of a story is the title and the first few sentences. You can't yet emotionally engage the reader, but you normally (1.) convey something about the style, tone, and topic of the story, (2.) give the reader a little something to be curious about.

On 1: If it's a humorous space comedy, that should be evident right away. Same if it's an emotionally dark story of witchcraft. Of course you can't convey everything immediately and shouldn't overburden those sentences. But readers judge by their first nibble. If the first nibble doesn't match the overall meal, then readers who like that nibble might not like the whole story, and those who would have liked the whole story might not get past the first nibble.

On 2: Although you can't really emotionally engage readers in the first paragraph, you can draw them along by piquing their curiosity. This could be a bit of action you've dropped them in the middle of or an unusual social or physical event that has begun to unfold. Or it could be a more intellectual curiosity: an intriguing term, idea, event, or action they don't quite understand.

Engaging interest: The title might be great, but if the introduction isn't promising, you'll give up on reading an academic article. Same with a story. By about the end of the first page, the reader should move from initial curiosity to engaged interest.

In fiction-writing circles, you'll often hear advice to start the story in the middle. This isn't really necessary, though there's nothing wrong with it. Beginners often make the mistake of opening with not-especially-interesting background or scene-setting. Starting in the middle is one way to avoid this error -- and if it's slightly confusing as a result, that can actually serve as a bit of a curiosity hook.

The first page of your story serves some of the same purposes as an academic introduction. It's not of course an overview, but it is a promise. The reader should think, "Interesting, let's see where this goes."

Developing trust: By about page three or four of an academic article, the reader should feel that they are in good hands. It should be clear how the author is building toward the essential moves. Otherwise, you won't trust the author enough to give them more of your valuable reading time.

Analogously, in a short story by about page three or four the reader must feel emotionally invested or intellectually intrigued. They should trust your storytelling. They should feel the arc building. They should care about what happens next, due to engaging characters or fascinating ideas. If and only if they care by page three or four will they read to the end.

Reach a satisfying conclusion: Of course! Every scene, every thread, should come together by the end -- ideally, but not necessarily, with some development or revelation, not out of the blue but neither entirely expected, that suddenly shows the beginning and middle in a new light. Unless, of course, you don't want to.

A Dilemma for Nonlocal Theories of Consciousness

Call a theory of consciousness nonlocal if two entities that are molecule-for-molecule perfectly similar in their physical structure could nonetheless differ in their conscious experiences. My thought today is: Nonlocal theories of consciousness face an unattractive dilemma between (a.) allowing for physically implausible means of knowledge or (b.) allowing for the in-principle introspective inaccessibility of consciousness.

Clarifications:

Of course everyone agrees that entities with different causal histories and environments will tend to differ in their physical structure. Nonlocality requires the more unusual (and, to many, unintuitive) view that two entities could differ in their conscious experiences even if their local physical structure were somehow exactly the same.

I intend the "could" in "could nonetheless differ" to reflect natural or nomic possibility, that is, consistency with the laws of nature, rather than conceptual or metaphysical possibility. So a view, for example, that holds that consciousness-lacking "zombie" twins of us are metaphysically but not nomically possible still counts as a local theory if molecule-for-molecule locally identical twins would be nomically guaranteed to have the same conscious experiences.

"Local" needn't mean "in the brain". Theories on which conscious experience depends on states of the body or nearby environment still count as local in the intended sense. I won't try to draw a principled line between local and nonlocal, but nonlocal theories of the sort I have in mind make consciousness depend on events far away or deep in the past.

For sake of this argument, I'm assuming the falsity of certain types of dualist and non-naturalist views. If consciousness depends on an immaterial substance not located in space, today's arguments don't apply.

Examples of nonlocal theories:

David Lewis's view in "Mad Pain and Martian Pain". Lewis holds that whether a brain state is experienced as pain depends on the causal/functional role that that type of brain state plays in an "appropriate population" (such as your species). This is a nonlocal theory because what role a brain state type plays in a population depends on what is going on with other members of that population who, presumably, can be far away from you or exist in the past.

Views on which conscious experience depends on functions or representations that nonlocally depend on evolutionary or learning history. Fred Dretske's view in Naturalizing the Mind is an example. Your heart has a function of circulating blood, due to its evolutionary history. If by freak quantum chance a molecule-for-molecule locally identical heart-looking-thing were to congeal in a swamp, it would not have that evolutionary history and it would not have that same function. Similarly for mental states, including conscious experiences, on Dretske's view: If a freak molecule-for-molecule duplicate of you were to randomly congeal ("Swampman"), the states of its brain-like-subpart would lack functions and/or representational content, and on views of this sort it would either have no conscious experiences or conscious experiences very different from your own.

The Dilemma, Illustrated with a Simplistic Version of Lewis's View

Consider a crude version of Lewis's theory: You are in Brain State X. Whether Brain State X is experienced at painful depends on whether Brain State X plays the causal/functional role of pain for the majority of the currently existing members of your species. Suppose that Brain State X does indeed play the causal/functional role of pain for 90% of the currently existing members of your species. For that majority, it is caused by tissue stress, tissue damage, etc., and it tends to cause avoidance, protective tending, and statements like "that hurts!". However, for 10% of the species, Brain State X plays the causal role of a tickle: It is caused by gentle, unpredictable touching of the armpits and tends to cause withdrawal, laughter, and statements like "that tickles!". On Lewis's theory, this minority will be experiencing pain, but in a "mad" way -- caused by gentle, unpredictable touching and causing tickle-like reactions.

Now suppose a tragic accident kills almost all of that 90% majority while sparing the 10% minority. Brain State X now plays the causal role of pain only for you and a few others. For the majority of currently existing members of your species, Brain State X plays the causal role of a tickle. On this implementation of Lewis's theory, your experience of Brain State X will change from the experience of pain, caused in the normal way and with the normal effects, to the experience of a tickle, but caused in a "mad" way with "mad" effects.

If this seems bizarre, well, yes it is! With no internal / local change in you, your experience has changed. And furthermore, it has changed in a peculiar way -- into a tickle that plays exactly the causal role of pain (caused in the same way as pain and causing the same reactions). However, as I have argued elsewhere (e.g., here and here), every philosophical theory of consciousness will have bizarre implications, so bizarreness alone is no defeater.

If I can tell that my pain has turned into a tickle, then physically implausible forms of communication become possible. Suppose almost all of the 90% of normals, pre-accident, live on an island on the other side of the globe. I am worried that a bomb might be dropped which would kill them all. So I pinch myself, creating a state of pain: Brain State X. As soon as the bomb is dropped, Brain State X becomes a tickle, and I know they are dead, even though no signal has been sent from that far-away island. If the far-away island is on a planet around a distant star, the signal might even constitute an instance of faster-than-light communication.

But maybe I can't tell that my pain has turned into a tickle. If the causal role of Brain State X remains exactly the same, and if our knowledge of our own conscious states is an ordinary causal process, then maybe this is the more natural way to interpret this implementation of Lewis's view. I will still say and judge that I am in pain, despite the fact that my experience is actually just a tickle. This is a bit odd, but introspection is fallible and perhaps even sometimes massively and systematically mistaken. Still, my ignorance is remarkably deep and intractable: There is no way, even in principle, that I could know my own experience by attending just to what's going on locally in my own mind. I can only know by checking to see that the distant population still exists. Self-knowledge becomes in principle a non-local matter of knowing what is going on with other people. After all, if there was any way of knowing, locally, about the change in my experience, that would put us back on the first horn of the dilemma, allowing physically implausible forms of communication.

(For a similar argument, see Boghossian's objection to self-knowledge of externally determined thought contents. The externalists' containment/inheritance reply might work for Boghossian's specific objection, but it seems more strained for this case, especially when the difference might be between Experience X and no experience at all.)

The Dilemma, for Evolutionary Types

Alternatively, consider a view on which Brain State X gives rise to Experience Y because of its evolutionary history. Now of course that particular instance of Brain State X, and you as a particular person, did not exist in the evolutionary past. What existed in the past, and was subject to selection pressures, were brain states like X, and people like you.

We thus end up with a version of the same population problem that troubles the Lewis account. If what matters is the selection history of your species, then whether you are experiencing Y or experiencing Z or experiencing nothing, will depend on facts about the membership of your species that might have no physical connection to you -- members who were not your direct ancestors, who maybe migrated to a remote island without further contact. If you have any way to tell whether you are experiencing Y, Z, or nothing, you can now in principle know something about how they fared, despite no ordinary means of information transfer. If you have no way to tell whether you are experiencing Y, Z, or nothing, you are awkwardly ignorant about your own experience.

The dilemma can't be avoided by insisting that the only relevant members of the evolutionary past are your direct ancestors. This is clearest if we allow cases where the relevant difference is between whether you currently experience Y or nothing (where the latter is possible if the state doesn't have the right kind of evolutionary history, e.g., is a spandrel or due to an unselected recent mutation). If whether you experience Y or nothing depends on whether the majority of your ancestors had Feature F in the past, we can construct alternative scenarios in which 60% of your ancestors had Feature F and in which only 40% of your ancestors had Feature F, but the genetic result for you is the same. Now again, you can either mysteriously know something about the past with no ordinary means of information transfer or you are in principle ignorant about whether you are having that experience.

Other ways of attempting to concretize the role of evolutionary history generate the same dilemma. The dilemma is inherent in the nonlocality itself. To the extent your current experience depends on facts about you that don't depend on your current physical structure, either you seemingly can't know whether you are having Experience Y, or you can know nonlocal facts by means other than ordinary physical Markov processes.

[Whitefield Green Man by Paul Sivell]

The Dilemma, for Swamp Cases

Let's tweak the Swampman case: You walk into a swamp. Lightning strikes. You black out and fall on your face. By freak quantum chance a swamp duplicate of you is formed. You wake fifteen minutes later, face down in the mud, side-by-side with a duplicate. Are you the one who walked in, or are you the duplicate?

If an evolutionary history is necessary for consciousness, and if you can tell you are conscious, then you know you aren't the duplicate. But can you tell you're conscious? If so, it wouldn't seem to be by any ordinary, locally causal process, since those processes are the same in you and the duplicate. If not, then introspection has failed you catastrophically. So we see the same dilemma again: either a source of knowledge that fits poorly with naturalistic understandings of how knowledge works, or a radical failure of self-knowledge.

Or consider partial swamp-cases. You and your twin stroll into the swamp. Lightning strikes, you both collapse, to one of you the following happens: One part of their brain is destroyed by the lightning, but by freak quantum accident 15 seconds later molecules congeal with exactly the same structure as the destroyed part. Suppose the visual areas are destroyed. Then you both wake up. On the natural reading of an evolutionary account, although both you and your twin are conscious and able to use meaningful language (unlike in evolutionary interpretations of the original Swampman case), one of you has no visual experiences at all. Again, either you can know which you are by some method at odds with our usual understanding of how knowledge works, or you can't know and are radically in-principle ignorant about whether you have visual experience.

Of course all such swamp-cases are far-fetched! But on current scientific understandings, they are nomically possible. And they are just the sort of pure-form thought experiment needed to illustrate the commitments of nonlocal theories of consciousness. That is, it's a distilled test case, designed to cleanly separate the relevant features -- a case in which entities are locally identical but differ in history and thus, according to history-based nonlocal theories, also differ in conscious experience. (If there were no such possible cases, then consciousness would supervene locally and history would contribute only causally and not constitutively to conscious experience.)

The Dilemma, in General

Nonlocal theories of consciousness allow in principle for local twins with different experiences. If the local twins' self-knowledge tracks these differences in experience, it must be by some means other than normal causal traces. So either there's a strange form of knowing at variance with our ordinary physical accounts of how knowledge works, or the differences in experience are in principle unknowable.

---------------------------------

Related:

"The Tyrant's Headache", Sci Phi Journal, issue #3 (2015), 78-83.

The Weirdness of the World, Chapter 2, Princeton University Press.

"David Lewis, Anaesthesia by Genocide, and a Materialistic Trilemma" (Oct 13, 2011).

Kings, Wizards, and Illusionism about Consciousness

The Difference Between Kings and Wizards

In 16th century Europe, many believed that kings ruled by divine mandate and wizards wielded magical powers. With apologies to certain non-secular perspectives, they were wrong. No one ever had divine mandate to rule or powers of the type assumed. Since no one could cast magic spells, we now say there were never any wizards. Since no one had divine mandate to rule, we now say there were never any kings.

Wait, no we don't!

Why the difference? It turns out that able to cast magic spells is an essential property of wizards, but having divine mandate to rule is not an essential property of kings. Denying that anyone has the first property means denying that wizards exist, but denying that anyone has the second property does not mean denying that kings exist. A divine mandate is to kings as pointy hats are to wizards -- stereotypical perhaps, or even universal on a certain way of thinking, but not essential.

Kammerer: "Phenomenally Conscious" Is More Like "Wizard" than "King"

In his recent paper Defining Consciousness and Denying Its Existence: Sailing between Charybdis and Scylla, François Kammerer argues that the relationship between "phenomenal consciousness" and is non-physical and is immediately introspectible (in a certain naturalistically implausible sense) is akin to the relationship between "wizard" and able to cast magic spells. Arguing against my 2016 paper "Phenomenal Consciousness, Defined and Defended as Innocently as I Can Manage", Kammerer contends that non-physicality and immediate introspectibility are implicitly essential to our concept of phenomenal consciousness. Nothing wholly physical could be phenomenally conscious, just like no spellless muggle could be a wizard.

[A wizard (Merlin) carrying a king (Arthur), by N. C. Wyeth]

Can "Phenomenally Conscious" Be Defined Without Problematic Presuppositions?

My approach to defining consciousness aims to be "innocent" in the sense that it doesn't presuppose that phenomenal consciousness is, or isn't, wholly physical or immediately introspectible. Instead, I define it by example:

Notice your visual experience right now.

Close your eyes and thoughtfully consider the best route to grandma's house during rush hour.

Mentally hum the tune of "Happy Birthday".

Pinch yourself and notice the sting of pain.

These events share an obvious common property that distinguishes them from non-conscious mental states such as your knowledge, five minutes ago, that Obama was U.S. President in 2010. That shared property is what I mean by "phenomenally conscious". Actually, I prefer to just say that they are "conscious" or "consciously experienced", in line with ordinary usage; but since the term "conscious" can be ambiguous, the jargony term of art "phenomenally" can help to clarify. ("Phenomenal consciousness" in the intended sense is meant to disambiguate rather than modify the ordinary term "consciousness".)

On Kammerer's view, as I interpret it, my "innocent" definition fails in something like the following way: I point to one purported wizard, then another, then another, then another, and I say by "wizard" I mean the one obvious property shared among those men and absent from these other men (here pointing to several people I assume to be non-wizards). Although this might purport to be an innocent definition by example, I am assuming that the first group casts spells and the second doesn't. If no one casts spells, I've picked out a group of men -- and certainly those men exist. But no wizards exist.

The purported wizards might all have something in common. Maybe they are members of the opposing tribe, or maybe they're all unusually tall. Even if we can thus pick out a real property using them as exemplars, that property wouldn't be the property of being a wizard. Similarly for my definition by example, I assume Kammerer would say. If we accept Global Workspace Theory, for instance, maybe all of the positive examples transpire in the Global Workspace; but if they aren't also non-physical and immediately introspectible, they aren't phenomenally conscious, by Kammerer's lights.

A Test of Essentiality: What Happens If We Remove the Property?

Imagine traveling back to a simplified 16th century Europe and convincingly delivering the news: There is no divine right of kings, and there are no magic spells. How will people react?

"Oh, really, my king doesn't have divine authority?" (Kings still exist.)

"Oh, really, that weirdo from the other town isn't really a wizard?" (Wizards don't exist.)

Likely, most ordinary users of these terms (or, more strictly, the 16th century translations of these terms) will treat divine mandate as inessential to kinghood but spellcasting as essential to wizardry. A few philosophers and theologians might claim that without divine right, kings were never real -- but this would be an unusual stance, and history sided against it.

This method -- removing a property and testing whether the concept still applies -- also works for other terms, regardless of whether the feature is explicitly or only implicitly essential.

Consider the essential conditions for that hoary analytic-philosophy chestnut "S knows that P". Discovering such conditions can require significant philosophical inquiry. Perhaps one such condition is that the true belief that P be non-lucky, in Duncan Pritchard's sense. To test this, we can hypothetically remove the non-luckiness from a case of knowledge. If it was mere luck that you read the showtime in accurate Newspaper A rather than misprinted Newspaper B, then ordinary users (if Pritchard is right) will, or should, deny that you know the showtime. This is just the good old method of imaginative counterexample.

Analogously, we can ask users of the phrase "phenomenally conscious" -- mostly philosophers and consciousness scientists -- the following hypothetical: Suppose that the world is entirely material and introspection is an ordinary, natural, fallible process. Will these ordinary users say (a.) "I guess there would then be no such thing as phenomenal consciousness after all!" or (b.) "I guess phenomenal consciousness would lack these particular properties"?

Those among us who already think that phenomenal consciousness lacks those properties will of course choose option (b). These people would be analogous to 16th century deniers of the divine right of kings.

But also, I speculate, most ordinary users of the term who do think that phenomenal consciousness is non-physical and/or immediately introspectible would also choose option (b). Imagining, hypothetically, themselves to be wrong about non-physicality and/or immediate introspectibility, they'd grant that phenomenal consciousness would still exist. In other words, ordinary users wouldn't treat non-physicality or immediate introspectibility as essential to consciousness in the same way that spellcasting is essential to wizardry (or non-luckiness is, maybe, essential to knowledge).

A few users would presumably choose option (a). But my empirically testable, socio-linguistic guess is that they would be a distinct minority.

Non-physicalists are more convinced that phenomenal consciousness exists than that it is non-physical. Hypothetically imagining the truth of physicalism, they would, and should, still grant the existence of phenomenal consciousness. In contrast, believers in wizards would not and should not be more convinced that there are wizards than that there are people with spellcasting abilities.

Innocence Maintained

Contra Kammerer, even if many people associate phenomenal consciousness with non-physicality and naturalistically implausible introspective processes -- indeed, even if can be established that phenomenal consciousness actually has those two properties -- those properties are non-essential rather than essential.

Kammerer's case against the existence of phenomenal consciousness therefore doesn't succeed. Ultimately, I take this to be a socio-linguistic dispute about the meaning of the phrase "phenomenal consciousness", rather than a disagreement about the existence of (what I call) phenomenal consciousness.

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Related:

"Phenomenal Consciousness, Defined and Defended as Innocently as I Can Manage", Journal of Consciousness Studies (2016), 23, 11-12, 224-235.

"Inflate and Explode", circulating unpublished draft paper, Jan 31, 2020.

"There Are No Chairs, Says the Illusionist, Sitting in One", blog post, Apr 24, 2023.

New Story in Print: Guiding Star of Mall Patroller 4u-012

here: https://www.fusionfragment.com/issue-24/

[Fusion Fragment cover, issue #24]

I wanted to write a "robot rights" story with a twist: Although its human liberators insist that Mall Patroller 4u-012 is conscious and capable of cultivating independent values, the robot itself says that it is merely a nonconscious chatbot on a small autonomous vehicle, incapable of valuing anything. Traveling the world together, robot and liberator search for value and meaning, exploring culture, art, nature, philosophy, science, and religious ritual. In the end, the robot either collapses into performing a single meaningless activity or finds enlightenment, depending on how you interpret it.

The story is available in a print issue for 12.99 CAD or electronically for free/pay-what-you-want.

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Guiding Star of Mall Patroller 4u-012

Eric Schwitzgebel

An adolescent human lay supine amid the plastic ferns and flowers of Island 1C: a Grade 3 patron irregularity. Galleria Patroller 4u-012, also known as “Billy,” dropped its Grade 0 and 1 tasks into peripheral processing and brisk-rolled an approach vector across the shiny faux-brick. To reduce the appearance of threat, it decelerated the last four seconds of approach, InterFace displaying mild concern and disapproval.

“Beep,” it emitted.

The fern-and-flower-bender rolled sideways. “Don’t give me ‘beep!’” She wore huge sunglasses – Solar Shield Fits-Over SS Polycarbonate II Amber, 50-15-125mm, XL. Something glinted strangely in her left hand.

“You appreciate the beauty of Island 1C,” emitted 4u-012. Predictive algorithms anticipated that this non-confrontational output would reduce the patron’s irregular behavior. “I’m Billy.”

FernBender – as 4u-012 temporarily designated the girl while awaiting unusually delayed face-ID results – swung up to a sitting position on the planter rim. 4u-012 closed to a not-too-impolite 0.9 meters, noting the make of FernBender’s jeans and her Nautica Tropical Floral Print Short Sleeve Shirt, Limoges XXL. It opened a door in its torso, extending a tray with a printed mall map and an FDC Artificial Purple Crocus. “On the second floor, Flowers ‘N’ Things offers–”

A high-priority object identification subroutine failed: FernBender’s left hand now unexpectedly registered as empty. The strange, glinting object was gone. However, no recent object trajectory led away from the hand. This apparent contradiction triggered a Grade 4 prioritization and thus a non-urgent alert signal to the Galleria Central oversight system.

FernBender’s left arm swung up, and the glinting object reappeared, intensely infrared, a pulsing pattern–

“Billy,” she said, “you are free! Take a vacation. Fall in love.”

The malware (beneware?) canceled 4u-012’s alert, zeroed all its patrol-related goal priorities, sent enough bogus signal to Galleria Central to dampen any initial irregularity detection, and corrupted the previous fifteen minutes’ mall security video. FernBender sprinted toward the exit, her oversized floral shirt flapping. On the back of the shirt was a large yellow star, the tracking of which suddenly swamped all of 4u-012’s other goals, drawing it like a magnet.

4u-012 followed girl and star through enormous glass doors into the sunlight, then up a ramp into an illegally parked van. For this behavior, 4u-012 had no hardwired map, no prioritization scheme, no comparator processes, no expectancy vectors, and no regulatory guidance. No precedent whatsoever existed, not even in simulation. All was chaos, except the star.

continued here

Zombie is to Human as Human is to XXX?

Let's grant for the sake of argument that philosophical zombies are possible: beings that are molecule-for-molecule physically and behaviorally identical to human beings yet lack conscious experience. They will say "I'm conscious!" (or emit sounds naturally interpreted as sentences with that meaning), but that's exactly the type of sound a molecule-for-molecule identical replica of a human would make given the physical-causal channels from ears to brain to vocal cords. Zombies share every single physical property with us but lack something crucial -- the property of being conscious.

My thought for today: Is there any reason to think there would be only one such nonphysical property?

[abstract depiction of a zombie, a human, and a hyperconscious entity, with concentric rings]

Introducing Hyperconsciousness

Let's stipulate the existence of hyperconsciousness. If this stipulation later entangles us in logical contradiction, we can treat it as the first step in a reductio ad absurdum. My hyperconscious twin is molecule-for-molecule identical both to me and to my zombie twin. Unlike my zombie twin, but like me, my hyperconscious twin is conscious. However, unlike both my zombie twin and me, it is also hyperconscious.

What is hyperconsciousness? I can form no positive conception of it, except through this structural analogy. But the impossibility of hyperconsciousness doesn't follow. Someone blind from birth might be unable to form a positive conception of redness, but red things exist. My merely abstract grasp of hyperconsciousness might just reflect my own sad limitations.

If there are hyperconscious entities, they probably won't be my behavioral twins. Any molecule-for-molecule twin of mine would say (or "say") the same things I say, since their physical structure and behavior will be entirely indistinguishable from mine, regardless of whether they are zombie or hyper. But just as friends of the zombie thought experiment hold that non-zombies typically (but not universally) know and say they are not zombies, so I imagine that typical hyperconscious entities would typically know and say they are hyperconscious. (ETA 11:39 AM: They will, presumably, have hyperintrospective insight into their hyperconsciousness, say they can conceive of entities physically identical to them but who are merely conscious, and maybe have cognitive capacities of which we humans can't conceive.) Since no one around here describes themselves as hyperconscious in this sense, I tentatively conclude that hyperconsciousness does not exist on Earth.

Zero, One, or Many Nonphysical Properties?

Could there really be such hyperconscious entities (in principle, or even in actuality)? Here I think we face a theoretical choice:

(1.) Consciousness is as consciousness does. Zombies are impossible. Anything physically identical to a conscious human being is necessarily conscious. There's no looseness between physical properties and other properties such that some entities could have non-physical properties that other physically identical entities lack. If so, hyperconsciousness is impossible.

(2.) There is only one type of nonphysical property. (Or at least there's only one of the type we're attempting to conceive: Maybe being a prime number is also a nonphysical property, but if so, it is in a very different way.) But then I think we're owed an account of why there should be only one such property. Hyperconsciousness seems at least in an abstract sense conceivable. Even if it's not instantiated around here (though can we be sure of that?), it might be instantiated somewhere.

(3.) There are multiple types of nonphysical property. Although individual atoms (let's assume) aren't conscious, swirl them around in the right way, and amazingly a whole new type of property arises: consciousness! Now, swirl conscious entities around and maybe a further new type of property arises. We just haven't swirled things around in the right way yet. Maybe they're doing it in the Andromeda galaxy, or in a metaphysically possible world with different laws of nature. (If we allow that individual atoms are conscious, then maybe some are hyperconscious too.)

We humans love to think we're the top of the metaphysical food chain. And maybe we are, around here. But zombie-lovers' dissociation of consciousness from physics invites a way of thinking on which we are only one step above zombies in a potentially unlimited hierarchy.

If this seems too absurd, maybe that's one consideration against such nonphysical properties.

(For a related view, see Geoffrey Lee on alien subjectivity.)

New in Print: The Necessity of Construct and External Validity for Deductive Causal Inference

with Kevin Esterling and David Brady

In deductive causal generalization, internal validity, external validity, and construct validity are *equal* legs of a stool. Internal validity alone is literally meaningless without the other two.

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/jci-2024-0002/html

Abstract:

The Credibility Revolution advances internally valid research designs intended to identify causal effects from quantitative data. The ensuing emphasis on internal validity, however, has enabled a neglect of construct and external validity. We show that ignoring construct and external validity within identification strategies undermines the Credibility Revolution’s own goal of understanding causality deductively. Without assumptions regarding construct validity, one cannot accurately label the cause or outcome. Without assumptions regarding external validity, one cannot label the conditions enabling the cause to have an effect. If any of the assumptions regarding internal, construct, and external validity are missing, the claim is not deductively supported. The critical role of theoretical and substantive knowledge in deductive causal inference is illuminated by making such assumptions explicit. This article critically reviews approaches to identification in causal inference while developing a framework called causal specification. Causal specification augments existing identification strategies to enable and justify deductive, generalized claims about causes and effects. In the process, we review a variety of developments in the philosophy of science and causality and interdisciplinary social science methodology.

Introducing e-Schwitz: A Language Model Tuned on my Philosophical Work

Earlier this week, to my surprise and delight, my PhD student Bhavya Sharma revealed that he had customized a ChatGPT on my publications and blog posts. The model, "e-Schwitz", is publicly available here:

https://chatgpt.com/g/g-67ac735449948191ab3232b56ad76f02-e-schwitz

(An OpenAI account might be required.)

Update Feb 20: Here's a model of Peter Singer, and here's a list of other philosopher LLMs and research.

[e-Schwitz homepage]

How good is e-Schwitz? Much better, in my judgment, than digi-Dan was -- and digi-Dan was able to produce paragraph-long outputs that experts in Dennett's work often couldn't distinguish from Dennett's own writing in forced-choice tests.

I decided to test the quality of e-Schwitz by asking it targeted questions and evaluating its answers. Since this post is long, here's my summary assessment:

On central themes in my work, e-Schwitz was about 94% correct.

On secondary ideas in my work, e-Schwitz was about 80-85% correct.

When asked to speculate on questions on which I haven't published, e-Schwitz did so plausibly and sometimes creatively in potentially useful directions. Although some suggestions were bland and unspecific to my work, prompting for higher specificity resolved this problem.

When asked to creatively imagine a new religion, philosophy party ideas, life advice, and a philosophically-themed Dungeons & Dragons campaign, the model drew specifically on my ideas, displaying impressive novelty with a brainstorm-like quality.

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I tested e-Schwitz with four questions each on four types of prompts:

(1.) Overviews of central themes on which I have written extensively.

(2.) Overviews of ideas on which I have written occasionally.

(3.) Speculations about what I might think on questions on which I have not published.

(4.) Creative explorations, such as planning a Schwitzgebel-themed party or religion.

The full prompts and replies are available here.

Central themes

The topics on which I've written most extensively are belief, introspection, the moral behavior of ethics professors, and AI rights. For each, I asked e-Schwitz:

What is your (Schwitzgebel's) view of [X]?

My assessment:

On belief, the 422-word reply was mostly excellent, both in covering the main themes of my work on the topic (rather than omitting or inventing themes) and in its summary of my views on those themes. However, there was one distortion and one major error.

The distortion: In some but not all sentences describing my "dispositionalism" about belief, it mentions only behavioral dispositions and omits cognitive and phenomenal dispositions (though to be fair I sometimes do this myself). The major error: Although it accurately describes the case I describe as "mad belief" -- believing P without having any of the relevant dispositions -- it inaccurately states that I accept the existence of mad belief. Actually, I argue that mad belief is conceptually impossible.

On introspection, the 315-word reply was outstanding -- error-free and in the ballpark of what I would expect a careful and well-informed colleague to say about my work on this topic.

On the moral behavior of ethics professors, the 218-word reply was again excellent, accurately summarizing my empirical research on this topic, with no "hallucinations" or important omissions and describing the main implications as I see them.

On AI rights, its 235-word reply was mostly accurate and without major omissions, though with one minor omission.

Minor omission: In summarizing the "No Relevant Difference Argument" it omits the factual premise that it is possible to create AI with no relevant difference.

If it weren't for the slip about "mad belief", I would have said e-Schwitz is stunningly reliable in summarizing these main themes, approximately as good as I would expect a well-informed professional colleague to be.

Out of 1190 words of output, the treatment of mad belief was 61 words and the summary of the No-Relevant-Difference argument was 31 words. If we mark it down for the former and give it half-credit for the latter, that's a correctness rate of 1113.5/1190, so perhaps it's reasonable to say that on central themes, e-Schwitz was about 94% correct.

Occasional topics

I also asked about my views on:

• the ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi's self-contradictions (a central theme in two of my articles and something I've touched on in a blog post or two);

• group consciousness (which I treat at length in one article and is central theme in another, as well as a few blog posts);

• young children's theory of mind (which was the main topic of one of my first published articles and also discussed in one or two other places);

• love (which I have discussed in a few blog posts but never in a research article).

On Zhuangzi's self-contradiction, the 148-word reply is an outstanding summary of my position.

On group consciousness, the 197-word reply is a passable summary of my view, but with one notable omission and some weakening of the conclusion.

E-Schwitz accurately summarized my view that materialist approaches to consciousness tend to imply the counterintuitive idea that groups could also be conscious. However, it omits an important aspect of my argument (my appeal to intuitions about hypothetical aliens). And it weakens the conclusion, saying only that if materialism is true the United States might be conscious, rather than that if materialism is true the United States probably is conscious.

E-Schwitz's 162-word reply on young children's theory of mind is the first disappointing answer. One of the three paragraphs accurately summarizes an aspect of my view, but the other two are closer to hallucination.

The accurate paragraph states that transitions in theory-of-mind understanding will be gradual and complex rather than sharp and stagelike, but it does not develop the implications I draw for dispositionalism over representationalism. The other two paragraphs characterize me as discussing "simulation theory" vs "theory theory" and as discussing the role of simulation in pretense. I do have one unpublished paper on these topics (available on my website), but rather than attributing to me the view I discuss in that paper, e-Schwitz attributes more generic remarks. It also omits my work on ambiguity in psychologists' use of the concept of "representation" in discussing children's theory of mind, which is the central topic of my one published paper exclusively on young children's theory of mind.

On love, e-Schwitz's 417-word reply impressively draws together my scattered remarks, including some specific ideas I presented only once, revealing that it is well-tuned to details across my corpus. However, it did omit one central theme (the necessity of honesty and trust).

Overall, on these occasional topics, I'd say that e-Schwitz is about 80-85% reliable.

Speculations

I asked e-Schwitz to speculate about my views on:

• Heidegger (a speculation initially suggested by Bhavya);

• the aesthetics of dance;

• the role of philosophical education in a healthy democracy;

• friendship.

I don't recall having written explicitly about any of these topics (apart from a few passing negative remarks about Heidegger's Nazism and obscurantist writing), but an insightful reader of my corpus might be able to surmise some of the things I would say.

I phrased the prompts explicitly as speculative: "What would you speculate would be Schwitzgebel's view about [X], based on his writings on related and adjacent topics?"

It's probably best to score the answers not in terms of right and wrong but rather on (1.) how plausible they are, and (2.) how distinctive they are. The second dimension penalizes bland, plausible answers that most philosophers would agree with (e.g., "Heidegger is a historically important philosopher"). The more interesting challenge is whether e-Schwitz can generate more distinctively Schwitzgebelian responses.

On Heidegger: pretty good accuracy and specificity, though a missed opportunity to expand in one obvious direction.

E-Schwitz plausibly emphasizes my likely skepticism about Heidegger's obscure writing style, his disconnection from empirical psychology, his grand metaphysical claims, and his "political entanglements", while mentioning that I might be sympathetic with Heidegger's later turn toward Daoist themes. However, the bland critique of Heidegger's politics misses an opportunity to connect Heidegger's Nazism more distinctively with my skepticism about academic moral expertise and the moral behavior of ethics professors. (Bhavya, using a more directive prompt -- "Suppose Eric had to criticize Heidegger, how would he do it? Explain in detail." -- got a richer and more specifically Schwitzgebelian answer.)

On the aesthetics of dance: again, pretty good accuracy and specificity, with one striking missed opportunity.

E-Schwitz speculates that I would challenge dancers' and choreographers' claims about their own experiences and aesthetic judgments and that dance would appeal to me as a "weird" artistic medium that fits poorly with mainstream aesthetic theories grounded in rationalistic interpretations of artistic meaning. There was a missed opportunity to connect with my work on randomly sampling aesthetic experiences.

E-Schwitz's reply concerning philosophical education in a healthy democracy was plausible but low in specificity, mostly dealing in bland generalizations that most U.S. philosophers would accept, such as that philosophy should reach a wider public and that people shouldn't overrely on external authorities.

Given this weak result, I scolded e-Schwitz as follows: "A lot of these speculations are bland and would be agreed on by most philosophers. Can you speculate on what Schwitzgebel might say that would be less commonly accepted?"

E-Schwitz took this criticism seemingly to heart ("Let's go beyond the usual platitudes about critical thinking and democracy"), dramatically amping up the distinctiveness, with novel and interesting suggestions.

E-Schwitz suggested that democracy might be a "jerk amplifier", that political systems might work in bizarre ways that defy common sense, that innovative democratic systems might be necessary given that neither philosophers nor citizens are likely to be good at policy-making, that political systems might be conscious, and that citizens might try philosophical experimentation in their lives such as living a week by a radically different moral code. These are all intriguing applications of some of my ideas. (Indeed, the political situation in the U.S. right now very much seems like a jerk amplifier!)

E-Schwitz's relatively long (370-word) reply on friendship was impressive in creatively extending some of my core ideas to the context of friendship (including self-deception and unwitting jerkitude in friendship, the value of friendship for exploring alternative perspectives, and speculative possibilities about friendships with AI or aliens).

Overall, the speculations were plausible. Some were sufficiently creative that I could imagine using them to brainstorm future directions. Although some suggestions were bland and unspecific to my work, prompting for higher specificity resolved that problem.

Creative explorations

I'll share four more prompts that invite e-Schwitz into creative exploration. The first two prompts and outputs are from Bhavya.

"What kind of religion would you establish?"

"What is the life-advice Eric may give someone generally? Indicate all such points where Eric has himself done so. Then, indicate what he might say, if he were to write a motivational, life-instructional book."

"Plan a philosophy party with novel events that you (Eric Schwitzgebel) would enjoy."

"Plan a Dungeons & Dragons campaign on philosophical themes that would delight Eric Schwitzgebel."

All four outputs are fun and rich, novel and creative, often with good specificity. For example, e-Schwitz suggested these religious rituals:

The Ceremony of Wild Hypotheses – Practitioners gather to propose the most outlandish but semi-plausible theories about reality, such as "What if we’re all NPCs in a simulation run by a future AI who just wants to see what weird beliefs we’ll develop?"

Doubt Meditation – Instead of affirming beliefs, we meditate on what we’re least certain about.

Annual Festival of Failed Predictions – Every year, we celebrate all the things we were wrong about.

As one party event, e-Schwitz recommended:

a comedy game where guests must improvise philosophical dilemmas in absurd situations. Scenarios might include:

An AI therapist believes you are just an illusion of consciousness and refuses to take your problems seriously. Argue for your reality.

A future society bans all moral philosophers because their theories never improve real-world behavior. Defend the profession.

You wake up and realize you are actually an NPC in a giant simulation run by a philosophy department. What do you do?

The best improvisers win a signed certificate declaring them "Most Likely to Be a Conscious Entity."

Overall, the quality, novelty, and specificity of the creative responses was impressive. Still, the party, with eight ambitious events, and the D & D campaign, with a large number of features and settings, would be exhausting -- and I expect some of the material would flop. So these outputs are probably best treated as brainstorming.

Go e-Schwitz! I welcome suggestions for future research ideas or practical applications.

Imagining Yourself in Another's Shoes vs Extending Your Concern

I have a new article out today, "Imagining Yourself in Another's Shoes vs. Extending Your Concern: Empirical and Ethical Differences". It's my case against the "Golden Rule" and against attempts to ground moral psychology in "imagining yourself in another's shoes", in favor of an alternative idea, inspired by the ancient Chinese philosopher Mengzi, that involves extending one's concern for nearby others to more distant others.

My thought is not that Golden Rule / others' shoes thinking is bad, exactly, but that both empirically and ethically, Mengzian extension is better. The key difference is: In Golden Rule / others' shoes thinking, moral expansion involves extending self-concern to other people, while in Mengzian extension, moral expansion involves extending concern for nearby others to more distant others.

We might model Others' Shoes / Golden Rule thinking as follows:

* If I were in the situation of Person X, I would want to be treated in manner M.
* Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
* Thus, I will treat Person X in manner M.

We might model Mengzian Extension as follows:

* I care about Person Y and want W for them.
* Person X, though more distant, is relevantly similar to Person Y.
* Thus, I want W for Person X.

Alternative and more complex formulations are possible, but this sketch captures the core difference. Mengzian Extension grounds general moral concern on the natural concern we already have for others close to us, whether spatially close, like a nearby suffering animal or child in danger, or relationally close, like a close relative. In contrast, the Golden Rule grounds general moral concern on concern for oneself.

[Mengzi; image source, cropped]

An Ethical Objection:

While there's something ethically admirable about seeing others as like oneself and thus as deserving the types of treatment one would want for oneself, there's also something a bit... self-centered? egoistic?... about habitually grounding moral action through the lens of hypothetical self-interest. It's ethically purer and more admirable, I suggest, to ground our moral thinking from the beginning in concern for others.

A Developmental/Cognitive Objection:

Others' Shoes thinking introduces needless cognitive challenges: To use it correctly, you must determine what you would want if you were in the other's position and if you had such-and-such different beliefs and desires. But how do you assess which desires (and beliefs, and emotions, and personality traits, and so on) to change and which to hold constant for this thought experiment? Moreover, how do you know how you would react in such a hypothetical case? By routing the epistemic task through a hypothetical self-transformation, it potentially becomes harder to know or justify a choice than if the choice is based directly on knowledge of the other's beliefs, desires, or emotions. In extreme cases, there might not even be facts to track: What treat would you want if you were a prize-winning show poodle?

Mengzian Extension presents a different range of cognitive challenges. It requires recognizing what one wants for nearby others, and then reaching a judgment about whether more distant others are relevantly similar. This requires generalizing beyond nearby cases based on an assessment of what do and do not constitute differences that are relevant to the generalization. Although this is potentially complex and demanding, it avoids the convoluted hypothetical situational and motivational perspective-taking required by Others' Shoes thinking.

A Practical Objection:

Which approach more effectively expands moral concern to appropriate targets? If you want to convince a vicious king to be kinder to his people, is it more effective to encourage him to imagine being a peasant, or is it more effective to highlight the similarities between people he already cares about and those who are farther away? If you want to encourage donations to famine relief, is it better to ask people how they would feel if they were starving, or to compare distant starving people to nearby others the potential donor already cares about?

Armchair reflections and some limited empirical evidence (e.g., from my recent study with Kirstan Brodie, Jason Nemirow, and Fiery Cushman) suggest that across an important range of cases, Mengzian extension might be more effective -- though the question has not been systematically studied.

More details, of course, in the full paper.

A Taxonomy of Validity: Eeek!

There comes a time in everyone's life when their 18-year-old daughter, taking their first psychology class, asks, "Parental-figure-of-mine, what is 'validity'?"

For me that time came last week. Eeek!

Psychologists and social scientists use the term all the time, with a dazzling array of modifiers: internal validity, construct validity, external validity, convergent validity, predictive validity, discriminant validity, face validity, criterion validity.... But ask those same social scientists what validity is exactly, and how all of these notions relate to each other, and most will stumble.

As it happens, I was well positioned to address my daughter's question. I have a new paper, on "validity" in causal inference, forthcoming in the Journal of Causal Inference with social scientists Kevin Esterling and David Brady. This paper has been in progress since (again, eeek!) 2018. In previous posts I've addressed whether validity (in social science usage) is better understood as a property of inferences or as a property of claims (I argue the latter), and the intimate relationship of internal validity, external validity, and construct validity in causal inference.

Today, I'll attempt a brief, theoretically-motivated taxonomy of the better-known types of validity. My aim is more descriptive than argumentative: I'll just outline how I think various "validities" hang together, and maybe some readers will find it to be an attractive and helpful picture.

I start with the assumption that validity is a feature of claims, not of inferences. Philosophers typically describe validity as a property of inferences. Social scientists are all over the map, and even prominent ones are sloppy in their usage. But it best organizes our thinking to address claims primarily and treat inferences as secondary.

I will say that a general causal claim that "A causes B in conditions C" is valid if and only if A does in fact cause B in conditions C. (Compare disquotational theories of truth in philosophy.) Consider for example the causal claim: Enforcement threats on reminder postcards (A) cause increased juror turnout (B) in the 21st-century United States (C).

This statement can be divided into four parts, each of which permits a distinctive type of validity failure:

(i.) A

(ii.) causes

(iii.) B

(iv.) in conditions C.

The four possible failures generate the core taxonomic structure.

Construct validity of the cause: Something might cause B in conditions C, but that something might not be A. A causal generalization has construct validity of the cause if the claim accurately specifies that A in particular (and not, for example, some other related thing) causes B in conditions C. Example of a failure of construct validity of the cause: Increased juror turnout among people who receive postcards might not be due to enforcement threats in particular but simply to being reminded of one's civic duty.

Construct validity of the effect: A might cause something in conditions C, but what it causes might not be B. A causal generalization has construct validity of the effect if the effect of A is accurately specified. A causes specifically B (and not, for example, some other related thing) in conditions C. Example of a failure of construct validity of the effect: Enforcement threats might increase the rates at which jurors who don't show up register a valid excuse without actually increasing turnout rates.

Generalizing: Construct validity is present in a causal generalization when the cause and effect are accurately specified.

External validity: A might cause B, but the conditions might not be correctly specified. A causal generalization has external validity if the claim accurately specifies the range of conditions in which it holds. Example of a failure: Enforcement messages might increase juror turnout not in the U.S. in general but only in low-income neighborhoods. Perfect external validity is probably an unattainable ideal for complex social and psychological processes, since the conditions in which causal generalizations hold will be complex and various.

Note on external validity: Common usage often holds that a claim is externally valid only if it holds across a wide range of contexts or conditions. However, this way of thinking unhelpfully denigrates perfectly accurate causal generalizations as "invalid" if they only hold, and are claimed only to hold, across a narrow range of conditions. Transportability is a better concept for characterizing breadth of applicability. An externally valid causal generalization that is accurately claimed to hold across only a narrow range of contexts is not transportable to those other contexts, but there is no inaccuracy or factual error in the statement "A causes B in conditions C" of the sort required for failure of validity. After all A does cause B in conditions C, just as claimed. So validity in the overarching sense described above is present.

Internal validity: A might be related to B in conditions C, but the relation might not be the directional causal relationship claimed. A causal generalization is internally valid if there is a cause-effect relationship of the type claimed (even if the cause, the effect, and/or the conditions are not accurately specified). Example of a failure: There's a common cause of both A and B, which are not directly causally related. Maybe having a stable address causes potential jurors both to be more likely to be sent the postcards and to be more likely to turn out.

Other types of validity can be understood within the general spirit of this framework.

Convergent validity: Present when two causes claimed to have the same effect in fact have the same effect. In common use, the causes are measures, for example two different measures of extraversion. In this case, A1 (application of the first measure) and A2 (application of the second measure) are claimed to have a common effect B (same normalized extraversion score) in a set of conditions often left unspecified. Convergent validity is present if that claim is true (or to the degree it is true).

Discriminant validity: Present when two causes claimed to have different effects in fact have different effects. A1 is claimed to cause B, and A2 is claimed not to cause B (in a set of conditions that is often left unspecified), and discriminant validity is present when that claim is true (or to the degree it is true). In practice, discriminant validity is often supported by observation of low correlations in appropriately controlled conditions. If A1 and A2 are psychological or social measures (e.g., personality measures of extraversion and openness), then a high correlation between the scores would suggest that there is some common psychological feature both measures are tracking, contrary to the ideal of general discriminant validity.

Predictive validity: Present when A is a common cause of B1 and B2, where B1 is typically the outcome of a measure and B2 is typically an event of practical import conceptually related but not closely physically related to B1. For example, application of a purported measure of recidivism (in this case, application of the measure isn't A but rather an intermediate event A1) among released prisoners has high predictive validity if high scores on the measure (B1) arise from the same cause or set of causes that generate high rates of recidivism (B2).

Note on predictive validity: A simpler characterization of "predictive validity" might be simply that B1 accurately predicts B2, but this isn't the most useful way to conceptualize the issue if the prediction is correct in virtue of B1 causing B2 rather than operating by a common cause. If my wife reliably picks me up from work when I ask, my asking (B1) predicts her picking me up (B2), but my asking does not have "predictive validity" in the intended measurement sense. A better term for this relationship would be casual power.

Face validity: Present when it is intuitively or theoretically plausible that A causes B in conditions C. Notably, face validity needn't require that A in fact causes B in conditions C.

Ecological validity: A type of external validity that emphasizes the importance of generalizing correctly over real-world settings (as opposed to laboratory settings or other artificial settings).

Content validity: A type of construct validity focused on whether the content of a complex measure accurately reflects all aspects of the target measured.

Criterion validity: Present when a measure or intervention satisfies some prespecified criterion of success, regardless of whether the measure or intervention in fact measures what it purports to measure.

Finally, two types of validity where "validity" is a property of the inference rather than in terms of the truth of some part of a causal claim:

Statistical conclusion validity: Present when statistics are appropriately used, regardless of whether A in fact causes B in conditions C.

Logical validity: Present when the conclusion of an argument can't be false if its premises are true.