Michael Tye
Website: www.michaeltye.us. My latest book with the title, Vagueness and the Evolution of Consciousness: Through the Looking Glass was published by Oxford University Press in August 2021. It is now available in paperback. My last but one book was on animal consciousness. It was published in December 2016 by Oxford. The earlier book is entitled Tense Bees and Shell-Shocked Crabs: Are Animals Conscious? That book led to a meeting with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala in May, 2023 at a small interdisciplinary conference dedicated to the topic of animal consciousness. A later and more general version of the talk given there, one that encompasses both animals and AIs is to be found at the link below. This version was for a conference at Princeton organized by Peter Singer in October 2023.
https://uchv.princeton.edu/events/artificial-intelligence-conscious-machines-and-animals-broadening-ai-ethics
A still later (and much more detailed) version focusing on the case of AIs is forthcoming in the journal INQUIRY in a special issue devoted to machine intelligence and consciousness.
More general bio: I’m a philosopher at the University of Texas at Austin (formally, I am the Dallas TACA Centennial Professor in Liberal Arts). My interest in philosophy was awakened at Oxford while an undergraduate. I went up to Oxford to study physics, but after finding out that a physics degree would require a day a week in the laboratory, I switched to physics and philosophy (which involved no lab work at all). By the time I had finished my undergraduate degree, I had decided to focus upon philosophy alone (for more here, see the interview for Mind and Consciousness below). Subsequently, I came to the USA, though I’ve been back to the UK as a visiting professor at King’s College, London for some ten consecutive years and briefly as the occupant of a chair at the University of St. Andrews.
I work mainly in the philosophy of mind and the foundations of cognitive science, but I also have interests in metaphysics. I’ve published nine books, five with MIT Press, Bradford Books, one with Cambridge University Press, and three with Oxford University Press. Six books are on various aspects of consciousness, one on the imagery debate in cognitive psychology, one on the metaphysics of mind, and one on concepts.
My first book on consciousness (Ten Problems of Consciousness) was an alternate selection of the Library of Science Book Club; it was published in 1995. The follow up (Consciousness, Color, and Content) came out in 2000. Both books defend what has come to be known as the representationalist approach to phenomenal consciousness. Another book, Consciousness and Persons, is on the unity of consciousness and was published by MIT Press, Bradford Books, in 2003. This was followed by Consciousness Revisited: Materialism without Phenomenal Concepts, also with MIT Press; it was published in Spring 2009. In 2012 I co-authored a book with Mark Sainsbury, entitled Seven Puzzles of Thought (and How to Solve Them): An Originalist Theory of Concepts. It was published by Oxford University Press.
https://uchv.princeton.edu/events/artificial-intelligence-conscious-machines-and-animals-broadening-ai-ethics
A still later (and much more detailed) version focusing on the case of AIs is forthcoming in the journal INQUIRY in a special issue devoted to machine intelligence and consciousness.
More general bio: I’m a philosopher at the University of Texas at Austin (formally, I am the Dallas TACA Centennial Professor in Liberal Arts). My interest in philosophy was awakened at Oxford while an undergraduate. I went up to Oxford to study physics, but after finding out that a physics degree would require a day a week in the laboratory, I switched to physics and philosophy (which involved no lab work at all). By the time I had finished my undergraduate degree, I had decided to focus upon philosophy alone (for more here, see the interview for Mind and Consciousness below). Subsequently, I came to the USA, though I’ve been back to the UK as a visiting professor at King’s College, London for some ten consecutive years and briefly as the occupant of a chair at the University of St. Andrews.
I work mainly in the philosophy of mind and the foundations of cognitive science, but I also have interests in metaphysics. I’ve published nine books, five with MIT Press, Bradford Books, one with Cambridge University Press, and three with Oxford University Press. Six books are on various aspects of consciousness, one on the imagery debate in cognitive psychology, one on the metaphysics of mind, and one on concepts.
My first book on consciousness (Ten Problems of Consciousness) was an alternate selection of the Library of Science Book Club; it was published in 1995. The follow up (Consciousness, Color, and Content) came out in 2000. Both books defend what has come to be known as the representationalist approach to phenomenal consciousness. Another book, Consciousness and Persons, is on the unity of consciousness and was published by MIT Press, Bradford Books, in 2003. This was followed by Consciousness Revisited: Materialism without Phenomenal Concepts, also with MIT Press; it was published in Spring 2009. In 2012 I co-authored a book with Mark Sainsbury, entitled Seven Puzzles of Thought (and How to Solve Them): An Originalist Theory of Concepts. It was published by Oxford University Press.
less
InterestsView All (7)
Uploads
Papers