Posted in Evolution, Minds and Brains, Philosophy on April 6, 2008 | No Comments »
From an evolutionary point of view, consciousness is a bit of a conundrum. I’m a pretty hardcore adaptationist so I’m of the opinion that complex traits are either adaptations or related to adaptations in some way (by being byproducts or vestiges of them, or, if they are not shared by a significant proportion of the population, [...]
Posted in Ethics, Minds and Brains, Philosophy on February 10, 2008 | 11 Comments »
That’s my what honours thesis is on. This post is an attempt to rid myself of thesis-writing block. First off, let me just explain what I take ‘ethics’ to mean. To simplify, ethics is about how our actions affect other individuals. This is not universally accepted but it is a useful working definition for certain [...]
Posted in Evolution, Idle Speculation, Minds and Brains on August 17, 2007 | No Comments »
One thought experiment in the philosophy of mind is the inverted spectrum. It asks you to imagine a person that sees things in opposite colours (like a photo negative but not exactly - the light areas are still light and the dark areas are still dark, it’s just the colours that are different). This person would [...]
Posted in Animals, Evolution, Minds and Brains, Science News on July 20, 2007 | No Comments »
I often trawl science blogs and news sites when I’m on the web so here’s some of the science news I’ve collected. Since I’m going to study animal behaviour, I’ve started with three stories from the animal world involving psychotic rats, interspecies ape-love and duck genitalia.
Posted in Admin, Minds and Brains on July 8, 2007 | No Comments »
Hello all, and welcome to my blog, Zombat. Now you might have some questions. What’s this blog all about? Who are you? What does zombat even mean?
