Substitution into Intensional Contexts and Web Browsers 1
Let the input into a web browser be A and the composite output of a web browser be B. For instance, the page source of a web page would be A, while the page as the user experiences it would be B.
Consider then the following proposition:Louis believes that man is Clark Kent.
Since we can substitute “that man” with “Superman” using Prototype’s gsub function,
According to A, Louis believes that man is Clark Kent.
<body>
<ol>
<li>
<span id="test2">
Louis believes that man is Clark Kent.
</span>
</li>
</ol>
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript" src="trixie.js" >
</script>
</body>
</html>However, according to B, Louis believes Superman is Clark Kent, which we know from our comic book reading is not true. Uh oh!
Since search engines index A and not B, any substitutions made on the client side may not be captured by a search engine. In other words, it is possible that a site may report that “Louis believes Superman is Clark Kent”, i.e. something false, while the search engine has captured that the site is reporting that “Louis believes that man is Clark Kent”, i.e. something that is true (or vice versa).
This is not the most interesting outcome of this thought experiment. What is interesting is that Javascript (and any similar client side technology with substitution methods similar to prototype’s gsub) gives us a way to expand the scope of the object of the proposition to include multiple intensions of a term.
I know pain
Most of my philosophy posts reside on my other blog. But I am very excited to announce – to anyone who might stop by this more-tech-oriented blog – that I have completed my master’s thesis and DEGREE in philosophy from Georgia State University. Yea!
I can now definitely say that I know pain. I’ve studied it, and I understand a bit more about the brain states involved with pain. Reallly, I swear! I know pain. You don’t believe me, do you? Well, if you are thinking that I am simply Mary the scientist, who has studied pain her entire life, but never experienced real pain, then you need to read my thesis.
Here’s the abstract…One common element of Kripke’s and Chalmers’ reactions to physicalist theories of mind is their reliance upon the intuition that the concept of conscious experience is essentially identified by the “immediate phenomenal quality” of conscious experience or how an experience feels. I examine how Kripke’s and Chalmers’ critiques require that the concept of conscious experience be identified by how it feels and then move on to provide some ways in which this intuition about the concept of conscious experience could be wrong. Specifically, the intuition is not consistent with our intuitions about unusual cases in pain science and does not take such cases to be genuine cases of pain. These inconsistencies weaken the intuition, making it difficult for any critique of identity theory or physicalism to rely heavily upon it.
Its title is Kripke, Chalmers and the Immediate Phenomenal Quality of Pain.
