| Valerii Latyshev |
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About me
I am a philosopher who works at the intersection of ethics, metaphysics, and cognitive science.
Presently, I am pursuing my Ph.D. at Indiana University, Bloomington. Prior to this, I earned my M.A. in philosophy at San Francisco State University, and and some years before that, I earned my B.A. in mathematics at Oxford University.
You can find my CV here [pdf]
Current projects
Freedom and Contraints. Freedom is usually opposed to constraints, but constraints may be viewed as enabling freedom instead: the functioning of the human brain and the human mind is enabled by the constraints that their constitutive parts are placed under. I explore the possibility that the same constraints that enable us to have the kind of freedom we do have also preclude us from having the kind of freedom we want to have. More specifically, I argue that the kind of self-authorship that many compatibilists require as the enabling feature of human freedom leads to a paradox: the same constraints that allow us to (partly) author ourselves necessitate that we cannot author ourselves to the degree that they require.
Consciousness and the Split-Brain. In her recent book Self-Consciousness and “Split” Brains, Elizabeth Schechter persuasively argues that split-brain subjects with sectioned callosal fibers have two experiential perspectives. If that is so, then there’s a puzzle: if split-brain subjects have two perspectives, why do non-split-brain subjects have only one? How can callosal fibers unify the two perspectives into one? I argue that they can’t. To do this, I invite the reader to conduct a thought experiment. Imagine reconnecting the two hemispheres back together: at what point do the two perspectives become one? There are only two possible options: either the two perspectives are unified gradually, or there is a threshold point where the unification happens abruptly. I argue that the first option is conceptually implausible: perspectives seem to be necessarily discrete. The second option, I contend, is untenable based on the experimental evidence. I conclude that if split-brain subjects have two experiential perspectives, then so do non-split-brain subjects, which is to say, subjects like you and me.