Here's a talk by philosopher David Chalmers presenting a general framework to determine whether a dispute is "merely verbal." This process also helps to unearth core disagreements and concepts, e.g. commitments by one party to the existence of normativity, consciousness, truth, or other fundamentals that the other side may wish to simply deny.
I found this helpful both for the pragmatism discussion (he even talks about William James a bit here) that I'm currently editing and on the philosophy of mind discussion (Chalmers is a significant voice in that area) that we'll be having next.
david chalmers recently gave a series of lectures (the John Locke lectures) at oxford:
http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/lectures/john_locke_lectures
Okay, I guess you have all already done your philosophy of mind issue… but maybe you are thinking to come back and do another? Maybe focussing a little more on the science of consciousness? Would or could be fun, especially if you invite me back 😛
My comment here is this. I am looking at the bigwigs you getting videos of (number 5 at this point is ol’Dan Dennett of zombie fame (Chalmers once brough a device that measures consciousness to a conference and “proved” Dan Dennett was in fact a “zombie” whereas, Pat Churchland was only almost a zombie according to the consciousness meter). Anyhow, this stuff was pretty much the focus of my studies back when, and I think you are missing some of the most interesting stuff that has come along. The quantum conscioussness group lacks philosophers, but it is worth looking at carefully. Individuals worth reviewing include the dynamic duo of Penrose and Hameroff, but there are others. So I would encourage you to look over there… For what it is worth, it is the only plausible scientific work I ever did find in all my searches so far as consciousness goes. Yep.
Keep up the great work guys!