Abstract: There are positive and negative lessons from Sartre: - Taking up some of his ideas one may arrive at a better model of consciousness in the analytic philosophy of mind; representing some of his ideas within the language and the models of a functionalist theory of mind makes them more accessible and inte¬grates them into the wider picture. - Sartre, as any philosopher, errs at some points, I believe; but these errors may be instruc¬tive, especially in as much as they mirror some errors in some current theories of consciousness. This paper, therefore, is not a piece of Sartre scholarship, but an attempt of a “friendly take¬over” of some ideas I ascribe to Sartre into current models in the philosophy of mind.

Abstract: What is consciousness? Of course, each of us knows, privately, what consciousness is. And we each think, for basically irresistible reasons, that all other conscious humans by and large have experiences like ours. So we conclude that we all know what consciousness is. It's the felt experiences of our lives. But that is not the answer we, as cognitive scientists, seek in asking our question. We all want to know what physical process consciousness is and why it produces this very strange, almost mysterious, phenomenon of felt experience

Abstract: It really is true -- Fact : there is nothing greater than consciousness -- Consciousness is what you are -- Aliveness -- Fact : consciousness is the infinite itself -- Consciousness is not the "human mind" -- Whose life is it, anyway? -- The all-inclusiveness of consciousness -- To be God, God has to be -- Consciousness is neither physical nor metaphysical -- There is only one consciousness -- Consciousness is -- Fact : consciousness is what the present is -- Check the credentials -- Cease ye from man -- Once upon a time -- How much distance or depth is there to a dream? -- The immediacy of all -- The spectrum of what isn't -- Love is what existence is -- Consciousness cannot ignore its own presence -- The present is all that is present -- Time is not continuous -- The present is perfection itself -- The infinite one -- I am not a duplex -- Now is undelayable -- Ideas cannot withhold themselves -- What is a statement of truth? -- You cannot be limited -- Majestic awareness -- Peace.

Abstract: Although Descartes is often said to have coined the modern notion of 'consciousness', he nowhere defines the according Latin term (conscientia), neither explicitly nor implicitly. This may either imply that he used the word in a sense that he did not make sufficiently clear, that he was not the first to use 'conscientia' in its modern psychological sense, or that he still used it in its traditional sense. I argue for the third assumption: Descartes used 'conscientia' according to the traditional meaning that we also find in the writings of St. Paul, Augustine, Aquinas and later scholastics. Thus for Descartes, conscientia is not a kind of speculative self-knowledge, inner observation or reflexive awareness. Rather, it is a kind of practical knowledge. This is a bold claim. I will argue for it (1) by closely examining the key passages in the Cartesian writings and (2) by re-evaluating the traditional use of the Latin 'conscientia'. Then I will (3) draw some consequences. 1. Descartes makes rather clear what consciousness (conscientia) is not. To take only the most likely candidates. Consciousness is not a thought (cogitatio), since every thought must be accompanied by consciousness. Further, it is not a disposition. Descartes claims that the object of our consciousness never is a possible, but always must be an actual thought. It would be difficult to see how a disposition could be about an actual thought rather than a possible one. But consciousness is also not an attribute of a thought, since Descartes always ascribes it to the thinker herself. 2. In classical and mediaeval Latin, 'conscientia' did not mean 'consciousness', but also not exactly the same as 'moral conscience'. Three aspects are involved in the traditional meaning of the term. First, conscientia is shared knowledge. At least since Augustine, this knowledge is said to be shared between particular human agents and God. Second, conscientia concerns the specific (moral) value of an action. Even more, as Aquinas maintains, actions acquire their rationality and normativity only by being subject to conscientia. On this basis, later scholastics thirdly defined conscientia as a kind of practical knowledge. As such, conscientia is in some sense the cause of what it understands. Put in late scholastic terms, it is the formal cause of its moral being (esse morale). This account of the meaning of 'conscientia' will be shown to be largely compatible with the Cartesian use of the term; the only change to be made being that it deals with thoughts (cogitationes) and their specific value rather than with actions. Hence for Descartes, consciousness is a kind of practical knowledge about thoughts that is shared with an ideal observer (God) and that causes the specific value of the thought that is its object. 3. This reading has several important implications. For instance, it provides us with a reason for the claim that the consciousness is not itself a thought of the thinker who has it. Our the consciousness turns something into a thought by taking it as its object and thereby endowing it with the specific value that it has as a thought. This value might be truth, correctness, adequacy or something along these lines. Now every particular judgment of value can itself be false, incorrect, or inadequate. Hence, every particular reflexive thought would itself be subject to a further consciousness. The only conscientia that can stop this regress is Gods knowledge of our thoughts. This knowledge cannot be wrong. As a consequence, the suggested reading directs us away from the assumption that the mind contains only incorporeal thoughts that are privately known to the thinker. As for the first, Descartes himself claims that most of our thoughts depend on the body. The object of our consciousness may then be some event happening in our brain. Consciousness turns this event into something that is also in some respect incorporeal by endowing it with a value. As thought, it is then not a mere corporeal thing. (The modern reader may add: as thought, but not as bodily event, it is equivalent with other brain events.) As for the second part of the above claim, the Cartesian mind must be radically public, since we always share our conscientia with an ideal observer. Finally, we come to see why Descartes proceeds so easily from his cogito, sum to a proof of the existence of God. Since every thought must be subject to a conscientia, there must always have been an ideal observer. God's existence can be shown because it must already have been presupposed. In fact, the Cartesian meditator was never alone.

Abstract: Consciousness. We have come to expect science to be able to explain all sorts of phenomena in the world (global warming, hereditary diseases, life – you name it). Consciousness is an anomaly in the success story of science for there is a real question whether science, in particular neuroscience, can explain much about what consciousness is. A good question to ask is how and to what extent consciousness resists scientific explanation. That might tell us something about what is special about consciousness

Abstract: It is argued that Block's thought experiment on superblindsight and “the Inverse Anton's syndrome” are not cases of A-consciousness without P-consciousness. “Weak dispositional states” should be excluded from the set of A-conscious states, and a subject's being reflectively conscious of a P-conscious state is suggested as a better candidate for A-consciousness. It is further pointed out that dreams, according to Block's own criterion but contrary to what he claims, are A-unconscious and it is argued that Block should not accept the idea that high-information representational content is an empirically sufficient condition of phenomenality in human beings

Abstract: It has been over a decade and half since Christof Koch and the late Francis Crick first advocated the now popular NCC project (Crick and Koch, 1990), in which one tries to find the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) for perceptual processes. In his chapter in this book Chris Frith provides a splendid review of how neuroimaging has contributed greatly to this project. For the sake of contrast, this chapter takes a more critical stance on what we have actually learned. Many authors have written on whether looking for the neural correlates would eventually lead to an explanatory theory of consciousness, while the proponents defend that focusing on correlates is a strategically sensible first step, given the complexity of the problem (Crick and Koch, 1998;Crick and Koch, 2003). My point here is not to argue whether studying the NCC is useful, but rather, to question whether we are really studying the NCC at all. I argue that in hoping to sidestep the difficult conceptual issues, we have sometimes also missed the phenomenon of perceptual consciousness itself

Abstract: Science has its beginning points and ending points in theoretical and practical philosophy. This little book gives a brief introduction to the philosophical issues involved in doing science by illustrating the issues under the classical divisions: Epistemology of Science, Scientific Metaphysics, and Ethics of Science. The book is for beginners.

Abstract: The epistemic backdrop for locating consciousness in a naturalist ontology -- The argument from consciousness -- John Searle and contingent correlation -- Timothy O'Connor and emergent necessitation -- Colin McGinn and mysterian ?naturalism? -- David Skrbina and panpsychism -- Philip Clayton and pluralistic emergentist monism -- Science and strong physicalism -- AC, dualism and the fear of god.

Abstract:  Introduce the intuitions  Accepting that there is no appearance/reality distinction for consciousness means we must deny that consciousness does causal work..

Abstract: Evolutionary explanations of psychological phenomena have become widespread. This paper examines a recent attempt by Nichols and Grantham (2000) to circumvent the problem of epiphenomenalism in establishing the selective status of consciousness. Nichols and Grantham (2000) argue that a case can be made for the view that consciousness is an adaptation based on its complexity. I set out this argument and argue that it fails to establish that phenomenal consciousness is a complex system. It is suggested that the goal of establishing consciousness as an adaptation may be better served by rejecting the distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness

Abstract: Consciousness is extremely familiar yet it is at the limits—beyond the limits, some would say—of what one can sensibly talk about or explain. Perhaps this is the reason its study has drawn contributions from many fields including psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, anthropology, cultural and literary theory, artificial intelligence, physics, and others. The focus of this entry is on: the varieties of consciousness, different problems that have been raised about these varieties, and prospects for progress on these problems

Abstract: Mary is confined to a black-and-white room, is educated through black-and-white books and through lectures relayed on black-and white television. In this way she learns everything there is to know about the physical nature of the world. She knows all the physical facts about us and our environment, in a wide sense of 'physical' which includes everything in completed physics, chemistry, and neurophysiology, and all there is to know about the causal and relational facts consequent upon all this, including of course functional roles. If physicalism is true, she knows all there is to know. For to suppose otherwise is to suppose that there is more to know than every physical fact, and that is just what physicalism denies. … It seems, however, that Mary does not know all there is to know. For when she is let out of the black-and- white room or given a color television, she will learn what it is like to see something red, say. This is rightly described as learning—she will not say “ho, hum.” Hence, physicalism is false. (Jackson 1986, p. 291, Chapter 2, this volume)

Abstract: Phenomenal consciousness poses a puzzle for philosophy of science. This arises from two facts: It is common for philosophers (and some scientists) to take its existence to be phenomenologically obvious and yet modern science arguably has little (if anything) to say about it. And, this despite 20 years of work targeting the phenomenon in what I will refer to as the new science of consciousness. How has such a supposedly evident part of our world remained beyond our scientific understanding? One possibility is that there is no such phenomenon. This possibility, however, is undercut by the claim that phenomenal consciousness is phenomenologically obvious. In this paper I argue that this claim is mistaken. Distinguishing between the qualities we are phenomenologically aware of and the classification of those qualities as being mental (as qualia), I present both empirical evidence and theoretical reasons to deny that the latter is phenomenologically obvious

Abstract: The Phenomenological Mind, by Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, is part of a recent initiative to show that phenomenology, classically conceived as the tradition inaugurated by Edmund Husserl and not as mere introspection, contributes something important to cognitive science. (For other examples, see “References” below.) Phenomenology, of course, has been a part of cognitive science for a long time. It implicitly informs the works of Andy Clark (e.g. 1997) and John Haugeland (e.g. 1998), and Hubert Dreyfus explicitly uses it (e.g. 1992). But where the former use phenomenology in the background as broad context and Dreyfus uses it primarily (though not exclusively) as a critique of conventional AI, Gallagher and Zahavi wish to indicate a positive and constructive place for it within cognitive science. They do not recommend that we simply accept pronouncements of thinkers like Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau‐Ponty and apply them to questions of cognition, but that we use revised forms of phenomenology to illuminate dimensions of cognitive experience that are missing in current research. The book is presented as an “introduction to philosophy of mind and cognitive science” written from a phenomenological perspective. It seeks to justify the use of phenomenology in cognitive science by showing what kinds of questions it asks and answers, the variety of uses to which it has recently been put and the fruitfulness of some of its findings. The catalog of topics, for the most part, matches other introductions to the philosophy of mind, such as questions of method, consciousness, perception, intentionality, embodiment, action, agency and other minds. One issue presented here that is not generally dealt with in existing philosophy of mind and cognitive science texts is temporality, a mainstay of the continental tradition. After an introductory chapter that places phenomenology in the context of other approaches, the book lays out the main tenets of phenomenological method. Here, one encounters expected components of phenomenology: the epoché (described below), phenomenological reduction, eidetic variation, and so on. This traditional fare is soon followed by some potential surprises, namely, attempts to “naturalize” phenomenology, a few attempts to formalize it, and the emergence of ‘neurophenomenology’. Each of these is a bit surprising because Husserl was a vocal critic of naturalism, seeing transcendental phenomenology as an alternative to the empirical study of consciousness. He was also skeptical about the possibilities of mathematizing phenomenology. Gallagher and Zahavi acknowledge these points, but since they are not repeating history or undertaking exegesis, strict adherence to canonical phenomenology is not required. Naturalizing phenomenology means recognizing that “the phenomena it studies are part of nature and are therefore also open to empirical investigation” (p..

Abstract: Money is a cultural construction, leukemia is not. In which category does phenomenal consciousness fit? The issue is clarified by a distinction between what cultural phenomena causally influence and what culture constitutes. Culture affects phenomenal consciousness but it is ridiculous to suppose that culture constitutes it, even in part

Abstract: One of the main libertarian arguments in support of free will is the argument from introspection. This argument places a great deal of faith in our conscious feeling of freedom and our introspective abilities. People often infer their own freedom from their introspective phenomenology of freedom. It is here argued that from the fact that I feel myself free, it does not necessarily follow that I am free. I maintain that it is our mistaken belief in the transparency and infallibility of consciousness that gives the introspective argument whatever power it possesses. Once we see that consciousness is neither transparent nor infallible, the argument from introspection loses all of its force. I argue that since we do not have direct, infallible access to our own minds, to rely on introspection to infer our own freedom would be a mistake.

Abstract: Most discussions of Spinoza and consciousness—and there are not many— conclude either that he does not have an account of consciousness, or that he does have one but that it is at best confused, at worst hopeless. I argue, in fact, that people have been looking in the wrong place for Spinoza's account of consciousness, namely, at his doctrine of "ideas of ideas". Indeed, Spinoza offers the possibility of a fairly sophisticated, naturalistic account of consciousness, one that grounds it in the nature and capacities of the body. Consciousness for Spinoza, I suggest, is a certain complexity in thinking that is the correlate of the complexity of a body, and human consciousness, for Spinoza, is nothing but the correlate in Thought of the extraordinarily high complexity of the human body in Extension. In this respect, Spinoza anticipates the conception of mind that is presently emerging from studies in the so-called ‘embodied mind’ research program. Moreover, this research program, in turn, may hold out hope for a clearer understanding of some of Spinoza's more difficult claims. CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    What's this?

Abstract: This commentary is a plea to re-read after five years one, as it seems, almost forgotten book which has nevertheless clearly influenced the development of empirical approaches to consciousness. The book provides an illuminating look at the early period to the modern revival of consciousness research. Its subtitle 'Psychological and Philosophical Essays' describes the book's range precisely. Early attempts to disect the mystery of consciousness and many themes that are still preoccupying modern consciousness research are covered. While some areas of research have been progressed, theoretical views have not changed dramatically, and this book still seems a good guide to embark on a mysterious journey when exploring consciousness

Abstract: The questions examined in the book speak directly to neuroscientists, computer scientists, psychologists, and philosophers.

Abstract: This book provides a comprehensive and novel theory of consciousness. In clear and non-technical language, Christopher Hill provides interrelated accounts of six main forms of consciousness - agent consciousness, propositional consciousness (consciousness that), introspective consciousness, relational consciousness (consciousness of), experiential consciousness, and phenomenal consciousness. He develops the representational theory of mind in new directions, showing in detail how it can be used to undercut dualistic accounts of mental states. In addition he offers original and stimulating discussions of a range of psychological phenomena, including visual awareness, pain, emotional qualia, and introspection. His important book will interest a wide readership of students and scholars in philosophy of mind and cognitive science

Abstract: The problem of explaining consciousness today depends on the meaning of language: the ordinary language of consciousness in which we define and express our sensations, thoughts, dreams and memories. Paul Livingston argues that this contemporary problem arises from a quest that developed over the twentieth century, and that historical analysis provides new resources for understanding and resolving it. Accordingly, Livingston traces the application of characteristic practices of analytic philosophy to problems about the relationship of experience to linguistic meaning

Abstract: Colin McGinn presents his latest work on consciousness in ten interlinked papers, four of them previously unpublished. He extends and deepens his controversial solution to the mind-body problem, defending the view that consciousness is both ontologically unproblematic and epistemologically impenetrable. He also investigates the basis of our knowledge that there is a mind-body problem, and the bearing of this on attempted solutions. McGinn goes on to discuss the status of first-person authority, the possibility of atomism with respect to consciousness, extreme dualism, and the role of non-existent objects in constituting intentionality. He argues that traditional claims about our knowledge of our own mind and of the external world can be inverted; that atomism about the conscious mind might turn out to be true; that dualism is more credible the more extreme it is; and that all intentionality involves non-existent objects. These are all surprising positions, but he contends that what the philosophy of mind needs now is 'methodological radicalism' - a willingness to consider new and seemingly extravagant ideas

Abstract: The contributions to this book are original articles, representing a cross-section of current philosophical work on consciousness and thereby allowing students and readers from other disciplines to acquaint themselves with the very latest debate, so that they can then pursue their own research interests more effectively. The volume includes a bibliography on consciousness in philosophy, cognitive science and brain research, covering the last 25 years and consisting of over 1000 entries in 18 thematic sections, compiled by David Chalmers and Thomas Metzinger

Abstract: This book offers a comprehensive and broadly rationalist theory of the mind which continually tests itself against experimental results and clinical data. Taking issue with Empiricists who believe that all knowledge arises from experience and that perception is a non-cognitive state, Norton Nelkin argues that perception is cognitive, constructive, and proposition-like. Further, as against Externalists who believe that our thoughts have meaning only insofar as they advert to the world outside our minds, he argues that meaning is determined 'in the head'. Finally, he offers an account of how we acquire some of our most basic concepts, including the concept of the self and that of other minds

Abstract: Brian O'Shaughnessy puts forward a bold and original theory of consciousness, one of the most fascinating but puzzling aspects of human existence. He analyzes consciousness into purely psychological constituents, according pre-eminence to epistemological properties. The result is an integrated picture of the conscious mind in its natural physical setting

Abstract: The relation between subjective consciousness and the physical brain is widely regarded as the last mystery facing science. Papineau argues that consciousness seems mysterious not because of any hidden essence, but only because we think about it in a special way. He exposes the resulting potential for confusion, and shows that much scientific study of consciousness is misconceived

Abstract: Consciousness seems to be an enigmatic phenomenon: it is difficult to imagine how our perceptions of the world and our inner thoughts, sensations and feelings could be related to the immensely complicated biological organ we call the brain. This volume presents the thoughts of some of the leading philosophers and cognitive scientists who have recently participated in the discussion of the status of consciousness in science. The focus of inquiry is the question: "Is it possible to incorporate consciousness into science?" Philosophers have suggested different alternatives -- some think that consciousness should be altogether eliminated from science because it is not a real phenomenon, others that consciousness is a real, higher-level physical or neurobiological phenomenon, and still others that consciousness is fundamentally mysterious and beyond the reach of science. At the same time, however, several models or theories of the role of conscious processing in the brain have been developed in the more empirical cognitive sciences. It has been suggested that non-conscious processes must be sharply separated from conscious ones, and that the necessity of this distinction is manifested in the curious behavior of certain brain-damaged patients. This book demonstrates the dialogue between philosophical and empirical points of view. The writers present alternative solutions to the brain-consciousness problem and they discuss how the unification of biological and psychological sciences could thus become feasible. Covering a large ground, this book shows how the philosophical and empirical problems are closely interconnected. From this interdisciplinary exploration emerges the conviction that consciousness can and should be a natural part of our scientific world view

Abstract: William S. Robinson has for many years written insightfully about the mind-body problem. In Understanding Phenomenal Consciousness he focuses on sensory experience (eg, pain, afterimages) and perception qualities such as colors, sounds and odors to present a dualistic view of the mind, called Qualitative Event Realism, that goes against the dominant materialist views. This theory is relevant to the development of a science of consciousness which is now being pursued not only by philosophers but by researchers in psychology and the brain sciences. This provocative book will interest students and professionals who work in the philosophy of mind and will also have cross-disciplinary appeal in cognitive psychology and the brain sciences

Abstract: What place does consciousness have in the natural world? If we reject materialism, could there be a credible alternative? In one classic example, philosophers ask whether we can ever know what is it is like for bats to sense the world using sonar. It seems obvious to many that any amount of information about a bat's physical structure and information processing leaves us guessing about the central questions concerning the character of its experience. A Place for Consciousness begins with reflections on the existence of this gap. Is it just a psychological shortcoming in our merely human understanding of the physical world? Is it a trivial consequence of the simple fact that we just cannot be bats? Or does it mean there really are facts about consciousness over and above the physical facts? If so, what does consciousness do? Why does it exist? Rosenberg sorts out these problems, especially those centering on the causal role of consciousness. He introduces a new paradigm called Liberal Naturalism for thinking about what causation is, about the natural world, and about how to create a detailed model to go along with the new paradigm. Arguing that experience is part of the categorical foundations of causality, he shows that within this new paradigm there is a place for something essentially like consciousness in all its traditional mysterious respects. A striking feature of Liberal Naturalism is that its central tenets are motivated independently of the mind-body problem, by analyzing causation itself. Because of this approach, when consciousness shows up in the picture it is not introduced in an ad hoc way, and its most puzzling features can be explained from first principles. Ultimately, Rosenberg's final solution gives consciousness a causally important role without supposing either that it is physical or that it interacts with the physical

Abstract: In The Nature of Consciousness, Mark Rowlands develops an innovative and radical account of the nature of phenomenal consciousness, one that has significant consequences for attempts to find a place for it in the natural order. The most significant feature of consciousness is its dual nature: consciousness can be both the directing of awareness and that upon which awareness is directed. Rowlands offers a clear and philosophically insightful discussion of the main positions in this fast-moving debate, and argues that the phenomenal aspects of conscious experience are aspects that exist only in the directing of experience towards non-phenomenal objects, a theory that undermines reductive attempts to explain consciousness in terms of what is not conscious. His book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in the philosophy of mind and language, psychology, and cognitive science

Abstract: Theories of Consciousness provides an introduction to a variety of approaches to consciousness, questions the nature of consciousness, and contributes to current debates about whether a scientific understanding of consciousness is possible. While discussing key figures including Descartes, Fodor, Dennett and Chalmers, the book incorporates identity theories, representational theories, intentionality, externalism and new information-based theories

Abstract: The most important scientific discovery of the present era will come when someone -- or some group -- discovers the answer to the following question: How exactly do neurobiological processes in the brain cause consciousness? This is the most important question facing us in the biological sciences, yet it is frequently evaded, and frequently misunderstood when not evaded. In order to clear the way for an understanding of this problem. I am going to begin to answer four questions: 1. What is consciousness? 2. What is the relation of consciousness to the brain? 3. What are some of the features that an empirical theory of consciousness should try to explain? 4. What are some common mistakes to avoid?

Abstract: "This is a marvelous book, full of subtle, thoughtful, and original argument.

Abstract: Consciousness is perhaps the most puzzling problem we humans face in trying to understand ourselves. Here, eighteen essays offer new angles on the subject. The contributors, who include many of the leading figures in philosophy of mind, discuss such central topics as intentionality, phenomenal content, and the relevance of quantum mechanics to the study of consciousness

Abstract: Ignorance and Imagination advances a novel way to resolve the central philosophical problem about the mind: how it is that consciousness or experience fits into a larger naturalistic picture of the world. The correct response to the problem, Stoljar argues, is not to posit a realm of experience distinct from the physical, nor to deny the reality of phenomenal experience, nor even to rethink our understanding of consciousness and the language we use to talk about it. Instead, we should view the problem itself as a consequence of our ignorance of the relevant physical facts. Stoljar shows that this change of orientation is well motivated historically, empirically, and philosophically, and that it has none of the side effects it is sometimes thought to have. The result is a philosophical perspective on the mind that has a number of far-reaching consequences: for consciousness studies, for our place in nature, and for the way we think about the relationship between philosophy and science

Abstract: Introduction -- A default position -- Experience -- The character of experience -- Understanding-experience -- A note about dispositional mental states -- Purely experiential content -- An account of four seconds of thought -- Questions -- The mental and the nonmental -- The mental and the publicly observable -- The mental and the behavioral -- Neobehaviorism and reductionism -- Naturalism in the philosophy of mind -- Conclusion: The three questions -- Agnostic materialism, part 1 -- Monism -- The linguistic argument -- Materialism and monism -- A comment on reduction -- The impossibility of an objective phenomenology -- Asymmetry and reduction -- Equal-status monism -- Panpsychism -- The inescapability of metaphysics -- Agnostic materialism, part 2 -- Ignorance -- Sensory spaces -- Experience, explanation, and theoretical integration -- The hard part of the mind-body problem -- Neutral monism and agnostic monism -- A comment on eliminativism, instrumentalism, and so on -- Mentalism, idealism, and immaterialism -- Mentalism -- Strict or pure process idealism -- Active-principle idealism -- Stuff idealism -- Immaterialism -- The positions restated -- The dualist options -- Frege's thesis -- Objections to pure process idealism -- The problem of mental dispositions -- Mental -- Shared abilities -- The sorting ability -- The definition of mental being -- Mental phenomena -- The view that all mental phenomena are experiential phenomena -- Natural intentionality -- E/c intentionality -- The experienceless -- Intentionality and abstract and nonexistent objects -- Experience, purely experiential content, and n/c intentionality -- Concepts in nature -- Intentionality and experience -- Summary with problem -- Pain and pain -- The neo-behaviorist view -- A linguistic argument for the necessary connection between pain and behavior -- A challenge -- The Sirians -- N.N. Novel -- An objection to the Sirians -- The Betelgeuzians -- The point of the Sirians -- Functionalism, naturalism, and realism about pain -- Unpleasantness and qualitative character -- The weather watchers -- The rooting story -- What is it like to be a weather watcher? -- The aptitudes of mental states -- The argument from the conditions for possessing the concept of space -- The argument from the conditions for language ability -- The argument from the nature of desire -- Desire and affect -- The argument from the phenomenology of desire -- Behavior -- A hopeless definition -- Difficulties -- Other-observability -- Neo-behaviorism -- The concept of mind.

Abstract: The mind-body problem continues to be the focus of many of our philosophical concerns. Matters of Mind tackles how the problem has spanned and how it has changed from the earlier theories of reducing aboutness to empirical cases for physicalism. The theories of perception, property explanation, content and knowledge, reliabilism and the problem of zombies and ghosts are all carefully assessed

Abstract: Beginning with physical reactions as simple and mechanical as rust, From Dust to Descartes goes step by evolutionary step to explore how the most remarkable and personal aspects of consciousness have arisen, how our awareness of the world of ourselves differs from that of other species, and whether machines could ever become self-aware. Part I addresses a newborn’s innate abilities. Part II shows how with these and experience, we can form expectations about the world. Parts III concentrates on the essential role that others play in the formation of self-awareness. Part IV then explores what follows from this explanation of human consciousness, touching on topics such as free will, personality, intelligence, and color perception which are often associated with self-awareness and the philosophy of mind.

Abstract: Tye's book develops a persuasive and, in many respects, original argument for the view that the qualitative side of our mental life is representational in...

Abstract: Physicalists commonly argue that conscious experiences are nothing more than states of the brain, and that conscious qualia are observer-independent, physical properties of the external world. Although this assumes the 'mantle of science,' it routinely ignores the findings of science, for example in sensory physiology, perception, psychophysics, neuropsychology and comparative psychology. Consequently, although physicalism aims to naturalise consciousness, it gives an unnatural account of it. It is possible, however, to develop a natural, nonreductive, reflexive model of how consciousness relates to the brain and the physical world. This paper introduces such a model and how it construes the nature of conscious experience. Within this model the physical world as perceived (the phenomenal world) is viewed as part of conscious experience not apart from it. While in everyday life we treat this phenomenal world as if it is the "physical world", it is really just one biologically useful representation of what the world is like that may differ in many respects from the world described by physics. How the world as perceived relates to the world as described by physics can be investigated by normal science (e.g. through the study of sensory physiology, psychophysics and so on). This model of consciousness appears to be consistent with both third-person evidence of how the brain works and with first-person evidence of what it is like to have a given experience. According to the reflexive model, conscious experiences are really how they seem

Abstract: With fifty-five peer reviewed chapters written by the leading authors in the field, The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness is the most extensive and comprehensive survey of the study of consciousness available today. Provides a variety of philosophical and scientific perspectives that create a breadth of understanding of the topic Topics include the origins and extent of consciousness, different consciousness experiences, such as meditation and drug-induced states, and the neuroscience of consciousness

Abstract: of (from Philosophy Dissertations Online)

Abstract: are sharp rather than vague, that they can have no borderline cases. On the other hand, many who take conscious states to be identical to, or realized by, complex physical states are committed to the vagueness of those concepts. In the paper I argue that conscious state and conscious creature are sharp by presenting four necessary conditions for conceiving borderline cases in general, and showing that some of those conditions cannot be met with conscious state. I conclude that conscious state is sharp, and the conclusion is then extended to conscious creature. The paper ends with a brief discussion of some implications

Abstract: Abstract. An argument is offered for this conditional: If our current concept conscious state is sharp rather than vague, and also correct (at least in respect of its sharpness), then common versions of familiar metaphysical theories of consciousness are false--?namely versions of the identity theory, functionalism, and dualism that appeal to complex physical or functional properties in identification, realization, or correlation. Reasons are also given for taking seriously the claim that our current concept conscious state is sharp. The paper ends by surveying the theoretical options left open by the concept's sharpness and the truth of the conditional argued for in the paper

Abstract: That consciousness is composed of simple or basic elements that combine to form complex experiences is an idea with a long history. This idea is approached through an examination of our

Abstract: Some alleged senses of the term are access consciousness, phenomenal consciousness, state consciousness, creature consciousness, introspective consciousness, self consciousness, to name a few. In the paper I argue for two points. First, there are few if any good reasons for thinking that such alleged senses are genuine:

Abstract: In spite of the enormous interdisciplinary interest in consciousness these days, sorely lacking are general methodologies in terms of which individual research efforts across disciplines can be seen as contributing to a common end

Abstract: An interactive process model of the nature of representation intrinsically accounts for multiple emergent properties of consciousness, such as being a contentful experiential flow, from a situated and embodied point of view. A crucial characteristic of this model is that content is an internally related property of interactive process, rather than an externally related property as in all other contemporary models. Externally related content requires an interpreter, yielding the familiar regress of interpreters, along with a host of additional fatal problems. Further properties of consciousness, such as differentiated qualities of experience, including qualia, emerge with conscious reflection. In particular, qualia are not constituents or direct properties of consciousness per se. Assuming that they are so is a common and ultimately disastrous misconstrual of the problems of consciousness

Abstract: in Encyclopedia of Consciousness, ed. William P. Banks, Amsterdam: Elsevier, forthcoming in 2009

Abstract: The distinction between phenomenal (P) and access (A) consciousness arises from the battle between biological and computational approaches to the mind. If P = A, the computationalists are right; but if not, the biological nature of P yields its scientific nature

Abstract: [[This was written as a commentary on Ned Block 's paper "On A Confusion about a Function of Consciousness" . It appeared in _Behavioral_ _and Brain Sciences_ 20:148-9, 1997, and also in the collection _The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates_ (MIT Press, 1997) edited by Block, Flanagan, and Guzeldere. ]]

Abstract: "Consciousness" is a multiply ambiguous word, and if our goal is to explain perceptual consciousness we had better be clear about which of the many senses of the word we are endorsing when we sign on to the project. I describe some of the relatively standard distinctions made in the philosophical literature about different meanings of the word "conscious". Then I consider some of the arguments of David Chalmers and of Ned Block that states of "phenomenal consciousness" pose special and intractable problems for the scientific understanding of perception. I argue that many of these problems are introduced by obscurities in the term itself, and propose a distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic senses of the term "phenomenal consciousness". That distinction helps explain why phenomenal consciousness seems so mysterious to so many people. States of "phenomenal consciousness" are not states of one, elemental (and inexplicable) kind; they are a ragtag lot, of differing levels of complexity, corralled under one heading by a regrettable ambiguity in our terminology

Abstract: The relation of dependency between consciousness and attention is, once again, a matter
of heated debate among scientists and philosophers. There are at least three general views on the
issue. First, there are those who suggest that attention is both necessary and sufficient for
consciousness (e.g. Posner, 1994; Prinz, 2000, forthcoming). Second, there are those who
suggest that even though attention is necessary for consciousness, it may not be sufficient (e.g.
Moran & Desimone, 1984; Rensink et al., 1997; Merikle & Joordens, 1997). Finally, there are
those who suggest that attention is neither necessary nor sufficient for consciousness, that—at
most—they are two different processes that happen to be concomitant some of the time, but
which, under very specific circumstances, can be shown to come apart (e.g. Lamme, 2003;
Koivisto et al., 2005; Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007). Piles of evidence have been marshaled in favor
and against each of these alternatives, and as far as I can see, there is no hope of agreement on
the horizon.

Abstract: In this article I distinguish the notion of there being something it is like to be a certain kind of creature from that of there being something it is like to have a certain kind of experience. Work on consciousness has typically dealt with the latter while employing the language of the former. I propose several ways of analyzing what it is like to be a certain kind of creature and find problems with them all. The upshot is that even if there is something it is like to have certain kinds of experience, it does not follow that there is anything it is like to be a certain kind of creature. Skepticism about the existence of something that it is like to be an F is recommended

Abstract: Concepts of space and time are widely developed in physics. However, there is a considerable lack of biologically plausible theoretical frameworks that can demonstrate how space and time dimensions are implemented in the activity of the most complex life-system – the brain with a mind. Brain activity is organized both temporally and spatially, thus representing space-time in the brain. Critical analysis of recent research on the space-time organization of the brain’s activity pointed to the existence of so-called operational space-time in the brain. This space-time is limited to the execution of brain operations of differing complexity. During each such brain operation a particular short-term spatio-temporal pattern of integrated activity of different brain areas emerges within related operational space-time. At the same time, to have a fully functional human brain one needs to have a subjective mental experience. Current research on the subjective mental experience offers detailed analysis of space-time organization of the mind. According to this research, subjective mental experience (subjective virtual world) has definitive spatial and temporal properties similar to many physical phenomena. Based on systematic review of the propositions and tenets of brain and mind space-time descriptions, our aim in this review essay is to explore the relations between the two. To be precise, we would like to discuss the hypothesis that via the brain operational space-time the mind subjective space-time is connected to otherwise distant physical space-time reality.

Abstract: This paper supports the basic integrity of the folk psychological conception of consciousness and its importance in cognitive theorizing. Section 1 critically examines some proposed definitions of consciousness, and argues that the folk- psychological notion of phenomenal consciousness is not captured by various functional-relational definitions. Section 2 rebuts the arguments of several writers who challenge the very existence of phenomenal consciousness, or the coherence or tenability of the folk-psychological notion of awareness. Section 3 defends a significant role for phenomenal consciousness in the execution of a certain cognitive task, viz., classification of one's own mental states. Execution of this task, which is part of folk psychologizing, is taken as a datum in scientific psychology. It is then argued (on theoretical grounds) that the most promising sort of scientific model of the self-ascription of mental states is one that posits the kinds of phenomenal properties invoked by folk psychology. Cognitive science and neuroscience can of course refine and improve upon the folk understanding of consciousness, awareness, and mental states generally. But the folk-psychological constructs should not be jettisoned; they have a role to play in cognitive theorizing

Abstract: Let's be externalists about perceptual consciousness and think the form of veridical perceptual consciousness includes /seeing this or that mind-independent particular and its colors/. Let's also take internalism seriously, granting that spectral inversion and hallucination can be "phenomenally" the same as normal seeing. Then perceptual consciousness and phenomenality are different, and so we need to say how they are related. It's complicated!

Phenomenal sameness is (against all odds) /reflective indiscriminability/. I build a "displaced perception" account of reflection on which indiscriminability stems from shared "qualia". Qualia are compatible with direct realism: while they generate an explanatory gap (and colors do not), so does /seeing/; qualia are excluded from perceptual consciousness by its "transparency"; instead, qualia are aspects of thought about the perceived environment.

The asymmetry between my treatments of color and seeing is grounded in the asymmetry between ignorance and error: while inversion shows that normal subjects are ignorant of the natures of the colors, hallucination shows not that perceivers are ignorant of the nature of seeing but that hallucinators are prone to error about their condition. Past literature has treated inversion and hallucination as on a par: externalists see error in both cases, while internalists see mutual ignorance. My account is so complicated because plausible results require mixing it up.

Abstract: This paper expands on the discussion in the first section of 'Beyond phenomenal naivete'. Let Phenomenal Naivete be understood as the doctrine that some phenomenal characters of veridical experiences are factive properties concerning the external world. Here I present in detail a phenomenological case for Phenomenal Naivete and an argument from hallucination against it. I believe that these arguments show the concept of phenomenal character to be defective, overdetermined by its metaphysical and epistemological commitments together with the world. This does not establish a gappish eliminativism, but a gluttish pluralism, on which there are many imperfect deservers of the name 'phenomenal character'. Different projects in the philosophy of mind -- phenomenology, philosophy of conscious, metaphysics and epistemology of perception -- are concerned with different deservers of the name.

Abstract: Although Descartes is often said to have coined the modern notion of ‘consciousness’, he defines it neither explicitly nor implicitly. This may imply (1) that he was not the first to use ‘conscientia’ in its modern, psychological sense, or (2) that he still used it in its traditional moral sense. In this paper, I argue for the latter assumption. Descartes used ‘conscientia’ according to the meaning we also find in texts of St. Paul, Augustine, Aquinas and later scholastics. Thus the Cartesian conscientia is, technically speaking, a shared knowledge of the specific value of our thoughts as thoughts and at the same time the cause of this value. This means that it is not itself a kind of individual knowledge, awareness, or a particular thought. Rather, ‘conscientia’ refers to the evaluative knowledge of an ideal observer.

Abstract: Consider three answers to the question of what it actually is for you to be aware of the room you are in. (1) It is for the room in a way to exist. (2) It is for there to be only physical activity in your head, however additionally described. (3) It is for there to be non-spatial facts somehow in your head. The first theory, unlike the other two, satisfies five criteria for an adequate account of consciousness itself. The criteria have to do with the seeming nature of this consciousness, and with subjectivity, reality including non-abstractness, mind-body causation, and the differences between perceptual, reflective and affective consciousness. The theory of consciousness as existence is not open to the objection having to do with a deluded brain in a vat. The theory, as any theory of consciousness needs to, explains its own degree of failure in characterizing consciousness. It releases neuroscience and cognitive science from nervousness about consciousness, and leaves all of consciousness a subject for science. The theory is a reconstruction of our conception of consciousness. It may be that we should carry forward several theories of consciousness. But they will have to be compared in terms of truth to the five criteria for an adequate theory

Abstract: This is a further improved version of a paper previously called `Reflective and Affective Consciousness'. It is better now -- more or less comprehensible if still imperfect. It is the fourth in a series of papers, and continues the idea that consciousness needs to be analysed not in any of the boring ways: by way of the plain or 17th Century materialism that is still with us in new packages, or immaterialism, or dualistic identity theory, or functionalism and cognitive science with philosophical ambition. (For argued surveys of these, and a particular allegiance now abandoned in favour of Consciousness as Existence, go to Mind Brain Connection and Mind and Brain Explanation .) Consciousness needs to be analysed, rather, mainly in terms of things existing outside of heads. The final draft of the paper will eventually turn up in the annual proceedings of The Royal Institute of Philosophy, a volume under the title Minds and Persons edited by Anthony O'Hear. At the end of the paper here there is a summary of it -- in fact the handout for a lecture

Abstract: It would be a mistake to deny commonsense intuitions a role in developing a theory of consciousness. However, philosophers have traditionally failed to probe commonsense in a way that allows these commonsense intuitions to make a robust contribution to a theory of consciousness. In this paper, I report the results of two experiments on purportedly phenomenal states and I argue that many disputes over the philosophical notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ are misguided—they fail to capture the interesting connection between commonsense ascriptions of pain and emotion. With this data in hand, I argue that our capacity to distinguish between ‘mere things’ and ‘subjects of moral concern’ rests, to a significant extent, on the sorts of mental states that we take a system to have

Abstract: When people are trying to determine whether an entity is capable of having certain kinds of mental states, they can proceed either by thinking about the entity from a *functional* standpoint or by thinking about the entity from a *physical* standpoint. We conducted a series of studies to determine how each of these standpoints impact people’s mental state ascriptions. The results point to a striking asymmetry. It appears that ascriptions of states involving phenomenal consciousness are sensitive to physical factors in a way that ascriptions of other states are not

Abstract: Key Terms: Phenomenal consciousness, access consciousness, qualitative character, subjective character, intransitive self-consciousness, disposition, categorical basis, subliminal perception, blindsight

Abstract: A conscious being is characterized by its ability to cope with the environment--to perceive it, sometimes change it, and perhaps reflect on it. Surprisingly, most studies of the mind's place in nature show little interest in such interaction. It is often implicitly assumed that the main questions about consciousness just concern the status of various entities, levels, etc., within the individual. The intertwined notions of "(conscious) experience" and "(phenomenal) consciousness" are considered. The predominant use of these notions in cognitive science can be traced back to Cartesianism. What is important is the survival of the central methodological commitments despite seemingly profound changes of metaphysical outlook. The author argues (1) that cognitive scientists typically assimilate perception to sensation, thereby ignoring ways in which descriptions of perception and descriptions of the environment are logically intertwined; (2) that this involves methodological solipsism and an unacknowledged sceptical position that was originally part of Descartes' Dream argument; and (3) that it is impossible to identify the object supposedly to be studied by a science of the phenomenal consciousness. A somewhat parallel argument is identified in Kant's critique of rationalist psychology

Abstract: Ned Block has influentially distinguished two kinds of consciousness, access and phenomenal consciousness. He argues that these two kinds of consciousness can dissociate, and therefore we cannot rely upon subjective report in constructing a science of consciousness. I argue that none of Block's evidence better supports his claim than the rival view, that access and phenomenal consciousness are perfectly correlated. Since Block's view is counterintuitive, and has wildly implausible implications, the fact that there is no evidence that better supports it than the rival view should lead us to reject it

Abstract: There is not a uniform kind of consciousness common to all conscious mental states: beliefs, emotions, perceptual experiences, pains, moods, verbal thoughts, and so on. Instead, we need a distinction between phenomenal and nonphenomenal consciousness. As if consciousness simpliciter were not mysterious enough, philosophers have recently focused their worries on phenomenal (or qualitative) consciousness, the kind that explains or constitutes there being "something it

Abstract: My topics are consciousness. The plural is deliberate. Both in philosophy and in psychology,

Abstract: It is widely held that there is an important distinction between the notion of consciousness as it is applied to creatures and, on the other hand, the notion of consciousness as it applies to mental states. McBride has recently argued in this journal that whilst there may be a grammatical distinction between state consciousness and creature consciousness, there is no parallel ontological distinction. It is argued here that whilst state consciousness and creature consciousness are indeed related, they are distinct properties. Conscious creatures can have, at one time, both conscious and unconscious mental states. This raises the question of what distinguishes the conscious from unconscious mental states of a subject: a question about what state consciousness consists in. Whilst the state/creature distinction may not be of use in explaining every aspect of a subject's consciousness, it does provide a key part of the explanandum for theories of consciousness and mind. The state/creature consciousness distinction is a real one and should not be dropped from our psychological taxonomy

Abstract: This essay examines the grammatical structure underlying the use of the word "conscious". Despite the existence of this grammatical structure, I reject the assumption that actual consciousness has a similar structure. Specifically, I reject the claim that consciousness consists of three subtypes: state consciousness, transitive consciousness, and creature consciousness. I offer an inductive argument and a deductive argument that no such psychological entities exist. The inductive argument: given the lack of evidence or arguments for the entities and given that a tripartite consciousness structure evolved from a tripartite grammatical habit, it would be far too coincidental if the grammatical distinction mirrored a psychological distinction. The deductive argument (a reductio ad absurdum) shows that absurd conclusions follow from assuming the existence of three distinct psychological entities. Furthermore, the verbal habits that motivate the distinction are rendered more intelligible under a "Unitary Thesis", the idea that verbal distinctions involving use of the word "conscious" are unified in their reliance on a single ontological unit, that of conscious experience

Abstract: This essay is divided into two parts, deeply intermingled. Part I examines not only the
origin of conscious experience but also how it is possible to ask of our own
consciousness how it came to be. Part II examines the origin of experience itself, which
soon reveals itself as the ontological question of Being. The chief premise of Part I
chapter is that symbolic communion and the categorizations of language have enabled
human organisms to distinguish between themselves as actually existing entities and
their own immediate experience of themselves and their world. This enables them to
reflect upon abstract concepts, including “self,” “experience,” and “world.” Symbolic
communication and conceptualization grow out of identification, the act of first
observing conscious experiencing and intimating what it is like, mimesis, a gestural
protolanguage learned through imitation, and reflection, seeing oneself through the eyes
of others. The step into actual intentional speech is made through self-assertion,
narrative, and intersubjectivity. These three become the spiral of human cultural
development that includes not only the adaptive satisfaction of our biological needs, but
also the creativity of thought. With the mental-conceptual separation of subject and
object – of self and world – the human ability to witness the universe (and each other) is
the ground of our genuinely human quality. Consciousness gives human life its
distinctively human reality. It is, therefore, one and the same ability that enables us to
shape planet Earth by means of conceptual representations (rather than by means of our
hands alone) while also awakening us to the significance of being.

Looking beyond human self-consciousness to investigate the origin and nature of
awareness itself in Part 2, reductive objective materialism is found to be of little use.
Direct experience also falls short in that, in order to be transformed into objective
knowledge about itself, it must always be interpreted through and limited by the
symbolic contexts of culture and the idiosyncratic conceptualizations of the individual.
Awareness in itself must thus be considered ultimately unexplainable, but this may
more indicate its inexpressible transcendence of all symbolic qualifiers than its
nonexistence. It is suggested that awareness is not “self-aware” (as in deity) but is
instead unknowing yet identical with the only true universal: the impetus of creative
unfolding. Our human knowledge, as an expression of this unfolding, is seen to emerge
from our conscious experiencing and, in turn, to have the power – and enormous
responsibility – of directing that experience. Our underlying symbolic worldviews are
found to be autopoietic: They limit or open our conscious experience, which, in turn,
confirms those worldview expectations. As we explore a future of unforeseeable
technological breakthroughs on an ailing planet who patiently copes with our “success,”
truly vital decisions about the nature, meaning, and future of conscious experience will
have to be made.

Abstract: in Encyclopedia of Consciousness, ed. William P. Banks, Amsterdam: Elsevier, forthcoming in 2009

Abstract: consciousness. Such unconscious processing always

Cambridge, UK

tends to re?ect habitual or strong responses. From this

Abstract: be realized. Whatever gets access to phenomenal awareness (to consciousness and P-consciousness are almost always present or P-consciousness as described by Block) is represented within this absent together.

Abstract: Among philosophers in the period of change between the late 18th and early 19th centuries it was a widespread conviction that, because the status of a demonstrative theory made up of axioms and proofs was neither available nor desirable for philosophy, philosophical critique would also not be external to the business of philosophy. Rather it was to belong to the essence of philosophy itself. Against this background Hegel occupied himself almost from the beginning of his philosophical thinking with the question of how a critique that is also able to convince an adherent of a theory differing from one’s own should proceed. Initially it must provide him with a description of his standpoint that he himself can accept. Moreover, the critique must tie up with a method of examination that is part of this standpoint itself, because its adherent would not otherwise have to agree to the procedure. Hegel is interested in this matter not only as a description of the hermeneutic situation in which the adherents of two particular, opposing positions find themselves. Rather, he asks himself whether an idea for the procedure of philosophical critique that commits itself to such considerations can also be generalized. This would require giving a minimalist description of the starting point in a way that allows as large a spectrum as possible of positions that are to be the object of the critique to recognize themselves within it. And the procedure of the critique must be able to be developed from this description itself

Abstract: This paper aims to replace deep sounding unanswerable, time-wasting pseudo- questions which are often posed in the context of attacking some version of the strong AI thesis, with deep, discovery-driving, real questions about the nature and content of internal states of intelligent agents of various kinds. In particular the question

Abstract: Over the past century phenomenology has ably analyzed the basic structuresof consciousness as we experience it. Yet recent philosophy of mind, lookingto brain activity and computational function, has found it difficult to makeroom for the structures of subjectivity and intentionality that phenomenologyhas appraised. In order to understand consciousness as something that is bothsubjective and grounded in neural activity, we need to delve into phenomenologyand ontology. I draw a fundamental distinction in ontology among the form,appearance, and substrate of any entity. Applying this three-facet ontology toconsciousness, we distinguish: the intentionality of consciousness (its form),the way we experience consciousness (its appearance, including so-called qualia),and the physical, biological, and cultural basis of consciousness (its substrate).We can thus show how these very different aspects of consciousness fit togetherin a fundamental ontology. And we can thereby define the proper domains ofphenomenology and other disciplinesthat contribute to our understanding of consciousness

Abstract: In studying folk psychology, cognitive and developmental psychologists have mainly focused on how people conceive of non-experiential states, such as beliefs and desires. As a result, we know very little about how the non-philosophers (or the folk) understand the mental states that philosophers typically classify as being phenomenally conscious. In particular, it is not known whether the folk even tend to classify mental states in terms of their being or not being phenomenally conscious in the first place. Things have changed dramatically in the last few years, however, with a flurry of ground-breaking research by psychologists and experimental philosophers. In this article, I will review this work, carefully distinguishing between two questions: First, are the ascriptions that the folk make with regard to the mental states that philosophers classify as phenomenally conscious related to their decisions about whether morally right or wrong action has been done to an entity? Second, do the folk tend to classify mental states in the way that philosophers do, distinguishing between mental states that are phenomenally conscious and mental states that are not phenomenally conscious?

Abstract: The assumption that the concept of phenomenal consciousness is pretheoretical is often found in the philosophical debates on consciousness. Unfortunately, this assumption has not received the kind of empirical attention that it deserves. We suspect that this is in part due to difficulties that arise in attempting to test folk intuitions about consciousness. In this article we elucidate and defend a key methodological principle for this work. We draw this principle out by considering recent experimental work on the topic by Joshua Knobe and Jesse Prinz (2008). We charge that their studies do not establish that the folk have a concept of phenomenal consciousness in part because they compare group agents to individuals . The problem is that group agents and individuals differ in some significant ways in terms of functional organization and behavior. We propose that future experiments should establish that ordinary people are disposed to ascribe different mental states to entities that are given behaviorally and functionally equivalent descriptions

Abstract: Do philosophers and ordinary people conceive of subjective experience in the same way? In this article, we argue that they do not and that the philosophical concept of phenomenal consciousness does not coincide with the folk conception. We first offer experimental support for the hypothesis that philosophers and ordinary people conceive of subjective experience in markedly different ways. We then explore experimentally the folk conception, proposing that for the folk, subjective experience is closely linked to valence. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for a central issue in the philosophy of mind, the hard problem of consciousness

Abstract: Classical and medieval writers had no term for consciousness in anything like the modern sense, and their philosophy seems not to have been troubled by the mind-body problem. Contemporary eliminativists find strong support in this fact for their claim that consciousness does not exist, or, at least, is not an appropriate scientific explanandum. They typically hold that contemporary conceptions of consciousness are artefacts of Descartes' (now outmoded) views about matter and his unrealistic craving for epistemological certainty. Essentially, they say, our belief in consciousness is a residue of once pressing, but now irrelevant, intellectual tensions between religion and the rising new science of the Early Modern period. With the attempts of Descartes and his successors to resolve these tensions, Western thought began down a track toward the conceptual cul-de-sac of the "hard problem". Plausibly, the problem will only be (dis)solved, and the onward march of science assured, when we are able to shake off the pervasive influence of the Cartesian tradition in a way that goes far beyond the mere rejection of dualism. But when we do so, eliminativists contend, the distinctively Cartesian notion of consciousness will simply drop out of our world-picture, like phlogiston or the vital entelechy

Abstract: An evolutionary point of view is proposed to make more appropriate distinctions between experience, awareness and consciousness. Experience can be defined as a characteristic linked closely to specific pattern matching, a characteristic already apparent at the molecular level at least. Awareness can be regarded as the special experience of one or more central, final modules in the animal neuronal brain. Awareness is what experience is to animals.Finally, consciousness could be defined as reflexive awareness. The ability for reflexive awareness is distinctly different from animal and human awareness and depends upon the availability of a separate frame of reference, as provided by symbolic language. As such, words have made reflexive awareness

Abstract: The following extracts with connecting comments suggest a departure point for a definitions of consciousness that preserves its everyday phenomenology while allowing an understanding of what consciousness is to deepen as scientific investigation proceeds. I argue that current definitions are often theory-driven rather than following the contours of ordinary experience. Consequently they are sometimes too broad, sometimes too narrow, and sometimes not definitions of phenomenal consciousness at all. As an alternative, an ecologically valid, reflexive approach to consciousness is suggested that is consistent with science and with common sense

Abstract: Definitions of consciousness need to be sufficiently broad to include all examples of conscious states and sufficiently narrow to exclude entities, events and processes that are not conscious. Unfortunately, deviations from these simple principles are common in modern consciousness studies, with consequent confusion and internal division in the field. The present paper gives example of ways in which definitions of consciousness can be either too broad or too narrow. It also discusses some of the main ways in which pre-existing theoretical commitments (about the nature of consciousness, mind and world) have intruded into definitions. Similar problems can arise in the way a “conscious process” is defined, potentially obscuring the way that conscious phenomenology actually relates to its neural correlates and antecedent causes in the brain, body and external world. Once a definition of “consciousness” is firmly grounded in its phenomenology, investigations of its ontology and its relationships to entities, events and processes that are not conscious can begin, and this may in time transmute the meaning (or sense) of the term. As our scientific understanding of these relationships deepen, our understanding of what consciousness is will also deepen. A similar transmutation of meaning (with growth of knowledge) occurs with basic terms in physics such as "energy", and "time."

Abstract: Philosophers and scientists seeking to conceptualize consciousness, and subjective experience in particular, have focused on sensation and perception, and have emphasized binding – how a percept holds together. Building on a constructivist approach to conception centered on separistic-holistic complexes incorporating multiple levels of abstraction, the present approach reconceptualizes binding and opens a new path to theorizing the emergence of consciousness. It is proposed that all subjective experience involves multiple levels of abstraction, a central feature of conception. This modifies the prevalent idea of sequential development from sensation through perception to conception. Further, this approach to mind and consciousness links constructivist theory to artistic activity and suggests that conception, subjective experience, aboutness (intentionality), and agency are linked together through separistic-holistic complexes. It also argues for change in the prevailing constructivist view that regards the process of production of new levels of conception as inherently directed towards better fit with the external environment. Copyright © 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel

Abstract: John Searle's review of my book The Conscious Mind appeared in the March 6, 1997 edition of the New York Review of Books. I replied in a letter printed in their May 15, 1997 edition, and Searle's response appeared simultaneously. I set up this web page so that interested people can see my reply to Searle in turn, and to give access to other relevant materials

Abstract: First, I should clarify the notion of "taking consciousness seriously", which serves as a premise in my work. Mulhauser characterizes this as the assumption that no cognitive theory of consciousness will suffice. The latter assumption would indeed beg some crucial questions, but it is not the assumption that I make. I make an assumption about the problem of consciousness, not about any solution. To quote (p. xii): Throughout the book, I have assumed that consciousness exists, and that to redefine the problem as that of explaining how certain cognitive and behavioral functions are performed is unacceptable. This is what I mean by taking consciousness seriously. That is, the premise is simply that there is a phenomenon to be explained, and that the problems of explaining such functions as discrimination, integration, self monitoring, reportability, and so on do not exhaust all the problems in the vicinity. The deepest problem of consciousness, as I understand it, is not the problem of how all these functions are performed, but rather the problem of explaining how and why all this activity supports states of subjective experience

Abstract: In my book _The Conscious Mind_ , I deny a number of claims that John Searle finds "obvious", and I make some claims that he finds "absurd". But if the mind/body problem has taught us anything, it is that nothing about consciousness is obvious, and that one person's obvious truth is another person's absurdity. So instead of throwing around this sort of language, it is best to examine the claims themselves and the arguments that I give for them, to see whether Searle says anything of substance that touches them

Abstract: For a solid quarter century Paul Churchland and I have been wheeling around in the space of work on consciousness, and though from up close it may appear that we =ve been rather vehemently opposed to each other =s position, from the bird =s eye view, we are moving in a rather tight spiral within the universe of contested views, both staunch materialists, interested in the same phenomena and the same empirical theories of those phenomena, but differing only over where the main chance lies for progress

Abstract: Charles Siewert offers a persuasive argument to show that the presence of certain phenomenal features logically suffices for the presence of certain intentional ones. He claims that this shows that (some) phenomenal features are inherently intentional. I argue that he has not established the latter thesis, even if we grant the logical sufficiency claim. For he has not ruled out a rival alternative interpretation of the relevant data, namely, that (some) intentional features are inherently phenomenal

Abstract: _The Significance of Consciousness_ . Princeton: Princeton University Press. $42.50 hbk. x + 374pp. ISBN: 0691027242. ABSTRACT: I discuss three issues about the relation of phenomenal consciousness, in the sense Siewert isolates, to

Abstract: Charles Siewert's _The Significance of Consciousness_ contends that most philosophers and psychologists who have written about "consciousness" have neglected a crucial type or aspect that Siewert calls "phenomenal consciousness" and tries carefully to define. The present article argues that some philosophers, at least, have not neglected phenomenal consciousness and have offered tenable theories of it

Abstract: How are the states of consciousness intrinsically so that they all qualify as ?feelings? in William James?s generic sense? Only a small, propaedeutic part of what is required to address the intrinsic nature of such states can be accomplished here. I restrict my topic mainly to a certain characteristic that belongs to each of those pulses of mentality that successively make up James?s stream of consciousness. Certain statements of James?s are intended to pick out the variable ?width? belonging to a stream of consciousness as it flows. Attention to this proposed property brings me to a discussion of (a) the unitary character of each of the states of consciousness however complex they may frequently be and (b) how to conceive of their complexity without recourse to a misleading spatial metaphor

Abstract: Siewert identifies a special kind of conscious experience, phenomenal consciousness, that is the sort of consciousness missing in a variety of cases of blindsight. He then argues that phenomenal consciousness has been neglected by students of consciousness when it should not be. According to Siewert, the neglect is based at least in part on two false assumptions: (i) phenomenal features are not intentional and (ii) phenomenal character is restricted to sensory experience. By identifying an essential tension in Siewert's characterization of phenomenal consciousness, I argue that his case for denying (i) and (ii) is at best incomplete

Abstract: profile deforms as we move about it. As perceivers we are masters of the patterns of sensorimotor contingency that shape our perceptual interaction with the world. We expect changes in such things as apparent size, shape and color to occur as we actively explore the environment. In encountering perspective-dependent changes of this sort, we learn how things are quite apart form our particular perspective. Our possession of these skills is constitutive of our ability to see (and generally to perceive). This is confirmed by the fact that we can disrupt a person

Abstract: I am lucky to have two such penetrating commentators as Robert Kirk and Andrew Melnyk. It is also fortunate that they come at me from different directions, and so cover different aspects of my book. Robert Kirk has doubts about the overall structure of my enterprise, and in particular about my central commitment to a distinctive species of phenomenal concepts. Andrew Melnyk, by contrast, offers no objections to my general brand of materialism. Instead he focuses specifically on my discussion of the anti-materialist 'intuition of distinctness', raising questions about my attempt to explain this intuition away, and offering alternative suggestions of his own

Abstract: I appeal to Merker's theory to motivate a hypothesis about the ontology of consciousness: Creature consciousness is (at least partially) constitutive of phenomenal consciousness. Rather than elaborating theories of phenomenal consciousness couched solely in terms of state consciousness, as philosophers are fond of doing, a correct approach to phenomenal consciousness should begin with an account of creature consciousness.

Abstract: Is phenomenal consciousness a problem for the brain sciences? An increasing number of researchers hold not only that it is but that its very existence is a deep mystery. That this problematic phenomenon exists is generally taken for granted: It is asserted that phenomenal consciousness is just phenomenologically obvious. In contrast, I hold that there is no such phenomenon and, thus, that it does not pose a problem for the brain sciences. For this denial to be plausible, however, I need to show that phenomenal consciousness is not phenomenologically obvious. That is the goal of this article. †To contact the author, please write to: 1414 Simona Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15201; e‐mail: jmsytsma@gmail.com

Abstract: This paper examines some of the central arguments of John McDowell's Mind and World, particularly his treatment of the Kantian themes of the spontaneity of thought and of the nature of self-consciousness. It is argued that in so far as McDowell departs from Kant, his position becomes less plausible in three respects. First, the space of reason is identified with the space of responsible and critical freedom in a way that runs together issues about synthesis below the level of concepts and at the level of complete judgements. This leads to the unwarranted exclusion of animal minds from the space of reasons. Second, McDowell draws no essential distinction between apperception and inner sense, a distinction which is important to a defensible Kantian view and to the very idea of a sui generis transcendental knowledge of the mind that is consistent with Kant's critical principles. McDowell does not take into account some of Kant's developed arguments about the inherently reflective nature of consciousness which is interpreted as an adverbial theory of the nature of conscious experience, a mode of being in a mental state (so neither an intrinsic nor extrinsic property of it). Third, McDowell endorses a standard treatment of Kant's approach to the mind in which a merely formal account of mind needs to be anchored outside consciousness on the physical body. The arguments for this conclusion, both in Mind and World and in related work by Bermudez and Hurley, is shown to be very inconclusive as a criticism of Kant. The capacity to self-ascribe thoughts that are already conscious shows, but does not say, a truth about the unity of our conscious experience that does not require further anchoring on a physical body; at that stage of the Critique Kant is describing conditions for conscious experience in general, not the conscious experience of spatio-temporally located makers of judgements. The alleged lacuna in Kant's arguments is no lacuna at all

Abstract: The concept of consciousness appears to have had little currency before the 17th century. Not only did philosophers before Descartes fail to worry about how consciousness fitted into the natural world, they did not even claim to be conscious. If we are conscious, however, we must assume that they were too, and it hardly seems plausible that they could have been unaware of it. In fact, when the mind was discussed in former ages, both before and within the work of Descartes, the concept of imagination filled most (not all) of the key conceptual roles that consciousness fills today. Although it was not considered uniquely problematic, in the way that consciousness is, imagination continued to be used in these ways long after the Cartesian revolution. It was both the mental arena where thinking took place - where ideas (images) had their being and their interaction - and, implicitly, the power whereby the deliverances of the material sense organs were integrated and rendered meaningful (and, thereby, rendered 'mental'). This suggests that the study of the imagination (in the relevant senses) ought to have a considerable bearing on the study of consciousness, and it may even provide a way to outflank the notorious 'hard problem' that seems to stand in the way of a direct scientific assault on consciousness itself

Abstract: This essay explores the phenomenon of spirituality by delineating of the rise of free will as a product of a reflective consciousness synthesized from conditioned responses resulting from external demands.

Abstract: There are two quite distinct ways in which events that we normally think of as “physical” relate in an intimate way to events that we normally think of as “psychological”. One intimate relation occurs in exteroception at the point where events in the world become events as-perceived. The other intimate relationship occurs at the interface of conscious experience with its neural correlates in the brain. The chapter examines each of these relationships and positions them within a dual-aspect, reflexive model of how consciousness relates to the brain and external world. The chapter goes on to provide grounds for viewing mind and nature as fundamentally psychophysical, and examines similar views as well as differences in previously unpublished writings of Wolfgang Pauli, one of the founders of quantum mechanics

Abstract: One oft the most fascinating abilities of humans is the ability to become conscious of the own physical and mental states. In this systematic investigation of self-consciousness, a representational theory is developed that is able to distinguish between different levels of self-consciousness. The most basic levels are already present in such simple animals as ants. From these basic forms, which are also relevant for adult human self-consciousness, high-level self-consciousness including self-knowledge can arise. Thereby, the theory is not only able to integrate developmental considerations but also to sharply distinguish different aspects of the complex phenomenon self-consciousness. Pathological breakdowns of these different aspects, as they can be found in schizophrenia, are explained by specific impairments on different levels of self-representation. In this way, the work shows that a naturalistic theory of self-consciousness is possible, if the analysis starts with very simple and basic mechanisms instead of starting on the »top of the iceberg«.

Abstract: Defining Imagery: Experience or Representation?
Historical Development of Ideas about Imagery
Subjective Individual Differences in Imagery Experience
Theories of Imagery, and their Implications for Consciousness
Picture theory
Description theory
Enactive theory

Abstract: A current, comprehensive summary of Velmans' theoretical work that updates and deepens the analysis given in Edition 1. Part 1 reviews the strengths and weaknesses of all currently dominant theories of consciousness in a form suitable for undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers focusing mainly on dualism, physicalism, functionalism and consciousness in machines. Part 2 gives a new analysis of consciousness, grounded in its everyday phenomenology, which undermines the basis of the dualism versus reductionist debate. It also examines the consequences for realism versus idealism, subjectivity, intersubjectivity and objectivity, and the relation of consciousness to brain processing. Part 3 gives a new synthesis, with a novel approach to understanding what consciousness is and what consciousness does. It also introduces Reflexive Monism, an alternative to dualism and reductionism that is consistent with the findings of science and with common sense.

Abstract: In "What is it Like to be a Bat?" Thomas Nagel argues that we cannot imagine what it is like to be a bat or presently understand how physicalism might be true. Both arguments have been seriously misunderstood. I defend them against various objections, point out a problem with the argument against physicalism, and show how the problem can be solved

Abstract: My purpose in this paper is to discuss and defend an objection to physicalist or materialist accounts of the mind

Abstract: In this article I distinguish the notion of there being something it is like to be a certain kind of creature from that of there being something it is like to have a certain kind of experience. Work on consciousness has typically dealt with the latter while employing the language of the former. I propose several ways of analyzing what it is like to be a certain kind of creature and find problems with them all. The upshot is that even if there is something it is like to have certain kinds of experience, it does not follow that there is anything it is like to be a certain kind of creature. Skepticism about the existence of something that it is like to be an F is recommended

Abstract: The concept of consciousness has been the source of much philosophical, cognitive scientific and neuroscientific discussion for the past two decades. Many scientists, as well as philosophers, argue that at the moment we are almost completely in the dark about the nature of consciousness. Stuart Sutherland, in a much quoted remark, wrote that

Abstract: I argue on linguistic grounds that when Mary comes to know what it's like to see a red thing, she comes to know a certain inexpressible truth about the character of her own experience. This affords a "no concept" reply to the knowledge argument. The reason the Knowledge Argument has proven so intractable may be that we believe that an inexpressible concept and an expressible concept cannot have the same referent.

Abstract: I discuss the meaning of 'There's something e is like', in the context of a reply to Eric Lormand's 'The explanatory stopgap'. I argue that Lormand is wrong to think it has a specially perceptual meaning. Rather, it has one of at least four candidate meanings: (a) e is some way as regards its subject; (b) e is some way and e's being that way is in the possession of its subject; (c) e is some way in the awareness of its subject; (d) e's subject is the "experiencer" of e. I provide additional argumentation for the view in this paper that in the context, 'like this' functions as a predicate variable.

Abstract: The central claim of this paper is that what it is like to see green or any other perceptible property is just the perceptual mode of presentation of that property. Perceptual modes of presentation are important because they help resolve a tension in current work on consciousness. Philosophers are pulled by three mutually inconsistent theses: representational externalism, representationalism, and phenomenal internalism. I throw my hat in with defenders of the first two: the externalist representationalists. We are faced with the problem of explaining away intuitions that favor phenomenal internalism. Perceptual modes of presentation account for what it is like to see properties in a way that accommodates those intuitions without vindicating phenomenal internalism itself. Perceptual MoPs therefore provide a new way of being an externalist representationalist

Abstract: Is there an explanatory gap between raw feels and raw material? Some philosophers argue, and many other people believe, that scientific explanations of conscious experience cannot be as satisfying as typical scientific explanations elsewhere, even in our wildest dreams. The underlying philosophical claims are

Abstract: Representationalism is the position that the phenomenal character of an experience is either identical with, or supervenes on, the content of that experience. Many representationalists hold that the relevant content of experience is nonconceptual. I propose a counter-example to this form of representationalism that arises from the phenomenon of Gestalt switching, which occurs when viewing ambiguous figures. First, I argue that one does not need to appeal to the conceptual content of experience or to judge- ments to account for Gestalt switching. I then argue that experiences of certain ambiguous figures are problematic because they have different phenomenal characters but that no difference in the nonconceptual content of these experiences can be identified. I consider three solutions to this problem that have been proposed by both philosophers and psychologists and conclude that none can account for all the ambiguous figures that pose the problem. I conclude that the onus is on representationalists to specify the relevant difference in content or to abandon their position

Abstract: Notably spurred into the philosophical forefront by Thomas Nagel's 'What Is It Like To Be a Bat?' decades ago, and since maintained by a number of advocates of dualism since that critical publication, is the assertion that our inability to know 'what it's like' to be someone or something else is inexplicable given physicalism. Contrary to this well-known and central objection, I find that a consistent and exhaustive physicalism is readily conceivable. I develop one such theory and demonstrate that not only is it consistent with the private and varied nature of subjective experience, it, in fact, entails it

Abstract: Defining consciousness along the lines of Nagel, an organism has consciousness iff there is something it is like to be that organism, I relate three types of consciousness (phenomenal, access and reflexive) to the three types of short-term memory (sensory memories, short-term working memory and the central executive). The suggestion is that these short-term memory stores may be a key feature of consciousness.

Abstract: A familiar story about phenomenal knowledge likens it to indexical knowledge, i.e. knowledge about oneself typically expressed with sentences containing indexicals or demonstratives. The popularity of this sort of story owes in part to its promise of resolving some longstanding puzzles about phenomenal knowledge. One such puzzle arises from the compelling arguments that we can have full objective knowledge of the world while lacking some phenomenal knowledge. I argue that the widespread optimism about the indexical account on this score is unwarranted.

Abstract: A number of writers have deployed the notion of a point of view as a key to the allegedly theory-resistant subjective aspect of experience. I examine that notion more closely than is usually done and find that it cannot support the anti-objectivist's case. Experience may indeed have an irreducibly subjective aspect, but the notion of a point of view cannot be used to show that it does

Abstract: George Herbert Mead's early lectures at the University of Chicago are more important to understanding the genesis of his views in social psychology than some commentators, such as Hans Joas, have emphasized. Mead's lecture series "The Evolution of the Psychical Element," preserved through the notes of student H. Heath Bawden, demonstrate his devotion to Hegelianism as a method of thinking and how this influenced his non-reductionistic approach to functional psychology. In addition, Mead's breadth of historical knowledge as well as his commitments in the natural and social sciences are on display here, culminating in the Darwinian observation that human animals only achieve the degree of control they have over their environment by the achievement of social organization

Abstract: In Word and Object, Quine acknowledged the "practical indispensability" in daily life of the intentional idioms of belief and desire but disparaged such talk as an "essentially dramatic idiom" rather than something from which real science could be made in any straightforward way.Endnote 1 Many who agree on little else have agreed with Quine about this, and have gone on to suggest one or another indirect way for science to accommodate folk psychology: Sellars, Davidson, Putnam, Rorty, Stich, the Churchlands, Schiffer and myself, to name a few. This fainthearted consensus is all wrong, according to Fodor, whose new book is a vigorous--even frantic--defense of what he calls Intentional Realism: beliefs and desires are real, causally involved, determinately contentful states. "We have no reason to doubt," Fodor says, "that it is possible to have a scientific psychology that vindicates commonsense belief/desire explanation." (p.16)

Abstract: Many philosophical issues concern questions of objectivity and subjectivity. Of these questions, there are two kinds. The first considers whether something is objective or subjective; the second what it _means_ for something to be objective or subjective

Abstract: Many have urged that the biggest obstacles to a physicalistic understanding of consciousness are the problems raised in connection with the subjectivity of consciousness. These problems are most acutely expressed in consideration of the knowledge argument against physicalism. I develop a novel account of the subjectivity of consciousness by explicating the ways in which mental representations may be perspectival. Crucial features of my account involve analogies between the representations involved in sensory experience and the ways in which pictorial representations exhibit perspectives or points of view. I argue that the resultant account of subjectivity provides a basis for the strongest response physicalists can give to the knowledge argument

Abstract: Philosophical tradition contains two major lines of thought concerning the relative difficulty of the notions of objectivity and subjectivity. One tradition, which we might characterize as

Abstract: The so-called subjectivity of conscious experience is central to much recent work in the philosophy of mind. Subjectivity is the alleged property of consciousness whereby one can know what it is like to have certain conscious states only if one has undergone such states oneself. I review neurophilosophical work on consciousness and concepts pertinent to this claim and argue that subjectivity eliminativism is at least as well supported, if not more supported, than subjectivity reductionism

Abstract: ...the problem of...how cognition...is possible at all...can never be answered on the basis of a prior knowledge of the transcendent [i.e. the external, spatio-temporal, empirical]...no matter whence the knowledge or the judgments are borrowed, not even if they are taken from the exact sciences.... It will not do to draw conclusions from existences of which one knows but which one cannot "see". "Seeing" does not lend itself to demonstration or deduction. [Husserl 1964a, pp. 2-3]

Abstract: Before one can even begin to model consciousness and what exactly it means that it is a subjective phenomenon one needs a theory about what a first-person perspective really is. This theory has to be conceptually convincing, empirically plausible and, most of all, open to new developments. The chosen conceptual framework must be able to accommodate scientific progress. Its ba- sic assumptions have to be plastic as it were, so that new details and empirical data can continuously be fed into the theoretical model as it grows and becomes more refined. This paper makes an attempt at sketching the outlines of such a theory, offering a representationalist analysis of the phenomenal first-person perspective. Three phenomenal target properties are centrally relevant:

Abstract: Human beings have the unique ability to view the world in a detached way: We can think about the world in terms that transcend our own experience or interest, and consider the world from a vantage point that is, in Nagel's words, "nowhere in particular". At the same time, each of us is a particular person in a particular place, each with his own "personal" view of the world, a view that we can recognize as just one aspect of the whole. How do we reconcile these two standpoints--intellectually, morally, and practically? To what extent are they irreconcilable and to what extent can they be integrated? Thomas Nagel's ambitious and lively book tackles this fundamental issue, arguing that our divided nature is the root of a whole range of philosophical problems, touching, as it does, every aspect of human life. He deals with its manifestations in such fields of philosophy as: the mind-body problem, personal identity, knowledge and skepticism, thought and reality, free will, ethics, the relation between moral and other values, the meaning of life, and death. Excessive objectification has been a malady of recent analytic philosophy, claims Nagel, it has led to implausible forms of reductionism in the philosophy of mind and elsewhere. The solution is not to inhibit the objectifying impulse, but to insist that it learn to live alongside the internal perspectives that cannot be either discarded or objectified. Reconciliation between the two standpoints, in the end, is not always possible

Abstract: Some of our most important mental states and events have a minimal objectivity, in this intuitive sense: a thinker’s being in the state, or enjoying the event, does not in general make the content of the state or event correct. In general, making a judgement is one thing, the correctness of what is judged is another. Having a perceptual experience as of something’s being the case does not in general make it the case. Valuing things that have a certain property does not in general make possession of that property something of value. What explains this minimal objectivity? How is it possible?

Abstract: A hypothetical evolutionary scenario is offered meant to account for the emergence of mental selves. According to the scenario, mental selves are constructed to solve a source-attribution problem. They emerge when internally generated mental contents (e.g., thoughts and goals) are treated like messages arising from external personal sources. As a result, mental contents becomes attributed to the self as an internal personal source. According to this view, subjectivity is construed outward-in, that is, one's own mental self is derived from, and is secondary to, the mental selves perceived in others. The social construction of subjectivity and selfhood relies on, and is maintained in, various discourses on subjectivity

Abstract: Thomas Nagel argues that the subjective character of mind inevitably eludes philosophical efforts to incorporate the mental into a single, complete, physically objective view of the world. Nagel sees contemporary philosophy as caught on the horns of a dilemma

Abstract: This book explores the evolution of space and time from the apeiron—the spaceless, timeless chaos of primordial nature. Steven M. Rosen examines Western culture’s past efforts to deny the apeiron, and the present possibility that lifting the repression of apeiron might serve to advance the process of human individuation. In proposing a radical rethinking of science’s underlying notions of space and time, Rosen employs phenomenological philosophy (primarily Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger), supplemented by an original application of the qualitative field of mathematics known as topology.

Abstract: Physics says that it cannot deal with the mind-brain problem, because it does not deal in subjectivities, and mind is subjective. However, biologists (among others) still claim to seek a material basis for subjective mental processes, which would thereby render them objective. Something is clearly wrong here. I claim that what is wrong is the adoption of too narrow a view of what constitutes objectivity, especially in identifying it with what a machine can do. I approach the problem in the light of two cognate circumstances: (a) the measurement problem in quantum physics, and (b) the objectivity of standard mathematics, even though most of it is beyond the reach of machines. I argue that the only resolution to such problems is in the recognition that closed loops of causation are objective; i.e. legitimate objects of scientific scrutiny. These are explicitly forbidden in any machine or mechanism. A material system which contains such loops is called complex. Such complex systems thus must possess nonsimulable models; i.e. models which contain impredicativities or self-references which cannot be removed, or faithfully mapped into a single coherent syntactic time-frame. I consider a few of the consequences of the above, in the context of thus redrawing the boundary between subject and object

Abstract: In this article, the author defends his claim that a subtle form of metaphysical dualism can be found in Alfred North Whitehead's central notion of the "actual occasion." Rosen contends that phenomenological philosophers such as Martin Heidegger go further than Whitehead in challenging traditional dualism.

Abstract: The central thesis of this paper is that contemporary theoretical physics is grounded in philosophical presuppositions that make it difficult to effectively address the problems of subject-object interaction and discontinuity inherent to quantum gravity. The core objectivist assumption implicit in relativity theory and quantum mechanics is uncovered and we see that, in string theory, this assumption leads into contradiction. To address this challenge, a new philosophical foundation is proposed based on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger. Then, through the application of qualitative topology and hypernumbers, phenomenological ideas about space, time, and dimension are brought into focus so as to provide specific solutions to the problems of force-field generation and unification. The phenomenological string theory that results speaks to the inconclusiveness of conventional string theory and resolves its core contradiction.

Abstract: This book confronts basic anomalies in the foundations of contemporary knowledge. Rosen deals with paradoxes that call into question conventional ways of thinking about space and time, and the nature of human experience. In the course of bringing together theoretical science and phenomenological thought, the author offers a process theory in which space, time, and consciousness undergo continuous internal transformation and organic growth. The work is “transcultural” in the sense of bridging the “two cultures” of science and the humanities.

Abstract: The concept of “flesh” in philosophical terms derives from the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This was the word he used to name the concrete realm of sentient bodies and life processes that has been eclipsed by the abstractions of science, technology, and modern culture. Topology, to conventional understanding, is the branch of mathematics that concerns itself with the properties of geometric figures that stay the same when the figures are stretched or deformed. "Topologies of the Flesh" is a blend of continental thought and mathematical imagination that proposes a new area of philosophical inquiry: topological phenomenology. Through the application of qualitative mathematics, the work extends the approaches of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger so as to offer a detailed exploration of previously uncharted dimensions of human experience and the natural world.

Abstract: This book offers an original way of thinking about two of the most significant problems confronting modern theoretical physics: the unification of the forces of nature and the evolution of the universe. In bringing out the inadequacies of the prevailing approach to these questions, the author demonstrates the need for more than just a new theory. The meanings of space and time themselves must be radically rethought, which requires a whole new philosophical foundation. To this end, the book turns to the phenomenological writings of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Their insights into space and time bring the natural world to life in a manner well-suited to the dynamic phenomena of contemporary physics.

Abstract: This essay is written at the crossroads of intuitive holism, as typified in Eastern thought, and the discursive reflectiveness more characteristic of the West. The point of departure is the age-old human need to overcome fragmentation and realize wholeness. Three basic tasks are set forth: to provide some new insight into the underlying obstacle to wholeness, to show what would be necessary for surmounting this blockage, and to take a concrete step in that direction. At the outset, the question of paradox is addressed, examined in relation to Zen meditation, the problem of language, and the thinking of Heidegger. Wholeness is to be realized through paradox, and it is shown that a complete realization requires that paradox be embodied. Drawing from the fields of visual geometry and qualitative mathematics, three concrete models of paradox are offered: the Necker cube, the Moebius surface, and the Klein bottle. In attempting to model wholeness, an important limitation is recognized: a model is a symbolic representation that maintains the division between the reality represented and the act of symbolizing that reality. It is demonstrated that while the first two models are subject to this limitation, the Klein bottle, possessing higher dimensionality, can express wholeness more completely, provided that it is approached in a radically nonclassical way. The final question of this essay concerns its own capability as an essay. It is asked whether the present text is restricted to affording a mere abstract reflection on wholeness, or whether wholeness can tangibly be delivered.

Abstract: Self-consciousness, many philosophers agree, is essential to being a person. There is not so much agreement, however, about how to understand what self- consciousness is. Philosophers in the field of cognitive science tend to write off self- consciousness as unproblematic. According to such philosophers, the real difficulty for the cognitive scientist is phenomenal consciousness--the fact that we (and other organisms) have states that feel a certain way. If we had a grip on phenomenal consciousness, they think, self-consciousness could be easily handled by functionalist models. For example, recently Ned Block commented,

Abstract: A familiar story about phenomenal knowledge likens it to indexical knowledge, i.e. knowledge about oneself typically expressed with sentences containing indexicals or demonstratives. The popularity of this sort of story owes in part to its promise of resolving some longstanding puzzles about phenomenal knowledge. One such puzzle arises from the compelling arguments that we can have full objective knowledge of the world while lacking some phenomenal knowledge. I argue that the widespread optimism about the indexical account on this score is unwarranted.

Abstract: It is not uncommon to find assumptions being made about folk psychology in the discussions of phenomenal consciousness in philosophy of mind. In this article I consider one example, focusing on what Dan Dennett says about the “folk theory of consciousness.” I show that he holds that the folk believe that the sensory qualities that we are acquainted with in ordinary perception are phenomenal qualities. Nonetheless, the shape of the folk theory is an empirical matter and in the absence of empirical investigation there is ample room for doubt. Fortunately, experimental evidence on the topic is now being produced by experimental philosophers and psychologists. This article contributes to this growing literature, presenting the results of six new studies on the folk view of colors and pains. I argue that the results indicate against Dennett’s theory of the folk theory of consciousness

Abstract: During the last two decades, several different anti-physicalist arguments based on an epistemic or conceptual gap between the phenomenal and the physical have been proposed. The most promising physicalist line of defense in the face of these arguments – the Phenomenal Concept Strategy – is based on the idea that these epistemic and conceptual gaps can be explained by appeal to the nature of phenomenal concepts rather than the nature of non-physical phenomenal properties. Phenomenal concepts, on this proposal, involve unique cognitive mechanisms, but none that could not be fully physically implemented. David Chalmers has recently presented a Master Argument to show that the Phenomenal Concept Strategy – not just this or that version of it, but any version of it – fails. Chalmers argues that the phenomenal concepts posited by such theories are either not physicalistically explicable, or they cannot explain our epistemic situation with regard to qualia. I argue that it is his Master Argument that fails. My claim is his argument does not provide any new reasons to reject the Phenomenal Concept Strategy. I also argue that, although the Phenomenal Concept Strategy is successful in showing that the physicalist is not rationally compelled to give up physicalism in the light of the anti-physicalist arguments, the anti-physicalist is not rationally compelled to give up the anti-physicalist argument in the light of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy either.

Abstract: At the start of the 20th century the question of whether life could be explained in purely me- chanical terms was as hotly debated as the mind-body problem is today. Two factions opposed each other: Biological mechanists claimed that the properties characteristic of living organisms (metabolism, perception, goal-directed behavior, procreation, morphogenesis) could be ex- plained mechanistically, in the way the behavior of a clock can be explained by the properties and the arrangement of its cogs, springs, and weights. Substantial vitalists, on the other hand, maintained that the explanation envisaged by the mechanists was impossible and that one had to postulate a special nonphysical substance in order to explain life

Abstract: Proponents of the explanatory gap claim that consciousness is a mystery. No one has ever given an account of how a physical thing could be identical to a phenomenal one. We fully understand the identity between water and H2O but the identity between pain and the firing of C-fibers is inconceivable. Mark Johnston [Journal of philosophy (1997), 564–583] suggests that if water is constituted by H2O, not identical to it, then the explanatory gap becomes a pseudo-problem. This is because all “manifest kinds”—those identified in experience—are on a par in not being identical to their physical bases, so that the special problem of the inconceivability of ‘pain = the firing of C-fibers’ vanishes. Moreover, the substitute relation, constitution, raises no explanatory difficulties: pain can be constituted by its physical base, as can water. The thesis of this paper is that the EG does not disappear when we substitute constitution for identity. I examine four arguments for the EG, and show that none of them is undermined by the move from constitution to identity

Abstract: The explanatory gap . Consciousness is a mystery. No one has ever given an account, even a highly speculative, hypothetical, and incomplete account of how a physical thing could have phenomenal states. (Nagel, 1974, Levine, 1983) Suppose that consciousness is identical to a property of the brain, say activity in the pyramidal cells of layer 5 of the cortex involving reverberatory circuits from cortical layer 6 to the thalamus and back to layers 4 and 6,as Crick and Koch have suggested for visual consciousness. (See Crick (1994).) Still, that identity itself calls out for explanation! Proponents of an explanatory gap disagree about whether the gap is permanent. Some (e.g. Nagel, 1974) say that we are like the scientifically naive person who is told that matter = energy, but does not have the concepts required to make sense of the idea. If we can acquire these concepts, the gap is closable. Others say the gap is uncloseable because of our cognitive limitations. (McGinn, 1991) Still others say that the gap is a consequence of the fundamental nature of consciousness

Abstract: It will not have escaped notice that the defendant in this afternoon

Abstract: I argue that the explanatory gap is generated by factors consistent with the view that qualia are physical properties. I begin by considering the most plausible current approach to this issue based on recent work by Valerie Hardcastle and Clyde Hardin. Although their account of the source of the explanatory gap and our potential to close it is attractive, I argue that it is too speculative and philosophically problematic. I then argue that the explanatory gap should not concern physicalists because it makes excessive demands on physical theory

Abstract: Can phenomenal consciousness be given a reductive natural explanation? Exponents of an

Abstract: Confronted with the apparent explanatory gap between physical processes and consciousness, there are many possible reactions. Some deny that any explanatory gap exists at all. Some hold that there is an explanatory gap for now, but that it will eventually be closed. Some hold that the explanatory gap corresponds to an ontological gap in nature

Abstract: _tableau_ can be given a full and satisfying explanation, while others cannot. We can explain in a full and satisfying way why the water in the mug is identical with H2O, why its liquidity is identical with a state of its molecular bonds, and why its heat is identical with its molecules being in motion. But we cannot explain in the same way why the neural processes which Joe undergoes when he looks at the mug are such as to make the mug look green, and not red. The latter explanations have gaps

Abstract: Chalmers has provided a dilemmatic master argument against all forms of the phenomenal concept strategy. This paper explores a position that evades Chalmers's argument, dubbed Type Bb: it is for Type B physicalists who embrace horn b of Chalmers's dilemma. The discussion concludes that Chalmers fails to show any incoherence in the position of a Type B physicalist who depends on the phenomenal concept strategy.

Abstract: This paper is a defence of Terence Horgan’s claim that any genuinely physicalist position must distinguish itself from (what has been traditionally known as) emergentism. I argue that physicalism is necessarily reductive in character -- it must either give a reductive account of apparently non-physical entities, or a reductive explanation of why there are non-physical entities. I argue that many recent ‘nonreductive’ physicalists do not do this, and that because of this they cannot adequately distinguish their view from emergentism. The conclusion is that this is the real challenge posed by Joseph Levine’s ‘explanatory gap’ argument: if physicalists cannot close the explanatory gap in Levine’s preferred way, they must find some other way to do it. Otherwise their view is indistinguishable from emergentism

Abstract: J. G. Taylor advances an empirically testable local neural network model to understand the neural correlates of phenomenal experience. Taylor's model is better able to explain the presence (i.e., persistence, latency, and seamlessness) and unity of phenomenal consciousness which support the idea that consciousness is coherent, undivided, and centered. However, Taylor fails to offer a satisfactory explanation of the nonlinear relationship between local and global neural systems. In addition, the ontological assumptions that PE is immediate, intrinsic, and incorrigible limit an understanding of the different experiential forms consciousness takes during neurobehavioral development. Recent studies suggest that neurobehavioral development is discontinuous and that judgment emerges under conditions of uncertainty to render feeling and perception in equivalent terms of energy and behavior. Approaching the problem of phenomenal experience from a developmental perspective may help resolve the paradox of feeling infinitely close as well as distant from one's self

Abstract: This paper considers the so-called explanatory gap between brain activity and conscious experience. A number of different, though closely related, explanatory gaps are distinguished and a monistic account of conscious experience, a version of Herbert Feigl's "dual-access theory," is advocated as a solution to the problems they are taken to pose for physicalist accounts of mind. Although dual-access theory is a version of the mind-body identity thesis, it in no way "eliminates" conscious experience; rather, it provides a parsimonious and explanatorily fruitful theory of the consciousness-body relation which faithfully preserves the nature of conscious experience while going quite far in "bridging" the various explanatory gaps distinguished below

Abstract: One of the most important arguments against physicalism is the so-called conceivability argument. Intuitively, this argument claims that since certain statements concerning the separation of the physical and the phenomenal are conceivable, they are possible. This inference from conceivability to possibility has been challenged in numerous ways. One of these ways is the so-called phenomenal concept strategy, which has become one of the main strategies against the conceivability argument. David Chalmers says it “is perhaps the most attractive option for a physicalist to take in responding to the problem of consciousness”.2 Certainly, in the recent years, a multitude of proposals of that sort have been proposed and developed.3 However, Chalmers (2006) has recently argued that no version of the phenomenal concept strategy can succeed. In what follows, I will examine his argument for that conclusion, and I will argue that it is not sound. I will conclude that he has not posed any serious problem for the phenomenal concept strategy to succeed..

Abstract: According to many philosophers, there is an explanatory gap between physical truths and phenomenal truths. Someone could know all the physical truths about the world, and in particular, all the physical information about the brain and the neurophysiology of vision, and still not know what it is like to see red (Jackson 1982, 1986). According to a similar example, someone could know all the physical truths about bats and still not know what it is like to be a bat (Nagel 1974). We can conceive of an individual that is physically identical to me, molecule per molecule, but does not have any phenomenally conscious state whatsoever (Chalmers 1996). Some philosophers have argued that the explanatory gap shows that we cannot explain consciousness in physical terms (Levine 2001), or even that phenomenal consciousness is not physical and therefore physicalism is false (Chalmers 1996, 2002)

Abstract: The claim that there is an explanatory gap between physical and phenomenal properties is perhaps the leading current challenge to materialist views about the mind. Tye tries to block this challenge, not by providing an explanation to bridge the gap but by denying that phenomenalphysical identities introduce an explanatory gap. Since an explanatory gap exists only if there is something unexplained that needs explaining, and something needs explaining only if it can be explained (whether or not it lies within the power of human-beings to explain it), there is no gap. (Tye ????, p. ???) Tyes strategy differs crucially from the claim that identities never stand in need of explanation because they constitute ultimate explanations; for he allows that identities such as water = H?O are explainable. Unlike WATER and H?O, which are descriptive concepts, phenomenal concepts are perspectival and hence irreducible to descriptive concepts, according to Tye. The fact that something picked out by a perspectival concept is identical to something picked out by a non-perspectival concept cannot be explained.1 So, he concludes, phenomenalphysical identities need not be explained

Abstract: This paper investigates the status of the purported explanatory gap between pain phenomena and natural science, when the “gap” is thought to exist due to the special properties of experience designated by “qualia” or “the pain quale” in the case of pain experiences. The paper questions the existence of such a property in the case of pain by: (1) looking at the history of the conception of pain; (2) raising questions from empirical research and theory in the psychology of pain; (3) considering evidence from the neurophysiological systems of pain; (4) investigating the possible biological role or roles of pain; and (5) considering methodological questions of the comparable status of the results of the sciences of pain in contrast to certain intuitions underpinning “the explanatory gap” in the case of pain. Skepticism concerning the crucial underlying intuitions seems justified by these considerations

Abstract: Discussions of the mind-body problem often refer to an

Abstract: A robot that is functionally indistinguishable from us may or may not be a mindless Zombie. There will never be any way to know, yet its functional principles will be as close as we can ever get to explaining the mind

Abstract: Levine (1997) claims that Locating Consciousness (1995) does not seriously address the problem of the explanatory gap; instead it merely provides lots of data. Here I argue that, contrary to the intuitions of some philosophers, the best remedy for our gaps in explanation and understanding is in fact through empirical investigation

Abstract: Presents the author’s view of the best current positions on certain core philosophical and psychological problems. These positions together suggest a traditional nihilist perspective modified by evolutionary psychology and other contemporary thinking that accepts limitations on our understanding (rather than the conclusive non-existence of certain explanations), the psychological (if not absolute) reality of values, free will and other phenomena and our desire to live as best we can. The positions presented are: (1) the origin of the universe cannot be understood, (2) morality has no absolute rational foundation, (3) some people have unquestioned beliefs they view as absolute, (4) we don’t really have free will but can act as if we do, (5) brains are conscious but we don’t know how, (6) we live by relative values, biological dispositions, upbringing, habit and choice and (7) we don’t know how much we can modify ourselves, what makes us happy or what we value

Abstract: According to the self-representational theory of consciousness – self- representationalism for short – a mental state is phenomenally conscious when, and only when, it represents itself in the right way. In this paper, I consider how self- representationalism might address the alleged explanatory gap between phenomenal consciousness and physical properties. I open with a presentation of self- representationalism and the case for it (§1). I then present what I take to be the most promising self-representational approach to the explanatory gap (§2). That approach is threatened, however, by an objection to self-representationalism, due to Levine, which I call the just more representation objection (§3). I close with a discussion of how the self-representationalist might approach the objection (§4).

Abstract: Conscious experience presents a deep puzzle. On the one hand, a fairly robust materialism must be true in order to explain how it is that conscious events causally interact with non-conscious, physical events. On the other hand, we cannot explain how physical phenomena give rise to conscious experience. In this wide-ranging study, Joseph Levine explores both sides of the mind-body dilemma, presenting the first book-length treatment of his highly influential ideas on the "explanatory gap," the fact that we can't explain the nature of phenomenal experience in terms of its physical realization. He presents a careful argument that there is such a gap, and, after providing intriguing analyses of virtually all existing theories of consciousness, shows that recent attempts to close it fall short of the mark. Levine concludes that in the foreseeable future consciousness will remain a mystery

Abstract: Contrary to certain rumours, the mind-body problem is alive and well. So argues Joseph Levine in Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness . The main argument is simple enough. Considerations of causal efficacy require us to accept that subjective experiential, or 'phenomenal', properties are realized in basic non-mental, probably physical properties. But no amount of knowledge of those physical properties will allow us conclusively to deduce facts about the existence and nature of phenomenal properties. This failure of deducibility constitutes an explanatory problem - an explanatory gap - but does not imply the existence of immaterial mental properties. Levine introduced this notion of the explanatory gap almost two decades ago. Purple Haze allows Levine to situate the explanatory gap in a broader philosophical context. He engages with those who hold that the explanatory gap is best understood as implying anti-materialist metaphysical conclusions. But he also seeks to distance himself from contemporary naturalistic philosophical theorizing about consciousness by arguing that reductive and eliminative theories of consciousness all fail. Levine's work is best seen as an attempt to firmly establish a definite status for the mind-body problem, i.e. that the mind-body problem is a real, substantive epistemological problem but emphatically not a metaphysical one. Because Levine's work is tightly focused upon contemporary Anglophone analytic philosophy of mind, there is little discussion of the broader conceptual background to the mind-body problem. My aim here is to place Levine's work in a broader conceptual context. In particular, I focus on the relationship between consciousness and intentionality in the belief that doing so will allow us better to understand and evaluate Levine's arguments and their place in contemporary theorizing about mentality and consciousness

Abstract: Wittgenstein demystified the notion of ''observational self-knowledge''. He dislodged the long-standing conception that we have privileged access to our impressions, sensations and feelings through introspection, and more precisely eliminated knowing as the kind of awareness that normally characterizes our first-person present-tense psychological statements. He was not thereby questioning our awareness of our emotions or sensations, but debunking the notion that we come to that awareness via any epistemic route. This makes the spontaneous linguistic articulation of our sensations and impressions nondescriptive. Not descriptions, but expressions that seem more akin to behaviour than to language. I suggest that Wittgenstein uncovered a new species of speech acts. Far from the prearranged consecration of words into performatives, utterances are deeds through their very spontaneity. This gives language a new aura: the aura of the reflex action. I argue, against Peter Hacker, that spontaneous utterances have the categorial status of deeds. This has no reductive consequences in that I do not suggest that one category is reduced to another, but that the boundary between them is porous. This explodes the myth of an explanatory gap between the traditionally distinct categories of saying (or thinking) and doing, or of mind and body

Abstract: The explanatory gap and theknowledge argument are rooted in the conflationof propositional and phenomenal knowledge. Thebasic knowledge argument is based on theconsideration that ``physical information'' aboutthe nervous system is unable to provide theknowledge of a ``color experience'' (Jackson,1982). The implication is that physicalism isincomplete or false because it leaves somethingunexplained. The problem with Jackson'sargument is that physical information has theform of highly symbolic propositional knowledgewhereas phenomenal knowledge consists in innateneurophysiological processes. In addition totheir fundamental epistemological differences,clinical, anatomical, pathological and brainimaging studies demonstrate that phenomenal andpropositional knowledge are fundamentallydifferent neurobiological processes. Propositional knowledge is phylogeneticallynew, highly symbolic, culturally acquired,exclusively human and expressible in differentnatural and artificial languages. By contrast,phenomenal knowledge (i.e.: knowingwhat-it-is-like to see a color) consists inqualitative experiences and phenomenal conceptsthat provide an internal, language-independentreference to the properties of objects and theneeds of the organism. Language andpropositional knowledge are exclusively humanattributes implemented in specific regions ofthe dominant hemisphere. This contrastssharply with the phylogenicallysensory areas that are common to animals andhumans, which implement qualitativeexperiences. Experiences are hard-wiredneurobiological processes that can neither betransmitted nor re-created through thesymbolism of propositions. Thus, I concludethat the fallacy in the explanatory gap and inthe knowledge argument is a fallacy ofequivocation that results from ignoringfundamental neurobiological differences betweenphenomenal and propositional knowledge

Abstract: The American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers. Harman

Abstract: Consciousness often presents itself as a problem for materialists because no matter which physical explanation we consider, there seems to remain something about conscious experience that hasn't been fully explained. This gives rise to an apparent explanatory gap. The explanatory gulf between the physical and the conscious is reflected in the broader population, in which dualistic intuitions abound. Drawing on recent empirical evidence, this essay presents a dual-process cognitive model of consciousness attribution. This dual-process model, we suggest, provides an important part of the explanation for why dualism is so attractive and the explanatory gap so vexing

Abstract: I argue that O'Regan & Noë's (O&N's) theory is in a no better position than any other theory to solve the “hard problem” of consciousness. Getting rid of the explanatory gap by exchanging sensorimotor contingencies for neural representations is an illusion

Abstract: On the first page of The Problem of Consciousness (1991), Colin McGinn asks "How is it possible for conscious states to depend on brain states? How can technicolour phenomenology arise from soggy grey matter?" Many philosophers feel that questions like these pose an unanswerable challenge to physicalism. They argue that there is no way of bridging the "explanatory gap" between the material brain and the lived world of conscious experience (Levine, 1983), and that physicalism about the mind can therefore provide no answer to the "hard problem" of why brains give rise to consciousness (Chalmers, 1996)

Abstract: A widely accepted theory holds that emotional experiences occur mainly in a part of the human brain called the amygdala. A different theory asserts that color sensation is located in a small subpart of the visual cortex called V4. If these theories are correct, or even approximately correct, then they are remarkable advances toward a scientific explanation of human conscious experience. Yet even understanding the claims of such theories

Abstract: Cognitive science is shamelessly materialistic. It maintains that human beings are nothing more than complex physical systems, ultimately and completely explicable in mechanistic terms. But this conception of humanity does not ?t well with common sense. To think of the creatures we spend much of our day loving, hating, admiring, resenting, comparing ourselves to, trying to understand, blaming, and thanking -- to think of them as mere mechanisms seems at best counterintuitive and unhelpful. More often it may strike us as ludicrous, or even abhorrent. We are

Abstract: It is argued that the explanatory gap argument, according to which it is fundamentally impossible to explain qualitative mental states in a physicalist theory of mind, is unsound. The main argument in favour of the explanatory gap is presented, which argues that an identity statement of mind and brain has no explanatory force, in contrast to "normal" scientific identity statements. Then it is shown that "normal" scientific identity statements also do not conform to the demands set by the proponent of the explanatory gap. Rather than accept all such gaps, it is argued that we should deny the explanatory gap in a physicalist theory of mind

Abstract: One popular materialist response to the explanatory gap identifies phenomenal concepts with type-demonstrative concepts. This kind of response, however, faces a serious challenge: Our phenomenal concepts seem to provide a richer characterization of their referents than just the demonstrative characterization of ‘that quality’. In this paper, I develop a materialist account that beefs up the contents of phenomenal concepts while retaining the idea that these contents contain demonstrative elements. I illustrate this account by focusing on our phenomenal concepts of phenomenal colour. The phenomenal colours stand in a similarity space relative to one another in virtue of being complex qualities—qualities that contain saturation, lightness, and various aspects of hue as component elements. Our phenomenal concepts, in turn, provide a demonstrative characterization of each of these component elements as well as a description of how much of that element is present in a given phenomenal colour. The result is an account where phenomenal concepts contain demonstrative elements and yet provide a significantly richer characterization of the intrinsic nature of their referents than just ‘that quality’.

Abstract: This paper examines a paradigm case of allegedly successful reductive explanation, viz. the explanation of the fact that water boils at 100°C based on facts about H2O. The case figures prominently in Joseph Levine’s explanatory gap argument against physicalism. The paper studies the way the argument evolved in the writings of Levine, focusing especially on the question how the reductive explanation of boiling water figures in the argument. It will turn out that there are two versions of the explanatory gap argument to be found in Levine’s writings. The earlier version relies heavily on conceptual analysis and construes reductive explanation as a process of deduction. The later version makes do without conceptual analysis and understands reductive explanations as based on theoretic reductions that are justified by explanatory power. Along the way will be shown that the bridge principles — which are being neglected in the explanatory gap literature — play a crucial role in the explanatory gap argument.

Abstract: A familiar story about phenomenal knowledge likens it to indexical knowledge, i.e. knowledge about oneself typically expressed with sentences containing indexicals or demonstratives. The popularity of this sort of story owes in part to its promise of resolving some longstanding puzzles about phenomenal knowledge. One such puzzle arises from the compelling arguments that we can have full objective knowledge of the world while lacking some phenomenal knowledge. I argue that the widespread optimism about the indexical account on this score is unwarranted.

Abstract: The contemporary epistemic status of mental health disciplines does not allow the cross validation of mental disorders among various genetic markers, biochemical pathway or mechanisms, and clinical assessments in neuroscience explanations. We attempt to provide a meta-empirical analysis of the contemporary status of the cross-disciplinary issues existing between neuro-biology and psychopathology. Our case studies take as an established medical mode an example cross validation between biological sciences and clinical cardiology in the case of myocardial infarction. This is then contrasted with the incoherence between neuroscience and psychiatry in the case of bipolar disorders. We examine some methodological problems arising from the neuro-imaging studies, specifically the experimental paradigm introduced by the team of Wayne Drevets. Several theoretical objections are raised: temporal discordance, state independence, and queries about the reliability and specificity, and failure of convergent validity of the inter-disciplinary attempt. Both modern neuroscience and clinical psychology taken as separate fields have failed to reveal the explanatory mechanisms underlying mental disorders. The data acquired inside the mono-disciplinary matrices of neurobiology and psychopathology are deeply insufficient concerning their validity, reliability, and utility. Further, there haven’t been developed any effective trans-disciplinary connections between them. It raises the requirement for development of explanatory significant multi-disciplinary “meta-language” in psychiatry (Berrios, 2006, 2008). We attempt to provide a novel conceptual model for an integrative dialogue between psychiatry and neuroscience that actually includes criteria for cross-validation of the common used psychiatric categories and the different assessment methods. The major goal of our proactive program is the foundation of complementary “bridging” connections of neuroscience and psychopathology which may stabilize the cognitive meta-structure of the mental health knowledge. This entails bringing into synergy the disparate discourses of clinical psychology and neuroscience. One possible model accomplishment of this goal would be the synergistic (or at least compatible) integration of the knowledge under trans-disciplinary convergent cross-validation of the commonly used methods and notions

Abstract: A number of philosophers have recently argued that (i) consciousness properties are identical with some set of physical or functional properties and that (ii) we can explain away the frequently felt puzzlement about this claim as a delusion or confusion generated by our different ways of apprehending or thinking about consciousness. This paper examines David Papineau’s influential version of this view. According to Papineau, the difference between our “phenomenal” and “material” concepts of consciousness produces an instinctive but erroneous intuition that these concepts can’t co-refer. I claim that this account fails. To begin with, it is arguable that we are mystified about physicalism even when the account predicts that we shouldn’t be. Further, and worse, the account predicts that an “intuition of distinctness” will arise in cases where it clearly does not. In conclusion, I make some remarks on the prospects for, constraints on, and (physicalist) alternatives to, a successful defence of the claim (ii)

Abstract: An exploration is given of neural network features now being uncovered in cortical processing which begins to go a little way to help bridge the ''Explanatory Gap'' between phenomenal consciousness and correlated brain activity. A survey of properties suggested as being possessed by phenomenal consciousness leads to a set of criteria to be required of the correlated neural activity. Various neural styles of processing are reviewed and those fitting the criteria are selected for further analysis. One particular processing style, in which semiautonomous and long-lasting cortical activity ''bubbles'' are created by input, is selected as being the most appropriate. Further experimental criteria are used to help narrow the possible neural styles involved. This leads to a class of neural models underpinning phenomenal consciousness and to a related set of testable predictions

Abstract: The thesis that there is a troublesome explanatory gap between the phenomenal aspects of experiences and the underlying physical and functional states is given a number of different interpretations. It is shown that, on each of these interpretations, the thesis is false. In supposing otherwise, philosophers have fallen prey to a cognitive illusion, induced largely by a failure to recognize the special character of phenomenal concepts

Abstract: A major part of the mind–body problem is to explain why a given set of physical processes should give rise to qualia of one sort rather than another. Colour hues are the usual example considered here, and there is a lively debate between, for example, Hardin, Levine, Jackson, Clark and Chalmers as to whether the results of colour vision science can provide convincing explanations of why colours actually look the way they do. This paper examines carefully the type of explanation that is needed here, and it is concluded that it does not have to be reductive to be effective. What needs to be explained more than anything is why inverted hue scenarios are more intuitive than other sensory inversions: and the issue of physicalism versus dualism is only of marginal relevance here.

Abstract: The explanatory gap refers to the lack of concepts for understanding “how it is that . . . a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue.” By assuming that there are colours in the outside world, Block needlessly widens this gap and Lycan and Kitcher simply fail to see the gap. When such assumptions are abandoned, an unnecessary and incomprehensible constraint disappears. It then becomes clear that the brain can use its own neural language for representing aspects of the outside world. While this may not close the gap, it becomes clearer where we need new concepts

Abstract:   Russell (1912) and others have argued that the real nature of colour is transparentto us in colour vision. It's nature is fully revealed to us and no further knowledgeis theoretically possible. This is the doctrine of revelation. Two-dimensionalFourier analyses of coloured checkerboards have shown that apparently simple,monadic, colours can be based on quite different physical mechanisms. Experimentswith the McCollough effect on different types of checkerboards have shown thatidentical colours can have energy at the quite different orientations of Fourierharmonic components but no energy at the edges of the checkerboards, thusrefuting revelation. It is concluded that this effect is not explained by a superveniencedispositional account of colour as proposed by McGinn (1996). It was argued that theMcCollough effect in checkerboards was an example of a local mind/body reduction(Kim 1993), by which the different characteristics of identical colours falsifies revelation. This reduction being based on both physical and neurological mechanisms led to a clear explanation of the perceive phenomenal effects and thus laid a small bridge over the explanatory gap

Abstract: As I type these words, cognitive systems in my brain engage in visual and auditory information processing. This processing is accompanied by subjective states of consciousness, such as the auditory experience of hearing the tap-tap-tap of the keyboard and the visual experience of seeing the letters appear on the screen. How does the brain's activity generate such experiences? Why should it be accompanied by conscious experience in the first place? This is the hard problem of consciousness

Abstract: The subjective features of conscious mental processes--as opposed to their physical causes and effects--cannot be captured by the purified form of thought suitable for dealing with the physical world that underlies appearances." (Nagel, in Dennett, 1991, p. 372)

Abstract: consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp

Abstract: To make progress on the problem of consciousness, we have to confront it directly. In this paper, I first isolate the truly hard part of the problem, separating it from more tractable parts and giving an account of why it is so difficult to explain. I critique some recent work that uses reductive methods to address consciousness, and argue that such methods inevitably fail to come to grips with the hardest part of the problem. Once this failure is recognized, the door to further progress is opened. In the second half of the paper, I argue that if we move to a new kind of nonreductive explanation, a naturalistic account of consciousness can be given. I put forward my own candidate for such an account: a nonreductive theory based on principles of structural coherence and organizational invariance, and a double-aspect theory of information

Abstract: This paper is a response to the 26 commentaries on my paper "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness". First, I respond to deflationary critiques, including those that argue that there is no "hard" problem of consciousness or that it can be accommodated within a materialist framework. Second, I respond to nonreductive critiques, including those that argue that the problems of consciousness are harder than I have suggested, or that my framework for addressing them is flawed. Third, I address positive proposals for addressing the problem of consciousness, including those based in neuroscience and cognitive science, phenomenology, physics, and fundamental psychophysical theories. Reply to: Baars, Bilodeau, Churchland, Clark, Clarke, Crick & Koch, Dennett, Hameroff & Penrose, Hardcastle, Hodgson, Hut & Shepard, Libet, Lowe, MacLennan, McGinn, Mills, O'Hara & Scutt, Price, Robinson, Rosenberg, Seager, Shear, Stapp, Varela, Velmans

Abstract: Conscious experience is at once the most familiar thing in the world and the most mysterious. There is nothing we know about more directly than consciousness, but it is extraordinarily hard to reconcile it with everything else we know. Why does it exist? What does it do? How could it possibly arise from neural processes in the brain? These questions are among the most intriguing in all of science

Abstract: This paper is an edited transcription of a talk at the 1997 Montreal symposium on "Consciousness at the Frontiers of Neuroscience". There's not much here that isn't said elsewhere, e.g. in "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" and "How Can We Construct a Science of Consciousness?"]]

Abstract: The constructivist notion that features are purely functional is incompatible with the classical computational metaphor of mind. I suggest that the discontent expressed by Schyns, Goldstone and Thibaut about fixed-features theories of categorization reflects the growing impact of connectionism, and show how their perspective is similar to recent research on implicit learning, consciousness, and development. A hard problem remains, however: How to bridge the gap between subsymbolic and symbolic cognition

Abstract: The strategy of divide and conquer is usually an excellent one, but it all depends on how you do the carving. Chalmer's attempt to sort the "easy" problems of consciousness from the "really hard" problem is not, I think, a useful contribution to research, but a major misdirector of attention, an illusion-generator. How could this be? Let me describe two somewhat similar strategic proposals, and compare them to Chalmers' recommendation

Abstract: In their joint paper entitled “ The Replication of the Hard Problem of Consciousness in AI and BIO - AI ” (Boltuc et al. Replication of the hard problem of conscious in AI and Bio- AI: An early conceptual framework 2008 ), Nicholas and Piotr Boltuc suggest that machines could be equipped with phenomenal consciousness, which is subjective consciousness that satisfies Chalmer’s hard problem (We will abbreviate the hard problem of consciousness as “H-consciousness”). The claim is that if we knew the inner workings of phenomenal consciousness and could understand its’ precise operation, we could instantiate such consciousness in a machine. This claim, called the extra - strong AI thesis, is an important claim because if true it would demystify the privileged access problem of first-person consciousness and cast it as an empirical problem of science and not a fundamental question of philosophy. A core assumption of the extra-strong AI thesis is that there is no logical argument that precludes the implementation of H-consciousness in an organic or in-organic machine provided we understand its algorithm. Another way of framing this conclusion is that there is nothing special about H-consciousness as compared to any other process. That is, in the same way that we do not preclude a machine from implementing photosynthesis, we also do not preclude a machine from implementing H-consciousness. While one may be more difficult in practice, it is a problem of science and engineering, and no longer a philosophical question. I propose that Boltuc’s conclusion, while plausible and convincing, comes at a very high price; the argument given for his conclusion does not exclude any conceivable process from machine implementation. In short, if we make some assumptions about the equivalence of a rough notion of algorithm and then tie this to human understanding, all logical preconditions vanish and the argument grants that any process can be implemented in a machine. The purpose of this paper is to comment on the argument for his conclusion and offer additional properties of H-consciousness that can be used to make the conclusion falsifiable through scientific investigation rather than relying on the limits of human understanding

Abstract: The following questions are considered: Why is it difficult to create a theory of consciousness? What are the contents of consciousness? What kind of theory is acceptable as transparent? and, What is the value of conscious experience?

Abstract: This paper’s outline is as follows. In sections 1-3 I give an exposi¬tion of the Mind-Body Problem, with emphasis on what I believe to be the heart of the problem, namely, the Percepts-Qualia Nonidentity and its incompatibility with the Physical Closure Paradigm. In 4 I present the “Qualia Inaction Postulate” underlying all non-interactionist theo¬ries that seek to resolve the above problem. Against this convenient postulate I propose in section 5 the “Bafflement Ar¬gument,” which is this paper's main thesis. Sections 6-11 critically dis¬cuss attempts to dismiss the Bafflement Argument by the “Baf¬flement=Mis¬perception Equation.” Section 12 offers a refutation of all such attempts in the form of a concise “Asymmetry Proof.” Section 13 points out the bearing of the Bafflement Argument on the evolutionary role of consciousness while section 14 acknowledges the price that has to be paid for it in terms of basic physical principles. Section 15 summarizes the paper, pointing out the inescapability of interactionist dualism.

Abstract: We analyze the results and implications of the combination of quantum and consciousness in terms of the recent QSC analysis. The quantum effect of consciousness is first explored. We show that the consciousness of the observer can help to distinguish the nonorthogonal states under some condition, while the usual physical measuring device without consciousness can’t. The result indicates that the causal efficacies of consciousness do exist when considering the basic quantum process. Based on this conclusion, we demonstrate that consciousness is not reducible or emergent, but a new fundamental property of matter. This provides a quantum basis for panpsychism. Furthermore, we argue that the conscious process is one kind of quantum computation process based on the analysis of consciousness time and combination problem. It is shown that a unified theory of matter and consciousness should include two parts: one is the complete quantum evolution of matter state, which includes the definite nonlinear evolution element introduced by consciousness, and the other is the psychophysical principle or corresponding principle between conscious content and matter state. Lastly, some experimental suggestions are presented to confirm the theoretical analysis of the paper

Abstract: The Mind/Body Problem (M/BP) is about causation not correlation. And its solution (if there is one) will require a mechanism in which the mental component somehow manages to play a causal role of its own, rather than just supervening superflously on other, nonmental components that look, for all the world, as if they can do the full causal job perfectly well without it. Correlations confirm that M does indeed "supervene" on B, but causality is needed to show how/why M is not supererogatory; and that's the hard part

Abstract: The mind/body problem is the feeling/function problem: How and why do feeling systems feel? The problem is not just "hard" but insoluble (unless one is ready to resort to telekinetic dualism). Fortunately, the "easy" problems of cognitive science (such as the how and why of categorization and language) are not insoluble. Five books (by Damasio, Edelman/Tononi, McGinn, Tomasello and Fodor) are reviewed in this context

Abstract: The mind/body problem is the feeling/function problem: How and why do feeling systems feel? The problem is not just "hard" but insoluble (unless one is ready to resort to telekinetic dualism). Fortunately, the "easy" problems of cognitive science (such as the how and why of categorization and language) are not insoluble. Five books (by Damasio, Edelman/Tononi, McGinn, Tomasello and Fodor) are reviewed in this context

Abstract: Comments on David Chalmers's "hard problem" and some unsuccessful attempts to solve it

Abstract: Creatures that have different physical realizations than human beings may or may not be conscious. Ned Block’s ‘harder problem of consciousness’ is that naturalistic phenomenal realists have no conception of a rational ground for belief that they have or have not discovered consciousness in such a creature. Drawing on the notion of inference to the best explanation, it appears the arguments to these conclusions beg the question and ignore that explanation may be a guide to discovery. Thus, best explanation can both validate an interpretation of the evidence and lead to the discovery of consciousness.

Abstract: Much of the dif?culty in assessing theories of consciousness stems from their advo- cates not supplying adequate or convincing characterisations of the phenomenon (or data) they hope to explain. Yet, to make any reasonable assessment this is precisely what is required, for it is not as if our

Abstract: Those who are optimistic about the prospects of a science of consciousness, and those who believe that it lies beyond the reach of standard scientific methods, have something in common: both groups view consciousness as posing a special challenge for science. In this paper, we take a close look at the nature of this challenge. We show that popular conceptions of the problem of consciousness, epitomized by David Chalmers’ formulation of the ‘hard problem’, can be best explained as a cognitive illusion, which arises as a by-product of our cognitive architecture. We present evidence from numerous sources to support our claim that we have a specialized system for thinking about phenomenal states, and that an inhibitory relationship exists between this system and the system we use to think about physical mechanisms. Even though the ‘hard problem’ is an illusion, unfortunately it appears that our cognitive architecture forces a closely related problem upon us. The ‘genuine problem’ of consciousness shares many features with the hard problem, and it also represents a special challenge for psychology. Nonetheless, researchers should be careful not to mistake the hard problem for the genuine problem, since the strategies appropriate for dealing with these problems differ in important respects

Abstract:      The question addressed by the hard problem of philosophy (3), how cognitive representation is acquired from the physical properties of self and the external, is examined from a perspective originating with Boethius(14) that knowledge is dependant on the nature of the perceiver and discussed with respect to the philosophy of George Berkeley (1,2,7) concerning the existence of matter with respect to perception. An account of the trails of history, scientific method, with respect to the naming and delineation of the hard problem suggest that its topic of address is a factor of plural elements-perceived as singular, a monism, only an aspect of its universality is perceived. A surface aspect is what seduces scientifically and, as a result, a confusion involving excessive abstraction and perceptually absent empirical fact, is postulated to accompany a false morality-an inclination to conquer it from scientific method is attributed to a seduction by naturally existing perplexity that is intermingled with unknown physical elements, themselves rooted from the same singular perplexity such that an ensuing interrogation targeted at the physical world and unavoidingly overlapping with the strictly philosophical has taken place. An invisible paper thin but sharp and self denigrating third facet to the commonly known philosophical walls, within the perplexing and the logical incongruence's, an artifact of perception and modeling of nature, results in a combined scientific (physical) and philosophical (reflective) assailing of natural paradox in a pursuit to summit human sufferings that are suggested to be, at least in part, of an unnatural and physical origin. Included as a conceptual tool is a section that discusses all possible human behavior as intuitively contained by the set of all the possible paths of nature emerged up to present and continued to emerge

Abstract: The philosophical mind-body problem, which Chalmers has named the 'Hard Problem', concerns the nature of the mind and the body. Physicalist approaches have been explored intensively in recent years but have brought us no consensual solution. Dualistic approaches have also been scrutinised since Descartes, but without consensual success. Mentalism has received little attention, yet it offers an elegantly simple solution to the hard problem

Abstract: This article tackles problems concerning the reduction of phenomenal consciousness to brain processes that arise in consideration of specifically epistemological properties that have been attributed to conscious experiences. In particular, various defenders of dualism and epiphenomenalism have argued for their positions by assuming special epistemic access to phenomenal consciousness. Many physicalists have reacted to such arguments by denying the epistemological premises. My aim in this paper is to take a different approach in opposing dualism and argue that when we correctly examine both the phenomenology and neural correlates of phenomenal consciousness we will see that granting the epistemological premises of special access are the best hope for a scientific study of consciousness. I argue that essential features of consciousness involve both their knowability by the subject of experience as well as their egocentricity, that is, their knowability by the subject as belonging to the subject. I articulate a neuroscientifically informed theory of phenomenal consciousness

Abstract: Philosophical (p-) zombies are constructs that possess all of the behavioral features and responses of a sentient human being, yet are not conscious. P-zombies are intimately linked to the hard problem of consciousness and have been invoked as arguments against physicalist approaches. But what if we were to invert the characteristics of p-zombies? Such an inverse (i-) zombie would possess all of the behavioral features and responses of an insensate being yet would nonetheless be conscious. While p-zombies are logically possible but naturally improbable, an approximation of i-zombies actually exists: individuals experiencing what is referred to as “anesthesia awareness.” Patients under general anesthesia may be intubated (preventing speech), paralyzed (preventing movement), and narcotized (minimizing response to nociceptive stimuli). Thus, they appear—and typically are—unconscious. In 1-2 cases/1000, however, patients may be aware of intraoperative events, sometimes without any objective indices. Furthermore, a much higher percentage of patients (22% in a recent study) may have the subjective experience of dreaming during general anesthesia. P-zombies confront us with the hard problem of consciousness—how do we explain the presence of qualia? I-zombies present a more practical problem—how do we detect the presence of qualia? The current investigation compares p-zombies to i-zombies and explores the “hard problem” of unconsciousness with a focus on anesthesia awareness.

Abstract: widely held commitments: to phenomenal realism and to naturalism. Phenomenal realism is the view that (a) we are phenomenally consciousness, and that (b) there is no a priori or armchair sufficient condition for phenomenal consciousness that can be stated (non- circularly) in nonphenomenal terms (p.392).^1,2 Block points out that while phenomenal realists reject

Abstract: Owen Flanagan's The Really Hard Problem provides a rich source of reflection on the question of meaning and ethics within the context of philosophical naturalism. I affirm the title's claim that the quest to find meaning in a purely physical universe is indeed a hard problem by addressing three issues: Flanagan's claim that there can be a scientific/empirical theory of ethics (eudaimonics), that ethics requires moral glue, and whether, in the end, Flanagan solves the hard problem. I suggest that he does not, although he provides much that is of importance and useful for further reflection along the way

Abstract: If one were to provide a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience one would explain why there could be a phenomenal experience that identifies itself as an individual that possesses ‘consciousness’. Although not a requirement of reduction, such an explanation would be consistent with our understanding of evolution and, consequently, explain the physical origins and purpose of phenomenal experience. However, this explanation would not explain why a particular conscious individual identifies itself as itself rather than any other individual - Why is ‘my’ consciousness ‘mine’ (materially, or otherwise, irrespective of experiential detail and content) rather than anyone else? What is consciousness outside of phenomenal experience and phenomenal conceptualization? In this paper, I argue that the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics makes it a suitable candidate for exploring the answers to these questions.

Abstract: Recently some philosophers interested in consciousness have begun to turn their attention to the question of what evolutionary advantages, if any, being conscious might confer on an organism. The issue has been pressed in recent dicussions involving David Chalmers, Todd Moody, Owen Flanagan and Thomas Polger, Daniel Dennett, and others. The purpose of this essay is to consider some of the problems that face anyone who wants to give an evolutionary explanation of consciousness. We begin by framing the problem in the context of some current debates. Then we

Abstract: In the seventh paragraph of the post, you say "This question [which machine, if any or both, is conscious/] seems to be in principle unfalsifiable, and yet genuinely meaningful." (I'm assuming that you mean that any answer to it is unfalsifiable.) My neo-Carnapian intuitions diagnoses the problem right at this point. Forget about attributions of meaningless and all that stuff. Replace it in your statement with more pragmatically-oriented evaluative notions: theoretically fruitless, arbitray without even being helpful for any theoretical, experimental, or practical purpose, and so on. Any answer to the question will be those. Thus the question is not worth pursuing, especially since the thought experiment is science fiction right now. A much more useful way to spend one's time is addressing frutiful questions, like the ones involved in constructing your postulated robots, or investigating neural mechanisms, and so on. So acknowledge the connection between unfalsifiability/verifiability/confirmability and theoretical and practical worthlessness (rather than "meaningless"). Then get on with the theoretically and empirically worthwhile questions. Many of the latter are quiter abstract and "philosophical," anyway (about the scope and limits of various methodologies, existing theories, and so on). Aren't those enough to occupy even the most abstract theorist's attention? Why puzzle about questions whose answers can't be rationally justified?

Abstract: I have assumed that consciousness exists, and that to redefine the problem as that of explaining how certain cognitive and behavioral functions are performed is unacceptable. . . .Like many people (materialists and dualists alike), I find this premise obvious, although I can no more "prove" it than I can prove that I am conscious. . . .there is no denying that such arguments - on either side - ultimately come down to a bedrock of intuition at some point. (Chalmers undated)

Abstract: In this book philosophers, physicists, psychologists, neurophysiologists, computer scientists, and others address this central topic in the growing discipline...

Abstract: Quantum theory can be regarded as a rationally coherent theory of the interaction of mind and matter and it allows our conscious thoughts to play a causally e cacious and necessary role in brain dynamics It therefore provides a natural basis created by scientists for the science of consciousness As an illustration it is explained how the interaction of brain and consciousness can speed up brain processing and thereby enhance the survival prospects of conscious organisms as compared to similar organisms that lack consciousness As a second illustration it is explained how within the quantum framework the consciously experi enced I directs the actions of a human being It is concluded that contemporary science already has an adequate framework for incorporat ing causally e cacious experiential events into the physical universe in a manner that puts the neural correlates of consciousness into the theory in a well de ned way explains in principle how the e ects of consciousness per se can enhance the survival prospects of organisms that possess it allows this survival e ect to feed into phylogenetic de velopment and explains how the consciously experienced I can direct human behaviour..