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1.4. Specific Views on Consciousness (Specific Views on Consciousness on PhilPapers)

• Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness [117]
• Higher-Order Perception Theories of Consciousness [2]
• Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness, Misc [3]
• Higher-Order Thought Theories of Consciousness [79]
• Self-Representational Theories of Consciousness [33]
• Dennett's Functionalism [28]
• Searle's Biological Naturalism [4]
• Functionalism about Consciousness [6]
• Eliminativism about Consciousness [5]
• Dualism about Consciousness [11]
• Panpsychism [31]
• Russellian Monism [11]
• Neutral Monism [8]
• Idealism [7]
• Specific Views on Consciousness, Misc [2]

• Ram Lakhan Pandey Vimal (2009). Dependent Co-origination and Inherent Existence: Dual-Aspect Framework.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Nāgārjuna rejects ‘inherent existence’ or ‘essence’ in favor of co-dependent origination, and that is also why he rejects causality. Causality is a major issue in metaphysical views; for example, one could argue that consciousness causes/affects our brain/behavior/function/matter or vice-versa. My goals are as follows: (i) which entities lack ‘inherent existence’ or ‘essence’ and which ones inherently exist? (ii) Do the entities that lack inherent existence dependently co-arise and hence can we reject causality as in Nāgārjuna’s philosophy? (iii) Do the entities that exist inherently cause entities that lack inherent existence? (iv) Do structure, function, experience, and environment cause each other? And (v) we critically analyze, extend, and examine Nāgārjuna’s philosophy of dependent co-origination (Nāgārjuna & Garfield, 1995)with respect to the dual-aspect-dual-mode PE-SE framework (Vimal, 2008a, 2008b, 2009a, 2009c). Our analysis suggests that: (i)All conventional entities lack inherently existence, except subjective experiences (SEs)/proto-experiences (PEs) that are fundamental and irreducible and hence inherently exist. (ii) The entities that lack inherent existence dependently co-arise, and hence causality for them can be rejected but instead conditions (such as efficient, percept-object, immediate, and dominant conditions) might be necessary, as in Nāgārjuna’s philosophy. (iii) It is not clear that SEs that exist inherently cause entities that lack inherent existence, but one could argue that (a) superposed PEs/SEs in the mental aspect of stings or elementary particles might be the motivation for the evolution to form neural-nets to realize a specific SE, and (b) Nāgārjuna’s rejection of causality and ‘relational ontology’ (Caponigro & Prakash, 2009) need to be reconsidered for SEs. For example, the SE redness (redness-bhutatma (Vimal, 2009g)) inherently, independently, and eternally exists; and hence causality may not be rejected and the ‘relational ontology’ may not apply for any such SE. (iv) It is not clear that structure, function, experience, and environment cause each other, but they might be linked via conditions. (v) Furthermore, (a) an entity has double aspect: mental and material aspects, (b) string is a dual-aspect entity that dependently co-arises from string-vacuum or brane, and (c) the dual-aspect-dual-mode PE-SE framework is consistent with these premises. For example, PEs/SEs inherently exist and are in superposed form in the mental aspect of (a) string-vacuum and/or brane before Big-Bang, (b) strings, elementary particles (bosons and fermions) and all evolved entities after Big-Bang, and (c) entities before and after Big-Freeze/Big-Crunch or entities in cyclic universe as in the big bounce/quantum-bounce (Loop Quantum Gravity) framework. However, the selection of a specific SE has dependent co-origination (and hence not inherently existent, consistent with Nāgārjuna), i.e., a specific SE occurs in brain when (i) relevant neural-net is formed via neural Darwinism, (ii) the specific SE is selected via matching and selection mechanisms, and (iii) the necessary ingredients ―such as wakefulness, re-entry, attention, working memory, stimulus at above threshold, and neural-net PEs― are satisfied. If this is true, then only experiences (PEs/SEs in superposed form) are inherently existent and other entities have dependent co-origination.

Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness

Higher-Order Perception Theories of Consciousness

• William G. Lycan (1995). Consciousness as internal monitoring.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Locke put forward the theory of consciousness as "internal Sense" or "reflection"; Kant made it inner sense, by means of which the mind intuits itself or its inner state." ¹ On that theory, consciousness is a perception-like second-order representing of our own psychological states events. The term "consciousness," of course, has many distinct uses
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1520-8583(1995)9<1:CAIMIT>2.0.CO;2-M
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2214210.pdf
  http://www.nd.edu/%7Elstubenb/Lycan.html
  
• William G. Lycan (2004). The superiority of Hop to HOT.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=opsp_D9yOREC&oi=fnd&pg=PA93&dq=The+superiority+of+HOP+to+HOT+Lycan&ots=oEeR7CG3-m&sig=9oPpecPlMhu_U3lFmtDZSVBldGg
  

Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness, Misc

• Benj Hellie (2007). 'There's something it's like' and the structure of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  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.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philreview.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/116/3/441
  
• William G. Lycan, A simple point about an alleged objection to higher-order theories of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: For purposes of this paper, a conscious state is a mental state whose subject is directly or at least nonevidentially aware of being in it. (The state does not count as conscious if the subject has only been told about it by a cognitive scientist or psychologist; introspectively would be better, but no one should say that a state is conscious only if its subject actively introspects it.). N.b., this usage is only one among several quite different though of course not competing ones; the phrase has been used in at least two other senses, as by, respectively, Dretske (1993, 1995) and Block (1995).1 My definition is stipulative, but not brutely so; it settles on one thing that is often meant by conscious state cf. a conscious memory, a conscious desire, a conscious intention, a conscious decision. According to higher-order (HO) theories of consciousness in this sense of consciousness, what makes a mental state a conscious one is that it is represented by another of the subject’s mental states, that in virtue of which s/he is aware of it. Some practitioners follow Locke in taking the higher-order state to be quasi-perceptual (Armstrong, 1968, 1980, Lycan 1991, 1996); others say it may be merely a thought about the original state (Rosenthal, 1986, 1990).2 There is an alleged objection to such theories, that originated with Goldman (1993)Error: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMap3 and has since been voiced and discussed by others (Dretske 1995, Stubenberg 1998, Van Gulick 2000, 2005, Gennaro 2005, Kriegel 2009). I say alleged, because
• Robert Van Gulick (2004). Higher-order global states (hogs): An alternative higher-order model of consciousness.   (More)

Higher-Order Thought Theories of Consciousness

• David M. Rosenthal, Consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: One phenomenon pertains roughly to being awake. A person or other creature is conscious when it's awake and mentally responsive to sensory input; otherwise it's unconscious. This kind of consciousness figures most often in everyday discourse
• David M. Rosenthal, The mind and its expression.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: pain' and ┌I think that p┐ express the pain and the thought that p, themselves. The book is most impressive. It is packed with careful argument, and addresses a remarkable range of important issues about the mind. I have very much enjoyed studying it
• Ned Block, Comparing the major theories of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This article compares the three frameworks for theories of consciousness that are taken most seriously by neuroscientists, the view that consciousness is a biological state of the brain, the global workspace perspective and an account in terms of higher order states. The comparison features the “explanatory gap” (Nagel, 1974; Levine, 1983) the fact that we have no idea why the neural basis of an experience is the neural basis of that experience rather than another experience or no experience at all. It is argued that the biological framework handles the explanatory gap better than the global workspace of higher order views. The article does not discuss quantum theories or “panpsychist” accounts according to which consciousness is a feature of the smallest particles of inorganic matter (Chalmers, 1996; Rosenberg, 2004). Nor does it discuss the “representationist” proposals (Tye, 2000; Byrne, 2001a) that are popular among philosophers but not neuroscientists
• Ned Block (ms). Some concepts of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Consciousness is a mongrel concept: there are a number of very different "consciousnesses". Phenomenal consciousness is experience; the phenomenally conscious aspect of a state is what it is like to be in that state
• Richard Brown (ms). Consciousness, (higher-order) thoughts, and what it's like.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: We have a vast range of conscious experience; from the taste of our favorite food, to the appearance of our favorite art, to the highs of accomplishing our goals, to the excruciating agony of a broken bone, or loss of a loved one, to wondering what time it is, or thinking about what one has to do to name but a few. Our conscious experience can be by turns exhilarating or frightening or overpowering, or just plain dull. Yet though all of this is common place it is quite mysterious how to fit this phenomenon into the natural world. Or so it seems to many philosophers and scientists, who feel, as Descartes did, that there is no hope of giving a scientific account of how consciousness arises in nature. These philosophers see ‘hard problems’ and ‘explanatory gaps’ that lead them to model consciousness as a non-physical phenomenon that is out of the reach of our scientific theories
• Derek Browne (1999). Carruthers on the deficits of animals.   (More)
• Alex Byrne (1997). Some like it HOT: Consciousness and higher-order thoughts.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Consciousness is the subject of many metaphors, and one of the most hardy perennials compares consciousness to a spotlight, illuminating certain mental goings-on, while leaving others to do their work in the dark. One way of elaborating the spotlight metaphor is this: mental events are loaded on to one end of a conveyer belt by the senses, and move with the belt
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://web.mit.edu/abyrne/www/SomeLikeItHOT.pdf
  http://pellenes-shoshonensis.mit.edu/abyrne/www/SomeLikeItHOT.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/m1mh117501w42017/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=86173&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/M1MH117501W42017.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/1997/00000086/00000002/00086173
  
• Alex Byrne (2004). What phenomenal consciousness is like.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The terminology surrounding the dispute between higher-order and first-order theories of consciousness is piled so high that it sometimes obscures the view. When the debris is cleared away, there is a real prospect
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=opsp_D9yOREC&oi=fnd&pg=PA203&dq=What+phenomenal+consciousness+is+like+Byrne&ots=oEeR7BK40o&sig=Jl5Mr5eWYcPPqXFuT_C0-534tQA
  
• Peter Carruthers (2001). Consciousness: Explaining the phenomena.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Can phenomenal consciousness be given a reductive natural explanation? Many people argue not. They claim that there is an
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/2235/0/Explaining-the-phenomena.htm
  http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/Faculty/pcarruthers/Explaining-the-phenomena.htm
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:2235
  http://cogprints.org/2235/1/Explaining%2Dthe%2Dphenomena.htm
  http://cogprints.org/2235/0/Explaining%2Dthe%2Dphenomena.htm
  
• Peter Carruthers (2004). Hop over FOR, HOT theory.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Following a short introduction, this chapter begins by contrasting two different forms of higher-order perception (HOP) theory of phenomenal consciousness - inner sense theory versus a dispositionalist kind of higher-order thought (HOT) theory - and by giving a brief statement of the superiority of the latter. Thereafter the chapter considers arguments in support of HOP theories in general. It develops two parallel objections against both first-order representationalist (FOR) theories and actualist forms of HOT theory. First, neither can give an adequate account of the distinctive features of our recognitional concepts of experience. And second, neither can explain why there are some states of the relevant kinds that are phenomenal and some that aren
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=opsp_D9yOREC&oi=fnd&pg=PA115&dq=HOP+over+FOR,+HOT+theory+Carruthers&ots=oEeR7BK81g&sig=WlRKs2rVn4hSkIELdyzRXXoQxfc
  
• Peter Carruthers (online). Higher-order theories of consciousness.   (More)
• Peter Carruthers (1998). Natural theories of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Many people have thought that consciousness
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/119131614/PDFSTART
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1468-0378.00058
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0378.00058
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/ejop/1998/00000006/00000002/art00005
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/ejop/1998/00000006/00000002/art00058
  
• Peter Carruthers (online). Precis of Phenomenal Consciousness: A Naturalistic Theory.   (More)
• Peter Carruthers (2000). Replies to critics: Explaining subjectivity.   (More)
• Peter Carruthers (online). Reply to Seager.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://lgxserve.ciseca.uniba.it/lei/mind/forums/002_0006.htm
  
• David Rosenthal (2005). The higher-order model of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: All mental states, including thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and sensations, often occur consciously. But they all occur also without being conscious. So the first thing a theory of consciousness must do is explain the difference between thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and sensations that are conscious and those which are not
• Peter Carruthers (2005). Why the question of animal consciousness might not matter very much.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: According to higher-order thought accounts of phenomenal consciousness it is unlikely that many non-human animals undergo phenomenally conscious experiences. Many people believe that this result would have deep and far-reaching consequences. More specifically, they believe that the absence of phenomenal consciousness from the rest of the animal kingdom must mark a radical and theoretically significant divide between ourselves and other animals, with important implications for comparative psychology. I shall argue that this belief is mistaken. Since phenomenal consciousness might be almost epiphenomenal in its functioning within human cognition, its absence in animals may signify only relatively trivial differences in cognitive architecture. Our temptation to think otherwise arises partly as a side-effect of imaginative identification with animal experiences, and partly from mistaken beliefs concerning the aspects of common-sense psychology that carry the main explanatory burden, whether applied to humans or to non-human animals
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a713997465~fulltext=713240930
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/R55R2K53440520Q1.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/cphp/2005/00000018/00000001/art00005
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oso/1055408/2005/00000001/00000001/art00011
  
• David J. Cole (online). Sense and sentience.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Surely one of the most interesting problems in the study of mind concerns the nature of sentience. How is it that there are sensations, rather than merely sensings? What is it like to be a bat -- or why is it like anything at all? Why aren't we automata or responding but unfeeling Zombies? How does neural activity give rise to subjective experience? As Leibniz put the problem (Monadology section 17):

  _It must be confessed, however, that Perception_ [consciousness?]_, and that which depends upon it, are_
  _inexplicable by mechanical means, that is to say, by figures and motions. Supposing that there were a_
  _machine whose structure produced thought, sensation, and perceptions, we could conceive of it as increased_
  _in its interior size with the same proportions until one was able to enter into its interior, as he would into a_
  _mill. Now, on going into it he would find only pieces working upon one another, but never would he find_

  _anything to explain Perception._ [Montgomery trans.]
• Rebecca Copenhaver (ms). Reid on consciousness: HOP, HOT or FOR?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.499.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/phiq/2007/00000057/00000229/art00006
  
• Barry F. Dainton (2004). Higher-order consciousness and phenomenal space: Reply to Meehan.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Meehan finds fault with a number of my arguments, and proposes that better solutions to the problems I was addressing are available if we adopt a higher-order theory of consciousness. I start with some general remarks on theories of this sort. I connect what I had to say about the A-thesis with different forms of higher-order sense theories, and explain why I ignored higher-order thought theories altogether: there are compelling grounds for thinking they cannot provide a viable account of phenomenal unity in phenomenal terms. Meehan
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://web.mac.com/barrydainton1/Research/Papers_files/Higher Order Reply to Meehan.pdf
  
• Paula Droege (online). Consciousness, higher-order theories of.   (More)
• Rocco J. Gennaro (2000). Fiction, pleasurable tragedy, and the HOT theory of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: [Final version in Philosophical Papers, 2000] Much has been made over the past few decades of two related problems in aesthetics. First, the "feeling fiction problem," as I will call it, asks: is it rational to be moved by what happens to fictional characters? How can we care about what happens to people who we know are not real?[i] Second, the so-called "paradox of tragedy" is embodied in the question: Why or how is it that we take pleasure in artworks (e.g. tragedies) which are clearly designed to cause in us such feelings as sadness and fear?[ii] Various solutions to these puzzles have been proposed, but my primary aim is neither to offer a novel solution nor to summarize and critique most of the alternatives.[iii] My focus instead will be on the issue of consciousness and, more specifically, to view these problems from the point of the view of the so-called "higher-order thought theory of consciousness" (the HOT theory). Although some work on these puzzles have raised important questions about the nature of consciousness and "aesthetic experience," no attempt has yet been made to examine them in light of a specific theory
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://isu1.indstate.edu/rgennaro/papers/tragfictHOT.doc
  http://www.ajol.info/viewarticle.php?jid=190&id=28329&layout=abstract
  
• Rocco J. Gennaro (2004). Higher-order thoughts, animal consciousness, and misrepresentation: A reply to Carruthers and Levine.   (More)
• Rocco J. Gennaro (2004). Higher-order theories of consciousness: An overview.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.benjamins.nl/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=AiCR 56
  http://www.benjamins.nl/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=AiCR_56
  http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=AiCR 56
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=opsp_D9yOREC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&ots=oEeR7CC93g&sig=wl5lXzQHGMEP_nhBbAp8QnwhIk4
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=opsp_D9yOREC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&ots=oEeR7CD3-f&sig=Ufi-kJUW4XaZNQKKZ_WwR1BQZmY
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=opsp_D9yOREC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&ots=oDmU3DD3_i&sig=h6iVMycgK3YIWJh_pAcwp8qE4x4
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=opsp_D9yOREC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&ots=oDmU3DD2_k&sig=KzUOHkbKPdpEk8wuK5vVE95wsBs
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=opsp_D9yOREC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&ots=oEeR7CD3-f&sig=9XHMwRG7BDjjKiKbZzyz_4MoIek
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=opsp_D9yOREC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&ots=oDmP2BL30f&sig=7KzfdXCn5wiDNvzUn19LdKPye4U
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=opsp_D9yOREC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&ots=oEeR7CC93g&sig=yHXMNgPVGwoc3sDJCdZhlPt-v5U
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=opsp_D9yOREC&oi=fnd&pg=RA1-PR11&ots=oDmU3DD2_k&sig=rKQ95_J-ebwnjXBDBjnbpwfQOrs
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=opsp_D9yOREC&oi=fnd&pg=RA1-PR11&ots=oDmU3DD3_i&sig=CAFmBA1urwtLH2r-43halohCPek
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=opsp_D9yOREC&oi=fnd&pg=RA1-PR11&ots=oDmP2BL30f&sig=QeUsjb_yBp-G5Ic6e1Qs8D3s2yw
  
• Rocco J. Gennaro (2002). Jean-Paul Sartre and the HOT theory of consciousness.   (More)
• Rocco J. Gennaro (2003). Papineau on the actualist HOT theory of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In Thinking About Consciousness , David Papineau [2002] presents a criticism of so-called 'actualist HOT theories of consciousness'. The HOT theory, held most notably by David Rosenthal, claims that the best explanation for what makes a mental state conscious is that it is the object of an actual higher-order thought directed at the mental state. Papineau contends that actualist HOT theory faces an awkward problem in relation to higher-order memory judgements; for example, that the theory cannot explain how one could later recall an earlier experience that was not introspected. He argues that, on the HOT theory, we are even left with the absurd conclusion that the consciousness of, say, an earlier visual experience might even depend on the later act of memory. I show that Papineau's criticism of actualist HOT theory not only fails, but also that it seriously mischaracterizes and underestimates the theory. In particular, Papineau badly conflates the crucial difference between an introspective state (i.e., where a conscious HOT is directed at a mental state) and an outer-directed first-order conscious state (i.e., a case where one has a nonconscious HOT)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a713659742~fulltext=713240930
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/H4LAP1936KMPJVM5.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/713659742.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/ajphil/2003/00000081/00000004/art00010
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/ajphil/2003/00000081/00000004/art00581
  
• Rocco J. Gennaro (2005). The HOT theory of consciousness: Between a rock and a hard place.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The so-called 'higher-order thought' (HOT) theory of consciousness says that what makes a mental state conscious is the presence of a suitable higher-order thought directed at it (Rosenthal, 1986; 1990; 1993; 2002; 2004; Gennaro, 1996; 2004). The HOT theory has been or could be attacked from two apparently opposite directions. On the one hand, there is what Stubenberg (1998) has called 'the problem of the rock' which, if successful, would show that the HOT theory proves too much. On the other hand, it might also be alleged that the HOT theory does not or cannot address the so-called 'hard problem' of phenomenal consciousness. If so, then the HOT theory would prove too little. We might say, then, that the HOT theory is arguably between a rock and a hard place. In this paper, I critically examine these objections and defend the HOT theory against them. In doing so, I hope to show that the HOT theory, or at least some version of it, neither proves too little nor too much, but is just right. I also show that these two objections are really just two sides of the same coin, and that the HOT theory is immune from David Chalmers' (1995; 1996) criticisms of other attempted reductionist accounts of consciousness
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://isu1.indstate.edu/rgennaro/papers/rockhd.rtf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2005/00000012/00000002/art00001
  
• Valerie Gray Hardcastle (2004). HOT theories of consciousness: More sad tales of philosophical intuitions gone astray.   (More)
• Benj Hellie (2007). Higher-order intentionalism and higher-order acquaintance.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I argue against such "Relation Intentionalist" theories of consciousness as the higher-order thought and inner sense views on the grounds that they understand a subject's awareness of his or her phenomenal characters to be intentional, like seeming-seeing, rather than "direct", like seeing. The trouble with such views is that they reverse the order of explanation between phenomenal character and intentional awareness. A superior theory of consciousness, based on views expressed by Russell and Price, takes the relation of awareness to be a nonintentional "acquaintance".
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/d17pm453577u60k6/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/D17PM453577U60K6.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2007/00000134/00000003/00000241
  
• Pierre Jacob (1996). State consciousness revisited.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/documents/disk0/00/00/01/64/ijn_00000164_00/ijn_00000164_00.htm
  
• Uriah Kriegel (2007). A cross-order integration hypothesis for the neural correlate of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: b>. One major problem many hypotheses regarding the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) face is what we might call “the why question”: _why _would this particular neural feature, rather than another, correlate with consciousness? The purpose of the present paper is to develop an NCC hypothesis that answers this question. The proposed hypothesis is inspired by the Cross-Order Integration (COI) theory of consciousness, according to which consciousness arises from the functional integration of a first-order representation of an external stimulus and a second-order representation of that first-order representation. The proposal comes in two steps. The first step concerns the “general shape” of the NCC and can be directly derived from COI theory. The second step is a concrete hypothesis that can be arrived at by combining the general shape with empirical considerations
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://uriahkriegel.com/downloads/COI.pdf
  
• Uriah Kriegel (2003). Consciousness, higher-order content, and the individuation of vehicles.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: One of the distinctive properties of conscious states is the peculiar self- awareness implicit in them. Two rival accounts of this self-awareness are discussed. According to a Neo-Brentanian account, a mental state M is conscious iff M represents its very own occurrence. According to the Higher-Order Monitoring account, M is merely accompanied by a numerically distinct representation of its occurrence. According to both, then, M is conscious in virtue of figuring in a higher-order content. The disagreement is over the question whether the higher-order content is carried by M itself or by a differ- ent state. While the Neo-Brentanian theory is phenomenologically more attractive, it is often felt to be somewhat mysterious. It is argued (i) that the difference between the Neo- Brentanian and Higher-Order Monitoring theories is smaller and more empirical than may initially seem, and (ii) that the Neo-Brentanian theory can be readily demystified. These considerations make it prima facie preferable to the Higher-Order Monitoring theory.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.uriahkriegel.com/downloads/synthese 2003.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/v3w0777v30xx17g0/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5091964&PDF=1
  http://journals.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5091964
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/V3W0777V30XX17G0.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/synt/2003/00000134/00000003/05091964
  
• Caleb Liang & Timothy Lane (2008). Higher-Order Thought and the Problem of Radical Confabulation.   (More)
• Hakwan Lau (ms). A higher order bayesian decision theory of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It is usually taken as given that consciousness involves superior or more elaborate forms of information processing. Contemporary models equate consciousness with global processing, system complexity, or depth or stability of computation. This is in stark contrast with the powerful philosophical intuition that being conscious is more than just having the ability to compute. I argue that it is also incompatible with current empirical findings. I present a model that is free from the strong assumption that consciousness predicts superior performance. The model is based on Bayesian decision theory, of which signal detection theory is a special case. It reflects the fact that the capacity for perceptual decisions is fundamentally limited by the presence and amount of noise in the system. To optimize performance, one therefore needs to set decision criteria that are based on the behaviour, i.e. the probability distributions, of the internal signals. One important realization is that the knowledge of how our internal signals behave statistically has to be learned over time. Essentially, we are doing statistics on our own brain. This ‘higherorder’ learning, however, may err, and this impairs our ability to set and maintain optimal criteria for perceptual decisions, which I argue is central to perception consciousness. I outline three possibilities of how conscious perception might be affected by failures of ‘higher-order’ representation. These all imply that one can have a dissociation between consciousness and performance. This model readily explains blindsight and hallucinations in formal terms, and is beginning to receive direct empirical support. I end by discussing some philosophical implications of the model
• JeeLoo Liu (2006). Review of Peter Carruthers, Consciousness: Essays From a Higher-Order Perspective.   (More)
• Robert W. Lurz (2000). A defense of first-order representationalist theories of mental-state consciousness.   (More)
• Robert W. Lurz (2003). Neither hot nor cold: An alternative account of consciousness.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://psyche.csse.monash.edu.au/articles/lurz/
  http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v9/psyche-9-01-lurz.html
  
• William G. Lycan (1999). A response to Carruthers' Natural Theories of Consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I have very little disagreement with Carruthers' article, for our views are very similar. I think he is terminologically a bit hard on Michael Tye. I think that in invoking Swampman he is in danger of conflating teleological theories of representation with etiological theories of teleology. In response to his criticism of my own higher-order experience (HOE) view, I argue that there is good reason to believe that we human beings sport as great a degree of computational complexity as is needed for HOEs. If other animals do not exhibit a comparable degree, we should deny that they have "phenomenal-consciousness" in the strong sense of that term
• William G. Lycan (2001). A simple argument for a higher-order representation theory of consciousness.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/119013542/PDFSTART
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1467-8284.00261
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8284.00261
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/anal/2001/00000061/00000269/art00002
  
• William G. Lycan (1995). Consciousness as internal monitoring.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Locke put forward the theory of consciousness as "internal Sense" or "reflection"; Kant made it inner sense, by means of which the mind intuits itself or its inner state." ¹ On that theory, consciousness is a perception-like second-order representing of our own psychological states events. The term "consciousness," of course, has many distinct uses
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1520-8583(1995)9<1:CAIMIT>2.0.CO;2-M
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2214210.pdf
  http://www.nd.edu/%7Elstubenb/Lycan.html
  
• William G. Lycan & Z. Ryder (2003). The loneliness of the long-distance truck-driver.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1467-8284.00022/abs/
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118827723/PDFSTART
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8284.00022
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/anal/2003/00000063/00000278/art00006
  
• William G. Lycan (2004). The superiority of Hop to HOT.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=opsp_D9yOREC&oi=fnd&pg=PA93&dq=The+superiority+of+HOP+to+HOT+Lycan&ots=oEeR7CG3-m&sig=9oPpecPlMhu_U3lFmtDZSVBldGg
  
• Pete Mandik (2009). Beware of the unicorn: Consciousness as being represented and other things that don't exist.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Higher-Order Representational theories of consciousness — HORs — primarily seek to explain a mental state’s being conscious in terms of the mental state’s being represented by another mental state. First-Order Representational theories of consciousness — FORs — primarily seek to explain a property’s being phenomenal in terms of the property being represented in experience. Despite differences in both explanans and explananda, HORs and FORs share a reliance on there being such a property as being represented. In this paper I develop an argument — the Unicorn Argument — against both HORs and FORs. The core of the Unicorn is that since there are mental rep- resentations of things that do not exist, there cannot be any such prop- erty as being represented, and thus no such property with which to identify either being conscious or being phenomenal.
• Jennifer Matey (2006). Two HOTS to handle: The concept of state consciousness in the higher-order thought theory of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: David Rosenthal's higher-order thought (HOT) theory is one of the most widely argued for of the higher-order accounts of consciousness. I argue that Rosenthal vacillates between two models of the HOT theory. First, I argue that these models employ different concepts of 'state consciousness'; the two concepts each refer to mental state tokens, but in virtue of different properties. In one model, the concept of 'state consciousness' is more consistent with how the term is typically used, both by philosophers and scientists, and in commonsense usage. This model, however, also has its problems. In the second part of the paper, I develop a modified version of Rosenthal's transitivity principle, thereby avoiding some complications that stem from the original transitivity principle. I suggest that Rosenthal occasionally employs this modified model himself, and that the inconsistency identified in the first section of this paper might really reflect Rosenthal's vacillation between these two versions of the transitivity principle. I offer one explanation for how this equivocation may have occurred. These two versions would result if articulations of the transitivity principle employed the term 'mental state' inconsistently, to refer on some occasions merely to mental state types, and on others, to tokened mental states. I conclude by arguing, contrary to Rosenthal and others, that the theory is not incompatible with view that conscious states are uniquely casual efficacious
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a743786471~fulltext=713240930
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/J232735274660780.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~db=all~content=a743786471~fulltext=713240930
  
• Gregory Minissale (2009). Enacting Higher Order Thoughts: Velazquez and Las Meninas.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper bridges art history and consciousness studies and investigates the network of gazes and frames in Las Meninas and how this engages with a system of higher-order thoughts and reflexive operations.
• Mark Pharoah (ms). Enhancing dispositional higher-order thought theory.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Through the utilization of a descriptive illustration and detailed referencing of Carruthers (2000), a comparison of Hierarchical Systems theory (Pharoah, 2007) with Dispositional Higher-Order Thought theory identifies and reinforces their complementary status. However, this also determines some key distinctions, particularly with regard to the conclusions each make regarding the mentality of animals and the autistic, and regarding the moral consequences of these conclusions.
• William S. Robinson (2004). A few thoughts too many?   (More)
• William S. Robinson (1999). A theory of phenomenal consciousness?   (More)
• Edmund T. Rolls (2004). A higher order syntactic thought (HOST) theory of consciousness.   (More)
• David M. Rosenthal (1997). Apperception, sensation, and dissociability.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Recent writing on consciousness has increasingly stressed ways in which the terms
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0017.1997.tb00071.x
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1468-0017.00045
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0017.00045
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1997/00000012/00000002/art00007
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1997/00000012/00000002/art00045
  
• David Rosenthal, Commentaries.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: But there is another reason, equally important. We distinguish among thoughts, feelings, and sensations by virtue of their characteristic representational properties. In particular, we describe thoughts and emotions in terms of the things they are about and how they represent those things. And we characterize sensations by reference to their qualitative properties and the things..
• David M. Rosenthal, Consciousness (.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: (1) Most commonly these terms are used to describe people. People and other creatures are conscious if they are awake and responsive to sensory stimulation. Because this is a property of creatures, we can call it creature consciousness. An individual lacks such consciousness if it is asleep, in a coma, anesthetized, and so forth. Creature consciousness demands a mainly biological explanation, as against an explanation in mainly psychological terms
• David Rosenthal (web). Concepts and definitions of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: in Encyclopedia of Consciousness, ed. William P. Banks, Amsterdam: Elsevier, forthcoming in 2009
• David M. Rosenthal (2002). Consciousness and higher-order thought.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The problem of consciousness is to say what it is for some of our thoughts, feelings, and sensations to be conscious, given that others are not. This is different from saying what it is for a person to be conscious or not conscious. Even when people are conscious, many of their thoughts and sensations typically are not. And there's nothing problematic about a person's being conscious; it's just the person's being awake and responsive to sensory input
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Higher-order_Thought
  
• David Rosenthal (ms). Consciousness and intrinsic higher-order content.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: PowerPoint presentation at Tucson VII, Toward a Science of Consciousness 2006, session on Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness
• David M. Rosenthal (2000). Consciousness, content, and metacognitive judgments.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Because metacognition consists in our having mental access to our cognitive states and mental states are conscious only when we are conscious of them in some suitable way, metacognition and consciousness shed important theoretical light on one another. Thus, our having metacognitive access to information carried by states that are not conscious helps con?rm the hypothesis that a mental state
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10924242&dopt=Citation
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10924239&dopt=Citation
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/10538100/2000/00000009/00000002/art90437
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ap/cc/2000/00000009/00000002/art00440
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ap/cc/2000/00000009/00000002/art00437
  
• David M. Rosenthal (2000). Consciousness, interpretation, and consciousness.   (More)
• David Rosenthal (2010). Expressing one's mind.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Remarks such as ‘I am in pain’ and ‘I think that it’s raining’ are puzzling, since they seem to literally describe oneself as being in pain or having a particular thought, but their conditions of use tend to coincide with unequivocal expressions of pain or of that thought. This led Wittgenstein, among others, to treat such remarks as expressing, rather than as reporting, one’s mental states. Though such expressivism is widely recognized as untenable, Bar-On has recently advanced a neo-expressivist view, on which such remarks exhibit characteristics of both expressions of mental states and reports of those states. I argue against any attempt to see such remarks as both reporting and expressing the same mental states, and that a correct account rests on distinguishing the truth conditions of such remarks from their conditions of use
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/l15842q71x705207/fulltext.pdf
  
• David M. Rosenthal (2002). How many kinds of consciousness?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12470629&dopt=Citation
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&uid=12470629&cmd=showdetailview&indexed=google
  http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S105381000200017X
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ap/cc/2002/00000011/00000004/art00017
  
• David Rosenthal & Josh Weisberg (online). Higher-order theories of consciousness.   (More)
• David M. Rosenthal (2000). Metacognition and higher-order thoughts.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Because there is a fair amount of overlap in the points by Balog and Rey, I will organize this response topically, referring specifically to each commentator as rele- vant. And, because much of the discussion focuses on my higher-order-thought (HOT) hypothesis independent of questions about metacognition, I will begin by addressing a cluster of issues that have to do with the status, motivation, and exact formulation of that hypothesis
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10924243&dopt=Citation
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/10538100/2000/00000009/00000002/art90441
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ap/cc/2000/00000009/00000002/art00441
  
• David M. Rosenthal (1995). Multiple drafts and the facts of the matter.   (More)
• David M. Rosenthal (1997). Phenomenal consciousness and what it's like.   (Abstract & more)
  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.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=29560&jid=BBS&volumeId=20&issueId=01&aid=29559
  http://www.journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0140525X9731005X
  
• David Rosenthal (online). Reflections on five questions: Autobiographical and disciplinary.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: in Mind and Consciousness: Five Questions, ed. Patrick Grim, New York and London: Automatic Press, forthcoming
• David Rosenthal (online). “Replies to Galen Strawson and Ned Block.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: (not intended for publication), Replies to Strawson and Block in Colloquium at the CUNY Graduate Center, December 13, 2006
• David M. Rosenthal (1994). State consciousness and transitive consciousness.   (More)
• David M. Rosenthal (2004). Subjective character and reflexive content.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I. Zombies and the Knowledge Argument John Perry
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2004.tb00335.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ips/ppr/2004/00000068/00000001/art00012
  
• David Rosenthal (online). The mind and its expression.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: MS., for an Eastern Division APA Author-Meets-Critics Session on Dorit Bar-On, Speaking My Mind: Expression and Self-Knowledge, Baltimore, December 2007
• David Rosenthal, V. consciousness, interpretation, and higher-order-thought.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Few contemporary researchers in psychology, philosophy, and the cognitive sciences have any doubt about whether mental phenomena occur without being conscious. There is extensive and convincing clinical and experimental evidence for the existence of thoughts, desires, and related mental states that aren’t conscious. We characterize thoughts, desires, intentions, expectations, hopes, and many other mental states in terms of the things they are about and, more fully, in terms of their content, as captured by a sentence nominalization, such as a clause beginning with the word ‘that’. The philosophical literature follows Franz Brentano’s adaptation of Thomist terminology in referring to all such states as intentional states. But there is another type of mental phenomena, which lack intentionality and whose mental nature consists instead of some qualitative feature. These states include bodily sensations, such as aches and pains, and perceptual states, such as visual sensations of color and tactile sensations of heat and cold. And these states all exhibit some mental quality or another, such as the mental quality distinctive of pain or the mental quality of red or blue.1 And even theorists who acknowledge that intentional states can and do occur without being conscious have sometimes insisted that qualitative states cannot. There is, according to these theorists, nothing to a state’s being qualitative or exhibiting some mental quality unless that state is conscious – unless it is, as we might metaphorically say, “lighted up”. It’s striking that Freud himself seems to have adopted this double standard toward the two types of mental state. In his metapsychological paper, “The Unconscious”, for example, he writes that “all the categories which we employ to describe conscious mental acts, such as ideas, purposes, resolutions, and so forth, can be applied to [unconscious mental occurrences]” (Freud 1915e, p. 168). But he seems here to have in..
• David Rosenthal (2004). Varieties of higher-order theory.   (More)
• Eric Saidel (1999). Consciousness without awareness?   (More)
• William E. Seager (2004). A cold look at HOT theory.   (More)
• William E. Seager (online). Dispositions and consciousness.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://lgxserve.ciseca.uniba.it/lei/mind/forums/002_0005.htm
  
• William E. Seager (ms). On dispositional HOT theories of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Higher Order Thought (HOT) theories of consciousness contend that consciousness can be explicated in terms of a relation between mental states of different
• Lawrence A. Shapiro (1999). Saving the phenomenal.   (More)
• Josh Weisberg (1999). Active, thin, and HOT: An actualist response to Carruthers' dispositionalist HOT view.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Carruthers proposes that for a mental state to be conscious (state consciousness), it must be present in a
• Josh Weisberg (2008). Same old, same old: The same-order representational theory of consciousness and the division of phenomenal labor.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The same-order representation theory of consciousness holds that conscious mental states represent both the world and themselves. This complex representational structure is posited in part to avoid a powerful objection to the more traditional higher-order representation theory of consciousness. The objection contends that the higher-order theory fails to account for the intimate relationship that holds between conscious states and our awareness of them--the theory 'divides the phenomenal labor' in an illicit fashion. This 'failure of intimacy' is exposed by the possibility of misrepresentation by higher-order states. In this paper, I argue that despite appearances, the same-order theory fails to avoid the objection, and thus also has troubles with intimacy
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/017t8t28216558h5.pdf
  
• Josh Weisberg (2001). The appearance of unity: A higher-order interpretation of the unity of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: subjective appearance of unity, but respects unity can be adequately dealt with by the theory. I the actual and potential disunity of the brain will close by briefly considering some worries about processes that underwrite consciousness. eliminativism that often accompany discussions of unity and consciousness
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.joshweisberg.com/The Appearance of Unity.pdf
  
• Wayne Wright (2005). Distracted drivers and unattended experience.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Consider the much-discussed case of the distracted driver, who is alleged to successfully navigate his car for miles despite being completely oblivious to his visual states. Perhaps he is deeply engrossed in the music playing over the radio or in philosophical reflection, and as a result he goes about unaware of the scene unfolding before him on the road. That the distracted driver has visual experiences of which he is not aware is a possibility that first-order representationalists (FOR) happily accept, but higher-order representationalists (HOR) steadfastly deny. HOR claims that perceptual states become conscious only as the object of higher-order states; perceptual states are not intrinsically conscious. According to HOR, since the driver is supposed to be completely distracted by other cognitive tasks, he cannot form higher-order representations of his visual states, with the result that those states are disqualified as experiences.1 HOR theories have come in two flavors, those that claim that the relevant higher-order representations are thought-like (HOT) and those that that rely on an inner perception-like mechanism that is directed toward one
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.mindstuff.net/Ddue_wtw.pdf
  http://www.mindstuff.net/DDUE_wtw.doc
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/k0p1461283j78px8/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/K0P1461283J78PX8.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/synt/2005/00000144/00000001/00009128
  

Self-Representational Theories of Consciousness

• Berit Brogaard (ms). Are conscious states conscious in virtue of representing Themselves?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This is an excellent book, one of the best I have read on consciousness in recent years. It is rigorously argued and contains interesting suggestions as to how to solve the mystery of consciousness. Following the standard literature, Uriah Kriegel takes consciousness to be the "what it is like for me"-ness of conscious mental states. This is also what is sometimes called the 'phenomenal character' of conscious mental states. For Kriegel (as for Levine), phenomenal character has two components: qualitative character and subjective character. If I have a red experience, the phenomenal redness of my experience is the qualitative character of my experience, whereas the for-me-ness is the subjective character of the experience. Kriegel states that the qualitative character of conscious mental states is what makes the conscious mental state the kind of conscious experience it is, whereas the for-me-ness of the mental state is what makes the mental state a conscious state in the first place. The mystery of consciousness, he says, does not lie in the qualitative character of experience. According to him, the question of how brain processes can give rise to purely qualitative redness is no harder to answer than that of how physical matter can instantiate colors. The mystery of consciousness lies in the for-me-ness of conscious experience. Kriegel then goes on to give an account of the subjective character of
  conscious mental states. He argues that the subjective character of conscious mental states
  consists in the state representing itself. It's the self-representational nature of conscious mental
  states that makes them conscious. The self-representational nature of conscious mental states is
  a kind of peripheral awareness. If I have a red experience, I am focally aware of redness but I
  am peripherally aware of the experience itself. Along the way Kriegel rebuts a number of
  alternative theories of subjective character: among others, that it is a kind of primitive property
  of conscious mental states, and that it is a representation of the conscious mental state by a
  higher-order state. I agree with many of Kriegel's arguments against both the naive primitivist
  view and the higher-order theoretical approach. My main concerns lie elsewhere. My three
  main points of disagreement can be summarized as follows: (1) Assuming that it makes sense to
  separate qualitative and subjective character I believe that the qualitative character of conscious
  mental states is at least as mysterious as the subjective character. (2) I believe Uriah's theory is
  at odds with plausible gradability theories of perception. (3) I am skeptical about the project of
  developing a reductive metaphysical theory of consciousness in terms of self-representation.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://brogaardb.googlepages.com/CommentsonUriahKriegel.pdf
  http://sites.google.com/site/brogaardb/CommentsonUriahKriegel.pdf
  
• Victor Caston (2006). Comment on Amie Thomasson's "self-awareness and self-knowledge".   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this paper, I raise an objection to Thomasson
• Angela Coventry & Uriah Kriegel (2008). Locke on consciousness.   (More)
• Rocco J. Gennaro (2006). Between pure self-referentialism and the (extrinsic) HOT theory of consciousness.   (More)
• Rocco J. Gennaro (2007). Representationalism, peripheral awareness, and the transparency of experience.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It is often said that some kind of peripheral (or inattentional) conscious awareness accompanies our focal (attentional) consciousness. I agree that this is often the case, but clarity is needed on several fronts. In this paper, I lay out four distinct theses on peripheral awareness and show that three of them are true. However, I then argue that a fourth thesis, commonly associated with the so-called "self-representational approach to consciousness," is false. The claim here is that we have outer focal consciousness accompanied often (or even always) by inner peripheral (self-)awareness. My criticisms stem from both methodological and phenomenological considerations. In doing so, I offer a diagnosis as to why the fourth thesis has seemed true to so many and also show how the so-called "transparency of experience," frequently invoked by representationalists, is importantly relevant to my diagnosis. Finally, I respond to several objections and to further attempts to show that thesis four is true. What emerges is that if one wishes to hold that some form of self-awareness accompanies all outer-directed conscious states, one is better off holding that such self-awareness is itself unconscious, as is held for example by standard higher-order theories of consciousness.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/c628645863404p3q.pdf
  
• Gilbert Harman (2006). Self-reflexive thoughts.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Alice has insomnia. She has trouble falling asleep and part of the problem is that she worries about it and realizes that her worrying about it tends to keep from falling asleep. It occurs to her that thinking that she will not be able to fall asleep may be a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Perhaps she even has a thought that might be expressed like this: I am not going to fall asleep because of my having this very thought. This thought (perhaps correctly) attributes to itself the property of keeping her awake
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.princeton.edu/~harman/Papers/Self-Ref.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1533-6077.2006.00117.x
  
• Christopher S. Hill (2006). Harman on self referential thoughts.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I will be concerned in these pages with the views that Gilbert Harman puts forward in his immensely stimulating paper Self-Reflexive Thoughts.¹ Harman maintains that self referential thoughts are possible, and also that they are useful. I applaud both of these claims. An example of a self referential thought is the thought that every thought, including this present one, has a logical structure. I feel sure that this thought exists, for I have entertained it on a number of occasions. Moreover, I feel that it is extremely useful. Without deploying it, how could we tell the whole truth about the nature of thoughts?
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1533-6077.2006.00118.x
  
• Jenann Ismael (2006). Doublemindedness: A model for a dual content cognitive architecture.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The outstanding stumbling blocks to any reductive account of phenomenal consciousness remain the subjectivity of phenomenal properties and cognitive and epistemic gaps that plague the relationship between physical and phenomenal properties. I suggest that a deflationary interpretation of both is available to defenders of self- representational accounts
• Tomis Kapitan (1999). The ubiquity of self-awareness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Two claims have been prominent in recent discussions of self-consciousness. One is that first-person reference or first-person thinking is irreducible (the Irreducibility Thesis), and the other is that an awareness of self accompanies all conscious states, at least those through which one refers to something. The latter--here termed the Ubiquity Thesis--has long been associated with philosophers like Fichte, Brentano, and Sartre, though each articulated his own version of the claim. More recently, variants have been defended by Dieter Henrich (1970) and Manfred Frank (1991, 1995a, 1995b). In Frank's words
• Uriah Kriegel (2007). A cross-order integration hypothesis for the neural correlate of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: b>. One major problem many hypotheses regarding the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) face is what we might call “the why question”: _why _would this particular neural feature, rather than another, correlate with consciousness? The purpose of the present paper is to develop an NCC hypothesis that answers this question. The proposed hypothesis is inspired by the Cross-Order Integration (COI) theory of consciousness, according to which consciousness arises from the functional integration of a first-order representation of an external stimulus and a second-order representation of that first-order representation. The proposal comes in two steps. The first step concerns the “general shape” of the NCC and can be directly derived from COI theory. The second step is a concrete hypothesis that can be arrived at by combining the general shape with empirical considerations
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://uriahkriegel.com/downloads/COI.pdf
  
• Uriah Kriegel (2003). Consciousness as intransitive self-consciousness: Two views and an argument.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The word ?consciousness? is notoriously ambiguous. This is mainly because it is not a term of art, but a mundane word we all use quite frequently, for different purposes and in different everyday contexts. In this paper, I discuss consciousness in one specific sense of the word. To avoid the ambiguities, I introduce a term of art ? intransitive self-consciousness ? and suggest that this form of self-consciousness is an essential component of the folk notion of consciousness. I then argue for a specific account of consciousness as intransitive self-consciousness. According to this account, a mental state is conscious (i.e., intransitively self-conscious) iff it represents its own occurrence. The argument is a ?modernizing? modification of an older argument due to Aristotle and Brentano
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.uriahkriegel.com/downloads/CJP.pdf
  
• Uriah Kriegel (2003). Consciousness, higher-order content, and the individuation of vehicles.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: One of the distinctive properties of conscious states is the peculiar self- awareness implicit in them. Two rival accounts of this self-awareness are discussed. According to a Neo-Brentanian account, a mental state M is conscious iff M represents its very own occurrence. According to the Higher-Order Monitoring account, M is merely accompanied by a numerically distinct representation of its occurrence. According to both, then, M is conscious in virtue of figuring in a higher-order content. The disagreement is over the question whether the higher-order content is carried by M itself or by a differ- ent state. While the Neo-Brentanian theory is phenomenologically more attractive, it is often felt to be somewhat mysterious. It is argued (i) that the difference between the Neo- Brentanian and Higher-Order Monitoring theories is smaller and more empirical than may initially seem, and (ii) that the Neo-Brentanian theory can be readily demystified. These considerations make it prima facie preferable to the Higher-Order Monitoring theory.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.uriahkriegel.com/downloads/synthese 2003.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/v3w0777v30xx17g0/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5091964&PDF=1
  http://journals.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5091964
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/V3W0777V30XX17G0.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/synt/2003/00000134/00000003/05091964
  
• Uriah Kriegel (2004). Moore's paradox and the structure of conscious belief.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/r78343n174207058/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5274979&PDF=1
  http://journals.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5274979
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/R78343N174207058.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/erke/2004/00000061/00000001/05274979
  
• Uriah Kriegel (2005). Naturalizing Subjective Character.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: When I have an experience of the blue sky, there is a bluish it is like for me to have the experience. There are two components to this “bluish way it is like for me”: the bluish component, which I call qualitative character; and the for-me component, which I call subjective character. The paper examines six options for naturalizing subjective character.
• Terry Horgan & Uriah Kriegel (2007). Phenomenal epistemology: What is consciousness that we may know it so well?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It has often been thought that our knowledge of ourselves is _different_ from, perhaps in some sense _better_ than, our knowledge of things other than ourselves. Indeed, there is a thriving research area in epistemology dedicated to seeking an account of self-knowledge that would articulate and explain its difference from, and superiority over, other knowledge. Such an account would thus illuminate the descriptive and normative difference between self-knowledge and other knowledge.¹ At the same time, self- knowledge has also encountered its share of skeptics – philosophers who refuse to accord it any descriptive, let alone normative, distinction. In this paper, we argue that there is at least one _species_ of self-knowledge that is different from, and better than, other knowledge. It is a specific kind of knowledge of one’s concurrent phenomenal experiences. Call knowledge of one’s own phenomenal experiences _phenomenal knowledge_. Our claim is that some (though not all) phenomenal knowledge is different from, and better than, non-phenomenal knowledge. In other
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1533-6077.2007.00126.x
  
• Uriah Kriegel (forthcoming). Precis of Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This is a Precis of my book _Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory_. It does the usual.
• Uriah Kriegel (2009). Self-representationalism and phenomenology.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: To a first approximation, self-representationalism is the view that a mental state M is phenomenally conscious just in case M represents itself in the appropriate way. Proponents of self-representationalism seem to think that the phenomenology of ordinary conscious experience is on their side, but opponents seem to think the opposite. In this paper, I consider the phenomenological merits and demerits of self-representationalism. I argue that there is phenomenological evidence in favor of self-representationalism, and rather more confidently, that there is no phenomenological evidence against self-representationalism
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/612q2835t6802k63/fulltext.pdf
  
• Uriah Kriegel (forthcoming). Self-Representationalism and the Explanatory Gap.   (Abstract & more)
  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).
• Uriah Kriegel (2006). The same-order monitoring theory of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: One of the promising approaches to the problem of consciousness has been the Higher-Order Monitoring Theory of Consciousness. According to the Higher-Order Monitoring Theory, a mental state M of a subject S is conscious iff S has another mental state, M*, such that M* is an appropriate representation of M. Recently, several philosophers have developed a Higher-Order Monitoring theory with a twist. The twist is that M and M* are construed as entertaining some kind of constitutive relation, rather than being logically independent of each other. We may call this the Same-Order Monitoring Theory of Consciousness. In this paper, I discuss the nature of the Same-Order Monitoring Theory and argue for its superiority over the more traditional Higher-Order Monitoring Theory
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://uriahkriegel.com/downloads/vegasbabyvegas.pdf
  
• Joseph Levine (2006). Conscious awareness and (self-)representation.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/consciousness05/LevineAwareness.pdf
  
• Thomas Natsoulas (1996). The case for intrinsic theory: I. An introduction.   (More)
• Paul Raymont (online). From HOTs to self-representing states.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: After briefly summarizing David Rosenthal
• David Rosenthal (ms). Consciousness and intrinsic higher-order content.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: PowerPoint presentation at Tucson VII, Toward a Science of Consciousness 2006, session on Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness
• David Rosenthal (2004). Varieties of higher-order theory.   (More)
• William Seager (2006). Is self-representation necessary for consciousness?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Brook and Raymont do not assert that self-representing representations are sufficient to generate consciousness, but they do assert that they are necessary, at least in the sense that self-representation provides the most plausible mechanism for generating conscious mental states. I argue that a first-order approach to consciousness is equally capable of accounting for the putative features of consciousness which are supposed to favor the self-representational account. If nothing is gained the simplicity of the first-order theory counts in its favor. I also advance a speculative proposal that we are never aware of any distinctively mental attributes of our own states of consciousness except via an independent act of reflective conceptualization, although this goes rather farther than the first-order theory strictly requires
• Brad J. Thompson (2006). Comments on Ismael's "double-mindedness: A model for a dual content cognitive architecture?".   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Two general worries are raised for the dual content approach to consciousness as presented by Ismael in
• Robert Van Gulick (2004). Higher-order global states (hogs): An alternative higher-order model of consciousness.   (More)
• Robert van Gulick (2000). Inward and upward: Reflection, introspection, and self-awareness.   (More)
• Robert Van Gulick (2006). Mirror, mirror -- is that all?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Consciousness and self-awareness seem intuitively linked, but how they intertwine is less than clear. Must one be self-aware in order to be consciousness? Indeed, is consciousness just a special type of self-awareness? Or perhaps it is the other way round: Is being self-aware a special way of being conscious? Discerning their connections is complicated by the fact that both the main relata themselves admit of many diverse forms and levels. One might be conscious or self- aware in many different ways or respects, and to varying degrees. Thus the real questions of linkage must be posed more specifically. We need to ask not whether the two are bound in general, but whether and how being conscious in some specific sense and degree relates to some particular sort of self-awareness. Only those more specific questions are likely to have fully determinate answers
• Josh Weisberg (2008). Same old, same old: The same-order representational theory of consciousness and the division of phenomenal labor.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The same-order representation theory of consciousness holds that conscious mental states represent both the world and themselves. This complex representational structure is posited in part to avoid a powerful objection to the more traditional higher-order representation theory of consciousness. The objection contends that the higher-order theory fails to account for the intimate relationship that holds between conscious states and our awareness of them--the theory 'divides the phenomenal labor' in an illicit fashion. This 'failure of intimacy' is exposed by the possibility of misrepresentation by higher-order states. In this paper, I argue that despite appearances, the same-order theory fails to avoid the objection, and thus also has troubles with intimacy
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/017t8t28216558h5.pdf
  
• Kenneth Williford (2006). Zahavi versus Brentano: A rejoinder.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Dan Zahavi has argued persuasively that some versions of self- representationalism are implausible on phenomenological and dialectical grounds: they fail to make sense of primitive self-knowledge and lead to an infinite regress. Zahavi proposes an alternative view of ubiquitous prereflective self-consciousness
• Dan Zahavi (2004). Back to Brentano?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: For a cou ple of decades, higher-order the o ries of con scious ness have enjoyed great pop u lar ity, but they have recently been met with grow ing dis sat is - fac tion. Many have started to look else where for via ble alter na tives, and within the last few years, quite a few have redis cov ered Brentano. In this paper such a (neo-)Brentanian one-level account of con scious ness will be out lined and dis - cussed. It will be argued that it can con trib ute impor tant insights to our under - stand ing of the rela tion between con scious ness and self-aware ness, but it will also be argued that the account remains beset with some prob lems, and that it will ulti mately make more sense to take a closer look at Sartre, Husserl, and Heidegger, if one is on the look out for prom is ing alter na tives to the higher-order the o ries, than to return all the way to Brentano
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2004/00000011/F0020010/art00005
  
• Dan Zahavi (2006). Two takes on a one-level account of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: My presentation will discuss two one-level accounts of consciousness, a Brentanian and a Husserlian. I will address some of the relevant differences
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cfs.ku.dk/staff/zahavi-publications/Two_Takes.pdf/
  http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/symposia/kriegel/4Zahavi.pdf
  http://psyche.csse.monash.edu.au/symposia/kriegel/4Zahavi.pdf
  

Dennett's Functionalism

• John Barresi & John R. Christie (2002). Using illusory line motion to differentiate misrepresentation (stalinesque) and misremembering (orwellian) accounts of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It has been suggested that the difference between misremembering (Orwellian) and misrepresentation (Stalinesque) models of consciousness cannot be differentiated (Dennett, 1991). According to an Orwellian account a briefly presented stimulus is seen and then forgotten; whereas, by a Stalinesque account it is never seen. At the same time, Dennett suggested a method for assessing whether an individual is conscious of something. An experiment was conducted which used the suggested method for assessing consciousness to look at Stalinesque and Orwellian distinctions. A visual illusion, illusory line motion, was presented and participants were requested to make judgments that reflected what they were aware of. The participants were able to make responses indicating that they were aware of the actual stimulus in some conditions, but only of the illusion in others. This finding supports a claim that the difference between the Orwellian and Stalinesque accounts may be empirically observable, and that both types of events may occur depending on task and stimulus parameters
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ap/cc/2002/00000011/00000002/art00539
  
• Ned Block (1995). What is Dennett's theory a theory of?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A convenient locus of discussion is provided by Dennett
• Selmer Bringsjord (online). Explaining phi without Dennett's exotica: Good ol' computation suffices.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.rpi.edu/~brings/SELPAP/phi/phi.html
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/bringsjord96explaining.html
  
• Andrew Brook (2000). Judgments and drafts eight years later.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Now that some years have passed, how does this picture of consciousness look? On the one hand, Dennett's work has vastly expanded the range of options for thinking about conscious experiences and conscious subjects. On the other hand, I suspect that the implications of his picture have been oversold (perhaps more by others than by Dennett himself). The rhetoric of _CE_ is radical in places but I do not sure that the actual implications for commonsense views of Seemings and Subjects are nearly as radical
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=jDwFYqcMEScC&oi=fnd&pg=PA219&dq=Judgments+and+drafts+eight+years+later+Brook&ots=QFBPrhLJo3&sig=Zvzi1JcFARzaqIQ-U6lBMrklY9o
  
• Andrew Brook (online). The appearance of things.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: These two contributions have had different fates. The attack on _qualia_ and related fantasies has been enormously influential, in part because it follows in a long line of scepticism about the traditional ways of thinking about this topic, a tradition including, among philosophers, the later Wittgenstein, Dennett's teacher Gilbert Ryle, John Austin and Wilfrid Sellars. Psychologists such as Tony Marcel and Bernard Baars and medical neuroscientists such as Marcel Kinsbourne are examples of leading researchers whose work is done in the light of Dennett's critique. Indeed, one can hardly pick up any leading journal of consciousness studies such as the _Journal of Consciousness Studies_ or _Consciousness and_ _Cognition_ without finding Dennett's name mentioned somewhere. The influence has not been easily won and the ground is still contested. Ringing rejections of Dennett's arguments still appear and he answers them in papers with ferocious titles such as 'The Unimagined Preposterousness of Zombies' (1995a). Thought experiments still appear purporting to show that _qualia_ are remarkable, in fact utterly extraordinary phenomena. Such rear-guard actions notwithstanding,. many consciousness researchers are now convinced that deep incoherencies lie buried in the traditional notion of conscious states
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://http-server.carleton.ca/~abrook/papers/2002-Dennet-2Appearance.pdf
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=wi-sOZZPnr4C&oi=fnd&pg=PA41&ots=EuPmff6Sgl&sig=C8YZlfEx2T7I08gFiL5o1EGqEBc
  
• Daniel C. Dennett (2001). Are we explaining consciousness yet?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/recordDetail?accno=EJ628448
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11164029&dopt=Abstract
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11164029&dopt=Citation
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/00100277/2001/00000079/00000001/art00130
  
• Daniel C. Dennett (1993). Caveat emptor.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: What I find particularly valuable in the juxtaposition of these three essays on my book is the triangulation made possible by their different versions of much the same story. I present my view as a product of cognitive science, but all three express worries that it may involve some sort of ominous backsliding towards the evils of behaviorism. I agree with Baars and McGovern when they suggest that philosophy has had some baleful influences on psychology during this century. Logical positivism at its best was full of subtle softenings, but behaviorist psychologists bought the tabloid version, and sold it to their students in large quantities. George Miller's account of those dreary days is not an exaggeration, and the effects still linger in some quarters. (Philosophers are often amused--but they should really be disconcerted--to note that the only living, preaching logical positivists today are to be found in psychology departments.)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000276/00/caveatem.htm
  
• Daniel C. Dennett & Marcel Kinsbourne (1992). Escape from the cartesian theater. Reply to commentaries on Time and the Observer: The Where and When of Consciousness in the Brain.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Damasio remarks, it "informs virtually all research on mind and brain, explicitly or implicitly." Indeed, serial information processing models generally run this risk (Kinsbourne, 1985). The commentaries provide a wealth of confirming instances of the seductive power of this idea. Our sternest critics Block, Farah, Libet, and Treisman) adopt fairly standard Cartesian positions; more interesting are those commentators who take themselves to be mainly in agreement with us, but who express reservations or offer support with arguments that betray a continuing allegiance to one or another tenet of the view we sought to discredit
• Daniel C. Dennett (1995). Get real.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: There could be no more gratifying response to a philosopher's work than such a bounty of challenging, high-quality essays. I have learned a great deal from them, and hope that other readers will be as delighted as I have been by the insights gathered here. One thing I have learned is just how much hard work I had left for others to do, by underestimating the degree of explicit formulation of theses and arguments that is actually required to bring these issues into optimal focus. These essays cover my work from top to bottom. Just about every nook and cranny is probed and tested in ways I could never do for myself. The essays thus highlight the areas of weakest exposition of my views; they also show the weak points of the views themselves--and suggest repairs, which I am sometimes happy to accept, but not always, since there are a few cases in which one critic deftly disarms another, sight unseen. I will be fascinated to learn how the individual authors react to each other's essays, since they side with me on different points, and disagree about what is still in need of revision or repair
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000280/
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000280/00/getreal.htm
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:280
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:280
  http://cogprints.org/280/1/getreal.htm
  http://cogprints.org/280/0/getreal.htm
  
• Daniel C. Dennett (1995). Is Perception the "Leading Edge" of Memory?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Daniel C. Dennett

  Is Perception the 'Leading Edge' of Memory?

  Consciousness appears to us to consist of a sequence of contentful items, arranged in a sequence, the so-called "stream of consciousness," in which each item in turn bursts quite suddenly into consciousness and thereby enters memory, perhaps only briefly to be remembered, and then forgotten. I think that hidden in this comfortable and largely innocent picture of consciousness is a deep and seductive mistake. I intend to expose and elucidate that mistake, and describe an alternative vision
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py104/dennett.memory.html
  
• Daniel C. Dennett (1993). Living on the edge.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In a survey of issues in philosophy of mind some years ago, I observed that "it is widely granted these days that dualism is not a serious view to contend with, but rather a cliff over which to push one's opponents." (Dennett, 1978, p.252) That was true enough, and I for one certainly didn't deplore the fact, but this rich array of essays tackling my book amply demonstrates that a cliff examined with care is better than a cliff ignored. And, as I have noted in my discussion of the blind spot and other gaps, you really can't perceive an edge unless you represent both sides of it. So one of the virtues of this gathering of essays is that it permits both friend and foe alike to take a good hard look at dualism, as represented by those who are tempted by it, those who can imagine no alternative to it, and those who, like me, still find it to be--in a word--hopeless
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/liveedge.htm
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000270/
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:270
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:270
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~db=all~content=a902035804~fulltext=713240930
  http://cogprints.org/270/1/liveedge.htm
  http://cogprints.org/270/0/liveedge.htm
  
• Daniel C. Dennett & Marcel Kinsbourne (1995). Multiple drafts: An eternal golden braid? Reply to Glicksohn and Salter.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: We have learned that the issues we raised are very difficult to think about clearly, and what "works" for one thinker falls flat for another, and leads yet another astray. So it is particularly useful to get these re-expressions of points we have tried to make. Both commentaries help by proposing further details for the Multiple Drafts Model, and asking good questions. They either directly clarify, or force us to clarify, our own account. They also both demonstrate how hard it is for even sympathetic commentators always to avoid the very habits of thought the Multiple Drafts Model was designed to combat. While acknowledging and expanding on their positive contributions, we must sound a few relatively minor alarms
• Daniel C. Dennett (1994). Self-portrait.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In my opinion, the two main topics in the philosophy of mind are content and consciousness. As the title of my first book, _Content and Consciousness_ (1969) suggested, that is the order in which they must be addressed: first, a theory of content or intentionality--a phenomenon more fundamental than consciousness--and then, building on that foundation, a theory of consciousness. Over the years I have found myself recapitulating this basic structure twice, partly in order to respond to various philosophical objections, but more importantly, because my research on foundational issues in cognitive science led me into different aspects of the problems. The articles in the first half of
• Daniel C. Dennett (1996). Seeing is believing--or is it?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: We would all like to have a good theory of perception. Such a theory would account for all the known phenomena and predict novel phenomena, explaining everything in terms of processes occurring in nervous systems in accordance with the principles and laws already established by science: the principles of optics, physics, biochemistry, and the like. Such a theory might come to exist without our ever having to answer the awkward "philosophical" question that arises
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000284/
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000284/00/seebelie.htm
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:284
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=r70IEreOL-wC&oi=fnd&pg=PA481&ots=weXJUX_Pr4&sig=mjHsr1gEjhzYr3_pZh0pOmhhlKc
  http://cogprints.org/284/1/seebelie.htm
  http://cogprints.org/284/0/seebelie.htm
  
• Daniel C. Dennett & Marcel Kinsbourne (1992). Time and the observer: The where and when of consciousness in the brain.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: _Behavioral and Brain Sciences_ , 15, 183-247, 1992. Reprinted in _The Philosopher's Annual_ , Grim, Mar and Williams, eds., vol. XV-1992, 1994, pp. 23-68; Noel Sheehy and Tony Chapman, eds., _Cognitive Science_ , Vol. I, Elgar, 1995, pp.210-274
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/time&obs.htm
  http://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/04/50/
  http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/05-06/cogs200/dennett&kinsbourne.pdf
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000264/00/time&obs.htm
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:264
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZLLtFxJw&sig=NuvhlOy-qlQ25CLlLkKyUD_M44g
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZJMBHuLs&sig=dbFnFSn9YGFEMzlbcQtuAzWJ5sE
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZHOAGoDq&sig=MXGCSpE5sFSRHfvNoYJ0FZFuVIg
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZGMzEqLp&sig=1SCWU7sPJ7Inbppt7ZjX-s7lH60
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=us6JKtIrEw&sig=TBZY4NtD0lCnuRZ_sw2jKioD3Eo
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZHIzKtGw&sig=AqzmZehz_4S-LIfYTM59NP5KPtc
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZJGBEoCs&sig=uWBwxCh6nyFrXoxBAz09qqdQLi8
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZKICHsLu&sig=bAKJB3pL1Iu-DBySuzLwA6QQRdI
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZJGBDtDu&sig=ml4NBpCWPpH2VRPRW-FGFvYsl88
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZLLtGpKr&sig=JRJWPEytuzEm2W1RPaKS7aCKcYo
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZJMBHvLr&sig=A0luOVKgCrJ_OOAhsFs1fhq6NWQ
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZGGyJxFp&sig=qggtgf7icUkWU76tXcX4NMpKrGs
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZFKyDxJx&sig=pnrLrtb_r1INKPt-7It-kbhxwiU
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZLLtGrDs&sig=Fbnh6iLWYxrOAkh5V-MgSjWDEpQ
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZFKyDtKw&sig=Pfs53KXrMr3NiqacqU5To-PKsyk
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=us6JKtIuEs&sig=blxw58dXbS4kkHcQkjTHyS1xWm4
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZHOAGrIp&sig=DcgRgV9vbWpOMJMtPBstQvAB8nY
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZKICIoDv&sig=nsT726R8Bl4oyHzLeLVEYOrVVmw
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZGMzEvJq&sig=K0Md58kq9ahMAg6f-Ffqv3iaMA4
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZJGBDuEu&sig=ypOoszCSt0vDttfhgMAeS2R9qd8
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZKICHwIp&sig=jBo126iYNYzsVZa2El8Yu8hThtI
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZGMzFoKv&sig=d8pysz9qpbLn5rYVSwTJVMZvpNs
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZGGyJtJx&sig=Cqogc3jeaoPceo6D4jPVENN0GpI
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZJMBHsKt&sig=YLmTMIPKbc9GzApVDCJyw8K3ncM
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=us6JKtIpIx&sig=IFMORl44INzpeJKG0ysCkqD1xYg
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZHOAFwGw&sig=mqA1eKUcGXXeA6jcegHOaA_o1HE
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZHIzKqCx&sig=CmCkYl9aeVfa7rUbu66JLGbLV-o
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZHIzJwGq&sig=3aXZKyTv4O4_VC5MEXa2OxTzviY
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZGGyJrJp&sig=PydxIL0HYSYP7qvfNKrFBmCFLkE
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eRBo6RcazOoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA141&ots=utZFKyEsEx&sig=BRT0N9p--AGx9m6UoFvL1rLHc8o
  
• Daniel C. Dennett (1994). Tiptoeing Past the Covered Wagons.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: David Carr complains, in "Dennett Explained, or The Wheel Reinvents Dennett," (Report #26), that I have ignored deconstructionism and Phenomenology. This charge is in some regards correct and in others not. Briefly, here is how my own encounters with these fields have looked to me
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000278/
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:278
  http://cogprints.org/278/1/tiptoe.htm
  http://cogprints.org/278/0/tiptoe.htm
  
• Shannon Densmore & Daniel C. Dennett (1999). The virtues of virtual machines.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Paul Churchland's book (hereafter ER)is an entertaining and instructive advertisement for a "neurocomputational" vision of how the brain (and mind) works. While we agree with its general thrust, and commend its lucid pedagogy on a host of difficult topics, we note that such pedagogy often exploits artificially heightened contrast, and sometimes the result is a misleading caricature instead of a helpful simplification. In particular, Churchland is eager to contrast the explanation of consciousness that can be accomplished by his "aspiring new structural and dynamic cognitive prototype: recurrent PDP networks" (p.266) with what strikes him as the retrograde introduction by Dennett of a virtual von Neumannesque machine--a "failed prototype"--as the key element in an explanation of human consciousness (in

  _Consciousness_

  _Explained_, 1991, hereafter, CE). We will try to show that by oversimplifying Dennett's alternative, he has taken a potential supplement to his own view--a much needed supplement--and transformed it in his imagination into a subversive threat. In part 1, we will expose and correct the mistaken contrasts. In part 2, we will compare the performance of the two views on Churchland's list of seven features of consciousness any theory must account for, showing that Dennett's account provides more than Churchland has recognized, and indeed offers answers to key questions that Churchland's account is powerless to address. At that point, Churchland's project and Dennett's could be seen to collaborate in a useful division of labor instead of being in mortal combat, were it not for what appears to be a fairly major disagreement about consciousness in non-human animals. Part 3 briefly examines this issue. It may be due to a misunderstanding, which when cleared up might restore the happy prospect of unification
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(199909)59:3<747:TVOVM>2.0.CO;2-#
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(199909)59:3<747:TVOVM>2.0.CO;2-#
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2653793.pdf
  
• Daniel D. Hutto (1995). Consciousness demystified: A Wittgensteinian critique of Dennett.   (More)
• Dan Lloyd (2000). Popping the thought balloon.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Many recovering dualists find that the old Cartesian demons are hard to exorcise. Dual substance abuse manifests itself not only as metaphysical dualism, but as a pervasive epistemological framework that creates an unhealthy codependent relationship between scientific realism and phenomenology. Daniel Dennett has led philosophers to recognize many of the symptoms of creeping crypto Cartesianism. In this paper, I try to take Dennett to the limit: Descartes lives on, I argue, in the very heart of cognitive science, in the concept of representation. I outline a five-step program for overcoming this lingering, fundamental, allegiance to Cartesianism, and discuss Dennett's own progress along this path
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=jDwFYqcMEScC&oi=fnd&pg=PA169&dq=Popping+the+thought+balloon+Lloyd&ots=QFBPrhQGk4&sig=qiHm5rH7N_phuQVpwua7X9h5rxY
  
• Gerard O'Brien & Jonathan Opie (1999). A defense of cartesian materialism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: One of the principal tasks Dennett sets himself in _Consciousness Explained _is to demolish the Cartesian theatre model of phenomenal consciousness, which in its contemporary garb takes the form of _Cartesian materialism_: the idea that conscious experience is a _process of presentation_ realized in the physical materials of the brain. The now standard response to Dennett is that, in focusing on Cartesian materialism, he attacks an impossibly naive account of consciousness held by no one currently working in cognitive science or the philosophy of mind. Our response is quite different. We believe that, once properly formulated, Cartesian materialism is no straw man. Rather, it is an attractive hypothesis about the relationship between the computational architecture of the brain and phenomenal consciousness, and hence one that is worthy of further exploration. Consequently, our primary aim in this paper is to defend Cartesian materialism from Dennett
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:1139
  http://www.arts.adelaide.edu.au/humanities/philosophy/publications/A_Defense_of_Cartesian_Materialism.pdf
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(199912)59:4<939:ADOCM>2.0.CO;2-9
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(199912)59:4<939:ADOCM>2.0.CO;2-9
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2653563.pdf
  http://cogprints.org/1139/3/A_Defense_of_Cartesian_Materialism.pdf
  http://cogprints.org/1139/0/A_Defense_of_Cartesian_Materialism.pdf
  
• Roland Puccetti (1993). Dennett on the split-brain.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In "Consciousness Explained," Dennett (1991) denies that split-brain humans have double consciousness: he describes the experiments as "anecdotal." In attempting to replace the Cartesian Theatre of the Mind" with his own "Multiple Drafts" view of consciousness, Dennett rejects the notion of the mind as a countable thing in favour of its being a mere "abstraction." His criticisms of the standard interpretation of the split-brain data are analyzed here and each is found to be open to objections. There exist people who have survived left ["dominant"] cerebral hemispherectomy; by Dennett's criteria, they would not have minds
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://psycprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/perl/local/psyc/makedoc?id=346&type=html
  http://psycprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000346/02/psyc.93.4.52.split-brain.1.puccetti
  http://psycprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000346/01/psyc.93.4.52.split-brain.1.puccetti.xml
  
• Teed Rockwell (1996). Awareness, mental phenomena, and consciousness: A synthesis of Dennett and Rosenthal.   (More)
• D. Rosenthal (2000). Content, interpretation, and consciousness.   (More)
• David M. Rosenthal (1995). Multiple drafts and the facts of the matter.   (More)
• Susan Schneider (2007). Daniel Dennett on the nature of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: One of the most influential philosophical voices in the consciousness studies community is that of Daniel Dennett. Outside of consciousness studies, Dennett is well-known for his work on numerous topics, such as intentionality, artificial intelligence, free will, evolutionary theory, and the basis of religious experience. (Dennett, 1984, 1987, 1995c, 2005) In 1991, just as researchers and philosophers were beginning to turn more attention to the nature of consciousness, Dennett authored his Consciousness Explained. Consciousness Explained aimed to develop both a theory of consciousness and a powerful critique of the then mainstream view of the nature of consciousness, which Dennett called,
• Dmirty B. Volkov (online). The moving target: Multiple drafts or fame in brain?   (More)

Searle's Biological Naturalism

• Daniel C. Dennett (1993). Review of Searle, the rediscovery of the mind.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Everyone agrees that consciousness is a very special phenomenon, unique in several ways, but there is scant agreement on just how special it is, and whether or not an explanation of it can be accommodated within normal science. John Searle's view, defended with passion in this book, is highly idiosyncratic: what is special about consciousness is its "subjective ontology," but normal science can accommodate subjective ontology alongside (not within) its otherwise objective ontology. Once we clear away some widespread confusions about what science requires, and dismiss the misbegotten field of cognitive science that has been engendered by those confusions, the subjective ontology of the mind, he claims, will lose its aura of unacceptable mystery
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000277/00/searle.htm
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:277
  http://cogprints.org/277/1/searle.htm
  http://cogprints.org/277/0/searle.htm
  
• Ted Honderich (2001). Mind the guff.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: (I) John Searle's conception of consciousness in the 'Mind the Gap' issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies remains short on content, no advance on either materialism or traditional dualism. Still, it is sufficiently contentful to be self-contradictory. And so his Biological Subjectivity on Two Levels, like materialism and dualism, needs replacing by a radically different conception of consciousness -- such as Consciousness as Existence. (II) From his idea that we can discover 'gaps', seeming absences of causal circumstances, in our experience of deciding and acting, Searle is led to the positing of a self and to mysterious causing. (III) In fact philosophers of determinism and freedom over three centuries have concerned themselves with what are now termed 'gaps'. Searle's advance is a useful terminological one. Compatibilist philosophers of freedom, contrary to what is said, have not missed any point at all. A successor to both Compatibilism and Incompatibilism is needed. (IV) Searle's previous account of deciding and acting in Biological Subjectivity on Two Levels does indeed fail because of its epiphenomenalism. (V) The culmination of his paper, his preferred hypothesis now about deciding and acting, is that down-up causation is true of it but not left-right causation. Quantum Theory as often interpreted doesn't work down-up but does work left-right. The hypothesis is entirely in the tradition of the Incompatibilist and Libertarian philosophers of determinism and freedom, whom Searle has joined, but is factually incredible
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2001/00000008/00000004/1197
  
• Sabat (1999). Consciousness, emergence and naturalism.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://sammelpunkt.philo.at:8080/archive/00001232/01/SABATES.pdf
  
• John R. Searle (2002). Why I am not a property dualist.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I have argued in a number of writings[1] that the philosophical part (though not the neurobiological part) of the traditional mind-body problem has a fairly simple and obvious solution: All of our mental phenomena are caused by lower level neuronal processes in the brain and are themselves realized in the brain as higher level, or system, features. The form of causation is
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://garnet.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/PropertydualismFNL.doc
  http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/PropertydualismFNL.doc
  http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/PropertydualismFNL.doc
  http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/132/PropertydualismFNL.doc
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2002/00000009/00000012/1322
  

Functionalism about Consciousness

• John Dilworth (2007). Conscious perceptual experience as representational self-prompting.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Journal of Mind and Behavior 28 no. 2 (2007), pp. 135-156. The self-prompting theory of consciousness holds that conscious perceptual experience occurs when non-routine perceptual data prompt the activation of a plan in an executive control system that monitors perceptual input. On the other hand, routine, non-conscious perception merely provides data about the world, which indicatively describes the world correctly or incorrectly. Perceptual experience instead involves data that are about the perceiver, not the world. Their function is that of imperatively prompting the perceiver herself to do something (hence
• John Gregg (ms). Functionalism: Can't we just say that consciousness depends on the higher-level organization of a given system?   (More)
• Fiona Macpherson (2007). Synaesthesia.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_60642_en.doc
  
• Bruce Mangan (1998). Against functionalism: Consciousness as an information-bearing medium.   (More)
• Donald R. Perlis (1995). Consciousness and complexity: The cognitive Quest.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/K584K12U915X57V1.pdf
  
• Jesse J. Prinz (2005). A neurofunctional theory of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Reading the philosophical literature on consciousness, one might get the idea that there is just one problem in consciousness studies, the hard problem. That would be a mistake. There are other problems; some are more tractable, but none are easy, and all interesting. The literature on the hard problem gives the impression that we have made little progress. Consciousness is just an excuse to work and re-work familiar positions on the mind-body problem. But progress is being made elsewhere. Researchers are moving towards increasingly specific accounts of the neural basis of conscious experience. These efforts will leave some questions unanswered, but they are no less significant for that
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/consciousness05/PrinzNeurofunctionaltoc.pdf
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ZS0eo39XOs8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA381&ots=mEvk7FvzOu&sig=kvnhZl3W_B-TXCoZGddJLv17EZc
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=bpjAkBrkmu4C&oi=fnd&pg=RA1-PA381&ots=JljQsvQ5Zu&sig=-KTVW1DRE4FnOlbsl9Lk8mAgFMQ
  

Eliminativism about Consciousness

• Drakon Nikolinakos (1994). General anesthesia, consciousness, and the skeptical challenge.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(199402)91:2<88:GACATS>2.0.CO;2-8
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(199402)91:2<88:GACATS>2.0.CO;2-8
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2940929.pdf
  
• Titus Rivas & Hein van Dongen (2001). Exit epiphenomenalism: The demolition of a refuge.   (More)
• William S. Robinson (online). Epiphenomenalism.   (More)
• Susan Schneider (2007). Daniel Dennett on the nature of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: One of the most influential philosophical voices in the consciousness studies community is that of Daniel Dennett. Outside of consciousness studies, Dennett is well-known for his work on numerous topics, such as intentionality, artificial intelligence, free will, evolutionary theory, and the basis of religious experience. (Dennett, 1984, 1987, 1995c, 2005) In 1991, just as researchers and philosophers were beginning to turn more attention to the nature of consciousness, Dennett authored his Consciousness Explained. Consciousness Explained aimed to develop both a theory of consciousness and a powerful critique of the then mainstream view of the nature of consciousness, which Dennett called,
• Pär Sundström (2008). A somewhat eliminativist proposal about phenomenal consciousness.   (More)

Dualism about Consciousness

• R. Banerjee, A. Bhattacharya, A. Genc & B. M. Arora (2006). Structure of twins in gaas nanowires grown by the vapour-liquid-solid process.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/H045765MN65818G3.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/767878712.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/tphl/2006/00000086/00000012/art00006
  
• Karen Bennett (ms). 1. dualism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Dualists think that not all the facts are physical facts. They think that there are facts about phenomenal consciousness2 that cannot be explained in purely physical terms—facts about what it’s like to see red, what it’s like to feel sandpaper, what it’s like to run 10 miles when it’s 15° F out, and so on. These phenomenal facts are genuine ‘extras’, not fixed by the physical facts and the physical laws. To use the standard metaphor: even after God settled the physical facts and laws, he had more work to do to put the phenomenal facts in place. Some dualists think that the additional work involves the creation of a special kind of nonphysical substance. More common these days are dualists who think that the additional work merely involves the creation and positioning of special nonphysical properties, and that is the only form of dualism that I will be explicitly concerned with here. The property dualist’s claim is that phenomenal properties, or at least protophenomenal properties, are among the basic furniture of the world
• Karen Bennett (ms). Why I am not a dualist.   (More)
• David J. Chalmers (2007). Naturalistic dualism.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=dRpzhcWWbxIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA202&dq=Naturalistic+dualism.+Chalmers&ots=C3fzaoD-Ri&sig=Z533eYUBqmUR12HJQeQXEZMsstM
  
• Eric Dietrich (1999). Fodor's gloom, or what does it mean that dualism seems true?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Any time you have philosophers working on a problem, you know you’ve got troubles. If a question has attracted the attention of the philosophers that means that either it is intractably difficult with convolutions and labyrinthine difficulties that would make other researchers blanch, or that it is just flat out impossible to solve. Impossible problems masquerade as intractable problems until someone either proves the problem is impossible (which can only happen in mathematics), or someone shows all solutions to the problem violate laws of physics (like the perpetual motion machine, for example), or until enough people fail so that declaring defeat is a reasonable move. The problem of consciousness is prototypical of this latter case. Indeed, one might say that it is the Platonic ideal of such a problem. The mere fact that philosophers wrestle with the problem of consciousness should be regarded by psychologists of all stripes as extremely bad news. If the philosophers can’t make any headway, psychologists are doomed
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/XWH838YE8RM1EBN4.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/teta/1999/00000011/00000002/art00001
  
• Rowan Grigg (ms). Longing for Integration.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A lighthearted look at some big themes in metaphysics and epistemology
• Amy Kind (2005). The irreducibility of consciousness.   (More)
• William G. Lycan (2007). Recent naturalistic dualisms.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper is about a certain family of philosophical positions on the mind-body problem. The positions are dualist, but only in a minimal sense of that term employed by philosophers: according to the positions in question, mental entities are immaterial and distinct from all physical things
• Fiona Macpherson (2006). Property dualism and the merits of solutions to the mind-body problem: A reply to Strawson.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper is divided into two main sections. The first articulates what I believe Strawson's position to be. I contrast Strawson's usage of 'physicalism' with the mainstream use. I then explain why I think that Strawson's position is one of property dualism and substance monism. In doing this, I outline his view and Locke's view on the nature of substance. I argue that they are similar in many respects and thus it is no surprise that Strawson actually holds a view on the mind much like one plausible interpretation of Locke's position. Strawson's use of terminology cloaks this fact and he does not himself explicitly recognize it in his paper. In the second section, I outline some of Strawson's assumptions that he uses in arguing for his position. I comment on the plausibility of his position concerning the relation of the mind to the body compared with mainstream physicalism and various forms of dualism. Before embarking on the two main sections, in the remainder of this introduction, I very briefly sketch Strawson's view
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/3325/01/strawson.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com//content/imp/jcs/2006/00000013/F0020010/art00008
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2006/00000013/F0020010/art00008
  
• Don Ross (2005). Chalmers's Naturalistic Dualism: The Irrelevance of the Mind-Body Problem to the Scientific Study of Consciousness.   (More)
• Brad Weslake, Review of understanding phenomenal consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In recent philosophy of mind, epiphenomenalism—that strain of dualism according to which the mind is caused by the body but does not cause the body in turn—has undergone something of a renaissance. Contemporary epiphenomenalists bear only partial resemblance to their more extravagantly metaphysical ancestors, however. Traditional epiphenomenalists thought that (at least) two sorts of mental properties were epiphenomenal—intentional properties such as the meaning or representational content of the propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires and so on); and conscious properties such as awareness and the qualitative nature of experience. Contemporary epiphenomenalists, on the other hand, are largely sanguine about the prospects for intentionality to be brought within the purview of a physicalist worldview; what forces their dualism is one particular feature of consciousness—what irks them are qualia, the..
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://mail.rochester.edu/~bweslake/research/papers/weslake_review_robinson.pdf
  

Panpsychism

• Charles Birch (1999). Why I became a panexperientialist.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/20423/20011210/www.alfred.north.whitehead.com/discussion_papers/birch_01.htm
  
• Roberto Casati (2003). Qualia domesticated.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://hal.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/05/32/47/PDF/ijn_00000057_00.pdf
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/05/32/47/PDF/ijn_00000057_00.pdf
  http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/05/32/47/PDF/ijn_00000057_00.pdf
  
• David J. Chalmers (online). What is it like to be a thermostat? (Commentary on Dan Lloyd, "what is it like to be a net?").   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The project that Dan Lloyd has undertaken is admirable and audacious. He has tried to boil down the substrate of information-processing that underlies conscious experience to some very simple elements, in order to gain a better understanding of the phenomenon. Some people will suspect that by considering a model as simple as a connectionist network, Dan has thrown away everything that is interesting about consciousness. Perhaps there is something to that complaint, but I will take a different tack. It seems to me that if we apply his own reasoning, we can see that Dan has not taken things far _enough_. When we have boiled things down to a system as simple as a connectionist network, it seems faint-hearted to stop there, and perhaps a little arbitrary as well. So I will take things further, and ask what seems to be the really interesting question in the vicinity: what is it like to be a thermostat?
• John B. Cobb & William H. Thorpe (1977). Some Whiteheadian comments on the discussion.   (More)
• Sam Coleman (2009). Mind under Matter.   (More)
• Christian de Quincey (2006). Switched-on consciousness - clarifying what it means.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: 'Consciousness' has been called the 'final frontier' for science, philosophy's 'hard problem', and the greatest mystery in mysticism. It is a central focus in philosophy of mind. Yet confusion abounds about what 'consciousness' means -- even among philosophers, scientists, and mystics who have built careers exploring the mind. Different scholars and different disciplines use the same word to mean very different things. Debates and dialogues on consciousness often run aground because scholars conflate two radically different uses of the term. This paper addresses the problem by elucidating a fundamental distinction between the philosophical and psychological uses of 'consciousness'
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2006/00000013/00000004/art00001
  
• P. Farleigh (1998). Whitehead's even more dangerous idea.   (More)
• Liane Gabora (2002). Amplifying phenomenal information: Toward a fundamental theory of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: from non-conscious components by positing that consciousness is a universal primitive. For example, the double aspect theory of information holds that infor- mation has a phenomenal aspect. How then do you get from phenomenal infor- mation to human consciousness? This paper proposes that an entity is conscious to the extent it amplifies information, first by trapping and integrating it through closure, and second by maintaining dynamics at the edge of chaos through simul- taneous processes of divergence and convergence. The origin of life through autocatalytic closure, and the origin of an interconnected worldview through conceptual closure, induced phase transitions in the degree to which informa- tion, and thus consciousness, is locally amplified. Divergence and convergence of cognitive information may involve phenomena observed in light e.g. focusing, interference, and resonance. By making information flow inward- biased, clo- sure shields us from external consciousness; thus the paucity of consciousness may be an illusion
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/2547/01/api.html
  http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/liane/papers/api.pdf
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00002547
  http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/liane/papers/api/api.html
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:2547
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:2547
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2002/00000009/00000008/1295
  
• Shan Gao (2003). A possible quantum basis of panpsychism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: We show that consciousness may violate the basic quantum principle, according to which the nonorthogonal quantum states can't be distinguished. This implies that the physical world is not causally closed without consciousness, and consciousness is a fundamental property of matter, thus provides a possible quantum basis for panpsychism
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000467/
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:3064
  http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000467/00/qbp-jcs.PDF
  
• Shan Gao (2003). A possible quantum basis of panpsychism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: We show that consciousness may violate the basic quantum principle, according to which the nonorthogonal quantum states can't be distinguished. This implies that the physical world is not causally closed without consciousness, and consciousness is a fundamental property of matter, thus provides a possible quantum basis for panpsychism
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/3064/1/qpan.pdf
  
• Mr Shan Gao (ms). Quantum, consciousness and panpsychism: A solution to the hard problem.   (Abstract & more)
  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
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/3489/1/qcp.pdf
  http://cogprints.org/3489/01/qcp.pdf
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003489/
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:3489
  
• Charles Hartshorne (1977). Physics and psychics: The place of mind in nature.   (More)
• Jaegwon Kim (1999). Physicalism and panexperientialism: Response to David Ray Griffin.   (More)
• Amy Kind (2006). Panexperientialism, cognition, and the nature of experience.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: i>: This paper explores the plausibility of panexperientialism by an examination of Gregg Rosenberg
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://psyche.csse.monash.edu.au/symposia/rosenberg/Kind.pdf
  http://phil-rlst.claremontmckenna.edu/akind/Panexperientialism.doc
  
• Fiona Macpherson (2006). Property dualism and the merits of solutions to the mind-body problem: A reply to Strawson.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper is divided into two main sections. The first articulates what I believe Strawson's position to be. I contrast Strawson's usage of 'physicalism' with the mainstream use. I then explain why I think that Strawson's position is one of property dualism and substance monism. In doing this, I outline his view and Locke's view on the nature of substance. I argue that they are similar in many respects and thus it is no surprise that Strawson actually holds a view on the mind much like one plausible interpretation of Locke's position. Strawson's use of terminology cloaks this fact and he does not himself explicitly recognize it in his paper. In the second section, I outline some of Strawson's assumptions that he uses in arguing for his position. I comment on the plausibility of his position concerning the relation of the mind to the body compared with mainstream physicalism and various forms of dualism. Before embarking on the two main sections, in the remainder of this introduction, I very briefly sketch Strawson's view
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/3325/01/strawson.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com//content/imp/jcs/2006/00000013/F0020010/art00008
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2006/00000013/F0020010/art00008
  
• Jennifer McKitrick (2006). Rosenberg on causation.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper is an explication and critique of a new theory of causation found in part II of Gregg Rosenberg's _A Place for Consciousness._ According to Rosenberg's Theory of Causal significance, causation constrains indeterminate possibilities, and according to his Carrier Theory, physical properties are dispositions which have phenomenal properties as their causal bases. This author finds Rosenberg's metaphysics excessively speculative, with disappointing implications for the place of consciousness in the natural world
• Yujin Nagasawa (2006). A place for protoconsciousness?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/symposia/rosenberg/Nagasawa.pdf
  http://www.philosophy.bham.ac.uk/pdf/Nagasawa/Protoconsciousness.pdf
  
• Jörg Neunhäuserer (ms). Panmentalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this short note we develop an unorthodox panmentalistic and libertarian dualism. Especially we skech a mental-physikal law of free will. Our aim is to to provoke the contemporary scentific common-sense.
• Christian Nimtz & M. Schutte (2003). On physicalism, physical properties, and panpsychism.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/(de)/philosophie/personen/nimtz/Nimtz_040301_PhysicalismSUBMITTEDPRINTED_FINE.pdf
  
• Gregory Nixon (2010). From Panexperientialism to Conscious Experience: The Continuum of Experience.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: When so much is being written on conscious experience, it is past time to face the question whether experience happens that is not conscious of itself. The recognition that we and most other living things experience non-consciously has recently been firmly supported by experimental science, clinical studies, and theoretic investigations; the related if not identical philosophic notion of experience without a subject has a rich pedigree. Leaving aside the question of how experience could become conscious of itself, I aim here to demonstrate that the terms experience and consciousness are not interchangeable. Experience is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, but I see non-conscious experience as based mainly in momentary sensations, relational between bodies or systems, and probably common throughout the natural world. If this continuum of experience — from non-conscious, to conscious, to self-transcending awareness — can be understood and accepted, radical constructivism (the “outside” world as a construct of experience) will gain a firmer foundation, panexperientialism (a living universe) may gain credibility, and psi will find its medium.
• David Pearce (online). Naturalistic panpsychism.   (More)
• Thomas W. Polger (2006). A place for dogs and trees?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Rosenberg does not provide arguments for some crucial premises in his argument against physicalism. In particular, he gives no independent argument to show that physicalists must accept the entry-by-entailment thesis. The arguments provided establish weaker premises than those that are needed. As a consequence, Rosenberg
• William E. Seager (online). Panpsychism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: 1 Non-reductive physicalists deny that there is any explanation of mentality in purely physical terms, but do not deny that the mental is entirely determined by and constituted out of underlying physical structures. There are important issues about the stability of such a view which teeters on the edge of explanatory reductionism on the one side and dualism on the other (see Kim 1998). 2 Save perhaps for eliminative materialism (see Churchland 1981 for a classic exposition). In fact, however, while
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.scar.utoronto.ca/~seager/pan_seager.pdf
  
• William E. Seager (2006). Rosenberg, reducibility and consciousness.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/symposia/rosenberg/Seager.pdf
  
• William E. Seager (2006). The 'intrinsic nature' argument for panpsychism.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.scar.utoronto.ca/~seager/mywork.htm
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com//content/imp/jcs/2006/00000013/F0020010/art00013
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2006/00000013/F0020010/art00013
  
• William E. Seager (ms). Whitehead and the revival (?) Of panpsychism.   (More)
• Steven Sevush (ms). Single-neuron theory of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: By most accounts, the mind arises from the integrated activity of large populations of neurons distributed across multiple brain regions. A contrasting model is presented in the present paper that places the mind/brain interface not at the whole brain level but at the level of single neurons. Specifically, it is proposed that each neuron in the nervous system is independently conscious, with conscious content corresponding to the spatial pattern of a portion of that neuron's dendritic electrical activity. For most neurons, such as those in the hypothalamus or posterior sensory cortices, the conscious activity would be assumed to be simple and unable to directly affect the organism's macroscopic conscious behavior. For a subpopulation of layer 5 pyramidal neurons in the lateral prefrontal cortices, however, an arrangement is proposed to be present such that, at any given moment: i) the spatial pattern of electrical activity in a portion of the dendritic tree of each neuron in the subpopulation individually manifests a complexity and diversity sufficient to account for the complexity and diversity of conscious experience; ii) the dendritic trees of the neurons in the subpopulation all contain similar spatial electrical patterns; iii) the spatial electrical pattern in the dendritic tree of each neuron interacts nonlinearly with the remaining ambient dendritic electrical activity to determine the neuron's overall axonal response; iv) the dendritic spatial pattern is reexpressed at the population level by the spatial pattern exhibited by a synchronously firing subgroup of the conscious neurons, thereby providing a mechanism by which conscious activity at the neuronal level can influence overall behavior. The resulting scheme is one in which conscious behavior appears to be the product of a single macroscopic mind, but is actually the integrated output of a chorus of minds, each associated with a different neuron
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/3891/1/snt-9html.htm
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003891/
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003891/01/snt-9html.htm
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16083912&dopt=Citation
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&uid=16083912&cmd=showdetailview&indexed=google
  http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0022519305002766
  http://cogprints.org/3891/1/snt%2D9html.htm
  http://cogprints.org/4432/1/single_neuron_theory.htm
  
• David Skrbina (2003). Panpsychism as an underlying theme in western philosophy: A survey paper.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2003/00000010/00000003/1333
  
• David Skrbina (online). Panpsychism.   (More)
• Timothy L. S. Sprigge (1998). Panpsychism.   (More)
• Leopold Stubenberg (2007). Review of Galen Strawson et al., Consciousness and its Place in Nature: Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism?.   (More)
• Author unknown (online). Panpsychism.   (More)

Russellian Monism

• Erik C. Banks (2010). Neutral Monism Reconsidered.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Should neutral monism be reconsidered? Classic NM (Mach James Russell) is examined first, and its fundamental theses identified. The second half of the paper looks at recent contemporary variants.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~db=all~content=a921557012~fulltext=713240930
  
• Erik C. Banks (online). Russell's Hypothesis and the New Physicalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A 2009 conference paper about Russell's enhanced physicalism: physical structural relations of matter instantiated by qualities with "intrinsic character." Russell's hypothesis leads many to panpsychism or protophenomenalism via a line-of-descent argument, but there is a way to break the line of descent, making sensation qualities separate higher order structural dispositions, if they are instantiated by the right kind of ground-level dispositional qualities.
• Jakob Hohwy (2005). Explanation and two conceptions of the physical.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Any position that promises genuine progress on the mind-body problem deserves attention. Recently, Daniel Stoljar has identified a physicalist version of Russells notion of neutral monism; he elegantly argues that with this type of physicalism it is possible to disambiguate on the notion of physicalism in such a way that the problem is resolved. The further issue then arises of whether we have reason to believe that this type of physicalism is in fact true. Ultimately, one needs to argue for this position by inference to the best explanation, and I show that this new type of physicalism does not hold promise of more explanatory prowess than its relevant rivals, and that, whether it is better than its rivals or not, it is doubtful whether it would furnish us with genuine explanations of the phenomenal at all
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/m88h547615552ng6/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5275862&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/M88H547615552NG6.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/erke/2005/00000062/00000001/00005862
  
• Mostyn W. Jones (forthcoming). How to make mind-brain relations clear.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The mind-body problem arises because all theories about mind-brain connections are too deeply obscure to gain general acceptance. This essay suggests a clear, simple, mind-brain solution that avoids all these perennial obscurities. (1) It does so, first of all, by reworking Strawson and Stoljar’s views. They argue that while minds differ from observable brains, minds can still be what brains are physically like behind the appearances created by our outer senses. This could avoid many obscurities. But to clearly do so, it must first clear up its own deep obscurity about what brains are like behind appearances, and how they create the mind’s privacy, unity and qualia – all of which observable brains lack. (2) This can ultimately be done with a clear, simple assumption: our consciousness is the physical substance that certain brain events consist of beyond appearances. For example, the distinctive electrochemistry in nociceptor ion channels wholly consists of pain. This rejects that pain is a brain property: instead it’s a brain substance that occupies space in brains, and exerts forces by which it’s indirectly detectable via EEGs. (3) This assumption is justified because treating pains as physical substances avoids the perennial obscurities in mind-body theories. For example, this ‘clear physicalism’ avoids the obscure nonphysical pain of dualism and its spinoffs. Pain is instead an electrochemical substance. It isn’t private because it’s hidden in nonphysical minds, but instead because it’s just indirectly detected in the physical world in ways that leave its real nature hidden. (4) Clear physicalism also avoids puzzling reductions of private pains into more fundamental terms of observable brain activity. Instead pain is a hidden, private substance underlying this observable activity. Also, pain is fundamental in itself, for it’s what some brain activity fundamentally consists of. This also avoids reductive idealist claims that the world just exists in the mind. They yield obscure views on why we see a world that isn’t really out there. (5) Clear physicalism also avoids obscure claims that pain is information processing which is realizable in multiple hardwares (not just in electrochemistry). Molecular neuroscience now casts doubt on multiple realization. Also, it’s puzzling how abstract information gets ‘realized’ in brains and affects brains (compare ancient quandries on how universals get embodied in matter). A related idea is that of supervenient properties in nonreductive physicalism. They involve obscure overdetermination and emergent consciousness. Clear physicalism avoids all this. Pain isn’t an abstract property obscurely related to brains – it’s simply a substance in brains. (6) Clear physicalism also avoids problems in neuroscience. Neuroscience explains the mind’s unity in problematic ways using synchrony, attention, etc.. Clear physicalism explains unity in terms of intense neuroelectrical activity reaching continually along brain circuits as a conscious whole. This fits evidence that just highly active, highly connected circuits are fully conscious. Neuroscience also has problems explaining how qualia are actually encoded by brains, and how to get from these abstract codes to actual pain, fear, etc.. Clear physicalism explains qualia electrochemically, using growing evidence that both sensory and emotional qualia correlate with very specific electrical channels in neural receptors. Multiple-realization advocates overlook this important evidence. (7) Clear physicalism thus bridges the mind-brain gulf by showing how brains can possess the mind’s qualia, unity and privacy – and how minds can possess features of brain activity like occupying space and exerting forces. This unorthodox nonreductive physicalism may be where physicalism leads to when stripped of all its reductive and nonreductive obscurities. It offers a clear, simple mind-body solution by just filling in what neuroscience is silent about, namely, what brain matter is like behind perceptions of it.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.imprint.co.uk/
  
• Uriah Kriegel (2008). Review of D. Stoljar, Ignorance and Imagination.   (More)
• Michael Lockwood (1993). The grain problem.   (More)
• Daniel Stoljar (forthcoming). Strawson's realistic monism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: There is at least one element in Strawson
• Daniel Stoljar (2001). Two conceptions of the physical.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The debate over physicalism in philosophy of mind can be seen as concerning an inconsistent tetrad of theses: (1) if physicalism is true, a priori physicalism is true; (2) a priori physicalism is false; (3) if physicalism is false, epiphenomenalism is true; (4) epiphenomenalism is false. This paper argues that one may resolve the debate by distinguishing two conceptions of the physical: on the theory-based conception
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/~dstoljar/onlinepapers/2COP.html
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2001.tb00056.x
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(200103)62:2<253:TCOTP>2.0.CO;2-X
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2653699.pdf
  
• Galen Strawson (2003). Realistic materialism.   (More)
• Leopold Stubenberg (1996). The place of qualia in the world of science.   (More)
• Peter K. Unger (1998). The mystery of the physical and the matter of qualities.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: For some fifty years now, nearly all work in mainstream analytic philosophy has made no serious attempt to understand the _nature of_ _physical reality,_ even though most analytic philosophers take this to be all of reality, or nearly all. While we've worried much about the nature of our own experiences and thoughts and languages, we've worried little about the nature of the vast physical world that, as we ourselves believe, has them all as only a small part
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1475-4975.00005
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1475-4975.00005
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/misp/1999/00000023/00000001/art00005
  

Neutral Monism

• Erik C. Banks (2010). Neutral Monism Reconsidered.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Should neutral monism be reconsidered? Classic NM (Mach James Russell) is examined first, and its fundamental theses identified. The second half of the paper looks at recent contemporary variants.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~db=all~content=a921557012~fulltext=713240930
  
• Erik C. Banks (online). Russell's Hypothesis and the New Physicalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A 2009 conference paper about Russell's enhanced physicalism: physical structural relations of matter instantiated by qualities with "intrinsic character." Russell's hypothesis leads many to panpsychism or protophenomenalism via a line-of-descent argument, but there is a way to break the line of descent, making sensation qualities separate higher order structural dispositions, if they are instantiated by the right kind of ground-level dispositional qualities.
• William James (1904). A world of pure experience.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0160-9335(19041013)1:21<561:AWOPEI>2.0.CO;2-N
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0160-9335(19040929)1:20<533:AWOPE>2.0.CO;2-Y
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0160-9335(19040929)1:20<533:AWOPE>2.0.CO;2-Y
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2011356.pdf
  
• William James (1904). A world of pure experience. II.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0160-9335(19041013)1:21<561:AWOPEI>2.0.CO;2-N
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0160-9335(19040929)1:20<533:AWOPE>2.0.CO;2-Y
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0160-9335(19041013)1:21<561:AWOPEI>2.0.CO;2-N
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2011356.pdf
  
• Leopold Stubenberg (online). Neutral monism.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2005/entries/neutral-monism/
  
• Eugene Taylor & Robert H. Wozniak (1996). Pure experience: The response to William James.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The radical empiricism of William James was first formally presented in his seminal papers of 1904, 'Does Consciousness Exist?' and 'A World of Pure Experience'. In James's view, pure experience was to serve as the source for psychology's primary data and radical empiricism was to launch an effective critique of experimentalism in psychology, a critique from which the problem of experimentalism within science could be addressed more broadly. This collection of papers presents James's formal statements on radical empiricism and a representative sample of contemporary responses from psychologists and philosophers. With only a few exceptions, these responses indicate just how badly James was misread - psychologists ignoring the heart of James's message and philosophers transforming James's metaphysics into something quite unintelligible to the emerging generation of experimental psychologists
• Robert Tully (1988). Russell's neutral monism.   (More)
• Prof Max Velmans (2007). Reflexive monism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Reflexive monism is, in essence, an ancient view of how consciousness relates to the material world that has, in recent decades, been resurrected in modern form. In this paper I discuss how some of its basic features differ from both dualism and variants of physicalist and functionalist reductionism, focusing on those aspects of the theory that challenge deeply rooted presuppositions in current Western thought. I pay particular attention to the ontological status and seeming “out-thereness” of the phenomenal world and to how the “phenomenal world” relates to the “physical world”, the “world itself”, and processing in the brain. In order to place the theory within the context of current thought and debate, I address questions that have been raised about reflexive monism in recent commentaries and also evaluate competing accounts of the same issues offered by “transparency theory” and by “biological naturalism”. I argue that, of the competing views on offer, reflexive monism most closely follows the contours of ordinary experience, the findings of science, and common sense
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/5730/1/Reflexive_Monism_final_version.pdf
  http://cogprints.org/6103/1/Reflexive_Monism_final_version_December_2007.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com//content/imp/jcs/2008/00000015/00000002/art00001
  

Specific Views on Consciousness, Misc

• Robert E. Haraldsen (online). Mind, Matter and Extreme Relativistic Aberration -ERA.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: On consciousness and the flow of spacetime with emphasis on Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and extra dimensions from the perspective of extreme relativistic aberration - ERA From the deepest levels of eternal consciousness we are shaped into an illusive subjective world of inherited collective projections built on phenomenological interactions, obeying solely the realm of purely abstract mathematics.
• Robert E. Haraldsen (ms). The Flow of the Oscillating Universe.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A deeper understanding of the dynamics of consciousness, not only in the trivial sense of immaterial psychological relations, but as the prerequisite of the universe itself, may lead to an understanding of gravitation. The following argument acknowledges theories of higher dimensions, such as string-M-theory as important descriptive models along with the embedded theories of quantum mechanics and an expanded relativity theory. It is also presumed that the unexploited consequence of special relativity; extreme relativistic aberration , will turn out to be one of the most important keys to a better understanding of the overall unity.