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1. Philosophy of Consciousness (Philosophy of Consciousness on PhilPapers)

• Philosophy of Consciousness, Miscellaneous [122]
• Philosophy of Consciousness, General Works [29]
• The Concept of Consciousness [51]
• Philosophy of Consciousness, Misc [40]
• Explaining Consciousness? [147]
• What is it Like? [13]
• Subjectivity and Objectivity [16]
• The Explanatory Gap [38]
• `Hard' and `Easy' Problems [42]
• Cognitive Closure [6]
• Conceptual Analysis and A Priori Entailment [12]
• Explaining Consciousness, Misc [19]
• Consciousness and Materialism [209]
• The Knowledge Argument [61]
• Zombies and the Conceivability Argument [86]
• Kripke's Modal Argument [6]
• Arguments from Disembodiment [5]
• Other Anti-Materialist Arguments [9]
• Consciousness and Materialism, Misc [9]
• Mind-Body Problem, General [32]
• Specific Views on Consciousness [229]
• 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]
• Consciousness and Content [236]
• Consciousness and Intentionality [37]
• Representationalism [105]
• Phenomenal Intentionality [23]
• Conscious Thought [7]
• Internalism and Externalism about Experience [16]
• Phenomenal Concepts [36]
• Consciousness and Content, Misc [11]
• Aspects of Consciousness [236]
• Self-Consciousness [66]
• The Unity of Consciousness [42]
• Homogeneity of Consciousness [6]
• Knowledge of Consciousness [24]
• The Function of Consciousness [29]
• Temporal Consciousness [37]
• Consciousness of Action [27]
• Unconscious States [4]
• Collective Consciousness [0]
• Aspects of Consciousness, Misc [1]
• Qualia [125]
• Qualia, Misc [17]
• Qualia and Materialism [13]
• Eliminativism about Qualia [8]
• The Inverted Spectrum [30]
• Absent Qualia [6]
• Functionalism and Qualia [9]

• Manuel Bremer (2005). Lessons from Sartre for the Analytic Philosophy of Mind.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: There are positive and negative lessons from Sartre: - Taking up some of his ideas one may arrive at a better model of consciousness in the analytic philosophy of mind; representing some of his ideas within the language and the models of a functionalist theory of mind makes them more accessible and inte¬grates them into the wider picture. - Sartre, as any philosopher, errs at some points, I believe; but these errors may be instruc¬tive, especially in as much as they mirror some errors in some current theories of consciousness. This paper, therefore, is not a piece of Sartre scholarship, but an attempt of a “friendly take¬over” of some ideas I ascribe to Sartre into current models in the philosophy of mind.
• Eric Dietrich, A connecticut yalie in King Descartes' court.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: What is consciousness? Of course, each of us knows, privately, what consciousness is. And we each think, for basically irresistible reasons, that all other conscious humans by and large have experiences like ours. So we conclude that we all know what consciousness is. It's the felt experiences of our lives. But that is not the answer we, as cognitive scientists, seek in asking our question. We all want to know what physical process consciousness is and why it produces this very strange, almost mysterious, phenomenon of felt experience
• Hakwan Lau (2008). Are we studying consciousness yet?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It has been over a decade and half since Christof Koch and the late Francis Crick first advocated the now popular NCC project (Crick and Koch, 1990), in which one tries to find the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) for perceptual processes. In his chapter in this book Chris Frith provides a splendid review of how neuroimaging has contributed greatly to this project. For the sake of contrast, this chapter takes a more critical stance on what we have actually learned. Many authors have written on whether looking for the neural correlates would eventually lead to an explanatory theory of consciousness, while the proponents defend that focusing on correlates is a strategically sensible first step, given the complexity of the problem (Crick and Koch, 1998;Crick and Koch, 2003). My point here is not to argue whether studying the NCC is useful, but rather, to question whether we are really studying the NCC at all. I argue that in hoping to sidestep the difficult conceptual issues, we have sometimes also missed the phenomenon of perceptual consciousness itself
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://hakwan.googlepages.com/Lau_AreWeStudyingConsciousnessYet_Ap.doc
  
• Vili Lähteenmäki (2010). Cudworth on Types of Consciousness.   (More)
• Elizabeth Schier, Our intuitions about consciousness are inconsistent.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract:  Introduce the intuitions  Accepting that there is no appearance/reality distinction for consciousness means we must deny that consciousness does causal work..
• Chuck Stieg (2009). Is phenomenal consciousness a complex structure?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Evolutionary explanations of psychological phenomena have become widespread. This paper examines a recent attempt by Nichols and Grantham (2000) to circumvent the problem of epiphenomenalism in establishing the selective status of consciousness. Nichols and Grantham (2000) argue that a case can be made for the view that consciousness is an adaptation based on its complexity. I set out this argument and argue that it fails to establish that phenomenal consciousness is a complex system. It is suggested that the goal of establishing consciousness as an adaptation may be better served by rejecting the distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/6173/2/PConsciousness%26ComplexitysubmitPhenom%26CogSci2.pdf
  http://cogprints.org/6173/1/PConsciousness%26ComplexitysubmitPhenom%26CogSci2.doc
  http://cogprints.org/6765/6/Is_Phenomenal_Consciousness_a_Complex_System_Activatas_Nervosa_Superior.doc
  
• Daniel Stoljar, Consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Consciousness is extremely familiar yet it is at the limits—beyond the limits, some would say—of what one can sensibly talk about or explain. Perhaps this is the reason its study has drawn contributions from many fields including psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, anthropology, cultural and literary theory, artificial intelligence, physics, and others. The focus of this entry is on: the varieties of consciousness, different problems that have been raised about these varieties, and prospects for progress on these problems
• Daniel Stoljar (2003). Introduction.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Mary is confined to a black-and-white room, is educated through black-and-white books and through lectures relayed on black-and white television. In this way she learns everything there is to know about the physical nature of the world. She knows all the physical facts about us and our environment, in a wide sense of 'physical' which includes everything in completed physics, chemistry, and neurophysiology, and all there is to know about the causal and relational facts consequent upon all this, including of course functional roles. If physicalism is true, she knows all there is to know. For to suppose otherwise is to suppose that there is more to know than every physical fact, and that is just what physicalism denies. … It seems, however, that Mary does not know all there is to know. For when she is let out of the black-and- white room or given a color television, she will learn what it is like to see something red, say. This is rightly described as learning—she will not say “ho, hum.” Hence, physicalism is false. (Jackson 1986, p. 291, Chapter 2, this volume)

Philosophy of Consciousness, Miscellaneous

• Anthony F. Beavers (2009). The phenomenological mind: An introduction to philosophy of mind and cognitive science.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The Phenomenological Mind, by Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, is part of a recent initiative to show that phenomenology, classically conceived as the tradition inaugurated by Edmund Husserl and not as mere introspection, contributes something important to cognitive science. (For other examples, see “References” below.) Phenomenology, of course, has been a part of cognitive science for a long time. It implicitly informs the works of Andy Clark (e.g. 1997) and John Haugeland (e.g. 1998), and Hubert Dreyfus explicitly uses it (e.g. 1992). But where the former use phenomenology in the background as broad context and Dreyfus uses it primarily (though not exclusively) as a critique of conventional AI, Gallagher and Zahavi wish to indicate a positive and constructive place for it within cognitive science. They do not recommend that we simply accept pronouncements of thinkers like Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau‐Ponty and apply them to questions of cognition, but that we use revised forms of phenomenology to illuminate dimensions of cognitive experience that are missing in current research. The book is presented as an “introduction to philosophy of mind and cognitive science” written from a phenomenological perspective. It seeks to justify the use of phenomenology in cognitive science by showing what kinds of questions it asks and answers, the variety of uses to which it has recently been put and the fruitfulness of some of its findings. The catalog of topics, for the most part, matches other introductions to the philosophy of mind, such as questions of method, consciousness, perception, intentionality, embodiment, action, agency and other minds. One issue presented here that is not generally dealt with in existing philosophy of mind and cognitive science texts is temporality, a mainstay of the continental tradition. After an introductory chapter that places phenomenology in the context of other approaches, the book lays out the main tenets of phenomenological method. Here, one encounters expected components of phenomenology: the epoché (described below), phenomenological reduction, eidetic variation, and so on. This traditional fare is soon followed by some potential surprises, namely, attempts to “naturalize” phenomenology, a few attempts to formalize it, and the emergence of ‘neurophenomenology’. Each of these is a bit surprising because Husserl was a vocal critic of naturalism, seeing transcendental phenomenology as an alternative to the empirical study of consciousness. He was also skeptical about the possibilities of mathematizing phenomenology. Gallagher and Zahavi acknowledge these points, but since they are not repeating history or undertaking exegesis, strict adherence to canonical phenomenology is not required. Naturalizing phenomenology means recognizing that “the phenomena it studies are part of nature and are therefore also open to empirical investigation” (p..
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~db=all~content=a913838757~fulltext=713240930
  
• Gregg Caruso (2008). Consciousness and Free Will: A Critique of the Argument from Introspection.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: One of the main libertarian arguments in support of free will is the argument from introspection. This argument places a great deal of faith in our conscious feeling of freedom and our introspective abilities. People often infer their own freedom from their introspective phenomenology of freedom. It is here argued that from the fact that I feel myself free, it does not necessarily follow that I am free. I maintain that it is our mistaken belief in the transparency and infallibility of consciousness that gives the introspective argument whatever power it possesses. Once we see that consciousness is neither transparent nor infallible, the argument from introspection loses all of its force. I argue that since we do not have direct, infallible access to our own minds, to rely on introspection to infer our own freedom would be a mistake.

Philosophy of Consciousness, General Works

• Ned Block (forthcoming). Consciousness.   (More)
• Ned Block (2003). Philosophical issues about consciousness.   (More)
• David J. Chalmers (2003). Consciousness and its place in nature.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://consc.net/papers/nature.html
  http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/nature.html
  
• David J. Chalmers (1999). Precis of The Conscious Mind.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/precis.html
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(199906)59:2<435:POTCM>2.0.CO;2-7
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2653680.pdf
  
• Paul M. Churchland & Patricia S. Churchland (2003). Recent work on consciousness: Philosophical, theoretical, and empirical.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9195661&dopt=Citation
  
• Daniel C. Dennett (2001). Consciousness: How much is that in real money?   (More)
• W. H. Dittrich (1999). More mysteries about consciousness? Book review of Davies & Humphreys on consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This commentary is a plea to re-read after five years one, as it seems, almost forgotten book which has nevertheless clearly influenced the development of empirical approaches to consciousness. The book provides an illuminating look at the early period to the modern revival of consciousness research. Its subtitle 'Psychological and Philosophical Essays' describes the book's range precisely. Early attempts to disect the mystery of consciousness and many themes that are still preoccupying modern consciousness research are covered. While some areas of research have been progressed, theoretical views have not changed dramatically, and this book still seems a good guide to embark on a mysterious journey when exploring consciousness
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/381/0/consc97a.htm
  
• Rocco J. Gennaro (online). Consciousness.   (More)
• Susan L. Hurley (online). Precis of Consciousness in Action.   (More)
• Timo Jarvilehto (online). New directions for consciousness research?   (More)
• Uriah Kriegel (2006). Theories of consciousness.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00008.x
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2005.00008.x
  
• Eric Lormand (1996). Consciousness.   (More)
• Eric Lormand (online). Steps toward a science of consciousness?   (More)
• Thomas Metzinger (1985). The problem of consciousness.   (More)
• Marvin L. Minsky (2006). Consciousness.   (More)
• Junichi Murata (1997). Consciousness and the mind-body problem.   (More)
• David Papineau (2003). Theories of consciousness.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.kcl.ac.uk/ip/davidpapineau/Staff/Papineau/OnlinePapers/theoriescon.html
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8AHDK62jPSgC&oi=fnd&pg=PA353&dq=Theories+of+consciousness+Papineau&ots=fHEaKTECak&sig=1fnfgWLj6fGeOQOlVv3FzvGf_AM
  
• Paul Raymont (ms). Conscious Unity.   (More)
• William E. Seager (2007). A brief history of the philosophical problem of consciousness.   (More)
• John R. Searle (2000). Consciousness.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://redwood.berkeley.edu/bruno/mindmachine/searle.pdf
  http://pages.pomona.edu/~rt004747/lgcs11read/Searle00.pdf
  http://www.linguistics.pomona.edu/thornton/lgcs11read/Searle00.pdf
  http://www.linguistics.pomona.edu/lcs11fall04/readings/Searle00.pdf
  http://nutr.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.neuro.23.1.557
  http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.neuro.23.1.557
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10845075&dopt=Citation
  
• John R. Searle (1987). Consciousness and the philosophers.   (More)
• John R. Searle (1993). The problem of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The most important scientific discovery of the present era will come when someone -- or some group -- discovers the answer to the following question: How exactly do neurobiological processes in the brain cause consciousness? This is the most important question facing us in the biological sciences, yet it is frequently evaded, and frequently misunderstood when not evaded. In order to clear the way for an understanding of this problem. I am going to begin to answer four questions: 1. What is consciousness? 2. What is the relation of consciousness to the brain? 3. What are some of the features that an empirical theory of consciousness should try to explain? 4. What are some common mistakes to avoid?
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py104/searle.prob.html
  http://www.engadin.nl/bibliotheek/bibliotheek/download_files/Searle Consciousness.pdf
  http://hq.sk/~mandos/fmfi-uk/Informatika/Uvod Do Umelej Inteligencie/clanky/probcons.pdf
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8319513&dopt=Citation
  
• Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (1998). Consciousness: A natural history.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/1998/00000005/00000003/844
  
• Charles Siewert (2000). Precis of The Significance of Consciousness.   (More)
• Keith Sutherland (1998). The mirror of consciousness.   (More)
• M. E. Tson (ms). From Dust to Descartes: A Mechanical and Evolutionary Explanation of Consciousness and Self-Awareness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Beginning with physical reactions as simple and mechanical as rust, From Dust to Descartes goes step by evolutionary step to explore how the most remarkable and personal aspects of consciousness have arisen, how our awareness of the world of ourselves differs from that of other species, and whether machines could ever become self-aware. Part I addresses a newborn’s innate abilities. Part II shows how with these and experience, we can form expectations about the world. Parts III concentrates on the essential role that others play in the formation of self-awareness. Part IV then explores what follows from this explanation of human consciousness, touching on topics such as free will, personality, intelligence, and color perception which are often associated with self-awareness and the philosophy of mind.
• Robert van Gulick (online). Consciousness.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2004/entries/consciousness/
  
• Max Velmans (2001). A natural account of phenomenal consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Physicalists commonly argue that conscious experiences are nothing more than states of the brain, and that conscious qualia are observer-independent, physical properties of the external world. Although this assumes the 'mantle of science,' it routinely ignores the findings of science, for example in sensory physiology, perception, psychophysics, neuropsychology and comparative psychology. Consequently, although physicalism aims to naturalise consciousness, it gives an unnatural account of it. It is possible, however, to develop a natural, nonreductive, reflexive model of how consciousness relates to the brain and the physical world. This paper introduces such a model and how it construes the nature of conscious experience. Within this model the physical world as perceived (the phenomenal world) is viewed as part of conscious experience not apart from it. While in everyday life we treat this phenomenal world as if it is the "physical world", it is really just one biologically useful representation of what the world is like that may differ in many respects from the world described by physics. How the world as perceived relates to the world as described by physics can be investigated by normal science (e.g. through the study of sensory physiology, psychophysics and so on). This model of consciousness appears to be consistent with both third-person evidence of how the brain works and with first-person evidence of what it is like to have a given experience. According to the reflexive model, conscious experiences are really how they seem
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00001813/
  http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/18/13/
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00001813/00/Natural_account_of_CS.htm
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:1813
  http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/18/13/cog00001813-00/Natural_account_of_CS.htm
  http://cogprints.org/1813/1/Natural_account_of_CS.htm
  http://cogprints.org/1813/0/Natural_account_of_CS.htm
  
• Josh Weisberg (2007). The Problem of Consciousness: Mental Appearance and Mental Reality.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: of (from Philosophy Dissertations Online)

The Concept of Consciousness

• Michael V. Antony (ms). Are our concepts "conscious state" and "conscious creature" vague?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: are sharp rather than vague, that they can have no borderline cases. On the other hand, many who take conscious states to be identical to, or realized by, complex physical states are committed to the vagueness of those concepts. In the paper I argue that conscious state and conscious creature are sharp by presenting four necessary conditions for conceiving borderline cases in general, and showing that some of those conditions cannot be met with conscious state. I conclude that conscious state is sharp, and the conclusion is then extended to conscious creature. The paper ends with a brief discussion of some implications
• Michael V. Antony (2006). Consciousness and vagueness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Abstract. An argument is offered for this conditional: If our current concept conscious state is sharp rather than vague, and also correct (at least in respect of its sharpness), then common versions of familiar metaphysical theories of consciousness are false--?namely versions of the identity theory, functionalism, and dualism that appeal to complex physical or functional properties in identification, realization, or correlation. Reasons are also given for taking seriously the claim that our current concept conscious state is sharp. The paper ends by surveying the theoretical options left open by the concept's sharpness and the truth of the conditional argued for in the paper
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/w40887115462k765/fulltext.pdf
  
• Michael V. Antony (2002). Concepts of consciousness, kinds of consciousness, meanings of 'consciousness'.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/9h7c816bx1u6603t/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=388549&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/9H7C816BX1U6603T.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2002/00000109/00000001/00388549
  
• Michael V. Antony (2001). Conceiving simple experiences.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: That consciousness is composed of simple or basic elements that combine to form complex experiences is an idea with a long history. This idea is approached through an examination of our
• Michael V. Antony (2001). Is 'consciousness' ambiguous?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Some alleged senses of the term are access consciousness, phenomenal consciousness, state consciousness, creature consciousness, introspective consciousness, self consciousness, to name a few. In the paper I argue for two points. First, there are few if any good reasons for thinking that such alleged senses are genuine:
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2001/00000008/00000002/1074
  
• Michael V. Antony (1999). Outline of a general methodology for consciousness research.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In spite of the enormous interdisciplinary interest in consciousness these days, sorely lacking are general methodologies in terms of which individual research efforts across disciplines can be seen as contributing to a common end
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://lgxserve.ciseca.uniba.it/lei/mind/texts/t0000005.htm
  
• Rodrigo Becerra (2004). Homonymous mistakes with ontological aspirations: The persisting problem with the word 'consciousness'.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ifs.csic.es/sorites/Issue_15/becerra.htm
  http://www.ifs.csic.es/sorites/Issue_15/sorites15.pdf#page=13
  
• Mark H. Bickhard (2005). Consciousness and reflective consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: An interactive process model of the nature of representation intrinsically accounts for multiple emergent properties of consciousness, such as being a contentful experiential flow, from a situated and embodied point of view. A crucial characteristic of this model is that content is an internally related property of interactive process, rather than an externally related property as in all other contemporary models. Externally related content requires an interpreter, yielding the familiar regress of interpreters, along with a host of additional fatal problems. Further properties of consciousness, such as differentiated qualities of experience, including qualia, emerge with conscious reflection. In particular, qualia are not constituents or direct properties of consciousness per se. Assuming that they are so is a common and ultimately disastrous misconstrual of the problems of consciousness
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.lehigh.edu/~mhb0/Consc.Weber.24May03.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a713997471~fulltext=713240930
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/J3K07H45847V6505.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/J3K07H45847V6505.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/cphp/2005/00000018/00000002/art00004
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~db=all~content=a713997471~fulltext=713240930
  
• Ned Block (1997). Author's response.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The distinction between phenomenal (P) and access (A) consciousness arises from the battle between biological and computational approaches to the mind. If P = A, the computationalists are right; but if not, the biological nature of P yields its scientific nature
• Gregg Caruso (2005). Sensory States, Consciousness, and the Cartesian Assumption.   (More)
• David J. Chalmers (1997). Availability: The cognitive basis of experience?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: [[This was written as a commentary on Ned Block 's paper "On A Confusion about a Function of Consciousness" . It appeared in _Behavioral_ _and Brain Sciences_ 20:148-9, 1997, and also in the collection _The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates_ (MIT Press, 1997) edited by Block, Flanagan, and Guzeldere. ]]
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/availability.html
  http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=29360&jid=BBS&volumeId=20&issueId=01&aid=29359
  http://www.journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0140525X97240057
  
• Austen Clark (2001). Phenomenal consciousness so-called.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: "Consciousness" is a multiply ambiguous word, and if our goal is to explain perceptual consciousness we had better be clear about which of the many senses of the word we are endorsing when we sign on to the project. I describe some of the relatively standard distinctions made in the philosophical literature about different meanings of the word "conscious". Then I consider some of the arguments of David Chalmers and of Ned Block that states of "phenomenal consciousness" pose special and intractable problems for the scientific understanding of perception. I argue that many of these problems are introduced by obscurities in the term itself, and propose a distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic senses of the term "phenomenal consciousness". That distinction helps explain why phenomenal consciousness seems so mysterious to so many people. States of "phenomenal consciousness" are not states of one, elemental (and inexplicable) kind; they are a ragtag lot, of differing levels of complexity, corralled under one heading by a regrettable ambiguity in our terminology
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://selfpace.uconn.edu/paper/ClarkAusPCtall.pdf
  
• Felipe De Brigard (forthcoming). Attention, Consciousness, and Commonsense.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The relation of dependency between consciousness and attention is, once again, a matter
  of heated debate among scientists and philosophers. There are at least three general views on the
  issue. First, there are those who suggest that attention is both necessary and sufficient for
  consciousness (e.g. Posner, 1994; Prinz, 2000, forthcoming). Second, there are those who
  suggest that even though attention is necessary for consciousness, it may not be sufficient (e.g.
  Moran & Desimone, 1984; Rensink et al., 1997; Merikle & Joordens, 1997). Finally, there are
  those who suggest that attention is neither necessary nor sufficient for consciousness, that—at
  most—they are two different processes that happen to be concomitant some of the time, but
  which, under very specific circumstances, can be shown to come apart (e.g. Lamme, 2003;
  Koivisto et al., 2005; Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007). Piles of evidence have been marshaled in favor
  and against each of these alternatives, and as far as I can see, there is no hope of agreement on
  the horizon.
  
• Daniel C. Dennett (2001). Consciousness: How much is that in real money?   (More)
• Ronald B. de Sousa (2002). Twelve varieties of subjectivity.   (More)
• Andrew A. Fingelkurts, Alexander A. Fingelkurts & Carlos F. H. Neves (2010). Natural World Physical, Brain Operational, and Mind Phenomenal Space-Time.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Concepts of space and time are widely developed in physics. However, there is a considerable lack of biologically plausible theoretical frameworks that can demonstrate how space and time dimensions are implemented in the activity of the most complex life-system – the brain with a mind. Brain activity is organized both temporally and spatially, thus representing space-time in the brain. Critical analysis of recent research on the space-time organization of the brain’s activity pointed to the existence of so-called operational space-time in the brain. This space-time is limited to the execution of brain operations of differing complexity. During each such brain operation a particular short-term spatio-temporal pattern of integrated activity of different brain areas emerges within related operational space-time. At the same time, to have a fully functional human brain one needs to have a subjective mental experience. Current research on the subjective mental experience offers detailed analysis of space-time organization of the mind. According to this research, subjective mental experience (subjective virtual world) has definitive spatial and temporal properties similar to many physical phenomena. Based on systematic review of the propositions and tenets of brain and mind space-time descriptions, our aim in this review essay is to explore the relations between the two. To be precise, we would like to discuss the hypothesis that via the brain operational space-time the mind subjective space-time is connected to otherwise distant physical space-time reality.
• Alvin Goldman (1993). Consciousness, folk psychology, and cognitive science.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper supports the basic integrity of the folk psychological conception of consciousness and its importance in cognitive theorizing. Section 1 critically examines some proposed definitions of consciousness, and argues that the folk- psychological notion of phenomenal consciousness is not captured by various functional-relational definitions. Section 2 rebuts the arguments of several writers who challenge the very existence of phenomenal consciousness, or the coherence or tenability of the folk-psychological notion of awareness. Section 3 defends a significant role for phenomenal consciousness in the execution of a certain cognitive task, viz., classification of one's own mental states. Execution of this task, which is part of folk psychologizing, is taken as a datum in scientific psychology. It is then argued (on theoretical grounds) that the most promising sort of scientific model of the self-ascription of mental states is one that posits the kinds of phenomenal properties invoked by folk psychology. Cognitive science and neuroscience can of course refine and improve upon the folk understanding of consciousness, awareness, and mental states generally. But the folk-psychological constructs should not be jettisoned; they have a role to play in cognitive theorizing
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py104/goldman.consc.html
  
• Gilbert Harman (online). What is cognitive access?   (More)
• Benj Hellie (2010). An externalist's guide to inner experience.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Let's be externalists about perceptual consciousness and think the form of veridical perceptual consciousness includes /seeing this or that mind-independent particular and its colors/. Let's also take internalism seriously, granting that spectral inversion and hallucination can be "phenomenally" the same as normal seeing. Then perceptual consciousness and phenomenality are different, and so we need to say how they are related. It's complicated!
  
  Phenomenal sameness is (against all odds) /reflective indiscriminability/. I build a "displaced perception" account of reflection on which indiscriminability stems from shared "qualia". Qualia are compatible with direct realism: while they generate an explanatory gap (and colors do not), so does /seeing/; qualia are excluded from perceptual consciousness by its "transparency"; instead, qualia are aspects of thought about the perceived environment.
  
  The asymmetry between my treatments of color and seeing is grounded in the asymmetry between ignorance and error: while inversion shows that normal subjects are ignorant of the natures of the colors, hallucination shows not that perceivers are ignorant of the nature of seeing but that hallucinators are prone to error about their condition. Past literature has treated inversion and hallucination as on a par: externalists see error in both cases, while internalists see mutual ignorance. My account is so complicated because plausible results require mixing it up.
• Benj Hellie (2007). Factive phenomenal characters.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper expands on the discussion in the first section of 'Beyond phenomenal naivete'. Let Phenomenal Naivete be understood as the doctrine that some phenomenal characters of veridical experiences are factive properties concerning the external world. Here I present in detail a phenomenological case for Phenomenal Naivete and an argument from hallucination against it. I believe that these arguments show the concept of phenomenal character to be defective, overdetermined by its metaphysical and epistemological commitments together with the world. This does not establish a gappish eliminativism, but a gluttish pluralism, on which there are many imperfect deservers of the name 'phenomenal character'. Different projects in the philosophy of mind -- phenomenology, philosophy of conscious, metaphysics and epistemology of perception -- are concerned with different deservers of the name.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1520-8583.2007.00128.x
  
• Boris Hennig (2007). Cartesian conscientia.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Although Descartes is often said to have coined the modern notion of ‘consciousness’, he defines it neither explicitly nor implicitly. This may imply (1) that he was not the first to use ‘conscientia’ in its modern, psychological sense, or (2) that he still used it in its traditional moral sense. In this paper, I argue for the latter assumption. Descartes used ‘conscientia’ according to the meaning we also find in texts of St. Paul, Augustine, Aquinas and later scholastics. Thus the Cartesian conscientia is, technically speaking, a shared knowledge of the specific value of our thoughts as thoughts and at the same time the cause of this value. This means that it is not itself a kind of individual knowledge, awareness, or a particular thought. Rather, ‘conscientia’ refers to the evaluative knowledge of an ideal observer.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a780365723~fulltext=713240930
  http://prod.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a780365723~db=all~jumptype=rss
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/780365723.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~db=all~content=a780365723~fulltext=713240930
  
• Ted Honderich (1998). Consciousness as existence.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/ted4.htm
  
• Ted Honderich (2004). Consciousness as existence, devout physicalism, spiritualism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Consider three answers to the question of what it actually is for you to be aware of the room you are in. (1) It is for the room in a way to exist. (2) It is for there to be only physical activity in your head, however additionally described. (3) It is for there to be non-spatial facts somehow in your head. The first theory, unlike the other two, satisfies five criteria for an adequate account of consciousness itself. The criteria have to do with the seeming nature of this consciousness, and with subjectivity, reality including non-abstractness, mind-body causation, and the differences between perceptual, reflective and affective consciousness. The theory of consciousness as existence is not open to the objection having to do with a deluded brain in a vat. The theory, as any theory of consciousness needs to, explains its own degree of failure in characterizing consciousness. It releases neuroscience and cognitive science from nervousness about consciousness, and leaves all of consciousness a subject for science. The theory is a reconstruction of our conception of consciousness. It may be that we should carry forward several theories of consciousness. But they will have to be compared in terms of truth to the five criteria for an adequate theory
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.mindmatter.de/mmpdf/honderich.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/mm/2004/00000002/00000001/art00005
  
• Ted Honderich (2003). Perceptual, reflective, and affective consciousness as existence.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This is a further improved version of a paper previously called `Reflective and Affective Consciousness'. It is better now -- more or less comprehensible if still imperfect. It is the fourth in a series of papers, and continues the idea that consciousness needs to be analysed not in any of the boring ways: by way of the plain or 17th Century materialism that is still with us in new packages, or immaterialism, or dualistic identity theory, or functionalism and cognitive science with philosophical ambition. (For argued surveys of these, and a particular allegiance now abandoned in favour of Consciousness as Existence, go to Mind Brain Connection and Mind and Brain Explanation .) Consciousness needs to be analysed, rather, mainly in terms of things existing outside of heads. The final draft of the paper will eventually turn up in the annual proceedings of The Royal Institute of Philosophy, a volume under the title Minds and Persons edited by Anthony O'Hear. At the end of the paper here there is a summary of it -- in fact the handout for a lecture
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=pS2ia_fLVSQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&ots=pBk4ATPUuW&sig=Hd_aHPmB4nEBfg-x-jrwcl84X_E
  
• Daniel D. Hutto (2001). Consciousness and Conceptual Schema.   (More)
• William James (1904). Does "consciousness" exist?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0160-9335(19040901)1:18<477:D`E>2.0.CO;2-M
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0160-9335(19040901)1:18<477:D`E>2.0.CO;2-M
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2011942.pdf
  
• Joshua Knobe & Jesse J. Prinz (2008). Intuitions about consciousness: Experimental studies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: When people are trying to determine whether an entity is capable of having certain kinds of mental states, they can proceed either by thinking about the entity from a *functional* standpoint or by thinking about the entity from a *physical* standpoint. We conducted a series of studies to determine how each of these standpoints impact people’s mental state ascriptions. The results point to a striking asymmetry. It appears that ascriptions of states involving phenomenal consciousness are sensitive to physical factors in a way that ascriptions of other states are not
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.unc.edu/~knobe/consciousness.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/y16u07u7775l2312/fulltext.pdf
  http://pantheon.yale.edu/~jk762/consciousness.pdf
  
• Uriah Kriegel (2006). Consciousness: Phenomenal consciousness, access consciousness, and scientific practice.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Key Terms: Phenomenal consciousness, access consciousness, qualitative character, subjective character, intransitive self-consciousness, disposition, categorical basis, subliminal perception, blindsight
• Eric Lormand (1996). Nonphenomenal consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: There is not a uniform kind of consciousness common to all conscious mental states: beliefs, emotions, perceptual experiences, pains, moods, verbal thoughts, and so on. Instead, we need a distinction between phenomenal and nonphenomenal consciousness. As if consciousness simpliciter were not mysterious enough, philosophers have recently focused their worries on phenomenal (or qualitative) consciousness, the kind that explains or constitutes there being "something it
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0029-4624(199606)30:2<242:NC>2.0.CO;2-Z
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0029-4624(199606)30:2<242:NC>2.0.CO;2-Z
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2216295.pdf
  
• William G. Lycan (online). The plurality of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: My topics are consciousness. The plural is deliberate. Both in philosophy and in psychology,
• Neil Campbell Manson (2002). Epistemic consciousness.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0039368102000250
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/searching/Expand?pub=infobike://els/00393681/2002/00000033/00000003/art00025&unc=
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/00393681/2002/00000033/00000003/art00025
  
• Gyorgy Markus (1975). The Marxian concept of consciousness.   (More)
• Thomas Natsoulas (1999). The concept of consciousness: The general state meaning.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/119067279/PDFSTART
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1468-5914.00091
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-5914.00091
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/jtsb/1999/00000029/00000001/art00004
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/jtsb/1999/00000029/00000001/art00091
  
• Thomas Natsoulas (1996). The sciousness hypothesis: Part I.   (More)
• Gregory Nixon (2010). Hollows of Experience.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This essay is divided into two parts, deeply intermingled. Part I examines not only the
  origin of conscious experience but also how it is possible to ask of our own
  consciousness how it came to be. Part II examines the origin of experience itself, which
  soon reveals itself as the ontological question of Being. The chief premise of Part I
  chapter is that symbolic communion and the categorizations of language have enabled
  human organisms to distinguish between themselves as actually existing entities and
  their own immediate experience of themselves and their world. This enables them to
  reflect upon abstract concepts, including “self,” “experience,” and “world.” Symbolic
  communication and conceptualization grow out of identification, the act of first
  observing conscious experiencing and intimating what it is like, mimesis, a gestural
  protolanguage learned through imitation, and reflection, seeing oneself through the eyes
  of others. The step into actual intentional speech is made through self-assertion,
  narrative, and intersubjectivity. These three become the spiral of human cultural
  development that includes not only the adaptive satisfaction of our biological needs, but
  also the creativity of thought. With the mental-conceptual separation of subject and
  object – of self and world – the human ability to witness the universe (and each other) is
  the ground of our genuinely human quality. Consciousness gives human life its
  distinctively human reality. It is, therefore, one and the same ability that enables us to
  shape planet Earth by means of conceptual representations (rather than by means of our
  hands alone) while also awakening us to the significance of being.
  
  Looking beyond human self-consciousness to investigate the origin and nature of
  awareness itself in Part 2, reductive objective materialism is found to be of little use.
  Direct experience also falls short in that, in order to be transformed into objective
  knowledge about itself, it must always be interpreted through and limited by the
  symbolic contexts of culture and the idiosyncratic conceptualizations of the individual.
  Awareness in itself must thus be considered ultimately unexplainable, but this may
  more indicate its inexpressible transcendence of all symbolic qualifiers than its
  nonexistence. It is suggested that awareness is not “self-aware” (as in deity) but is
  instead unknowing yet identical with the only true universal: the impetus of creative
  unfolding. Our human knowledge, as an expression of this unfolding, is seen to emerge
  from our conscious experiencing and, in turn, to have the power – and enormous
  responsibility – of directing that experience. Our underlying symbolic worldviews are
  found to be autopoietic: They limit or open our conscious experience, which, in turn,
  confirms those worldview expectations. As we explore a future of unforeseeable
  technological breakthroughs on an ailing planet who patiently copes with our “success,”
  truly vital decisions about the nature, meaning, and future of conscious experience will
  have to be made.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/viewFile/22/20
  
• Gualtiero Piccinini (2007). The ontology of creature consciousness: A challenge for philosophy.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.umsl.edu/~piccininig/Data From Introspective Reports.pdf
  http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=1007828&jid=BBS&volumeId=30&issueId=01&aid=1007824
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&uid=17475074&cmd=showdetailview&indexed=google
  http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=1007824
  http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0140525X07001100
  
• Charles Ripley (1984). Sperry's concept of consciousness.   (More)
• 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 Rosenthal (2001). Consciousness and sensation: Philosophical aspects.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: consciousness. Such unconscious processing always

  Cambridge, UK

  tends to re?ect habitual or strong responses. From this
• 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 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 M. Rosenthal (1994). State consciousness and transitive consciousness.   (More)
• Ulrich Schlösser (ms). Hegel's conception of philosophical critique. The concept of consciousness and the structure of proof in the introduction to the phenomenology of spirit.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Among philosophers in the period of change between the late 18th and early 19th centuries it was a widespread conviction that, because the status of a demonstrative theory made up of axioms and proofs was neither available nor desirable for philosophy, philosophical critique would also not be external to the business of philosophy. Rather it was to belong to the essence of philosophy itself. Against this background Hegel occupied himself almost from the beginning of his philosophical thinking with the question of how a critique that is also able to convince an adherent of a theory differing from one’s own should proceed. Initially it must provide him with a description of his standpoint that he himself can accept. Moreover, the critique must tie up with a method of examination that is part of this standpoint itself, because its adherent would not otherwise have to agree to the procedure. Hegel is interested in this matter not only as a description of the hermeneutic situation in which the adherents of two particular, opposing positions find themselves. Rather, he asks himself whether an idea for the procedure of philosophical critique that commits itself to such considerations can also be generalized. This would require giving a minimalist description of the starting point in a way that allows as large a spectrum as possible of positions that are to be the object of the critique to recognize themselves within it. And the procedure of the critique must be able to be developed from this description itself
• Aaron Sloman (ms). What is it like to be a rock?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper aims to replace deep sounding unanswerable, time-wasting pseudo- questions which are often posed in the context of attacking some version of the strong AI thesis, with deep, discovery-driving, real questions about the nature and content of internal states of intelligent agents of various kinds. In particular the question
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/misc/rock/rock/
  http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/misc/like_to_be_a_rock/rock.pdf
  http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/misc/like_to_be_a_rock/rock.html
  http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/cogaff/misc/like_to_be_a_rock/rock.pdf
  
• Justin Sytsma (2010). Folk psychology and phenomenal consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In studying folk psychology, cognitive and developmental psychologists have mainly focused on how people conceive of non-experiential states, such as beliefs and desires. As a result, we know very little about how the non-philosophers (or the folk) understand the mental states that philosophers typically classify as being phenomenally conscious. In particular, it is not known whether the folk even tend to classify mental states in terms of their being or not being phenomenally conscious in the first place. Things have changed dramatically in the last few years, however, with a flurry of ground-breaking research by psychologists and experimental philosophers. In this article, I will review this work, carefully distinguishing between two questions: First, are the ascriptions that the folk make with regard to the mental states that philosophers classify as phenomenally conscious related to their decisions about whether morally right or wrong action has been done to an entity? Second, do the folk tend to classify mental states in the way that philosophers do, distinguishing between mental states that are phenomenally conscious and mental states that are not phenomenally conscious?
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/123587895/PDFSTART
  
• Justin Sytsma & Edouard Machery (2009). How to study folk intuitions about phenomenal consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The assumption that the concept of phenomenal consciousness is pretheoretical is often found in the philosophical debates on consciousness. Unfortunately, this assumption has not received the kind of empirical attention that it deserves. We suspect that this is in part due to difficulties that arise in attempting to test folk intuitions about consciousness. In this article we elucidate and defend a key methodological principle for this work. We draw this principle out by considering recent experimental work on the topic by Joshua Knobe and Jesse Prinz (2008). We charge that their studies do not establish that the folk have a concept of phenomenal consciousness in part because they compare group agents to individuals . The problem is that group agents and individuals differ in some significant ways in terms of functional organization and behavior. We propose that future experiments should establish that ordinary people are disposed to ascribe different mental states to entities that are given behaviorally and functionally equivalent descriptions
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a908827766~fulltext=713240930
  
• Justin Sytsma & Edouard Machery (forthcoming). Two conceptions of subjective experience.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Do philosophers and ordinary people conceive of subjective experience in the same way? In this article, we argue that they do not and that the philosophical concept of phenomenal consciousness does not coincide with the folk conception. We first offer experimental support for the hypothesis that philosophers and ordinary people conceive of subjective experience in markedly different ways. We then explore experimentally the folk conception, proposing that for the folk, subjective experience is closely linked to valence. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for a central issue in the philosophy of mind, the hard problem of consciousness
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/h12n401r44417x31/fulltext.pdf
  
• Nigel J. T. Thomas (1998). Imagination, eliminativism, and the pre-history of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Classical and medieval writers had no term for consciousness in anything like the modern sense, and their philosophy seems not to have been troubled by the mind-body problem. Contemporary eliminativists find strong support in this fact for their claim that consciousness does not exist, or, at least, is not an appropriate scientific explanandum. They typically hold that contemporary conceptions of consciousness are artefacts of Descartes' (now outmoded) views about matter and his unrealistic craving for epistemological certainty. Essentially, they say, our belief in consciousness is a residue of once pressing, but now irrelevant, intellectual tensions between religion and the rising new science of the Early Modern period. With the attempts of Descartes and his successors to resolve these tensions, Western thought began down a track toward the conceptual cul-de-sac of the "hard problem". Plausibly, the problem will only be (dis)solved, and the onward march of science assured, when we are able to shake off the pervasive influence of the Cartesian tradition in a way that goes far beyond the mere rejection of dualism. But when we do so, eliminativists contend, the distinctively Cartesian notion of consciousness will simply drop out of our world-picture, like phlogiston or the vital entelechy
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.imagery-imagination.com/im-c-abs.htm
  http://htpprints.yorku.ca/archive/00000220/01/iepc2.htm
  
• Mario Vaneechoutte (2000). Experience, awareness, and consciousness: Suggestions for definitions as offered by an evolutionary approach.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: An evolutionary point of view is proposed to make more appropriate distinctions between experience, awareness and consciousness. Experience can be defined as a characteristic linked closely to specific pattern matching, a characteristic already apparent at the molecular level at least. Awareness can be regarded as the special experience of one or more central, final modules in the animal neuronal brain. Awareness is what experience is to animals.Finally, consciousness could be defined as reflexive awareness. The ability for reflexive awareness is distinctly different from animal and human awareness and depends upon the availability of a separate frame of reference, as provided by symbolic language. As such, words have made reflexive awareness
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/m1p4672r4wht3110/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=322218&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/M1P4672R4WHT3110.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/foda/2000/00000005/00000004/00322218
  
• Max Velmans, Defining consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The following extracts with connecting comments suggest a departure point for a definitions of consciousness that preserves its everyday phenomenology while allowing an understanding of what consciousness is to deepen as scientific investigation proceeds. I argue that current definitions are often theory-driven rather than following the contours of ordinary experience. Consequently they are sometimes too broad, sometimes too narrow, and sometimes not definitions of phenomenal consciousness at all. As an alternative, an ecologically valid, reflexive approach to consciousness is suggested that is consistent with science and with common sense
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:395
  http://cogprints.org/395/1/Definingconsciousness.html
  http://cogprints.org/395/0/Definingconsciousness.html
  
• Prof Max Velmans (2009). How to define consciousness—and how not to define consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Definitions of consciousness need to be sufficiently broad to include all examples of conscious states and sufficiently narrow to exclude entities, events and processes that are not conscious. Unfortunately, deviations from these simple principles are common in modern consciousness studies, with consequent confusion and internal division in the field. The present paper gives example of ways in which definitions of consciousness can be either too broad or too narrow. It also discusses some of the main ways in which pre-existing theoretical commitments (about the nature of consciousness, mind and world) have intruded into definitions. Similar problems can arise in the way a “conscious process” is defined, potentially obscuring the way that conscious phenomenology actually relates to its neural correlates and antecedent causes in the brain, body and external world. Once a definition of “consciousness” is firmly grounded in its phenomenology, investigations of its ontology and its relationships to entities, events and processes that are not conscious can begin, and this may in time transmute the meaning (or sense) of the term. As our scientific understanding of these relationships deepen, our understanding of what consciousness is will also deepen. A similar transmutation of meaning (with growth of knowledge) occurs with basic terms in physics such as "energy", and "time."

Philosophy of Consciousness, Misc

• Joe Becker (2008). Conceptualizing Mind and Consciousness: Using Constructivist Ideas to Transcend the Physical Bind.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Philosophers and scientists seeking to conceptualize consciousness, and subjective experience in particular, have focused on sensation and perception, and have emphasized binding – how a percept holds together. Building on a constructivist approach to conception centered on separistic-holistic complexes incorporating multiple levels of abstraction, the present approach reconceptualizes binding and opens a new path to theorizing the emergence of consciousness. It is proposed that all subjective experience involves multiple levels of abstraction, a central feature of conception. This modifies the prevalent idea of sequential development from sensation through perception to conception. Further, this approach to mind and consciousness links constructivist theory to artistic activity and suggests that conception, subjective experience, aboutness (intentionality), and agency are linked together through separistic-holistic complexes. It also argues for change in the prevailing constructivist view that regards the process of production of new levels of conception as inherently directed towards better fit with the external environment. Copyright © 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel
• Alex Byrne, David Hilbert & Susanna Siegel (online). Do we see more than we can access?   (More)
• Peter Carruthers (2001). Who is blind to blindsight?   (More)
• David J. Chalmers (unknown). On ``consciousness and the philosophers''.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: John Searle's review of my book The Conscious Mind appeared in the March 6, 1997 edition of the New York Review of Books. I replied in a letter printed in their May 15, 1997 edition, and Searle's response appeared simultaneously. I set up this web page so that interested people can see my reply to Searle in turn, and to give access to other relevant materials
• David J. Chalmers (unknown). Reply to mulhauser's review of the conscious mind.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: First, I should clarify the notion of "taking consciousness seriously", which serves as a premise in my work. Mulhauser characterizes this as the assumption that no cognitive theory of consciousness will suffice. The latter assumption would indeed beg some crucial questions, but it is not the assumption that I make. I make an assumption about the problem of consciousness, not about any solution. To quote (p. xii): Throughout the book, I have assumed that consciousness exists, and that to redefine the problem as that of explaining how certain cognitive and behavioral functions are performed is unacceptable. This is what I mean by taking consciousness seriously. That is, the premise is simply that there is a phenomenon to be explained, and that the problems of explaining such functions as discrimination, integration, self monitoring, reportability, and so on do not exhaust all the problems in the vicinity. The deepest problem of consciousness, as I understand it, is not the problem of how all these functions are performed, but rather the problem of explaining how and why all this activity supports states of subjective experience
• David J. Chalmers (1997). Response to Searle.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In my book _The Conscious Mind_ , I deny a number of claims that John Searle finds "obvious", and I make some claims that he finds "absurd". But if the mind/body problem has taught us anything, it is that nothing about consciousness is obvious, and that one person's obvious truth is another person's absurdity. So instead of throwing around this sort of language, it is best to examine the claims themselves and the arguments that I give for them, to see whether Searle says anything of substance that touches them
• Daniel C. Dennett (2005). Two steps closer on consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: For a solid quarter century Paul Churchland and I have been wheeling around in the space of work on consciousness, and though from up close it may appear that we =ve been rather vehemently opposed to each other =s position, from the bird =s eye view, we are moving in a rather tight spiral within the universe of contested views, both staunch materialists, interested in the same phenomena and the same empirical theories of those phenomena, but differing only over where the main chance lies for progress
• Fred Dretske (2001). First person warrant: Comments on Siewert's The Significance of Consciousness.   (More)
• Richard M. Gale (online). William James on the misery and glory of consciousness.   (More)
• Brie Gertler (2001). The relationship between phenomenality and intentionality: Comments on Siewert's The Significance of Consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Charles Siewert offers a persuasive argument to show that the presence of certain phenomenal features logically suffices for the presence of certain intentional ones. He claims that this shows that (some) phenomenal features are inherently intentional. I argue that he has not established the latter thesis, even if we grant the logical sufficiency claim. For he has not ruled out a rival alternative interpretation of the relevant data, namely, that (some) intentional features are inherently phenomenal
• George Graham & Terence E. Horgan (1998). Sensations and grain processes.   (More)
• Susan L. Hurley (online). Is there a substantive disagreement here? Reply to Chemero and Cordeiro.   (More)
• Susan L. Hurley (online). The space of reasons vs. the space of inference: Reply to Noe.   (More)
• Robert E. Kirk (2002). Thinking about Papineau's Thinking About Consciousness.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://lgxserve.ciseca.uniba.it/lei/mind/forums/004_0002.htm
  
• Joseph Levine (2001). Phenomenal consciousness and the first-person.   (More)
• Vili Lähteenmäki (2007). Orders of Consciousness and Forms of Reflexivity in Descartes.   (More)
• Vili Lähteenmäki (2008). The Sphere of Experience in Locke: The Relations Between Reflection, Consciousness, and Ideas.   (More)
• Paul M. Livingston (2002). Experience and structure: Philosophical history and the problem of consciousness.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2002/00000009/00000003/1260
  
• Kirk A. Ludwig (2002). Phenomenal consciousness and intentionality: Comments on The Significance of Consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: _The Significance of Consciousness_ . Princeton: Princeton University Press. $42.50 hbk. x + 374pp. ISBN: 0691027242. ABSTRACT: I discuss three issues about the relation of phenomenal consciousness, in the sense Siewert isolates, to
• Robert W. Lurz (2001). Taking the first-person approach: Two worries for Siewert's sense of 'consciousness'.   (More)
• William G. Lycan (2001). Have we neglected phenomenal consciousness?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Charles Siewert's _The Significance of Consciousness_ contends that most philosophers and psychologists who have written about "consciousness" have neglected a crucial type or aspect that Siewert calls "phenomenal consciousness" and tries carefully to define. The present article argues that some philosophers, at least, have not neglected phenomenal consciousness and have offered tenable theories of it
• Andrew Melnuk (2002). Papineau on the intuition of distinctness.   (More)
• Thomas Nagel (1993). The mind wins.   (More)
• Dana K. Nelkin (2001). Phenomenal consciousness and intentionality.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Siewert identifies a special kind of conscious experience, phenomenal consciousness, that is the sort of consciousness missing in a variety of cases of blindsight. He then argues that phenomenal consciousness has been neglected by students of consciousness when it should not be. According to Siewert, the neglect is based at least in part on two false assumptions: (i) phenomenal features are not intentional and (ii) phenomenal character is restricted to sensory experience. By identifying an essential tension in Siewert's characterization of phenomenal consciousness, I argue that his case for denying (i) and (ii) is at best incomplete
• Alva Noe (ms). Perception, action, and nonconceptual content.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: profile deforms as we move about it. As perceivers we are masters of the patterns of sensorimotor contingency that shape our perceptual interaction with the world. We expect changes in such things as apparent size, shape and color to occur as we actively explore the environment. In encountering perspective-dependent changes of this sort, we learn how things are quite apart form our particular perspective. Our possession of these skills is constitutive of our ability to see (and generally to perceive). This is confirmed by the fact that we can disrupt a person
• David Papineau (2003). Reply to Kirk and Melnyk.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I am lucky to have two such penetrating commentators as Robert Kirk and Andrew Melnyk. It is also fortunate that they come at me from different directions, and so cover different aspects of my book. Robert Kirk has doubts about the overall structure of my enterprise, and in particular about my central commitment to a distinctive species of phenomenal concepts. Andrew Melnyk, by contrast, offers no objections to my general brand of materialism. Instead he focuses specifically on my discussion of the anti-materialist 'intuition of distinctness', raising questions about my attempt to explain this intuition away, and offering alternative suggestions of his own
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://lgxserve.ciseca.uniba.it/lei/mind/forums/004_0004.htm
  
• Gualtiero Piccinini (2007). The Ontology of Creature Consciousness: A Challenge for Philosophy.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I appeal to Merker's theory to motivate a hypothesis about the ontology of consciousness: Creature consciousness is (at least partially) constitutive of phenomenal consciousness. Rather than elaborating theories of phenomenal consciousness couched solely in terms of state consciousness, as philosophers are fond of doing, a correct approach to phenomenal consciousness should begin with an account of creature consciousness.
• Philip Robbins (2008). Consciousness and the social mind.   (More)
• William E. Seager (2001). Consciousness, value and functionalism.   (More)
• Charles Siewert (2004). Replies.   (More)
• Par Sundstrom (2006). Review of Papineau's Thinking About Consciousness.   (More)
• Pär Sundström (2005). Wittgenstein, consciousness, and the mind.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ifs.csic.es/sorites/Issue_16/sundstro.htm
  http://www.umu.se/philos/personal/Sundstrom/Whemsida.pdf
  http://www.umu.se/philos/personal/Sundstrom/Wittgenstein.pdf
  http://www.ifs.csic.es/sorites/Issue_16/sorites16.pdf#page=8
  
• Justin Sytsma (2009). Phenomenological obviousness and the new science of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Is phenomenal consciousness a problem for the brain sciences? An increasing number of researchers hold not only that it is but that its very existence is a deep mystery. That this problematic phenomenon exists is generally taken for granted: It is asserted that phenomenal consciousness is just phenomenologically obvious. In contrast, I hold that there is no such phenomenon and, thus, that it does not pose a problem for the brain sciences. For this denial to be plausible, however, I need to show that phenomenal consciousness is not phenomenologically obvious. That is the goal of this article. †To contact the author, please write to: 1414 Simona Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15201; e‐mail: jmsytsma@gmail.com
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00004383/01/Phenomenological_Obviousness_and_the_New_Science.pdf
  http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/605821
  
• Alan Thomas (1997). Kant, McDowell and the theory of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper examines some of the central arguments of John McDowell's Mind and World, particularly his treatment of the Kantian themes of the spontaneity of thought and of the nature of self-consciousness. It is argued that in so far as McDowell departs from Kant, his position becomes less plausible in three respects. First, the space of reason is identified with the space of responsible and critical freedom in a way that runs together issues about synthesis below the level of concepts and at the level of complete judgements. This leads to the unwarranted exclusion of animal minds from the space of reasons. Second, McDowell draws no essential distinction between apperception and inner sense, a distinction which is important to a defensible Kantian view and to the very idea of a sui generis transcendental knowledge of the mind that is consistent with Kant's critical principles. McDowell does not take into account some of Kant's developed arguments about the inherently reflective nature of consciousness which is interpreted as an adverbial theory of the nature of conscious experience, a mode of being in a mental state (so neither an intrinsic nor extrinsic property of it). Third, McDowell endorses a standard treatment of Kant's approach to the mind in which a merely formal account of mind needs to be anchored outside consciousness on the physical body. The arguments for this conclusion, both in Mind and World and in related work by Bermudez and Hurley, is shown to be very inconclusive as a criticism of Kant. The capacity to self-ascribe thoughts that are already conscious shows, but does not say, a truth about the unity of our conscious experience that does not require further anchoring on a physical body; at that stage of the Critique Kant is describing conditions for conscious experience in general, not the conscious experience of spatio-temporally located makers of judgements. The alleged lacuna in Kant's arguments is no lacuna at all
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.logical-operator.com/EJP Paper.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1468-0378.00041
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0378.00041
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/ejop/1997/00000005/00000003/art00004
  
• Nigel Thomas (ms). The study of imagination as an approach to consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The concept of consciousness appears to have had little currency before the 17th century. Not only did philosophers before Descartes fail to worry about how consciousness fitted into the natural world, they did not even claim to be conscious. If we are conscious, however, we must assume that they were too, and it hardly seems plausible that they could have been unaware of it. In fact, when the mind was discussed in former ages, both before and within the work of Descartes, the concept of imagination filled most (not all) of the key conceptual roles that consciousness fills today. Although it was not considered uniquely problematic, in the way that consciousness is, imagination continued to be used in these ways long after the Cartesian revolution. It was both the mental arena where thinking took place - where ideas (images) had their being and their interaction - and, implicitly, the power whereby the deliverances of the material sense organs were integrated and rendered meaningful (and, thereby, rendered 'mental'). This suggests that the study of the imagination (in the relevant senses) ought to have a considerable bearing on the study of consciousness, and it may even provide a way to outflank the notorious 'hard problem' that seems to stand in the way of a direct scientific assault on consciousness itself
• Michael Tranchina, Freedom and Spirituality.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This essay explores the phenomenon of spirituality by delineating of the rise of free will as a product of a reflective consciousness synthesized from conditioned responses resulting from external demands.
• William Uzgalis (2008). Review of Barry Dainton, The Phenomenal Self.   (More)
• Prof Max Velmans (2009). Psychophysical nature.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: There are two quite distinct ways in which events that we normally think of as “physical” relate in an intimate way to events that we normally think of as “psychological”. One intimate relation occurs in exteroception at the point where events in the world become events as-perceived. The other intimate relationship occurs at the interface of conscious experience with its neural correlates in the brain. The chapter examines each of these relationships and positions them within a dual-aspect, reflexive model of how consciousness relates to the brain and external world. The chapter goes on to provide grounds for viewing mind and nature as fundamentally psychophysical, and examines similar views as well as differences in previously unpublished writings of Wolfgang Pauli, one of the founders of quantum mechanics
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/6109/1/Psychophysical_nature.pdf
  
• Gottfried Vosgerau (2009). Mental Representation and Self-Consciousness: From Basic Self-Representation to Self-Related Cognition.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: One oft the most fascinating abilities of humans is the ability to become conscious of the own physical and mental states. In this systematic investigation of self-consciousness, a representational theory is developed that is able to distinguish between different levels of self-consciousness. The most basic levels are already present in such simple animals as ants. From these basic forms, which are also relevant for adult human self-consciousness, high-level self-consciousness including self-knowledge can arise. Thereby, the theory is not only able to integrate developmental considerations but also to sharply distinguish different aspects of the complex phenomenon self-consciousness. Pathological breakdowns of these different aspects, as they can be found in schizophrenia, are explained by specific impairments on different levels of self-representation. In this way, the work shows that a naturalistic theory of self-consciousness is possible, if the analysis starts with very simple and basic mechanisms instead of starting on the »top of the iceberg«.
• D. Gene Witmer (2001). Experience, appearance, and hidden features.   (More)

Explaining Consciousness?

• Nigel J. T. Thomas (2009). Visual Imagery and Consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Defining Imagery: Experience or Representation?
  Historical Development of Ideas about Imagery
  Subjective Individual Differences in Imagery Experience
  Theories of Imagery, and their Implications for Consciousness
  Picture theory
  Description theory
  Enactive theory

What is it Like?

• David Beisecker (2005). Phenomenal consciousness, sense impressions, and the logic of 'what it's like'.   (More)
• Susan J. Blackmore (2003). What is it like to be...?   (More)
• Laurence A. BonJour (ms). What is it like to be human (instead of a bat).   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: My purpose in this paper is to discuss and defend an objection to physicalist or materialist accounts of the mind
• P. M. S. Hacker (2002). Is there anything it is like to be a bat?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The concept of consciousness has been the source of much philosophical, cognitive scientific and neuroscientific discussion for the past two decades. Many scientists, as well as philosophers, argue that at the moment we are almost completely in the dark about the nature of consciousness. Stuart Sutherland, in a much quoted remark, wrote that
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=102154&jid=PHI&volumeId=77&issueId=02&aid=102153
  http://www.journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0031819102000220
  http://journals.cambridge.org/article_S0031819102000220
  
• Benj Hellie (2004). Inexpressible truths and the allure of the knowledge argument.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I argue on linguistic grounds that when Mary comes to know what it's like to see a red thing, she comes to know a certain inexpressible truth about the character of her own experience. This affords a "no concept" reply to the knowledge argument. The reason the Knowledge Argument has proven so intractable may be that we believe that an inexpressible concept and an expressible concept cannot have the same referent.
• 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
  
• Eric Lormand (2004). The explanatory stopgap.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Is there an explanatory gap between raw feels and raw material? Some philosophers argue, and many other people believe, that scientific explanations of conscious experience cannot be as satisfying as typical scientific explanations elsewhere, even in our wildest dreams. The underlying philosophical claims are
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108(200407)113:3<303:TES>2.0.CO;2-K
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/4147973.pdf
  http://philreview.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/citation/113/3/303
  http://philreview.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/113/3/303.pdf
  http://philreview.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/113/3/303
  
• Fiona Macpherson (2006). Ambiguous figures and the content of experience.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Representationalism is the position that the phenomenal character of an experience is either identical with, or supervenes on, the content of that experience. Many representationalists hold that the relevant content of experience is nonconceptual. I propose a counter-example to this form of representationalism that arises from the phenomenon of Gestalt switching, which occurs when viewing ambiguous figures. First, I argue that one does not need to appeal to the conceptual content of experience or to judge- ments to account for Gestalt switching. I then argue that experiences of certain ambiguous figures are problematic because they have different phenomenal characters but that no difference in the nonconceptual content of these experiences can be identified. I consider three solutions to this problem that have been proposed by both philosophers and psychologists and conclude that none can account for all the ambiguous figures that pose the problem. I conclude that the onus is on representationalists to specify the relevant difference in content or to abandon their position
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_21954_en.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0029-4624.2006.00602.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/2006/00000040/00000001/art00003
  
• Fiona Macpherson (2000). Representational Theories of Phenomenal Character.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  https://dspace.stir.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/1893/25/1/Macpherson_Thesis_Complete.pdf
  
• Luca Malatesti (2004). Knowing what it is like and knowing how.   (More)
• Jeffrey A. Medina (2002). What it's like and why: Subjective qualia explained as objective phenomena.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Notably spurred into the philosophical forefront by Thomas Nagel's 'What Is It Like To Be a Bat?' decades ago, and since maintained by a number of advocates of dualism since that critical publication, is the assertion that our inability to know 'what it's like' to be someone or something else is inexplicable given physicalism. Contrary to this well-known and central objection, I find that a consistent and exhaustive physicalism is readily conceivable. I develop one such theory and demonstrate that not only is it consistent with the private and varied nature of subjective experience, it, in fact, entails it
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00002649/
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:2649
  
• Yujin Nagasawa (2003). Thomas versus Thomas: A new approach to Nagel's bat argument.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ptr.bham.ac.uk/staff/docs/nagasawa_thomas.pdf
  http://www.philosophy.bham.ac.uk/staff/nagasawa_Thomas.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a713788647~fulltext=713240930
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./content~content=a713788647~db=all~order=page
  http://www.yujinnagasawa.com/resources/thomas.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~db=all~content=a713788647~fulltext=713240930
  
• Thomas Nagel (1974). What is it like to be a bat?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iBpGvhKP670C&oi=fnd&pg=PA422&ots=MWAuhYCnil&sig=LX8QyTKZzotzwL2YA29L5vm_Mwc
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iBpGvhKP670C&oi=fnd&pg=PA422&ots=MWAsdXtlic&sig=I0vTcuOty-ay321R8Chyazc0Wv8
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iBpGvhKP670C&oi=fnd&pg=PA422&ots=MWAw9ZBnmg&sig=-hnhK-NYKovY7izgiOdIZGgtwi4
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iBpGvhKP670C&oi=fnd&pg=PA422&ots=MWAubYxhoe&sig=E-uyaFC1mwRViC_Vzd1yV_YkfNY
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iBpGvhKP670C&oi=fnd&pg=PA422&ots=MWAxh-Ahle&sig=Jn45gyNQkfQO0iW-AZv3qTcg458
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iBpGvhKP670C&oi=fnd&pg=PA422&ots=MVJw9Ztljk&sig=3hJuRqj_SsLgAIksFx5iJHDNPHU
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iBpGvhKP670C&oi=fnd&pg=PA422&ots=MWAxb-wlog&sig=ZaPLuowxn31jMNfxpOidMniWgGM
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iBpGvhKP670C&oi=fnd&pg=PA422&ots=MVJwe0xlkd&sig=cRzA3p8Fyz06dPKUfeqO_kOimmU
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iBpGvhKP670C&oi=fnd&pg=PA422&ots=MWAt9Xyglj&sig=tfHw81xAKrWjWzI0mVWUhkqh7gk
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iBpGvhKP670C&oi=fnd&pg=PA422&ots=MWAvdZxkok&sig=QsnNG__LP8r9RIWni64e_eZJDeU
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iBpGvhKP670C&oi=fnd&pg=PA422&ots=MWAtfXCnmd&sig=toEe1io-gDMt8nW8a2h5CmKHMX8
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iBpGvhKP670C&oi=fnd&pg=PA422&ots=MWAwf_wmlk&sig=l06X1Mqe7LPm-K_TMNXbyDbmZ7I
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA186&ots=023TSBEVKQ&sig=FiTx9VnPHNUriSOswDvWeN5Awpg
  

Subjectivity and Objectivity

• Ronald L. Chrisley (2001). A view from anywhere: Prospects for an objective understanding of consciousness.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/ronc/nagel.ps
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/chrisley98view.html
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=CCX1NhhpQNQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&ots=1BEcKyf309&sig=KrkVdWRv8wsujMhpKbnYbQBRGgM
  
• Daniel C. Dennett (1988). Review of Fodor, psychosemantics.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In Word and Object, Quine acknowledged the "practical indispensability" in daily life of the intentional idioms of belief and desire but disparaged such talk as an "essentially dramatic idiom" rather than something from which real science could be made in any straightforward way.Endnote 1 Many who agree on little else have agreed with Quine about this, and have gone on to suggest one or another indirect way for science to accommodate folk psychology: Sellars, Davidson, Putnam, Rorty, Stich, the Churchlands, Schiffer and myself, to name a few. This fainthearted consensus is all wrong, according to Fodor, whose new book is a vigorous--even frantic--defense of what he calls Intentional Realism: beliefs and desires are real, causally involved, determinately contentful states. "We have no reason to doubt," Fodor says, "that it is possible to have a scientific psychology that vindicates commonsense belief/desire explanation." (p.16)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/fodor.htm
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000253/
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000253/00/fodor.htm
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:253
  http://cogprints.org/253/1/fodor.htm
  http://cogprints.org/253/0/fodor.htm
  
• Rom Harre (1999). Nagel's challenge and the mind-body problem.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=/PHI/PHI74_02/S0031819199000285a.pdf&code=a40eba0e7560f0c1968140bc4db80943
  
• Pete Mandik (2000). Chapter 1: Subjective and Objective Judgments.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Many philosophical issues concern questions of objectivity and subjectivity. Of these questions, there are two kinds. The first considers whether something is objective or subjective; the second what it _means_ for something to be objective or subjective
• Pete Mandik (2001). Mental representation and the subjectivity of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Many have urged that the biggest obstacles to a physicalistic understanding of consciousness are the problems raised in connection with the subjectivity of consciousness. These problems are most acutely expressed in consideration of the knowledge argument against physicalism. I develop a novel account of the subjectivity of consciousness by explicating the ways in which mental representations may be perspectival. Crucial features of my account involve analogies between the representations involved in sensory experience and the ways in which pictorial representations exhibit perspectives or points of view. I argue that the resultant account of subjectivity provides a basis for the strongest response physicalists can give to the knowledge argument
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/mandik01mental.html
  http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/papers/repsubj.pdf
  http://testweb.wpunj.edu/cohss/philosophy/FACULTY/mandik/papers/mrsc.PDF
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a713690498~fulltext=713240930
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/7F2MCHYKXHKAJ5LG.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/7F2MCHYKXHKAJ5LG.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/cphp/2001/00000014/00000002/art00003
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~db=all~content=a713690498~fulltext=713240930
  
• Pete Mandik (2008). The Neural Accomplishment of Objectivity.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Philosophical tradition contains two major lines of thought concerning the relative difficulty of the notions of objectivity and subjectivity. One tradition, which we might characterize as
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://testweb.wpunj.edu/cohss/philosophy/FACULTY/mandik/papers/nao.pdf
  
• Pete Mandik (2009). The neurophilosophy of subjectivity.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The so-called subjectivity of conscious experience is central to much recent work in the philosophy of mind. Subjectivity is the alleged property of consciousness whereby one can know what it is like to have certain conscious states only if one has undergone such states oneself. I review neurophilosophical work on consciousness and concepts pertinent to this claim and argue that subjectivity eliminativism is at least as well supported, if not more supported, than subjectivity reductionism
• Ron McClamrock (1992). Irreducibility and subjectivity.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: ...the problem of...how cognition...is possible at all...can never be answered on the basis of a prior knowledge of the transcendent [i.e. the external, spatio-temporal, empirical]...no matter whence the knowledge or the judgments are borrowed, not even if they are taken from the exact sciences.... It will not do to draw conclusions from existences of which one knows but which one cannot "see". "Seeing" does not lend itself to demonstration or deduction. [Husserl 1964a, pp. 2-3]
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/tx03234k78335152/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/TX03234K78335152.pdf
  
• Thomas Metzinger (2004). The subjectivity of subjective experience: A representationalist analysis of the first-person perspective.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Before one can even begin to model consciousness and what exactly it means that it is a subjective phenomenon one needs a theory about what a first-person perspective really is. This theory has to be conceptually convincing, empirically plausible and, most of all, open to new developments. The chosen conceptual framework must be able to accommodate scientific progress. Its ba- sic assumptions have to be plastic as it were, so that new details and empirical data can continuously be fed into the theoretical model as it grows and becomes more refined. This paper makes an attempt at sketching the outlines of such a theory, offering a representationalist analysis of the phenomenal first-person perspective. Three phenomenal target properties are centrally relevant:
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://sammelpunkt.philo.at:8080/archive/00000267/
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/metzinger00subjectivity.html
  http://sammelpunkt.philo.at:8080/archive/00000267/01/2000c.pdf
  http://lgxserver.uniba.it/lei/ai/networks/04/metzinger_engl.pdf
  http://www.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/metzinger/publikationen/2000c.pdf
  http://lgxserve.ciseca.uniba.it/lei/ai/networks/04/metzinger_engl.pdf
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:1358
  http://www.jsmf.org/meetings/2003/nov/The Subjectivity of Subjective Experience.pdf
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:1358
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00001358/00/The_Subjectivity_of_Subjective_Experience.pdf
  http://www.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/metzinger/publikationen/The Subjectivity of Subjective Experience Revised Version networks 2004.pdf
  http://www.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/metzinger/publikationen/The%20Subjectivity%20of%20Subjective%20Experience%20Revised%20%20Version%20networks%202004.pdf
  http://cogprints.org/1358/3/The_Subjectivity_of_Subjective_Experience.pdf
  http://cogprints.org/1358/0/The_Subjectivity_of_Subjective_Experience.pdf
  
• Ana Pasztor (1998). Subjective experience divided and conquered.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.cs.fiu.edu/~pasztora/candc/div8.ps
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/pasztor98subjective.html
  http://www.cs.fiu.edu/~pasztora/candc/c&c-abstract.pdf
  
• Christopher Peacocke (2009). Objectivity.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Some of our most important mental states and events have a minimal objectivity, in this intuitive sense: a thinker’s being in the state, or enjoying the event, does not in general make the content of the state or event correct. In general, making a judgement is one thing, the correctness of what is judged is another. Having a perceptual experience as of something’s being the case does not in general make it the case. Valuing things that have a certain property does not in general make possession of that property something of value. What explains this minimal objectivity? How is it possible?
• Steven M. Rosen (2000). Focusing on the Flesh: Merleau-Ponty, Gendlin, and Lived Subjectivity.   (More)
• Steven M. Rosen (2008). Quantum Gravity and Phenomenological Philosophy.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The central thesis of this paper is that contemporary theoretical physics is grounded in philosophical presuppositions that make it difficult to effectively address the problems of subject-object interaction and discontinuity inherent to quantum gravity. The core objectivist assumption implicit in relativity theory and quantum mechanics is uncovered and we see that, in string theory, this assumption leads into contradiction. To address this challenge, a new philosophical foundation is proposed based on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger. Then, through the application of qualitative topology and hypernumbers, phenomenological ideas about space, time, and dimension are brought into focus so as to provide specific solutions to the problems of force-field generation and unification. The phenomenological string theory that results speaks to the inconclusiveness of conventional string theory and resolves its core contradiction.
• Steven M. Rosen (1997). Wholeness as the Body of Paradox.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This essay is written at the crossroads of intuitive holism, as typified in Eastern thought, and the discursive reflectiveness more characteristic of the West. The point of departure is the age-old human need to overcome fragmentation and realize wholeness. Three basic tasks are set forth: to provide some new insight into the underlying obstacle to wholeness, to show what would be necessary for surmounting this blockage, and to take a concrete step in that direction. At the outset, the question of paradox is addressed, examined in relation to Zen meditation, the problem of language, and the thinking of Heidegger. Wholeness is to be realized through paradox, and it is shown that a complete realization requires that paradox be embodied. Drawing from the fields of visual geometry and qualitative mathematics, three concrete models of paradox are offered: the Necker cube, the Moebius surface, and the Klein bottle. In attempting to model wholeness, an important limitation is recognized: a model is a symbolic representation that maintains the division between the reality represented and the act of symbolizing that reality. It is demonstrated that while the first two models are subject to this limitation, the Klein bottle, possessing higher dimensionality, can express wholeness more completely, provided that it is approached in a radically nonclassical way. The final question of this essay concerns its own capability as an essay. It is asked whether the present text is restricted to affording a mere abstract reflection on wholeness, or whether wholeness can tangibly be delivered.
• Pär Sundström (2002). Nagel's case against physicalism.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://ej.lib.cbs.dk/index.php/sats/article/viewArticle/392
  
• Justin Sytsma, Experiments on the folk theory of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It is not uncommon to find assumptions being made about folk psychology in the discussions of phenomenal consciousness in philosophy of mind. In this article I consider one example, focusing on what Dan Dennett says about the “folk theory of consciousness.” I show that he holds that the folk believe that the sensory qualities that we are acquainted with in ordinary perception are phenomenal qualities. Nonetheless, the shape of the folk theory is an empirical matter and in the absence of empirical investigation there is ample room for doubt. Fortunately, experimental evidence on the topic is now being produced by experimental philosophers and psychologists. This article contributes to this growing literature, presenting the results of six new studies on the folk view of colors and pains. I argue that the results indicate against Dennett’s theory of the folk theory of consciousness

The Explanatory Gap

• Katalin Balog (forthcoming). In Defense of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: During the last two decades, several different anti-physicalist arguments based on an epistemic or conceptual gap between the phenomenal and the physical have been proposed. The most promising physicalist line of defense in the face of these arguments – the Phenomenal Concept Strategy – is based on the idea that these epistemic and conceptual gaps can be explained by appeal to the nature of phenomenal concepts rather than the nature of non-physical phenomenal properties. Phenomenal concepts, on this proposal, involve unique cognitive mechanisms, but none that could not be fully physically implemented. David Chalmers has recently presented a Master Argument to show that the Phenomenal Concept Strategy – not just this or that version of it, but any version of it – fails. Chalmers argues that the phenomenal concepts posited by such theories are either not physicalistically explicable, or they cannot explain our epistemic situation with regard to qualia. I argue that it is his Master Argument that fails. My claim is his argument does not provide any new reasons to reject the Phenomenal Concept Strategy. I also argue that, although the Phenomenal Concept Strategy is successful in showing that the physicalist is not rationally compelled to give up physicalism in the light of the anti-physicalist arguments, the anti-physicalist is not rationally compelled to give up the anti-physicalist argument in the light of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy either.
• Ansgar Beckermann (2000). The perennial problem of the reductive explainability of phenomenal consciousness: C. D. broad on the explanatory gap.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: At the start of the 20th century the question of whether life could be explained in purely me- chanical terms was as hotly debated as the mind-body problem is today. Two factions opposed each other: Biological mechanists claimed that the properties characteristic of living organisms (metabolism, perception, goal-directed behavior, procreation, morphogenesis) could be ex- plained mechanistically, in the way the behavior of a clock can be explained by the properties and the arrangement of its cogs, springs, and weights. Substantial vitalists, on the other hand, maintained that the explanation envisaged by the mechanists was impossible and that one had to postulate a special nonphysical substance in order to explain life
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/(de)/philosophie/personen/beckermann/broad_ew.pdf
  http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/(en)/philosophie/personen/beckermann/broad_ew.pdf
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=2XWXfmDYTRIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA41&ots=Y7iTrSU1rF&sig=syguWsmufnr9lXK_AOR9Wcm8aNE
  
• David Bengtsson (2003). The nature of explanation in a theory of consciousness.   (More)
• Ned Block & Robert Stalnaker (1999). Conceptual analysis, dualism, and the explanatory gap.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The explanatory gap . Consciousness is a mystery. No one has ever given an account, even a highly speculative, hypothetical, and incomplete account of how a physical thing could have phenomenal states. (Nagel, 1974, Levine, 1983) Suppose that consciousness is identical to a property of the brain, say activity in the pyramidal cells of layer 5 of the cortex involving reverberatory circuits from cortical layer 6 to the thalamus and back to layers 4 and 6,as Crick and Koch have suggested for visual consciousness. (See Crick (1994).) Still, that identity itself calls out for explanation! Proponents of an explanatory gap disagree about whether the gap is permanent. Some (e.g. Nagel, 1974) say that we are like the scientifically naive person who is told that matter = energy, but does not have the concepts required to make sense of the idea. If we can acquire these concepts, the gap is closable. Others say the gap is uncloseable because of our cognitive limitations. (McGinn, 1991) Still others say that the gap is a consequence of the fundamental nature of consciousness
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108(199901)108:1<1:CADATE>2.0.CO;2-T
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108(199901)108:1<1:CADATE>2.0.CO;2-T
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2998259.pdf
  
• Alex Byrne (online). Tye on color and the explanatory gap.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It will not have escaped notice that the defendant in this afternoon
• Peter Carruthers (2004). Reductive explanation and the "explanatory gap".   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Can phenomenal consciousness be given a reductive natural explanation? Exponents of an
• David J. Chalmers (2006). Phenomenal concepts and the explanatory gap.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Confronted with the apparent explanatory gap between physical processes and consciousness, there are many possible reactions. Some deny that any explanatory gap exists at all. Some hold that there is an explanatory gap for now, but that it will eventually be closed. Some hold that the explanatory gap corresponds to an ontological gap in nature
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://consc.net/papers/pceg.html
  
• Austen Clark (online). I am Joe's explanatory gap.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: _tableau_ can be given a full and satisfying explanation, while others cannot. We can explain in a full and satisfying way why the water in the mug is identical with H2O, why its liquidity is identical with a state of its molecular bonds, and why its heat is identical with its molecules being in motion. But we cannot explain in the same way why the neural processes which Joe undergoes when he looks at the mug are such as to make the mug look green, and not red. The latter explanations have gaps
• Sam Coleman (ms). Chalmers's Master Argument and Type Bb Physicalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Chalmers has provided a dilemmatic master argument against all forms of the phenomenal concept strategy. This paper explores a position that evades Chalmers's argument, dubbed Type Bb: it is for Type B physicalists who embrace horn b of Chalmers's dilemma. The discussion concludes that Chalmers fails to show any incoherence in the position of a Type B physicalist who depends on the phenomenal concept strategy.
• Tim Crane (online). Cosmic hermeneutics vs emergence: The challenge of the explanatory gap.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper is a defence of Terence Horgan’s claim that any genuinely physicalist position must distinguish itself from (what has been traditionally known as) emergentism. I argue that physicalism is necessarily reductive in character -- it must either give a reductive account of apparently non-physical entities, or a reductive explanation of why there are non-physical entities. I argue that many recent ‘nonreductive’ physicalists do not do this, and that because of this they cannot adequately distinguish their view from emergentism. The conclusion is that this is the real challenge posed by Joseph Levine’s ‘explanatory gap’ argument: if physicalists cannot close the explanatory gap in Levine’s preferred way, they must find some other way to do it. Otherwise their view is indistinguishable from emergentism
• Esa Diaz-Leon (online). Can phenomenal concepts explain the explanatory gap?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: One of the most important arguments against physicalism is the so-called conceivability argument. Intuitively, this argument claims that since certain statements concerning the separation of the physical and the phenomenal are conceivable, they are possible. This inference from conceivability to possibility has been challenged in numerous ways. One of these ways is the so-called phenomenal concept strategy, which has become one of the main strategies against the conceivability argument. David Chalmers says it “is perhaps the most attractive option for a physicalist to take in responding to the problem of consciousness”.2 Certainly, in the recent years, a multitude of proposals of that sort have been proposed and developed.3 However, Chalmers (2006) has recently argued that no version of the phenomenal concept strategy can succeed. In what follows, I will examine his argument for that conclusion, and I will argue that it is not sound. I will conclude that he has not posed any serious problem for the phenomenal concept strategy to succeed..
• Esa Diaz-Leon (2009). How many explanatory gaps are there?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: According to many philosophers, there is an explanatory gap between physical truths and phenomenal truths. Someone could know all the physical truths about the world, and in particular, all the physical information about the brain and the neurophysiology of vision, and still not know what it is like to see red (Jackson 1982, 1986). According to a similar example, someone could know all the physical truths about bats and still not know what it is like to be a bat (Nagel 1974). We can conceive of an individual that is physically identical to me, molecule per molecule, but does not have any phenomenally conscious state whatsoever (Chalmers 1996). Some philosophers have argued that the explanatory gap shows that we cannot explain consciousness in physical terms (Levine 2001), or even that phenomenal consciousness is not physical and therefore physicalism is false (Chalmers 1996, 2002)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://esadiazleon.googlepages.com/howmanyexplanatorygaps.pdf
  
• Brie Gertler (2001). The explanatory gap is not an illusion: A reply to Michael Tye.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The claim that there is an explanatory gap between physical and phenomenal properties is perhaps the leading current challenge to materialist views about the mind. Tye tries to block this challenge, not by providing an explanation to bridge the gap but by denying that phenomenalphysical identities introduce an explanatory gap. Since an explanatory gap exists only if there is something unexplained that needs explaining, and something needs explaining only if it can be explained (whether or not it lies within the power of human-beings to explain it), there is no gap. (Tye ????, p. ???) Tyes strategy differs crucially from the claim that identities never stand in need of explanation because they constitute ultimate explanations; for he allows that identities such as water = H?O are explainable. Unlike WATER and H?O, which are descriptive concepts, phenomenal concepts are perspectival and hence irreducible to descriptive concepts, according to Tye. The fact that something picked out by a perspectival concept is identical to something picked out by a non-perspectival concept cannot be explained.1 So, he concludes, phenomenalphysical identities need not be explained
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/110/439/689
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3093652.pdf
  
• Franz-Peter Griesmaier (2003). On explaining phenomenal consciousness.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/L0AMV10XPF60V2HJ.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/L0AMV10XPF60V2HJ.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/teta/2003/00000015/00000002/art00008
  
• Gilbert Harman (online). Explaining an explanatory gap.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Discussions of the mind-body problem often refer to an
• C. L. Hardin (1992). Physiology, phenomenology, and Spinoza's true colors.   (More)
• Stevan Harnad (1994). Why and how we are not zombies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A robot that is functionally indistinguishable from us may or may not be a mindless Zombie. There will never be any way to know, yet its functional principles will be as close as we can ever get to explaining the mind
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00001601/
  http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/16/01/
  http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/3347/01/harnad95.zombies.html
  http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad95.zombies.html
  http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad95.zombies.html
  http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad95.zombies.html
  http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003347/01/harnad95.zombies.html
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00001601/00/harnad95.zombies.html
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk:3347
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:1601
  http://cogprints.org/1601/0/harnad95.zombies.html
  http://cogprints.org/1601/1/harnad95.zombies.html
  
• Valerie Gray Hardcastle (1997). Why science is important for philosophy.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Levine (1997) claims that Locating Consciousness (1995) does not seriously address the problem of the explanatory gap; instead it merely provides lots of data. Here I argue that, contrary to the intuitions of some philosophers, the best remedy for our gaps in explanation and understanding is in fact through empirical investigation
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://psycprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000544/01/psyc.97.8.08.locating-consciousness.5.hardcastle.xml
  
• Ted Honderich (2000). Consciousness and inner tubes.   (More)
• J. P. Kline (1998). Another opening in the explanatory gap.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/10538100/1998/00000007/00000002/art90344
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ap/cc/1998/00000007/00000002/art00344
  
• Dr Marc Krellenstein (ms). Point of view: A modern nihilism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Presents the author’s view of the best current positions on certain core philosophical and psychological problems. These positions together suggest a traditional nihilist perspective modified by evolutionary psychology and other contemporary thinking that accepts limitations on our understanding (rather than the conclusive non-existence of certain explanations), the psychological (if not absolute) reality of values, free will and other phenomena and our desire to live as best we can. The positions presented are: (1) the origin of the universe cannot be understood, (2) morality has no absolute rational foundation, (3) some people have unquestioned beliefs they view as absolute, (4) we don’t really have free will but can act as if we do, (5) brains are conscious but we don’t know how, (6) we live by relative values, biological dispositions, upbringing, habit and choice and (7) we don’t know how much we can modify ourselves, what makes us happy or what we value
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/4815/1/point%2Dof%2Dview%2Da%2Dmodern%2Dnihilism%2D30%2Dmar%2D06.html
  
• 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).
• Joseph Levine (1983). Materialism and qualia: The explanatory gap.   (More)
• J. M. Musacchio (2002). Dissolving the explanatory gap: Neurobiological differences between phenomenal and propositional knowledge.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The explanatory gap and theknowledge argument are rooted in the conflationof propositional and phenomenal knowledge. Thebasic knowledge argument is based on theconsideration that ``physical information'' aboutthe nervous system is unable to provide theknowledge of a ``color experience'' (Jackson,1982). The implication is that physicalism isincomplete or false because it leaves somethingunexplained. The problem with Jackson'sargument is that physical information has theform of highly symbolic propositional knowledgewhereas phenomenal knowledge consists in innateneurophysiological processes. In addition totheir fundamental epistemological differences,clinical, anatomical, pathological and brainimaging studies demonstrate that phenomenal andpropositional knowledge are fundamentallydifferent neurobiological processes. Propositional knowledge is phylogeneticallynew, highly symbolic, culturally acquired,exclusively human and expressible in differentnatural and artificial languages. By contrast,phenomenal knowledge (i.e.: knowingwhat-it-is-like to see a color) consists inqualitative experiences and phenomenal conceptsthat provide an internal, language-independentreference to the properties of objects and theneeds of the organism. Language andpropositional knowledge are exclusively humanattributes implemented in specific regions ofthe dominant hemisphere. This contrastssharply with the phylogenicallysensory areas that are common to animals andhumans, which implement qualitativeexperiences. Experiences are hard-wiredneurobiological processes that can neither betransmitted nor re-created through thesymbolism of propositions. Thus, I concludethat the fallacy in the explanatory gap and inthe knowledge argument is a fallacy ofequivocation that results from ignoringfundamental neurobiological differences betweenphenomenal and propositional knowledge
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/l8403wt023670q48/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=459118&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/L8403WT023670Q48.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/bram/2002/00000003/00000003/00459118
  
• Yujin Nagasawa (web). Formulating the explanatory gap.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers. Harman
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ptr.bham.ac.uk/staff/docs/nagasawa_formulating.pdf
  http://www.yujinnagasawa.com/resources/formulating.pdf
  
• Ram Neta (2004). Skepticism, abductivism, and the explanatory gap.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.1533-6077.2004.00032.x/abs/
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1533-6077.2004.00032.x
  
• Brian Fiala, Adam Arico & Shaun Nichols (ms). On the psychological origins of dualism: Dual-process cognition and the explanatory gap.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Consciousness often presents itself as a problem for materialists because no matter which physical explanation we consider, there seems to remain something about conscious experience that hasn't been fully explained. This gives rise to an apparent explanatory gap. The explanatory gulf between the physical and the conscious is reflected in the broader population, in which dualistic intuitions abound. Drawing on recent empirical evidence, this essay presents a dual-process cognitive model of consciousness attribution. This dual-process model, we suggest, provides an important part of the explanation for why dualism is so attractive and the explanatory gap so vexing
• David Papineau (1998). Mind the gap.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: On the first page of The Problem of Consciousness (1991), Colin McGinn asks "How is it possible for conscious states to depend on brain states? How can technicolour phenomenology arise from soggy grey matter?" Many philosophers feel that questions like these pose an unanswerable challenge to physicalism. They argue that there is no way of bridging the "explanatory gap" between the material brain and the lived world of conscious experience (Levine, 1983), and that physicalism about the mind can therefore provide no answer to the "hard problem" of why brains give rise to consciousness (Chalmers, 1996)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.kcl.ac.uk/ip/davidpapineau/Staff/Papineau/OnlinePapers/MindtheGap.html
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0029-4624(1998)32<373:MTG>2.0.CO;2-8
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2676154.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/1998/00000032/A0020s12/art00124
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/1998/00000032/A0120s12/art00124
  
• Thomas W. Polger & Kenneth J. Sufka (ms). Closing the gap on pain.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A widely accepted theory holds that emotional experiences occur mainly in a part of the human brain called the amygdala. A different theory asserts that color sensation is located in a small subpart of the visual cortex called V4. If these theories are correct, or even approximately correct, then they are remarkable advances toward a scientific explanation of human conscious experience. Yet even understanding the claims of such theories
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://homepages.uc.edu/~polgertw/PolgerSufka-ClosingGapPain.pdf
  
• Thomas W. Polger & Robert B. Skipper (online). Naturalism, explanation, and identity.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~pnp/Papers/polger2004a.pdf
  http://homepages.uc.edu/~polgertw/PolgerSkipper-NEI.pdf
  http://drrob.typepad.com/hpb_etc/files/PolgerSkipper-NEI.pdf
  
• Karol Polcyn (2006). Phenomenal consciousness and the explanatory gap.   (More)
• Philip Robbins & Anthony I. Jack (2006). The phenomenal stance.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Cognitive science is shamelessly materialistic. It maintains that human beings are nothing more than complex physical systems, ultimately and completely explicable in mechanistic terms. But this conception of humanity does not ?t well with common sense. To think of the creatures we spend much of our day loving, hating, admiring, resenting, comparing ourselves to, trying to understand, blaming, and thanking -- to think of them as mere mechanisms seems at best counterintuitive and unhelpful. More often it may strike us as ludicrous, or even abhorrent. We are
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/yk1782nu45536582/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/YK1782NU45536582.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2006/00000127/00000001/00001730
  http://sites.google.com/site/tonyjack/ThePhenomenalStancejournalversion.pdf
  
• Max Seeger (ms). The Reductive Explanation of Boiling Water in Levine's Explanatory Gap Argument.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper examines a paradigm case of allegedly successful reductive explanation, viz. the explanation of the fact that water boils at 100°C based on facts about H2O. The case figures prominently in Joseph Levine’s explanatory gap argument against physicalism. The paper studies the way the argument evolved in the writings of Levine, focusing especially on the question how the reductive explanation of boiling water figures in the argument. It will turn out that there are two versions of the explanatory gap argument to be found in Levine’s writings. The earlier version relies heavily on conceptual analysis and construes reductive explanation as a process of deduction. The later version makes do without conceptual analysis and understands reductive explanations as based on theoretic reductions that are justified by explanatory power. Along the way will be shown that the bridge principles — which are being neglected in the explanatory gap literature — play a crucial role in the explanatory gap argument.
• Michael Silberstein (2002). Reductive physicalism and the explanatory gap: A dilemma.   (More)
• Drozdstoj Stoyanov, Peter Machamer & Kenneth Schaffner, In Quest for scientific psychiatry: Towards bridging the explanatory gap.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The contemporary epistemic status of mental health disciplines does not allow the cross validation of mental disorders among various genetic markers, biochemical pathway or mechanisms, and clinical assessments in neuroscience explanations. We attempt to provide a meta-empirical analysis of the contemporary status of the cross-disciplinary issues existing between neuro-biology and psychopathology. Our case studies take as an established medical mode an example cross validation between biological sciences and clinical cardiology in the case of myocardial infarction. This is then contrasted with the incoherence between neuroscience and psychiatry in the case of bipolar disorders. We examine some methodological problems arising from the neuro-imaging studies, specifically the experimental paradigm introduced by the team of Wayne Drevets. Several theoretical objections are raised: temporal discordance, state independence, and queries about the reliability and specificity, and failure of convergent validity of the inter-disciplinary attempt. Both modern neuroscience and clinical psychology taken as separate fields have failed to reveal the explanatory mechanisms underlying mental disorders. The data acquired inside the mono-disciplinary matrices of neurobiology and psychopathology are deeply insufficient concerning their validity, reliability, and utility. Further, there haven’t been developed any effective trans-disciplinary connections between them. It raises the requirement for development of explanatory significant multi-disciplinary “meta-language” in psychiatry (Berrios, 2006, 2008). We attempt to provide a novel conceptual model for an integrative dialogue between psychiatry and neuroscience that actually includes criteria for cross-validation of the common used psychiatric categories and the different assessment methods. The major goal of our proactive program is the foundation of complementary “bridging” connections of neuroscience and psychopathology which may stabilize the cognitive meta-structure of the mental health knowledge. This entails bringing into synergy the disparate discourses of clinical psychology and neuroscience. One possible model accomplishment of this goal would be the synergistic (or at least compatible) integration of the knowledge under trans-disciplinary convergent cross-validation of the commonly used methods and notions
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00005127/01/MS.preliminary[1]-3.doc
  http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00005157/01/PhilSciArchive_2010.pdf
  
• Par Sundstrom (2007). Colour and consciousness: Untying the metaphysical knot.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/u645h20010108131/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/U645H20010108131.pdf
  
• Nicholas Unwin (ms). Explaining Colour Phenomenology: Reduction versus Connection.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A major part of the mind–body problem is to explain why a given set of physical processes should give rise to qualia of one sort rather than another. Colour hues are the usual example considered here, and there is a lively debate between, for example, Hardin, Levine, Jackson, Clark and Chalmers as to whether the results of colour vision science can provide convincing explanations of why colours actually look the way they do. This paper examines carefully the type of explanation that is needed here, and it is concluded that it does not have to be reductive to be effective. What needs to be explained more than anything is why inverted hue scenarios are more intuitive than other sensory inversions: and the issue of physicalism versus dualism is only of marginal relevance here.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/philosophy/research/docs/Explaining%20Colour%20Phenomenology.doc
  
• Robert van Gulick (2003). Maps, gaps, and traps.   (More)

`Hard' and `Easy' Problems

• Marcus Arvan (1998). Out with Qualia and in with Consciousness: Why the Hard Problem is a Myth.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The subjective features of conscious mental processes--as opposed to their physical causes and effects--cannot be captured by the purified form of thought suitable for dealing with the physical world that underlies appearances." (Nagel, in Dennett, 1991, p. 372)
• Ned Block (2002). The harder problem of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=abstract&id=8600&recNo=1&toc=1
  http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/harder.htm
  http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/HarderProblem.pdf
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(200208)99:8<391:THPOC>2.0.CO;2-3
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3655621.pdf
  
• David Brooks (2000). How to solve the hard problem: A predictable inexplicability.   (More)
• David J. Chalmers (1995). Facing up to the problem of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: To make progress on the problem of consciousness, we have to confront it directly. In this paper, I first isolate the truly hard part of the problem, separating it from more tractable parts and giving an account of why it is so difficult to explain. I critique some recent work that uses reductive methods to address consciousness, and argue that such methods inevitably fail to come to grips with the hardest part of the problem. Once this failure is recognized, the door to further progress is opened. In the second half of the paper, I argue that if we move to a new kind of nonreductive explanation, a naturalistic account of consciousness can be given. I put forward my own candidate for such an account: a nonreductive theory based on principles of structural coherence and organizational invariance, and a double-aspect theory of information
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/316/
  http://consc.net/papers/facing.html
  http://imprint.co.uk/chalmers.html
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/105313.html
  http://www.zynet.co.uk/imprint/chalmers.html
  http://human-nature.com/articles/chalmers.html
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/chalmers94facing.html
  http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/facing.ps
  http://www.blutner.de/philom/consc/chalmers_facing.pdf
  http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/03/16/
  http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/genre/baars/baarschalmers.htm
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000316/00/consciousness.html
  http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~mozer/courses/3702/readings/Chalmers1995.pdf
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:316
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA224&ots=023ROBDOPM&sig=Xw_AyIOpX-FvGiVv3wXKIeSFiL4
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA224&ots=023TSCJULP&sig=x0vf1lMky6blsYkUL6WxHEQQLJc
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA224&ots=023VQEIPQN&sig=ZFECPU54W0p9ATmCLIGATiyibpA
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA224&ots=023QMADOMK&sig=8mZomwkQ8fx_sa4VkbfpB97n3XM
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA224&ots=023RUBISIQ&sig=O8DE2mqPWpkpUKaFS-BpZPSMUpE
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA224&ots=023QSAHTNN&sig=BtH-9ZxW1XBPYQvB15617xu1gzw
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA224&ots=023UODJSLO&sig=WKzdbsuVIMqN1qNqgmDdR3mrbd4
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA224&ots=01cTQvCWJR&sig=aaILUHrJmxZmg3ApAbBnRV53XAA
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA224&ots=01cTSvCQOQ&sig=9q-OhlJjhyo0U0WxNSlRp_kivnU
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA224&ots=023PQzIQLJ&sig=o7ztlPajLbS1IuuXWBl5Duoyv8E
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA224&ots=023TMCGXJJ&sig=51OBngXgHG7ta8rP8ZXgUhbXYE8
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/1995/00000002/00000003/653
  http://cogprints.org/316/1/consciousness.html
  http://cogprints.org/316/0/consciousness.html
  
• David J. Chalmers (1997). Moving forward on the problem of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper is a response to the 26 commentaries on my paper "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness". First, I respond to deflationary critiques, including those that argue that there is no "hard" problem of consciousness or that it can be accommodated within a materialist framework. Second, I respond to nonreductive critiques, including those that argue that the problems of consciousness are harder than I have suggested, or that my framework for addressing them is flawed. Third, I address positive proposals for addressing the problem of consciousness, including those based in neuroscience and cognitive science, phenomenology, physics, and fundamental psychophysical theories. Reply to: Baars, Bilodeau, Churchland, Clark, Clarke, Crick & Koch, Dennett, Hameroff & Penrose, Hardcastle, Hodgson, Hut & Shepard, Libet, Lowe, MacLennan, McGinn, Mills, O'Hara & Scutt, Price, Robinson, Rosenberg, Seager, Shear, Stapp, Varela, Velmans
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/317/
  http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/moving.html
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000317/00/moving.html
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:317
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/1997/00000004/00000001/745
  http://cogprints.org/317/1/moving.html
  http://cogprints.org/317/0/moving.html
  
• David J. Chalmers (1995). The puzzle of conscious experience.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Conscious experience is at once the most familiar thing in the world and the most mysterious. There is nothing we know about more directly than consciousness, but it is extraordinarily hard to reconcile it with everything else we know. Why does it exist? What does it do? How could it possibly arise from neural processes in the brain? These questions are among the most intriguing in all of science
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/puzzle.html
  http://philosophy.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/Courses/chalmersphil1.pdf
  http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/Courses/chalmersphil1.pdf
  http://www.sciamdigital.com/gsp_qpdf.cfm?ISSUEID_CHAR=4E3B6963-3358-4EBE-9524-A7CFD3F328A&ARTICLEID_CHAR=7D19731A-1116-4FE8-9448-F88868253C7
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8525350&dopt=Citation
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=8525350&dopt=Citation
  
• David J. Chalmers (1998). The problems of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper is an edited transcription of a talk at the 1997 Montreal symposium on "Consciousness at the Frontiers of Neuroscience". There's not much here that isn't said elsewhere, e.g. in "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" and "How Can We Construct a Science of Consciousness?"]]
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/montreal.html
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9709814&dopt=Citation
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&uid=9709814&cmd=showdetailview&indexed=google
  
• Axel Cleeremans (1998). The other hard problem: How to bridge the gap between subsymbolic and symbolic cognition.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The constructivist notion that features are purely functional is incompatible with the classical computational metaphor of mind. I suggest that the discontent expressed by Schyns, Goldstone and Thibaut about fixed-features theories of categorization reflects the growing impact of connectionism, and show how their perspective is similar to recent research on implicit learning, consciousness, and development. A hard problem remains, however: How to bridge the gap between subsymbolic and symbolic cognition
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://srsc.ulb.ac.be/axcWWW/papers/BBS-schyns98.html
  http://srsc.ulb.ac.be/axcwww/papers/pdf/98-C-on-SGT.pdf
  http://srsc.ulb.ac.be/axcWWW/papers/pdf/98-C-on-SGT.pdf
  http://srsc.ulb.ac.be/axcWWW/papers/pdf/98-C-on-SGT.pdf
  http://srsc-mac1.ulb.ac.be/axcWWW/papers/pdf/98-C-on-SGT.pdf
  http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=30266&jid=BBS&volumeId=21&issueId=01&aid=30265
  http://www.journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0140525X98290108
  
• Daniel C. Dennett (1996). Commentary on Chalmers "facing backwards on the problem of consciousness".   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The strategy of divide and conquer is usually an excellent one, but it all depends on how you do the carving. Chalmer's attempt to sort the "easy" problems of consciousness from the "really hard" problem is not, I think, a useful contribution to research, but a major misdirector of attention, an illusion-generator. How could this be? Let me describe two somewhat similar strategic proposals, and compare them to Chalmers' recommendation
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/290/0/chalmers.htm
  
• Daniel C. Dennett (2003). Explaining the "magic" of consciousness.   (More)
• Daniel C. Dennett (1996). Facing backwards on the problem of consciousness.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://human-nature.com/articles/dennett.html
  http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/chalmers.htm
  http://www.zynet.co.uk/imprint/online/HP_dennett.html
  
• Avshalom C. Elitzur (2009). Consciousness makes a difference: A reluctant dualist’s confession.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper’s outline is as follows. In sections 1-3 I give an exposi¬tion of the Mind-Body Problem, with emphasis on what I believe to be the heart of the problem, namely, the Percepts-Qualia Nonidentity and its incompatibility with the Physical Closure Paradigm. In 4 I present the “Qualia Inaction Postulate” underlying all non-interactionist theo¬ries that seek to resolve the above problem. Against this convenient postulate I propose in section 5 the “Bafflement Ar¬gument,” which is this paper's main thesis. Sections 6-11 critically dis¬cuss attempts to dismiss the Bafflement Argument by the “Baf¬flement=Mis¬perception Equation.” Section 12 offers a refutation of all such attempts in the form of a concise “Asymmetry Proof.” Section 13 points out the bearing of the Bafflement Argument on the evolutionary role of consciousness while section 14 acknowledges the price that has to be paid for it in terms of basic physical principles. Section 15 summarizes the paper, pointing out the inescapability of interactionist dualism.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.a-c-elitzur.co.il/site/siteArticle.asp?ar=67
  http://cogprints.org/6613/1/Dualism0409.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
  
• Jeffrey A. Gray (1998). Creeping up on the hard question of consciousness.   (More)
• Stevan Harnad (2000). Correlation vs. causality: How/why the mind-body problem is hard.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The Mind/Body Problem (M/BP) is about causation not correlation. And its solution (if there is one) will require a mechanism in which the mental component somehow manages to play a causal role of its own, rather than just supervening superflously on other, nonmental components that look, for all the world, as if they can do the full causal job perfectly well without it. Correlations confirm that M does indeed "supervene" on B, but causality is needed to show how/why M is not supererogatory; and that's the hard part
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00002602/
  http://cogprints.org/1617/00/harnad00.mind.humphrey.html
  http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/16/17/
  http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad00.mind.humphrey.html
  http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad00.mind.humphrey.html
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00001617/00/harnad00.mind.humphrey.html
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk:2602
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:1617
  http://cogprints.org/1617/1/harnad00.mind.humphrey.html
  http://cogprints.org/1617/0/harnad00.mind.humphrey.html
  
• Stevan Harnad (2001). Explaining the mind: Problems, problems.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The mind/body problem is the feeling/function problem: How and why do feeling systems feel? The problem is not just "hard" but insoluble (unless one is ready to resort to telekinetic dualism). Fortunately, the "easy" problems of cognitive science (such as the how and why of categorization and language) are not insoluble. Five books (by Damasio, Edelman/Tononi, McGinn, Tomasello and Fodor) are reviewed in this context
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/bookrev.htm
  http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/bookrev.htm
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00001623/
  http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/16/23/
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:1623
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:1623
  http://cogprints.org/1623/1/bookrev.htm
  http://cogprints.org/1623/0/bookrev.htm
  
• Stevan Harnad (2001). No easy way out.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The mind/body problem is the feeling/function problem: How and why do feeling systems feel? The problem is not just "hard" but insoluble (unless one is ready to resort to telekinetic dualism). Fortunately, the "easy" problems of cognitive science (such as the how and why of categorization and language) are not insoluble. Five books (by Damasio, Edelman/Tononi, McGinn, Tomasello and Fodor) are reviewed in this context
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/1624/1/thesciences.htm
  
• Stevan Harnad (1998). The hardships of cognitive science.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Comments on David Chalmers's "hard problem" and some unsuccessful attempts to solve it
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/1610/0/harnad98.explaining.consciousness.html
  
• Greg P. Hodes (2005). What would it "be like" to solve the hard problem?: Cognition, consciousness, and qualia zombies.   (More)
• Jakob Hohwy (2004). Evidence, explanation, and experience: On the harder problem of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Creatures that have different physical realizations than human beings may or may not be conscious. Ned Block’s ‘harder problem of consciousness’ is that naturalistic phenomenal realists have no conception of a rational ground for belief that they have or have not discovered consciousness in such a creature. Drawing on the notion of inference to the best explanation, it appears the arguments to these conclusions beg the question and ignore that explanation may be a guide to discovery. Thus, best explanation can both validate an interpretation of the evidence and lead to the discovery of consciousness.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/Hohwy.pdf
  
• Robert J. Howell (online). The Hard Problem of Consciousness.   (More)
• Daniel D. Hutto (2006). Turning hard problems on their heads.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Much of the dif?culty in assessing theories of consciousness stems from their advo- cates not supplying adequate or convincing characterisations of the phenomenon (or data) they hope to explain. Yet, to make any reasonable assessment this is precisely what is required, for it is not as if our
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/p7w7185087067kh1/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/P7W7185087067KH1.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phen/2006/00000005/00000001/00009013
  
• Marvin Eli Kirsh, The hard problem of consciousness studies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract:      The question addressed by the hard problem of philosophy (3), how cognitive representation is acquired from the physical properties of self and the external, is examined from a perspective originating with Boethius(14) that knowledge is dependant on the nature of the perceiver and discussed with respect to the philosophy of George Berkeley (1,2,7) concerning the existence of matter with respect to perception. An account of the trails of history, scientific method, with respect to the naming and delineation of the hard problem suggest that its topic of address is a factor of plural elements-perceived as singular, a monism, only an aspect of its universality is perceived. A surface aspect is what seduces scientifically and, as a result, a confusion involving excessive abstraction and perceptually absent empirical fact, is postulated to accompany a false morality-an inclination to conquer it from scientific method is attributed to a seduction by naturally existing perplexity that is intermingled with unknown physical elements, themselves rooted from the same singular perplexity such that an ensuing interrogation targeted at the physical world and unavoidingly overlapping with the strictly philosophical has taken place. An invisible paper thin but sharp and self denigrating third facet to the commonly known philosophical walls, within the perplexing and the logical incongruence's, an artifact of perception and modeling of nature, results in a combined scientific (physical) and philosophical (reflective) assailing of natural paradox in a pursuit to summit human sufferings that are suggested to be, at least in part, of an unnatural and physical origin. Included as a conceptual tool is a section that discusses all possible human behavior as intuitively contained by the set of all the possible paths of nature emerged up to present and continued to emerge
• Peter Lloyd (online). Berkeley revisited: The hard problem considered easy.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The philosophical mind-body problem, which Chalmers has named the 'Hard Problem', concerns the nature of the mind and the body. Physicalist approaches have been explored intensively in recent years but have brought us no consensual solution. Dualistic approaches have also been scrutinised since Descartes, but without consensual success. Mentalism has received little attention, yet it offers an elegantly simple solution to the hard problem
• Bruce J. MacLennan (1996). The elements of consciousness and their neurodynamical correlates.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/50979.html
  ftp://cs.utk.edu/pub/maclennan/JCS2/JCS2.html
  http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/anon-ftp/JCS2/JCS2.html
  
• Pete Mandik (2008). An epistemological theory of consciousness?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This article tackles problems concerning the reduction of phenomenal consciousness to brain processes that arise in consideration of specifically epistemological properties that have been attributed to conscious experiences. In particular, various defenders of dualism and epiphenomenalism have argued for their positions by assuming special epistemic access to phenomenal consciousness. Many physicalists have reacted to such arguments by denying the epistemological premises. My aim in this paper is to take a different approach in opposing dualism and argue that when we correctly examine both the phenomenology and neural correlates of phenomenal consciousness we will see that granting the epistemological premises of special access are the best hope for a scientific study of consciousness. I argue that essential features of consciousness involve both their knowability by the subject of experience as well as their egocentricity, that is, their knowability by the subject as belonging to the subject. I articulate a neuroscientifically informed theory of phenomenal consciousness
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/papers/epistemconsc.pdf
  http://testweb.wpunj.edu/cohss/philosophy/FACULTY/mandik/papers/etc.pdf
  
• J. McFadden (2002). The conscious electromagnetic information (cemi) field theory: The hard problem made easy?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2002/00000009/00000008/1298
  
• Brian P. McLaughlin (2003). A naturalist-phenomenal realist response to Block's harder problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: widely held commitments: to phenomenal realism and to naturalism. Phenomenal realism is the view that (a) we are phenomenally consciousness, and that (b) there is no a priori or armchair sufficient condition for phenomenal consciousness that can be stated (non- circularly) in nonphenomenal terms (p.392).^1,2 Block points out that while phenomenal realists reject
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1533-6077.00011
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1533-6077.00011
  
• Mark Pharoah (ms). 'Thing-in-itself' - Exploring the relationship between phenomenal experience and the phenomenon of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: If one were to provide a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience one would explain why there could be a phenomenal experience that identifies itself as an individual that possesses ‘consciousness’. Although not a requirement of reduction, such an explanation would be consistent with our understanding of evolution and, consequently, explain the physical origins and purpose of phenomenal experience. However, this explanation would not explain why a particular conscious individual identifies itself as itself rather than any other individual - Why is ‘my’ consciousness ‘mine’ (materially, or otherwise, irrespective of experiential detail and content) rather than anyone else? What is consciousness outside of phenomenal experience and phenomenal conceptualization? In this paper, I argue that the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics makes it a suitable candidate for exploring the answers to these questions.
• Thomas W. Polger & Owen J. Flanagan (online). Explaining the evolution of consciousness: The other hard problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Recently some philosophers interested in consciousness have begun to turn their attention to the question of what evolutionary advantages, if any, being conscious might confer on an organism. The issue has been pressed in recent dicussions involving David Chalmers, Todd Moody, Owen Flanagan and Thomas Polger, Daniel Dennett, and others. The purpose of this essay is to consider some of the problems that face anyone who wants to give an evolutionary explanation of consciousness. We begin by framing the problem in the context of some current debates. Then we
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://oz.uc.edu/~polgertw/Polger-Rethinking.pdf
  http://homepages.uc.edu/~polgertw/Polger-SSPP1997.pdf
  http://homepages.uc.edu/~polgertw/Polger-Rethinking.pdf
  
• Teed Rockwell, Commentary on a hard problem thought experiment.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In the seventh paragraph of the post, you say "This question [which machine, if any or both, is conscious/] seems to be in principle unfalsifiable, and yet genuinely meaningful." (I'm assuming that you mean that any answer to it is unfalsifiable.) My neo-Carnapian intuitions diagnoses the problem right at this point. Forget about attributions of meaningless and all that stuff. Replace it in your statement with more pragmatically-oriented evaluative notions: theoretically fruitless, arbitray without even being helpful for any theoretical, experimental, or practical purpose, and so on. Any answer to the question will be those. Thus the question is not worth pursuing, especially since the thought experiment is science fiction right now. A much more useful way to spend one's time is addressing frutiful questions, like the ones involved in constructing your postulated robots, or investigating neural mechanisms, and so on. So acknowledge the connection between unfalsifiability/verifiability/confirmability and theoretical and practical worthlessness (rather than "meaningless"). Then get on with the theoretically and empirically worthwhile questions. Many of the latter are quiter abstract and "philosophical," anyway (about the scope and limits of various methodologies, existing theories, and so on). Aren't those enough to occupy even the most abstract theorist's attention? Why puzzle about questions whose answers can't be rationally justified?
• Teed Rockwell (ms). The hard problem is dead: Long live the hard problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I have assumed that consciousness exists, and that to redefine the problem as that of explaining how certain cognitive and behavioral functions are performed is unacceptable. . . .Like many people (materialists and dualists alike), I find this premise obvious, although I can no more "prove" it than I can prove that I am conscious. . . .there is no denying that such arguments - on either side - ultimately come down to a bedrock of intuition at some point. (Chalmers undated)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://users.california.com/~mcmf/hardproblem.html
  
• Henry P. Stapp (1997). Science of consciousness and the hard problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Quantum theory can be regarded as a rationally coherent theory of the interaction of mind and matter and it allows our conscious thoughts to play a causally e cacious and necessary role in brain dynamics It therefore provides a natural basis created by scientists for the science of consciousness As an illustration it is explained how the interaction of brain and consciousness can speed up brain processing and thereby enhance the survival prospects of conscious organisms as compared to similar organisms that lack consciousness As a second illustration it is explained how within the quantum framework the consciously experi enced I directs the actions of a human being It is concluded that contemporary science already has an adequate framework for incorporat ing causally e cacious experiential events into the physical universe in a manner that puts the neural correlates of consciousness into the theory in a well de ned way explains in principle how the e ects of consciousness per se can enhance the survival prospects of organisms that possess it allows this survival e ect to feed into phylogenetic de velopment and explains how the consciously experienced I can direct human behaviour..
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/38621.txt
  https://www.osti.gov/dublincore/gpo/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=269006
  http://www.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&collection=TRD&recid=N9711596AH
  
• Henry P. Stapp (1995). The hard problem: A quantum approach.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/156538.html
  http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/37163new.ps
  http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/37163new.txt
  http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1995quant.ph..5023S
  
• Nigel J. T. Thomas (2001). Color realism: Toward a solution to the "hard problem".   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This article was written as a commentary on a target article by Peter W. Ross entitled "The Location Problem for Color Subjectivism" [Consciousness and Cognition 10(1), 42-58 (2001)], and is published together with it, and with other commentaries and Ross's reply. If you or your library have the necessary subscription you can get PDF versions of the target article, all the commentaries, and Ross's reply to the commentaries here. However, I do not think that it is by any means essential for you to have read Ross's piece in order to understand this one. Ross defends a view called "color physicalism" or color realism that holds (simplifying somewhat) that colors are real physical properties (in typical cases, spectral reflectances of object surfaces). This is in opposition to what is probably a more widely held "subjectivist" view of color, holding that color qualities really exist only in the mind. In my commentary I suggest that a realist view of qualitative properties, such as Ross's, together with a direct, active view of perception, and a concept of "extended mind" (Clark & Chalmers, 1998) may provide the materials for a real solution to the notorious hard problem of consciousness. I sketch this solution in outline. - N.J.T.T
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/5020/
  http://cogprints.org/3749/1/colreal.htm
  http://cogprints.org/5020/1/colreal.htm
  http://www.imagery-imagination.com/col-real.pdf
  http://www.imagery-imagination.com/col-real.htm
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003749/01/colreal.htm
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11273636&dopt=Citation
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&uid=11273636&cmd=showdetailview&indexed=google
  http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1053810000904847
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/10538100/2001/00000010/00000001/art90484
  
• Vadim V. Vasilyev (2009). The Hard Problem of Consciousness and Two Arguments for Interactionism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The paper begins with a restatement of Chalmers's "hard problem of consciousness". It is suggested that an interactionist approach is one of the possible solutions of this problem. Some fresh arguments against the identity theory and epiphenomenalism as main rivals of interactionism are developed. One of these arguments has among its colloraries a denial of local supervenience, although not of the causal closure principle. As a result of these considerations a version of "local interactionism" (compatible with causal closure) is proposed.
• Prof Max Velmans (2007). How to separate conceptual issues from empirical ones in the study of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Modern consciousness studies are in a healthy state, with many progressive empirical programmes in cognitive science, neuroscience and related sciences, using relatively conventional third-person research methods. However not all the problems of consciousness can be resolved in this way. These problems may be grouped into problems that require empirical advance, those that require theoretical advance, and those that require a re-examination of some of our pre-theoretical assumptions. I give examples of these, and focus on two problems—what consciousness is, and what consciousness does—that require all three. In this, careful attention to conscious phenomenology and finding an appropriate way to relate first-person evidence to third-person evidence appears to be central to progress. But we may also need to re-examine what we take to be “natural facts” about the world, and how we can know them. The same appears to be true for a trans-cultural understanding of consciousness that combines classical Indian phenomenological methods with the third-person methods of Western science
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/5380/1/Conceptual_vs_emprical_issues.pdf
  
• Max Velmans (1995). The relation of consciousness to the material world.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Many of the arguments about how to address the hard versus the easy questions of consciousness put by Chalmers (1995) are similar to ones I have developed in Velmans (1991a,b; 1993a). This includes the multiplicity of mind/body problems, the limits of functional explanation, the need for a nonreductionist approach, and the notion that consciousness may be related to neural/physical representation via a dual-aspect theory of information. But there are also differences. Unlike Chalmers I argue for the use of neutral information processing language for functional accounts rather than the term "awareness." I do not agree that functional equivalence cannot be extricated from phenomenal equivalence, and suggest a hypothetical experiment for doing so - using a cortical implant for blindsight. I argue that not all information has phenomenal accompaniments, and introduce a different form of dual-aspect theory involving "psychological complementarity." I also suggest that the hard problem posed by "qualia" has its origin in a misdescription of everyday experience implicit in dualism
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000246/
  http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/02/46/
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000246/00/velman11.html
  http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/02/46/cog00000246-00/velman11.html
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:246
  http://cogprints.org/246/1/velman11.html
  http://cogprints.org/246/0/velman11.html
  
• Peter B. M. Vranas (2008). Review of Owen Flanagan, The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World.   (More)
• Richard Warner (1996). Facing ourselves: Incorrigibility and the mind-body problem.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/1996/00000003/00000003/709
  
• Ken Wilber (online). The hard problem and integral psychology.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Although far from unanimous, there seems to be a general consensus that neither mind nor brain can be reduced without remainder to the other. This essay argues that indeed both mind and brain need to be included in a nonreductionistic way in any genuinely integral theory of consciousness. In order to facilitate such integration, this essay presents the results of an extensive cross-cultural literature search on the "mind" side of the equation, suggesting that the mental phenomena that need to be considered in any integral theory include developmental levels or waves of consciousness, developmental lines or streams of consciousness, states of consciousness, and the self (or self-system). A "master template" of these various phenomena, culled from over one-hundred psychological systems East and West, is presented. It is suggested that this master template represents a general summary of the "mind" side of the brain-mind integration. The essay concludes with reflections on the "hard problem," or how the mind-side can be integrated with the brain-side to generate a more integral theory of consciousness
• Wayne Wright (2007). Explanation and the hard problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper argues that the form of explanation at issue in the hard problem of consciousness is scientifically irrelevant, despite appearances to the contrary. In particular, it is argued that the
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.mindstuff.net/ExplanHardProb_WTW.doc
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/0434452x17nt11p3/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/w186042338744821/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/0434452X17NT11P3.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/W186042338744821.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2007/00000132/00000002/00002220
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2007/00000134/00000003/00009089
  

Cognitive Closure

• Sophie R. Allen (online). A space oddity: McGinn on consciousness and space.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2006/00000013/00000004/art00005
  
• Anthony L. Brueckner & E. Beroukhim (2003). McGinn on consciousness and the mind-body problem.   (More)
• David de Leon (1995). The limits of thought and the mind-body problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper gives an account of Colin McGinn's essay: "Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?". McGinn's answer to his own essay title is that the problem is forever beyond us due to the particular nature of our cognitive abilities.The present author offers a number of criticisms of the arguments which support this conclusion
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:367
  http://lu-research.lub.lu.se/php/gateway.php?who=lr&method=getfile&file=archive/00009266/
  http://cogprints.org/367/3/LUCS42.pdf
  http://cogprints.org/367/0/LUCS42.pdf
  
• Marc F. Krellenstein (1995). Unsolvable problems, visual imagery, and explanatory satisfaction.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It has been suggested that certain problems may be unsolvable because of the mind's cognitive structure, but we may wonder what problems, and exactly why. The ultimate origin of the universe and the mind-body problem seem to be two such problems. As to why, Colin McGinn has argued that the mind-body problem is unsolvable because any theoretical concepts about the brain will be observation-based and unable to connect to unobservable subjective experience. McGinn's argument suggests a requirement of imagability -- an observation basis -- for physical causal explanation that cannot be met for either of these problems. Acausal descriptions may be possible but not the causal analyses that provide the greatest explanatory satisfaction, a psychological phenomenon that seems tied to the strength of the underlying observation basis but is affected by other factors as well
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00001957/
  http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/19/57/
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:1957
  http://cogprints.org/1957/1/temp.txt
  http://cogprints.org/1957/0/temp.txt
  
• Colin McGinn (1995). Consciousness and space.   (More)
• Colin McGinn (2003). What constitutes the mind-body problem.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/120710655/PDFSTART
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1533-6077.00010
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oso/870087/2004/00000001/00000001/art00002
  

Conceptual Analysis and A Priori Entailment

• Michael Beaton (2009). Qualia and Introspection.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The claim that behaviourally undetectable inverted spectra are possible has been endorsed by many physicalists. I explain why this starting point rules out standard forms of scientific explanation for qualia. The modern ‘phenomenal concept strategy’ is an updated way of defending problematic intuitions like these, but I show that it cannot help to recover standard scientific explanation. I argue that Chalmers is right: we should accept the falsity of physicalism if we accept this problematic starting point. I further argue that accepting this starting point amounts to at least implicitly endorsing certain theoretical claims about the nature of introspection. I therefore suggest that we allow ourselves to be guided, in our quest to understand qualia, by whatever independently plausible theories of introspection we have. I propose that we adopt a more moderate definition of qualia, as those introspectible properties which cannot be fully specified simply by specifying the non-controversially introspectible ‘propositional attitude’ mental states (including seeing x, experiencing x, and so on, where x is a specification of a potentially public state of affairs). Qualia thus defined may well fit plausible, naturalisable accounts of introspection. If so, such accounts have the potential to explain, rather than explain away, the problematic intuitions discussed earlier; an approach that should allow integration of our understanding of qualia with the rest of science.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2009/00000016/00000005/art00008
  
• Ned Block & Robert Stalnaker (1999). Conceptual analysis, dualism, and the explanatory gap.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The explanatory gap . Consciousness is a mystery. No one has ever given an account, even a highly speculative, hypothetical, and incomplete account of how a physical thing could have phenomenal states. (Nagel, 1974, Levine, 1983) Suppose that consciousness is identical to a property of the brain, say activity in the pyramidal cells of layer 5 of the cortex involving reverberatory circuits from cortical layer 6 to the thalamus and back to layers 4 and 6,as Crick and Koch have suggested for visual consciousness. (See Crick (1994).) Still, that identity itself calls out for explanation! Proponents of an explanatory gap disagree about whether the gap is permanent. Some (e.g. Nagel, 1974) say that we are like the scientifically naive person who is told that matter = energy, but does not have the concepts required to make sense of the idea. If we can acquire these concepts, the gap is closable. Others say the gap is uncloseable because of our cognitive limitations. (McGinn, 1991) Still others say that the gap is a consequence of the fundamental nature of consciousness
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108(199901)108:1<1:CADATE>2.0.CO;2-T
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108(199901)108:1<1:CADATE>2.0.CO;2-T
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2998259.pdf
  
• Richard Brown (2010). Deprioritizing the A Priori Arguments against Physicalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this paper I argue that a priori arguments fail to present any real problem for physicalism. They beg the question against physicalism in the sense that the argument will only seem compelling if one is already assuming that qualitative properties are nonphysical. To show this I will present the reverse-zombie and reverse-knowledge arguments. The only evidence against physicalism is a priori arguments, but there are also a priori arguments against dualism of exactly the same variety. Each of these parity arguments has premises that are just as intuitively plausible, and it cannot be the case that both the traditional scenarios and the reverse-scenarios are all ideally conceivable. Given this one set must be merely prima facie conceivable and only empirical methods will tell us which is which. So, by the time a priori methodology will be of any use it will be too late.
  
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://faculty.lagcc.cuny.edu/rbrown/deprioritizing%20JSC.htm
  
• Peter Carruthers (2004). Reductive explanation and the "explanatory gap".   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Can phenomenal consciousness be given a reductive natural explanation? Exponents of an
• David J. Chalmers & Frank Jackson (2001). Conceptual analysis and reductive explanation.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Is conceptual analysis required for reductive explanation? If there is no a priori entailment from microphysical truths to phenomenal truths, does reductive explanation of the phenomenal fail? We say yes (Chalmers 1996; Jackson 1994, 1998). Ned Block and Robert Stalnaker say no (Block and Stalnaker 1999)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://consc.net/papers/analysis.html
  http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/analysis.html
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108(200107)110:3<315:CAARE>2.0.CO;2-Y
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108(200107)110:3<315:CAARE>2.0.CO;2-Y
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2693648.pdf
  http://philreview.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/citation/110/3/315
  http://philreview.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/110/3/315
  
• Tim Crane (online). Cosmic hermeneutics vs emergence: The challenge of the explanatory gap.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper is a defence of Terence Horgan’s claim that any genuinely physicalist position must distinguish itself from (what has been traditionally known as) emergentism. I argue that physicalism is necessarily reductive in character -- it must either give a reductive account of apparently non-physical entities, or a reductive explanation of why there are non-physical entities. I argue that many recent ‘nonreductive’ physicalists do not do this, and that because of this they cannot adequately distinguish their view from emergentism. The conclusion is that this is the real challenge posed by Joseph Levine’s ‘explanatory gap’ argument: if physicalists cannot close the explanatory gap in Levine’s preferred way, they must find some other way to do it. Otherwise their view is indistinguishable from emergentism
• Brie Gertler (2002). Explanatory reduction, conceptual analysis, and conceivability arguments about the mind.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The current stand-off between reductionists and anti-reductionists about the mental has sparked a long-overdue reexamination of key issues in philosophi- cal methodology.1 The resulting debate promises to advance our understand- ing of how empirical discoveries bear on the numerous philosophical problems which involve the analysis or reduction of kinds. The parties to this debate disagree about how, and to what extent, conceptual facts contribute to justify- ing explanatory reductions
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1468-0068.00359
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0068.00359
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/2002/00000036/00000001/art00359
  
• Frank Jackson (2003). From H2O to water: The relevance to A Priori passage.   (More)
• Frank Jackson (2005). The Case for a Priori Physicalism.   (More)
• 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).
• William G. Lycan (2009). Serious metaphysics: Frank Jackson's defense of conceptual analysis.   (More)
• Thomas W. Polger (2008). H2O, 'water', and transparent reduction.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Do facts about water have a priori, transparent, reductive explanations in terms of microphysics? Ned Block and Robert Stalnaker hold that they do not. David Chalmers and Frank Jackson hold that they do. In this paper I argue that Chalmers
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/n237pk00h2825166/fulltext.pdf
  

Explaining Consciousness, Misc

• M. E. Tson (ms). A Brief Explanation of Consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This short paper (4 pages) demonstrates how subjective experience, language, and consciousness can be explained in terms of abilities we share with the simplest of creatures, specifically the ability to detect, react to, and associate various aspects of the world.
• Andrew Brook (2005). Making consciousness safe for neuroscience.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ZS0eo39XOs8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA397&ots=mEvk0HqwLv&sig=-cVT4mFAkI52dc3K2fIIGS_dGVc
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=bpjAkBrkmu4C&oi=fnd&pg=RA1-PA397&ots=JljQlxL2Wv&sig=i_Srpcus4H70uo65_ebF6OR3pjo
  
• Patricia S. Churchland (1998). What Should We Expect From a Theory of Consciousness?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Within the domain of philosophy, it is not unusual to hear the claim that most questions about the nature of consciousness are essentially and absolutely beyond the scope of science, no matter how science may develop in the twenty-first century. Some things, it is pointed out, we shall never _ever_ understand, and consciousness is one of them (Vendler 1994, Swinburne 1994, McGinn 1989, Nagel 1994, Warner 1994). One line of reasoning assumes that consciousness is the manifestation of a distinctly nonphysical thing, and hence has no physical properties that might be explored by techniques suitable to physical things. Dualism, as this view is known, is still to be found among those within the tradition of Kant and Hegel, as well as among some with religious convictions. Surprisingly, however, strenuous foot-dragging is evident even among philosophers of a materialist conviction. Indeed, one might say that it is the philosophical fashion of the 90's to pronounce consciousness unexplainable, and to find the explanatory aspirations of neurobiology to be faintly comic if not rather pitiful. The very word, "reductionism" has come to be used more or less synonymously with "benighted-scientism-run-amok", where scientistm apparently means "applying scientific techniques to domains where they are inapplicable." McGinn, perhaps the most unblushing of the naysayers, insists that we cannot expect even to make any headway on the problem. (p. 114) Ironically perhaps, here we are at a conference in honor of Dr. Herbert Jasper who was a great pioneer in moving neuroscience forward on this problem, and where results will be presented allegedly _showing_ additional progress on the problem. Because I am quite optimistic about future scientific progress on the nature of consciousness, my aim here, as a philosopher, is to address the most popular and influential of the skeptical arguments, and to explain why I find them unconvincing. Thus the overall form of the paper is negative, in the sense that I want to show why a set of naysaying arguments fail..
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=9709815&dopt=citation
  
• Austen Clark (online). How to respond to philosophers on raw feels.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I address this talk to anyone who believes in the possibility of an informative empirical science about sensory qualities. Potentially this is a large audience. By "sensory quality" I mean those qualities manifest in various sensory experiences: color, taste, smell, touch, pain, and so on. We should include sensory modalities humans do not share, such as electro-reception in fish, echolocation in bats, or the skylight compass in birds. Those pursuing empirical science about this large domain might pursue it in the halls of experimental psychology, psycho-physics, psychometrics, psycho-physiology, sensory physiology, neuroscience, neuro-biology, comparative psychology, neuro-anatomy, and so on and on. These days even molecular genetics has kicked in with some notable recent contributions to the sequencing of genes for photopigments and for olfactory receptors. But to all those investigators in all those halls I bring bad news. Your discipline is _a priori_ impossible. Philosophers whom you do not know have uncovered _a priori_ proofs that empirical investigation which proceeds along the lines currently underway, or which will proceed along lines that are currently _imaginable_, does not, will not, and cannot explain the sensory qualities of experience. Or at least so they say. You might as well give up now
• Henk bij de Weg (ms). Explaining consciousness and the duality of method.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In consciousness studies, the first-person perspective, seen as a way to approach consciousness, is often seen as nothing but a variant of the third-person perspective. One of the most important advocates of this view is Dennett. However, as I show in critical interaction with Dennett’s view, the first-person perspective and the third-person perspective are different ways of asking questions about themes. What these questions are is determined by the purposes that we have when we ask them. Since our purposes are different according to the perspective we take, each perspective has a set of leading questions of its own. This makes that the first-person perspective is an approach of consciousness that is substantially different from the third-person perspective, and that one cannot be reduced to the other. These perspectives are independent, although complementary approaches of the mind.
• Andrew A. Fingelkurts, Alexander A. Fingelkurts & Carlos F. H. Neves (2010). Natural World Physical, Brain Operational, and Mind Phenomenal Space-Time.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Concepts of space and time are widely developed in physics. However, there is a considerable lack of biologically plausible theoretical frameworks that can demonstrate how space and time dimensions are implemented in the activity of the most complex life-system – the brain with a mind. Brain activity is organized both temporally and spatially, thus representing space-time in the brain. Critical analysis of recent research on the space-time organization of the brain’s activity pointed to the existence of so-called operational space-time in the brain. This space-time is limited to the execution of brain operations of differing complexity. During each such brain operation a particular short-term spatio-temporal pattern of integrated activity of different brain areas emerges within related operational space-time. At the same time, to have a fully functional human brain one needs to have a subjective mental experience. Current research on the subjective mental experience offers detailed analysis of space-time organization of the mind. According to this research, subjective mental experience (subjective virtual world) has definitive spatial and temporal properties similar to many physical phenomena. Based on systematic review of the propositions and tenets of brain and mind space-time descriptions, our aim in this review essay is to explore the relations between the two. To be precise, we would like to discuss the hypothesis that via the brain operational space-time the mind subjective space-time is connected to otherwise distant physical space-time reality.
• Nicholas Humphrey (2002). Thinking about feeling.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00002045/
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00002045/00/CompanionEssay.htm
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:2045
  http://cogprints.org/2045/1/CompanionEssay.htm
  http://cogprints.org/2045/0/CompanionEssay.htm
  
• Claus Janew (2009). Omnipresent Consciousness and Free Will.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This article is not an attempt to explain consciousness in terms basically of quantum physics or neuro-biology. Instead I should like to place the term "Consciousness" on a broader footing. I shall therefore proceed from everyday reality, precisely where we experience ourselves as conscious beings. I shall use the term in such a general way as to resolve the question whether only a human being enjoys consciousness, or even a thermostat. Whilst the difference is considerable, it is not fundamental. Every effect exists in the perception of a consciousness. I elaborate on its freedom of choice, in my view the most important source of creativity, in a similarly general way. The problems associated with a really conscious decision do not disappear by mixing determination with a touch of coincidence. Both must enter into a higher unity. In so doing it will emerge that a certain degree of freedom of choice is just as omnipresent as consciousness - an inherent part of reality itself.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Georgi Lazarov (online). Materialism and the problem of consciousness: The aesthesionomic approach.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003161/
  http://cogprints.org/3161/1/The_Aesthesionomic_Approach.htm
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003161/01/The_Aesthesionomic_Approach.htm
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:3161
  
• Barbara Montero (2004). Consciousness is puzzling but not paradoxical.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2004.tb00392.x
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/119921434/PDFSTART
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ips/ppr/2004/00000069/00000001/art00011
  
• Todd C. Moody (2003). Consciousness and complexity.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.doaj.org/abstract?id=120218&toc=y
  http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=abstract&id=120218
  http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-get_topic-f-10-t-000065.html
  http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-get_topic-f-24-t-000005.html
  http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=abstract&id=120218&recNo=4&toc=1
  http://www.iscid.org/papers/Moody_ConsciousnessComplexity_103103.pdf
  http://www.doaj.org/abstract?id=120218&year=2003&volume=2&issue=3&toc=y
  
• Gregory Nixon (2010). Hollows of Memory: From Individual Consciousness to Panexperientialism and Beyond.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Preface/Introduction
  
  The question under discussion is metaphysical and truly elemental. It emerges in two aspects – how did we come to be conscious of our own existence, and, as a deeper corollary, do existence and awareness necessitate each other? I am bold enough to explore these questions and I invite you to come along; I make no claim to have discovered absolute answers. However, I do believe I have created here a compelling interpretation. You’ll have to judge for yourself.
  
  
  
  What follows is the presentation of three essays I have worked on over the past several years seeing publication for the first time. “Hollows of Experience” was written first as an invited chapter for a collection on the ontology of consciousness. However, when cuts became necessary, my chapter got the knife. Its length has prohibited it from publication in any print journal. “Myth and Mind” was written next as a journal article, but as my involvement with it grew so did its length, so it has also idled on my websty awaiting its call. “From Panexperiential-ism to Conscious Experience” was written most recently, but it is the only one to have been available to the public elsewhere than my own website. Under the name, “The Continuum of Experience”, it was Target Article #95 on the recently closed Karl Jaspers Forum (for discussion purposes only).
  
  
  
  I have put them in a different sequence here, for reasons of logical sense. Up first, “Panexperientialism” deals with an idea difficult for many to accept, namely that conscious experience is a particular mode of symbolically reflected experience that is largely unique to our species. However, I aver that experienced sensation in itself (as found, for example, in autonomic sensory response systems) goes “all the way down” into nature, and thus the title, panexperientialism.
  
  
  
  Understanding this idea is helpful to dealing with the focus on language in Part I of “Hollows”, next, since here speech and general symbolic interaction in general are found to be the catalysts for the creation of our consciously experienced world (our “lived reality”). In Part II, however, I explore how experienced sensations must be coeval with existence, and, with even greater temerity, how all this sensational existence might have arisen within some literally inconceivable background of awareness-in-itself that yet has a dynamism that occasionally breaks into existence as experiential events and entities. (The latter may sound wacky, but physicists and cosmologists are themselves attempting to come to terms with that which seethes with vast potential energy in what they refer to as the quantum vacuum.)
  
  
  
  “Myth and Mind” was put third since it deals with a major lacuna in “Hollows” – that presumed prehistoric period when members of our species made the painful crossing of the symbolic threshold into the beginnings of cultural consciousness. Speech plays a central role here, too, but I look more at narrative structures from the dawn of self-awareness when ritual and myth became vital to human survival. Why would fantastic stories and bizarre rituals be necessary? I speculate that growing foresight led to the unavoidable realization of certain mortality, from which, in turn, emerged the secondary realization that we were now alive. In contrast to our yet-to-come death, we have life here and now, and by ritually identifying with a symbolically expanded mythic, i.e., sacred, reality, we may continue to live on after bodily death, just as our ancestors and loved ones must also do. Language and mythmaking are necessary to avoid mortal despair and they remain at the core of human consciousness.
  
  
  
  As Ernst Cassirer (1944) has noted, language and myth are “twin creatures”, both metaphoric webs over a reality we can never wholly comprehend. We live in the symbolic and construct our works of imagination and wars of conquest to make life meaningful, to feel immortal, and to sense that we ourselves participate in a reality greater than ourselves. No doubt we do, but this does not mean our culturally constructed self-identities survive the death of our bodies, and it does not imply that our symbolic concepts can ever indicate the ultimate truth. We simply must symbolize an extended reality that was sacred to our ancestors: “Is it not our way, as illusory as it may be, to force continuance on our world and our life in the face of their inevitable ending? Are we not compelled to extend those imagi-nary horizons as far as we can despite the terror and the sometime joy their extension incites? Is their closure not a form of death?” (Crapanzano, p. 210)
  
  
  
  Of course, this leaves me in the uncomfortable position of being forced to admit that this venture of mine must inevitably be another attempt at meaningful mythmaking. But what else could it be? This is certainly not a scientific proof though it is indeed an academically rigorous exploration. (Just try to count the citations!) I hope the reader will judge my thesis on the basis of its coherence, the sense of meaning it evokes, my intellectual responsibility, and, finally, the engagement it inspires. If you have read my expositions and found yourself immersed in the timeless questions I here call forth, I would call these writings successful (even if you violently disagree with my answers).
  
  
  
  I am very grateful to Huping Hu for granting me this special issue of JCER in which to present my ideas in some detail. He has patiently dealt with my exuberant approach and allowed the many changes I kept coming up with right until the final publication date. I also wish to thank the many potential commentators who politely replied to my invitation, and, even more, I thank those who made time to write actual commentaries.
  
  
  
  References
  
  
  
  Cassirer, E. (1944). An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Hu-man Culture. New Haven/London: Yale UP.
  
  
  
  Crapanzano, V. (2004). Imaginative Horizons: An Essay in Literary-Philosophical Anthropology. Chicago: U of Chicago Press.
  
  
  
  Gregory M. Nixon
  
  University of Northern British Columbia
  
  Prince George, British Columbia, Canada
  
  Email: doknyx@shaw.ca
  
  Websty: http://members.shaw.ca/doknyx
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Contents
  
  
  
  Preface/Introduction 213
  
  
  
  From Panexperientialism to Conscious Experience:
  
  The Continuum of Experience 216
  
  
  
  Hollows of Experience 234
  
  
  
  Myth and Mind:
  
  The Origin of Human Consciousness in the Discovery of the Sacred 289
  
  
• Gregory Nixon (2010). Myth and Mind: The Origin of Consciousness in the Discovery of the Sacred.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: By accepting that the formal structure of human language is the key to understanding the uniquity of human culture and consciousness and by further accepting the late appearance of such language amongst the Cro-Magnon, I am free to focus on the causes that led to such an unprecedented threshold crossing. In the complex of causes that led to human being, I look to scholarship in linguistics, mythology, anthropology, paleontology, and to creation myths themselves for an answer. I conclude that prehumans underwent an existential crisis, i.e., the realization of certain mortality, that could be borne only by the discovery-creation of the larger realm of symbolic consciousness once experienced as the sacred (but today we know it as "the world" – as opposed to our immediate natural environment and that of other animals). Thus, although we, the human species, are but one species among innumerable others, we differ in kind, not degree. This quality is our symbolically enabled self-consciousness, the fortress of cultural identity that empowers but also imprisons awareness.
• James R. Mensch (2000). An objective phenomenology: Husserl sees colors.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: David Chalmers expresses a general consensus when he writes that
• Galen Strawson (1999). Realistic Materialist Monism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Short version of 'Real materialism', given at Tucson III Conference, 1998. (1) physicalism is true (2) the qualitative character of experience is real, as most naively understood ... so (3) the qualitative character of experience (considered specifically as such) is wholly physical. ‘How can consciousness possibly be physical, given what we know about the physical?’ To ask this question is already to have gone wrong. We have no good reason (as Priestley and Russell and others observe) to think that we know anything about the physical that gives us any reason to find any problem in the idea that consciousness is wholly physical.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://reading.academia.edu/documents/0095/5756/1999_Realistic_Materialist_Monism_Strawson.pdf
  
• Justin Sytsma & Edouard Machery (2009). How to study folk intuitions about phenomenal consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The assumption that the concept of phenomenal consciousness is pretheoretical is often found in the philosophical debates on consciousness. Unfortunately, this assumption has not received the kind of empirical attention that it deserves. We suspect that this is in part due to difficulties that arise in attempting to test folk intuitions about consciousness. In this article we elucidate and defend a key methodological principle for this work. We draw this principle out by considering recent experimental work on the topic by Joshua Knobe and Jesse Prinz (2008). We charge that their studies do not establish that the folk have a concept of phenomenal consciousness in part because they compare group agents to individuals . The problem is that group agents and individuals differ in some significant ways in terms of functional organization and behavior. We propose that future experiments should establish that ordinary people are disposed to ascribe different mental states to entities that are given behaviorally and functionally equivalent descriptions
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a908827766~fulltext=713240930
  
• M. E. Tson (ms). From Dust to Descartes: A Mechanical and Evolutionary Explanation of Consciousness and Self-Awareness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Beginning with physical reactions as simple and mechanical as rust, From Dust to Descartes goes step by evolutionary step to explore how the most remarkable and personal aspects of consciousness have arisen, how our awareness of the world of ourselves differs from that of other species, and whether machines could ever become self-aware. Part I addresses a newborn’s innate abilities. Part II shows how with these and experience, we can form expectations about the world. Parts III concentrates on the essential role that others play in the formation of self-awareness. Part IV then explores what follows from this explanation of human consciousness, touching on topics such as free will, personality, intelligence, and color perception which are often associated with self-awareness and the philosophy of mind.
• Vadim V. Vasilyev (2006). Brain and consciousness: Exits from the labyrinth.   (More)
• Max Velmans (2007). The co-evolution of matter and consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Theories about the evolution of consciousness relate in an intimate way to theories about the distribution of consciousness, which range from the view that only human beings are conscious to the view that all matter is in some sense conscious. Broadly speaking, such theories can be classified into discontinuity theories and continuity theories. Discontinuity theories propose that consciousness emerged only when material forms reached a given stage of evolution, but propose different criteria for the stage at which this occurred. Continuity theories argue that in some primal form, consciousness always accompanies matter and as matter evolved in form and complexity consciousness co-evolved, for example into the forms that we now recognise in human beings. Given our limited knowledge of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the presence of human consciousness in human brains, all options remain open. On balance however continuity theory appears to be more elegant than discontinuity theory
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/6104/1/Evolution_of_consciousness_web.pdf
  

Consciousness and Materialism

• Robert D. Rupert (2007). Review of J. T. Ismael, The Situated Self.   (More)

The Knowledge Argument

• Torin Alter (1998). A limited defense of the knowledge argument.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/U837510838223657.pdf
  
• Torin Alter (2006). Does representationalism undermine the knowledge argument?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The knowledge argument aims to refute physicalism, the view that the world is entirely physical. The argument first establishes the existence of facts (or truths or information) about consciousness that are not a priori deducible from the complete physical truth, and then infers the falsity of physicalism from this lack of deducibility. Frank Jackson (1982, 1986) gave the argument its classic formulation. But now he rejects the argument (Jackson 1998b, 2003, chapter 3 of this volume). On his view, it relies on a false conception of sensory experience, which should be replaced with representationalism (also known as intentionalism), the view that phenomenal states are just representational states. And he argues that mental representation is physically explicable
• Torin Alter (online). Knowledge argument against physicalism.   (More)
• Torin Alter (online). The knowledge argument.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Frank Jackson first presented the Knowledge Argument (henceforth KA) in "Epiphenomenal Qualia" 1982). The KA is an argument against physicalism, the doctrine that (very roughly put) everything is physical. The general thrust of the KA is that physicalism errs by misconstruing or denying the existence of the subjective features of experience. Physicalists have given numerous responses, and the debate continues about whether the KA ultimately succeeds in refuting any or all forms of physicalism. Jackson himself has recently
• James T. Anderson (online). A simple refutation of the knowledge argument against physicalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: One of the most persuasive objections to the identity thesis
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://home.sandiego.edu/~janderso/research/Knowledge.html
  http://home.sandiego.edu/~janderso/research/KnowledgeAb.html
  
• István Aranyosi (2008). Review of Torin Alter and Sven Walter (eds.) Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge.   (More)
• Katalin Balog (2008). Review of Torin Alter, Sven Walter (eds.), Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The book under review is a collection of thirteen essays on the nature phenomenal concepts and the ways in which phenomenal concepts figure in debates over physicalism. Phenomenal concepts are of special interest in a number of ways. First, they refer to phenomenal experiences, and the qualitative character of those experiences (aka “qualia”) whose metaphysical status is hotly debated. There are recent arguments, originating in Descartes’ famous conceivability argument, that purport to show that phenomenal experience is irreducibly non-physical. Second, phenomenal concepts are widely thought to be special and unique among concepts. Both the anti-physicalist arguments and physicalist replies to these arguments turn on views about the nature of phenomenal concepts. In this review I survey the many ways in which the essays in this volume are engaged (pro or con) with anti-physicalist arguments and the role phenomenal concepts play in these arguments.
• Michael Beaton (2005). What RoboDennett still doesn't know.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The explicit aim of Daniel Dennett’s new paper ‘What RoboMary Knows’ is to show that Mary (the hypothetical colour-blind neuroscientist) will necessarily be able to come to know what it is like to see in colour, if she fully understands all the physical facts about colour vision. I believe we can establish that Dennett’s line of reasoning is flawed, but the flaw is not as simple as an equivocation on ‘knows’. Rather, it goes to the heart of functionalism and hinges on whether or not Dennett is correct to claim that there is ‘no fact of the matter’ about what subjective experience consists in.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/mjsb20/robodennett/RoboDennett.pdf
  http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/users/mjsb20/robodennett/RoboDennett.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2005/00000012/00000012/art00001
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/latest
  
• Alex Byrne (2006). Review of There's Something About Mary.   (More)
• Alex Byrne (2002). Something about Mary.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Jackson's black-and-white Mary teaches us that the propositional content of perception cannot be fully expressed in language
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://mit.edu/abyrne/www/SomethingAboutMary.pdf
  http://web.mit.edu/abyrne/www/SomethingAboutMary.pdf
  http://pellenes-shoshonensis.mit.edu/abyrne/www/SomethingAboutMary.pdf
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=yBiNGPmAd04C&oi=fnd&pg=PA123&ots=WeseODhlSZ&sig=pxUvnxNuWn5xt3cnEBixP_t1M4E
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com//content/rodopi/gps/2002/00000063/00000001/art00008
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/rodopi/gps/2002/00000063/00000001/art00008
  
• Yuri Cath (2009). The ability hypothesis and the new knowledge-how.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121680921/PDFSTART
  
• David J. Chalmers (2004). Phenomenal concepts and the knowledge argument.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: *[[This paper is largely based on material in other papers. The first three sections and the appendix are drawn with minor modifications from Chalmers 2002c (which explores issues about phenomenal concepts and beliefs in much more depth, mostly independently of questions about materialism). The main ideas of the last three sections are drawn from Chalmers 1996, 1999, and 2002a, although with considerable revision and elaboration. ]]
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/knowledge.html
  
• Sam Coleman (2009). Why the Ability Hypothesis is best forgotten.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: According to the knowledge argument, physicalism fails because when physically omniscient Mary first sees red, her gain in phenomenal knowledge involves a gain in factual knowledge. Thus not all facts are physical facts. According to the ability hypothesis, the knowledge argument fails because Mary only acquires abilities to imagine, remember and recognise redness, and not new factual knowledge. I argue that reducing Mary’s new knowledge to abilities does not affect the issue of whether she also learns factually: I show that gaining specific new phenomenal knowledge is required for acquiring abilities of the relevant kind. Phenomenal knowledge being basic to abilities, and not vice versa, it is left an open question whether someone who acquires such abilities also learns something factual. The answer depends on whether the new phenomenal knowledge involved is factual. But this is the same question we wanted to settle when first considering the knowledge argument. The ability hypothesis, therefore, has offered us no dialectical progress with the knowledge argument, and is best forgotten.
• Tim Crane (2003). Subjective facts.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: An important theme running through D.H. Mellor’s work is his realism, or as I shall call it, his objectivism: the idea that reality as such is how it is, regardless of the way we represent it, and that philosophical error often arises from confusing aspects of our subjective representation of the world with aspects of the world itself. Thus central to Mellor’s work on time has been the claim that the temporal A-series (previously called ‘tense’) is unreal while the B-series (the series of ‘dates’) is real. The A-series is something which is a product of our representation of the world, but not a feature of reality itself. And in other, less central, areas of his work, this kind of theme has been repeated: ‘Objective decision making’ (1980) argues that the right way to understand decision theory is as a theory of what is the objectively correct decision, the one that will actually as a matter of fact achieve your intended goal, rather than the one that is justified purely in terms of what you believe, regardless of whether the belief is true or false. ‘I and now’ (1989) argues against a substantial subjective conception of the self, using analogies between subjective and objective ways of thinking about time and subjective and objective ways of thinking about the self. And in the paper which shall be the focus of my attention here, ‘Nothing like experience’ (1992), Mellor..
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.bbkphilsoc.org.uk/archive/geocities/CranePoster.pdf
  
• Daniel C. Dennett (1991). "Epiphenomenal" qualia?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=HYyubHBrVUcC&oi=fnd&pg=PA59&dq=Epiphenomenal+qualia?+Dennett&ots=_SC-jo5zwi&sig=DxAGjB1ySyCT2dtyRK43P-0R0Q4
  
• Max Deutsch (ms). Subjective physical facts.   (More)
• Brie Gertler (1999). A defense of the knowledge argument.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/gj2x7p0681887317/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/GJ2X7P0681887317.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/1999/00000093/00000003/00143970
  
• Brie Gertler (2005). The Knowledge Argument.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The definitive statement of the Knowledge Argument was formulated by Frank Jackson, in a paper entitled “Epiphenomenal Qualia” that appeared in The Philosophical Quarterly in 1982. Arguments in the same spirit had appeared earlier (Broad 1925, Robinson 1982), but Jackson’s argument is most often compared with Thomas Nagel’s argument in “What is it Like to be a Bat?” (1974). Jackson, however, takes pains to distinguish his argument from Nagel’s. This entry will follow standard practice in focusing on Jackson’s argument, though I will also describe the main points of alleged similarity and dissimilarity between these two arguments
• Gilbert Harman (1993). Can science understand the mind?   (More)
• Benj Hellie (2004). Inexpressible truths and the allure of the knowledge argument.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I argue on linguistic grounds that when Mary comes to know what it's like to see a red thing, she comes to know a certain inexpressible truth about the character of her own experience. This affords a "no concept" reply to the knowledge argument. The reason the Knowledge Argument has proven so intractable may be that we believe that an inexpressible concept and an expressible concept cannot have the same referent.
• David Hodgson (2008). The knowledge argument: A response to Elizabeth Schier.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I much appreciated Elizabeth Schier's paper on Frank Jackson's knowledge argument, published in the January 2008 issue of Journal of Consciousness Studies (Schier, 2008) -- in part, I confess, because of resonances with my gestalt argument for free will (Hodgson, 2001; 2002; 2005; 2007a,b). I would like to offer two comments on this paper
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com//content/imp/jcs/2008/00000015/00000004/art00008
  
• Amir Horowitz & Hilla Jacobson-Horowitz (2005). The knowledge argument and higher-order properties.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9329.2005.00270.x/abs/
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9329.2005.00270.x
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118648334/PDFSTART
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/rati/2005/00000018/00000001/art00004
  
• Frank Jackson (1982). Epiphenomenal qualia.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA102&ots=023SQBHRLK&sig=lpLBA75S5ZNh7nRMzwXaTu9ivhw
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA102&ots=01cTMBEPKN&sig=nrqGrDr6BtBhIMYeNlT1uDsK6Qs
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA102&ots=023ROAJROK&sig=CcwbkADsnucEzfU7Z9mCzNEYSlM
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA102&ots=023VQEFTQN&sig=uXnKXoN7jyiZ2QHF-PfypYY9Rv8
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA102&ots=023UUECWPJ&sig=RJi-St-b9kx018y6yResxfK4OoM
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA102&ots=023QSAEOLR&sig=bCap_SwkCsP8FLlFAX4sdGQhYLg
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA102&ots=023RUBEUNN&sig=6tQZIpZHouebGy9fctdarZbQivw
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA102&ots=023UODHTOP&sig=zWAe4dwHZXfaFEM358lrTKkVSiI
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA102&ots=01cTPEIONQ&sig=NEvPcMVl5uYMTylMlfuR9yPcrLo
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA102&ots=023UODGVON&sig=UJRGJGzDi0DC-z-ENo1Yuy8ipJc
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA102&ots=023TSCHROO&sig=ZIpzWdtTaIUmTTyUvSPA2DqIcV4
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA102&ots=023TMCDUQO&sig=EoFnSapBQFa9qwebq724B8Ijoag
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA102&ots=023QMzJQIK&sig=wU_mBShayo_GQugf6FOY2AnJ5Y4
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA102&ots=023VQEFWPK&sig=6qMuMHnr_ttGQrtaqv-Nt4WmjoQ
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA102&ots=01cTREJTNQ&sig=4glbZFmhSDrS05egUFkwQxDeQ_g
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fGLRPNiWS5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA102&ots=023UUEDOLN&sig=d4nP0qjmyhHk28iBFlCsFl-Wa-Q
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8094(198204)32:127<127:EQ>2.0.CO;2-5
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8094(198204)32:127<127:EQ>2.0.CO;2-5
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2960077.pdf
  
• Frank Jackson (2003). Mind and illusion.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/consciousness/papers/jackson.pdf
  
• Dunja Jutronic (2004). The knowledge argument--some comments.   (More)
• Guy Kahane (2010). Feeling pain for the very first time: The normative knowledge argument.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this paper I present a new argument against internalist theories of practical reason. My argument is inpired by Frank Jackson's celebrated Knowledge Argument. I ask what will happen when an agent experiences pain for the first time. Such an agent, I argue, will gain new normative knowledge that internalism cannot explain. This argument presents a similar difficulty for other subjectivist and constructivist theories of practical reason and value. I end by suggesting that some debates in meta-ethics and in the philosophy of mind might be more closely intertwined than philosophers in either area would like to believe
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/123226703/PDFSTART
  
• Jesper Kallestrup (2006). Epistemological physicalism and the knowledge argument.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper offers a new solution to the knowledge argument. Both a priori and a posteriori physicalists reject the claim that Mary does not know all the facts, but they do so for different reasons. While the former think that Mary gains no new knowledge of any fact, the latter think that Mary gains new knowledge of an old fact. This paper argues that on a broad understanding of what counts as physical, it is consistent with physicalism that Mary does not know all the physical facts, and that on a narrow understanding, it is consistent with physicalism that Mary knows all the physical facts, but not all the facts. Either way, Mary gains new knowledge of a new fact that is not non-physical. The resultant view
• William G. Lycan (2003). Perspectival representation and the knowledge argument.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Someday there will be no more articles written about the
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8AHDK62jPSgC&oi=fnd&pg=PA384&dq=Perspectival+representation+and+the+knowledge+argument+Lycan&ots=fHEaMRGFdm&sig=KlOaW53DD8Mbz4hBlMS1Tcz1mmc
  
• Luca Malatesti (2004). The Knowledge Argument.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  https://dspace.stir.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/1893/22/1/Malatesti_Thesis_Complete.pdf
  
• Pete Mandik (2010). Swamp Mary's revenge: Deviant phenomenal knowledge and physicalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Deviant phenomenal knowledge is knowing what it’s like to have experiences of, e.g., red without actually having had experiences of red. Such a knower is a deviant. Some physicalists have argued and some anti-physicalists have denied that the possibility of deviants undermines anti-physicalism and the Knowledge Argument. The current paper presents new arguments defending the deviant-based attacks on anti-physicalism. Central to my arguments are considerations concerning the psychosemantic underpinnings of deviant phenomenal knowledge. I argue that physicalists are in a superior position to account for the conditions in virtue of which states of deviants constitute representations of phenomenal facts
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/l07pw010561jx1m5/fulltext.pdf
  
• Yujin Nagasawa (online). Knowledge argument.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The knowledge argument is an argument against physicalism that was first formulated by Frank Jackson in 1982. While Jackson no longer endorses it, it is still regarded as one of the most important arguments in the philosophy of mind. Physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that, roughly speaking, everything in this world—including tables, galaxies, cheese cakes, cars, atoms, and even our sensations— are ultimately physical. The knowledge argument attempts to undermine this thesis by appealing to the following simple imaginary scenario: Mary is confined to a black-and-white room, is educated through black-and-white books and through lectures relayed on black-and white television. In this way she learns everything there is to know about the physical nature of the world. She knows all the physical facts about us and our environment, in a wide sense of ‘physical’ which includes everything in completed physics, chemistry, and neurophysiology, and all there is to know about the causal and relational facts consequent upon all this, including of course functional roles. (Jackson 1986, p. 291) The knowledge argument says that if physicalism is true, Mary knows everything in this world. However, it seems obvious that her knowledge is not yet complete. Suppose that..
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ptr.bham.ac.uk/staff/docs/nagasawa_knowledge.pdf
  http://www.yujinnagasawa.com/resources/knowledge.pdf
  
• Yujin Nagasawa (2002). The knowledge argument against dualism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Paul Churchland argues that Frank Jackson
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/~yujin/2KADualism.pdf
  http://www.cappe.edu.au/people/nagayu/2KADualism.pdf
  http://www.newdualism.org/papers/Y.Nagasawa/2KADualism.pdf
  http://www.philosophy.bham.ac.uk/pdf/Nagasawa/KADualism.pdf
  http://www.philosophy.bham.ac.uk/staff/nagasawa_KADualism.pdf
  http://www.ptr.bham.ac.uk/staff/docs/nagasawa_knowledgeargument.pdf
  http://www.yujinnagasawa.com/resources/against_dualism.pdf
  
• Yujin Nagasawa (2010). The knowledge argument and epiphenomenalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Frank Jackson endorses epiphenomenalism because he thinks that his knowledge argument undermines physicalism. One of the most interesting criticisms of Jackson’s position is what I call the ‘inconsistency objection’. The inconsistency objection says that Jackson’s position is untenable because epiphenomenalism undermines the knowledge argument. The inconsistency objection has been defended by various philosophers independently, including Michael Watkins, Fredrik Stjernberg, and Neil Campbell. Surprisingly enough, while Jackson himself admits explicitly that the inconsistency objection is ‘the most powerful reply to the knowledge argument’ he knows of, it has never been discussed critically. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the objection and to identify and consider its implications. The objection is alleged to be based on a causal theory of knowledge. I argue that the objection fails by showing that any causal theory of knowledge is such that it is either false or does not support the inconsistency objection. In order to defend my argument, I offer a hypothesis concerning phenomenal knowledge
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/8t65710112q81073/fulltext.pdf
  
• Bence Nanay (2009). Imagining, recognizing and discriminating: Reconsidering the ability hypothesis.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/122683662/PDFSTART
  
• Mr D. M. Nicholson (ms). From a flaw in the knowledge argument to a physicalist account of qualia.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The Knowledge argument based on the grey Mary thought experiment cannot be claimed as a basis for rejecting physicalism. First, because it is flawed, being so formulated as to predetermine the outcome of the thought experiment in favour of a refutation of physicalism. Second, because, once this is recognised, it becomes clear that there is one - and only one - account of the qualia-physical relationship that will permit physicalism to survive the thought experiment itself. It is suggested that the position in question is worthy of further consideration as a reasonable candidate theory for a physicalist account of qualia
• Dennis Nicholson (ms). Solving the mind-body problem - the real significance of the knowledge argument.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The Knowledge Argument is misconstructed. Knowing that it is ‘just obvious’ that Mary will learn something new on leaving her black and white room, we nevertheless assume she can acquire a complete knowledge of the physical inside it – thereby predetermining the outcome of the thought experiment in favour of a refutation of physicalism. If we reformulate the argument to leave the question of what she can learn in the room open, it becomes clear, not only that physicalism can survive the Knowledge Argument, but also that there is only one perspective on the relationship between qualia and the physical that will permit it to do so. If physicalism is true, this perspective must be the correct view of the qualia-physical relationship – the solution to the mind-body problem, a conclusion supported by its ability to resolve a number of associated difficulties, including Kripke’s problem for proposed identities and Chalmers’ Hard Problem
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/2951/2/karealsig0webfp.htm
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00002951/
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00002951/02/karealsig0webfp.htm
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:2951
  
• Martine Nida-Rumelin (online). The knowledge argument.   (More)
• Knut Nordby (1990). Vision in a complete achromat: A personal account.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/misc/achromat.html
  
• Michael W. Pelczar (2005). Enlightening the fully informed.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper develops a response to the knowledge argument against physicalism. The response is both austere, in that it does not concede the existence of non-physical information (much less non-physical facts), and natural, in that it acknowledges the alethic character of phenomenal knowledge and learning. I argue that such a response has all the advantages and none of the disadvantages of existing objections to the knowledge argument. Throughout, the goal is to develop a response that is polemically effective in addition to theoretically sound
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/philo/pelczar/PHIL252.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/b200724171424160/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/B200724171424160.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2005/00000126/00000001/00007794
  
• Michael Pelczar (2009). The knowledge argument, the open question argument, and the moral problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Someone who knew everything about the world’s physical nature could, apparently, suffer from ignorance about various aspects of conscious experience. Someone who knew everything about the world’s physical and mental nature could, apparently, suffer from moral ignorance. Does it follow that there are ways the world is, over and above the way it is physically or psychophysically? This paper defends a negative answer, based on a distinction between knowing the fact that p and knowing that p. This distinction is made intelligible by reference to criterial connections between the possession of moral or phenomenal knowledge, and the satisfaction of cognitively neutral conditions of desire and experiential history. The existence of such connections in the moral case makes for an efficient dissolution of the so-called moral problem
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/41787n7w458492k7/fulltext.pdf
  
• Derk Pereboom (1994). Bats, brain scientists, and the limitations of introspection.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(199406)54:2<315:BBSATL>2.0.CO;2-W
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2108491.pdf
  
• John Perry (2001). Time, consciousness and the knowledge argument.   (More)
• Philip Pettit (2004). Motion blindness and the knowledge argument.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In a now famous thought experiment, Frank jackson asked us t0 imagine an omniscient scientist, Mary, who is coniincd in a black-and-white room and then released into the world 0f color (jackson 1982; jackson 1986; cf. Braddon—Mitch<-:11 and Jackson 1996). Assuming that she is omniscicnt in respect of all physical facts—roughiy, all the facts available to physics and all the facts that they in turn Hx or determine-physicalism would suggest that there is no new fact Mary can discover after emancipation; physicalism holds that all facts are physical in the relevant sense (for a fuller statement scc Pettit 1993; jackson 1998). Yet we cannot help but feel that coming out of that room would be an occasion of dramatic enlightenment and, in particular, an occasion for learning facts to do with how red or yellow or blue 100ks or, as it is usually said, with what it is like t0 sec red or yellow or blue. Many in the black-and—whit<—: room knew all the physical facts about the world, where these may be taken to include three sorts of color facts: objcctual facts, as to what surface colors different objects have, assuming as I shall do throughout—that colors are properties of objects; intentional facts, as to which colors different objects 0r apparent objects are represented as having in the subjc-:ct’s experience, rightly or wrongly; and nonintentional facts, about what such color experiences are like in their effects on subiccts—wh<—:ther they are comforting, or arousing, or whatever. But, according to the argument, Mary didn’t know how any color looks or, equivalently, what color experience is like in itself, not just in its effects O1'1 subjects. This particular nonintentional fact about the quality of color c-zxpc-2ri<—:ncc-—this phenomenal fact, as it is often describcd—she did not..
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=HYyubHBrVUcC&oi=fnd&pg=PA105&dq=Motion+blindness+and+the+knowledge+argument+Pettit&ots=_SC-joayCb&sig=AOUsICKVby-3fkmx4oJjzDFoF2E
  
• Jesse J. Prinz (ms). Mental maintenance: A response to the knowledge argument.   (More)
• Diana Raffman (2005). Even zombies can be surprised: A reply to Graham and Horgan.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/T13447103052KP36.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2005/00000122/00000002/00009462
  
• Paul Raymont (1999). The know-how response to Jackson's knowledge argument.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I defend Frank Jackson's knowledge argument against physicalism in the philosophy of mind from a criticism that has been advanced by Laurence Nemirow and David Lewis. According to their criticism, what Mary lacked when she was in her black and white room was a set of abilities; she did not know how to recognize or imagine certain types of experience from a first-person perspective. Her subsequent discovery of what it is like to experience redness amounts to no more than her acquisition of these abilities. The physicalist can admit this, since it does not commit one to the view that there are any facts of which Mary was ignorant (in spite of her exhaustive knowledge of truths about the physical world). I argue against this view, on the grounds that the knowledge of what an experience is like cannot be equated with the possession of any set of abilities
• Howard M. Robinson (1993). Dennett on the knowledge argument.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-2638(199307)53:3<174:DOTKA>2.0.CO;2-E
  
• John R. Skoyles (ms). The case of Milton: A counter-example to Chalmers' case of Mary.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Chalmers' hard problem confuses within and without-system information. This can be seen in his case of Mary. This neurophysiologist of colour vision raised in a black and white room in an age of a completed neuroscience in spite of her knowing everything about colour vision lacks colour experience. I demonstrate with a counter-example involving Milton, an economist in an age of completed economics, that Chalmers mixes up scientific accountability and accessibility of information processing. There is a profound conceptual difference between the external understanding of information processing in the brain and the internal understanding that participates in it -- as can be illustrated in Aristotles' illusion
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000375/00/chalmers.htm
  
• Robert Stalnaker (ms). Knowing where we are, and what it is like.   (More)
• Fredrik Stjernberg (online). Not so epiphenomenal qualia.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.lucs.lu.se/spinning/categories/language/Stjernberg/Stjernberg.pdf
  http://asip.lucs.lu.se/spinning/categories/language/Stjernberg/Stjernberg.pdf
  
• Daniel Stoljar & Yujin Nagasawa (2003). Introduction to There's Something About Mary.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Mary is confined to a black-and-white room, is educated through black-and-white books and through lectures relayed on black-and white television. In this way she learns everything there is to know about the physical nature of the world. She knows all the physical facts about us and our environment, in a wide sense of 'physical' which includes everything in completed physics, chemistry, and neurophysiology, and all there is to know about the causal and relational facts consequent upon all this, including of course functional roles. If physicalism is true, she knows all there is to know. For to suppose otherwise is to suppose that there is more to know than every physical fact, and that is just what physicalis..
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/~dstoljar/onlinepapers/There's Something about Mary.Intro.pdf
  
• Nigel J. T. Thomas (online). Mary doesn't know science: On misconceiving a science of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The so called "Knowledge Argument" of Frank Jackson (1982, 1986) ¹ claims to show that there is something about the human mind that must inevitably escape the grasp of physical science: "There are truths about . . . people ( . . . ) which escape the physicalist story" (Jackson, 1986). In effect, materialism is false, and science, as opposed to metaphysics, cannot hope to attain to an understanding of consciousness
• Evan Thompson (1992). Novel colors.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/v377v06152244243/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/V377V06152244243.pdf
  
• David L. Thompson (online). On naturalizing intentionality.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Outline by Section: INTRODUCTION HUSSERL'S TRANSCENDENTAL POSITION Brentano's Notion of Intentionality Frege's Notion of Sinn Husserl's Transcendental Position Intentional Relations are not Causal. Realism is Wrong, Objects must be Meaningful Psychological States are Empirical. Meanings cannot be In-Themselves, but always for an Ego SEARLE'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY CONFRONTATION OF SEARLE'S THEORY WITH THE FOUR THESES Searle Intentionalizes or Trivializes Causation Searle is still a Realist Visual Experience is a Thing-In-Itself Intentional States Presented as Stopping Points CONCLUSION
• Michael Tye (2000). Knowing what it is like: The ability hypothesis and the knowledge argument.   (More)
• Author unknown (online). The know-how response to Jackson's knowledge argument.   (More)
• Robert van Gulick (2004). So many ways of saying no to Mary.   (More)
• Tillmann Vierkant (2002). Zombie Mary and the blue banana. On the compatibility of the 'knowledge argument' with the argument from modality.   (More)
• Sven Walter (2002). Terry, Terry, quite contrary.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In 'Jackson on physical information and qualia'(1984) Terry Horgan defended physicalism against Frank Jackson's Knowledge Argument by raising what later has been called the 'mode of presentation reply'- arguingthatthe Knowledge Argumentis fallacious because itsubtly equivocates on two different readings of 'physical information'. In 'Mary, Mary, quite contrary' (2000) however, George Graham and Terry Horgan maintain that none of the replies against Jackson has yet been successful, not even Horgan's own 1984 rejoinder.Tosubstantiate their claim, they present an allegedly improved version of the Knowledge Argument, the 'Mary Mary Argument' whose default moral is property-dualism. In section 1, I will set the scene by making some clarifying remarks regarding Jackson's original argument. In section 2, I will consider several objections to the most promising physicalist rejoinder to the Knowledge Argument, the mode of presentation reply. In section 3 I will discuss the Mary Mary Argument and propose the indexical account of consciousness that, as it happens, is based on Horgan's own 1984 account as a possible solution. Finally,in section 4, I will argue that to the extent that the Mary Mary Argument exceeds the force of Jackson's original challenge it coincides with Joe Levine's Explanatory Gap Argument
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com//content/rodopi/gps/2002/00000063/00000001/art00007
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/rodopi/gps/2002/00000063/00000001/art00007
  
• Jessica M. Wilson (2002). Review of John Perry's Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Perry, in this lucid, deep, and entertaining book (based on his 1999 Jean Nicod lectures), supposes that type-identity physicalism is antecedently plausible, and that rejecting this thesis requires good reason (this is

Zombies and the Conceivability Argument

• Torin Alter (2007). Imagining subjective absence: Marcus on zombies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Many philosophers accept the conceivability of zombies: creatures that lack consciousness but are physically and functionally identical to conscious human beings. Many also believe that the conceivability of zombies supports their metaphysical possibility. And most agree that if zombies are metaphysically possible, then physicalism is false. So, the claim that zombies are conceivable may have considerable significance.¹
• István Aranyosi (forthcoming). A new argument for mind-brain identity.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this paper I undertake the tasks of reconsidering Feigl’s notion of a ‘nomological dangler’ in light of recent discussion about the viability of accommodating phenomenal properties, or qualia, within a physicalist picture of reality, and of constructing an argument to the effect that nomological danglers, including the way qualia are understood to be related to brain states by contemporary dualists, are extremely unlikely. I offer a probabilistic argument to the effect that merely nomological danglers are extremely unlikely, the only probabilistically coherent candidates being ‘anomic danglers’ (not even nomically correlated) and ‘necessary danglers’ (more than merely nomically correlated). After I show, based on similar probabilistic reasoning, that the first disjunct (anomic danglers) is very unlikely, I conclude that the identity thesis is the only remaining candidate for the mental/physical connection. The novelty of the argument is that it brings probabilistic considerations in favour of physicalism, a move that has been neglected in the recent burgeoning literature on the subject.
  
• Istvan A. Aranyosi (2005). Chalmers' zombie argument.   (More)
• István Aranyosi (2010). Powers and the mind–body problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper proposes a new line of attack on the conceivability argument for mind-body property dualism, based on the causal account of properties, according to which properties have their conditional powers essentially. It is argued that the epistemic possibility of physical but not phenomenal duplicates of actuality is identical to a metaphysical (understood as broadly logical) possibility, but irrelevant for establishing the falsity of physicalism. The proposed attack is in many ways inspired by a standard, broadly Kripkean approach to epistemic and metaphysical modality
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/%7Eistvan/powers.pdf
  http://sites.google.com/site/istvanaranyosi/Powersandthemindfull.pdf
  http://www.istvanaranyosi.net/resources/Powers%20and%20the%20mind%20full.pdf
  http://istvanaranyosi.net/resources/Powers%20and%20the%20mind%20full.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~db=all~content=a919487830~fulltext=713240930
  
• Murat Aydede & Guven Guzeldere (2004). Cognitive architecture, concepts, and introspection: An information-theoretic solution to the problem of phenomenal consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This essay is a sustained attempt to bring new light to some of the perennial problems in philosophy of mind surrounding phenomenal consciousness and introspection through developing an account of sensory and phenomenal concepts. Building on the information-theoretic framework of Dretske (1981), we present an informational psychosemantics as it applies to what we call sensory concepts, concepts that apply, roughly, to so-called secondary qualities of objects. We show that these concepts have a special informational character and semantic structure that closely tie them to the brain states realizing conscious qualitative experiences. We then develop an account of introspection which exploits this special nature of sensory concepts. The result is a new class of concepts, which, following recent terminology, we call phenomenal concepts: these concepts refer to phenomenal experience itself and are the vehicles used in introspection. On our account, the connection between sensory and phenomenal concepts is very tight: it consists in different semantic uses of the same cognitive structures underlying the sensory concepts, such as the concept of red. Contrary to widespread opinion, we show that information theory contains all the resources to satisfy internalist intuitions about phenomenal consciousness, while not offending externalist ones. A consequence of this account is that it explains and predicts the so-called conceivability arguments against physicalism on the basis of the special nature of sensory and phenomenal concepts. Thus we not only show why physicalism is not threatened by such arguments, but also demonstrate its strength in virtue of its ability to predict and explain away such arguments in a principled way. However, we take the main contribution of this work to be what it provides in addition to a response to those conceivability arguments, namely, a substantive account of the interface between sensory and conceptual systems and the mechanisms of introspection as based on the special nature of the information flow between them
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0029-4624.2005.00500.x
  
• Murat Aydede & Guven Guzeldere (2001). Consciousness, conceivability arguments, and perspectivalism: The dialectics of the debate.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.philosophy.ubc.ca/faculty/aydede/dialectics.pdf
  
• Andrew R. Bailey (ms). Physicalism and the preposterousness of zombies.   (More)
• Andrew R. Bailey (ms). The unsoundness of arguments from conceivability.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It is widely suspected that arguments from conceivability, at least in some of their more notorious instances, are unsound. However, the reasons for the failure of conceivability arguments are less well agreed upon, and it remains unclear how to distinguish between sound and unsound instances of the form. In this paper I provide an analysis of the form of arguments from conceivability, and use this analysis to diagnose a systematic weakness in the argument form which reveals all its instances to be, roughly, either uninformative or unsound. I illustrate this conclusion through a consideration of David Chalmers
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.uoguelph.ca/~abailey/papers/The Unsoundness of Arguments from Conceivability.pdf
  http://www.uoguelph.ca/~abailey/Resources/The Unsoundness of Arguments from Conceivability (Latest Draft).pdf
  
• Andrew R. Bailey, Zombies and epiphenomenalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: RÉSUMÉ: Cette étude examine la relation entre la demande que les zombies sont logiquement/métaphysiquement possible et de la position que la conscience phénoménal est epiphenomenal. Il est souvent présumé que la première entraîne ce dernier, et que, par conséquent, toute implausibility dans la notion de conscience epiphenomenalism remet en question la possibilité réelle de zombies. Quatre façons dont les zombist pourrait répondre sont examinées, et je soutiens que les deux les plus fréquemment rencontrés sont insuffisantes, mais les autres—dont l’un est rarement formulés et l’autre nouveaux—sont plus persuasif. Le résultat, cependant, est que le zombist pourraient en effet être confronté à un engagement indésirables à l’epiphenomenalism de conscience
• Andrew R. Bailey (ms). Zombies support biological theories of consciousness.   (More)
• Katalin Balog (forthcoming). Acquaintance and the mind-body problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this paper I begin to develop an account of the acquaintance that each of us has with our own conscious states and processes. The account is a speculative proposal about human mental architecture and specifically about the nature of the concepts via which we think in first personish ways about our qualia. In a certain sense my account is neutral between physicalist and dualist accounts of consciousness. As will be clear, a dualist could adopt the account I will offer while maintaining that qualia themselves are non-physical properties. In this case the non-physical nature of qualia may play no role in accounting for the features of acquaintance. But although the account could be used by a dualist, its existence provides enormous support for physicalism. In particular it provides the makings of a positive refutation (i.e., a refutation by construction) of the conceivability arguments and the Mary argument for dualism.
• Katalin Balog (forthcoming). In Defense of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: During the last two decades, several different anti-physicalist arguments based on an epistemic or conceptual gap between the phenomenal and the physical have been proposed. The most promising physicalist line of defense in the face of these arguments – the Phenomenal Concept Strategy – is based on the idea that these epistemic and conceptual gaps can be explained by appeal to the nature of phenomenal concepts rather than the nature of non-physical phenomenal properties. Phenomenal concepts, on this proposal, involve unique cognitive mechanisms, but none that could not be fully physically implemented. David Chalmers has recently presented a Master Argument to show that the Phenomenal Concept Strategy – not just this or that version of it, but any version of it – fails. Chalmers argues that the phenomenal concepts posited by such theories are either not physicalistically explicable, or they cannot explain our epistemic situation with regard to qualia. I argue that it is his Master Argument that fails. My claim is his argument does not provide any new reasons to reject the Phenomenal Concept Strategy. I also argue that, although the Phenomenal Concept Strategy is successful in showing that the physicalist is not rationally compelled to give up physicalism in the light of the anti-physicalist arguments, the anti-physicalist is not rationally compelled to give up the anti-physicalist argument in the light of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy either.
• Katalin Balog, Illuminati, zombies and metaphysical gridlock.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this paper I survey the landscape of anti-physicalist arguments and physicalist responses to them. The anti-physicalist arguments I discuss start from a premise about a conceptual, epistemic, or explanatory gap between physical and phenomenal descriptions and conclude from this – on a priori grounds – that physicalism is false. My primary aim is to develop a master argument to counter these arguments. With this master argument in place, it is apparent that there is a puzzling symmetry between dualist attacks on physicalism and physicalist replies. Each position can be developed in a way to defend itself from attacks from the other position. Therefore the debate comes down to which metaphysical framework provides the better overall explanatory/theoretical framework.
• George Bealer (2002). Modal epistemology and the rationalist renaissance.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The paper begins with a clarification of the notions of intuition (and, in particular, modal intuition), modal error, conceivability, metaphysical possibility, and epistemic possibility. It is argued that two-dimensionalism is the wrong framework for modal epistemology and that a certain nonreductionist approach to the theory of concepts and propositions is required instead. Finally, there is an examination of moderate rationalism
• George Bealer (1987). The philosophical limits of scientific essentialism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Scientific essentialism is the view that some necessities (e.g., water = H2O) can be known only with the aid of empirical science. The thesis of the paper is that scientific essentialism does not extend to the central questions of philosophy and that these questions can be answered a priori. The argument is that the evidence required for the defense of scientific essentialism (e.g., twin earth intuitions) is reliable only if the intuitions required by philosophy to answer its central questions is also reliable. Included is an outline of a modal reliabilist theory of basic evidence and a concept-possession account of the reliability of a priori intuition
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1520-8583(1987)1<289:TPLOSE>2.0.CO;2-Z
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=1520-8583(1987)1<289:TPLOSE>2.0.CO;2-Z
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2214149.pdf
  
• Karen Bennett (online). Zombies everywhere!   (More)
• Peter Bokulich (ms). Putting zombies to rest: The role of dynamics in reduction.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I argue that property dualism is not supported by the purported logical possibility of qualitative zombies. Chalmers
• Selmer Bringsjord (1995). In defense of impenetrable zombies.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/bringsjord95defense.html
  http://www.rpi.edu/~brings/SELPAP/zombies.jcs/zombies.jcs.html
  
• Selmer Bringsjord (1999). The zombie attack on the computational conception of mind.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.rpi.edu/~brings/SELPAP/zombies.ppr.pdf
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/bringsjord97zombie.html
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(199903)59:1<41:TZAOTC>2.0.CO;2-F
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(199903)59:1<41:TZAOTC>2.0.CO;2-F
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2653457.pdf
  
• Richard Brown (2010). Deprioritizing the A Priori Arguments against Physicalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this paper I argue that a priori arguments fail to present any real problem for physicalism. They beg the question against physicalism in the sense that the argument will only seem compelling if one is already assuming that qualitative properties are nonphysical. To show this I will present the reverse-zombie and reverse-knowledge arguments. The only evidence against physicalism is a priori arguments, but there are also a priori arguments against dualism of exactly the same variety. Each of these parity arguments has premises that are just as intuitively plausible, and it cannot be the case that both the traditional scenarios and the reverse-scenarios are all ideally conceivable. Given this one set must be merely prima facie conceivable and only empirical methods will tell us which is which. So, by the time a priori methodology will be of any use it will be too late.
  
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://faculty.lagcc.cuny.edu/rbrown/deprioritizing%20JSC.htm
  
• Richard Brown (2007). Review of Zombies and consciousness by Robert Kirk.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This book covers a vast amount of material in the philosophy of mind, which makes it difficult to do justice to its tightly argued and nuanced details. It does, however, have two overarching goals that are visible, so to speak, from space. In the first half of the book Kirk aims to show that, contra his former self, philosophical zombies are not conceivable. By this he means that the zombie scenario as usually constructed contains an unnoticed contradiction, and explaining the contradiction reveals a radical misconception about the nature of phenomenal consciousness. His second aim of the book is to construct a theory of perceptual-phenomenal consciousness that avoids this contradiction. The anti-zombie argument can be stated rather easily. According to the ‘zombist’ there can be a creature that is a molecule-for-molecule-duplicate of me and yet lacks phenomenal consciousness. At the same time they want to hold that we have ‘epistemic access’ to our phenomenal consciousness. These two claims are not consistent with each other. To see why, imagine a zombie world that is identical to ours except in respect of phenomenal consciousness. Since that world is just like ours we can assume that it is causally closed under the physical. Now, continues Kirk, it should be possible to add to that world whatever it is that the zombist thinks will transform it into a world that does have phenomenal consciousness. But since whatever we added would have to be nonphysical, since their world is identical to ours (excepting consciousness), and so could not interact causally with the physical world (which is closed under the physical), it follows that we could not know anything about these ‘e-qualia’. Therefore, we could not have ‘epistemic access’ to them. To make this vivid he offers what he calls the ‘sole-pictures’ argument. Again, consider our zombie world. Let’s add whatever it is that the zombist thinks will transform it into a world like ours. Now let’s imagine that by a “strange shift in the natural laws” of the zombie world the visual processes that in me cause e-qualia instead cause....
• David J. Chalmers (2002). Does conceivability entail possibility?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: There is a long tradition in philosophy of using a priori methods to draw conclusions about what is possible and what is necessary, and often in turn to draw conclusions about matters of substantive metaphysics. Arguments like this typically have three steps: first an epistemic claim (about what can be known or conceived), from there to a modal claim (about what is possible or necessary), and from there to a metaphysical claim (about the nature of things in the world)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/conceivability.html
  
• David J. Chalmers (2004). Imagination, indexicality, and intensions.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: John Perry's book Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness is a lucid and engaging defense of a physicalist view of consciousness against various anti-physicalist arguments. In what follows, I will address Perry's responses to the three main anti-physicalist arguments he discusses: the zombie argument (focusing on imagination), the knowledge argument (focusing on indexicals), and the modal argument (focusing on intensions)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/perry.html
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2004.tb00334.x
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/119921373/PDFSTART
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ips/ppr/2004/00000068/00000001/art00011
  
• David J. Chalmers (manuscript). Mind and modality.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: What follows are compressed versions of three lectures on the subject of "Mind and Modality", given at Princeton University the week of October 12-16, 1998. The first two form a series; the third stands alone to some extent. All are philosophically technical, and probably of interest mainly to philosophers. I hope that they make sense, at least to those familiar with my book _The Conscious Mind_ . Lecture 1 recapitulates some of the material in the book in a somewhat different form, and adds some further material on conditionals and on Kripke. Note that section has a more or less definitive formalization of the anti-materialist argument from the book (lots of people have asked for this). Lecture 2 pushes deeper into the heart of modality, further investigating the conceivability/possibility relationship and the epistemology of modality (with some material on the scrutability of truth in general), and arguing for a sort of modal rationalism. Lecture 3 gives an analysis of the content of beliefs about experiences, and applies this to a number of epistemological issues, including incorrigibility and the dialectic on "The Myth of the Given"
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/mm.html
  
• David J. Chalmers (1999). Materialism and the metaphysics of modality.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This appeared in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59:473-93, as a response to four papers in a symposium on my book The Conscious Mind . Most of it should be comprehensible without having read the papers in question. This paper is for an audience of philosophers and so is relatively technical. It will probably also help to have read some of the book. (There is a corresponding precis of the book, written for the symposium.) The papers I'm responding to are: Chris Hill & Brian McLaughlin, There are fewer things in reality than are dreamt of in Chalmers' philosophy Brian Loar, David Chalmers' The Conscious Mind Sydney Shoemaker, On David Chalmers' The Conscious Mind Stephen Yablo, Concepts and consciousness Contents
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/modality.html
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(199906)59:2<473:MATMOM>2.0.CO;2-Q
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2653685.pdf
  
• David J. Chalmers (1996). Naturalistic dualism.   (More)
• David J. Chalmers (1993). Self-ascription without qualia: A case-study.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In Section 5 of his interesting article, Goldman suggests that the consideration of imaginary cases can be valuable in the analysis of our psychological concepts. In particular, he argues that we can imagine a system that is isomorphic to us under any functional description, but which lacks qualitative mental states, such as pains and color sensations. Whether or not such a being is empirically possible, it certainly seems to be logically possible, or conceptually coherent. Goldman argues from this possibility to the conclusion that our concepts of qualitative mental states cannot be analyzed entirely in functional terms
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/goldman.html
  http://larskaos.squarespace.com/storage/actacon/black-sorcery/baggrundsmateriale om zombier og voodoo.pdf
  
• David J. Chalmers (forthcoming). The two-dimensional argument against materialism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A number of popular arguments for dualism start from a premise about an epistemic gap between physical truths about truths about consciousness, and infer an ontological gap between physical processes and consciousness. Arguments of this sort include the conceivability argument, the knowledge argument, the explanatory-gap argument, and the property dualism argument. Such arguments are often resisted on the grounds that epistemic premises do not entail ontological conclusion. My view is that one can legitimately infer ontological conclusions from epistemic premises, if one is very careful about how one reasons. To do so, the best way is to reason first from epistemic premises to modal conclusions (about necessity and possibility), and from there to ontological conclusions. Here, the crucial issue is the link between the epistemic and modal domains. How can one reason from theses about what is knowable or conceivable to theses about what is necessary or possible? To bridge the epistemic and modal domains, the framework of two-dimensional semantics can play a central role. I have used this framework in earlier work (Chalmers 1996) to mount an argument against materialism. Here, I want to revisit the argument, laying it out in a more explicit and careful form, and responding to a number of objections. In what follows I will concentrate mostly on the conceivability argument. I think that very similar considerations apply to the other arguments mentioned above, however. In the final section of the paper, I show how this analysis might yield a unified treatment of a number of anti-materialist arguments
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://phonline.org/paper.php?keynum=686
  
• David Chalmers (unknown). Zombies on the web.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Zombies are hypothetical creatures of the sort that philosophers have been known to cherish. A zombie is physically identical to a normal human being, but completely lacks conscious experience. Zombies look and behave like the conscious beings that we know and love, but "all is dark inside." There is nothing it is like to be a zombie
• Daniel C. Dennett (1995). The unimagined preposterousness of zombies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Knock-down refutations are rare in philosophy, and unambiguous self-refutations are even rarer, for obvious reasons, but sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes philosophers clutch an insupportable hypothesis to their bosoms and run headlong over the cliff edge. Then, like cartoon characters, they hang there in mid-air, until they notice what they have done and gravity takes over. Just such a boon is the philosophers' concept of a zombie, a strangely attractive notion that sums up, in one leaden lump, almost everything that I think is wrong with current thinking about consciousness. Philosophers ought to have dropped the zombie like a hot potato, but since they persist in their embrace, this gives me a golden opportunity to focus attention on the most seductive error in current thinking
• Daniel C. Dennett (2001). The zombic hunch: Extinction of an intuition?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.brianfelsen.com/resourcepapers/zombic.rtf
  http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/consciousness/papers/DD-zombie.html
  
• Esa Diaz-Leon (2008). Defending the phenomenal concept strategy.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: One of the main strategies against conceivability arguments is the so-called phenomenal concept strategy, which aims to explain the epistemic gap between physical and phenomenal truths in terms of the special features of phenomenal concepts. Daniel Stoljar has recently argued that the phenomenal concept strategy has failed to provide a successful explanation of this epistemic gap. In this paper my aim is to defend the phenomenal concept strategy from his criticisms. I argue that Stoljar has misrepresented the resources of the strategy, which can indeed accomplish the required explanatory task, once it is properly understood
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a795250731~fulltext=713240930
  
• Esa Diaz-Leon, The conceivability argument against behaviourism and the phenomenal concept strategy.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The phenomenal concept strategy is one of the most attractive responses to the so-called conceivability arguments. A crucial step in these arguments is the inference from conceivability to possibility. The phenomenal concept strategy attacks this inference from conceivability to possibility: they argue that there is an alternative explanation of the conceivability of zombies, which does not involve the possibility of zombies. This alternative explanation appeals to special features of phenomenal concepts in order to explain the conceivability of zombies. Daniel Stoljar has recently argued that if the phenomenal concept strategy was a good strategy against the conceivability argument against physicalism, it would also be a good strategy against the conceivability argument against behaviourism. But he claims that the latter conceivability argument is sound, and therefore the phenomenal concept strategy cannot be correct. In this paper I show how the phenomenal concept strategy can respond to this objection
• Eric Dietrich & Anthony S. Gillies (2001). Consciousness and the limits of our imaginations.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=260563&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/N8278506L281T513.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/synt/2001/00000126/00000003/00260563
  
• Eric Dietrich (1998). It only seems as if zombies are logically possible, or how consciousness hides the truth of materialism: A critical review of The Conscious Mind.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/wm8263u77162q5tv/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/WM8263U77162Q5TV.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/mind/1998/00000008/00000003/00180267
  
• Heimir Geirsson (2005). Conceivability and defeasible modal justification.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper advances the thesis that we can justifiably believe philosophically interesting possibility statements. The first part of the paper critically discusses van Inwagens skeptical arguments while at the same time laying some of the foundation for a positive view. The second part of the paper advances a view of conceivability in terms of imaginability, where imaginging can be propositional, pictorial, or a combination of the two, and argues that conceivability can, and often does, provide us with justified beliefs of what is metaphysically possible. The notion of scenarios is developed, as is an account of how filling out scenarios can uncover a defeater or, in many cases, strengthen the justification for the relevant possibility statement
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/n41460740nq8318n/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/N41460740NQ8318N.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2005/00000122/00000003/00006522
  
• Brie Gertler (2002). Explanatory reduction, conceptual analysis, and conceivability arguments about the mind.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The current stand-off between reductionists and anti-reductionists about the mental has sparked a long-overdue reexamination of key issues in philosophi- cal methodology.1 The resulting debate promises to advance our understand- ing of how empirical discoveries bear on the numerous philosophical problems which involve the analysis or reduction of kinds. The parties to this debate disagree about how, and to what extent, conceptual facts contribute to justify- ing explanatory reductions
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1468-0068.00359
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0068.00359
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/2002/00000036/00000001/art00359
  
• Philip Goff (2010). Ghosts and sparse properties: Why physicalists have more to fear from ghosts than zombies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Zombies are bodies without minds: creatures that are physically identical to actual human beings, but which have no conscious experience. Much of the consciousness literature focuses on considering how threatening philosophical reflection on such creatures is to physicalism. There is not much attention given to the converse possibility, the possibility of minds without bodies, that is, creatures who are conscious but whose nature is exhausted by their being conscious. We can call such a ‘purely conscious’ creature a ghost
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.philosophy.bham.ac.uk/staff/Goff_Ghosts.pdf
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/123477098/PDFSTART
  
• Stevan Harnad (1994). Why and how we are not zombies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A robot that is functionally indistinguishable from us may or may not be a mindless Zombie. There will never be any way to know, yet its functional principles will be as close as we can ever get to explaining the mind
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00001601/
  http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/16/01/
  http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/3347/01/harnad95.zombies.html
  http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad95.zombies.html
  http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad95.zombies.html
  http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad95.zombies.html
  http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003347/01/harnad95.zombies.html
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00001601/00/harnad95.zombies.html
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk:3347
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:1601
  http://cogprints.org/1601/0/harnad95.zombies.html
  http://cogprints.org/1601/1/harnad95.zombies.html
  
• Stevan Harnad (1995). Why and how we are not zombies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A robot that is functionally indistinguishable from us may or may not be a mindless Zombie. There will never be any way to know, yet its functional principles will be as close as we can ever get to explaining the mind
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/1601/1/harnad95.zombies.html
  
• Larry Hauser (online). Revenge of the zombies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Zombies recently conjured by Searle and others threaten civilized (i.e., materialistic) philosophy of mind and scientific psychology as we know it. Humanoid beings that behave like us and may share our functional organizations and even, perhaps, our neurophysiological makeups without qualetative conscious experiences, zombies seem to meet every materialist condition for thought on offer and yet -- the wonted intuitions go -- are still disqualefied (disqualified for lack of qualia) from being thinking things. I have a plan. Other zombies -- good (qualia eating) zombies -- can battle their evil (behavior eating) cousins to a standoff. Perhaps even defeat them. Familiar zombies and supersmart zombies resist disqualefication, making the world safe, again, for materialism. Behavioristic materialism. Alas for functionalism, good zombies still eat programs. Alas for identity theory, all zombies -- every B movie fan knows -- eat brains
• Ivan Havel (1999). Living in conceivable worlds.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Certain cognitive and philosophical aspects of the concept of conceivability with intended or established diversion from (putative) reality are discussed. The “coherence gap problem” arises when certain fragments of the real world are replaced with imaginary situations while most details are (intentionally or not) ignored. Another issue, “the spectator problem”, concerns the participation of the conceiver himself in the world conceived. Three different examples of conceivability are used to illustrate our points, namely thought experiments in physics, a hypothetical world devoid of consciousness (zombie world), and virtual reality
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/t71j3757537056r2/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=201839&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/T71J3757537056R2.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/foda/1998/00000003/00000002/00201839
  
• Charles Huenemann (2004). The Sage meets the zombie: Spinoza's wise man and Chalmers' The Conscious Mind.   (More)
• Mark Johnston (ms). It necessarily ain't so.   (More)
• Jesper Kallestrup (2006). Physicalism, conceivability and strong necessities.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/02r087t87k312rl3/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/02R087T87K312RL3.pdf
  
• Mike Kearns (online). Could Daniel Dennett be a zombie?   (More)
• Robert E. Kirk (online). Zombies.   (More)
• Christof Koch & Francis Crick (2001). On the zombie within.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001Natur.411..893K
  http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~koch/koch-crick-nature-01.pdf
  http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v411/n6840/full/411893a0.html
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11418835&dopt=Citation
  
• Uriah Kriegel (2008). Review of D. Stoljar, Ignorance and Imagination.   (More)
• Manfred Kupffer (online). Conceivability and the A Priori.   (More)
• Dan Lloyd (online). Twilight of the zombies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A philosophical zombie is a being indistinguishable from an ordinary human in every observable respect, but lacking subjective consciousness. Zombiehood implies *linguistic indiscriminability*, the zombie tendency to talk and even do philosophy of mind in language indiscriminable from ordinary discourse. Zombies thus speak *Zombish*, indistinguishable from English but radically distinct in reference for mental terms. The fate of zombies ultimately depends on whether Zombish can be consistently interpreted. If it can be interpreted consistently, then zombies remain possible, but no test could ever reveal whether anyone (oneself included) is speaking Zombish. Any materialist theory of consciousness is therefore already a theory in Zombish, and is equally confirmable in its human language edition (applicable to humans) and its zombie-language edition (applicable to zombies). On the other hand, if Zombish cannot be consistently interpreted, then the zombies described in Zombish are logically impossible. Either way, the search for a materialistic theory of consciousness should be untroubled by the (possible) zombies among us
• William G. Lycan (2003). Vs. a new a priorist argument for dualism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Back in the late 1950s, a wonderful thing happened to metaphysics
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=X8ixQCd_-l8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA130&ots=raPGPqzQGa&sig=X2Mq33RAldiNZZRo8c6Tu4qKwso
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1533-6077.00009/abs/
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/120710669/PDFSTART
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1533-6077.00009
  
• Pete Mandik (ms). Transcending zombies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I develop advice to the reductionist about consciousness in the form of a transcendental argument that depends crucially on the sorts of knowledge claims concerning consciousness that, as crucial elements in the anti-reductionists’ epistemicgap arguments, the anti-reductionist will readily concede. The argument that I develop goes as follows. P1. If I know that I am not a zombie, then phenomenal character is (a certain kind of) conceptualized egocentric content. P2. I know that I am not a zombie. P3. Phenomenal character is (a certain kind of) conceptualized egocentric content. P4. Fixing my physical properties fixes my conceptualized egocentric contents. C. Fixing my physical properties fixes my phenomenal properties
• Eric Marcus (2004). Why zombies are inconceivable.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I argue that zombies are inconceivable. More precisely, I argue that the conceivability-intuition that is used to demonstrate their possibility has been misconstrued. Thought experiments alleged to feature zombies founder on the fact that, on the one hand, they _must_ involve first-person imagining, and yet, on the other hand, _cannot_. Philosophers who take themselves to have imagined zombies have unwittingly conflated imagining a creature who lacks consciousness with imagining a creature without also imagining the consciousness it may or may not possess
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a713659880~fulltext=713240930
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/Q8CU72RTGX10YHM8.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/713659880.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/ajphil/2004/00000082/00000003/art00007
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oup/ajphil/2004/00000082/00000003/art00477
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~db=all~content=a713659880~fulltext=713240930
  
• Wallace I. Matson (ms). Logical possibility, laws of nature, and mind in the history of philosophy.   (More)
• Chris Mathieson (2000). Reining in Chalmers: On the logical possibility of zombies.   (More)
• John McCarthy (1995). Todd Moody's zombies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: From the AI point of view, consciousness must be regarded as a collection of interacting processes rather than the unitary object of much philosophical speculation. We ask what kinds of propositions and other entities need to be designed for consciousness to be useful to an animal or a machine. We thereby assert that human consciousness is useful to human functioning and not just and epiphenomenon. Zombies in the sense of Todd Moody's article are merely the victims of Moody's prejudices. To behave like humans, zombies will need what Moody might call pseudo-consciousness, but useful pseudo-consciousness will share all the observable qualities of human consciousness including what the zombie will be able to report. Robots will require a pseudo-consciousness with many of the intellectual qualities of human consciousness but will function successfully with few if any human emotional conscious qualities if that is how we choose to build them
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/259682.html
  http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/zombie.ps
  http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/zombie.pdf
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/mccarthy97todd.html
  http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/zombie/zombie.html
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:426
  http://cogprints.org/426/2/zombie.ps
  http://cogprints.org/426/0/zombie.ps
  
• Todd C. Moody (1994). Conversations with zombies.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.zynet.co.uk/imprint/moody.html
  http://www.zynet.co.uk/imprint/Moody_zombies.html
  
• Thomas Nagel (1998). Conceiving the impossible and the mind-body problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Intuitions based on the first-person perspective can easily mislead us about what is and is not conceivable.1 This point is usually made in support of familiar reductionist positions on the mind-body problem, but I believe it can be detached from that approach. It seems to me that the powerful appearance of contingency in the relation between the functioning of the physical organism and the conscious mind -- an appearance that depends directly or indirectly on the first- person perspective -- must be an illusion. But the denial of this contingency should not take the form of a reductionist account of consciousness of the usual type, whereby the logical gap between the mental and the physical is closed by conceptual analysis -- in effect, by analyzing the mental in terms of the physical (however elaborately this is done -- and I count functionalism as such a theory, along with the topic-neutral causal role analyses of mental concepts from which it descends)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/nagel/papers/conceiving.pdf
  http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=24970&jid=PHI&volumeId=73&issueId=03&aid=24969
  http://www.journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0031819198000035
  http://journals.cambridge.org/article_S0031819198000035
  
• Derk Pereboom (web). Consciousness and introspective inaccuracy.   (More)
• Matthew Phillips (ms). Why positive and negative conceivability can't save the conceivability-possibility link.   (More)
• Gualtiero Piccinini (2008). Access denied to zombies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: According to the zombie conceivability argument, phenomenal zombies are conceivable, and hence possible, and hence physicalism is false. Critics of the conceivability argument have responded by denying either that zombies are conceivable or that they are possible. Much of the controversy hinges on how to establish and understand what is conceivable, what is possible, and the link between the two—matters that are at least as obscure and controversial as whether consciousness is physical. Because of this, the debate over physicalism is unlikely to be resolved by thinking about zombies—or at least, zombies as discussed by philosophers to date.
  
  
  
  In this paper, I explore an alternative strategy against the zombie conceivability argument. I accept the possibility of zombies and ask whether that possibility is accessible (in the sense of ‘accessible’ used in possible world semantics) to our world. It turns out that the question of whether zombie worlds are accessible to our world is equivalent to the question of whether physicalism is true. By assuming that zombie worlds are accessible to our world, supporters of the zombie conceivability argument beg the question against physicalists. I will then consider what happens if a supporter of the zombie conceivability argument should insist that zombie worlds are accessible to our world. I will argue that the same ingredients used in the zombie conceivability argument—whatever they might be—can be used to construct an argument to the opposite conclusion. If that is correct, we reach a stalemate between physicalism and property dualism: while the possibility of some zombies entails property dualism, the possibility of other creatures entails physicalism. Since these two possibilities are inconsistent, one of them is not genuine. To resolve this stalemate, we need more than thought experiments.
• Karol Polcyn (2006). Conceivability, possibility, and a posteriori necessity: On Chalmers' argument for dualism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Chalmers argues that zombies are possible and that therefore consciousness does not supervene on physical facts, which shows the falsity of materialism. The crucial step in this argument – that zombies are possible – follows from their conceivability and hence depends on assuming that conceivability implies possibility. But while Chalmers’s defense of this assumption – call it the conceivability principle – is the key part of his argument, it has not been well understood. As I see it, Chalmers’s defense of the conceivability principle comes in his response to the so-called objection from a posteriori necessity. The defense aims at showing that there is no gap between conceivability and possibility since no such gap can be generated by necessary a posteriori truths. I will argue that while Chalmers is right to the extent that there is no gap between conceivability and possibility within the standard Kripkean model of a posteriori necessity, his general conclusion is not justified. This is because the conceivability principle might be inconsistent with a posteriori necessity understood in some non-Kripkean way and Chalmers has not shown that no such alternative understanding of a posteriori necessity is available.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.diametros.iphils.uj.edu.pl/pdf/diam7polcyn.pdf
  
• Thomas W. Polger (online). Zombies.   (More)
• Thomas W. Polger (2000). Zombies explained.   (More)
• David Robb (2008). Zombies from Below.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A zombie is a creature just like a conscious being in certain respects, but wholly lacking in consciousness. In this paper, I look at zombies from the perspective of basic ontology (“from below”), taking as my starting point a trope ontology I have defended elsewhere. The consequences of this ontology for zombies are mixed. Viewed from below, one sort of zombie—the exact dispositional zombie—is impossible. A similar argument can be wielded against another sort—the exact physical zombie—but here supplementary principles are needed to get to the impossibility result. Finally, at least two sorts of zombie—the behavioural and functional zombies—escape these arguments from below.
• David M. Rosenthal (1968). Intentionality: A study of the views of Chisholm and Sellars.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Edited in hypertext by Andrew Chrucky. Reprinted with the permission of Professor David Rosenthal. Editor's Note: Due to the limitation of current hypertext, the following conventions have been used. In general, if an expression has some mark over it, that mark is placed as a prefix to the expression. All Greek characters (except phi) are rendered by their names. Subscripts are placed in parentheses as concatenated suffixes: thus, e.g., H(2)O is the chemical formula for water. Sellars' dot quotes are expressed by bold periods
• David M. Rosenthal & Wilfrid S. Sellars (1972). The Rosenthal-Sellars correspondence on intentionality.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In response to your kind offer to read through portions of the typescript of my thesis pertaining to your views on intentionality, I am sending you a copy of an introductory section to such a chapter.{1} The enclosed typescript represents a first draft, for which I apologize, but I thought it might be useful to get any comments you might have in at the ground floor, so to speak
• William E. Seager (ms). Are zombies logically possible? -- And why it matters.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A philosophical zombie is a being physically indistinguishable from an actual or possible human being, inhabiting a possible world where the _physical_ laws are identical to the laws of the actual world, but which completely lacks consciousness. For zombies, all is dark within, and hence they are, at the most fundamental level, utterly different from us. But, given their definition, this singular fact has no direct implications about the kind of motion, or other physical processes, the zombie will undergo within its own world. Under quite standard physicalist assumptions, such as certain assumptions about the 'initial conditions' of the zombie's world and that of the causal closure of the physical
• Jan Sleutels (2006). Greek zombies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper explores the possibility that the human mind underwent substantial changes in recent history. Assuming that consciousness is a substantial trait of the mind, the paper focuses on the suggestion made by Julian Jaynes that the Mycenean Greeks had a "bicameral" mind instead of a conscious one. The suggestion is commonly dismissed as patently absurd, for instance by critics such as Ned Block. A closer examination of the intuitions involved, considered from different theoretical angles (social constructivism, idealism, eliminativism, realism), reveals that the idea of 'Greek zombies' should be taken more seriously than is commonly assumed
  Additional links for this entry:
  https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/8643
  https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/dspace/handle/1887/8643
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a743786468~fulltext=713240930
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/K7133P7331316346.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/743786468.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~db=all~content=a743786468~fulltext=713240930
  
• Tamler Sommers (2002). Of zombies, color scientists, and floating iron bars.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: a logically possible world physically identical to ours, in which the positive facts about consciousness do not hold." First, I analyze the move from conceivability to logical possibility. Following George Seddon, I consider the case of a floating iron bar and argue that even this seemingly conceivable event has implicit logical contradictions in its description. I then show that the distinctions Chalmers employs between primary and secondary intensions, and a priori and a posteriori entailment, break down upon close examination-with iron bars and with consciousness it is impossible to know where primary intensions end and secondary intensions begin. I extend this analysis of logical possibility to the famous zombie thought experiment and conclude not that a zombie world is logically _im_possible, but rather that, at present, the question is open. Finally, I show how a similar line of argument may be used to undermine the "Mary the color scientist" thought experiment as well
• Daniel Stoljar (2006). Actors and zombies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: 1. Much of contemporary philosophy of mind is dominated by the intersection of three topics: physicalism, the conceivability argument, and the necessary a posteriori. I will be concerned here (i) to describe (what I take to be) the consensus view of these topics; (ii) to explain why I think this account is mistaken; and (iii) to briefly sketch an alternative
• Daniel Stoljar (forthcoming). Review of Perry's Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: _the subject matter assumption_ . Perry suggests that the subject matter assumption is false
• Daniel Stoljar (2001). The conceivability argument and two conceptions of the physical.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The conceivability argument (CA) against physicalism1 starts from the prem- ises that: (1) It is conceivable that I have a zombie-twin, i.e., that there is someone who is physically identical to me and yet who lacks phenomenal con- sciousness; and (2) If it is conceivable that I have a zombie-twin, then it is possible that I have a zombie-twin. These premises entail that physicalism is false, for physicalism is the claim—or can be assumed for our purposes to be the claim2—that
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=368dtpdoBEUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA393&ots=9bFVL9Wy4B&sig=8VXXJTF5pjIOGHSco_Wh8s4hXCo
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0029-4624.35.s15.18
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/2001/00000035/A00100s1/art00325
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/2001/00000035/A0150s15/art00325
  
• Daniel Stoljar (2007). Two conceivability arguments compared.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The conclusion of this argument (hereafter ZA) entails the falsity of physicalism because, technical details aside, physicalism is or entails the thesis that every psychological truth is entailed by some physical truth. If it is possible that I have a zombie duplicate however, then it is possible that the physical truths are as they are and some psychological truth is different. Hence 3 entails that physicalism is false. The second conceivability argument is one that is almost as famous, though perhaps it is less famous for being a conceivability argument: the perfect actor argument against behaviorism (see, e.g., Putnam 1963, 1975). In a version that is both familiar and relatively clear, it goes like this
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9264.2007.00210.x
  
• Julia Tanney (2004). On the conceptual, psychological, and moral status of zombies, swamp-beings, and other 'behaviourally indistinguishable' creatures.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/119921431/PDFSTART
  
• Nigel J. T. Thomas (1998). Zombie killer.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Philosopher's zombies are hypothetical beings behaviorally, functionally, and perhaps even physically indistinguishable from normal humans, but who lack our consciousness. Many people seem to be convinced that such zombies are a real conceptual possibility, and that this bare possibility entails that understanding human consciousness must remain forever beyond the reach of science. However, the conceptual entailments of zombiehood have not been sufficiently examined. This brief article shows that any way of understanding the behavior of zombies that does in fact support the suggested entailment, leads to contradictions and absurdities. Zombies are _not_ conceptually possible
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=dliyExsqYGwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA171&dq=Zombie+killer+Thomas&ots=xz3Hidqf_f&sig=pi69RPsSfKQp9QZh0O4mF-6gf6U
  
• Nicholas Unwin (ms). Expressivism and the Metaphysics of Consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: An expressivist theory of consciousness is outlined. The suggestion that attributions of consciousness involve an essentially projective element is carefully examined, as is the view that ‘zombism’, defined as the thought that certain people are unconscious although physically normal, is a largely affective and not wholly cognitive (hypothetical) disorder. A comparison is drawn between ‘zombism’ and the Capgras delusion. The notion of supervenience is shown to be deeply problematic when applied to projected properties, as is the distinction between weak and strong varieties. It is concluded that, contrary to most received opinion, consciousness and values are not all that different as far as these modal considerations are concerned.
• Robert van Gulick (1999). Conceiving beyond our means: The limits of thought experiments.   (More)
• Tillmann Vierkant (2002). Zombie Mary and the blue banana. On the compatibility of the 'knowledge argument' with the argument from modality.   (More)
• Brian Weatherson (ms). Morality in fiction and consciousness in imagination.   (More)
• Stephen Yablo (1999). Concepts and consciousness.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/consciousness/papers/concon.pdf
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(199906)59:2<455:CAC>2.0.CO;2-2
  
• Stephen Yablo (2002). Coulda, woulda, shoulda.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/yablo01coulda.html
  
• Stephen Yablo (ms). No Fool's Cold: Notes on Illusions of Possibility.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/user/y/a/yablo/OldFiles/www/illposs.pdf
  http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/user/y/a/yablo/OldFiles/www/illposs.pdf
  
• Stephen Yablo (online). Modal rationalism and logical empiricism: Some similarities.   (More)

Kripke's Modal Argument

• George Bealer (1994). Mental properties.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It is argued that, because of scientific essentialism, two currently popular arguments against the mind-body identity thesis -- the multiple-realizability argument and the Nagel-Jackson knowledge argument -- are unsatisfactory as they stand and that their problems are incurable. It is then argued that a refutation of the identity thesis in its full generality can be achieved by weaving together two traditional Cartesian arguments -- the modal argument and the certainty argument. This argument establishes, not just the falsity of the identity thesis, but also the metaphysical possibility of disembodiment
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(199404)91:4<185:MP>2.0.CO;2-6
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(199404)91:4<185:MP>2.0.CO;2-6
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2940770.pdf
  
• George Bealer (2004). The origins of modal error.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Modal intuitions are the primary source of modal knowledge but also of modal error. According to the theory of modal error in this paper, modal intuitions retain their evidential force in spite of their fallibility, and erroneous modal intuitions are in principle identifiable and eliminable by subjecting our intuitions to a priori dialectic. After an inventory of standard sources of modal error, two further sources are examined in detail. The first source - namely, the failure to distinguish between metaphysical possibility and various kinds of epistemic possibility - turns out to be comparatively easy to untangle and poses little threat to intuition-driven philosophical investigation. The second source is the local (i.e., temporary) misunderstanding of one's concepts (as opposed to outright Burgean misunderstanding). This pathology may be understood on analogy with a patient who is given a clean bill of health at his annual check-up, despite his having a cold at the time of the check-up: although the patient's health is locally (temporarily) disrupted, his overall health is sufficiently good to enable him to overcome the cold without external intervention. Even when our understanding of certain pivotal concepts has lapsed locally, our larger body of intuitions is sufficiently reliable to allow us, without intervention, to ferret out the modal errors resulting from this lapse of understanding by means of dialectic and/or a process of a priori reflection. This source of modal error, and our capacity to overcome it, has wide-ranging implications for philosophical method - including, in particular, its promise for disarming skepticism about the classical method of intuition-driven investigation itself. Indeed, it is shown that skeptical accounts of modal error (e.g., the accounts given by Hill, Levin, and several others) are ultimately self-defeating
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://pantheon.yale.edu/~gb275/Modal Error.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1746-8361.2004.tb00290.x
  
• Alex Byrne (2007). Possibility and imagination.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: forthcoming in Philosophical Perspectives
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1520-8583.2007.00123.x
  
• Peter Hanks, Conceiving of pain.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Kripke’s modal argument against the mind-body identity thesis is by now familiar (Kripke 1980): 1. It is possible for there to be pain without C-fiber stimulation, and vice versa.1 2. If pain = C-fiber stimulation, then it is not possible for there to be pain without..
• David Papineau (online). Kripke's proof that we are all intuitive dualists.   (More)
• Thomas W. Polger (online). Kripke and the illusion of contingent identity.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://homepages.uc.edu/~polgertw/Polger-APA1999.pdf
  

Arguments from Disembodiment

• Nicholas Everitt (2000). Substance dualism and disembodied existence.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nicholas_everitt/dualism.html
  
• Philip Goff (2010). Ghosts and sparse properties: Why physicalists have more to fear from ghosts than zombies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Zombies are bodies without minds: creatures that are physically identical to actual human beings, but which have no conscious experience. Much of the consciousness literature focuses on considering how threatening philosophical reflection on such creatures is to physicalism. There is not much attention given to the converse possibility, the possibility of minds without bodies, that is, creatures who are conscious but whose nature is exhausted by their being conscious. We can call such a ‘purely conscious’ creature a ghost
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.philosophy.bham.ac.uk/staff/Goff_Ghosts.pdf
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/123477098/PDFSTART
  
• Douglas C. Long (1969). Descartes' argument for mind-body dualism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: [p. 259] After establishing his own existence by the Cogito argument, Descartes inquires into the nature of the self that he claims to know with certainty to exist. He concludes that he is a res cogitans, an unextended entity whose essence is to be conscious. Although a considerable amount of critical effort has been expended in attempts to show how he thought he could move to this important conclusion, his reasoning has remained quite unconvincing. In particular, his critics have insisted, and I think quite rightly, that his claim to be "entirely and absolutely distinct"[i] from his body is not justified by the reasoning which he offers in its support.[ii] Nevertheless, I also believe that the proffered criticisms of Descartes
• Douglas C. Long (1977). Disembodied existence, physicalism, and the mind-body problem.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/m616507x112n8548/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/M616507X112N8548.pdf
  
• Stephen Yablo (1993). Is conceivability a guide to possibility?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.mit.edu/~yablo/isconposs.pdf
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/yablo93is.html
  http://web.mit.edu/~yablo/www/isconposs.pdf
  http://web.mit.edu/~yablo/OldFiles/www/isconposs.pdf
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(199303)53:1<1:ICAGTP>2.0.CO;2-Y
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(199303)53:1<1:ICAGTP>2.0.CO;2-Y
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2108052.pdf
  

Other Anti-Materialist Arguments

• Ned Block (2006). Max Black's objection to mind-body identity.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: considered an objection (Objection 3) that he says he thought was first put to him by Max Black. He says
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/consciousness/papers/PropertyDualism.pdf
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=cqOM0YJuzXEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&ots=LoXEhe1L5M&sig=633Rxa3F44lFlo1-dOH16QsGSMA
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=YnEPGol7UrQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&ots=857foq68-c&sig=p_t43UZuR0cm6nPPQcdpwDsa9cI
  
• Brie Gertler (2006). Consciousness and Qualia Cannot Be Reduced.   (More)
• William Hasker (2003). How not to be a reductivist.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.doaj.org/abstract?id=120224&toc=y
  http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=abstract&id=120224
  http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-get_topic-f-10-t-000064.html
  http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-get_topic-f-24-t-000004.html
  http://www.iscid.org/papers/Hasker_NonReductivism_103103.pdf
  http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=abstract&id=120224&recNo=5&toc=1
  http://www.newdualism.org/papers/W.Hasker/Hasker_NonReductivism_103103.pdf
  
• Geoffrey C. Madell (2003). Materialism and the first person.   (More)
• Adam Pautz (2010). A Simple View of Consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Phenomenal intentionality is irreducible. Empirical investigation shows it is internally-dependent. So our usual externalist (causal, etc.) theories do not apply here. Internalist views of phenomenal intentionality (e. g. interpretationism) also fail. The resulting primitivist view avoids Papineau's worry that terms for consciousness are highly indeterminate: since conscious properties are extremely natural (despite having unnatural supervenience bases) they are 'reference magnets'.
• Adam Pautz (forthcoming). Do Theories of Consciousness Rest on a Mistake?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Using empirical research on pain, sound and taste, I argue against the combination of intentionalism about consciousness and a broadly ‘tracking’ psychosemantics of the kind defended by Fodor, Dretske, Hill, Neander, Stalnaker, Tye and others. Then I develop problems with Kriegel and Prinz's attempt to combine a Dretskean psychosemantics with the view that sensible properties are Shoemakerian response-dependent properties. Finally, I develop in detail my own 'primitivist' view of sensory intentionality.
• Daniel Stoljar (forthcoming). The argument from revelation.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: 1. Introduction The story of Canberra, the capital of Australia, is roughly as follows. In 1901, when what is called
• Max Velmans (1998). Goodbye to reductionism: Complementary first and third-person approaches to consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This chapter argues that dualist vs. reductionist debates adopt an implicit description of consciousness that does not resemble ordinary experience. If one adopts an accurate description of conscious phenomenology along with an understanding of the fundamental differences between correlation, causation and ontological identity, reductionism cannot succeed. However the alternative is not a dualism that places consciousness beyond science. Rather, it is a nonreductionist science of consciousness.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000244/
  http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/02/44/
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000244/00/velmans7.html
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:244
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:244
  http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/02/44/cog00000244-00/velmans7.html
  
• Stephen L. White (2002). Why the property dualism argument won't go away.   (More)

Consciousness and Materialism, Misc

• R. L. Barnette (1978). Grounding the mental.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(197809)39:1<92:GTM>2.0.CO;2-N
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2107032.pdf
  
• James Hopkins (online). Mind as metaphor: A physicalistic approach to the problem of consciousness.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In what follows I present an approach to the problem of consciousness, which I take to be suggested by Wittgenstein's remarks on sensation. As sketched here, this consists of a number of empirical hypotheses about the mind and how we represent it, and a series of arguments that these hypotheses explain phenomena which constitute the problem of consciousness, in such a way as to render them neither mysterious nor problematic
• Robert J. Howell (online). The Hard Problem of Consciousness.   (More)
• John Hubbard (ms). Parsimony and the mind.   (More)
• Marvin E. Kirsh (ms). Einstein and Mythology : The Lengthier the Relations in a Myth the Greater Its' Mass.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The theory of relativity (1) is considered form a perspective of folklore. Abstracted entities in the theory of relativity are stripped of units in order to provide explanation, to expose an ordinary meaning that employs a fulcrum for visual description. It is suggested that components of the theory’s construction are not only unusually compatible with religious and spiritual but are also unaccounted for scientifically; they may not render the expected power struggle of church doctrine with scientific notions but an opposite situation in which logical contradiction at the root level of physical meaning and symbolism is absent and might exist only with respect to active perceptual structuring, either functioning on the unknown or belief. This situation, is projected to exist in a volatile mythological form as a ‘fulcrum’ like bridge between points of dispersion in which the (invisible) entity of mass assumes an added social (or physical) weight imposed by the assumption of the existence of massless space; especially, should its’ logically non excludable converse situation, of exclusively “mass and force containing space” for all phenomenon, find future explanation and validity.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1422742
  
• Michael McGlone (ms). Strong Impossibilities (Partial Draft 1).   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A strong impossibility is a situation that is epistemically, but not metaphysically, possible. Opponents of strong impossibilities (including Chalmers, Jackson and Stalnaker) have argued that we have “overwhelming reason” to reject and “very little” or “no reason” to think that such impossibilities exist. This partial draft argues that there are strong impossibilities and (very briefly) discusses the manner in which the existence of strong impossibilities is related to some much-discussed arguments in the philosophy of conscious experience. (The full version of the paper will ultimately include a reply to the most significant argument against strong impossibilities, and a (slightly) more involved discussion of the relevance of all of this to issues in the philosophy of conscious experience.)
• Marvin L. Minsky (online). Minds are simply what brains do.   (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
  
• Pär Sundström (2002). Nagel's case against physicalism.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://ej.lib.cbs.dk/index.php/sats/article/viewArticle/392
  

Mind-Body Problem, General

• István Aranyosi (2010). Powers and the mind–body problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper proposes a new line of attack on the conceivability argument for mind-body property dualism, based on the causal account of properties, according to which properties have their conditional powers essentially. It is argued that the epistemic possibility of physical but not phenomenal duplicates of actuality is identical to a metaphysical (understood as broadly logical) possibility, but irrelevant for establishing the falsity of physicalism. The proposed attack is in many ways inspired by a standard, broadly Kripkean approach to epistemic and metaphysical modality
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/%7Eistvan/powers.pdf
  http://sites.google.com/site/istvanaranyosi/Powersandthemindfull.pdf
  http://www.istvanaranyosi.net/resources/Powers%20and%20the%20mind%20full.pdf
  http://istvanaranyosi.net/resources/Powers%20and%20the%20mind%20full.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~db=all~content=a919487830~fulltext=713240930
  
• Alexander Bain (1883). Mind and body.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=HojcO8AL8BAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&ots=WU0XFFKKpY&sig=KNlF6Ldnoj5NSIeiB301He2wViw
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-4423(188307)1:8:31<402:MAB>2.0.CO;2-Q
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-4423(188307)1:8:31<402:MAB>2.0.CO;2-Q
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2246895.pdf
  
• Lynne Rudder Baker, Our place in nature: Material persons and theism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: One of the deepest assumptions of Judaism and its offspring, Christianity, is that there is an important difference between human persons and everything else that exists in Creation. We alone are made in God’s image. We alone are the stewards of the earth. It is said in Genesis that we have “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” It is difficult to see how a traditional theist could deny the significance of the difference between human persons and the rest of Creation. We human persons are morally and ontologically special
• Katalin Balog (forthcoming). Acquaintance and the mind-body problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this paper I begin to develop an account of the acquaintance that each of us has with our own conscious states and processes. The account is a speculative proposal about human mental architecture and specifically about the nature of the concepts via which we think in first personish ways about our qualia. In a certain sense my account is neutral between physicalist and dualist accounts of consciousness. As will be clear, a dualist could adopt the account I will offer while maintaining that qualia themselves are non-physical properties. In this case the non-physical nature of qualia may play no role in accounting for the features of acquaintance. But although the account could be used by a dualist, its existence provides enormous support for physicalism. In particular it provides the makings of a positive refutation (i.e., a refutation by construction) of the conceivability arguments and the Mary argument for dualism.
• Paul Richard Blum (online). Epistemology and Cosmology in Neoplatonism: Is Cognition a Mind-Body-Problem? Paper at Cosmos, Nature, Culture - A Transdisciplinary Conference Metanexus Conference July 18-21, 2009, Phoenix, Arizona.   (More)
• David J. Chalmers (unknown). The first person and third person views (part I).   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Intro to what "first person" and "third person" mean. (outline the probs of the first person) (convenience of third person vs absoluteness of first person) (explain terminology) Dominance of third person, reasons. (embarassment with first person) (division of reactions) (natural selection - those who can make the most noise) (analogy with behaviourism) Reductionism, hard line and soft line Appropriation of first person terms by reductionists
• Guy Claxton (2003). The mind-body problem--who cares?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2003/00000010/00000012/1396
  
• Fergus Duniho (1991). The Mind/Body Problem and its Solution.   (More)
• Avshalom C. Elitzur (2009). Consciousness makes a difference: A reluctant dualist’s confession.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper’s outline is as follows. In sections 1-3 I give an exposi¬tion of the Mind-Body Problem, with emphasis on what I believe to be the heart of the problem, namely, the Percepts-Qualia Nonidentity and its incompatibility with the Physical Closure Paradigm. In 4 I present the “Qualia Inaction Postulate” underlying all non-interactionist theo¬ries that seek to resolve the above problem. Against this convenient postulate I propose in section 5 the “Bafflement Ar¬gument,” which is this paper's main thesis. Sections 6-11 critically dis¬cuss attempts to dismiss the Bafflement Argument by the “Baf¬flement=Mis¬perception Equation.” Section 12 offers a refutation of all such attempts in the form of a concise “Asymmetry Proof.” Section 13 points out the bearing of the Bafflement Argument on the evolutionary role of consciousness while section 14 acknowledges the price that has to be paid for it in terms of basic physical principles. Section 15 summarizes the paper, pointing out the inescapability of interactionist dualism.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.a-c-elitzur.co.il/site/siteArticle.asp?ar=67
  http://cogprints.org/6613/1/Dualism0409.pdf
  
• Andrew A. Fingelkurts, Alexander A. Fingelkurts & Carlos F. H. Neves (2010). Emergentist Monism, Biological Realism, Operations and Brain-Mind Problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: We would like to thank all the commentators who responded to our target review paper for their thought-provoking ideas and for their initially positive characterization of our theorizing. Our position provoked a broad range of reactions, from enthusiastic support to some kind of opposition. Regardless of the type of the response, one common factor appears to be the plausibility of a presented attempt to apply insights from physics, biology (neuroscience), and phenomenology of mind to form a unified theoretical framework of Operational Architectonics of brain-mind functioning.
• Jerry A. Fodor (1981). The mind-body problem.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/Courses/fodorphil1.pdf
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7209483&dopt=Citation
  
• Eugene T. Gendlin (2000). The 'mind'/'body' problem and first-person process: Three types of concepts.   (More)
• Robert Hanna & Evan Thompson (2003). The mind-body-body problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: ? We gratefully acknowledge the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson, which provided a grant for the support of this work. E.T. is also supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the McDonnell Project in Philosophy and the Neurosciences. ¹ See David Woodruff Smith,
• Stevan Harnad (online). Harnad on Dennett on Chalmers on consciousness: The mind/body problem is the feeling/function problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Why, oh why do we keep conflating this question, which is about the uncertainty of sensory information, with the much more profound and pertinent one, which is about the functional explicability and causal role of feeling?

  _Kant: How is it possible for something even to be a thought (of mine)? What are the conditions for the_
  _possibility of experience (veridical or illusory) at all?_

  That's not the right question either. The right question is not even an epistemic one, about "thought" or "knowledge" (whether veridical, illusory, or otherwise) but an "aesthesiogenic" one: How and why are there any feelings at all?
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/dennett-chalmers.htm
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk:6468
  
• Stevan Harnad (online). There is only one mind/body problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In our century a Frege/Brentano wedge has gradually been driven into the mind/body problem so deeply that it appears to have split it into two: The problem of "qualia" and the problem of "intentionality." Both problems use similar intuition pumps: For qualia, we imagine a robot that is indistinguishable from us in every objective respect, but it lacks subjective experiences; it is mindless. For intentionality, we again imagine a robot that is indistinguishable from us in every objective respect but its "thoughts" lack "aboutness"; they are meaningless. I will try to show that there is a way to re-unify the mind/body problem by grounding the "language of thought" (symbols) in our perceptual categorization capacity. The model is bottom-up and hybrid symbolic/nonsymbolic
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/16/25/
  http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnadXX.one.mind.body.problem.html
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:1625
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00001625/00/harnadXX.one.mind.body.problem.html
  http://cogprints.org/1625/1/harnadXX.one.mind.body.problem.html
  http://cogprints.org/1625/0/harnadXX.one.mind.body.problem.html
  
• Nicholas Humphrey (2000). How to solve the mind-body problem.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://human-nature.com/nibbs/02/mind.html
  http://mentalhelp.net/books/books.php?type=de&id=833
  http://www.humphrey.org.uk/papers/2000MindBodyProblem.pdf
  http://cogprints.org/2869/1/9.How_toSolveMindBodyProblem.pdf
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:2869
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1wL3Dqze56UC&oi=fnd&pg=PP6&sig=4CIWNnLTD6SDmpix-k1oVV-JYPA
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1wL3Dqze56UC&oi=fnd&pg=PA4&ots=zAhQbCsZ03&sig=IoOPVStSv4Iy7Na-KRu9Yk6XjgM
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1wL3Dqze56UC&oi=fnd&pg=PP6&ots=zAgTaBt-45&sig=YsbAnqcPUxu4f5JIOM3XAdL8qEI
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2000/00000007/00000004/1006
  http://cogprints.org/918/1/mindbodytxt.htm
  http://cogprints.org/918/0/mindbodytxt.htm
  
• Nicholas Humphrey (2000). In reply [reply to commentaries on "how to solve the mind-body problem"].   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/1076/1/JCSreply.htm
  http://cogprints.org/1076/0/JCSreply.htm
  
• Piet Hut & Bas van Fraassen (1997). Elements of reality: A dialogue.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.sns.ias.edu/~piet/publ/elements/elements.ps
  
• 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/
  
• Peter King (2005). Why isn't the mind-body problem medieval?   (More)
• KM Kniffin (2006). Show me the status: Money as a kind of currency.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Currencies that are recognized as money cannot be easily distinguished from alternative currencies such as status. Numerous examples demonstrate the need for status to be recognized as a motivator alongside, at least, money. Lea & Webley (L&W) acknowledge the roles of status; however, a closer focus is warranted. (Published OnlineApril52006)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=421074&jid=BBS&volumeId=29&issueId=02&aid=421072
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16606512&dopt=Citation
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&uid=16606512&cmd=showdetailview&indexed=google
  http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0140525X0636904X
  
• John-Michael M. Kuczynski (2004). A quasi-materialist, quasi-dualist solution to the mind-body problem.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0100-512X2004000100005&script=sci_abstract
  http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0100-512X2004000100005&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en
  http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?pid=S0100-512X2006000100003&script=sci_arttext
  http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?pid=S0100-512X2006000100003&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en
  
• Gordon McCabe (ms). Structural realism and the mind.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper considers whether, and how, the mind can be incorporated into structural realism. Section 1 begins with some definitions, and briefly reviews the main problems which beset structural realism. The existence of the mind is proffered as an additional problem, to which the rest of the paper is devoted. Three different philosophies of the mind are analysed, beginning with eliminative materialism, which is briefly reviewed in Section 2. The identity theory of the mind-brain relationship is critically analysed in Section 3, and the notions of supervenience and emergentism are defined. In Section 4, the functionalist approach to the mind-brain relationship is introduced, and two specific functionalist approaches---the representational theory of the mind, and connectionism---are defined and appraised. It is argued that these approaches enable structural realism to be extended to include the mind. It is also argued that structural realism can be applied to the unconscious mind, and the paper concludes with the proposal that the distinction between epistemic structural realism and ontic structural realism is also valid in the case of the mind
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002751/01/Mind.pdf
  
• Colin McGinn (2001). How not to solve the mind-body problem.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oso/870087/2004/00000001/00000001/art00003
  
• Thomas Nagel (2001). The psychophysical nexus.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I. The Mind-Body Problem after Kripke This essay will explore an approach to the mind-body problem that is distinct both from dualism and from the sort of conceptual reduction of the mental to the physical that proceeds via causal behaviorist or functionalist analysis of mental concepts. The essential element of the approach is that it takes the subjective phenomenological features of conscious experience to be perfectly real and not reducible to anything else--but nevertheless holds that their systematic relations to neurophysiology are not contingent but necessary
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/1172/nexus.pdf
  http://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/1172/nexus.pdf
  http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/nagel/papers/nexus.pdf
  
• Thomas Nagel (2000). The psychophysical nexus.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I. The Mind-Body Problem after Kripke This essay will explore an approach to the mind-body problem that is distinct both from dualism and from the sort of conceptual reduction of the mental to the physical that proceeds via causal behaviorist or functionalist analysis of mental concepts. The essential element of the approach is that it takes the subjective phenomenological features of conscious experience to be perfectly real and not reducible to anything else--but nevertheless holds that their systematic relations to neurophysiology are not contingent but necessary
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/1172/nexus.pdf
  http://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/1172/nexus.pdf
  http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/nagel/papers/nexus.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oso/67523/2000/00000001/00000001/art00018
  
• Steven Perkins (2005). An orthodox Christian look at the mind-body problem.   (More)
• Michael Polanyi (1969). On body and mind.   (More)
• David M. Rosenthal (2000). Addendum to introduction.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Mind-body materialism is at its most inviting in the context of trying to give a unified treatment of the natural world. And the principle challenge it faces is to do justice to the distinguishing features of mental phenomena, which set them off from nonmental, physical reality. This challenge it not easy to meet. In 1971 I suggested that the difficulty in meeting it makes especially appealing the eliminative materialism of Feyerabend and Rorty. If adopting the materialist view that mental phenomena are physical in nature prevents us from giving a satisfactory account of what is distinctive about the mental, perhaps the trouble is not with materialism but with the mental. If we can describe and explain everything about the world in physical terms but cannot give a satisfactory account of the distinctively mental, why not conclude that there simply are no mental states and events? Physical terms would then suffice to describe and explain the phenomena we now classify as mental. Even if describing and explaining these things physically is not a practical option, the possibility of doing so would underwrite the eliminative materialist position
• Sydney Shoemaker (1994). The mind-body problem.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=FNanAh-JcNwC&oi=fnd&pg=PT201&ots=_3j6ARnBjt&sig=lWMvUMoiQ-ieokHzcyePpcNAUjs
  
• Peter Slezak (2000). The mind-brain problem.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The problem of explaining the mind persists essentially unchanged today since the time of Plato and Aristotle. For the ancients, of course, it was not a question of the relation of mind to brain, though the question was fundamentally the same nonetheless. For Plato, the mind was conceived as distinct from the body and was posited in order to explain knowledge which transcends that available to the senses. For his successor, Aristotle, the mind was conceived as intimately related to the body as form is related to substance. On this conception, the mind is an abstract property or condition of the body itself -
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://hps.arts.unsw.edu.au/hps_content/staff_homepages/p_slezak_site/Article Links/2000/Slezak_MindBrain_2000.pdf
  
• Robert H. Wozniak (online). Mind and body: Rene Descartes to William James.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/Mind/Table.html
  http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exhibitions/Mind/Table.html
  

Specific Views on Consciousness

• 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