Foundational Issues in the Science of Consciousness

Philosophy 596V: Philosophy and Cognitive Science

Foundational Issues in the Science of Consciousness

David Chalmers

E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: 621-7105
Web: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/
Office hours: Thursday 1:30-3pm (Social Sciences 226A)
Class meeting (Fall 1999): Tuesday 3:30-6pm, Social Sciences 311.

Overview

In recent years there has been an explosion of work on consciousness, within philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. This seminar will examine the science of consciousness, addressing both empirical and philosophical issues within it.

Some empirical areas to be covered include:

the search for the neural correlate of consciousness
neuropsychological disorders of consciousness
the processes involved in conscious vision
implicit processes in memory, learning, and perception
the relationship between consciousness and attention
cognitive models of consciousness
consciousness and metacognition
animal consciousness
phenomenological approaches to consciousness.

Some philosophical issues to be addressed include:

What are the varieties of "consciousness"?
Can consciousness be explained in terms of neurobiology?
How can we gain experimental access to consciousness?
What is an appropriate epistemology for the science of consciousness?
What might a final theory of consciousness look like?
What can one being know about the consciousness of another?
Might consciousness differ radically between individuals?

Some weeks will be devoted to "empirical" topics and some weeks to "philosophical" topics, but for any given topic we will read papers by both empirical researchers and philosophers, often spending half the meeting on each. In the empirical areas, we will make an effort to address the foundational questions that lie behind the research. In the philosophical areas, we will examine how empirical work can illuminate and occasionally reshape these issues.

This course is intended as an interdisciplinary seminar. Material in both philosophy and cognitive science will be approached in such a way
to be accessible to students without much background in one or the other. Any graduate student in philosophy, psychology, or other relevant areas would be welcome.

Readings

There is no required textbook. Recommended texts are:

Block, Flanagan, and Guzeldere (eds.): The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates. MIT Press, 1997.
Cohen and Schooler (eds.): Scientific Approaches to Consciousness. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Many readings will be available on the web, and others will be made available for copying. Students will be expected to make brief seminar presentations of the readings.

Web page

The web page for the class is at

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/phil596v.html

Mailing list

I will set up a mailing list, [email protected], for class discussion. Everyone will be expected to make reasonably regular contributions to this list (at least one reasonably substantial posting every two weeks), discussing issues arising from the readings, from class discussion, and from the mailing list itself. Think of this as a substitute for biweekly short papers of 1-2 pages each.

Assessment

Assessment will be based most heavily on a final paper, and will also be based on in-class presentations, mailing list contributions, and class participation.

Schedule

Here is a very approximate week-by-week plan for the course, with associated readings. Note that this is very likely to be revised and supplemented as things develop. Readings that are not available on the web will be made available in the department office. Full bibliographical information can be found in my online bibliographies of consciousness in philosophy and of consciousness in science.

1. What is consciousness?

Norton Nelkin, "What is consciousness?"
Edoardo Bisiach, "The (haunted) brain and consciousness".

Week 1 discussion

2. Can consciousness be reductively explained?

David Chalmers, Facing up to the problem of consciousness
Paul Churchland, "The rediscovery of light".
Daniel Dennett, Facing backwards on the problem of consciousness
Francis Crick and Christof Koch, Why neuroscience may be able to explain consciousness
David Chalmers, Moving forward on the problem of consciousness

Week 2 discussion

3. What can be known about the consciousness of another?

Frank Jackson, Epiphenomenal qualia
Paul Churchland, "Reduction, qualia, and the direct introspection of brain states"
Evan Thompson, "Novel colours"
Knut Nordby, Vision in a complete achromat: A personal account

Week 3 discussion

4. Neural correlates of consciousness I.

Francis Crick and Christof Koch, "Toward a neurobiological account of consciousness"
Joseph Bogen, On the neurophysiology of consciousness, part I: An overview.
Ned Block, How to find the neural correlate of consciousness
David Chalmers, On the search for the neural correlate of consciousness

Week 4 discussion

5. Neural correlates of consciousness II.

D.L. Sheinberg & Nikos Logothetis, The role of temporal cortical areas in perceptual organization
Francis Crick and Christof Koch, Consciousness and neuroscience
Davida Teller and E.N. Pugh Jr., Linking propositions in color vision
David Chalmers, What is a neural correlate of consciousness?

Week 5 discussion

6. Blindsight

Petra Stoerig and Alan Cowey, Blindsight in man and monkey
Semir Zeki and Dominic ffytche, The Riddoch syndrome: Insights into the neurobiology of conscious vision
Ned Block, On a confusion about a function of consciousness

Week 6 discussion

7. Conscious and unconscious perception

David Milner and Melvyn Goodale, The visual brain in action (precis)
Philip Merikle & Meredyth Daneman, Psychological investigations of unconscious perception
Anthony Greenwald, New Look 3: Unconscious cognition reclaimed
Max Velmans, Is human information processing conscious?

Week 7 discussion

8. Change blindness, consciousness, and attention.

Arien Mack and Irvin Rock, Inattentional blindness: An overview
Daniel Simons, Change blindness
Jeremy Wolfe, Inattentional amnesia
Valerie Hardcastle, Consciousness and attention: A distinction with a difference
Alva Noe and Evan Thompson, Beyond the grand illusion: What change blindness really teaches us about vision

Week 8 discussion

9. Cognitive models of consciousness.

Bernard Baars, In the theatre of consciousness
Daniel Schacter, On the relation between memory and consciousness: Dissociable interactions and conscious experience
Daniel Dennett & Marcel Kinsbourne, Time and the observer: The where and when of consciousness in the brain

Week 9 discussion

10. Consciousness and metacognition.

Thomas Nelson, Consciousness and metacognition
Marcia Johnson and John Reeder, Consciousness as meta-processing
David Rosenthal, Consciousness, content, and metacognitive judgments

Week 10 discussion

11. Animal consciousness.

Gordon Gallup, Are animals self-aware? Yes
Daniel Povinelli, Are animals self-aware? Maybe not
Thomas Nagel, What is it like to be a bat?
Kathleen Akins, What is it like to be boring and myopic?

Week 11 discussion

12. The inverted spectrum.

Stephen Palmer, Color, consciousness, and the isomorphism constraint
C.L. Hardin, Color quality and color structure
Martine Nida-Rumelin, Pseudonormal vision: An actual case of spectrum inversion?

13. Epistemology of consciousness.

Eyal Reingold and Philip Merikle, Theory and measurement in the study of unconscious processes
Jonathan Schooler, Consciousness and the limits of language
Alvin Goldman, Can science know when you're conscious? Epistemological foundations of consciousness research

14. First-person approaches.

David Chalmers, First-person methods in the science of consciousness
Francisco Varela, Neurophenomenology: A methodological remedy for the hard problem
Steven Horst, Phenomenology and psychophysics

15. To be determined

Web resources

Some useful resources on the web include: