It has recently been proposed that the framework of semantic relativism be put to use to describe mental content, as deployed in some of the fundamental operations of the mind. This programme has inspired in particular a novel strategy of accounting for the essential egocentricity of first-personal or de se thoughts in relativist terms, with the advantage of dispensing with a notion of self-representation. This paper is a critical discussion of this strategy. While it is based on a plausible appeal (...) to cognitive economy, the relativist theory does not fully account for the epistemic profile that distinguishes de se thinking, as some of its proponents hope to do. A deeper worry concerns the reliance of the theory on a primitive notion of “centre” that hasn’t yet received enough critical attention, and is ambiguous between a thin and a rich reading. I argue that while the rich reading is required if the relativist analysis of the de se is to achieve its most ambitious aims, it also deprives the theory of much of its explanatory power. (shrink)

This is a bibliography of books and articles on consciousness in philosophy, cognitive science, and neuroscience over the last 30 years. There are three main sections, devoted to monographs, edited collections of papers, and articles. The first two of these sections are each divided into three subsections containing books in each of the main areas of research. The third section is divided into 12 subsections, with 10 subject headings for philosophical articles along with two additional subsections for articles in cognitive (...) science and neuroscience. Of course the division is somewhat arbitrary, but I hope that it makes the bibliography easier to use. This bibliography has first been compiled by Thomas Metzinger and David Chalmers to appear in print in two philosophical anthologies on conscious experience . From 1995 onwards it has been continuously updated by Thomas Metzinger, and now is freely available as a PDF-, RTF-, or HTML-file. This bibliography mainly attempts to cover the Anglo-Saxon and German debates, in a non-annotated, fully formatted way that makes it easy to "cut and paste" from the original file. To a certain degree this bibliography also contains items in other languages than English and German - all submissions in other languages are welcome. Last update of current version: July 13th, 2001. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Over the past three decades, philosophy of science has grown increasingly “local.” Concerns have switched from general features of scientific practice to concepts, issues, and puzzles specific to particular disciplines. Philosophy of neuroscience is a natural result. This emerging area was also spurred by remarkable recent growth in the neurosciences. Cognitive and computational neuroscience continues to encroach upon issues traditionally addressed within the humanities, including the nature of consciousness, action, knowledge, and normativity. Empirical discoveries about brain structure and function suggest (...) ways that “naturalistic” programs might develop in detail, beyond the abstract philosophical considerations in their favor. -/- The literature distinguishes “philosophy of neuroscience” and “neurophilosophy.” The former concerns foundational issues within the neurosciences. The latter concerns application of neuroscientific concepts to traditional philosophical questions. Exploring various concepts of representation employed in neuroscientific theories is an example of the former. Examining implications of neurological syndromes for the concept of a unified self is an example of the latter. In this entry, we will assume this distinction and discuss examples of both. (shrink)

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

The topic of this thesis is how different phenomena, commonly regarded as "psychological" or "mental", are or can be apprehended in the first person. The aim is to show that a number of influential texts of contemporary philosophy display a particular type of oversight on this topic. The texts in question display, I argue, an insufficient appreciation of the case for holding that "non-qualitative" psychological phenomena are apprehended in an exclusive way in the first person. To make this case, I (...) begin by isolating a limited class of phenomena. The class, which is called the class of 'occurrent psychological doings', includes performances such as searching for a flower and adding two numbers. In chapter 2, I submit a case for holding that it is logically necessary that if an agent is performing an occurrent psychological doing, then he has a certain apprehension of what he is doing. This claim is called The First-Person Thesis'. In chapter 3, I submit a case for holding that the type of apprehension mentioned in The First-Person Thesis is logically exclusive: it is an apprehension which an agent who is doing so-and-so can have of the fact that he is doing so-and-so but which it is logically impossible for someone else to have of this fact. This claim is called 'The Exclusiveness Thesis'. In chapters 4 and 5, the two theses are used in critical discussions of some influential texts of contemporary philosophy. In chapter 4,1 examine two arguments of Wittgenstein's to the effect that one may perform some selected actions without having a particular type of "experience", or "sensation". I try to show that these arguments, while valid, have rather limited implications. I use The First-Person Thesis to illustrate the limited scope of these implications. I then try to show that the limited significance of the arguments has often been obscured by commentators of Wittgenstein. In chapter 5, I examine a position commonly held in contemporary philosophy of mind, and often associated with Nagel. The position is that "qualitative" phenomena such as perceptual experiences and bodily sensations are, because of the appearances they present in the first person, particularly difficult to explain in physical terms. An implication of this view is the claim that other phenomena do not present appearances to subjects in the allegedly problematic way that "qualitative" phenomena do. The First-Person Thesis and The Exclusiveness Thesis are used to argue that this position, as exemplified in the writings of McGinn and Chalmers, involve controversial assumptions for which insufficient justification is provided. (shrink)

While nobody will ever know what it may be like to be God, there is a more basic question one may try to answer: does God have phenomenal consciousness, does He have experiences within a conscious point of view (POV)? Drawing on recent debates within philosophy of mind, I argue that He doesn’t: if God exists, ‘He’ is not phenomenally conscious, at least in the sense that there is no ‘divine subjectivity’. The article aims at displaying an incompatibility between God’s (...) being truly omnipresent on the one hand, and God’s having a genuine conscious POV on the other. This is shown by introducing the concept of ‘experiential location’ to clarify what shall be meant by ‘conscious POV’, then by exposing an inconsistency in the traditional concept of omnipresence, and finally by arguing that a consistent though weaker understanding of omnipresence is incompatible with God’s having a conscious POV. This paves the way for a ‘processual’ or computational conception of God, which may have its own metaphysical benefit. (shrink)

The first part of this thesis articulates and defends the Subjectivist View of the Mental. According to this view, my mental states are essentially different from the mental states of everyone else, but the fact that they are is a subjective fact, rather than an objective one. Chapter 1 explains what it takes for a fact to be subjective, what kind of difference holds between my mental states and everyone else's mental states and what kind of intuitions lead me to (...) believe that there is such a difference. Chapter 2 defends the Subjectivist View of the Mental from objections and discusses some of its most significant implications. In the second part of the thesis, I explore the advantages that the Subjectivist View of the Mental offers when it comes to accounting for three basic features of our knowledge of the mental. Chapter 3 deals with the asymmetry between self-knowledge and knowledge of other minds. It is argued that, if the Subjectivist View of the Mental is true, we can explain why this asymmetry holds without assuming that self-knowledge and knowledge of other minds are involved with substantially different ways of knowing. Chapter 4 focuses on the immunity to error through misidentification of mental self-ascriptions. I show that, while there has been a temptation to explain this phenomenon by following Lichtenberg and Wittgenstein in taking the content of mental self-ascriptions to be general rather than particular, this proposal cannot be made to work unless something like the Subjectivist View of the Mental is true. Chapter 5 is concerned with experiential knowledge. I argue that, if experiential truths are taken to be objective truths, it is not easy to see why experiential knowledge should have the peculiar 'first-hand' character it has. The problem disappears if experiential truths are regarded as subjective rather than objective. (shrink)

Non-reductivists about phenomenal consciousness believe that physical facts are insufficient to ground the existence of phenomenal consciousness. It will be argued that if one is going to be a non-reductivist, then one should not limit oneself to expanding one’s catalogue of the world’s basic features, as recommended in the paradigmatic non-reductivist approach developed by David Chalmers. One should rather take a realist stance towards subjectivity. A realist about subjectivity thinks that at least some of the propositions needed to state how (...) things are in reality are such that their truth-value is capable of changing ‘from one subject to another’. Realism about subjectivity will be introduced by means of an analogy with the so called ‘A-theory’ of time. An A-theorist claims that at least some of the propositions needed to state how things are in reality are such that their truth-value is capable of changing ‘from one time to another’. It turns out that a robust notion of metaphysical reality is necessary to make sense of both realism about subjectivity and the A-theories of time. (shrink)