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Consciousness and its place in nature

In Josh Weisberg (ed.), Consciousness (Key Concepts in Philosophy). Cambridge, UK: Polity (2014)

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  1. The Problem of Consciousness: Easy, Hard or Tricky?Tom McClelland - 2017 - Topoi 36 (1):17-30.
    Phenomenal consciousness presents a distinctive explanatory problem. Some regard this problem as ‘hard’, which has troubling implications for the science and metaphysics of consciousness. Some regard it as ‘easy’, which ignores the special explanatory difficulties that consciousness offers. Others are unable to decide between these two uncomfortable positions. All three camps assume that the problem of consciousness is either easy or hard. I argue against this disjunction and suggest that the problem may be ‘tricky’—that is, partly easy and partly hard. (...)
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  • Grounding: necessary or contingent?Kelly Trogdon - 2013 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 94 (4):465-485.
    Argument that full grounds modally entail what they ground.
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  • How to be a type-C physicalist.Adrian Boutel - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 164 (2):301-320.
    This paper advances a version of physicalism which reconciles the “a priori entailment thesis” (APET) with the analytic independence of our phenomenal and physical vocabularies. The APET is the claim that, if physicalism is true, the complete truths of physics imply every other truth a priori. If so, “cosmic hermeneutics” is possible: a demon having only complete knowledge of physics could deduce every truth about the world. Analytic independence is a popular physicalist explanation for the apparent “epistemic gaps” between phenomenal (...)
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  • Against Normative Naturalism.Matthew S. Bedke - 2012 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (1):111 - 129.
    This paper considers normative naturalism, understood as the view that (i) normative sentences are descriptive of the way things are, and (ii) their truth/falsity does not require ontology beyond the ontology of the natural world. Assuming (i) for the sake of argument, I here show that (ii) is false not only as applied to ethics, but more generally as applied to practical and epistemic normativity across the board. The argument is a descendant of Moore's Open Question Argument and Hume's Is-Ought (...)
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  • The Rise and Fall of the Mind-Body Problem.Katalin Balog - forthcoming - In Corine Besson, Anandi Hattiangadi, Romina Padro & Antonella Mallozzi (eds.), 50 Years of Naming and Necessity. Oxford University Press.
    In this paper, I examine the relationship between physicalism and property dualism in the light of the dialectic between anti-physicalist arguments and physicalist responses. Upon rehearsing the moves of each side, it is hard not to notice 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, and it seems that there are neither a priori nor a posteriori grounds (...)
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  • Consciousness, self-consciousness, and meditation.Wolfgang Fasching - 2008 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (4):463-483.
    Many spiritual traditions employ certain mental techniques (meditation) which consist in inhibiting mental activity whilst nonetheless remaining fully conscious, which is supposed to lead to a realisation of one’s own true nature prior to habitual self-substantialisation. In this paper I propose that this practice can be understood as a special means of becoming aware of consciousness itself as such. To explain this claim I conduct some phenomenologically oriented considerations about the nature of consciousness qua presence and the problem of self-presence (...)
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  • The physical: Empirical, not metaphysical.J. L. Dowell, & Janice Dowell - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 131 (1):25-60.
    2. The Contingency and A posteriority Constraint: A formulation of the thesis must make physicalism come out contingent and a posteriori. First, physicalism is a contingent truth, if it is a truth. This means that physicalism could have been false, i.e. there are counterfactual worlds in which physicalism is false, for example, counterfactual worlds in which there are miracle -performing angels.[9] Moreover, if physicalism is true, our knowledge of its truth is a posteriori. This is to say that there are (...)
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  • Zombies in the Basement? Ghosts in the Floorboards?Walter Barta - manuscript
    Do the hard problem of consciousness and the simulation argument potentially resolve each other? Here we will argue for four possible views: that consciousness may be possible only (a) outside of, (b) inside and/or outside of, (c) inside of, or (d) interfacing with simulations. The first two of these views have been developed at length by David Chalmers and are used as jumping off points to introduce and develop the latter two views here. If any one of these views could (...)
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  • Lightweight and Heavyweight Anti-physicalism.Damian Aleksiev - 2022 - Synthese 200 (112):1-23.
    I define two metaphysical positions that anti-physicalists can take in response to Jonathan Schaffer’s ground functionalism. Ground functionalism is a version of physicalism where explanatory gaps are everywhere. If ground functionalism is true, arguments against physicalism based on the explanatory gap between the physical and experiential facts fail. In response, first, I argue that some anti-physicalists are already safe from Schaffer’s challenge. These anti-physicalists reject an underlying assumption of ground functionalism: the assumption that macrophysical entities are something over and above (...)
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  • Bodies and minds, heaps and syllables.Erik Goodwyn - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):8831-8855.
    In this paper the explanatory gap of the philosophy of mind is explored, and found to have a similar structure even in different framings of the mind–body problem. This leads to the consideration that the MBP may be a special case of the more general whole-part problem: how do properties of wholes arise from the particular assembly of isolated parts? The conclusion is argued that only an approach of mereological holism offers solace from the explanatory gap problem, exchanging it for (...)
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  • Two Problems in Spinoza's Theory of Mind.James Van Cleve - 2022 - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind 2:337-378.
    My aim in what follows is to expound and (if possible) resolve two problems in Spinoza’s theory of mind. The first problem is how Spinoza can accept a key premise in Descartes’s argument for dualism—that thought and extension are separately conceivable, “one without the help of the other”—without accepting Descartes’s conclusion that no substance is both thinking and extended. Resolving this problem will require us to consider a crucial ambiguity in the notion of conceiving one thing without another, the credentials (...)
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  • If consciousness causes collapse, the zombie argument fails.Mousa Mohammadian - 2021 - Synthese 199:1599–1615.
    Many non-physicalists, including Chalmers, hold that the zombie argument succeeds in rejecting the physicalist view of consciousness. Some non-physicalists, including, again, Chalmers, hold that quantum collapse interactionism, i.e., the idea that non-physical consciousness causes collapse of the wave function in phenomena such as quantum measurement, is a viable interactionist solution for the problem of the relationship between the physical world and the non-physical consciousness. In this paper, I argue that if QCI is true, the zombie argument fails. In particular, I (...)
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  • Explaining contingent facts.Fatema Amijee - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (4):1163-1181.
    I argue against a principle that is widely taken to govern metaphysical explanation. This is the principle that no necessary facts can, on their own, explain a contingent fact. I then show how this result makes available a response to a longstanding objection to the Principle of Sufficient Reason—the objection that the Principle of Sufficient Reason entails that the world could not have been otherwise.
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  • (1 other version)Seeing Zombie Off - Axiologically - Nomologically.Dieter Wandschneider - 2018 - Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 72:590-597.
    The zombie, mocking all nomological arguments, gives rise to axiological considerations that also result in a vindication of the nomological paradigm. So the ‘philosophical benefit of zombies’ ultimately proves to be that they lead to an understanding they were originally invented to refute.
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  • (1 other version)Farewell to Chalmers' Zombie - The 'Principle Self-Preservation' as the Basis of 'Sense'.Dieter Wandschneider - 2018 - Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 72:246-262.
    My argument is that Chalmers' zombie fiction and his rigid-designator-argument going back on Kripke comes down to a petitio principii. Rather, at the core it appears to be more related to the essential 'privacy' of the phenomenal internal perspective. In return for Chalmers I argue that the 'principle self-preservation' of living organisms necessarily implies subjectivity and the emergence of sense. The comparison with a robot proves instructive. The mode of 'mere physical' being is transcended if, in the form of phenomenal (...)
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  • Introducción a la Ontología.Axel Barceló - manuscript
    Intuitivamente, la realidad está formada por entidades y hechos existentes y concretos. Sin embargo, nuestro lenguaje y pensamiento versa también sobre hechos meramente posibles, sobre cosas inexistentes y entidades abstractas. ¿Cómo es esto posible? ¿Significa ello que cuando hablamos y pensamos de estas otras cosas no hablamos de nada real? ¿o mas bien la realidad está mas poblada de lo que pensábamos y hay diferentes maneras de formar parte de la realidad además de la de existir de manera positiva y (...)
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  • Reducing Uncertainty: Understanding the Information-Theoretic Origins of Consciousness.Garrett Mindt - 2020 - Dissertation, Central European University
    Ever since the hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers, 1996, 1995) first entered the scene in the debate over consciousness many have taken it to show the limitations of a scientific or naturalist explanation of consciousness. The hard problem is the problem of explaining why there is any experience associated with certain physical processes, that is, why there is anything it is like associated with such physical processes? The character of one’s experience doesn’t seem to be entailed by physical processes and (...)
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  • A Pāli Buddhist Philosophy of Sentience: Reflections on Bhavaṅga Citta.Sean M. Smith - 2020 - Sophia 59 (3):457-488.
    In this paper, I provide a philosophical analysis of Pāli texts that treat of a special kind of mental event called bhavaṅga citta. This mental event is a primal sentient consciousness, a passive form of basal awareness that individuates sentient beings as the type of being that they are. My aims with this analysis are twofold, one genealogical and reconstructive, the other systematic. On the genealogical and reconstructive side, I argue for a distinction between two kinds of continuity that are (...)
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  • Modal rationalism and the demonstrative reply to the scrutability argument against physicalism.Gabriel Oak Rabin - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 8):2107-2134.
    According to the scrutability argument against physicalism, an a priori gap between the physical and conscious experience entails a lack of necessitation and the falsity of physicalism. This paper investigates the crucial premise of the scrutability argument: the inference from an a priori gap to a lack of necessitation. This premise gets its support from modal rationalism, according to which there are important, potentially constitutive, connections between a priori justification and metaphysical modality. I argue against the strong form of modal (...)
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  • The illusion of conscious experience.François Kammerer - 2019 - Synthese 198 (1):845-866.
    Illusionism about phenomenal consciousness is the thesis that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, even though it seems to exist. This thesis is widely judged to be uniquely counterintuitive: the idea that consciousness is an illusion strikes most people as absurd, and seems almost impossible to contemplate in earnest. Defenders of illusionism should be able to explain the apparent absurdity of their own thesis, within their own framework. However, this is no trivial task: arguably, none of the illusionist theories currently on (...)
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  • Does the Explanatory Gap Rest on a Fallacy?François Kammerer - 2018 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 10 (4):649-667.
    Many philosophers have tried to defend physicalism concerning phenomenal consciousness, by explaining dualist intuitions within a purely physicalist framework. One of the most common strategies to do so consists in interpreting the alleged “explanatory gap” between phenomenal states and physical states as resulting from a fallacy, or a cognitive illusion. In this paper, I argue that the explanatory gap does not rest on a fallacy or a cognitive illusion. This does not imply the falsity of physicalism, but it has consequences (...)
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  • Hylomorphism and the Construct of Consciousness.William Jaworski - 2020 - Topoi 39 (5):1125-1139.
    The hard problem of consciousness has held center stage in the philosophy of mind for the past two decades. It claims that the phenomenal character of conscious experiences—what it’s like to be in them—cannot be explained by appeal to the operation of physiological subsystems. The hard problem arises, however, only given the assumption that hylomorphism is false. Hylomorphism claims that structure is a basic ontological and explanatory principle. A human is not a random collection of physical materials, but an individual (...)
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  • Can the Russellian Monist Escape the Epiphenomenalist’s Paradox?Lok-Chi Chan - 2020 - Topoi 39 (5):1093-1102.
    Russellian monism—an influential doctrine proposed by Russell (The analysis of matter, Routledge, London, 1927/1992)—is roughly the view that physics can only ever tell us about the causal, dispositional, and structural properties of physical entities and not their categorical (or intrinsic) properties, whereas our qualia are constituted by those categorical properties. In this paper, I will discuss the relation between Russellian monism and a seminal paradox facing epiphenomenalism, the paradox of phenomenal judgment: if epiphenomenalism is true—qualia are causally inefficacious—then any judgment (...)
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  • Explaining what?Elizabeth Irvine - unknown
    The Hard Problem is surrounded by a vast literature, to which it is increasingly hard to contribute to in any meaningful way. Accordingly, the strategy here is not to offer any new metaphysical or ‘in principle’ arguments in favour of the success of materialism, but to assume a Type Q(uinian) approach and look to contemporary consciousness science to see how the concept of consciousness fares there, and what kind of explanations we can hope to offer of it. It is suggested (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Compatibility of the Structure-and-Dynamics Argument and Phenomenal Functionalism about Space.Luke Roelofs - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (S1):44-52.
    Chalmers (2002) argues against physicalism in part using the premise that no truth about consciousness can be deduced a priori from any set of purely structural truths. Chalmers (2012) elaborates a detailed definition of what it is for a truth to be structural, which turns out to include spatiotemporal truths. But Chalmers (2012) then proposes to define spatiotemporal terms by reference to their role in causing spatial and temporal experiences. Stoljar (2015) and Ebbers (Ms) argue that this definition of spatiotemporal (...)
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  • Conceivability, higher order patterns, and physicalism.Hilla Jacobson-Horowitz & Amir Horowitz - 2008 - Acta Analytica 23 (4):349-366.
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  • Physical Constituents of Qualia.István Aranyosi - 2003 - Philosophical Studies 116 (2):103-131.
    In this paper I propose a defense of a posteriori materialism.Problems with a posteriori identity materialism are identified,and a materialism based on composition, not identity, is proposed.The main task for such a proposal is to account for the relationbetween physical and phenomenal properties. Composition does notseem to be fit as a relation between properties, but I offer apeculiar way to understand property-composition, based on somerecent ideas in the literature on ontology. Finally, I propose amaterialist model for the mind-body relation that (...)
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  • An Argument for Micropsychism: If There is a Conscious Whole, There Must be Conscious Parts.Arjen Rookmaaker - 2024 - Kriterion – Journal of Philosophy 38 (1-2):57-90.
    Many philosophers today accept that phenomenal truths cannot be explained in terms of ordinary physical truths. Two possible routes to accounting for consciousness have received much attention: the emergentist route is to accept that ordinary experience is inexplicable in physical terms but that microscopic entities as described in physics nonetheless bring about conscious experience. The second route is to argue that microscopic entities have features not described in physics which can fully explain conscious experience. The view associated with panprotopsychism is (...)
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  • Russellian Monism or Nagelian Monism?Daniel Stoljar - 2015 - In Torin Andrew Alter & Yujin Nagasawa (eds.), Consciousness in the Physical World: Perspectives on Russellian Monism. New York: Oxford University Press.
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  • Once More Unto the Breach: Type B Physicalism, Phenomenal Concepts, and the Epistemic Gap.Janet Levin - 2018 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (1):57-71.
    ABSTRACTType B, or a posteriori, physicalism is the view that phenomenal-physical identity statements can be necessarily true, even though they cannot be known a priori—and that the key to understanding their status is to understand the special features of our phenomenal concepts, those concepts of our experiential states acquired through introspection. This view was once regarded as a promising response to anti-physicalist arguments that maintain that an epistemic gap between phenomenal and physical concepts entails that phenomenal and physical properties are (...)
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  • The experience property frame work: a misleading paradigm.Martine Nida-Rümelin - 2018 - Synthese 195 (8):3361-3387.
    According to the experience property framework qualia are properties of experiences the subject undergoing the experience is aware of. A phenomenological argument against this framework is developed and a few mistakes invited by the framework are described. An alternative to the framework, the framework of experiential properties is presented and defended as preferable. It is argued that the choice between these two frameworks makes a substantial difference for theoretical purposes.
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  • Empirical metaphysics: the role of intuitions about possible cases in philosophy.J. L. Dowell - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 140 (1):19-46.
    Frank Jackson has argued that only if we have a priori knowledge of the extension-fixers for many of our terms can we vindicate the methodological practice of relying on intuitions to decide between philosophical theories. While there has been much discussion of Jackson’s claim that we have such knowledge, there has been comparatively little discussion of this most powerful argument for that claim. Here I defend an alternative explanation of our intuitions about possible cases, one that does not rely on (...)
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  • The Location and Boundaries of Consciousness: a Structural Realist Approach.Kristjan Loorits - 2018 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 9 (3):523-537.
    Despite the remarkable progress made in consciousness research during recent decades, there is still no sign of a general agreement about the location of its object. According to internalists, consciousness resides inside the brain. According to externalists, consciousness is partly constituted by elements or aspects of the environment. Internalism comports better with the existence of dreams, hallucinations and sensory imaging. Externalism seems to provide a more promising basis for understanding how we can experience the world and refer to the content (...)
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  • The Structure and Dynamics Argument against Materialism.Torin Alter - 2015 - Noûs 50 (4):794-815.
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  • Befuddling the mind: radical Enactivism (Hutto-Myin style) and the metaphysics of experience.Itay Shani - 2020 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 20 (1):39-56.
    This paper is a critique of the radical enactivism of Daniel Hutto, Erik Myin, and their collaborators, insofar as their approach pertains to the hard problem of consciousness. I argue that their valiant attempt to discard the hard problem is ultimately unsuccessful. More specifically, I argue that the hard problem of consciousness is best construed as a transcendental challenge and that no phenomeno-physical identity theory, and no “logic of identity”, successfully eliminate this challenge. Finally, I argue that the theoretical stance (...)
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  • Intuitions, edited by Anthony Robert Booth and Darrell P. Rowbottom: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. ix + 289, £40. [REVIEW]Glenn Carruthers - 2016 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94 (1):187-190.
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  • (1 other version)The sensory basis of the epistemic gap: an alternative to phenomenal concepts.Peter Fazekas & Zoltán Jakab - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (8):2105-2124.
    The phenomenal character of conscious experience has long been regarded as the major problem for physicalist accounts of consciousness. In recent years, defenders of physicalism have typically been relying on the so-called Phenomenal Concept Strategy to avoid dualism. In this paper, we argue with PCS that cognitive-physicalistic explanations can account for the peculiarities of phenomenal character. However, we think that the conceptual features PCS investigates are not the genuine causes of the special characteristics of phenomenal consciousness but only symptoms, which (...)
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  • Phenomenal concepts as bare recognitional concepts: harder to debunk than you thought, …but still possible.Emmett L. Holman - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 164 (3):807-827.
    A popular defense of physicalist theories of consciousness against anti-physicalist arguments invokes the existence of ‘phenomenal concepts’. These are concepts that designate conscious experiences from a first person perspective, and hence differ from physicalistic concepts; but not in a way that precludes co-referentiality with them. On one version of this strategy phenomenal concepts are seen as (1) type demonstratives that have (2) no mode of presentation. However, 2 is possible without 1-call this the ‘bare recognitional concept’ view-and I will argue (...)
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  • Why property dualists must reject substance physicalism.Susan Schneider - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 157 (1):61-76.
    I argue that property dualists cannot hold that minds are physical substances. The focus of my discussion is a property dualism that takes qualia to be sui generis features of reality.
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  • The role of ignorance in the problem of consciousness: Critical review of Daniel Stoljar, ignorance and imagination: The epistemic origin of the problem of consciousness (oxford university press, 2006).Brie Gertler - 2009 - Noûs 43 (2):378-393.
    The plain man thinks that material objects must certainly exist, since they are evident to the senses. Whatever else may be doubted, it is certain that anything you can bump into must be real; this is the plain man’s metaphysic. This is all very well, but the physicist comes along and shows that you never bump into anything: even when you run your hand along a stone wall, you do not really touch it. When you think you touch a thing, (...)
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  • Turning the zombie on its head.Amir Horowitz - 2009 - Synthese 170 (1):191 - 210.
    This paper suggests a critique of the zombie argument that bypasses the need to decide on the truth of its main premises, and specifically, avoids the need to enter the battlefield of whether conceivability entails metaphysical possibility. It is argued that if we accept, as the zombie argument’s supporters would urge us, the assumption that an ideal reasoner can conceive of a complete physical description of the world without conceiving of qualia, the general principle that conceivability entails metaphysical possibility, and (...)
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  • A naturalist-phenomenal realist response to Block's harder problem.Brian P. McLaughlin - 2003 - Philosophical Issues 13 (1):163-204.
    widely held commitments: to phenomenal realism and to naturalism. Phenomenal realism is the view that we are phenomenally consciousness, and that there is no a priori or armchair sufficient condition for phenomenal consciousness that can be stated in nonphenomenal terms . 1,2 Block points out that while phenomenal realists reject.
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  • Explanatory Perspectivalism: Limiting the Scope of the Hard Problem of Consciousness.Daniel Kostić - 2017 - Topoi 36 (1):119-125.
    I argue that the hard problem of consciousness occurs only in very limited contexts. My argument is based on the idea of explanatory perspectivalism, according to which what we want to know about a phenomenon determines the type of explanation we use to understand it. To that effect the hard problem arises only in regard to questions such as how is it that concepts of subjective experience can refer to physical properties, but not concerning questions such as what gives rise (...)
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  • Mind Stuffed with Red Herrings: Why William James’ Critique of the Mind-Stuff Theory Does not Substantiate a Combination Problem for Panpsychism. [REVIEW]Itay Shani - 2010 - Acta Analytica 25 (4):413-434.
    There is a famous passage in chapter six of James’ Principles of Psychology whose import, many believe, deals a devastating blow to the explanatory aspirations of panpsychism. In the present paper I take a close look at James’ argument, as well as at the claim that it underlies a powerful critique of panpsychism. Apart from the fact that the argument was never aimed at panpsychism as such, I show that it rests on highly problematic assumptions which, if followed to their (...)
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  • Response to Alter and Bennett.Daniel Stoljar - 2009 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79 (3):775-784.
    The paper responds to criticisms of *Ignorance and Imagination* offered by Torin Alter and Karen Bennett.
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  • ‘Experience’, ordinary and philosophical: a corpus study.Eugen Fischer & Justin Sytsma - 2023 - Synthese 201 (6):1-30.
    Common arguments for realism about phenomenal consciousness contend that this is a folk concept, with proponents expecting it to be lexicalised in ordinary language. In English, the word ‘experience’ is typically regarded as the best candidate. This predicts that ‘experience’ will be used to refer to mental states and episodes, not only in philosophical but also in ordinary discourse. We conduct a corpus study in order to assess this claim and to understand the actual use of the word in non-academic, (...)
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  • (1 other version)Access Denied to Zombies.Gualtiero Piccinini - 2017 - Topoi 36 (1):81-93.
    I argue that metaphysicians of mind have not done justice to the notion of accessibility between possible worlds. Once accessibility is given its due, physicalism must be reformulated and conceivability arguments must be reevaluated. To reach these conclusions, I explore a novel way of assessing the zombie conceivability argument. I accept that zombies are possible and ask whether that possibility is accessible from our world in the sense of ‘accessible’ used in possible world semantics. It turns out that the question (...)
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  • The Zombie Attack, Perry’s Parry, and a Riposte: A Slight Softening of the “Hard Problem” of Consciousness.J. Brendan Ritchie - 2017 - Topoi 36 (1):55-65.
    The “hard problem” of consciousness is a challenge for explanations of the nature of our phenomenal experiences. Chalmers has claimed that physicalist solutions to the challenge are ill-suited due, in part, to the zombie argument against physicalism. Perry has suggested that the zombie argument begs the question against the physicalist, and presents no relevant threat to the view. Although seldom discussed in the literature, I show there is defensive merit to Perry’s “parry” of the zombie attack. The success of the (...)
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