From 1990 on, the London psychologist Max Velmans developed a novel approach to consciousness according to which an experience of an object is phenomenologically identical to an object as experienced. On the face of it I agree; but unlike Velmans I argue that the latter should be understood as comparable, not to a Kantian, but rather to a noematic.

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.

This paper uses the explanation of blindsight generated by a two-systems theory of vision in order to set Siewert a dilemma. Either his blindsight examples are modelled on actual blindsight, in which case certain reductive theories of phenomenal consciousness will have no difficulty in accommodating them. Or they are intended to be purely imaginary, in which case they will have no force against a reductive naturalist.

In this paper I argue that the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness has an underlying emergentist metaphysics, specifically of a kind that has received minimal attention and we may call functionalist emergentism. I will try to show that in this scientific theory conscious experience is a functional-role property possessed by the whole system, not by their parts, which is dependent on, but also (purportedly) causally powerful over and above, the properties of the parts. However, I will argue that depicting conscious (...) experience as a functional-role emergent property threatens the whole coherence of the theory because, by definition, functional-realizers do all the causal work associated with the instantiation of any functional-role property on any occasion. Hence, to preserve the causal power of consciousness, which, as we will see, is one of the fundamental building blocks of the theory, linked to the assertion of the very existence of consciousness, phenomenal properties should be re-thought as realizers of the relevant informationally integrated causal-roles. (shrink)

The dual-aspect monist conjecture launched by Pauli and Jung in the mid-20th century will be couched in somewhat formal terms to characterize it more concisely than by verbal description alone. After some background material situating the Pauli–Jung conjecture among other conceptual approaches to the mind–matter problem, the main body of this paper outlines its general framework of a basic psychophysically neutral reality with its derivative mental and physical aspects and the nature of the correlations that connect these aspects. Some related (...) approaches are discussed to identify key similarities to and deviations from the Pauli–Jung framework that may be useful for cross-fertilization. (shrink)

We argue that a certain variety of presentist time travel ends up significantly undermining the motivational foundations which lead some, but not all, presentists to their view. We suggest that if presentism is motivated by phenomenology, and part of that phenomenology is that it’s an experiential datum that we experience temporal passage, then the basis for believing presentism is less secure than we might have thought.

The main goal of this article consists in addressing two fundamental issues of consciousness research and cognitive science, namely, the question of why declarative memory functions are inextricably linked with phenomenal awareness and the question of the physical basis of memory traces. The presented approach proposes that high-level cognitive processes involving consciousness employ a universal mechanism by means of which they access and modulate an omnipresent background field that is identified with the zero-point field (ZPF) specified by stochastic electrodynamics, a (...) branch of physics that deals with the universal principles underlying quantum systems. In addition to its known physical properties and memory capacities, the ZPF is hypothesized to be an immanently sentient medium. It is propounded that linking up to a particular field mode of the ZPF activates a particular phenomenal nuance, implying that the phase-locked coupling of a set of field modes, i.e., the formation of a so-called ZPF information state, constitutes an appropriate mechanism for the amalgamation of elementary shades of consciousness into a complex state of consciousness. Since quantum systems rest exactly on this mechanism, conscious memory processes in the brain are expected to differ from unconscious processes by the presence of the typical features of many-body quantum systems, particularly long-range coherence and attractor formation, which is supported by a huge body of empirical evidence. On this basis, the conceptual framework set out in this article paves the way for a new understanding of the brain as a write-read head interacting with the ZPF, leading to self-consistent interpretations of the neural correlates of memory formation and memory retrieval and explaining why these memory processes are closely intertwined with phenomenal awareness. In particular, the neural correlates suggest that the brain produces consciously perceived memory traces by writing sequences of information states into the ZPF and retrieves consciously experienced memory traces by reading sequences of information states from the ZPF. Using these theoretical foundations, altered states of consciousness and memory disorders can be traced back to impairments of the ZPF write-read mechanism. The mechanism should reveal itself through characteristic photon emissions, resulting in testable predictions. (shrink)

En esta revista, argumenté en favor de la naturaleza consciente de las creencias de primera persona. En un artículo más reciente, Miguel Ángel Sebastián trata de mostrar que tal argumento no es sólido. Aquí procedo a lidiar con sus tres críticas principales. En primer lugar, sostengo que el argumento es válido si conocer una creencia de primera persona consiste en creer que uno la tiene. Defiendo también que no hay ninguna regresión al infinito de creencias conscientes de orden superior que (...) sea dañina. En segundo lugar, argumento que la noción de conciencia en juego es aquella que es relevante en la discusión acerca de la naturaleza de la conciencia y del inconsciente. Por último, reviso la justificación del principio para mostrar que no prejuzga la cuestión. (shrink)

The present dissertation starts from the general claim that neuroscience is not neutral, with regard to theoretical questions like the nature of consciousness, but it needs to be complemented with dedicated conceptual analysis. Specifically, the argument for this thesis is that the combination of empirical and conceptual work is a necessary step for assessing the significant questions raised by the most recent study of the brain. Results emerging from neuroscience are conceptually very relevant in themselves but, notwithstanding its theoretical sophistication, (...) neuroscience is not sufficient to provide a complete interpretation or an appropriate understanding of their impact. Consequently, the present thesis starts from the need for an interdisciplinary and hybrid field of research, i.e. fundamental neuroethics. Within this framework, the thesis takes consciousness and related disorders and the addicted brain as illustrative cases of the potential fruitful collaboration between empirical and conceptual investigations. The general goal of the thesis is to contribute to the overall development of bridging the gap between empirical and conceptual understandings of consciousness. The first paper sets the theoretical framework, providing an empirically-based description of the brain with significant philosophical implications for an understanding of consciousness. The last three papers of the thesis try to apply the theoretical framework to illustrative cases. Papers II and III analyse the possible application of science and technology for an easier detection and clinical care of patients with disorders of consciousness, with particular attention to communication mediated by neurotechnology and the simulation of the conscious brain, respectively; paper IV provides a potentially new ethical analysis of addiction within the elaborated general conceptual framework. The conclusion of the thesis is that the impact of neuroscientific results needs that a dedicated conceptual approach reveals and investigates their conceptual meaning. This conceptual analysis is not exclusive but integrative and complementary to the empirical science. The case of consciousness, analysed from both an ethical and conceptual point of view, is highly illustrative in this respect. In the end, a conceptual/linguistic work of clarification is urgently needed. (shrink)

This paper compares and contrasts two conceivability arguments: the zombie argument (ZA) against physicalism, and the perfect actor argument (AA) against behaviourism. I start the paper by assuming that the arguments are of the same kind, and that AA is sound. On the basis of these two assumptions I criticize the most common philosophical suggestions in the literature today about what is wrong with ZA, and what is right in it. I end the paper by suggesting that the comparison between (...) the two arguments makes plausible an epistemic response to ZA according to which the conceivability of a zombie - that is, someone identical to me in all physical respects but different in some phenomenal respect - is being confused with the conceivability of something else, i.e. someone identical to me in physical respects that are epistemically available, but different in some phenomenal respect. (shrink)

The paper is focused on Genesis 1 – 3 where the primordial man [adàm] is created ‎and he was given the proper name Adam [adàm]. ‎ In Hebrew man and Adam are the same word, spelled the same way – [adàm]. ‎Different translations of Genesis 1-3 use for the first time the proper name Adam in ‎different places versions Gen 2:25; The German Luther ‎Bible Gen 3:8; Some English Protestant versions Gen 3:17; Bulgarian Protestant and many ‎English Protestant versions Gen (...) 3:20-21). The paper decodes the phenomenon by ‎studying the Hebrew original and several semiotic views on common and proper names ‎‎. Through these opinions the ‎important question “Who wrote the Bible?” is discussed. The analysis interfaces the new ‎linguistic relativity theory.‎ Four layers of symbolism are decoded: 1. The man became Adam; 2. The two men in ‎Gen 1:27 and in Gen 2:7 man [adàm] ‎is made by earth, ground [adamà]; 3. The two men in the New Testament ; 4. Edom, Adam and cultural discourses in both Testaments.‎. (shrink)

In this thesis I argue that we should break with the dominant Kripkean tradition concerning natural kind terms and theoretical identity. I claim that there is just no interesting connection between the metaphysics and semantics of natural kind terms, and demonstrate this by constructing a version of descriptivism that is combined with the same metaphysics – that is, a nontrivial version of essentialism – found in Kripke, but which effectively avoids all of the standard criticisms. With my version of descriptivism (...) in place, I present what I take to be the most reasonable version of metaphysical essentialism, positing only what I call 'thin' essences. I claim that thin essences are perfectly adequate to underpin scientific realism, and moreover that they are sufficient to support the version of descriptivism developed here. In effect, what I offer here is an error theory of the Kripkean tradition: Kripke is right to think that there are interesting things to say about meaning and essence, but just wrong about what those things are. Thus whilst Kripke thinks that it is possible to make discoveries about the meanings of natural kind terms, I think, rather, that we make empirical discoveries that lead to revisions in meaning. Furthermore, whilst Kripke thinks there is a dichotomy between de re and de dicto necessity, and that theoretical identities are necessary de re, I think this distinction is both misleading and inaccurate, and that the necessity of theoretical identities is neither entirely de re nor entirely de dicto. By separating and insulating questions concerning meaning from questions concerning essence I show that whilst scientific discoveries are contingent and a posteriori, the definition of scientific terms are both necessary and a priori. (shrink)

Creativity is generally thought to be the production of things that are novel and valuable. Humans are unique in the extent of their creativity, which plays a central role in innovation and problem solving, as well as in the arts. But what are the cognitive sources of novelty? More particularly, what are the cognitive sources of stochasticity in creative production? I will argue that they belong to two broad categories. One is associative, enabling the selection of goal-relevant ideas that have (...) become activated by happenstance in an unrelated context. The other relies on selection processes that leverage stochastic fluctuations in neural activity. At the same time, I will address a central puzzle, which is to understand how the outputs of stochastic processes can nevertheless generally fall within task constraints. While the components appealed to in the accounts that I offer are well established, the ways in which I combine them together are new. (shrink)

Cardiophenomenology aims at refining the neuro-phenomenological approach created by F. Varela as a new paradigm, jointly based on Husserl’s a priori dynamics of the living present and an experiment on anticipatory time-dynamics of visual motor perception. In order to do so, we will situate the paradigm of neurophenomenology at the cardio-vascular level, focusing on the emotional dynamics of lived experience and thus refining the dialogue, more precisely, the generative mutual constraints between first- and third-person analysis. In this article we present (...) the theoretical hypothesis of cardiophenomenology, which places the bodily-emotional heartsystem at its core, as an intrinsic part of the cognitive system. The latter therefore needs to be enlarged in order to include an enactive embodied cardiac-affective dimension. Here we present five main arguments for the necessary inclusion of the bodily-emotional heartsystem in the cognitive system: first, two pragmatic operational arguments, then three theoretical ones. A direct methodological-pragmatic consequence is the actual operativity of the generative mutual constraints based on an experiential -experimental continuity of the embodied cardiac-affective fold inherent in the subject. (shrink)

I present 3 arguments that the laws of physics, by themselves, cannot explain the origin of phenomenal consciousness. First, physics investigates the objective, while consciousness is subjective. Second, the laws of physics are syntactical, while consciousness is semantic. Third, the concept of consciousness cannot even be defined in terms of physics.

Methodological naturalists generally believe that science is the best and only method for discovering the properties of reality and what exists. A central tenet of methodological naturalism is that science is limited to evaluating only natural things. Science cannot allow for the possibility of supernatural objects because doing so would irreparably damage the scientific method. Or, it may be that evaluating the supernatural is beyond the capabilities of science. In this thesis, I challenge these assumptions. I defend a form of (...) naturalism known as Provisory Methodological Naturalism which holds that science can, at least theoretically, evaluate supernatural claims. Provisory methodological naturalists believe the notion that science only evaluates natural things is provisional and subject to being overruled. Should supernatural objects exist, science would be able to observe them. (shrink)

Restrictivists hold that visual experience only represents low-level properties such as shape, spatial location, motion, color, etc. Expansionists contend that visual experience also represents high-level properties such as being a pine tree. I outline a new approach to support expansionism called the conflict cross-modal argument. What I call the conflict cross-modal effects occur when at least two perceptual systems disagree about some property belonging to a common stimulus, and this disagreement causes a change in the representational and phenomenal content of (...) the perceptual experience associated with one, or both, modalities. The conflict cross-modal argument works by accepting that if a property figures in a conflict cross-modal effect, then prima facie that property is a strong common sensible between the two modalities, and vision and another modality disagree about a property that is high-level for vision. After outlining this argument, and showing how it overcomes two obstacles that face traditional methods employed to defend expansionism, I turn to the well known Mcgurk effect as a case where vision and audition disagree about phoneme properties in order to employ my argument for the conclusion that phoneme properties are represented in visual experience. The upshot is that since phoneme properties are high-level for vision, we have an argument supporting expansionism. (shrink)

Jackson argues that conceptual analysis plays a modest, albeit crucial, role in ‘serious metaphysics’: roughly, the project of demystifying phenomena we take to be mysterious by locating them in the natural world. This defence of conceptual analysis is associated with ‘the Canberra Plan’, a philosophical methodology that has its roots in the works of both Lewis :427–446, 1970, Australas J Philos 50:249–258, 1972) and Jackson. There is, however, a distinction to be drawn between conceptual analysis, as it is typically employed (...) in the Canberra plan, and a version of it defended by Jackson himself. In this paper, I elucidate this distinction, and employ examples from the history of science to argue the use of the former, but not the latter, incurs certain problems of conceptual change. Moreover, I also argue neither can be used to undertake serious metaphysics—the former because of the aforementioned problems, and the latter due to the machinery it employs to solve them. (shrink)

Defending or attacking either functionalism or computationalism requires clarity on what they amount to and what evidence counts for or against them. My goal here is not to evaluate their plausibility. My goal is to formulate them and their relationship clearly enough that we can determine which type of evidence is relevant to them. I aim to dispel some sources of confusion that surround functionalism and computationalism, recruit recent philosophical work on mechanisms and computation to shed light on them, and (...) clarify how functionalism and computationalism may or may not legitimately come together. (shrink)

I am grateful to Jakob Korf for his reply to my comment on his “Qualia in a Contemporary Neurobiological Perspective”. I appreciate that Korf’s intention is to approach the issue from the perspective of neuroscience, rather than philosophy of mind, and I suspect that our dialogue may have partly been at cross purposes. Korf concedes that he does not resolve the “hard problem” of Chalmers. This is a reasonable concession and entirely appropriate for his aim. However, to mitigate the potential (...) for miscommunication, some care is needed to ensure conceptual clarity, so that theoretical claims about brain processes are not erroneously exalted to metaphysical claims about the “hard problem”. (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on an influential account of phenomenal concepts, the recognitional account, and defend it from some recent challenges. According to this account, phenomenal concepts are recognitional concepts that we use when we recognize experiences as “another one of those.” Michael Tye has argued that this account is viciously circular because the relevant recognitional abilities involve descriptions of the form “another experience of the same type,” which is also a phenomenal concept. Tye argues that we avoid the (...) circularity worry if we explain the reference-fixing of phenomenal concepts in terms of dispositions to re-identify tokens of the same type without appealing to any further phenomenal concepts. However, he argues, this account is incompatible with the intuitive claim that phenomenal concepts seem to involve rich modes of presentation of their referents. Philip Goff and others have similarly argued that a recognitional account of phenomenal concepts would make phenomenal concepts opaque, that is, unable to reveal anything about their referents, which seems problematic. In this paper, I present a new version of the recognitional account that avoids the circularity worry without entailing that phenomenal concepts are opaque. (shrink)

In ‘Collapsing Emergence’, Elanor Taylor argues that all accounts of emergence face a common problem: excluding ‘collapse-inducing’ features—features encoding information about macro-level phenomena—from the micro-level bases of putatively emergent phenomena in a metaphysically principled way. I argue that Taylor's solution to ‘the collapse problem’, which utilizes an explanation-based account of emergence she develops in recent work, does not succeed, as it relies on a false principle about the requirements for explanation. I then propose a better solution, one that presupposes no (...) specific account of emergence, instead relying on the metaphysically principled distinction between what is essential to the having of a feature versus what is not. In addition to solving the collapse problem, I show how the distinction is also a useful tool for articulating more and less robust ways in which emergent phenomena can be genuinely novel and autonomous from the micro-level features they emerge from. (shrink)

Seattle rain smelled different from New Orleans rain…. New Orleans rain smelled of sulfur and hibiscus, trumpet metal, thunder, and sweat. Seattle rain, the widespread rain of the Great Northwest, smelled of green ice and sumi ink, of geology and silence and minnow breath.— Tom Robbins, Jitterbug PerfumeMuch of the philosophical literature on perception has focused on vision. This is not surprising, given that vision holds for us a certain prestige. Our visual experience is incredibly rich, offering up a mosaic (...) of apparent three-dimensional objects. For this reason, it is commonplace to suppose that visual experience is world-directed, with the view taking its most popular form in the representational, or content, view. World-directed views contrast with what we might call subjectivist views — views according to which experiences are raw feels or mere sensations. (shrink)

This paper considers the extent to which the notion of truthmaking can play a substantive role in defining physicalism. While a truthmaking-based approach to physicalism is prima facie attractive, there is some reason to doubt that truthmaking can do much work when it comes to understanding physicalism, and perhaps austere metaphysical frameworks in general. First, despite promising to dispense with higher-level properties and states, truthmaking appears to make little progress on issues concerning higher-level items and how they are related to (...) how things are physically. Second, it seems that truthmaking-based approaches to physicalism will have a difficult time addressing the status of truthmaking itself without, in effect, appealing to the resources of alternative ways of conceptualizing physicalism. (shrink)

This article explores two consequences of intentionalism. My first line of argument focuses on the impact of intentionalism on the 'hard problem' of phenomenal character. If intentionalism is true, the phenomenal supervenes on the intentional. Furthermore, if physicalism about the intentional is also true, the intentional supervenes on the physical. Therefore, if intentionalism and physicalism are both true, then, by transitivity of supervenience, physicalism about the phenomenal is true. I argue that this transitivity argument is not persuasive, because on any (...) interpretation of its central terms, at least one of its premises is as controversial as its conclusion already is. My second line of argument is about the consequences of intentionalism for the error theory of color perception. I suggest that if intentionalism is true, projectivism must be true also, because under this condition there is no single concept of color that can be used for the qualification of objects as well as for the characterization of experiences. (shrink)

This paper introduces this special issue which is focused on its target paper - The Natural Origins of Content. The target paper has had a robust and considered set of fifteen replies; a literal A to Z of papers. This extended introduction explains the background thinking and challenges that motivated the target article's proposed research programme. It also provides a sneak peak preview and navigational aid to the special issue’s contents. Brief highlights of each commentary are provided and they are (...) grouped together under broad headings. We do not attempt to give detailed replies to these suggestions or answer the various critiques at this stage of the proceedings: that is for future work. (shrink)

The evolutionary argument is an argument against epiphenomenalism, designed to show that some mind-body theory that allows for the efficacy of qualia is true. First developed by Herbert Spencer and William James, the argument has gone through numerous incarnations and it has been criticized in a number of different ways. Yet many have found the criticisms of the argument in the literature unconvincing. Bearing this in mind, I examine two primary issues: first, whether the alleged insights employed in traditional versions (...) of the argument have been correctly and consistently applied, and second, whether the alleged insights can withstand critical scrutiny. With respect to the first issue, I conclude that the proponents of the argument have tended to grossly oversimplify the considerations involved, incorrectly supposing that the evolutionary argument is properly conceived as a non-specific argument for the disjunction of physicalism and interactionist dualism and against epiphenomenalism. With respect to the second issue, I offer a new criticism that decisively refutes all arguments along the lines of the one I present. Finally, I draw positive lessons about the use of empirical considerations in debates over the mind-body problem. (shrink)

Las sensaciones constituyen el mayor obstáculo para dar una explicación satisfactoria de la mente en términos no mentales, y se distinguen por la manera como se sienten, esto es, por sus qualia o su carácter fenoménico, que se resiste a ser explicado y que hace patente el hiato entre lo físico y lo mental. Pero, ¿en qué consiste este aspecto de las sensaciones? ¿Lograremos alguna vez dar cuenta de él adecuadamente? Éstas son dos de las preguntas fundamentales que se discuten (...) en los doce artículos de este volumen, los cuales, en particular, se sitúan en el debate actual sobre los problemas que los qualia presentan a las teorías fisicalistas, funcionalistas e intencionalistas de la mente. En el primero, las compiladoras ofrecen un panorama general de la discusión contemporánea en torno a las sensaciones y su carácter fenoménico; los demás son textos centrales en esta discusión, de T. Nagel, C. McGinn, F. Jackson, D. Lewis, G. Harman, N. Block, J. Fodor, M. Tye, D. Dennett y S. Shoemaker. (shrink)

In dem Artikel wird die These vertreten, dass sich das – um es in populärster Weise zu formulieren – „Problem des Bewusstseins” auf einer falschen Interpretation der Erfahrungsstruktur gründet. Der Kontrast zwischen meiner subjektiven Perspektive und der gemeinsamen Welt, in der ich meine Perspektive einnehme , ist Bestandteil meiner Erfahrung. Beschreibungen von Erfahrungen, die den Grundstein für die Bewusstseinsausbildung legen, neigen jedoch dazu, lediglich Ersteres zu betonen, wobei sie merkwürdigerweise die Tatsache vergessen, dass Erfahrung mit einschließt, sich zugehörig zu der (...) Welt zu fühlen, in der man eine kontingente subjektive Perspektive einnimmt. Der nächste Schritt bei der Formulierung des Problems ist, darüber nachzudenken, wie diese Abstraktion in die wissenschaftlich beschriebene Welt integriert werden kann. Der Verfasser stellt die Behauptung auf, dass die wissenschaftlich beschriebene Welt selbst das durch die Erfahrung konstituierte Gefühl der Zugehörigkeit zu einer gemeinsamen Wirklichkeit als selbstverständlich voraussetzt. Daher schließt das Problem des Bewusstseins mit ein, dass A von B abstrahiert und B abgestritten wird; sodann wird versucht, A in C zu insertieren, wenn C Aspekte von B voraussetzt. Das so geartete Problem ist symptomatisch für massiven phänomenologischen Wirrwarr. Demnach verwundert nicht, dass das Bewusstsein weiterhin ein rätselhaftes Phänomen ist. (shrink)

A ideia intuitivamente plausível de que pelo menos alguns de nossos estados mentais teriam aspectos fenomenais qualitativos aos quais nós teríamos um acesso cognitivo privilegiado é considerada por muitos filósofos como incompatível com a ontologia fisicista. Alguns defensores radicais do fisicismo preferem simplesmente negar a existência de aspectos qualitativos, ao passo que outros materialistas procuram reinterpretar a cognição do caráter fenomenal da nossa experiência do mundo como a aquisição de uma habilidade, isto é, como uma forma de know-how , em (...) oposição à aquisição de informação ( know-that ). O presente trabalho expõe e examina criticamente algumas tentativas recentes de compatibilização da natureza sui generis da apreensão cognitiva do caráter fenomenal da nossa experiência com a tese materialista de que o conteúdo proposicional dessa cognição é constituído exclusivamente por fatos físicos. doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.5007 / 1808-1711.2011v15n3p415. (shrink)

One reason for the recent attention to conceivability claims is to be found in the extended use of conceivability in philosophy of mind, and then especially in connection with zombie thought experiments. The idea is that zombies are conceivable; beings that look like us and behave like us in all ways, but for which “all is dark inside;” that is, for a zombie, there is no “what it is like.” There is no “what it is like” to be a zombie, (...) there is no “what it is like” for a zombie to feel pain, there is no “what it is like” for a zombie to taste, or feel, or smell something. They are creatures without consciousness. I am skeptical about the conceivability of zombies. That is not to say that I believe that there is some inherent contradiction to be found in the idea of zombies. Instead, I do not think that I am justified in believing that zombies are conceivable. The focus on justification is not common in the literature on conceivability, or for that matter in the literature on the possibility of zombies. Instead, the focus tends to be on trying to find out whether or not the notion of a zombie is contradictory. It is widely accepted in the literature on conceivability that the absence of a contradiction when conceiving of X is both necessary and sufficient for X to be conceivable. That might be true of ideal conceivability, but as I will argue below, ideal conceivability is not relevant to our (human) pursuit of knowledge and understanding. Further, as I will argue, once we focus on non-ideal conceivability the notion of justification, and degrees of justification comes into play. (shrink)

In his book In Defense of Pure Reason Laurence BonJour proposed an account of a priori justification which essentially refers to so-called rational insights. Unfortunately, the reader is not equipped with a substantial answer to the question what such rational insights exactly are. And moreover, he is told that this is not an in any way decisive shortcoming of BonJour’s account of a priori justification — at least not a shortcoming which should motivate us to abandon his account. In order (...) to support this thesis, BonJour refers to an analogy between the case of rational insights and the case of consciousness. He points out that we would not give up the use of the notion of consciousness, in spite of the fact that today there is still no satisfying answer to the question what consciousness exactly is. I will argue that the analogy BonJour refers to is in fact a persuasive one and can help him as well as other proponents of the rational-insight account to deal with some prominent objections. But taking the analogy seriously does consequently mean to undermine a favourite rationalist’s thesis: the autonomy claim. I conclude that the rationalist is confronted with a dilemma; he simply cannot have it both ways. (shrink)

In this talk I consider two problems for conceptual atomism. Conceptual atomism can be defended against the criticism that it seems to contend that all concepts are simply innate (even technical concepts to pre-technological humanoids) by specifying the innateness thesis as one of mechanisms of hooking up mental representations (concepts as language of thought types) to properties in the world (§1). This theory faces a problem with non-referring expressions/concepts, it seems. Conceptual atomism can, however, deal with non-referring expressions/concepts (§2). Hooking (...) up concepts with properties raises, further on, broader metaphysical problems of making concepts correspond to (natural) properties. These questions are much harder to answer (§3). (shrink)

I have argued in many places that a carefully articulated version of Descartes’ argument to show that he is essentially an immaterial soul is sound. It is conceivable that I who am currently conscious continue to exist without my body, and that can only be if there is currently a non-bodily part of me which alone is essential for me. Recent counter-arguments of Alston and Smythe, Moser and van der Nat, Zimmerman, and Shoemaker are rejected.

In this lucid, deep, and entertaining book, John Perry supposes that type-identity physicalism is antecedently plausible, and that rejecting this thesis requires good reason. He aims to show that experience gap arguments, as given by Jackson, Kripke, and Chalmers, fail to provide such reason, and moreover that each failure stems from an overly restrictive conception of the content of thought.

This paper extends three decades of work arguing that researchers who discuss consciousness should not restrict themselves only to (adult) human minds, but should study (and attempt to model) many kinds of minds, natural and artificial, thereby contributing to our understanding of the space containing all of them. We need to study what they do or can do, how they can do it, and how the natural ones can be emulated in synthetic minds. That requires: (a) understanding sets of requirements (...) that are met by different sorts of minds, i.e. the niches that they occupy, (b) understanding the space of possible designs, and (c) understanding complex and varied relationships between requirements and designs. Attempts to model or explain any particular phenomenon, such as vision, emotion, learning, language use, or consciousness lead to muddle and confusion unless they are placed in that broader context. A methodology for making progress is summarised and a novel requirement proposed for a theory of how human minds work: the theory should support a single generic design for a learning, developing system that, in addition to meeting familiar requirements, should be capable of developing different and opposed philosophical viewpoints about consciousness, and the so-called hard problem. In other words, we need a common explanation for the mental machinations of mysterians, materialists, functionalists, identity theorists, and those who regard all such theories as attempting to answer incoherent questions. No designs proposed so far come close. (shrink)

It would be a mistake to deny commonsense intuitions a role in developing a theory of consciousness. However, philosophers have traditionally failed to probe commonsense in a way that allows these commonsense intuitions to make a robust contribution to a theory of consciousness. In this paper, I report the results of two experiments on purportedly phenomenal states and I argue that many disputes over the philosophical notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ are misguided—they fail to capture the interesting connection between commonsense ascriptions (...) of pain and emotion. With this data in hand, I argue that our capacity to distinguish between ‘mere things’ and ‘subjects of moral concern’ rests, to a significant extent, on the sorts of mental states that we take a system to have. (shrink)

A perspective on Everett's relative state formulation is proposed leading to a relational quantum mechanics. There are inevitably a large number of different versions of the universe in which a specific observer could exist, and in the universe of the unitary wave function they are all existing and coincident. If these different versions of the universe are superposed the result is a universe in which the superposition of all of the identical copies sums to a single observer. The effective universe (...) in the functional frame of reference of this observer would be highly indeterminate but determinate where observed by this observer. This would naturally relativise the universe of the conventional view since each observer would inhabit an effective universe in which different aspects were determinate. Although the identity of the observer as a physical body does not readily fit this concept, it appears to apply inevitably to the functional identity of an observer as depicted by Everett. In this relational quantum mechanics a collapse dynamics applies only to the functional frame of reference of the observer and raises no incompatibility with the linear dynamics. (shrink)

Two-dimensional semantics aims to eliminate the puzzle of necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori truths. Recently many argue that even assuming two-dimensional semantics we are left with the puzzle of necessary and a posteriori propositions. Stephen Yablo (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 81, 98–122, 2000) and Penelope Mackie (Analysis, 62(3), 225–236, 2002) argue that a plausible sense of “knowing which” lets us know the object of such a proposition, and yet its necessity is “hidden” and thus a posteriori. This paper answers (...) this objection; I argue that given two-dimensional semantics you cannot know a necessary proposition without knowing that it is true. (shrink)

We present a scenario describing how time emerges in the framework of weak quantum theory. In a process similar to the emergence of time in quantum cosmology, time arises after an epistemic split of an undivided unus mundus as a quality of the individual conscious mind. Synchronization with matter and other mental systems is achieved by entanglement correlations. In the course of its operationalization, time loses its original quality and the time of physics as measured by clocks appears. avoided/explicated.

In order to understand consciousness one would benefit from developing a more eclectic intellectual style. Consciousness is, as proposed by almost everyone except the stubborn reductionists, a truly mysterious concept. Its study and dissection merits a multidisciplinary approach. Waving this multidisciplinary flag has positively enlarged the discussion and neurologists, psychiatrists, mathematicians, and so on, have moved to the philosophy of mind arena, first with caution and now with a more powerful voice. Identifying what we mean by consciousness is a first (...) step even when we want to deny its existence. The link between consciousness and some other mental activity is a logical next step and there is abundant literature doing this, but not all of them differentiate among associated yet different phenomena. (shrink)

The paper spells out an argument to the effect that rejecting what Sellars denounces as the “myth of the given” has a bearing not only on epistemology, but also on ontology: we get to recognizing persons as ontologically primitive. We spell that argument out by drawing on what is known as left-wing Sellarsianism, although our aim is not the exegesis of Sellars’s texts. Our aim is to show how one can get from this argument to a social ontology in the (...) guise of a synoptic view that recognizes both persons and matter in motion as ontologically primitive and that employs the conceptual tools of ontic structural realism. (shrink)

In several works, Ruth Millikan has developed a ‘teleosemantic’ theory of concepts. Millikan’s theory has three explicit desiderata for concepts: wide scope, non-descriptionist content, and naturalism. I contend that Millikan’s theory cannot fulfill all of these desiderata simultaneously. Theoretical concepts, such as those of chemistry and physics, fall under Millikan’s intended scope, but I will argue that her theory cannot account for these concepts in a way that is compatible with both non-descriptionism and naturalism. In these cases, Millikan’s view is (...) subject to the traditional ‘indeterminacy problem’ for teleosemantic theories. This leaves the content of theoretical concepts indeterminate between a descriptionist and non-descriptionist content. Furthermore, this problem cannot be overcome without giving up the naturalism desideratum. I suggest that the scope of Millikan’s theory should be limited. At best, the theory will be able to attribute naturalistic, non-descriptionist content to a smaller range of concepts. (shrink)