The relationship between the physical body and the conscious human mind has been a deeply problematic topic for centuries. Physicalism is the 'orthodox' metaphysical stance in contemporary Western thought, according to which reality is exclusively physical/material in nature. However, in the West, theoretical dissatisfaction with this type of approach has historically lead to Cartesian-style dualism, wherein mind and body are thought to belong to distinct metaphysical realms. In the current discussion I compare and contrast this standard Western approach with an (...) alternative form of dualism developed in the Sāṃkhya-Yoga philosophical tradition, where matter and pure consciousness are held to belong to distinct and independent realms, but where the mind is placed on the material side of the ontological divide. I argue that this model possesses a number of theoretical advantages over Cartesian-style dualism, and constitutes a compelling theoretical framework for re-conceptualizing the mind-body problem. (shrink)

What are we? Despite much discussion in historical and contemporary philosophy, we have not yet settled on an answer. A satisfactory personal ontology, an account of our metaphysical nature, will be informed by issues in the metaphysics of material objects. In the dissertation, I target two prominent materialist ontologies: animalism, the view that we are numerically identical to human organisms, and constitutionalism, the view that we are constituted by, but not identical to, human organisms. Because of the problems that arise (...) from endorsing these ontologies, I instead advance immaterialism, the view that we are essentially immaterial. In Chapter 2, I discuss how animalists must respond to a widely-discussed metaphysical puzzle, the problem of the many. This puzzle prompts some to endorse revisionary ontologies of material objects, and I argue that the animalist cannot appeal to these revisionary ontologies to solve the puzzle as it arises for personal ontology. In addition, solutions that don’t involve a commitment to revisionary ontology will be unavailable to the animalist: I argue that if animalists make use of non-revisionary solutions to the problem, they must abandon the most successful argument for their view. Absent their most successful argument, animalists will need to motivate the view in some other way. Some new arguments for animalism have been proposed, and I argue that they fail to give us reason to endorse animalism over competing ontologies. Without a strong argument, we should not prefer animalism over the other, more attractive, views. In Chapter 3, I show how constitutionalists face a different problem: explaining how the person is not the very same thing as the human organism, despite sharing the very same parts and occupying the very same physical space. We think that the person and the organism are different things because they have different modal profiles – the human organism can survive permanent loss of psychological life, but the person, presumably, cannot. Constitutionalists must then explain what grounds the difference in modal profiles, but such an explanation is hard to come by. This is an instance of the grounding problem, which is notoriously intractable. While the grounding problem is a well-known challenge to constitutional accounts of objects, I demonstrate that this puzzle is even more threatening when applied to persons. Some “solutions” to the problem fail to solve it at all, and solutions that might get the right result for ordinary objects require accepting that there are a multitude of persons where we ordinarily take there to be only one. We should not accept a personal ontology that requires a commitment to that multitude. I argue that the threat of the grounding problem is so great that we must reject the constitutionalist personal ontology. We will see from these puzzles in personal ontology that materialist solutions are either unsuccessful or yield unacceptable consequences. This should prompt us toward considering, instead, immaterialism. According to immaterialism, persons are not material objects, and the immaterialist can then provide solutions to the puzzles that threatened materialist ontologies. In Chapter 4, I outline these immaterialist solutions and show that the puzzles cannot be reinstantiated successfully against the immaterialist. I then discuss different available varieties of immaterialism and argue in defense of my preferred version. Ultimately, I argue that we are simple, immaterial entities that come into existence at the proper functioning of the brain. Endorsing this view of personal ontology permits us to adequately respond to metaphysical puzzles and retain judgments about persons that should be most important to us. In particular, the immaterialist has the resources to avoid the problem of too many thinkers and retain the judgment that there is exactly one person in circumstances where we take there to be just one. The immaterialist also has the resources to plausibly analyze thought experiments, such as cerebrum-swap cases, that threaten materialist ontologies. All things considered, it remains to be seen which personal ontology has the most evidence in its favor. In the context of debates that arise from material object metaphysics, however, evidence weighs in favor of immaterialism. Materialist personal ontologies are saddled with unacceptable responses to metaphysical puzzles, and endorsing materialism about persons requires taking on a very high cost: Either there are far more of us than we ordinarily take there to be, or there are no persons – far fewer of us than we ordinarily take there to be. Some might argue that these are the only acceptable options, so cost be damned. But we cannot afford to be so cavalier about our personal ontology. Instead, I advance immaterialist solutions to puzzles in personal ontology and propose that, in the interest of saving ourselves and everyone we love, we should seriously consider accounts according to which we are immaterial entities. (shrink)

The Phenomenal Concept Strategy is a popular strategy used to support physicalism in the realm of conscious experience. This Strategy accounts for dualist intuitions but uses the ways in which we think about our experiences to explain these intuitions in a physicalist framework, without any appeal to ontological dualism. In this paper, I will raise two issues related to the currently available versions of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy. First, most of the theories belonging to the Phenomenal Concept Strategy posit that (...) phenomenal concepts are exceptional and sui generis concepts, and these theories can be shown to be largely ad hoc. Second, these theories may explain the existence of anti-physicalist intuitions, but they do not explain their persistence. My aim is to put forward a new theory of phenomenal concepts that can rise up to these challenges to the Phenomenal Concept Strategy. In my view, phenomenal concepts are not independent and sui generis concepts. On the contrary, they are closely related to our other epistemic concepts, especially our concepts of “justification”. Thinking about an experience means thinking about a specific kind of justification – an unjustified justification, or, in other words, an “ultimate seeming”. I will show why this explains the existence and the persistence of antiphysicalist intuitions in a non-ad hoc way. (shrink)

My paper consists of five parts. In the first part I explain what I mean by the phenomenology of mind. In the second part I show that in contemporary analytic philosophy the prevailing metaphysical theories of the mind are typically not connected to the phenomenology of mind. Views on the nature of the mind are developed without considering the phenomenological facts. In the third part I outline a notion of metaphysics connected to the phenomenology of mind, then in the fourth (...) and fifth parts I give some examples to illustrate how I envision the nature of this connection. (shrink)

This public article presents three arguments for the plausibility of panpsychism: the view that sentience is a fundamental and ubiquitous element of actuality. Thereafter is presented a brief exploration of why panpsychism has been spurned. The article was commissioned by High Existence. -/- – Introduction – 1. The Genetic Argument – 2. The Abstraction Argument – 3. The Inferential Argument – Why Panpsychism is Spurned – End Remarks.

Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument (KA) aims to prove, by means of a thought experiment concerning the hypothetical scientist Mary, that conscious experiences have non-physical properties, called qualia. Mary has complete scientific knowledge of colours and colour vision without having had any colour experience. The central intuition in the KA is that, by seeing colours, Mary will learn what it is like to have colour experiences. Therefore, her scientific knowledge is incomplete, and conscious experiences have qualia. In this paper I consider (...) an objection to the KA raised by Daniel Dennett. He maintains that the KA is vitiated by Jackson’s account of Mary’s scientific knowledge. While endorsing this criticism, I will defend the plausibility and relevance of the type of strategy involved in the KA by offering an account of Mary’s scientific knowledge. This account involves formulating a reasonable and not immediately false version of the physicalist thesis with regard to colour experiences. Whether this version of the KA is successful against this type of physicalism is not investigated here. (shrink)

Synaesthesia is a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces photisms, i.e. mental percepts of colours. R is a 20 year old colour blind subject who, in addition to the relatively common grapheme-colour synaesthesia, presents a rarely reported cross modal perception in which a variety of visual stimuli elicit aura-like percepts of colour. In R, photisms seem to be closely related to the affective valence of stimuli and (...) typically bring out a consistent pattern of emotional responses. The present case study suggests that colours might be an intrinsic category of the human brain. We developed an empirical methodology that allowed us to study the subject's otherwise inaccessible phenomenological experience. First, we found that R shows a Stroop effect elicited by photisms despite the fact that he does not show a regular Stroop with real colours. Secondly, by manipulating the colour context we confirmed that colours can alter R's emotional evaluation of the stimuli. Furthermore, we demonstrated that R's auras may actually lead to a partially inverted emotional spectrum where certain stimuli bring out emotional reactions opposite to the normal ones. These findings can only be accounted for by considering R's subjective colour experience or qualia. Therefore the present paper defends the view that qualia are a useful scientific concept that can be approached and studied by experimental methods. (shrink)

The paper considers the two main challenges to scientific realism, stemming from confirmation holism and the underdetermination thesis as well as from semantic holism and the incommensurability thesis. Against the first challenge, it is argued that there are other criteria besides agreement with experience that enable a rational evaluation of competing theories. Against the second challenge, it is argued that at most a thesis of local incommensurability can be defended that is compatible with a minimal version of scientific realism, namely (...) conjectural realism. However, in order to establish a fully-fledged scientific realism, one has to refute the local incommensurability thesis as well, showing how a comparison is possible on the level of the proper concepts of the theories in question. The paper examines the prospects for such a comparison, distinguishing three cases. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that consciousness is a unique way of processing information, in that: it produces information, rather than purely transmitting it; the information it produces is meaningful for us; the meaning it has is always individuated. This uniqueness allows us to process information on the basis of our personal needs and ever-changing interactions with the environment, and consequently to act autonomously. Three main basic cognitive processes contribute to realize this unique way of information processing: the self, attention (...) and working memory. The self, which is primarily expressed via the central and peripheral nervous systems, maps our body, the environment, and our relations with the environment. It is the primary means by which the complexity inherent to our composite structure is reduced into the “single voice” of a unique individual. It provides a reference system that (albeit evolving) is sufficiently stable to define the variations that will be used as the raw material for the construction of conscious information. Attention allows for the selection of those variations in the state of the self that are most relevant in the given situation. Attention originates and is deployed from a single locus inside our body, which represents the center of the self, around which all our conscious experiences are organized. Whatever is focused by attention appears in our consciousness as possessing a spatial quality defined by this center and the direction toward which attention is focused. In addition, attention determines two other features of conscious experience: periodicity and phenomenal quality. Self and attention are necessary but not sufficient for conscious information to be produced. Complex forms of conscious experiences, such as the various modes of givenness of conscious experience and the stream of consciousness, need a working memory mechanism to assemble the basic pieces of information selected by attention. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there are problems with the foundations of the current version of physicalism about color. In some sources laying the foundations of physicalism, types of surface reflectance corresponding to (veridical) color perceptions are characterized by making reference to properties of the observer. This means that these surface attributes are not objective (i.e. observer-independent). This problem casts doubt on the possibility of identifying colors with types of surface reflectance. If this identification cannot be maintained, that in (...) turn threatens representationalist theories of phenomenal consciousness: there remains no objective, observer-independent property that color experiences represent - hence no representational content, in terms of semantic externalism, can be attributed to color experiences. I offer an alternative account of color and conclude that further empirical study is required to do justice to the basic claims of color physicalism. (shrink)

La physique contemporaine pourrait bien nous livrer un enseignement incroyable, à savoir que l'espace et le temps n'existent pas fondamentalement. Je présenterai succinctement les ontologies suggérées par les deux principaux programmes de recherche en gravité quantique : la théorie des cordes et la gravité quantique à boucles. Je soutiendrai ensuite qu'il est fructueux de prendre les différentes conceptions ontologiques de la conscience en philosophie de l'esprit en modèles pour la construction de solutions au problème de l'émergence de l'espace-temps.

I develop a new argument against Russellian Monism about consciousness.

If Australasian philosophers constitute the kind of group to which a collective identity or broadly shared self-image can plausibly be ascribed, the celebrated history of Australian materialism rightly lies close to its heart. Jack Smart’s chapter in this volume, along with an outstanding series of briefer essays in A Companion to Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand (Forrest 2010; Gold 2010; Koksvik 2010; Lycan 2010; Matthews 2010; Nagasawa 2010; Opie 2010; Stoljar 2010a), effectively describe the naturalistic realism of Australian philosophy (...) of mind. In occasional semi-serious psychogeographic speculation, this long-standing and strongly-felt intellectual attitude has been traced back to the influences of our light, land, or lifestyle (Devitt 1996, x; compare comments by Chalmers and O’Brien in Mitchell, 2006). Australasian work in philosophy of mind and cognition has become more diverse in the last 40 years, but is almost all still marked, in one way or another, by the history of these debates on materialism. (shrink)

The question “What is the nature of experience?” is of perennial philosophical concern. It deals not only with the nature of experience qua experience, but additionally with related questions about the experiencing subject and that which is experienced. In other words, to speak of the philosophical problem of experience, one must also address questions about mind, world, and the various relations that link them together. Both William James and Kitarō Nishida were deeply concerned with these issues. Their shared notion of (...) “pure experience” is the conceptual cornerstone of their attempt to deal with the philosophical problem of experience. This dissertation is an analysis of “pure experience” and its relevance to several issues in contemporary hilosophy of mind. Drawing upon James’s and Nishida’s “pure experience”, I argue both for a sensorimotor-based, “extended” conception of consciousness and a bodily skills-based account of moral psychology. (shrink)

The nucleus accumbens orchestrates processes related to reward and pleasure, including the addictive consequences of repeated reward (e.g., drug addiction and compulsive gambling) and the accompanying feelings of craving and anhedonia. The neurotransmitters dopamine and endogenous opiates play interactive roles in these processes. They are released by natural rewards (i.e., food, water, sex, money, play, etc.) and are released or mimicked by drugs of abuse. Repeated drug use induces conditioned down-regulation of these neurotransmitters, thus causing painful suppression of everyday pleasure. (...) As with many spiritual traditions, Buddhism provides strong advice against the pursuit of worldly pleasures to attain the ‘‘good life.’’ In contrast, many forms of meditation give rise to an immense and abiding joy. Most of these practices involve ‘‘stilling the mind,’’ whereby all content-laden thought (e.g., fantasies, daydreams, plans) ceases, and the mind enters a state of openness, formlessness, clarity, and bliss. This can be explained by the Buddhist suggestion that almost all of our everyday thoughts are a form of addiction. It follows that if we turn off this internal ‘‘gossip of ego,’’ we will find relief from the biochemical dopamine/opiate down-regulation, which is, perhaps, the perpetual concomitant of our daily rumination. (shrink)

Many contemporary philosophers of mind are concerned to defend a thesis called a posteriori physicalism. This thesis has two parts, one metaphysical, and the other epistemological. The metaphysical part of the thesis—the physicalist part—is the claim that the psychological nature of the actual world is wholly physical. The epistemological part of the thesis—the a posteriori part—is the claim that no a priori connection holds between psychological nature and physical nature. Despite its attractiveness, however, a familiar argument alleges that a posteriori (...) physicalism cannot be true. This argument is sometimes called the Property Dualism Argument Against Physicalism. In this paper, I consider Stephen White’s version of the Property Dualism Argument and argue that it fails. I distinguish two ways in which the argument’s crucial notion might be understood, and I argue that on neither way of understanding it is the Property Dualism Argument compelling. (shrink)

I interpret the philosophical views of Werner Heisenberg as a pragmatism and non-metaphysical realism of a Wittgensteinian kind. The “closed theory” is a Wittgensteinian rule/concept.

Emotional states of consciousness, or what are typically called emotional feelings, are traditionally viewed as being innately programed in subcortical areas of the brain, and are often treated as different from cognitive states of consciousness, such as those related to the perception of external stimuli. We argue that conscious experiences, regardless of their content, arise from one system in the brain. On this view, what differs in emotional and non-emotional states is the kind of inputs that are processed by a (...) general cortical network of cognition, a network essential for conscious experiences. Although subcortical circuits are not directly responsible for conscious feelings, they provide non-conscious inputs that coalesce with other kinds of neural signals in the cognitive assembly of conscious emotional experiences. In building the case for this proposal, we defend a modified version of what is known as the higher-order theory of consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall argue that both emergence and downward causation, which are strongly interconnected, presuppose the presence of levels of reality. However, emergence and downward causation pull in opposite directions with respect to my best reconstruction of what levels are. The upshot is that emergence stresses the autonomy among levels while downward causation puts the distinction between levels at risk of a reductio ad absurdum, with the further consequence of blurring the very notion of downward. Therefore, emergence and (...) downward causation are not fit to each other vis-a-vis the concept of level. (shrink)

What is the relationship between pain and the body? I claim that pain is best explained as a type of personal experience and the bodily response during pain is best explained in terms of a type of mechanical neurophysiologic operation. I apply the radical philosophy of identity theory from philosophy of mind to the relationship between the personal experience of pain and specific neurophysiologic mechanism and argue that the relationship between them is best explained as one of type identity. Specifically, (...) pain is a specific type of personal experience identical to a specific type of allostatic stress response comprised of interdependent nervous, endocrine and immune mechanical operations. (shrink)

This paper proposes that the ‘problem of consciousness’, in its most popular formulation, is based upon a misinterpretation of the structure of experience. A contrast between my subjective perspective and the shared world in which I take up that perspective is part of my experience. However, descriptions of experience upon which the problem of consciousness is founded tend to emphasise only the former, remaining strangely oblivious to the fact that experience involves a sense of belonging to a world in which (...) one occupies a contingent subjective perspective. The next step in formulating the problem is to muse over how this abstraction can be integrated into the scientifically described world . I argue that the scientifically described world itself takes for granted the experientially constituted sense of a shared reality. Hence the problem of consciousness involves abstracting A from B, denying B and then trying to insert A into C, when C presupposes aspects of B. The problem in this form is symptomatic of serious phenomenological confusion. No wonder then that consciousness remains a mystery. (shrink)

Eliminative functionalism is the view that mental attributes, of humans and other machines, consist ultimately in behavioural abilities or dispositions. Hence, ‘Strong AI’: if a machine consistently acts as if it were fully conscious, then conscious it is. From these assumptions, optimistic futurists have derived a variety of remarkable visions of our ‘post-human’ future; from widely-recognised ‘robot rights’ to ‘mind uploading’, immortality, ‘apotheosis’ and beyond. It is argued here, however, that eliminative functionalism is false; for at least on our present (...) knowledge, the subjectively qualitative characteristics of conscious experience are neither deducible from, nor logically required to generate, the performance of any sort of overtly ‘intelligent’, or indeed, characteristically human behaviour. Thus, a machine could easily be designed to report awareness of phenomenal qualities, without necessarily possessing them; and Alan Turing’s ‘Imitation Game’ test for artificial thinking is unable to determine whether or not a machine is sentient. An alternative test is proposed, in which the machine is asked phenomenological questions under conditions designed to detect any form of cheating—whilst also, potentially revealing evidence for the occurrence of genuine qualitative experience. (shrink)

There has long been a debate on the possible similarity between some forms of Indian and Greek idealistic monism ( Advaita and Neoplatonism ). After a basic historical introduction to the debate, the text proposes that Paramādvaita , also known as Kashmiri Shaivism , is a more suitable comparandum for Neoplatonism than any other form of Advaita , suggested in the debate. Paramādvaita ’s dynamic view of reality summarized in the terms prakāśa-vimarśa or unmeṣa-nimeṣa , corresponds quite precisely to the (...) viewpoint of Neoplatonism , summarized in the similar bipolar terms such as prohodos-epistrophe . The context of the dynamic nature of reality doctrine is also quite similar ( svataḥsiddhatva, authypostasis ). My arguments are based on the texts of Plotinus and Proclus ( Neoplatonism ) and the texts of Abhinavagupta, Utpaladeva and Kṣemarāja ( Paramādvaita ) . Several parallel doctrines of both systems are further discussed: the doctrine of creative multilevel subjectivity , the doctrine of mutual omnipresence of all in all , the doctrine of creative multilevel speech , and some corresponding doctrines on aesthetic beauty and its important role in the Soul’s return towards its ultimate source. Some implications of the high degree of correspondence between both systems are considered at the end of the paper, for instance whether some similarities of compared systems might be explained on a structural basis, since both schools ware facing similar sceptical critique ( Mādhyamika, Hellenistic scepticism ). (shrink)

This thesis explores the possibility of composite consciousness: phenomenally conscious states belonging to a composite being in virtue of the consciousness of, and relations among, its parts. We have no trouble accepting that a composite being has physical properties entirely in virtue of the physical properties of, and relations among, its parts. But a long­standing intuition holds that consciousness is different: my consciousness cannot be understood as a complex of interacting component consciousnesses belonging to parts of me. I ask why: (...) what is it about consciousness that makes us think it so different from matter? And should we accept this apparent difference? (shrink)

I present a case for a rapprochement between aspects of rationalism and scientific realism, by way of a general framework employing modal epistemology and elements of 2-dimensional semantics (2DS). My overall argument strategy is meta-inductive: The bulk of this paper establishes a “base case,” i.e., a concretely constructive example by which I demonstrate this linkage. The base case or constructive example acts as the exemplar for generating, in a constructively ‘bottom-up’ fashion, a more generally rigorous case for rationalism-realism qua modal (...) epistemology. The exemple I choose in D. Chalmers’ (2002) modal rationalism and R. Giere’s (1985, 1988) constructive realism. I show by way of a thorough analysis how Giere’s claims concerning modal scope are characterized as instances of Chalmers’ modal rationalism, both weak and strong. In essence, as I demonstrate via Chalmers’ notions, ceteris paribus the constructive realist ultimately opts for a comparatively wider gate, characterized by modal reasoning, to lead from the rooms of conceivability qua thought experiments and models, to the pastures of metaphysical possibility. Chalmers likewise tries to erect such a wider gate, in his general conceivability-possibility theses. Anti-realists, on the other hand, see a narrower passage and my contention herein is that they suffer from modal myopia, which hopefully the ‘corrective vision’ of Chalmers’ modal rationalism can restore. In the introduction and concluding sections I sketch out suggestions of constructing ‘inductive steps’ from my base case, to generate more extensively general claims regarding realism qua rationalism. -/- . (shrink)

Nesta entrada irei apresentar uma nova taxonomia sistemática das nossas capacidades imaginativas, coerente com os tratamentos convencionais em ciência cognitiva, filosofia da mente e estética. Em particular, irei distinguir entre a imaginação não-proposicional e a imaginação proposicional, o que inclui ainda outras subvariedades, como a imaginação objectual, a imagética, a imaginação experiencial, a suposição, o faz-de-conta e outras.

The existence of neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) is not enough for philosophical purposes. On the other hand, there's more to NCC than meets the sceptic's eye. (I) NCC are useful for a better understanding of conscious experience, for instance: (1) NCC are helpful to explain phenomenological features of consciousness – e.g., dreaming. (2) NCC can account for phenomenological opaque facts – e.g., the temporal structure of consciousness. (3) NCC reveal properties and functions of consciousness which cannot be elucidated either (...) by introspective phenomenology or by psychological experiments alone – e.g., vision. (II) There are crucial problems and shortcomings of NCC: (1) Correlation implies neither causation nor identity. (2) There are limitations of empirical access due to the problem of other minds and the problem of self-deception, and (3) due to the restrictions provided by inter- and intraindividual variations. (4) NCC cannot be catched by neuroscience alone because of the externalistic content of representations. Therefore, NCC are not sufficient for a naturalistic theory of mind, (5) nor are they necessary because of the possibility of multiple realization. (III) Nevertheless, NCC are relevant and important for the mind-body problem: (1) NCC reveal features that are necessary at least for behavioral manifestations of human consciousness. (2) But NCC are compatible with very different proposals for a solution of the mind-body problem. This seems to be both advantageous and detrimental. (3) NCC restrict nomological identity accounts. (4) The investigation of NCC can refute empirical arguments for interactionism as a case study of John Eccles' dualistic proposals will show. (5) The discoveries of NCC cannot establish a naturalistic theory of mind alone, for which, e.g., a principle of supervenience and a further condition – and therefore philosophical arguments – are required. (shrink)

We first want to express our thanks to the commentators for their close and critical readings of The Phenomenological Mind. We would like to treat their comments and challenging questions as a productive opportunity to clarify and to make our positions more precise. Before we address the specific points raised by our colleagues, we do want to say that the intersection between phenomenology and the cognitive sciences is a rich one, and growing richer as collaboration and research continues. Our book (...) was meant to be an introduction to this area rather than a complete map of ongoing research. For that reason we were not able to cover every interesting issue, many of which are raised in the set of commentaries. (shrink)

• An adequate conceptual framework is still needed to account for phenomena that (i) have a first-person, subjective-experiential or phenomenal character; (ii) are (usually) reportable and describable (in humans); and (iii) are neurobiologically realized.2 • The conscious subject plays an unavoidable epistemological role in characterizing the explanadum of consciousness through first-person descriptive reports. The experimentalist is then able to link first-person data and third-person data. Yet the generation of first-person data raises difficult epistemological issues about the relation of second-order awareness (...) or meta-awareness to first-order experience (e.g. (shrink)

The metaphysics of representation poses questions such as: in virtue of what does a sentence, picture, or mental state represent that the world is a certain way? In the first instance, I have focused on the semantic properties of language: for example, what is it for a name such as ‘London’ to refer to something? Interpretationism concerning what it is for linguistic expressions to have meaning, says that constitutively, semantic facts are fixed by best semantic theory. As here developed, it (...) promises to give a reductive, universal and non-revisionary account of the nature of linguistic representation. -/- Interpretationism in general, however, is threatened by severe internal tension, due to arguments for radical inscrutability. These contend that, given the interpretationist setting, there can be no fact of the matter what object an individual word refers to: for example, that there is no fact of the matter as to whether “London” refers to London or to Sydney. -/- A series of challenges emerge, forming the basis for this thesis. 1. What sort of properties is the interpretationist trying to reduce, and what kind of reductive story is she offering? 2. How are inscrutability theses best formulated? Are arguments for inscrutability effective in their own terms? What kinds of inscrutability arise? 3. Is endorsing radical inscrutability a stable position? 4. Are there theoretical virtues—such as simplicity—that can be appealed to in discrediting the rival (empirically equivalent) theories that underpin inscrutability arguments? -/- In addressing these questions, I concentrate on diagnosing the source of inscrutability, mapping the space of ways of resisting the arguments for radical inscrutability, and examining the challenges faced in developing a principled account of linguistic content that avoids radical inscrutability. -/- The effect is not to close down the original puzzles, but rather to sharpen them into a set of new and deeper challenges. (shrink)

The dominant position in current debates on the mind-body problem is some version of physicalism, according to which the mind is reducible to the brain and mental phenomena are ultimately explainable in physical terms. But there seems to be an explanatory gap between physicalistic descriptions of neuronal processes and the subjectivity of conscious experience. Some dualists conclude that, therefore, consciousness must be ontologically distinct from any physical properties or entities. This article introduces and argues for a different perspective on these (...) issues, namely, an epistemological dualism - a nonreductive position which is neither a version of physicalism nor an ontological dualism. It is argued that Kant holds this epistemological dualism implicitly as a consequence of his critical epistemology. On the one hand, he stresses the explanatory gap between the mental and the physical. On the basis of his theory of subjectivity set out in the Transcendental Deduction, Kant provides an explanation for why the gap cannot be closed empirically, as the physicalist promises. On the other hand, in his criticism of Descartes’ dualism in the Paralogismschapter, Kant argues that an ontological conclusion on the basis of this epistemological gap is unjustified even though physicalism is explanatory inadequate to account for consciousness. Thus, this epistemological dualism can be seen as an original third way between physicalist reductionism and ontological dualism. (shrink)

We present a sound and complete Fitch-style natural deduction system for an S5 modal logic containing an actuality operator, a diagonal necessity operator, and a diagonal possibility operator. The logic is two-dimensional, where we evaluate sentences with respect to both an actual world (first dimension) and a world of evaluation (second dimension). The diagonal necessity operator behaves as a quantifier over every point on the diagonal between actual worlds and worlds of evaluation, while the diagonal possibility quantifies over some point (...) on the diagonal. Thus, they are just like the epistemic operators for apriority and its dual. We take this extension of Fitch’s familiar derivation system to be a very natural one, since the new rules and labeled lines hereby introduced preserve the structure of Fitch’s own rules for the modal case. (shrink)

Russellian panpsychism puts basic conscious properties at the bottom level and then grounds lowestlevel physical entities in them. This paper offers arguments against the view. The explanatory gap cuts both ways, making it as hard to get the physical out of consciousness as to get consciousness out of the physical. Russellian panpsychism can't explain how basic conscious properties yield high-level consciousness. Other non-physicalist views can evade the causal argument for physicalism at least as well as Russellian panpsychism. Simplicity and beauty (...) don't supply reasons for Russellian panpsychism. (shrink)

Some philosophers of mind have argued for considering consciousness as a further fundamental feature of reality in addition to its physical properties. Hence most of them are property dualists. But some of them are panpsychists. In the present paper it will be argued that being a real property dualist essentially entails being a panpsychist. Even if panpsychism deals rather elegantly with certain problems of the puzzle of consciousness, there’s no way around the composition problem. Adhering to the fundamentality claim of (...) the mind, it will be shown that only a radical revision of metaphysics will allow the panpsychist to avoid these troubles, and hence that a panpsychist must adopt Leibnizian idealism. (shrink)

En su laboratorio, Benjamin Libet les pidió a algunos participantes apretar un botón cuando lo decidieran. Pretendía medir, con un eeg, la secuencia entre el deseo de mover la muñeca, la activación del área motora cerebral y el movimiento. Los resultados parecen negar la voluntad libre: primero se da la actividad cerebral, luego el deseo consciente de mover la muñeca y, finalmente, el movimiento. Nuestro cerebro —y no nuestra voluntad— decidiría nuestras acciones. En este artículo cuestiono el aparato conceptual de (...) tal explicación, haciendo énfasis en las nociones de voluntad, la relación mente-cuerpo y, sobre todo, la estructura de la conciencia. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson’s Knowledge and its Limits has been highly influential since the beginning of this century. It can be read as a systematic response to scepticism. One of the most important notions in this response is the notion of «evidence,» which will be the focus of the present paper. I attempt to show primarily two things. First, the notion of evidence invoked by Williamson does not address the sceptical worry: he stipulates an objective notion of evidence, but this begs the (...) question against his opponent. Second, his related thesis «Evidence equals Knowledge» does not sit well with his own content externalism: he promises to relate epistemology to philosophy of mind, but he fails to live up to this commitment in his crucial chapter on scepticism. Other minor problems concerning evidence will also be discussed in due course. (shrink)

In anticipation of the journal’s centenary in 2027 this paper provides a citation network analysis of all available citation and publication data of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy (1923–2017). A total of 2,353 academic articles containing 21,772 references were collated and analyzed. This includes 175 articles that contained author-submitted keywords, 415 publisher-tagged keywords and 519 articles that had abstracts. Results initially focused on finding the most published authors, most cited articles and most cited authors within the journal, followed by most (...) discussed topics and emerging patterns using keywords and abstracts. The analysis then proceeded to apply social network analysis using Kumu© – a visualization platform for mapping systems and relationships using large datasets. Analysis reveals topic clusters both unique to the journal, and inclusive of the journal’s history. Results from this analysis reaffirm the journal’s continuing focus on topics in traditional analytic philosophy such as morality, epistemology and knowledge, whilst also featuring topics associated with logic and paradox. This paper presents a new approach to analysing and understanding the historic and emerging topics of interest to the journal, and its readership. This has never previously been done for single philosophy journal. This is historically important given the journal’s forthcoming centenary. (shrink)

The conclusion of physics, within both a historical and more recent context, that an objectively progressive time and present moment are derivative notions without actual physical foundation in nature, illustrate that these perceived chronological features originate from subjective conscious experience and the neurobiological processes underlying it. Using this conclusion as a stepping stone, it is posited that the phenomena of an in-built subjective conception of a progressive present moment in time and that of conscious awareness are actually one and the (...) same thing, and as such, are also the outcome of the same neurobiological processes. A possible explanation as to how this might be achieved by the brain through employing the neuronal induced nonconscious cognitive manipulation of a small interval of time is proposed. The CIP phenomenon, elucidated within the context of this study is also then discussed. (shrink)

This thesis inquires into our ‘human nature’ through an interdisciplinary approach that considers some of the radical changes in intellectual thought at those key points in Western culture in which this concept has been centrally deployed. The broad historical sweep that this study covers finds the preoccupation with defining who we are and what we are capable of inextricably linked with the focus, at most of the pivotal moments examined, on a dominant impulse to conceive human beings as moral creatures.

This thesis articulates an analytic version of the ontology of idealism, according to which universal phenomenal consciousness is all there ultimately is, everything else in nature being reducible to patterns of excitation of this consciousness. The thesis’ key challenge is to explain how the seemingly distinct conscious inner lives of different subjects—such as you and me—can arise within this fundamentally unitary phenomenal field. Along the way, a variety of other challenges are addressed, such as: how we can reconcile idealism with (...) the fact that we all inhabit a common external world; why this world unfolds independently of our personal volition or imagination; why there are such tight correlations between measured patterns of brain activity and reports of experience; etc. The core idea of this thesis can be summarized thus: we, as well as all other living organisms, are dissociated alters of universal phenomenal consciousness, analogously to how a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) manifests multiple disjoint centers of subjectivity also called ‘alters.’ We, and all other living organisms, are surrounded by the transpersonal phenomenal activity of universal consciousness, which unfolds beyond the dissociative boundary of our respective alter. The inanimate world we perceive around us is the extrinsic appearance—i.e. the phenomenal image imprinted from across our dissociative boundary—of this activity. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other alters. (shrink)

In the first instance, IIT is formulated as a theory of the physical basis of the 'degree' or ‘level’ or ‘amount’ of consciousness in a system. In addition, integrated information theorists have tried to provide a systematic theory of how physical states determine the specific qualitative contents of episodes of consciousness: for instance, an experience as of a red and round thing rather than a green and square thing. I raise a series of questions about the central explanatory target, the (...) 'degree' or ‘level’ or ‘amount’ of consciousness. I suggest it is not at all clear what scientists and philosophers are talking about when they talk about consciousness as gradable. I also raise some questions about the explanation of qualitative content. (shrink)

“Naturalized epistemology” is a recent attempt to transform the theory of knowledge into a branch of natural science. Traditional epistemologists object to this proposal on the grounds that it eliminates the distinctively philosophical content of epistemology. In this thesis, I argue that traditional philosophers are justified in their reluctance to accept naturalism, but that their ongoing inability to refute it points to deeper problems inherent in traditional epistemology. I establish my thesis first by critiquing three versions of naturalism, showing that (...) each version either fails to implement its objectives consistently or starts from dubious objectives. “Optimistic naturalism” attempts to use naturalistic methods to give positive answers to traditional epistemological questions (such as by affirming that our beliefs can be justified). This fails because the form of traditional questions requires the concept “belief,” a concept that I argue naturalistic methodology cannot countenance (because of the severe constraints of naturalistic semantic theory). “Pessimistic naturalism,” the version advocated by Quine, is more consistent with naturalistic methodology, but fails because hidden behind its conclusions are assumptions (such as the underdetermination thesis) that cannot themselves be naturalized in the full context of scientific evidence. A final attempt to naturalize epistemology, deflationary naturalism, dispenses with traditional questions entirely, urging that the terms “knowledge” and “justification” be taken as mere pragmatic devices whose use can, nevertheless, be studied scientifically. Curiously, this view fails to take account of important facts about the actual use of those terms, as studied by psychologists. In the end, despite problems with each of these versions, traditional philosophers can learn something from their encounter with naturalism. In the course of showing how various naturalistic doctrines cannot themselves be naturalized, I identify the flaws in traditional epistemology (such as its reliance on a priorism, and its resulting inability to articulate a workable empirical foundationalist theory of justification) that make naturalism harder to challenge. These flaws must be corrected if philosophers are to preserve the autonomy of their discipline. (shrink)

Philosophical discourse traditionally distinguishes between ontology and epistemology and generally enforces this distinction by keeping the two subject areas separated. However, the relationship between the two areas is of central importance to physics and philosophy of physics. For instance, many measurement-related problems force us to consider both our knowledge of the states and observables of a system and its states and observables independent of such knowledge. This applies to quantum systems in particular. This contribution presents an example showing the importance (...) of distinguishing between ontic and epistemic levels of description even for classical systems. Corresponding conceptions of ontic and epistemic states and their evolution are introduced and discussed with respect to aspects of stability and information flow. These aspects show why the ontic/epistemic distinction is particularly important for systems exhibiting deterministic chaos. Moreover, this distinction provides some understanding of the relationships between determinism, causation, predictability, randomness, and stochasticity. (shrink)