A commentary on a target article by Alison Gopnik (1993) How we know our minds: the illusion of first-person knowledge of intentionality. Focusing on evidence of how children acquire a theory of mind, this commentary argues that there are internal inconsistencies in theories that both argue for the functional role of conscious experiences and the irreducibility of those experiences to third-person viewable information processing.

This paper replies to the first 36 commentaries on my target article on “Is human information processing conscious?” (Behavioral and Brain Sciences,1991, pp.651-669). The target article focused largely on experimental studies of how consciousness relates to human information processing, tracing their relation from input through to output, while discussion of the implications of the findings both for cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind was relatively brief. The commentaries reversed this emphasis, and so, correspondingly, did the reply. The sequence of topics (...) in the reply roughly follows that of the target article. The discussion begins with a reconsideration of the details of the empirical findings, whether they can be extrapolated to non-laboratory settings, and the extent to which one can rely on their use of subjective reports. This is followed by an in-depth discussion of what is meant by “conscious processing” and of how phenomenal consciousness relates to attentional processing. We then turn to broader philosophical and theoretical issues. I point out some of the reasons why I do not support epiphenomenalism, dualist-interactionism, or reductionism, and elaborate on how first- and third-person views of the mind can be regarded as complementary and mutually irreducible. I suggest how the relation of conscious experiences to their neural correlates can be understood in terms of a dual-aspect theory of information,and how this might be used to resolve some of the paradoxes surrounding the causal interactions of consciousness and brain. I also suggest that, viewed from a first-person perspective, consciousness gives purpose to existence, which allows a different way of viewing its role in evolution. (shrink)

Recent philosophy of mind has seen an increase of interest in theories of intentionality in offering a functional account of mental states. The standard intentionalist view holds that mental states can be exhaustively accounted for in terms of their representational contents. An alternative view proposed by Tim Crane, called impure intentionalism, specifies mental states in terms of intentional content, mode, and object. This view is also suggested to hold for states of sensory awareness. This paper primarily develops an alternative to (...) the impure intentionalist account of states of sensory awareness. On the basis of Husserl’s phenomenological work, I argue that a focus on intentionality at the level of sensory awareness is phenomenologically implausible. The final part offers an alternative functional account of sensory awareness based on what Husserl called ‘immanent association’. (shrink)

Phenomenology is explored as a way of helping students and educators open up to music as a creative and transformative experience. I begin by introducing a simple exercise in experimental phenomenology involving multi-stable visual phenomena that can be explored without the use of complex terminology. Here, I discuss how the “phenomenological attitude” may foster a deeper appreciation of the structure of consciousness, as well as the central role the body plays in how we experience and form understandings of the worlds (...) we inhabit. I then explore how the phenomenological attitude may serve as a starting point for students and teachers as they begin to reflect on their involvement with music as co-investigators. Here I draw on my teaching practice as a percussion and drum kit instructor, with a special focus on multi-stable musical phenomena. To conclude, I briefly consider how the phenomenological approach might be developed beyond the practice room to examine music’s relationship to the experience of culture, imagination and “self.”. (shrink)

Analytic Panpsychism has been brought into contact with Indian philosophy primarily through an examination of the Advaita Vedānta tradition and the Yogācāra tradition. In this work I explore the relation between Rāmānuja, the 12th century father of the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta tradition, and analytic panpsychism. I argue that Rāmānuja’s philosophy inspires a more world affirming form of cosmopsychism where there are different kinds of reality, rather than one fundamental reality of pure consciousness and an ordinary wrold that is illusory from the (...) perspective of fundamental reality. (shrink)

Consciousness is seen as a difficult “binding” problem. Binding, a process where different sensations evoked by an item are associated in the nervous system, can be viewed as a process similar to associative learning. Several reports that consciousness is associated with some form of memory imply that different forms of memories have a common feature contributing to consciousness. Based on a proposed synaptic mechanism capable of explaining different forms of memory, we developed a framework for consciousness. It is based on (...) the formation of semblance of sensory stimulus from (1) synaptic semblances when excitatory postsynaptic potentials arrive at functionally LINKed postsynaptic membranes, and (2) network semblances when these potentials summate to elicit action potential initiating activity in a network of neurons. It is then possible to derive a framework for consciousness as a multi-dimensional semblance. According to this framework, a continuum of semblances formed from background sensory stimuli and oscillating neuronal activities serve to maintain consciousness. Feasibility of this framework to explain various physiological and pathological states of consciousness, its subjective nature and qualia is examined. (shrink)

Consciousness is seen as a difficult “binding” problem. Binding, a process where different sensations evoked by an item are associated in the nervous system, can be viewed as a process similar to associative learning. Several reports that consciousness is associated with some form of memory imply that different forms of memories have a common feature contributing to consciousness. Based on a proposed synaptic mechanism capable of explaining different forms of memory, we developed a framework for consciousness. It is based on (...) the formation of semblance of sensory stimulus from (1) synaptic semblances when excitatory postsynaptic potentials arrive at functionally LINKed postsynaptic membranes, and (2) network semblances when these potentials summate to elicit action potential initiating activity in a network of neurons. It is then possible to derive a framework for consciousness as a multi-dimensional semblance. According to this framework, a continuum of semblances formed from background sensory stimuli and oscillating neuronal activities serve to maintain consciousness. Feasibility of this framework to explain various physiological and pathological states of consciousness, its subjective nature and qualia is examined. (shrink)

If we are to preserve qualia, one possibility is to take the current academic, philosophical, and theoretical notion less seriously and current natural science and some pre-theoretical intuitions about qualia more seriously. Dennett (1997) is instrumental in showing how ideas of the intrinsicalness and privacy of qualia are misguided and those of ineffability and immediacy misinterpreted. However, by combining ideas of non-mechanicalness used in contemporary natural science with the pre-theoretical idea that qualia are special because they are unique, we get (...) a notion of qualia that is acceptable to naturalistic philosophy. The notion of unique qualia is not opposed to the idea that some of the characterizations of qualia have to be qualified. It is the folk-philosophical, academic, notions of theoreticity and conceptuality that have to be modified. (shrink)

Philosophical Studies 104: 143-162 (2001).

Notoriously, the dispositional view of natural properties is thought to face a number of regress problems, one of which points to an epistemological worry. In this paper, I argue that the rival categorical view is also susceptible to the same kind of regress problem. This problem can be overcome, most plausibly, with the development of a structuralist epistemology. After identifying problems faced by alternative solutions, I sketch the main features of this structuralist epistemological approach, referring to graph-theoretic modelling in the (...) process. Given that both the categoricalists and dispositionalists are under pressure to adopt this same epistemological approach in light of the regress problem, this suggests that the categoricalist versus dispositionalist debate is best fought on metaphysical rather than epistemological grounds. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a rational reconstruction of the claim of eliminative materialism (EM), espoused by Paul and Patricia Churchland. It will identify and clarify alternative understandings of that view and assess the version that is the most plausible interpretation in the light of the Churchlands' writings and contemporary discussions. The result of the analysis is that eliminativism is best understood as a methodological thesis regarding the scope and depth of the possible revision of (scientific and folk) usage of (...) FP terms and principles. The problem is important not only, and nor primarily, for exegetical purposes. EM functions in contemporary metaphysics of mind mainly as a point of negative reference: for this reason, it is important to carefully formulate the main claim of EM so that the theorists taking part in the debate know what they actually disagree with. The careful formulation provided by this paper could show other philosophers that their position is not, in fact, as far from EM as they might have thought. (shrink)

This article was written as a commentary on a target article by Peter W. Ross entitled "The Location Problem for Color Subjectivism" [Consciousness and Cognition 10(1), 42-58 (2001)], and is published together with it, and with other commentaries and Ross's reply. If you or your library have the necessary subscription you can get PDF versions of the target article, all the commentaries, and Ross's reply to the commentaries here. However, I do not think that it is by any means essential (...) for you to have read Ross's piece in order to understand this one. Ross defends a view called "color physicalism" or color realism that holds (simplifying somewhat) that colors are real physical properties (in typical cases, spectral reflectances of object surfaces). This is in opposition to what is probably a more widely held "subjectivist" view of color, holding that color qualities really exist only in the mind. In my commentary I suggest that a realist view of qualitative properties, such as Ross's, together with a direct, active view of perception, and a concept of "extended mind" (Clark & Chalmers, 1998) may provide the materials for a real solution to the notorious hard problem of consciousness. I sketch this solution in outline. - N.J.T.T. (shrink)

I have argued elsewhere for a deflationary conception of metaphysics, which takes well-formed metaphysical questions to be answerable using nothing more mysterious than empirical information and descriptive and normative conceptual work. Here I examine the ways in which our practices of metaphysics should change, if we adopt the deflationary reconception of metaphysics. Adopting this approach does not mean abandoning metaphysics, but it does lead to important differences regarding which debates and positions are worth taking seriously. It also requires us to (...) reevaluate which criteria for choosing metaphysical views are appropriate – particularly where debates about existence are concerned. (shrink)

Critics of wide functionalism have traditionally sought to attack the theory by exposing weaknesses in its account of the qualitative content of experience. Wide functionalist theories of intentional content, however, were spared philosophical scrutiny. I propose that wide functionalist accounts of the intentional content are equally susceptible to attack. I will attempt to demonstrate this by enlisting the functionalist's old foe from the qualia wars - the inverted spectrum hypothesis - in a new way. If the argument is sound, not (...) only will I have shown that the inverted spectrum hypothesis may have more use than philosophical literature recognizes, I will have also exposed a weakness in a dominant philosophical theory: the wide functionalist theory of intentional content. (shrink)

I examine the abstraction/representation theory of computation put forward by Horsman et al., connecting it to the broader notion of modeling, and in particular, model-based explanation, as considered by Rosen. I argue that the ‘representational entities’ it depends on cannot themselves be computational, and that, in particular, their representational capacities cannot be realized by computational means, and must remain explanatorily opaque to them. I then propose that representation might be realized by subjective experience, through being the bearer of the structure (...) of abstract objects that are represented. (shrink)

Representationalist accounts of mental content face the threat of the homunculus fallacy. In collapsing the distinction between the conscious state and the conscious subject, self-representational accounts of consciousness possess the means to deal with this objection. We analyze a particular sort of self-representational theory, built on the work of John von Neumann on self-reproduction, using tools from mathematical logic. We provide an explicit theory of the emergence of referential beliefs by means of modal fixed points, grounded in intrinsic properties yielding (...) the subjective aspects of experience. Furthermore, we study complications introduced by allowing for the modification of such symbolic content by environmental influences. (shrink)

Horgan’s perceptive discussion of Freudian psychology, Prozac and evolutionary biology cannot mitigate the problems that seriously weaken his book (Horgan, 1999). While he certainly manages to deflate some of the more outrageous hype surrounding the scientific and often not-so-scientific study of the mind, his criticism of the brain and behavioral sciences contains a number of flaws, some of which I will address below. My response focuses on his discussion of neuroscience. As we shall see, the three mysteries that Horgan believes (...) cripple neuroscience are certainly not as serious as he insists. (shrink)

Oscar is going to be the first artificial person — at any rate, he is going to be the first artificial person to be built in Tucson's Philosophy Department. Oscar's creator, John Pollock, maintains that once Oscar is complete he will experience qualia, will be self-conscious, will have desires, fears, intentions, and a full range of mental states (Pollock 1989, pp. ix–x). In this paper I focus on what seems to me to be the most problematical of these claims, viz., (...) that Oscar will experience qualia. I argue that we have not been given sufficient reasons to believe this bold claim. I doubt that Oscar will enjoy qualitative conscious phenomena and I maintain that it will be like nothing to be Oscar. (shrink)

Keith Lehrer distinguishes three kinds of questions about consciousness: scientific questions, metaphysical questions, and epistemological questions. He leaves the scientific questions to the scientists. He articulates and answers the peculiar epistemological questions posed by consciousness. And he boldly contends that no metaphysical questions about consciousness remain, once the epistemological questions have been answered. This is an astonishing claim. What happened to the metaphysical questions? Were they pseudo-questions? Were they epistemological questions masquerading as metaphysical ones? And isn't it possible that Lehrer's (...) epistemological account of consciousness raises metaphysical questions of its own? I will argue that Lehrer's account of consciousness does leave a metaphysical remainder. To deal with this remainder, Lehrer could try to expand his explanatory framework—but this would involve to a substantial revision of his current views. I end with a speculative proposal that might allow Lehrer acknowledge all the points raised in this paper, but without forcing him to revise his account of consciousness in a substantial way. (shrink)

This article uses participant objectivation in sociology and philosophy as two knowledge fields to provide a reflexive comparison of their synced field effect in historical circumstances. Drawing on the philosopher and historian of science Gaston Bachelard, I theorize fielded knowledge as a social relation that combines the prior presence of folk knowledge with a socioanalytic exchange between field and folk that includes positions of either defense, replacement or critique. A comparison of post-Wittgenstein Anglophone philosophy and post-sixties American sociology describes their (...) mutual confrontation with folk psychology as an “epistemological obstacle” that generates a remarkable concern with action as a position-taking on the folk relation. A reflexive objectivation of folk knowledge is therefore necessary for a revised understanding of action that correlates with the distinction of sociology’s knowledge capital and how it fares as an explanatory resource in competitive circumstances. The article concludes by leveraging the synced field effect even further to make a recommendation that sociologists can increase the distinction of their knowledge capital by producing discourse that can recognize, legitimate and officialize experiences that otherwise remain obscure, nameless or impossible within the bounded universe of folk psychology. (shrink)

THIS PAPER ARGUES FOR THE CLAIM THAT ALTHOUGH COLOUR WORDS LIKE 'RED' ARE, ESSENTIALLY, 'PHENOMENAL-QUALITY' WORDS—I.E., WORDS FOR PROPERTIES WHOSE WHOLE AND ESSENTIAL NATURE CAN BE AND IS FULLY REVEALED IN SENSORY EXPERIENCE, GIVEN ONLY THE QUALITATIVE CHARACTER THAT THAT EXPERIENCE HAS—STILL 'RED' CANNOT BE SUPPOSED TO BE A WORD THAT PICKS OUT OR DENOTES ANY PARTICULAR PHENOMENAL QUALITY. THE ARGUMENT RESTS ESSENTIALLY ON THE SUPPOSITION, OFTEN DISCUSSED UNDER THE HEADING OF THE 'COLOR-SPECTRUM INVERSION ARGUMENT', THAT TWO PEOPLE COULD POSSIBLY (...) AGREE IN ALL THEIR COLOUR-JUDGEMENTS WHILE DIFFERING IN THEIR COLOUR EXPERIENCE. (shrink)

A fiction may prescribe imagining that a pig can talk or tell the future. A fiction may prescribe imagining that torturing innocent persons is a good thing. We generally comply with imaginative prescriptions like the former, but not always with prescriptions like the latter: we imagine non-evaluative fictions without difficulty but sometimes resist imagining value-rich fictions. Thus arises the puzzle of imaginative resistance. Most analyses of the phenomenon focus on the content of the relevant imaginings. The present analysis focuses instead (...) on the character of certain kinds of imaginings, arguing that we resist in such cases given the rich evaluative character of the imaginings prescribed, and the agent-dependent constraints on imagining in such ways. (shrink)

Fictions evoke imagery, and their value consists partly in that achievement. This paper offers analysis of this neglected topic. Section 2 identifies relevant philosophical background. Section 3 offers a working definition of imagery. Section 4 identifies empirical work on visual imagery. Sections 5 and 6 criticize imagery essentialism, through the lens of genuine fictional narratives. This outcome, though, is not wholly critical. The expressed spirit of imagery essentialism is to encourage philosophers to ‘put the image back into the imagination’. The (...) weakened conclusion is that while an image is not essential to imagining, it should be returned to our theories of imagination. (shrink)

This is the first in a series of two articles that serve as an introduction to recent debates about cognitive phenomenology. Cognitive phenomenology can be defined as the experience that is associated with cognitive activities, such as thinking, reasoning, and understanding. What is at issue in contemporary debates is not the existence of cognitive phenomenology, so defined, but rather its nature and theoretical role. The first article examines questions about the nature of cognitive phenomenology, while the second article explores the (...) philosophical implications of these questions for the role of consciousness in theories of intentionality, introspective self-knowledge, and knowledge of the external world. (shrink)

In the first section of this paper I argue that the main reason why Daniel Dennett’s Intentional Systems Theory (IST) has been perceived as behaviourist or antirealist is its inability to account for the causal efficacy of the mental. The rest of the paper is devoted to the claim that by emending the theory with a phenomenon called ‘empathic resonance’ (ER), it can account for the various explananda in the mental causation debate. Thus, IST + ER is a much more (...) viable option than IST, even though IST + ER assigns a crucial role to the phenomenology of agency, a role that is incompatible with Dennett’s writings on consciousness. (shrink)

This paper examines how new evil demon problems could arise for our access to the internal world of our own minds. I start by arguing that the internalist/externalist debate in epistemology has been widely misconstrued---we need to reconfigure the debate in order to see how it can arise about our access to the internal world. I then argue for the coherence of scenarios of radical deception about our own minds, and I use them to defend a properly formulated internalist view (...) about our access to our minds. The overarching lesson is that general epistemology and the specialized epistemology of introspection need to talk---each has much to learn from each other. (shrink)

In part one, I clarify the crucial notion of “introspection”, and give novel cases for the coherence of scenarios of local and global deception about how we access our own minds, drawing on empirical work. In part two, I evaluate a series of skeptical arguments based on such scenarios of error, and in each case explain why the skeptical argument fails. The first main upshot is that we should not over-estimate what it takes to introspect: introspection need not be accurate, (...) or non-inferential, or exclusive of perception, or even exclusive of confabulation. The second main upshot is that, while skeptical challenges by figures such as Carruthers, Doris, and Schwitzgebel are rich and empirically informed, these skeptical challenges founder on how they are epistemologically under-informed. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose that those who reject higher-order theories of consciousness should not rule out the possibility of having conscious experiences that they cannot introspect. I begin by offering four arguments that such non-introspectible conscious experiences are possible. Next, I offer two arguments for thinking that we actually have such experiences. According to the first argument, it is unlikely that evolution would have furnished us with a faculty of introspection that worked flawlessly. According to the second argument, there (...) are many plausible potential sources of non-introspectible experiences. Given that all of these sources are at least somewhat plausible, it is fairly probable that we have some kind or other. Finally, I consider whether we might be justified in believing that we can introspect all of our conscious experiences if in fact we can. I show that current approaches to justifying belief in epiphenomenal qualia do not carry over. The upshot of these arguments is that we should be less certain that we really know what it feels like to be us. There may be much more to our experiences than we are aware of. (shrink)

Consciousness in experimental subjects is typically inferred from reports and other forms of voluntary behaviour. A wealth of everyday experience confirms that healthy subjects do not ordinarily behave in these ways unless they are conscious. Investigation of consciousness in vegetative state patients has been based on the search for neural evidence that such broad functional capacities are preserved in some vegetative state patients. We call this the standard approach. To date, the results of the standard approach have suggested that some (...) vegetative state patients might indeed be conscious, although they fall short of being demonstrative. The fact that some vegetative state patients show evidence of consciousness according to the standard approach is remarkable, for the standard approach to consciousness is rather conservative, and leaves open the pressing question of how to ascertain whether patients who fail such tests are conscious or not. We argue for a cluster-based ‘natural kind’ methodology that is adequate to that task, both as a replacement for the approach that currently informs research into the presence or absence of consciousness in vegetative state patients and as a methodology for the science of consciousness more generally. 1. Introduction2. The Vegetative State3. The Standard Approach4. The Natural Kind Methodology5. Is Consciousness a Special Case? 5.1 Is consciousness a natural kind?5.2 A special obstacle?6. Conclusion. (shrink)

According to illusionism, phenomenal consciousness is an introspective illusion. The illusion problem is to explain the cause of the illusion, or why we are powerfully disposed to judge—erroneously—that we are phenomenally conscious. I propose a theory to solve the illusion problem. I argue that on the basis of three hypotheses about the mind—which I call introspective opacity, the infallibility intuition, and the justification constraint—we can explain our disposition, on introspection, to draw erroneous unconscious inferences about our sensory states. Being subject (...) to the illusion of phenomenal consciousness consists in having this disposition. I explain our ‘problem intuitions’ about consciousness —that our sensory states bear phenomenal properties that are qualitatively like something with which we are directly acquainted that is ineffable, atomic, intrinsic, private, and non-physical. I also address the illusion meta-problem, which is to explain why illusionism seems especially counterintuitive. (shrink)

I argue that Daniel Dennett's latest book, Consciousness Explained, presents a radically eliminativist view of conscious experience in which experience or, in Dennett's own words, actual phenomenology, becomes a merely intentional object of our own and others? judgments ?about? experience. This strategy of ?intentionalizing? consciousness dovetails nicely with Dennett's background model of brain function: cognitive pandemonium, but does not follow from it. Thus Dennett is driven to a series of independent attacks on the notion of conscious experience, many of which (...) depend upon verificationist premises. I do not directly dispute the appeal to verificationism (though many would, I am sure) but rather aim to show that the sort of verificationist arguments that Dennett employs are fundamentally similar to classical sceptical arguments. The philosophical status of such arguments remains perennially unclear, but none of them produce conviction in their ostensible conclusions. I argue that Dennett's verificationist strategy suffers the same fate. (shrink)

Qualia and Physicalism. It is assumed that the following three relations exhaust the possibilities for a physicalist account of qualia: 1. determination, 2. identity, 3. realization. The first relation is immediately rejected because it does not exclude property dualism. The second faces the problem that it is probably impossible to discriminate empirically between the identity thesis and the epiphenomenalist position. The third cannot handle qualia adequately, for qualia are not functional properties and the realization relation is only plausible as a (...) relation between physical realizers and functional properties. Finally, if one attempts to replace multiple realization by multiple identities it is shown that the notion of multiple property identities is unintelligible. The upshot is that if these three relations exhaust the possibilities of a physicalist construal of qualia then physicalism is wrong. (shrink)