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)

Throughout the debate on psi, skeptics have almost universally insisted on different standards for evaluating the evidence, claiming that psi represents a radical departure from our current scientific understanding. Thus, there is considerable ambiguity about what standard of evaluation psi must meet. Little attention has been paid to the possible harm to the integrity of scientific investigation from this resulting inconsistency in testing standards. Some have proposed using a Bayesian framework as an improvement on this dilemma in order to more (...) explicitly model beliefs, assumptions, and background scientific knowledge, especially when evaluating a controversial hypothesis. Recently, Kuhn’s notion of paradigms, which constrains scientific research within bound- aries believed to be most productive, has been incorporated into a Bayesian framework. Within this framework, I explore a likely paradigm or meta-theory used by skeptics that typically constrains research and makes it difficult for psi evidence to be accepted. It appears that such a paradigm would in many respects have difficulty accounting for consciousness, which is fundamental to an understanding of psi. I discuss why psi data are likely to play a key role in making progress in solving the problem of consciousness. Thus, applying different standards of evaluation to psi data is likely counterproductive. (shrink)

This selective overview of the history of American Philosophy in the Twentieth Century begins with certain enduring themes that were developed by the two main founders of classical American pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839--1914) and William James. Against the background of the pervasive influence of Kantian and Hegelian idealism in America in the decades surrounding the turn of the century, pragmatism and related philosophical outlooks emphasizing naturalism and realism were dominant during the first three decades of the century. Beginning in (...) the 1930s and 1940s, however, the middle third of the century witnessed the rising influence in America of what would become known as “‘analytic philosophy’,” with its primary roots in Europe: in the Cambridge philosophical analysis of Moore, Russell, and Wittgenstein; logical empiricism and positivism on the continent; and linguistic analysis and ordinary- language philosophy at Oxford. This overview stresses the persistence of pragmatist themes throughout much of the century, while emphasizing the mid-century transformations that resulted from developments primarily in analytic philosophy. These combined influences resulted at the turn of the millennium in the flourishing, among other developments, of distinctively analytic styles of pragmatism and naturalism. (shrink)

The mind-body problem is analyzed in a physicalist perspective. By combining the concepts of emergence and algorithmic information theory in a thought experiment employing a basic nonlinear process, it is shown that epistemically strongly emergent properties may develop in a physical system. Turning to the significantly more complex neural network of the brain it is subsequently argued that consciousness is epistemically emergent. Thus reductionist understanding of consciousness appears not possible; the mind-body problem does not have a reductionist solution. The ontologically (...) emergent character of consciousness is then identified from a combinatorial analysis relating to universal limits set by quantum mechanics, implying that consciousness is fundamentally irreducible to low-level phenomena. (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)

Our commonsense notion of reality is supported by two critical assumptions for which we have little understanding: The conscious experience which underpins the observations integral to the scientific method and language, which is the method by which all theories, scientific or otherwise, are communicated. This book examines both of these matters in detail and arrives at a new theoretical foundation for understanding how nature undertakes the task of building the universe. -/- Creating Reality is a synthesis of Darwin’s The Origin (...) of Species and Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach (GEB). It is an intellectual journey that addresses the most profound questions facing science and philosophy today and delivers the greatest transformation in the way we view the world since Darwin’s masterpiece. The book is targeted at anyone up for the cerebral challenge of thinking deeply about how we make sense of the world and our existence. The book is thoroughly researched and referenced, drawing from the most highly credential sources. -/- When we take stock of where we are in our understanding of nature, it seems that three important questions stand out for which we have few answers. More than just questions, they represent gaps in our comprehension of what makes the universe tick. These are the thematic focal points of this book: -/- • What is the nature of belief? (An examination of truth as a function of language). • What is consciousness? • What is the relationship between mathematics and the physical world? -/- The exploration of these three questions unravels the mystery behind the principal means by which we come to have knowledge of the world. So our journey begins by asking the more generic question: How do we come to know the world? The book makes no assumptions about this thing called ‘reality’ and takes a fresh look at the presuppositions underlying commonsense notions of reality. (shrink)

Attempts to ‘naturalize’ phenomenology challenge both traditional phenomenology and traditional approaches to cognitive science. They challenge Edmund Husserl’s rejection of naturalism and his attempt to establish phenomenology as a foundational transcendental discipline, and they challenge efforts to explain cognition through mainstream science. While appearing to be a retreat from the bold claims made for phenomenology, it is really its triumph. Naturalized phenomenology is spearheading a successful challenge to the heritage of Cartesian dualism. This converges with the reaction against Cartesian thought (...) within science itself. Descartes divided the universe between res cogitans, thinking substances, and res extensa, the mechanical world. The latter won with Newton and we have, in most of objective science since, literally lost our mind, hence our humanity. Despite Darwin, biologists remain children of Newton, and dream of a grand theory that is epistemologically complete and would allow lawful entailment of the evolution of the biosphere. This dream is no longer tenable. We now have to recognize that science and scientists are within and part of the world we are striving to comprehend, as proponents of endophysics have argued, and that physics, biology and mathematics have to be reconceived accordingly. Interpreting quantum mechanics from this perspective is shown to both illuminate conscious experience and reveal new paths for its further development. In biology we must now justify the use of the word “function”. As we shall see, we cannot prestate the ever new biological functions that arise and constitute the very phase space of evolution. Hence, we cannot mathematize the detailed becoming of the biosphere, nor write differential equations for functional variables we do not know ahead of time, nor integrate those equations, so no laws “entail” evolution. The dream of a grand theory fails. In place of entailing laws, a post-entailing law explanatory framework is proposed in which Actuals arise in evolution that constitute new boundary conditions that are enabling constraints that create new, typically unprestatable, Adjacent Possible opportunities for further evolution, in which new Actuals arise, in a persistent becoming. Evolution flows into a typically unprestatable succession of Adjacent Possibles. Given the concept of function, the concept of functional closure of an organism making a living in its world, becomes central. Implications for patterns in evolution include historical reconstruction, and statistical laws such as the distribution of extinction events, or species per genus, and the use of formal cause, not efficient cause, laws. (shrink)

I examine some of the key scientific pre-commitments of modern psychology, and argue that their adoption has the unintended consequence of rendering a purely psychological analysis of mind indistinguishable from a purely biological treatment. And, since these pre-commitments sanction an “authority of the biological”, explanation of phenomena traditionally considered the purview of psychological analysis is fully subsumed under the biological. I next evaluate the epistemic warrant of these pre-commitments and suggest there are good reasons to question their applicability to psychological (...) science. I conclude that experiential aspects of reality give us reason to remain open to the need for psychological explanation in the treatment of mind. (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)

In this paper, I explain and assess Karen Bennett’s solution to the exclusion problem. I begin by explaining and motivating Bennett’s formulation of the exclusion problem. Bennett’s formulation of the problem is unique in that it’s not a pointed argument against any one particular view; rather, her formulation sets up the problem as a set of inconsistent claims, at least one of which must be denied to remove the inconsistency. I then explain and motivate Bennett’s solution. Bennett creates a counterfactual (...) test for overdetermination, which is meant to show that the non-reductivist account of mental causation does not result in rampant overdetermination. Next, I explain and motivate a recent objection to Bennett’s solution by Chiwook Won. Won’s charge is that Bennett’s counterfactuals are not necessary for overdetermination. However, I will show that Won does not assess the counterfactuals in Bennett’s test correctly and, thus, Bennett’s solution remains viable. (shrink)

In his Confessions, Augustine lamented, “What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I know not.” In this respect, consciousness is like time. If no one asks me what consciousness is, I know. To pay attention to something is to become conscious of it. Indeed, everything with which I can be familiar ­­ from the sound of your footsteps to my own daydreams ­­ can be an object (...) of my consciousness. Yet, if I wish to explain consciousness to one who asks, I know not. I (and, I suspect, we) have little theoretical grip on the nature of consciousness. Not for nothing did Schopenhauer call the problem of consciousness ‘the world knot.’ What, then, is consciousness? (shrink)

Music is often described in anthropomorphic terms. This paper suggests that if we think about music in certain ways we could think of it as conscious. Motional characteristics give music the impression of being alive, but musical motion is conventionally taken as metaphorical. The first part of this paper argues that metaphor may not be the exclusive means of understanding musical motion – there could also be literal ways. Discussing kinds of consciousness, particularly “access consciousness” (Block 1995), the second part (...) proposes ways in which music could (hypothetically) be conscious. The conclusion states that a greater understanding of the interactions of “phenomenal consciousness” and “access consciousness” is important in conceptualizing non-human consciousnesses, such as music might be conceived to be. (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.

En este trabajo se propone una caracterización de lo que la tradición filosófica denomina «qualia», a partir de cuatro rasgos principales: intrinsecalidad, inefabilidad, subjetividad y un peculiar acceso epistémico. Después de repasar brevemente las diversas teorías contemporáreas que pretenden responder al problema de cómo incorporar estos qualia al mundo físico, se propone una salida naturalista al problema de los qualia, consistente en dar una explicación independiente de cada uno de estos rasgos dentro de un marco naturalista, tomando como punto de (...) partida nuestro lenguaje mentalista ordinario. La idea es que una vez explicados estos rasgos, la pregunta más abstracta acerca de cómo incorporar los qualia a una pintura naturalista del mundo, ya no necesita ser planteada. (shrink)

Consciousness is best understood in context, as one element of an interactive waking state in which the greater part of cognitive processing takes place in a nonconscious fashion. But if conscious and nonconscious processing are combined in the waking state, what distinguishes the former form the latter, what is consciousness, and what is its purpose? The answer to the second question depends crucially on our conclusion regarding the first. What is the property in virtue of which a state is conscious (...) rather than nonconscious? In the following, it will be argued that of the answers most frequently proposed—intentionality, subjectivity, accessibility, reflexivity—only the final characteristic, reflexive, autonoetic awareness, is unique to the conscious state. Reflexivity can best be explained not as the product of a self-representational data structure, but as the expression of a recursive processing regime, in which cognition registers the properties of the processing state to a greater extent than properties of the content represented. And the principal characteristic of a reflexive processing state is cognitive reflexivity or autonoetic awareness. (shrink)

Th is review article discusses Rebecca Kukla and Mark Lance’s (2009) book on normative speech act theory and Joseph Heath’s (2008) book on rule following, putting them into the context of the general problem of normativity of human discursive practices (and human practices in general). Th e upshot of the discussion is that while Heath’s book advances our understanding of the normative dimension of human life, prominently including human language, Kukla and Lance’s one presents a deeply interesting attempt at a (...) framework for the study of discourse taking normativity of language at face value. (shrink)

Metaphysicians eager to engage with substantive, thoughtful, and provocative issues will be happy with John Heil’s From an Ontological Point of View. The book represents not only a sustained defence of a specific metaphysical theory, but also of a specific way of doing metaphysics. Put ontology first, Heil urges us, in order to remember that the original fascination of metaphysics wasn’t the question ‘what must the world be like in order to correspond neatly to our use of language?’, but rather (...) the altogether more fundamental ‘what must the world be like?’. (shrink)

Neurological syndromes in which consciousness seems to malfunction, such as temporal lobe epilepsy, visual scotomas, Charles Bonnet syndrome, and synesthesia offer valuable clues about the normal functions of consciousness and ‘qualia’. An investigation into these syndromes reveals, we argue, that qualia are different from other brain states in that they possess three functional characteristics, which we state in the form of ‘three laws of qualia’. First, they are irrevocable: I cannot simply decide to start seeing the sunset as green, or (...) feel pain as if it were an itch; second, qualia do not always produce the same behaviour: given a set of qualia, we can choose from a potentially infinite set of possible behaviours to execute; and third, qualia endure in short-term memory, as opposed to non-conscious brain states involved in the on-line guidance of behaviour in real time. We suggest that qualia have evolved these and other attributes because of their role in facilitating non-automatic, decision-based action. We also suggest that the apparent epistemic barrier to knowing what qualia another person is experiencing can be overcome by using a ‘bridge’ of neurons; and we offer a hypothesis about the relation between qualia and one's sense of self. (shrink)

I here describe meanings attributed to the term consciousness, extracted from the literature and from recent online discussions. Forty such meanings were identified and categorized according to whether they were principally about function or about experience; some overlapped but others were apparently mutually exclusive - and this list is by no means exhaustive. Most can be regarded as expressions of authors' views about the basis of con-sciousness, or opinions about the significance of aspects of its con-tents. The prospects for reaching (...) any single, agreed, theory independent definition of consciousness thus appear remote. How-ever, much confusion could be avoided if authors were always to spec-ify which aspects of consciousness they refer to when using the term. An example is outlined of how this can be done. (shrink)

Contrary to philosophical tradition, modern theorists of the mind have often downplayed the importance of consciousness. Instead, they have accounted for the mind in terms of phenomena like mechanisms, dispositions, abilities and even environmental features. One of many inspirations for this trend is a series of passages of the later Wittgenstein. These passages discuss a variety of specific mental phenomena, like searching, comparing, understanding and reading. The passages have often been taken them to show that one may exemplify any of (...) the phenomena at issue without being in any particular type of conscious state. I claim that the passages do not support this conclusion, and that the conclusion is, arguably, false. My conclusion is that consciousness may be a more important aspect of the mind than is supposed by many contemporary theorists--both Wittgensteinians and others. (shrink)

Key Terms: Phenomenal consciousness, access consciousness, qualitative character, subjective character, intransitive self-consciousness, disposition, categorical basis, subliminal perception, blindsight.

The existence of quantum correlates of consciousness (QCC) is doubtful from a scientific perspective. But even if their existence were verified, philosophical problems would remain. On the other hand, there could be more to QCC than meets the sceptic's eye: • QCC might be useful or even necessary for a better understanding of conscious experience or quantum physics or both. The main reasons for this are: the measurement problem (the nature of observation, the mysterious collapse of the wave function, etc.), (...) ostensibly shared features of quantum phenomena and conscious phenomena (e.g., complementarity, nonspatiality, acausality, spontaneity, and holism) and connections (ontology, causation, and knowledge), the qualia problem (subjectivity, explanatory gap etc.). But there are many problems, especially questions regarding realism and the nature and role of conscious observers; • QCC are conceptually challenging, because there are definitory problems and some crucial ontological and epistemological shortcomings. It is instructive to compare them with recent proposals for understanding neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). QCC are not sufficient for a quantum theory of mind, nor might they be necessary except perhaps in a very broad sense; • QCC are also empirically challenging. Nevertheless, QCC could be relevant and important for the mindbody problem: QCC might reveal features that are necessary at least for behavioral manifestations of human consciousness. But QCC are compatible with very different proposals for a solution of the mind-body problem. This seems to be both advantageous and detrimental. QCC restrict accounts of nomological identity. The discovery of QCC cannot establish a naturalistic theory of mind alone. But there are also problems with QCC in the framework of other ontologies. (shrink)

Current scientific research on consciousness aims to understand how consciousness arises from the workings of the brain and body, as well as the relations between conscious experience and cognitive processing. Clearly, to make progress in these areas, researchers cannot avoid a range of conceptual issues about the nature and structure of consciousness, such as the following: What is the relation between intentionality and consciousness? What is the relation between self-awareness and consciousness? What is the temporal structure of conscious experience? What (...) is it like to imagine or visualize something, and how is this type of experience different from perception? How is bodily experience related to self-consciousness? Such issues have been addressed in detail in the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, inaugurated by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and developed by numerous other philosophers throughout the 20th century. This chapter provides an introduction to this tradition and its way of approaching issues about consciousness. We first discuss some features of phenomenological methodology and then present some of the most important, influential, and enduring phenomenological proposals about various aspects of consciousness. These aspects include intentionality, self-awareness and the first-person perspective, time-consciousness, embodiment, and intersubjectivity. We also highlight a few ways of linking phenomenology and cognitive. (shrink)

The objectives of this article are twofold. First, by denying the dualism inherent in attempts to load metaphysical significance on the inner/outer distinction, it defends the view that scientific investigation can approach consciousness in itself, and is not somehow restricted in scope to the outward manifestations of a private and hidden realm. Second, it provisionally endorses the central tenets of global workspace theory, and recommends them as a possible basis for the sort of scientific understanding of consciousness thus legitimised. However, (...) the article goes on to argue that global workspace theory alone does not constitute a fully worked-out objective account of the conscious subject. This requires additional attention to be paid to the issue of embodiment, and to the possibility of indexicality that arises when an instantiation of the global workspace architecture inhabits a spatially localised body. (shrink)

This paper considers whether, and how, the mind can be incorporated into structural realism. Section 1 begins with some definitions, and briefly reviews the main problems which beset structural realism. The existence of the mind is proffered as an additional problem, to which the rest of the paper is devoted. Three different philosophies of the mind are analysed, beginning with eliminative materialism, which is briefly reviewed in Section 2. The identity theory of the mind-brain relationship is critically analysed in Section (...) 3, and the notions of supervenience and emergentism are defined. In Section 4, the functionalist approach to the mind-brain relationship is introduced, and two specific functionalist approaches---the representational theory of the mind, and connectionism---are defined and appraised. It is argued that these approaches enable structural realism to be extended to include the mind. It is also argued that structural realism can be applied to the unconscious mind, and the paper concludes with the proposal that the distinction between epistemic structural realism and ontic structural realism is also valid in the case of the mind. (shrink)

Psychology, according to a standard dictionary definition, is the science of mind and behavior. For a major part of the twentieth century, (nonhuman) animal psychology was on a behavioristic track that explicitly denied the possibility of a science of animal mind. While many comparative psychologists remain wedded to behavioristic methods, they have more recently adopted a cognitive, information-processing approach that does not adhere to the strictures of stimulus-response explanations of animal behavior. Cognitive ethologists are typically willing to go much further (...) than comparative psychologists by adopting folk-psychological terms to explain the behavior of nonhuman animals. This different attitudes of many scientists presupposes a distinction between cognitive and mental state attributions that is not commonly articulated. This paper seeks to understand that distinction. (shrink)

Thinking is special. There is nothing quite like it. Thinking.

This dissertation explores issues in the philosophy of psychology and metaphysics through the lens of the emotion of disgust, and its corresponding property, disgustingness. The first chapter organizes an extremely large body of data about disgust, imposes two constraints any theory must meet, and offers a cognitive model of the mechanisms underlying the emotion. The second chapter explores the evolution of disgust, and argues for the Entanglement thesis: this uniquely human emotion was formed when two formerly distinct mechanisms, one dedicated (...) to monitoring food intake and protecting against poisons, the other dedicated to protecting against parasitic infection, where driven together until they became functionally integrated. The third chapter explores the sorts of acquisition mechanisms that could give rise to the patterns of individual and cultural level variation we find with disgust elicitors. It argues for the Empathic Acquisition thesis, which holds that one important route for the social acquisition and transmission of disgust elicitors is linked to empathic recognition of facial expressions of the emotion. The fourth chapter builds on the Entanglement thesis, and embeds the emotion of disgust in gene-culture coevolutionary theory and the tribal instincts hypothesis. The Co-opt thesis is defended, which maintains that disgust was co-opted to play an important role in our moral psychology, particularly in our cognition of social norms and ethnic boundary markers. In doing so, however, it brings to bear many features initially linked to poisons and parasites. This explains the puzzling and troublesome character of moral judgments linked to disgust. After shifting gears from psychology to metaphysics, the fifth chapter recasts the Humean tradition of projectivism in the terminology of cognitive science. Using examples such as disgust, I argue that a psychologized projectivism is able to make sense of the idea that some properties are projected onto the world, rather than found there to begin with. The final chapter criticizes three other accounts of the property of disgustingness, two inspired by functionalism in the philosophy of color, one inspired by fittingness accounts in metaethics. I argue that none provide nearly as satisfactory account of the property as the psychologized projectivism articulated previously. (shrink)

To what extent can film - or individual films - act as a vehicle of or forum for philosophy itself?. Many have responded that films can indeed do philosophy to a substantial degree. Furthermore, it has been claimed that this virtue does not belong solely to ‘art’ films, but that popular cinema too can do philosophy. A case in point is Spike Jonze’s 1999 film Being John Malkovich, the Oscar-winning screenplay of which was written by Charlie Kaufman. The outrageous premise (...) of this comic fantasy is summarised by the film’s protagonist, Craig Schwartz: "There's a tiny door in my office Maxine. It's a portal, and it takes you inside John Malkovich. You see the world through John Malkovich's eyes. And then, after about fifteen minutes, you're spit out into a ditch on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike." The philosophical issues that this scenario raises are manifold. My primary aim in this paper is to follow the film through its exploration of subjectivity, clarifying its insights with the aid of current philosophical work on the topic. Hopefully, this will enhance our understanding both of subjectivity, and of the philosophical relevance of the film. A secondary goal of this enquiry is to provide a clear example of film-as-philosophy, perhaps demonstrating how film contributes something to the philosophical forum that an academic text cannot. (shrink)

At the heart of my pragmatic theory of truth and ontology is a view of the relation between language and reality which I term internal justification: a way of explaining how sentences may have truth-values which we cannot discover without invoking the need for the mystery of a correspondence relation. The epistemology upon which the theory depend~ is fallibilist and holistic ; places heavy reliance on modal idioms ; and leads to the conclusion that current versions of realism and anti-realism (...) are deficient. Just as my theory avoids the need for an epistemic 'given', it avoids the need for a metaphysical 'given' or 'joints'. I offer a view of the nature of philosophy and what it can properly achieve with respect to ontological questions ; since those views lead me to believe that philosophical discussion about what exists should be restricted to 'entities' discussed in non-philosophical contexts, my views on how we should understand claims made about the existence of middle-sized physical objects, theoretical entities in science, and abstract entities in mathematics, give the thesis a schematic completeness. My theory leads me to a conception of inquiry which defends the cognitive status of moral statements whilst being critical of Kantian and utilitarian approaches to morality. Chapter 1 explores the views of my closest philosophical allies: William James and Nelson Goodman. (shrink)

The aim for this thesis is to motivate, critically evaluate and defend the claim that subjects are able to consciously perceive the affordances of objects. I will present my protagonist, the ‘Conscious Affordance Theorist’, with what are two main obstacles to this claim. The first of these is that affordance perception correctly understood refers only to a kind of subpersonal visual processing, and not to a kind of conscious visual experience. I claim that this results in an explanatory gap at (...) the level of intentional action, which in order to correct we need to redefine the notion of affordance perception to include conscious as well as subpersonal affordance perception. Precisely, I claim that ‘affordance awareness’ has a crucial epistemological role to play, and that subjects must be able to consciously experience affordances in order to gain this awareness. In answer to this claim, I supplement the objection that affordance perception is defined as subpersonal perception to include the claim that any awareness subjects have of the affordances of objects they visually experience is due to them having thoughts about those affordances, and not visual experience of them. I then consider the Conscious Affordance Theorist’s response to this supplemented account. The second obstacle is the claim that conscious visual affordance perception is an impossible notion given that affordances are dispositional properties, and the dispositional properties of objects cannot be ‘seen’. In facing this objection I look to the supporting claims and motivations that lie behind it, in order to find a way for the Conscious Affordance Theorist to challenge its central claim that affordances cannot be seen. I end this thesis with an account of the Conscious Affordance Theorist’s own positive position, and a consideration of how his account has the ability to provide for conscious affordance perception in the case of non-human animals. (shrink)

To date, there is no universal and coherent theory concerning the nature or the function of time. Furthermore, important and unresolved controversies raging within both philosophy and the natural sciences apparently indicate that there is little hope of constructing a single, unified theory. Even so-called "folk" theories of time, embedded within different cultural traditions, show no common elements, and therefore can not provide a pre-theoretical description of time, towards which an explanatory framework could be constructed. This lack of consensus indicates (...) that the concept as it is currently being used is ill defined, and, at the very least, needs to be considerably revised. The conceptual disarray surrounding time has aided and abetted the arguments of certain thinkers, especially Ricoeur, working within the phenomenological tradition who make de principe claims that there can not be a single theory of time. My intention is not to try and to produce a concept of time that was capable of unifying all these different elements. Rather, Ricoeur's arguments and those of others working in the phenomenological tradition dissatisfied me. I believed that their arguments were informed by a myopic, muddled and positively 19th Century understanding of the scientific project. Hence, my aim is to show that Ricoeur's claim will not stand up to scrutiny, and that there are no principled arguments against the possibility of a unified theory of time. We examine the major arguments against unification in general, and also with particular reference to theories of time, such as Husserlian phenomenology, conventionalism, instrumentalism, anti-reductive positions in general, as well as the specific problem of reducing subjective experience to objective description. We demonstrate that none of these objections constitutes a watertight a priori argument against a unified theory of time. Furthermore, we demonstrate that recent developments in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of mind have made such a unified theory a plausible goal. We argue that post-positivist philosophy of science, with its emphasis on research programmes, the co-evolution of theories and super-empirical rational support, opens the way for new types of evidence to be brought to bear on questions about time. Also, recent developments in the brain sciences mean that a neurologically plausible and fully naturalised analysis of our experience of time is being developed. Although much work in this direction has begun, we argue that it is fragmented, partly through the limitations of our current knowledge, but more particularly through an inadequate background of coherent philosophical thought. This has lead both philosophers and scientists to attempt grand metaphysical answers to muddled philosophical questions which threaten the progress which natural science and the philosophy of science have offered in the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

The Epiphenomenal Mind is both a deflationary attack on the powers of the human mind and a defence of human subjectivity. It is deflationary because in the thesis I argue that consciousness is an epiphenomenal consequence of events in the brain. It is a defence of human subjectivity because I argue that the mind is sui generis real, irreducible, and largely an endogenous product (i.e. not dependent on society or its resources). Part I is devoted to arguing that the conscious (...) mind is epiphenomenal. Arguing from, the irreducibility of mental states, the causal closure of the physical domain, and the principle of causal explanatory exclusion, I seek to demonstrate that all theories of mental causation necessarily violate one or more of these premises. Contemporary approaches to mental causation come under two broad categories, those that argue that mental events are supervenient on physical events (such as Davidson, Kim and Horgan) and those (like Haskar) who argue that the mind is an emergent property of the brain. Supervenience based theories, I argue, end up reducing mental states in their search for a theory of mental causation and emergence based theories end up violating the principle of the causal closure of the physical. In part II, I explore some of the consequences of epiphenomenalism for social theory. This exploration comes in the context of a defence of human subjectivity against (i.) those sociological imperialists who view the mind and self as a 'gift of society', and (ii.) social situationalists who have abandoned the concept of action and an interest in 'what's in the head' of the actor, in favour of a concept of social action which views behaviour as action only to the extent that it is socially meaningful. The conclusion is that the social sciences should return to an interpretative style (Weberian) methodology. (shrink)

The aim of this dissertation is to create a naturalistic philosophical picture of creative capacities that are specific to our species, focusing on artistic ability, religious reflection, and scientific study. By integrating data from diverse domains within a philosophical anthropological framework, I have presented a cognitive and evolutionary approach to the question of why humans, but not other animals engage in such activities. Through an application of cognitive and evolutionary perspectives to the study of these behaviors, I have sought to (...) provide a more solid footing for philosophical anthropological discussions of uniquely human behavior. In particular, I have argued that art, religion and science, which are usually seen as achievements that are quite remote from ordinary modes of reasoning, are subserved by evolved cognitive processes that serve functions in everyday cognitive tasks, that arise early and spontaneously in cognitive development, that are shared cross-culturally, and that have evolved in response to selective pressures in our ancestral past. These mundane cognitive processes provide a measuring rod with which we can assess a diversity of cultural phenomena; they form a unified explanatory framework to approach human culture. I have argued that we can explain uncommon thoughts in terms of interactions between common minds. This dissertation is subdivided into four parts. Part I outlines the problem of human uniqueness, examining theories on how humans conceptualize the world, and what their mental tool box looks like. Part II discusses the evolutionary and cognitive origins of human artistic behavior. Part III focuses on the cognitive science of religion, especially on how it can be applied to the reasoning of theologians and philosophers of religion. Part IV considers the cognitive basis of scientific practice. (shrink)

This thesis is an examination and critique of naturalistic representational theories of phenomenal character. Phenomenal character refers to the distinctive quality that perceptual and sensational experiences seem to have; it is identified with 'what it is like' to undergo experiences. The central claims of representationalism are that phenomenal character is identical with the content of experience and that all representational states, bearing appropriate relations to the cognitive system, are conscious experiences. These claims are taken to explain both how conscious experiential (...) states arise and their nature. After examining the desiderata for naturalistic explanations, I argue that theories which ascribe nonconceptual content to experiences are the most plausible versions of representationalism. Further, causal covariation and teleological theories yield distinctive and interesting representationalist positions, hence, they become the focus of this study. To assess representationalism, I investigate whether all differences in phenomenal character can be correlated with differences in content. I claim that a useful distinction can be drawn between implicit and explicit content, which allows one to best describe the phenomena of perfect and relative pitch. I then argue that ambiguous figures show that two experiences can have the same content but different phenomenal character. I explicate the Inverted Earth hypothesis and claim that to identify content and phenomenal character, representationalists either have to condone the possibility of philosophical zombies, or hold that people lack authoritative first-person knowledge of their current experiences. Both these positions are unpalatable. Finally, I argue that representationalists cannot ascribe contents to experiences of novel colours to account for their phenomenal character. I also question, in light of dissociation phenomena, whether there is one distinctive relationship that all experiences bear to the cognitive system. I conclude that phenomenal character cannot be identical with the type of content under investigation, and that naturalistic representationalist theories cannot fully explain conscious experience. (shrink)

Relationalism claims that the phenomenal character of perception is constituted by the obtaining of a non-representational psychological relation to mind-independent objects. Although relationalism provides what seems to be the most straightforward and intuitive account of how experience strikes us introspectively, it is very often believed that the argument from hallucination shows that the view is untenable. The aim of this thesis is to defend relationalism against the argument from hallucination. The argument claims that the phenomenal character of hallucination and perception (...) deserves the same account, and that relationalism cannot be true for hallucinations, therefore relationalism must be rejected. This argument relies on the Indiscriminability Principle, the claim that two experiences that are introspectively indiscriminable from each other have the same phenomenal character. Before assessing the plausibility of this principle, I first consider and dismiss versions of the argument which wouldn’t depend on IND. Although widely accepted, no satisfactory support for IND has been presented yet. In this thesis I argue that defending IND requires that we understand the notion of ‘indiscriminability’ employed in IND in an impersonal sense. I then identify what underwrites IND: the intuition that, in virtue of its superficiality, the nature of a phenomenal character must be accessible through introspection, together with the claim that it is not possible to deny IND without denying the superficiality of phenomenal characters too. I argue that the relationalist can deny IND while preserving the superficiality of phenomenal characters. This can be done by adopting a negative view of hallucination and an account of introspection whereby the phenomenal character doesn’t exist independently of one’s introspective awareness of it and where having introspective access to our experience depends on our perceptual access to the world. (shrink)

It is my intention in this thesis to demonstrate that there exists a clear and explicit formal relationship between the seemingly exclusive descriptions of spatio-temporal and purely temporal continuity, and further, that this relationship manifests itself within our most fundamental understanding of the physical world itself, namely; within our understanding of the identity, diversity and re-identification of material bodies. It may therefore be claimed that behind that cultural understanding which leads us to imagine that the physical world is located in (...) both space and time, whereas our thoughts and feelings are located in time alone, there lies a formal logical framework, or an explicit formal description of how being in space and time relates to being in time alone - leading us to wonder, perhaps, whether these two things are really as distinct as we might at first imagine. That I should then go on to apply to this analysis a philosophical interpretation of Bergson's conception of the relationship between the intuition and the intellect is of lesser importance - indicating as it does little more than my own philosophical inclinations. However, something will be gained, I hope, from this further exercise. Along the way it will allow me to clarify a number of technical points of which the general philosopher may be unaware; for example the unobservable nature of numerical identity and re-identification, the importance of the principle of special relativity to the topic of mind and the technical difficulties of claiming that mental events are 'in time' at all. Notwithstanding these latter points, however, the intentions of this work are predominantly analytical and are adequately described as an attempt to consolidate spatio-temporal and purely temporal description under a unified logical framework. (shrink)

This thesis analyzes L.A. Paul’s concept of transformative experience. It specifically analyzes Paul’s criteria for transformative experiences, which are experiences that are so epistemically and personally transformative that an agent can’t know what it’s like to have a TE until having the experience itself. Paul argues that the transformative nature of these experiences prevent us from being able to make a rational choice using our normative way of decision-making. According to Paul, this is especially problematic because some of life’s biggest (...) choices involve TEs. I begin with an overview of Paul’s main thought experiments that illustrate the structure of TEs that real-world agents face. I then clarify Paul’s criteria for TE, and ET and PT experiences. I argue that life’s biggest choices are not ET, except in very rare cases, and thus are not TEs. I conclude that in the vast majority of cases, we can make rational choices when faced with life’s biggest decisions. (shrink)

U članku se kroz višedisciplinarni pristup kognitivnih znanosti proučava osobito ljudsko iskustvo povezano s religioznim doživljajem stvarnosti, koje se u tradiciji discipline povijesti religija naziva ‘iskustvo svetoga’. U skladu s teorijom emergencije, predlaže se definicija iskustva svetoga kao stanja svijesti sa subjektivnom kvalitetom integracije, specifičnim neurološkim korelatom i funkcionalnim obilježjima. Emergentne teorije svijesti pružaju ontološki ujednačeno tumačenje iskustava svetoga nudeći »naravna« objašnjenja bez odricanja njihove fenomenološke subjektivnosti. Prijenos iskustva svetoga iz unitarnoga, svojevrsnog intencionalno neobojenoga stanja, u izrecivi jezični kôd intencionalno (...) relevantnih pojmova sa sveprožimajućim utjecajima na opojmljivanje svijeta razmatra se pomoću kognitivne jezične teorije u tradiciji Johnsona i Lakoffa. Sposobnost izricanja značenja iskustva svetoga sagledava se kao emergentno svojstvo pojmovnog procesuiranja metaforičkoga razmišljanja uvjetovanoga utjelovljenošću uma i kulturalnim odrednicama. Predloženi pristup omogućuje tumačenje nastanka složenih mitoloških i kulturalnih modela temeljem iskustva svetoga, ali i ukazuje na njegovu kulturalnu neuvjetovanost zadanu nediskurzivnom naravi samog iskustva.In this article a multidisciplinary approach of cognitive sciences is employed for the analysis of a special category of human experience related to the religious understanding of the world, termed according to the History of Religion as the ‘experience of sacred’. The experience of sacred is defined as the state of consciousness with a subjective quality of integration, a specific neural correlate and functional features. Emergentist theory of consciousness provides ontologically consistent perspective offering a “natural” explanation for this type of experience without denying its subjective phenomenology. The linguistic expression of the experience is examined in the light of Johnson’s and Lakoff’s cognitive linguistic theory. The linguistic competence enabling the expression of the sacred experience is defined as the emergent property of conceptual processing of metaphorical thinking shaped by the embodied mind. This approach explains the seminal role of the experience of sacred in the formation of complex mythological and cultural models, but also points to its non discursive nature. (shrink)

A physicalist view of qualia labelled non-eliminative reductionism is outlined. If it is true, qualia and physicalism can co-exist without difficulty. First, qualia present no particular problem for reductionist physicalism - they are entirely physical, can be studied and explained using the standard scientific approach, and present no problem any harder than any other scientists face. Second, reductionist physicalism presents no particular problem for qualia – they can be encompassed within an entirely physicalist position without any necessity, either to reduce (...) them to non-existence, or to treat them as new fundamental properties. It is suggested that the position also has sufficient explanatory power to successfully deal with the 'why like anything – why does experience exist at all' question and to counter both Chalmers' Conceivability Argument and Jackson's Knowledge Argument. (shrink)

Pain is unpleasant. Given that pain is the paradigmatic example of an unpleasant experience, I aim to shed light on what pain and unpleasantness are by trying to understand what it means for a pain to be unpleasant, what the structure of unpleasantness is, and by tackling several problematic aspects of the relation between pain and unpleasantness. By doing this, I will also provide a general account of what it means for an experience that might not be a pain to (...) be unpleasant. The thesis is organised into seven chapters and divided by three main themes: i) what the unpleasantness of pain consists in, ii) how we can account for the great phenomenal diversity among experiences of unpleasantness, and iii) which cases suggest that there could be pains that are not unpleasant. Broadly, the first two chapters deal with the first theme, the third and fourth chapter with the second theme, and the fifth and sixth chapter focus on the third theme. In the final chapter I offer a conclusion of the three main themes by providing my own view on the unpleasantness of pain. According to this account, an unpleasant experience is something felt, it is a phenomenal property of mental states, and this property should be understood using the determinable determinate distinction. By doing all of this, this thesis will provide a detailed understanding of the nature of pain and unpleasantness. (shrink)

The human mind is constituted by inner, subjective, private, first-person conscious experiences that cannot be measured with physical devices or observed from an external, objective, public, third-person perspective. The qualitative, phenomenal nature of conscious experiences also cannot be communicated to others in the form of a message composed of classical bits of information. Because in a classical world everything physical is observable and communicable, it is a daunting task to explain how an empirically unobservable, incommunicable consciousness could have any physical (...) substrates such as neurons composed of biochemical molecules, water, and electrolytes. The challenges encountered by classical physics are exemplified by a number of thought experiments including the inverted qualia argument, the private language argument, the beetle in the box argument and the knowledge argument. These thought experiments, however, do not imply that our consciousness is nonphysical and our introspective conscious testimonies are untrustworthy. The principles of classical physics have been superseded by modern quantum physics, which contains two fundamentally different kinds of physical objects: unobservable quantum state vectors, which define what physically exists, and quantum operators (observables), which define what can physically be observed. Identifying consciousness with the unobservable quantum information contained by quantum physical brain states allows for application of quantum information theorems to resolve possible paradoxes created by the inner privacy of conscious experiences, and explains how the observable brain is constructed by accessible bits of classical information that are bound by Holevo's theorem and extracted from the physically existing quantum brain upon measurement with physical devices. (shrink)

In this article I discuss the seeming contingency of the fact that one is the specific person that one is. Here, I propose that this contingency is illusory.

Setting aside the problems of recognising consciousness in a machine, this article considers what would be needed for a machine to have human-like conscious- ness. Human-like consciousness is an illusion; that is, it exists but is not what it appears to be. The illusion that we are a conscious self having a stream of experi- ences is constructed when memes compete for replication by human hosts. Some memes survive by being promoted as personal beliefs, desires, opinions and pos- sessions, leading (...) to the formation of a memeplex (or selfplex). Any machine capa- ble of imitation would acquire this type of illusion and think it was conscious. Robots that imitated humans would acquire an illusion of self and consciousness just as we do. Robots that imitated each other would develop their own separate languages, cultures and illusions of self. Distributed seflplexes in large networks of machines are also possible. Unanswered questions include what remains of consciousness without memes, and whether artificial meme machines can ever transcend the illusion of self consciousness. (shrink)

The present study is a theoretical discussion concerning some of the important processes that characterize human perception, which is understood as a fundamental structure of consciousness. The aim is to acquire new insights for a better comprehension of the human experience in the world and the way individual subjects become familiar with their environment. To accomplish this task, the experience of listening to music is analysed due to the widespread acceptance of music as an important aspect of human life. With (...) reference to a various research studies and hypothesis focused on the way listeners understand music, principles of perceptual organization which allow immediate awareness of music are investigated. Particular attention is given to studies in the field of music perception and cognition. Through an analysis of the main mental processes involved, the goal is to describe several relevant aspects of how listeners understand music at the perceptual level and constitute musical meanings in a subjective manner. This constitution results in a listener’s ability to become immediately aware of their auditory experience as having a specific meaning – that of being, first of all, a musical experience. Focusing on everyday experience and exposure to music, expectation and anticipation are presented as fundamental principles that contribute to the knowledge of the auditory environment and the meaning which acoustic events acquire for a subject. An in-depth analysis of their specific features will show the different influence expectation and anticipation have on a listener’s basic perceptual comprehension of music and in the constitution of musical meanings that are subjectively characterized. Within the framework of a theoretical investigation into human processes of musical knowledge acquisition, the additional objective is to create a dialogue between empirical research results in the field of music cognition and phenomenological descriptions of the structures of human consciousness. In particular, through clarification of the specific terminology that characterizes these two fields of research, the intent is to go beyond the historical gap which has existed between them. This combination of perspectives may increase our understanding of the way human beings know the world and learn how to react to the events which they encounter. (shrink)