Several authors within psychology, neuroscience and philosophy take for granted that standard empirical research techniques are applicable when studying consciousness. In this article, it is discussed whether one of the key methods in cognitive neuroscience – the contrastive analysis – suffers from any serious confounding when applied to the field of consciousness studies; that is to say, if there are any systematic difficulties when studying consciousness with this method that make the results untrustworthy. Through an analysis of theoretical arguments in (...) favour of using contrastive analysis, combined with analyses of empirical findings, I conclude by arguing for three factors that currently are confounding of research using contrastive analysis. These are (1) unconscious processes, (2) introspective reports, and (3) attention. (shrink)

There is a tension or even contradiction between mental causation - the belief that some mental events or properties are causally relevant for some physical events or properties - and the irreducibility of mental features to physical ones, the causal closure of the physical, and the assumption that there is no overdetermination of the physical. To reconcile these premises was a promise of nonreductive physicalism, but a closer inspection shows that it is, on the contrary, a source of the problem (...) - namely, the unintelligibility of mental causation. This has to do with the widely-held assumption that the mental supervenes on the physical. How can the mental be causally relevant, then? And what is the relationship of the mental and the physical? There are many options, including identity, realizationism, emergence, or some kind of reducibility. But they all have their own problems, e.g. they threaten mental reality, the causal closure of the physical, or scientific explanations. All these aspects are covered in Jaegwon Kim's book Mind in a Physical World. This paper is a detailed introduction to it, discussing and critically commenting it and those still intriguing, but also confusing and complicated issues of the mind-body problem, especially the ontology of mental causation. (shrink)

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)