How do we know what we "know"? How did we –as individuals and as a society – come to accept certain knowledge as fact? In _Human Knowledge,_ Bertrand Russell questions the reliability of our assumptions on knowledge. This brilliant and controversial work investigates the relationship between ‘individual’ and ‘scientific’ knowledge. First published in 1948, this provocative work contributed significantly to an explosive intellectual discourse that continues to this day.

Representationalism is a thesis about the phenomenal character of experiences, about their immediate subjective ‘feel’.1 At a minimum, the thesis is one of supervenience: necessarily, experiences that are alike in their representational contents are alike in their phenomenal character. So understood, the thesis is silent on the nature of phenomenal character. Strong or pure representationalism goes further. It aims to tell us what phenomenal character is. According to the theory developed in Tye 1995, phenomenal character is one and the same (...) as representational content that meets certain further conditions. One very important motivation for this theory is the so-called ? transparency of experience.? The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the appeal to transparency more carefully than has been done hithertofore, to make some remarks about the introspective awareness of experience in light of this appeal, and to consider one problem case for transparency at some length, that of blurry vision. Along the way, I shall also address some of the remarks Stephen Leeds makes in his essay on transparency. (shrink)

In 1995, in my book, Ten Problems of Consciousness, I proposed a version of the theory of phenomenal consciousness now known as representationalism. The present book, in part, consists of a further development of that theory along with replies to common objections. It is also concerned with two prominent challenges for any reductive theory of consciousness: the explanatory gap and the knowledge argument. In addition, it connects representationalism with two more general issues: the nature of color and the location of (...) the phylogenetic dividing line between those creatures that are phenomenally conscious and those that are not. (shrink)

(1) Materialists hold that every real, concrete phenomenon in the universe is a wholly physical phenomenon. (2) Consciousness ('what-it's-likeness', etc.) is the most certainly existing real, concrete phenomenon there is. It follows that (3) all serious materialists must grant that consciousness is a wholly physical phenomenon. ‘How can consciousness possibly be physical, given what we know about the physical?’ To ask this question is already to have gone wrong. We have no good reason (as Priestley, Eddington, Russell and others observe) (...) to think that we know anything about the physical that gives us any reason to find any problem in the idea that consciousness is wholly physical. (shrink)

[…] One view I hold about the nature of phenomenal character, which is also a view about the relation between phenomenal character and the introspective belief about it, is that phenomenal character is “self intimating.” This means that it is of the essence of a state’s having a certain phenomenal character that this issues in the subject’s being introspectively aware of that character, or does so if the subject reflects. Part of my aim is to give an account which makes (...) it intelligible that this should be so. A more substantive view I hold about phenomenal character is that a perceptual state’s having a certain phenomenal character is a matter of its having a certain sort of representational content. This much I hold in common with a number of recent writers, including Gil Harman, Michael Tye, Bill Lycan, and Fred Dretske. But representationalism about phenomenal character often goes with the rejection of “qualia,” and with the rejection of the possibility of spectrum inversion and other sorts of “qualia invesion.” My version of representationalism embraces what other versions reject. It assigns an essential role to qualia, and accepts the possibility of qualia inversion. A central aim of the present paper is to present a version of this view which is free of the defects I now see in my earlier versions of it. (shrink)

The words “content” and “character” in my title refer to the representational content and phenomenal character of color experiences. So my topic concerns the nature of our experience of color. But I will, of course, be talking about colors as well as color experience. Let me set the stage by mentioning some things, some more controversial than others, that I will be taking for granted. I assume, to begin with, that objects in the world have colors, and have them independently (...) of being perceived to have them, and independently even of there being creatures capable of perceiving them. I think, and this of course sets me apart from the many color irrealists among philosophers and color scientists, that any reasonable semantics for color terms, and any reasonable account of the reference of color concepts, should yield the result that colors are properties of external things that are realized in certain of their physical properties, namely those responsible for their reflecting or emitting the light whose impact on our retinas is involved in causing our color perceptions. This brings me to a further assumption that I shall be making, namely the truth of physicalism. I take physicalism to be the thesis that all properties of things either are or are realized in basic physical properties, where basic physical properties are the properties that underlie the behavior and causal powers of inanimate things. There are two ways in which the commitment to physicalism will figure in my discussion. First, I assume that colors are physically realized properties. Second, I assume that color experiences are physically realized. These two commitments frame the problem I am discussing – how can colors be properties realized in the microphysical properties of things, and how can color experience be so realized? I don’t think there is any generally accepted account of what it is for a property to be “realized in” other properties. For those who think, as I do, that properties are individuated by their causal features, it should seem plausible to say that property P realizes property Q just in case the forward looking causal features of Q are a subset of the forward looking causal features of P, and the backward looking.... (shrink)

The transparency argument concludes that we're directly aware of external properties and not directly aware of the properties of experience. Focusing on the presentation used by Michael Tye (2002) I contend that the argument requires experience to have content that it cannot plausibly have. I attribute the failure to a faulty account of the transparency phenomenon and conclude by suggesting an alternative understanding that is independently plausible, is not an error-theory and yet renders the transparency of experience compatible with mental-paint (...) style views. (shrink)

Since Twin Earth was discovered by American philosophical-space explorers in the 1970s, the domain of.

Over the past few decades, as philosophers of mind have begun to rethink the sharp divide that was traditionally drawn between the phenomenal character of an experience (what it’s like to have that experience) and its intentional content (what it represents), representationalist theories of consciousness have become increasingly popular. On this view, phenomenal character is reduced to intentional content. This article explores a key motivation for this theory, namely, considerations of experiential transparency. Experience is said to be transparent in that (...) we ‘look right through it’ to the objects of that experience, and this is supposed to support the representationalist claim that there are no intrinsic aspects of our experience. (shrink)

According to representationalism, the qualitative character of our phenomenal mental states supervenes on the intentional content of such states. Strong representationalism makes a further claim: the qualitative character of our phenomenal mental states _consists in_ the intentional content of such states. Although strong representationalism has greatly increased in popularity over the last decade, I find the view deeply implausible. In what follows, I will attempt to argue against strong representationalism by a two-step argument. First, I suggest that strong representationalism must (...) be _unrestricted_ in order to serve as an adequate theory of qualia, i.e., it must apply to all qualitative mental states. Second, I present considerations to show that an unrestricted form of strong representationalism is problematic. (shrink)

Qualia internalism is the thesis that qualia are intrinsic to their subjects: the experiences of intrinsic duplicates have the same qualia. Content externalism is the thesis that mental representation is an extrinsic matter, partly depending on what happens outside the head. 1 Intentionalism comes in strong and weak forms. In its weakest formulation, it is the thesis that representationally identical experiences of subjects have the same qualia. 2.

Should a principle of charity be applied to the interpretation of the colour concepts exercised in visual experience? We think not. We shall argue, for one thing, that the grounds for applying a principle of charity are lacking in the case of colour concepts. More importantly, we shall argue that attempts at giving the experience of colour a charitable interpretation either fail to respect obvious features of that experience or fail to interpret it charitably, after all. Charity to visual experience (...) is therefore no motive for resisting the natural, Galilean response to a scientific understanding of light and vision. The best interpretation of colour experience ends up convicting it of widespread and systematic error. (shrink)

In this book, Derk Pereboom explores how physicalism might best be formulated and defended against the best anti-physicalist arguments. Two responses to the knowledge and conceivability arguments are set out and developed. The first exploits the open possibility that introspective representations fail to represent mental properties as they are in themselves; specifically, that introspection represents phenomenal properties as having certain characteristic qualitative natures, which these properties might actually lack. The second response draws on the proposal that currently unknown fundamental intrinsic (...) properties provide categorical bases for known physical properties and would also yield an account of consciousness. While there are non-physicalist versions of this position, some are amenable to physicalism. The book's third theme is a defense of a nonreductive account of physicalism. The type of nonreductivism endorsed departs from others in that it rejects all token identity claims for psychological and microphysical entities. The deepest relation between the mental and the microphysical is constitution, where this relation is not to be explicated by the notion of identity. (shrink)

Tye's book develops a persuasive and, in many respects, original argument for the view that the qualitative side of our mental life is representational in..

A further development of Tye's theory of phenomenal consciousness along with replies to common objections.

This book presents a comprehensive theory of consciousness. The initial chapter distinguishes six main forms of consciousness and sketches an account of each one. Later chapters focus on phenomenal consciousness, consciousness of, and introspective consciousness. In discussing phenomenal consciousness, Hill develops the representational theory of mind in new directions, arguing that all awareness involves representations, even awareness of qualitative states like pain. He then uses this view to undercut dualistic accounts of qualitative states. Other topics include visual awareness, visual appearances, (...) emotional qualia, and meta-cognitive processing. This important work will interest a wide readership of students and scholars in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. (shrink)

Some mental events are conscious, some are unconscious. What is the difference between the two? Uriah Kriegel offers an answer. His aim is a comprehensive theory of the features that all and only conscious mental events have. The key idea is that consciousness arises when self-awareness and world-awareness are integrated in the right way. Conscious mental events differ from unconscious ones in that, whatever else they may represent, they always also represent themselves, and do so in a very specific way. (...) Subjective Consciousness is a fascinating new move forward towards a full understanding of the mind. (shrink)

Lycan not only uses the numerous arguments against materialism, and functionalist theories of mind in particular, to gain a more detailed positive view of the ..

In this provocative book, Fred Dretske argues that to achieve an understanding of the mind it is not enough to understand the biological machinery by means of...

There is a long tradition in philosophy of using a priori methods to draw conclusions about what is possible and what is necessary, and often in turn to draw conclusions about matters of substantive metaphysics. Arguments like this typically have three steps: first an epistemic claim , from there to a modal claim , and from there to a metaphysical claim.

A number of popular arguments for dualism start from a premise about an epistemic gap between physical truths about truths about consciousness, and infer an ontological gap between physical processes and consciousness. Arguments of this sort include the conceivability argument, the knowledge argument, the explanatory-gap argument, and the property dualism argument. Such arguments are often resisted on the grounds that epistemic premises do not entail ontological conclusion. My view is that one can legitimately infer ontological conclusions from epistemic premises, if (...) one is very careful about how one reasons. To do so, the best way is to reason first from epistemic premises to modal conclusions , and from there to ontological conclusions. Here, the crucial issue is the link between the epistemic and modal domains. How can one reason from theses about what is knowable or conceivable to theses about what is necessary or possible? To bridge the epistemic and modal domains, the framework of two-dimensional semantics can play a central role. I have used this framework in earlier work to mount an argument against materialism. Here, I want to revisit the argument, laying it out in a more explicit and careful form, and responding to a number of objections. In what follows I will concentrate mostly on the conceivability argument. I think that very similar considerations apply to the other arguments mentioned above, however. In the final section of the paper, I show how this analysis might yield a unified treatment of a number of anti-materialist arguments. (shrink)

According to David Chalmers , 'we have good reason to suppose that consciousness has a fundamental place in nature' . This, he thinks is because the world as revealed to us by fundamental physics is entirely structural -- it is a world not of things, but of relations -- yet relations can only account for more relations, and consciousness is not merely a relation . Call this the 'structural argument against physicalism.' I shall argue that there is a view about (...) the relationship between mind and body, what I call, 'Russellian physicalism' that is consistent with the premises of the structural argument yet does not imply that consciousness is fundamental. (shrink)

Experiences vary widely. For example, I run my fingers over sandpaper, smell a skunk, feel a sharp pain in my finger, seem to see bright purple, become extremely angry. In each of these cases, I am the subject of a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character. There is something it is _like_ for me to undergo each state, some phenomenology that it has. Philoso- phers often use the term 'qualia' to refer to the introspectively accessible properties of experiences (...) that characterize what it is like to have them. In this standard, broad sense of the term, it is very difficult to deny that there are qualia. There is another, more restricted use of the term. (shrink)