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...

" Qualia " is an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us. As is so often the case with philosophical jargon, it is easier to give examples than to give a definition of the term. Look at a glass of milk at sunset; the way it looks to you--the particular, personal, subjective visual quality of the glass of milk is the quale of your visual experience at the (...) moment. The way the milk tastes to you then is another, gustatory quale, and how it sounds to you as you swallow is an auditory quale; These various "properties of conscious experience" are prime examples of qualia. Nothing, it seems, could you know more intimately than your own qualia ; let the entire universe be some vast illusion, some mere figment of Descartes' evil demon, and yet what the figment is made of will be the qualia of your hallucinatory experiences. Descartes claimed to doubt everything that could be doubted, but he never doubted that his conscious experiences had qualia, the properties by which he knew or apprehended them. (shrink)

The title of The Rediscovery of the Mind suggests the question "When was the mind lost?" Since most people may not be aware that it ever was lost, we must also then ask "Who lost it?" It was lost, of course, only by philosophers, by certain philosophers. This passed unnoticed by society at large. The "rediscovery" is also likely to pass unnoticed. But has the mind been rediscovered by the same philosophers who "lost" it? Probably not. John Searle is an (...) analytic philosopher, with some of the same notions as the positivists and behaviorists who rejected consciousness and "lost" the mind in the first place, but he also does not sound like the kind of reductionist who would have joined that crowd. His views, indeed, are sensible enough, and some of his insights so important, that it is a shame to find his thought profoundly limited by some of the same mistakes and prejudices that ruined philosophy, and not just philosophy of mind, under the influence of those positivists and behaviorists. There is enough of genuine value in his treatment, that it can easily be taken up and, with relatively slight modification, added to what is of permanent value in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

This book argues that we are not equipped to understand the workings of conciousness, despite its objective naturalness.

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 ..

The significance of consciousness in modern science is discussed by leading authorities from a variety of disciplines. Presenting a wide-ranging survey of current thinking on this important topic, the contributors address such issues as the status of different aspects of consciousness; the criteria for using the concept of consciousness and identifying instances of it; the basis of consciousness in functional brain organization; the relationship between different levels of theoretical discourse; and the functions of consciousness.

This collection of 17 essays by the author offers a comprehensive theory of mind, encompassing traditional issues of consciousness and free will.

The ability to feel pain is a property of human beings that seems to be based entirely in our biological natures and to place us squarely within the animal kingdom. Yet the experience of pain is often used as an example of a mental attribute with qualitative properties that defeat attempts to identify mental events with physiological mechanisms. I will argue that neurophysiology and psychology help to explain the interwoven biological and subjective features of pain and recommend a view of (...) pain which differs in important respects from the one most commonly accepted. (shrink)

This book investigates the subjective and objective representations of the world, developing analogies between secondary qualities and indexical thoughts and arguing that subjective representations are ineliminable. Throughout, McGinn brings together historical and contemporary discussions to illuminate old problems in a novel way.

Owen Flanagan argues that we are on the way to understanding consciousness and its place in the natural order.

There is a traditional view of pain as a conscious phenomenon which satisfies the following two principles at least: Pain is essentially a belief- or cognition-independent sensation, given for consciousness in an immediate way, and pain′s unitary physical base is responsible for both its phenomenal or felt qualities and it′s functional, causal features. These are "The Raw Feels Principle" and "The Unity of Pain Principle" . Each is shown to be implausible. Evidence comes from recent pain research in a number (...) of dimensions. A further argument against The Unity of Pain Principle is constructed by analogy with facts about blindsight. The consequences of rejecting P or Q are examined in light of the traditional epistemological role of pain as exemplar of sensations thought to be foundational for knowledge, the prospects of a modularity theory of the pain system, recent accounts of pain among contemporary philosophers, a naturalist and realist conception of pain, and views about the status of Folk Psychology. (shrink)

The ability to feel pain is a property of human beings that seems to be based entirely in our biological natures and to place us squarely within the animal kingdom. Yet the experience of pain is often used as an example of a mental attribute with qualitative properties that defeat attempts to identify mental events with physiological mechanisms. I will argue that neurophysiology and psychology help to explain the interwoven biological and subjective features of pain and recommend a view of (...) pain which differs in important respects from the one most commonly accepted. (shrink)

There is a traditional view of pain as a conscious phenomenon which satisfies the following two principles at least: Pain is essentially a belief- or cognition-independent sensation, given for consciousness in an immediate way, and pain′s unitary physical base is responsible for both its phenomenal or felt qualities and it′s functional, causal features. These are "The Raw Feels Principle" and "The Unity of Pain Principle" . Each is shown to be implausible. Evidence comes from recent pain research in a number (...) of dimensions. A further argument against The Unity of Pain Principle is constructed by analogy with facts about blindsight. The consequences of rejecting P or Q are examined in light of the traditional epistemological role of pain as exemplar of sensations thought to be foundational for knowledge, the prospects of a modularity theory of the pain system, recent accounts of pain among contemporary philosophers, a naturalist and realist conception of pain, and views about the status of Folk Psychology. (shrink)