Some time ago, in an article for the Journal of Consciousness Studies, David Chalmers challenged his peers to identify the ingredient missing from our current theories of consciousness, the absence of which prevents us from solving the 'hard' problem and forces us to make do with nonreductive theories. Here I respond to this challenge. I suggest that consciousness is a metaphysical problem and as such can be solved only within a global metaphysical theory. Such a theory would (...) look very like the information theory proposed by Chalmers, but with the addition of an extra phenomenon that would allow it to become fundamental. (shrink)

The higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness is a reductive representational theory of consciousness which says that what makes a mental state conscious is that there is a suitable HOT directed at that mental state. Although it seems that any neural realization of the theory must be somewhat widely distributed in the brain, it remains unclear just how widely distributed it needs to be. In section I, I provide some background and define some key terms. In section II, (...) I argue against the view that HOT theory should treat first-order (i.e. world-directed) conscious states as requiring prefrontal cortical activity though it is reasonable to suppose that conscious states are realized in the brain. In section III, I then explore some of the key background metaphysical issues involved in understanding the nature of consciousness, such as the debate between realism and idealism as well as the prospects for solving the so-called “hard problem” of consciousness. Some of the differences in question often mirror the traditional differences between Western and Eastern perspectives on the nature of consciousness. Overall, I argue that some form of realism and physicalism is more plausible than the opposing views. I also argue that materialists (and especially HOT theorists) can offer plausible replies to the hard problem. (shrink)

Locke’s theory of personal identity was philosophically groundbreaking for its attempt to establish a non-substantial identity condition. Locke states, “For the same consciousness being preserv’d, whether in the same or different Substances, the personal Identity is preserv’d” (II.xxvii.13). Many have interpreted Locke to think that consciousness identifies a self both synchronically and diachronically by attributing thoughts and actions to a self. Thus, many have attributed to Locke either a memory theory or an appropriation theory of personal identity. But (...) the former stumble on circularity and the latter is insufficient for Locke’s moral theory insofar as he is committed to a theory of divine rectification. The common problem is that Locke’s theory seems to demand an objective, or metaphysical, fact of a continuing consciousness that does not appeal to a traditional notion of substance for the continuity. I’m suggesting something new. In II.xxvii of the Essay, we see an ambiguity in Locke’s use of the term ‘consciousness’. Locke seems to see consciousness as both a mental state by means of which we are aware of ourselves as perceiving and as the ongoing self we are aware of in these conscious states. First, I make the textual argument why we should read Locke as having a conception of a metaphysical fact of a continuing consciousness that does not appeal to thinking or bodily substance to establish its continuity. I then argue that the metaphysical fact of an enduring consciousness is revealed to us as a phenomenological fact of experience. Due to the nature of certain kinds of perceptual situations we have an experience of ourselves as temporally extended. Although the text bears out that Locke seemed to think there is a fact of an ongoing consciousness, I argue that it is consistent with his reluctance elsewhere that he makes no further epistemological or ontological claims about it. Finally, I provide an account of Locke’s understanding of memory and its relation to consciousness that supports the claim that consciousness is something ontologically distinct from either thinking or bodily substance. (shrink)

Explanation does not exist in a metaphysical vacuum. Conceptions of the structure of a phenomenon play an important role in guiding attempts to explain it, and erroneous conceptions of a phenomenon may direct investigation in misleading directions. I believe that there is a case to be made for thinking that much work on the neural underpinnings of consciousness—what is often called the neural correlates of consciousness—is driven by an erroneous conception of the structure of consciousness. The aim (...) of this paper is lay bare some connections between the explanation of consciousness and the structure of consciousness, and to argue for a conception of the structure of consciousness that is more adequate than that which currently drives much research into the neural correlates of consciousness. (shrink)

It is intuitive that free action depends on consciousness in some way, since behavior that is unconsciously generated is widely regarded as un-free. But there is no clear consensus as to what such dependence comes to, in part because there is no clear consensus about either the cognitive role of consciousness or about the essential components of free action. I divide the space of possible views into four: the Constitution View (on which free actions metaphysically consist, at least (...) in part, in phenomenally conscious episodes of a special sort), the Causal-Dependence View (on which free actions are necessarily caused by conscious episodes), the Counterfactaul-Dependence View (on which free actions necessarily counterfactually dependent on conscious episodes of certain types), and the Independence View (on which there are no necessary dependence-relations that hold between free action and conscious episodes). After surveying recent empirical literature that purports to show that consciousness plays a smaller role in generating action than is usually supposed, I conclude that it is plausible that free action depends on consciousness in two ways. First, free action causally depends on consciousness control. Second, free action counterfactually depends on the agent's being responsive to certain reasons. (shrink)

It is common to hold that our conscious experiences at a single moment are often unified. But when consciousness is unified, what are the fundamental facts in virtue of which it is unified? On some accounts of the unity of consciousness, the most fundamental fact that grounds unity is a form of singularity or oneness. These accounts are similar to Newtonian views of space according to which the most fundamental fact that grounds relations of co-spatiality between various points (...) (or regions) of a space is the fact that these points (or regions) are parts of the same single space. In this paper, I sketch and defend an alternative account of unity of consciousness. Very roughly, the view holds that experiences are unified when they are connected in the right way. In this respect, the view is analogous to Leibnizian views of space according to which the oneness of space emerges from certain conditions over spatial relations. The Leibnizian alternative has significant implications for our understanding of the metaphysics of conscious experience, the cognitive architecture of the mind and our assessment of the conditions under which unity of consciousness breaks. (shrink)

Consciousness is a natural phenomenon, the object of a flourishing area of research in the natural sciences – research whose primary goal is to identify the neural correlates of consciousness. This raises the question: why is there need for a philosophy of consciousness? As we see things, the need for a philosophy of consciousness arises for two reasons. First, as a young and energetic science operating as yet under no guiding paradigm, the science of consciousness (...) has been subject to considerable confusion regarding its methodological, conceptual, and philosophical foundations, and it is philosophy’s mandate to address such confusion in an attempt to regiment scientific practice. Secondly, the identification of a neural feature that correlated perfectly with consciousness would still leave open a certain metaphysical question: is the relation between consciousness and the relevant neural feature merely correlation, or is that correlation indicative of a deeper, more intimate relation between the two? In this paper, we offer an opinionated overview of the philosophy of consciousness as it addresses these two dimensions of consciousness research. (shrink)

The unity of consciousness has so far been studied only as a relation holding among the many experiences of a single subject. I investigate whether this relation could hold between the experiences of distinct subjects, considering three major arguments against the possibility of such ‘between-subjects unity’. The first argument, based on the popular idea that unity implies subsumption by a composite experience, can be deflected by allowing for limited forms of ‘experience-sharing’, in which the same token experience belongs to (...) more than one subject. The second argument, based on the phenomenological claim that unified experiences have interdependent phenomenal characters, I show to rest on an equivocation. Finally, the third argument accuses between-subjects unity of being unimaginable, or more broadly a formal possibility corresponding to nothing we can make sense of. I argue that the familiar experience of perceptual co-presentation gives us an adequate phenomenological grasp on what between-subjects unity might be like. (shrink)

In this discussion paper, I argue that no theory of consciousness can simultaneously respect four initially plausible metaphysical claims – namely, “first-person realism”, “non-solipsism”, “non-fragmentation”, and “one world” – but that any three of the four claims are mutually consistent. So, theories of consciousness face a “quadrilemma”. Since it will be hard to achieve a consensus on which of the four claims to retain and which to give up, we arrive at a landscape of competing theories, all of (...) which have pros and cons. I will briefly indicate which kinds of theories correspond to the four horns of the quadrilemma. (shrink)

Metaphysical underdetermination arises when we are not able to decide, through purely theoretical criteria, between competing interpretations of scientific theories with different metaphysical commitments. This is the case in which non-relativistic quantum mechanics (QM) finds itself in. Among several available interpretations, there is the one that states that the interaction with the conscious mind of a human observer causes a change in the dynamics of quantum objects undergoing from indefinite to definite states. In this paper, we argue that there seems (...) to be also a metaphysical underdetermination concerning London and Bauer’s theory of measurement between two methods of phenomenological reduction: the eidetic and the transcendental approaches. Recently, Steven French argued that both methods can be combined in order to interpret London and Bauer’s formalism. However, in this paper we argue that the eidetic one is the only viable phenomenological way to interpret this particular theory of measurement in QM based on the formalism presented by London and Bauer, hence breaking this phenomenological underdetermination. (shrink)

This paper sketches a new and somewhat heterodox metaphysical theory of consciousness: the “many-worlds theory”. It drops the assumption that all conscious subjects’ experiences are features of one and the same world and instead associates different subjects with different “first-personally centred worlds”. We can think of these as distinct “first-personal realizers” of a shared “third-personal world”, where the latter is supervenient, in a sense to be explained. This is combined with a form of modal realism, according to which different (...) subjects’ first-personally centred worlds are all real, though only one of them is present for each subject. The theory offers a novel way of capturing the irreducibly subjective nature of conscious experience without lapsing into solipsism. The paper also looks at some scientific theories of consciousness, such as integrated information theory, through the proposed lens and reconsiders the hard problem of consciousness. (shrink)

We review the spiritual cosmology of the 20th-century Indian mystic and yogi Sri Aurobindo. Our aim is twofold. First to furnish a basic philosophical understanding of Aurobindo’s vision, and secondly, that of making a comparative analysis with present scientific knowledge that could furnish an alternative metaphysical interpretation of the physical world. The rationale of our study is to question whether the observation of the physical world from the standpoint of the mystic experience could suggest some new theoretical framework for the (...) metaphysical ontology of the world itself. Taking perspectives from the states of consciousness described by mystics may furnish us with a deeper understanding of the material and metaphysical character of physical categories such as matter, energy, force, space, time, and space-time. This is an introductory overview of Aurobindo’s relevance for physical sciences and the conceptual foundations of physics, with particular attention paid to quantum physics. (shrink)

Most recent philosophical theories of consciousness account for it in terms of representation, the bulk of the debate revolving around whether (suitably) representing something is sufficient for consciousness (as per first-order representationalism) or some further (meta-)representation is needed (as per higher-order representationalism and self-representationalism). In this paper, I explore an alternative theory of consciousness, one that aims to explain consciousness not in terms of representation but in terms of the epistemically and metaphysically direct relation of acquaintance. (...) I call this the Inner Acquaintance Theory of consciousness (IAT). Roughly, on IAT, what makes a mental state conscious is its subject being acquainted with it. Though not wholly unprecedented, IAT is still at the fringe of consciousness debates and remains largely underexplored. The main goal of this paper is to take some steps toward developing the details of IAT, illustrate its potential explanatory power, and put it forward as a plausible alternative to representational theories, with the hope that this will contribute to shifting IAT closer to the center of the debate. Here is how I proceed. In §2 I introduce a notion—inner awareness—that is crucial both to contextualize and to understand IAT. In §3 I provide some preliminary motivation for exploring IAT. In §4 I explain the notion of acquaintance and illustrate some of the features that are typically attributed to it in the literature. The details of IAT are then shaped through four main decision points. I address them in §§5-8, where I suggest a particular choice at each decision point, thereby progressively building up a view that I consider particularly promising. (shrink)

In our post-Enlightenment world, reality has been reduced to only that which can be known through the faculty of reason, or empirically verified by the five senses; all higher levels of knowing have virtually been banished. Current approaches to psychotherapy have failed to discern that, without a proper understanding of the mind in all its dimensions, any discussion about effective mental health is not even possible. This paper seeks to demonstrate that certain pernicious limitations in modern Western psychology today have (...) served to distort our understanding of consciousness. This, in turn, has undermined our ability to deliver efficacious mental health treatment, where every dimension of a human being is taken into account. (shrink)

A primary goal of this chapter is to highlight neglected epistemic parallels between dualism and physicalism. Both dualist and physicalist arguments employ a combination of empirical data and armchair reflection; both rely on considerations stemming from how we conceptualize certain phenomena; and both aim to establish views that are compatible with scientific results but go well beyond the deliverances of empirical science. -/- I begin the chapter by fleshing out the distinctive commitments of dualism, in a way that illuminates the (...) interplay of epistemic and metaphysical elements within the dualist position. Section 2 outlines two influential arguments for dualism and explains how dualists defend those arguments from key criticisms. Sections 3 and 4 examine the most powerful objections to dualism: that it is inferior to physicalism as regards the theoretical virtue of simplicity, and that it cannot explain mental causation. I show that each of these objections to dualism depends on substantial assumptions that cannot be empirically justified. The objection from mental causation additionally rests on an ambitious assumption about how we conceptualize physical phenomena. Section 5 briefly reviews how epistemic considerations inform arguments on both sides of this debate. (shrink)

I present and I implement what I take to be the best approach to solve the meta-problem: the evidential approach. The main tenet of this approach is to explain our problematic phenomenal intuitions by putting our representations of phenomenal states in perspective within the larger frame of the cognitive processes we use to conceive of evidence.

Cosmological connectedness materializes when energy within the conscious cosmos connects one and all, an energy that wraps each and every being, living or non living, an energy that forms a labyrinth of intricate connections, an energy that transforms from one form to another with no control of itself. Matter created matter, but conserved the energy that created it, for the creator created matter and energy; to be connected eternally breathing life into beings. Cosmological energy trapped by matter is an exclusive (...) connection between energy and matter that moves beyond the domain of time. Seeking to be seeken should be the essence of all living beings, for man; the highest of beings known till date, bears the burden of an egoistic evolutionary self; laws of entropy shall forever grow, but through consciousness within the cosmos can sustain the connections. (shrink)

It is often thought that there is little that seems more obvious from experience than that time objectively passes, and that time is, in this respect, quite unlike space. Yet nothing in the physical picture of the world seems to correspond to the idea of such an objective passage of time. In this paper, I discuss some attempts to explain this apparent conflict between appearance and reality. I argue that existing attempts to explain the conflict as the result of a (...) perceptual illusion fail, and that it is, in fact, the nature of memory, rather than perception, that explains why we are inclined to think of time as passing. I also offer a diagnosis as to why philosophers have sometimes been tempted to think that an objective passage of time seems to figure directly in perceptual experience, even though it does not. (shrink)

Panpsychism is a solution to the mind-body problem that presumes that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality instead of a product or consequence of physical processes (i.e., brain activity). Panpsychism is an elegant solution to the mind-body problem: it effectively rids itself of the explanatory gap materialist theories of consciousness suffer from. However, many theorists and experimentalists doubt panpsychism can ever be successful as a scientific theory, as it cannot be empirically verified or falsified. In this paper, (...) I present a panpsychist model based on the controversial idea that consciousness may be a so called higher physical dimension. Although this notion seems outrageous, I show that the idea has surprising explanatory power, even though the model (as most models) is most likely wrong. Most importantly, though, it results in a panpsychist model that yields predictions that can be empirically verified or falsified. As such, the model's main purpose is to serve as an example how a metaphysical model of consciousness can be specified in such a way that they can be tested in a scientifically rigorous way. (shrink)

Ever since the hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers, 1996, 1995) first entered the scene in the debate over consciousness many have taken it to show the limitations of a scientific or naturalist explanation of consciousness. The hard problem is the problem of explaining why there is any experience associated with certain physical processes, that is, why there is anything it is like associated with such physical processes? The character of one’s experience doesn’t seem to be entailed by (...) physical processes and so an explanation which can overcome such a worry must (1) explain how physical processes give rise to experience (explain the entailment), (2) give an explanation which doesn’t rely on such physical processes, or (3) show why the hard problem is misguided in some sense. Recently, a rather ambitious and novel theory of consciousness has entered the scene – Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of Consciousness (Oizumi et al., 2014; Tononi, 2008; Tononi et al., 2016) – and proposes that consciousness is the result of a specific type of information processing, what those developing the theory call integrated information. The central aim of this dissertation is to philosophically investigate IIT and see whether it has the ability to overcome the hard problem and related worries. I then aim to use this philosophical investigation to answer a set of related questions which guide this dissertation, which are the following: Is it possible to give an information-theoretic explanation of consciousness? What would the nature of such an explanation be and would it result in a novel metaphysics of consciousness? In this dissertation, I begin in chapter one by first setting up the hard problem and related arguments against the backdrop of IIT (Mindt, 2017). I show that given a certain understanding of structural and dynamical properties IIT fails to overcome the hard problem of consciousness. I go on in chapter two to argue that a deflationary account of causation is the best view for IIT to overcome the causal exclusion problem (Baxendale and Mindt, 2018). In chapter three, I explain IIT’s account of how the qualitative character of our experience arises (qualia) and what view of intentionality (the directedness of our mental states) IIT advocates. I then move on in chapter four to show why the hard problem mischaracterizes structural and dynamical properties and misses important nuances that may shed light on giving a naturalized explanation of consciousness. In the last and fifth chapter, I outline a sketch of a novel metaphysics of consciousness that takes the conjunction of Neutral Monism and Information-Theoretic Structural Realism to give what I call Information-Theoretic Neutral-Structuralism. (shrink)

To make educated guesses about what happens to consciousness upon bodily death, one has to have some understanding of the relationship between body and consciousness during life. This relationship, of course, reflects an ontology. In this brief essay, the tenability of both the physicalist and dualist ontologies will be assessed in view of recent experimental results in physics. The alternative ontology of idealism will then be discussed, which not only can be reconciled with the available empirical evidence, but (...) also overcomes the lack of parsimony and limited explanatory power of physicalism and dualism. Idealism elegantly explains the basic facts of reality, such as (a) the fact that brain activity correlates with experience, (b) the fact that we all seem to share the same world, and (c) the fact that we can’t change the laws of nature at will. If idealism is correct, the implication is that, instead of disappearing, conscious inner life expands upon bodily death, a prediction that finds circumstantial but significant confirmation in reports of near-death experiences and psychedelic trances, both of which can be construed as glimpses into the early stages of the death process. (shrink)

A general definition of consciousness is: ‘consciousness is a mental aspect of a system or a process, which is a conscious experience, a conscious function, or both depending on the context’, where the term context refers to metaphysical views, constraints, specific aims, and so on. One of the aspects of visual consciousness is the visual subjective experience (SE) or the first person experience that occurs/emerges in the visual neural-network of thalamocortical system (which includes dorsal and ventral visual (...) pathways and frontal cortex) during dynamic interactions among widely distributed neuronal groups. In this article, however, consciousness and SE are interchangeably used unless noted. Consciousness can be either access (reportable) or phenomenal consciousness. For access consciousness, the interactions are between feed forward stimulus dependent signals and fronto-parietal feedback attentional signals. The necessary ingredients for access (reportable) consciousness are (i) wakefulness, (ii) reentrant interactions among neural populations, (iii) fronto-parietal and thalamic-reticular-nucleus attentional signals that modulate consciousness, (iv) working memory that retains information for consciousness, (v) stimulus at or above threshold level, and (vi) neural-network proto-experiences (PEs) that are superposed SEs embedded in a neural-network. Attention and the ability to report are not necessary for phenomenal consciousness. The neural source for the arousal system is the ascending reticular activating system in the brain stem, which brings the thalamocortical neural networks to wakeful state as a baseline for consciousness to occur. Reentrant interactions among neural populations bind stimulus attributes (such as location and features) and entail consciousness. Attention could be the results of reentry and competitive interactions, and modulates the stimulus related feed forward signal and consciousness. The ‘sources’ of attention may be thalamic reticular nucleus for bottom-up or frontal cortex for top-down direction. The ‘target’ of visual attention is ‘V4/V8/VO’ for Red-Green (R-G) channel. The neural correlates of the psychophysical entity R-G channel appear to be ‘V4/V8/VO’-neural-network (retina → LGN ↔ V1 ↔ V2 ↔ ‘V4/V8/VO’, and areas for attention, memory, and wakefulness). The psychophysical Red-Green Channel, its neurophysiological correlates V4/V8/VO-neural-network, and related experience (such as redness) are integrated. The dual-aspect-dual-mode PE-SE framework (Vimal, J Integr Neurosci 7:49–73, 2008) was used to address the explanatory gap problem of materialism. Neural-network and related SEs are the results of the co-evolution and co-development of the material aspect (mass, charge, spin, force, quanta, and space-time) and the mental aspect of fundamental particles (strings or elementary particles (fermions and bosons)). Their mental aspects are considered as the carriers of superposed multiple possible experiences (SEs/PEs) in unexpressed form. These possibilities are actualized when neural-networks are formed via neural Darwinism, and a specific SE is selected by a matching process when the necessary ingredients of consciousness/SE are satisfied. A simple experimental design is suggested to address the necessary and sufficient attributes of consciousness. (shrink)

Beginning with the paradoxes of zombie twins, we present an argument that dualism is both true and false. We show that avoiding this contradiction is impossible. Our diagnosis is that consciousness itself engenders this contradiction by producing contradictory points of view. This result has a large effect on the realism/anti-realism debate, namely, it suggests that this debate is intractable, and furthermore, it explains why this debate is intractable. We close with some comments on what our results mean for (...) class='Hi'>metaphysics and philosophy, in general. (shrink)

Most consciousness researchers, almost no matter what their views of the metaphysics of consciousness, can agree that the first step in a science of consciousness is the search for the neural correlate of consciousness (the NCC). The reason for this agreement is that the notion of ‘correlation’ doesn’t by itself commit one to any particular metaphysical view about the relation between (neural) matter and consciousness. For example, some might treat the correlates as causally related, (...) while others might view the correlation as evidence for identity between conscious states and brain states. The common ground therefore seems to be that the scientific search for the NCC is largely independent of the metaphysics of consciousness. (shrink)

The human brain consists of approximately 100 billion electrically active neurones that generate an endogenous electromagnetic field, whose role in neuronal computing has not been fully examined. The source, magnitude and likely influence of the brain's endogenous em field are here considered. An estimate of the strength and magnitude of the brain's em field is gained from theoretical considerations, brain scanning and microelectrode data. An estimate of the likely influence of the brain's em field is gained from theoretical principles and (...) considerations of the experimental effects of external em fields on neurone firing both in vitro and in vivo. Synchronous firing of distributed neurones phase-locks induced em field fluctuations to increase their magnitude and influence. Synchronous firing has previously been demonstrated to correlate with awareness and perception, indicating that perturbations to the brain's em field also correlate with awareness. The brain's em field represents an integrated electromagnetic field representation of distributed neuronal information and has dynamics that closely map to those expected for a correlate of consciousness. I propose that the brain's em information field is the physical substrate of conscious awareness - the cemi field - and make a number of predictions that follow from this proposal. Experimental evidence pertinent to these predictions is examined and shown to be entirely consistent with the cemi field theory. This theory provides solutions to many of the intractable problems of consciousness - such as the binding problem - and provides new insights into the role of consciousness, the meaning of free will and the nature of qualia. It thus places consciousness within a secure physical framework and provides a route towards constructing an artificial consciousness. (shrink)

Anger occupies a peculiar place in the context of human experience. Although it is a constant phenomenon in our everyday reality, we cannot actually say much about it. However, can we reduce anger to just an elusive emotion or even a sentiment nurtured in our consciousness? Our ancestors believed anger to be a powerful force, capable of taking control over us, without our consent. Can we still perceive anger that way? Research in psychology precisely explains the results of anger (...) but rarely is interested in how it exists and how it begins. Is it only a content of our consciousness or something more? What are its sources? In this paper the author will explain, using mainly the concepts of Seneca and M. Nussbaum, how anger occurs, what anger is and how unique it is to human condition. (shrink)

Christ, who is the Creator and source of all knowledge, is the ultimate goal of all those seeking truth in any discipline. It is difficult to know God with the puny tools of science. As we get closer and closer to the truth, our science must merge with our theology otherwise we will be following a false end of our scientific inquiry. I think Max Planck said it best: “God is the beginning of every religion and at the end of (...) the natural sciences.” All scientists who have any depth to their work will find the hand of God in nature or else a mystery that they refuse to identify with God. (shrink)

Recently, an information-theoretic structural realist theory of the self and consciousness has been put forward (Beni, M. D. 2019. Structuring the Self, Series New Directions in Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Palgrave Macmillan). The theory is presented as a form of panpsychism. I argue against this interpretation and show that Beni’s structuralist theory runs into the hard problem of consciousness, in a similar way as the Integrated Information theory of consciousness. Since both of these theories are structuralist and (...) based on the notion of information, I propose to use a solution that has been employed for Integrated Information Theory, namely introducing the distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic structure and dynamics (intrinsic information and intrinsic structure). Making these metaphysical enhancements to Beni’s structuralist theory of consciousness will give the theory a better chance of overcoming the hard problem. In terms of the metaphysics of consciousness, it takes us beyond physicalism. I then suggest that the information-theoretic structuralist theory of consciousness should, instead of panpsychism and physicalism, be combined with neutral monist ontology which is a better fit. These reworkings could lead to an improved naturalistic account of consciousness – the neutral-structuralist theory of consciousness and the self. (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)

Consciousness is connected with the fact that a subject is aware and open to the manifestation of whatever appears. Existence, by contrast, is used to express the fact that something is given in experience, is present, or is real. Usually, the two notions are taken to be somehow related. This chapter suggests that existence is at best introduced as a metaphysical (or meta-experiential) concept that inevitably escapes the domain of conscious experience. In order to illustrate this claim, two case (...) studies are considered. The first case is provided by Descartes’s famous treatment of consciousness and existence in his Meditations on First Philosophy. The second case is meant to contrast the Cartesian approach by taking the opposite route, as delineated by Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) in his ‘fundamental ontology’. (shrink)

Illusionists about phenomenal consciousness claim that phenomenal consciousness does not exist but merely seems to exist. At the same time, it is quite intuitive for there to be some kind of link between phenomenality and value. For example, some situations seem good or bad in virtue of the conscious experiences they feature. Illusionist views of phenomenal consciousness then face what I call the normative challenge. They have to say where they stand regarding the idea that there is (...) a link between phenomenality and value. If they accept that there is such a link, they might be committed to revisionary normative consequences (and some of them may prove to be uncomfortable). If they deny that there is such link, they might avoid revisionary normative consequences (without being guaranteed against them) but then they have to give reasons to deny that such link obtains, which is not a trivial task. The existence of the normative challenge does not show that illusionism is false, but it shows that illusionism might have important consequences in the normative domain, which have to be clarified. (shrink)

In the marketplace of opinions concerning the metaphysics of mind and consciousness panqualityism (PQ) occupies an interesting position. It is a distinct variant of neutral monism, as well as of protophenomenalism, and as such it strives to carve out a conceptual niche midway between physicalism and mentalism. It is also a brand of Russellian monism, advocated by its supporters as a less costly and less extravagant alternative to panpsychism. Being clearly articulated and relatively well-developed it constitutes an intriguing (...) view. Nonetheless, the present paper takes a decisively critical stance towards PQ. In particular, it challenges it on two principal grounds. First, I argue that PQ's analysis of experience, and of the qualities tasked with constituting the phenomenal character of experience, is fundamentally flawed. Second, I argue that PQ's attempt to explain phenomenal consciousness as a function of reflective awareness is equally misguided. Along the way, the paper also points the shortcomings of previously established critiques of PQ. All in all, the discussion identifies some difficulties that are likely to generalize beyond PQ's specific circumstances, raising concerns regarding the viability of a "middle of the road" solution to the mind–body problem. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre believed that consciousness entails self-consciousness, or, even more strongly, that consciousness is self-consciousness. As Kathleen Wider puts it in her terrific book The Bodily Nature of Consciousness: Sartre and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind, ‘all consciousness is, by its very nature, self-consciousness.’ I share this view with Sartre and have elsewhere argued for it at length. My overall aim in this paper is to examine Sartre's theory of consciousness against the background (...) of the so-called ‘higher-order thought theory of consciousness’ which, in turn, will shed light on the structure of conscious mental states as well as on Sartre's theory of consciousness and reflection. Another goal of this paper is, following Wider, to show how Sartre's views can be understood from a contemporary analytic perspective. Sartre's theory of consciousness is often confusing to the so-called ‘analytic Anglo-American’ tradition, but I attempt to show how this obstacle can be overcome against the backdrop of a specific contemporary theory of consciousness. (shrink)

How The Evolution Of Language Created The Mysteries of Subjective Experience, Mind And Self. -/- In this new paradigm, a distinction is made between biological awareness which exists in varying degrees in all animate beings and consciousness, the origin of which is based on symbolic language and therefore found only within our species. The evolution of language enabled us to not only label and communicate our experiences, an ability shared by other primates but to also describe and explain them, (...) both of which only humans are capable. The essence of the mind-body problem has been our inability to explain how our inner subjective experiences became seen as different from our objective experiences of the physical world. This problematic duality was created by the relatively rapid growth in scientific terminology and thought during the seventeenth century which was in sharp contrast to our emotionally based vocabulary. As we became increasingly tuned into the physical world, our awareness of the difference between our objective and subjective experiences became obvious. As the evolution of language further enabled us to label and describe both our objective and subjective experiences, we were able to recognize the difference between what was occurring within us versus to us. This naturally created the dualism of mind versus body. The evolution of symbolic language was not only the basis for both the origin of consciousness and the mind-body problem, but for the metaphysical ideas of god and mind as well as of the soul and the personal self. As such, this book provides an entirely new perspective on subjects that have long perplexed many thinkers throughout history. (shrink)

Can we conceive of a mind without body? Does, for example, the idea of the soul's immortality make sense? Certain versions of materialism deny such questions; I shall try to prove that these versions of materialism cannot be right. They fail because they cannot account for the mental vocabulary from the language of brains in the vat. Envatted expressions such as "I think", "I believe", etc., do not have to be reinterpreted when we translate them to our language; they are (...) semantically stable. By contrast, physical expressions from the vat language are semantically instable; due to Putnam's externalism they cannot be transported to our language without change. This contrast opens the way to a new understanding of what the immortality of the soul might be like: A brain in a vat (and its mental life) might survive what the brain calls "my physical body's death". (shrink)

In the contemporary philosophy of mind and consciousness studies, views such as panpsychism or theories of universal consciousness, have enjoyed a recent renaissance of metaphysical speculations in Western philosophy. Its similarities with Eastern philosophical traditions went not unnoticed. However, the potential contribution that the evolutionary cosmology of the Indian poet, mystic and philosopher Sri Aurobindo can offer to these ontologies, remains largely unknown or unexplored. Here, consciousness, mind, life, matter and evolution are interpreted in an extended metaphysical (...) framework, uniting Western and Eastern traditions inside a modern philosophical system where materialism, panpsychism, cosmopsychism and philosophical idealism are not seen as irreconcilable exclusives, but different points of view that can be reconciled in a synthesis of knowledge, as envisioned from higher states of consciousness. This integral view of reality offers a conceptual platform that can complement and incorporate current theoretical approaches in modern philosophy, where their present internal inconsistencies do not emerge, and can be suggestive for scientists as well, especially in the fields of biology and physical sciences. (shrink)

This paper presents a new cognitivist account for the old puzzle of self-consciousness or knowing self-reference. Knowing self-reference does not rely on reflection on some putative pre-existent pre-reflexive self-consciousness, nor is it the result of a process of identification of oneself as the employer of the relevant token of “I” according to the token-reflexive rule of the first-person pronoun. Rather, it relies on the architecture of the cognitive system. By exploiting the acquaintance relation that every brain has to (...) one’s own body, a “mental file” is opened in a subliminal way to house information about oneself gained through the appropriate proprioceptors. Knowing self-reference based on self-files dispenses with self-identification because the opening of the file in the same brain/body is not a deed of the cognitive system but rather something that takes place sub-personally. (shrink)

This paper uses a paradox inherent in any solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness to argue for God’s existence. The paper assumes we are “thought machines”, reading the state of a relevant physical medium and then outputting corresponding thoughts. However, the existence of such a thought machine is impossible, since it needs an infinite number of point-representing sensors to map the physical world to conscious thought. This paper shows that these sensors cannot exist, and thus thought cannot come (...) solely from our physical world. The only possible explanation is something outside, argued to be God. (shrink)

After half a century in oblivion, the nature of consciousness is now the hottest topic in the behavioral sciences and philosophy. Beginning with the pioneering work of Ludwig Wittgenstein in the 1930’s (the Blue and Brown Books) and from the 50’s to the present by his logical successor John Searle, I have created the following table as a heuristic for furthering this study. The rows show various aspects or ways of studying and the columns show the involuntary processes and (...) voluntary behaviors comprising the two systems (dual processes) of the Logical Structure of Consciousness (LSC), which can also be regarded as the Logical Structure of Rationality (LSR-Searle), of behavior (LSB), of personality (LSP), of reality (LSOR), of Intentionality (LSI) -the classical philosophical term, the Descriptive Psychology of Consciousness (DPC) , the Descriptive Psychology of Thought (DPT) –or better, the Language of the Descriptive Psychology of Thought (LDPT), terms introduced here and in my other very recent writings. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

The theory of mind that medieval philosophers inherit from Augustine is predicated on the thesis that the human mind is essentially self-reflexive. This paper examines Peter John Olivi's (1248-1298) distinctive development of this traditional Augustinian thesis. The aim of the paper is three-fold. The first is to establish that Olivi's theory of reflexive awareness amounts to a theory of phenomenal consciousness. The second is to show that, despite appearances, Olivi rejects a higher-order analysis of consciousness in favor of (...) a same-order theory. The third and final is to show that, on his view, consciousness is both self-intimating and infallible. (shrink)

Recent evidence points to widespread underconnectivity in autistic brains owing to deviant white matter, the fibers that make long connections between areas of the cortex. Subjects with autism show measurably fewer long-range connections between the parietal and prefrontal cortices. These findings may help shed light on the current debate in the consciousness literature about whether conscious states require both prefrontal and parietal/temporal components. If it can be shown that people with autism have conscious states despite such underconnectivity, this would (...) constitute an argument for the claim that conscious states can exist in posterior cortex without associated prefrontal activity. This in turn lends support to a class of theories according to which microconsciousness is possible—consciousness in small areas of cortex without active connections to the prefrontal cortex, as opposed to the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness, according to which conscious states can only occur when posterior cortical areas (in the parietal or temporal lobes) have active connections to the prefrontal cortex. In this chapter, after listing several candidate examples of consciousness without accompanying prefrontal connections, I will argue that autism provides yet another such example. I will also examine a recent version of the higher-order theory that acknowledges these cases of consciousness without prefrontal activity and, instead depicts consciousness as requiring higher-order thoughts located in posterior cortex. In the final section, I will examine the consequences of these views for our understanding of the metaphysical nature of consciousness itself—the classic mind-body problem. (shrink)

In Galileo's Error, Philip Goff sets out a manifesto for a post-Galilean science of consciousness. Article four of the manifesto reads: 'Anti-Dualism: Consciousness is not separate from the physical world; rather consciousness is located in the intrinsic nature of the physical world.' I argue that there is an important sense of ‘dualism’ in which Goff’s arguments are not only compatible with but entail dualism, and not only dualism but substance dualism. Substance dualism, in the sense I have (...) in mind, is the view that (i) there are two sides to reality, a fundamentally mental side and a fundamentally nonmental side; and (ii) the fundamentally mental side consists of mental substances resembling Cartesian souls. I do not suggest that this is bad news for post-Galilean science of consciousness. My aim is rather to push for a certain view about what a theory of consciousness motivated by Goff’s arguments must look like. (shrink)

Consider the following three claims. (i) There are no truths of the form ‘p and ~p’. (ii) No one holds a belief of the form ‘p and ~p’. (iii) No one holds any pairs of beliefs of the form {p, ~p}. Irad Kimhi has recently argued, in effect, that each of these claims holds and holds with metaphysical necessity. Furthermore, he maintains that they are ultimately not distinct claims at all, but the same claim formulated in different ways. I find (...) his argument suggestive, if not entirely transparent. I do think there is at least an important kernel of truth even in (iii), and that (i) ultimately explains what’s right about the other two. Consciousness of an impossibility makes belief in the obtaining of the corresponding state of affairs an impossibility. Interestingly, an appreciation of this fact brings into view a novel conception of inference, according to which it consists in the consciousness of necessity. This essay outlines and defends this position. A central element of the defense is that it reveals how reasoners satisfy what Paul Boghossian calls the Taking Condition and do so without engendering regress. (shrink)

One of the leading concerns animating current philosophy of mind is that, no matter how good a scientific account is, it will leave out what its like to be conscious. The challenge has thus been to study or at least explain away that qualitative dimension. Pursuant with that aim, I investigate how philosophy of signs in the Peircean tradition can positively reshape ongoing debates. Specifically, I think the account of iconic or similarity-based reference we find in semiotic theory offers a (...) more promising variant of the phenomenal concept strategy. Philosophers who endorse this strategy think that the difficulties we have fitting conscious qualia into a scientific picture may owe to the peculiar nature of indexical concepts. They point to the fact that, when we try to convey the feel of our experiences, we employ context-dependent gestures and/or utterances that are indexed to perspectives unique to each person. However, according to the theory I defend, there are three ways signs can refer, namely by convention, causal contact, and similarity. Since similarity is not reducible to proximity, I argue that a theory of reference that turns on shared quality can bypass some of the implausible consequences that plague indexical accounts. In the first chapter, I describe the apparatus needed to make sense of this claim. In the second chapter, I present my account of iconic reference. In the third chapter, I justify my reliance on a distinction that is less than real yet more than nominal. In the fourth chapter, I sketch a trinitarian metaphysics well-suited to house the foregoing account of qualia. (shrink)

The goal of this programmatic paper is to highlight a close connection between the core problem in the philosophy of medicine, i.e. the concept of health, and the core problem of the philosophy of mind, i.e. the concept of consciousness. I show when we look at these phenomena together, taking the evolutionary perspective of modern state-based behavioural and life-history theory used as the teleonomic tool to Darwinize the agent- and subject-side of organisms, we will be in a better position (...) to make sense of them both as natural phenomena. (shrink)

In discussion on consciousness and the hard problem, there is an unquestioned background assumption, namely, our experience is stored in the brain. Yet Bergson argued that this very question, “Is experience stored in the brain?” is the critical issue in the problem of consciousness. His examination of then-current memory research led him, save for motor or procedural memory, to a “no” answer. Others, for example Sheldrake, have continued this negative assessment of the research findings. So, has this assumption (...) actually been proven since Bergson? Do we know how experience is stored? Or that it is stored? Here, a recent review and model of memory is examined to see where this assumption actually stands. Again, the assessment will be that nothing has changed. The core of the problem, it will be argued, lies in two things: Firstly, the search for how/where experience is stored is motivated—rephrasing Bergson—in the classic metaphysic, a framework on space and time whose logic cannot be coherently, logically adhered to in attempting to explain how experience is stored. Secondly, the search generally assumes an inadequate theory of perception that is implicitly based in this classic metaphysic. If framed within Bergson’s model of perception and his temporal metaphysic, conjoined with J. J. Gibson’s model, the storage-search appears misguided from the start. (shrink)

Modern rationalism transformed the modern homeland to a discursive space and time by means of institutes governing the modern society in all its walks. Based on the Newtonian and Kantian conception of space and time the discursive field is just a scene wherein any human individual adopts stewardship to create progress by reducing landscape and non-human life to auxiliary items for human’s benefit. In contrast, Aldo Leopold considered humans, non human life and the landscape as mutually influencing participants and enlarged (...) ethical care to all living participants and the landscape, called ´the land´. Integrity and autonomy of the homeland are the central topics of Leopold’s land ethics. Baird Callicott suggested to complete it with new metaphysical conceptions of space and time. -/- We formulated a metaphysical background for Leopold’s land ethics by phenomenology of space and time based on the Leibnizian conception of space-time. The latter is constructed by particular places and events called ´ecotopois´ embracing all human participants, locals and foreigners in a varying symbolic temporal and spatial field of dynamic process of identification and self consciousness. Adopting Warwick Fox´ transpersonal identification idea non-human life and landscape enriches these processes. Finally, it is not a matter of conquering the land, it is matter of making a community. -/- Though landscape and participants are particular, integrity and autonomy of the homeland claim the universal status of the land. Adopting Gadamer hermeneutical way of understanding, we reject mutual and equally understanding. Only acceptance of mutual prejudice makes room for asymmetric praxis between locals and foreigners as well as between humans and non-humans. What is more, Gadamer´s hermeneutics makes an ontological status of the foreigner possible and recognizes the interest of homeland’s particularity. This universal status is guaranteed as a priori space-time that links subject’s tradition and that of the land to actual contact with the foreigner. Transpersonal identification is a consequence of converging hermeneutical understanding of foreigner’s particularity and that of the landscape. Ethics of the land evolves from the ethical status of any foreigner in the own homeland. -/- . (shrink)

Self-consciousness relates to important themes, such as sentience and personhood, and is often the cornerstone of moral theories (Warren, 1997). However, not much attention is given to future moral creatures of the earth: robots. This may be due to the unsettled status of their experience, which is why I have chosen to find the necessary features of self-consciousness in them. Philosophy of mind is also my interest which I have developed since I rejected the idea of souls and (...) could not account for my own phenomenal experiences. Among the current answers to the hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers, 1995) one stood out to me – Daniel Dennett’s multiple drafts model of consciousness presented in “Consciousness Explained” (Dennett, 1991) and his other works. Daniel Dennett is a self-described illusionist (Dennett, 2016) and a functionalist. His position is synonymous to holding self-conscious experiences, such as deliberating over one’s pain or reflecting over one’s actions insufficient to postulate existence of a metaphysical self. He believes instead that experiences are functional realizations which do not require any self, and the feeling of being conscious or self-conscious is actually a ”user-illusion” (Dennett, 1991), a term describing the unjustified belief of being in control of one’s actions. In his views, a selfhood as it is popularly conceived is contradictory. Therefore, he rejects realism about mental events, a position also called naïve realism (Siegel, 2011), on the basis that it is unverifiable and there are insufficient grounds to accept mental events (Dennett, 1988). He adopts a similar scepticism towards other theories of minds, hence nearing eliminative materialism in self-consciousness and related theme of pain (Dennett, 1978). His multiple drafts model of consciousness seeks to ground our beliefs about self-consciousness in the specific architecture of mind, which is particular to every species and kind of being. As such it is a particularly flexible theory that examines experiences of non-humans without falling into binary thinking – believing that a being has as rich inner life as humans do or none. This is why it is a great starting point for establishing necessary conditions for consciousness in robots. In this essay, I will often use words computer, programme, robot interchangeably for the purpose of clarity and take as the working definition “autonomous machines capable of sensing their environment, making decision and performing tasks similar to human actions”. I chose to explore self-consciousness instead of committing to the issue of consciousness, because consciousness can be defined in a weak sense, in which even a thermostat is “conscious” of the temperature, and consciousness in a strong sense, which invokes the internalism and externalism debate that is less connected to the nature of experiences than self-consciousness. My exploration pertains first and foremost to the philosophy of mind, of which I will examine the most relevant positions and decide to commit to functionalism (Block, 1980). Then I will advocate for explaining away of some of phenomena of self-consciousness and believing self-consciousness to be a sort of illusion. From there I will conclude that robots could fall for the same illusion of self-consciousness and therefore become self-conscious. I will argue, that self-consciousness can be established using a modified Turing Test, which would determine if a robot believed in a meaningful narrative about itself (Ricoeur, 1991) and hence be self-conscious. This will lead to answering the question of this essay: what are the features necessary for a self-conscious robot in the light of “Consciousness Explained” by Daniel Dennett? (shrink)

Throughout its history, the relationship of phenomenology to historical reflection has appeared ambiguous. On the one hand, phenomenology—with the help of its founding figures—gave a promise to return from the world-historical speculations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the phenomenon of lived historicity, that is, to the question of how historical time is experienced within the life of the individual. On the other hand, phenomenology could not resist the temptation to critically reconsider some of the fundamental historical narratives that (...) define our modern self-understanding—narratives that concerned the revolutionary effect of the natural sciences , the birth of the subject .. (shrink)

This paper centers on the implicit metaphysics beyond the Theory of Relativity and the Principle of Indeterminacy – two revolutionary theories that have changed 20th Century Physics – using the perspective of Husserlian Transcedental Phenomenology. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) abolished the theoretical framework of Classical (Galilean- Newtonian) physics that has been complemented, strengthened by Cartesian metaphysics. Rene Descartes (1596- 1850) introduced a separation between subject and object (as two different and self- enclosed substances) while Galileo (...) and Newton did the “mathematization” of the world. Newtonian physics, however, had an inexplicable postulate of absolute space and absolute time – a kind of geometrical framework, independent of all matter, for the explication of locality and acceleration. Thus, Cartesian modern metaphysics and Galilean- Newtonian physics go hand in hand, resulting to socio- ethical problems, materialism and environmental destruction. Einstein got rid of the Newtonian absolutes and was able to provide a new foundation for our notions of space and time: the four (4) dimensional space- time; simultaneity and the constancy of velocity of light, and the relativity of all systems of reference. Heisenberg, following the theory of quanta of Max Planck, told us of our inability to know sub- atomic phenomena and thus, blurring the line between the Cartesian separation of object and subject, hence, initiating the crisis of the foundations of Classical Physics. But the real crisis, according to Edmund Husserl (1859-1930) is that Modern (Classical) Science had “idealized” the world, severing nature from what he calls the Lebenswelt (life- world), the world that is simply there even before it has been reduced to mere mathematical- logical equations. Husserl thus, aims to establish a new science that returns to the “pre- scientific” and “non- mathematized” world of rich and complex phenomena: phenomena as they “appear to human consciousness”. To overcome the Cartesian equation of subject vs. object (man versus environment), Husserl brackets the external reality of Newtonian Science (epoché = to put in brackets, to suspend judgment) and emphasizes (1) the meaning of “world” different from the “world” of Classical Physics, (2) the intentionality of consciousness (L. in + tendere = to tend towards, to be essentially related to or connected to) which means that even before any scientific- logical description of the external reality, there is always a relation already between consciousness and an external reality. The world is the equiprimordial existence of consciousness and of external reality. My paper aims to look at this new science of the pre- idealized phenomena started by Husserl (a science of phenomena as they appear to conscious, human, lived experience, hence he calls it phenomenology), centering on the life- world and the intentionality of consciousness, as providing a new way of looking at ourselves and the world, in short, as providing a new metaphysics (as an antidote to Cartesian metaphysics) that grounds the revolutionary findings of Einstein and Heisenberg. The environmental destruction, technocracy, socio- ethical problems in the modern world are all rooted in this Galilean- Newtonian- Cartesian interpretation of the relationship between humans and the world after the crumbling of European Medieval Ages. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) comments that the modern world is going toward a nihilism (L. nihil = nothingness) at the turn of the century. Now, after two World Wars and the dropping of Atomic bomb, the capitalism and imperialism on the one hand, and on the other hand the poverty, hunger of the non- industrialized countries alongside destruction of nature (i.e., global warming), Nietzsche might be correct: unless humanity changes the way it looks at humanity and the kosmos. The works of Einstein, Heisenberg and Husserl seem to be pointing the way for us humans to escape nihilism by a “great existential transformation.” What these thinkers of post- modernity (after Cartesian/ Newtonian/ Galilean modernity) point to are: a) a new therapeutic way of looking at ourselves and our world (metaphysics) and b) a new and corrective notion of “rationality” (different from the objectivist, mathematico- logical way of thinking). This paper is divided into four parts: 1) A summary of Classical Physics and a short history of Quantum Theory 2) Einstein’s Special and General Relativity and Heisenberg’s Indeterminacy Principle 3) Husserl’s discussion of the Crisis of Europe, the life- world and intentionality of consciousness 4) A Metaphysics of Relativity and Indeterminacy and a Corrective notion of Rationality in Husserl’s Phenomenology . (shrink)