In this article, I undertake the tasks: (i) of reconsidering Feigl’s notion of a ‘nomological dangler’ in light of recent discussion about the viability of accommodating phenomenal properties, or qualia, within a physicalist picture of reality; and (ii) of constructing an argument to the effect that nomological danglers, including the way qualia are understood to be related to brain states by contemporary dualists, are extremely unlikely. I offer a probabilistic argument to the effect that merely nomological danglers are extremely unlikely, (...) the only probabilistically coherent candidates being ‘anomic danglers’ (not even nomically correlated) and ‘necessary danglers’ (more than merely nomically correlated). After I show, based on similar probabilistic reasoning, that the first disjunct (anomic danglers) is very unlikely, I conclude that the identity thesis is the only remaining candidate for the mental–physical connection. The novelty of the argument is that it brings probabilistic considerations in favor of physicalism, a move that has been neglected in the recent burgeoning literature on the subject. (shrink)

ABSTRACT. In this paper I propose a defense of a posteriori materialism. Prob- lems with a posteriori identity materialism are identi?ed, and a materialism based on composition, not identity, is proposed. The main task for such a proposal is to account for the relation between physical and phenomenal properties. Compos- ition does not seem to be ?t as a relation between properties, but I offer a peculiar way to understand property-composition, based on some recent ideas in the literature on ontology. (...) Finally, I propose a materialist model for the mind-body relation that is able to resist the attack from conceivability arguments. (shrink)

Are qualia natural kinds? In order to give this question slightly more focus, and to show why it might be an interesting question, let me begin by saying a little about what I take qualia to be, and what natural kinds. For the purposes of this paper, I shall be assuming a fairly full-blooded kind of phenomenal realism about qualia: qualia, thus, include the qualitative painfulness of pain (rather than merely the functional specification of pain states), the qualitative redness in (...) the visual field that typically accompanies red discriminations, the taste of lemon (independently of the fact that such states are normally caused by lemons and give rise to puckering of the lips, etc.), and so on. In other words, I am assuming the falsity of functionalism with respect to qualia, though I am not for a moment assuming dualism. (shrink)

The claim that behaviourally undetectable inverted spectra are possible has been endorsed by many physicalists. I explain why this starting point rules out standard forms of scientific explanation for qualia. The modern ‘phenomenal concept strategy’ is an updated way of defending problematic intuitions like these, but I show that it cannot help to recover standard scientific explanation. I argue that Chalmers is right: we should accept the falsity of physicalism if we accept this problematic starting point. I further argue that (...) accepting this starting point amounts to at least implicitly endorsing certain theoretical claims about the nature of introspection. I therefore suggest that we allow ourselves to be guided, in our quest to understand qualia, by whatever independently plausible theories of introspection we have. I propose that we adopt a more moderate definition of qualia, as those introspectible properties which cannot be fully specified simply by specifying the non-controversially introspectible ‘propositional attitude’ mental states (including seeing x, experiencing x, and so on, where x is a specification of a potentially public state of affairs). Qualia thus defined may well fit plausible, naturalisable accounts of introspection. If so, such accounts have the potential to explain, rather than explain away, the problematic intuitions discussed earlier; an approach that should allow integration of our understanding of qualia with the rest of science. (shrink)

If a brain is duplicated so that there are two brains in identical states, are there then two numerically distinct phenomenal experiences or only one? There are two, I argue, and given computationalism, this has implications for what it is to implement a computation. I then consider what happens when a computation is implemented in a system that either uses unreliable components or possesses varying degrees of parallelism. I show that in some of these cases there can be, in a (...) deep and intriguing sense, a fractional (non-integer) number of qualitatively identical phenomenal experiences. This, in turn, has implications for what lessons one should draw from neural replacement scenarios such as Chalmers. (shrink)

The papers in this special issue are all descended from papers presented at the second Online Consciousness Conference. I founded the Online Consciousness Conference at Consciousness Online (http://consciousnessonline.wordpress.com) in 2008 mostly because no one else would. Being inspired by the Online Philosophy Conference, I mentioned to several people that it would be great if we had something like that in Consciousness Studies. People I talked to were very enthusiastic but no one seemed like they wanted to initiate the process. I (...) figured I would give it a shot and have been pleasantly surprised by the results. Papers from the first conference were published in a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, papers from the second are in this special issue, and papers from the third conference (2011) are due to come out as a book in Springer’s series Studies in Brain and Mind. As I write this I am planning the fourth conference for February 2012. There is no way I could have known back in 2008 how well the conference would be received but I am grateful for that reception. (shrink)

Although the capacity to discriminate between different qualia is typically admitted to have a definition in terms of functional role, the qualia thereby related are thought to elude functional definition. In this paper I argue that these views are inconsistent. Given a functional model of discrimination, one can construct from it a definition of qualia. The problem is similar in many ways to Goodman's definition of qualia in terms of 'matching', and I argue that many of his findings survive reinterpretation (...) into a physicalistic basis which employs 'indiscriminability' as its primitive term. I show how one can identify the critical properties to which discrimination capacities are sensitive, and then identify their order. A problem arises concerning the different ways in which qualitatively distinct experiences can differ (hue, shape, and so on). Physicalist accounts have often been accused of relying in a circular fashion on some antecedent understanding of phenomenal properties in order to specify those differences. This account avoids such an accusation: ordering of critical properties is determined by the dimensionality of discriminations, and the latter is given by the structure of the discrimination pair lists. Once a topology of quality is constructed, qualia names can be defined by their relative location within the order. In the conclusion I argue that psychophysics employs physicalist techniques to define a topology of quality, and that it can provide what Thomas Nagel calls an "objective phenomenology.". (shrink)

Functionalists think an event's causes and effects, its 'causal role', determines whether it is a mental state and, if so, which kind. Functionalists see this causal role principle as supporting their orthodox materialism, their commitment to the neuroscientist's ontology. I examine and refute the functionalist's causal principle and the orthodox materialism that attends that principle.

s Gibson (1982) correctly points out, despite Quine’s brief flirtation with a “mitigated phenomenalism” (Gibson’s phrase) in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, Quine’s ontology of 1953 (“On Mental Entities”) and beyond left no room for non-physical sensory objects or qualities. Anyone familiar with the contemporary neo-dualist qualia-freak-fest might wonder why Quinean lessons were insufficiently transmitted to the current generation.

Zu den großen Rätseln der Philosophie des Geistes, ja der Philosophie überhaupt, gehört die folgende Frage: Wie lässt sich der qualitative oder phänomenale Charakter bewusster Erlebnisse beschreiben, erklären oder verstehen? Wie lässt sich beispielsweise erklären, wie es ist, eine Rose zu riechen? Einerseits erscheint angesichts der Erfolgsgeschichte der modernen Naturwissenschaften die Annahme plausibel, dass sich letztlich alles physikalisch erklären lässt, auch bewusste Erlebnisse. Bei dieser Annahme handelt es sich um die physikalistische Intuition, die in der analytischen Philosophie des Geistes die (...) Hauptmotivation der gegenwärtig dominierenden Position darstellt: der Position des Physikalismus. Andererseits stellt der nur subjektiv erfassbare qualitative Charakter bewusster Erlebnisse das Kernproblem für eine physikalische Erklärung des Bewusstseins dar: Wie sollte das Erlebnis von Rosenduft physikalisch erklärbar sein? Dabei handelt es sich um die antiphysikalistische Intuition, auf deren Grundlage in den letzten Jahren verschiedene Argumente gegen den Physikalismus vorgebracht worden sind. Indem in der vorliegenden Studie diesen beiden, zumindest auf den ersten Blick unvereinbar erscheinenden Intuitionen ausführlich und vorbehaltlos Rechnung getragen wird - sie stellen sowohl den Ausgangspunkt als auch den argumentativen Rahmen der Studie dar -, wird untersucht, wie sich der qualitative Charakter bewusster Erlebnisse im Rahmen einer Theorie des Bewusstseins fassen lässt. (shrink)

A defense of Frank Jackson's knowledge argument from an objection raised by Michael Tye (1986, 1989), according to which Mary acquires no new factual knowledge when she first sees red but, instead, merely comes to know old facts (that she already knew) in a new way.

A zombie is a creature just like a conscious being in certain respects, but wholly lacking in consciousness. In this paper, I look at zombies from the perspective of basic ontology (“from below”), taking as my starting point a trope ontology I have defended elsewhere. The consequences of this ontology for zombies are mixed. Viewed from below, one sort of zombie—the exact dispositional zombie—is impossible. A similar argument can be wielded against another sort—the exact physical zombie—but here supplementary principles are (...) needed to get to the impossibility result. Finally, at least two sorts of zombie—the behavioural and functional zombies—escape these arguments from below. (shrink)

Phenomenology is based on a doctrine of evidence which accords a crucial role to human capacity to discriminate or ‘intuit’ features of their experience. However, some experiential entities to which phenomenologists are committed must be intuition-transcendent. Examples of intuition-transcendent phenomenology include the very fine grained perceptual discriminations which Thomas Metzinger calls ‘Raffman Qualia’ (Metzinger 2004, p. 74) and, crucially, the structure of temporal awareness (Roden 2006). It can be argued, on this basis, that phenomenology is in much the same epistemological (...) relationship to its own subject matter as descriptive (i.e. ‘phenomenological’) physics or biology are to physical and biological reality: phenomenology cannot tell us what phenomenology is really ‘about’. This does not entail that we should abjure phenomenological enquiry in favour of the methods of the cognitive sciences, say. It implies, rather, that the domain of phenomenology is not the province of a self-standing, autonomous discipline but must be investigated with any empirically fruitful techniques that are open to us (e.g. computational neuroscience, artificial intelligence, etc.). Finally, it entails that while a naturalized phenomenology should be retained as a descriptive, empirical method, it should not be accorded transcendental authority. If phenomenology (the discipline) cannot tell us what phenomenology (the subject of that discipline) is then it cannot limn the scope of possible phenomenologies. (shrink)

I argue that property dualists cannot hold that minds are physical substances. The focus of my discussion is a property dualism that takes qualia to be sui generis features of reality.

A major part of the mind–body problem is to explain why a given set of physical processes should give rise to qualia of one sort rather than another. Colour hues are the usual example considered here, and there is a lively debate between, for example, Hardin, Levine, Jackson, Clark and Chalmers as to whether the results of colour vision science can provide convincing explanations of why colours actually look the way they do. This paper examines carefully the type of explanation (...) that is needed here, and it is concluded that it does not have to be reductive to be effective. What needs to be explained more than anything is why inverted hue scenarios are more intuitive than other sensory inversions: and the issue of physicalism versus dualism is only of marginal relevance here. (shrink)

In recent philosophy of mind, epiphenomenalism—that strain of dualism according to which the mind is caused by the body but does not cause the body in turn—has undergone something of a renaissance. Contemporary epiphenomenalists bear only partial resemblance to their more extravagantly metaphysical ancestors, however. Traditional epiphenomenalists thought that (at least) two sorts of mental properties were epiphenomenal—intentional properties such as the meaning or representational content of the propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires and so on); and conscious properties such as awareness (...) and the qualitative nature of experience. Contemporary epiphenomenalists, on the other hand, are largely sanguine about the prospects for intentionality to be brought within the purview of a physicalist worldview; what forces their dualism is one particular feature of consciousness—what irks them are qualia, the.. (shrink)

The essays address a wide range of topics, including normativity and naturalized epistemology, holism, consciousness, the philosophy of logic, perception, value ...

The 'completeness of physics' is the key premise in the causal argument for physicalism. Standard formulations of it fail to rule out emergent downwards causation. I argue that it must do this if it is tare in a valid causal argument for physicalism. Drawing on the notion of conferring causal power, I formulate a suitable principle, 'strong completeness'. I investigate the metaphysical implications of distinguishing this principle from emergent downwards causation, and I argue that categoricalist accounts of properties are better (...) equipped to sustain the distinction than dispositional essentialist accounts. Finally, I argue that the additional evidence needed for strong completeness renders the causal argument otiose for any properties amenable to scientific reduction. (shrink)