Online research in philosophy

are sharp rather than vague, that they can have no borderline cases. On the other hand, many who take conscious states to be identical to, or realized by, complex physical states are committed to the vagueness of those concepts. In the paper I argue that conscious state and conscious creature are sharp by presenting four necessary conditions for conceiving borderline cases in general, and showing that some of those conditions cannot be met with conscious state. I conclude that conscious state is sharp, and the conclusion is then extended to conscious creature. The paper ends with a brief discussion of some implications.

Once upon a time, people thought that all perception was conscious. Indeed, it was widely believed that all mental states are conscious, so the problem of explaining consciousness collapses into the problem of explaining mentality. But things have changed. Most people now believe that a lot goes on unconsciously. Indeed, some people believe that mental states that are not perceptual in nature are never conscious. That’s a matter of controversy. Less controversial is the claim that perceptual states are conscious some of the time, but not all of the time. This raises a question. When are perceptual states conscious? A theory of consciousness is, in large part, an answer to that question. In this chapter, I will offer a few critical remarks on one answer that has been popular in philosophy, and then I will offer a defense of another answer that has emerged out of cognitive science. To avoid undue suspense, the answer that I favor is that perceptual states become conscious when and only when the perceiver is attending.

Wegner's conclusion that conscious will is an illusion follows from a key omission in his analysis. Although he describes conscious will as an experience, akin to one of the senses, he omits its objective correlate. The degree to which behavior can be influenced by its consequences (voluntariness) provides an objective correlate for conscious will. With conscious will anchored to voluntariness, the illusion disappears.

So "conscious business" might mean, engaging in an occupation, work, or trade in a mindful, awake fashion. This implies, of course, that many people do not do so. In my experience, that is often the case. So I would definitely be in favor of conscious business; or conscious anything, for that matter.

If consciousness has no influence on my behaviour,what shall I do with it ? In this paper it is contended, that even if neuroscience is right, if some conscious experiences such as emotional experiences have no influence on our behavior, they still constitute a significant part of our world, our existence. For understanding the significance of conscious experiences we should go beyond behaviour, biology and biological evolution. This paper and its understanding of consciousness and natural science is based on an idealist philosophy maintaining, that only conscious experience is real. Conscious experience is supposed to be known directly or intuitively, it cannot be explained. Key words: Consciousness as existence; behaviour; communication; language; free will; idealist philosophy; collective conscious experience; cognition.

A general definition of consciousness that accommodates most views (Vimal, 2010b) 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 and particular bias (e.g. metaphysical assumptions)’, where experiences can be conscious experiences and/or non-conscious experiences and functions can be conscious functions and/or non-conscious functions that include qualities of objects. These are a posteriori definitions because they are based on observations and the categorization.” Non-conscious experiences are equivalent to relevant proto-experiences and nonconscious functions are equivalent to related proto-functions at various levels as these terms are precursors of respective conscious subjective experiences and conscious functions aspect of consciousness. The non-conscious experiences and non-conscious functions may be considered as a part of the definition of mind and/or awareness.

Are there different constraints on theories of conscious experience as against theories of conscious propositional thought? Is what is problematic or puzzling about each of these phenomena of the same, or of different, types? And to what extent is it plausible to think that either or both conscious experience and conscious thought involve some sort of selfreference? In pursuing these questions I shall also explore the prospects for a defensible form of eliminativism concerning conscious thinking, one that would leave the reality of conscious experience untouched. In the end, I shall argue that while there might be no such thing as conscious judging or conscious wanting, there is (or may well be) such a thing as conscious generic thinking.

The problem of consciousness is to say what it is for some of our thoughts, feelings, and sensations to be conscious, given that others are not. This is different from saying what it is for a person to be conscious or not conscious. Even when people are conscious, many of their thoughts and sensations typically are not. And there's nothing problematic about a person's being conscious; it's just the person's being awake and responsive to sensory input.

We don’t need science in order to know that we are conscious or aware. But science suggests that we are conscious largely due to our brains. And science perhaps further suggests that our conscious states are identical to certain states of our brains. This later idea—that conscious states just are certain brain states (hereafter, the Identity Thesis)—is the main aim of this book to defend.