About this topic
Summary Functionalism is the doctrine that all mental state/property types are individuated, not by their intrinsic constitution, but by their causal relationships with appropriate inputs (e.g. sensory stimulation) and outputs (e.g. changes to other mental states, and the production of behaviour). Qualia are the class of mental properties that seem prima facie the most resistant to any kind of functional analysis. A certain kind of pain, for example, intuitively seems to be the pain it is at least in part in virtue of how it feels (its intrinsic nature), rather than entirely because of its causal connections to other states. Thus qualia are a challenge to the adequacy of functionalism as a complete theory of the mind. The qualia challenge is often posed using arguments from inverted spectra or absent qualia.
Key works Block 1978 is a highly influential discussion of functionalism and the challenge from qualia. A representative functionalist account of qualia appears in Lycan 1996. Further discussion of the qualia issue for functionalism appears in Shoemaker 1975, Horgan 1984Hill 1991, Levin 1991 and Graham & Stephens 1985.
Introductions Van Gulick 2007, Chalmers 1995, Lycan 1981.
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  1. How the Brain Makes Up the Mind: a heuristic approach to the hard problem of consciousness.Dan Bruiger - manuscript
    A solution to the “hard problem” requires taking the point of view of the organism and its sub- agents. The organism constructs phenomenality through acts of fiat, much as we create meaning in language, through the use of symbols that are assigned meaning in the context of an embodied evolutionary history. Phenomenality is a virtual representation, made to itself by an executive agent (the conscious self), which is tasked with monitoring the state of the organism and its environment, planning future (...)
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  2. The meta-problem and the transfer of knowledge between theories of consciousness: a software engineer’s take.Marcel Kvassay - manuscript
    This contribution examines two radically different explanations of our phenomenal intuitions, one reductive and one strongly non-reductive, and identifies two germane ideas that could benefit many other theories of consciousness. Firstly, the ability of sophisticated agent architectures with a purely physical implementation to support certain functional forms of qualia or proto-qualia appears to entail the possibility of machine consciousness with qualia, not only for reductive theories but also for the nonreductive ones that regard consciousness as ubiquitous in Nature. Secondly, analysis (...)
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  3. Yet Another Objection to Fading and Dancing Qualia.Nir Aides -
    In this paper I present objections to the Fading Qualia and Dancing Qualia thought experiments, which David Chalmers uses to argue that functional organization fully determines conscious experience.
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  4. Virtual Machine Functionalism: The only form of functionalism worth taking seriously in Philosophy of Mind.Aaron Sloman -
    Most philosophers appear to have ignored the distinction between the broad concept of Virtual Machine Functionalism (VMF) described in Sloman&Chrisley (2003) and the better known version of functionalism referred to there as Atomic State Functionalism (ASF), which is often given as an explanation of what Functionalism is, e.g. in Block (1995). -/- One of the main differences is that ASF encourages talk of supervenience of states and properties, whereas VMF requires supervenience of machines that are arbitrarily complex networks of causally (...)
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  5. Functionalism and mental boundaries.Larry Shapiro - unknown - Cognitive Systems Research 9 (1-2).
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  6. Toward a Well-Innervated Philosophy of Mind (Chapter 4 of The Peripheral Mind).István Aranyosi - forthcoming - Oxford University Press.
    The “brain in a vat” thought experiment is presented and refuted by appeal to the intuitiveness of what the author informally calls “the eye for an eye principle”, namely: Conscious mental states typically involved in sensory processes can conceivably successfully be brought about by direct stimulation of the brain, and in all such cases the utilized stimulus field will be in the relevant sense equivalent to the actual PNS or part of it thereof. In the second section, four classic problems (...)
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  7. The perceptual reality monitoring theory.Matthias Michel - forthcoming - In Michael Herzog, Aaron Schurger & Adrien Doerig (eds.), Scientific Theories of Consciousness: The Grand Tour. Cambridge University Press.
    This chapter presents the perceptual reality monitoring theory of consciousness (PRM). PRM is a higher-order theory of consciousness. It holds that consciousness involves monitoring the reliability of one’s own sensory signals. I explain how a perceptual reality monitoring mechanism computes the higher order representations that are crucial for consciousness. While PRM accounts for the difference between conscious and unconscious states, it does not explain, on its own, why experiences feel the way they do—the phenomenal character of experience. PRM is compatible (...)
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  8. Gradualism, Bifurcation, and Fading Qualia.Miguel Ángel Sebastián & Manolo Martínez - forthcoming - Analysis.
    When reasoning about dependence relations, philosophers often rely on gradualist assumptions, according to which abrupt changes in a phenomenon of interest can only result from abrupt changes in the low-level phenomena on which it depends. These assumptions, while strictly correct if the dependence relation in question can be expressed by continuous dynamical equations, should be handled with care: very often the descriptively relevant property of a dynamical system connecting high- and low-level phenomena is not its instantaneous behavior, but its stable (...)
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  9. Success Semantics, Reinforcing Satisfaction, and Sensory Inclinations.Howard Nye & Meysam Shojaeenejad - 2023 - Dialogue:1-12.
    Success semantics holds, roughly, that what it is for a state of an agent to be a belief that P is for it to be disposed to combine with her desires to cause behaviour that would fulfill those desires if P. J. T. Whyte supplements this with an account of the contents of an agent's “basic desires” to provide an attractive naturalistic theory of mental content. We argue that Whyte's strategy can avoid the objections raised against it by restricting “basic (...)
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  10. Explanatory Optimism about the Hard Problem of Consciousness.Josh Weisberg - 2023 - Routledge. Edited by Josh Weisberg.
    Explanatory Optimism about the Hard Problem of Consciousness argues that despite the worries of explanatory pessimists, consciousness can be fully explained in “easy” scientific terms. The widespread intuition that consciousness poses a hard problem is plausibly based on how consciousness appears to us in first-person access. The book offers a debunking argument to undercut the justificatory link between the first-person appearances and our hard problem intuitions. -/- The key step in the debunking argument involves the development and defense of an (...)
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  11. Science and Philosophy of Color in the Modern Age.Jacob Browning & Zed Adams - 2021 - In Anders Steinvall & Sarah Streets (eds.), Cultural History of Color in the Modern Age. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 21-38.
    The study of color expanded rapidly in the 20th century. With this expansion came fragmentation, as philosophers, physicists, physiologists, psychologists, and others explored the subject in vastly different ways. There are at least two ways in which the study of color became contentious. The first was with regard to the definitional question: what is color? The second was with the location question: are colors inside the head or out in the world? In this chapter, we summarize the most prominent answers (...)
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  12. Closing (or at least narrowing) the explanatory gap.Katalin Farkas - 2021 - In David Braddon-Mitchell & Peter Anstey (eds.), Armstrong's Materialist Theory of Mind. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 125-142.
    In this chapter, I revisit the issue of the explanatory gap that is supposed to open when considering identity statements between physical and mental phenomena. I show that the question asked in the original formulation of the explanatory gap was this: ʻwhy this phenomenal character, rather than any other, is attached to this physiological process?ʼ I argue that this question can be answered, because there is a natural fit between the phenomenal character of experiences and their functional roles. For example, (...)
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  13. Phenomenality, conscious states, and consciousness inessentialism.Mikio Akagi - 2020 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 19 (4):803-819.
    I draw attention to an ambiguity of the expression ‘phenomenal consciousness’ that is an avoidable yet persistent source of conceptual confusion among consciousness scientists. The ambiguity is between what I call phenomenality and what I call conscious states, where the former denotes an abstract property and the latter denotes a phenomenon or class of its instances. Since sentences featuring these two terms have different semantic properties, it is possible to equivocate over the term ‘consciousness’. It is also possible to fail (...)
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  14. Phenomenal Consciousness: A Critical Analysis of Knowledge Argument Inverted Spectrum Argument and Conceivability Argument.Manas Kumar Sahu - 2020 - Journal of Advances in Education and Philosophy 4 (4):160-166.
    The objective of this paper is to defend the non-reductive thesis of phenomenal consciousness. This paper will give an overview of the arguments for the non-reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness and justify why the reductionist approach is implausible in the context of explaining phenomenal subjective experience. The debate between reductionist and non-reductionist on the project of demystifying and mystifying phenomenal consciousness is driven by two fundamental assumptions-1) Reductive-Naturalistic Objectivism, 2) Phenomenal Realism. There are several arguments for the irreducibility of phenomenal (...)
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  15. Reasons and Theories of Sensory Affect.Murat Aydede & Matthew Fulkerson - 2019 - In David Bain, Michael Brady & Jennifer Corns (eds.), The Philosophy of Pain: Unpleasantness, Emotion, and Deviance. New York, USA: Routledge. pp. 27-59.
    Some sensory experiences are pleasant, some unpleasant. This is a truism. But understanding what makes these experiences pleasant and unpleasant is not an easy job. Various difficulties and puzzles arise as soon as we start theorizing. There are various philosophical theories on offer that seem to give different accounts for the positive or negative affective valences of sensory experiences. In this paper, we will look at the current state of art in the philosophy of mind, present the main contenders, critically (...)
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  16. Consciousness and the Philosophy of Signs: A New Précis.Marc Champagne - 2019 - American Journal of Semiotics 35 (3/4):443-462.
    I will be talking today about the limits of cognitive science. I won’t be talking about contingent shortcomings that could perhaps be remedied with, say, more time, resources, or ingenuity. Rather, I will be concerned with limitations that are “baked into” the very enterprise. The main blind spot, I will argue, is consciousness—but not for the reasons typically given. Current work in philosophy of mind can sometimes seem arcane, so my goal today will be to answer the question: why bother? (...)
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  17. Chalmers' principle of organizational invariance makes consciousness fundamental but meaningless spectator of its own drama.Danko Georgiev - 2019 - Activitas Nervosa Superior 61 (4):159-164.
    The principles of classical physics, including deterministic dynamics and observability of physical states, are incompatible with the existence of unobservable conscious minds that possess free will. Attempts to directly accommodate consciousness in a classical world lead to philosophical paradoxes such as causally ineffective consciousness and possibility of alternate worlds in which functional brain isomorphs behave identically but lack conscious experiences. Here, we show that because Chalmers’ principle of organizational invariance is based on a deficient nineteenth century classical physics, it is (...)
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  18. Locating and Representing Pain.Simone Gozzano - 2019 - Philosophical Investigations 42 (4):313-332.
    Two views on the nature and location of pain are usually contrasted. According to the first, experientialism, pain is essentially an experience, and its bodily location is illusory. According to the second, perceptualism or representationalism, pain is a perceptual or representational state, and its location is to be traced to the part of the body in which pain is felt. Against this second view, the cases of phantom, referred and chronic pain have been marshalled: all these cases apparently show that (...)
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  19. An analytic-hermeneutic history of Consciousness.Benj Hellie - 2019 - In Kelly Michael Becker & Iain Thompson (eds.), Cambridge Companion to History of Philosophy 1945-2015. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
    The hermeneutic tradition divides /physical/ discourse, which takes an 'exterior' point of view in /describing/ its subject-matter, from /mental/ discourse, which takes an 'interior' point of view in /expressing/ its subject-matter: a 'metapsychological dualist' or 'metadualist' approach. The analytic tradition, in its attachment to truth-logic and consequently the 'unity of science', is 'metamonist', and thinks all discourse takes the 'exterior' viewpoint: the 'bump in the rug' moves to the disunification of mind into the functional and (big-'C') Consciousness. Assuming the hermeneuts (...)
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  20. A Contemporary Account of Sensory Pleasure.Murat Aydede - 2018 - In Lisa Shapiro (ed.), Pleasure: A History. New York, USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 239-266.
    [This is the penultimate version, please send me an email for the final version]. Some sensations are pleasant, some unpleasant, and some are neither. Furthermore, those that are pleasant or unpleasant are so to different degrees. In this essay, I want to explore what kind of a difference is the difference between these three kinds of sensations. I will develop a comprehensive three-level account of sensory pleasure that is simultaneously adverbialist, functionalist and is also a version of a satisfied experiential-desire (...)
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  21. Quantum Information and Consciousness: A Gentle Introduction.Danko D. Georgiev - 2017 - Boca Raton: CRC Press.
    This book addresses the fascinating cross-disciplinary field of quantum information theory applied to the study of brain function. It offers a self-study guide to probe the problems of consciousness, including a concise but rigorous introduction to classical and quantum information theory, theoretical neuroscience, and philosophy of the mind. It aims to address long-standing problems related to consciousness within the framework of modern theoretical physics in a comprehensible manner that elucidates the nature of the mind-body relationship. The reader also gains an (...)
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  22. Review of Philosophy in a New Century by John Searle (2008).Michael Starks - 2017 - Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization Michael Starks 3rd Ed. (2017).
    Before commenting on the book, I offer comments on Wittgenstein and Searle and the logical structure of rationality. The essays here are mostly already published during the last decade (though some have been updated), along with one unpublished item, and nothing here will come as a surprise to those who have kept up with his work. Like W, he is regarded as the best standup philosopher of his time and his written work is solid as a rock and groundbreaking throughout. (...)
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  23. Tying the Knot: Why Representationalists should Endorse the Sensorimotor Theory of Conscious Feel.David Silverman - 2016 - Philosophical Quarterly 66 (263):pqv097.
    The sensorimotor theory of perception and consciousness is frequently presented as a variety of anti-representationalist cognitive science, and there is thus a temptation to suppose that those who take representation as bedrock should reject the approach. This paper argues that the sensorimotor approach is compatible with representationalism, and moreover that representationalism about phenomenal qualities, such as that advocated by Tye, would be more complete and less vulnerable to criticism if it incorporated the sensorimotor account of conscious feel. The paper concludes (...)
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  24. Recognitional Identification and the Knowledge Argument.Erhan Demircioglu - 2015 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 15 (3):325-340.
    Frank Jackson’s famous Knowledge Argument moves from the premise that complete physical knowledge about experiences is not complete knowledge about experiences to the falsity of physicalism. Some physicalists (e.g., John Perry) have countered by arguing that what Jackson’s Mary, the perfect scientist who acquires all physical knowledge about experiencing red while being locked in a monochromatic room, lacks before experiencing red is merely a piece of recognitional knowledge of an identity, and that since lacking a piece of recognitional knowledge of (...)
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  25. De se Attitudes and Semiotic Aspects of Cognition.Erich Rast - 2015 - In J. Fonseca & J. Gonçalves (eds.), Philosophical Perspectives on the Self. Peter Lang. pp. 121-146.
    Typical puzzles for de se attitudes by Perry and Lewis are laid out and contrasted with the original version of Jackson's Knowledge Argument. It is argued, from an epistemic perspective, that de se attitudes can be explained by looking at the way internal/introspective knowledge is formed without resorting to acquaintance or making assumptions about the Mind/Body problem.
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  26. What panpsychists should reject: on the incompatibility of panpsychism and organizational invariantism.Miguel Ángel Sebastián - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (7):1833-1846.
    Some philosophers, like David Chalmers, have either shown their sympathy for, or explicitly endorsed, the following two principles: Panpsychism—roughly the thesis that the mind is ubiquitous throughout the universe—and Organizational Invariantism—the principle that holds that two systems with the same fine-grained functional organization will have qualitatively identical experiences. The purpose of this paper is to show the tension between the arguments that back up both principles. This tension should lead, or so I will argue, defenders of one of the principles (...)
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  27. Lewis on Materialism and Experience.Daniel Stoljar - 2015 - In Barry Loewer & Jonathan Schaffer (eds.), A Companion to David Lewis. Oxford, UK: Wiley. pp. 519–532.
    This chapter reviews four elements of David Lewis's account of materialism and experience. These elements include: materialism for which Lewis gave a distinctive and well‐known characterization; an account of what experience is; an account of the source of the tension between experience and materialism; and a strategy for resolving the tension. Lewis did not just give a distinctive and well‐known characterization of materialism, he gave two: one in terms of fundamental properties, and one in terms of supervenience. The chapter considers (...)
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  28. Phenomenal Consciousness Disembodied.Wesley Buckwalter & Mark Phelan - 2014 - In Justin Sytsma (ed.), Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Mind. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 45-74.
    We evaluate the role of embodiment in ordinary mental state ascriptions. Presented are five experiments on phenomenal state ascriptions to disembodied entities such as ghosts and spirits. Results suggest that biological embodiment is not a central principle of folk psychology guiding ascriptions of phenomenal consciousness. By contrast, results continue to support the important role of functional considerations in theory of mind judgments.
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  29. Breaking the Spell: Materialism and the Qualia Intuition.R. Henderson - 2014 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 21 (7-8):184-192.
    The paper consists of a simple argument in favour of reductive materialism. It is argued that the usual arguments for dualism all presuppose what I call the qualia intuition , the assumption that qualia are functionally undefinable . This assumption has given rise to a long-standing dilemma; irreducible qualia or no qualia . The contrary assumption, ~QI, however, gives rise to a different choice; reducible qualia or no qualia . The real question then is: QI or ~QI ? It is (...)
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  30. Arguing pain-brain relationships in the fetus.Simon van Rysewyk - 2014
  31. Does Phenomenology Ground Mental Content?Adam Pautz - 2013 - In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), Phenomenal Intentionality. Oxford University Press. pp. 194-234.
    I develop several new arguments against claims about "cognitive phenomenology" and its alleged role in grounding thought content. My arguments concern "absent cognitive qualia cases", "altered cognitive qualia cases", and "disembodied cognitive qualia cases". However, at the end, I sketch a positive theory of the role of phenomenology in grounding content, drawing on David Lewis's work on intentionality. I suggest that within Lewis's theory the subject's total evidence plays the central role in fixing mental content and ruling out deviant interpretations. (...)
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  32. Why Sensations Must be Neurological Properties: A Defense of the Identity Theory.Nicholas Keith Simmons - 2013 - Dissertation, University of Kansas
    In this dissertation, I defend the thesis that qualitative mental states known as qualia are identical to physical properties. In Chapter 1, I argue that qualia have a functional role in the world, and that is to facilitate non-automatic mental processes. In Chapter 2, I demonstrate how non-reductive accounts of the mind fail. In Chapter 3, I demonstrate how my reductive account fares better than similar accounts with respect to common and contemporary objections. In Chapter 4, I address arguments against (...)
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  33. Computational Theories of Conscious Experience: Between a Rock and a Hard Place.Gary Bartlett - 2012 - Erkenntnis 76 (2):195-209.
    Very plausibly, nothing can be a genuine computing system unless it meets an input-sensitivity requirement. Otherwise all sorts of objects, such as rocks or pails of water, can count as performing computations, even such as might suffice for mentality—thus threatening computationalism about the mind with panpsychism. Maudlin in J Philos 86:407–432, ( 1989 ) and Bishop ( 2002a , b ) have argued, however, that such a requirement creates difficulties for computationalism about conscious experience, putting it in conflict with the (...)
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  34. Painful Reasons: Representationalism as a Theory of Pain.Brendan O'Sullivan & Robert Schroer - 2012 - Philosophical Quarterly 62 (249):737-758.
    It is widely thought that functionalism and the qualia theory are better positioned to accommodate the ‘affective’ aspect of pain phenomenology than representationalism. In this paper, we attempt to overturn this opinion by raising problems for both functionalism and the qualia theory on this score. With regard to functionalism, we argue that it gets the order of explanation wrong: pain experience gives rise to the effects it does because it hurts, and not the other way around. With regard to the (...)
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  35. Analytic Functionalism and Mental State Attribution.Mark Phelan & Wesley Buckwalter - 2012 - Philosophical Topics 40 (2):129-154.
    We argue that the causal account offered by analytic functionalism provides the best account of the folk psychological theory of mind, and that people ordinarily define mental states relative to the causal roles these states occupy in relation to environmental impingements, external behaviors, and other mental states. We present new empirical evidence, as well as review several key studies on mental state ascription to diverse types of entities such as robots, cyborgs, corporations and God, and explain how this evidence supports (...)
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  36. De Se Puzzles, the Knowledge Argument, and the Formation of Internal Knowledge.Erich Rast - 2012 - Analysis and Metaphysics 11:106-132.
    ABSTRACT. Thought experiments about de se attitudes and Jackson’s original Knowledge Argument are compared with each other and discussed from the perspective of a computational theory of mind. It is argued that internal knowledge, i.e. knowledge formed on the basis of signals that encode aspects of their own processing rather than being intentionally directed towards external objects, suffices for explaining the seminal puzzles without resorting to acquaintance or phenomenal character as primitive notions. Since computationalism is ontologically neutral, the account also (...)
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  37. On the Supposed Inconceivability of Absent Qualia Functional Duplicates—a Reply to Tye.Robert Van Gulick - 2012 - Philosophical Review 121 (2):277-284.
    In “Absent Qualia and the Mind-Body Problem,” Michael Tye (2006) presents an argument by which he claims to show the inconceivability of beings that are functionally equivalent to phenomenally conscious beings but lack any qualia. On that basis, he concludes that qualia can be fully defined in functional terms. The argument does not suffice to establish the claimed results. In particular it does not show that such absent qualia cases are inconceivable. Tye’s argument relies on a principle P according to (...)
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  38. The Explanatory Gap Account and Intelligibility of Explanation.Daniel Kostic - 2011 - Theoria 54 (3):27-42.
    This paper examines the explanatory gap account. The key notions for its proper understanding are analysed. In particular, the analysis is concerned with the role of “thick” and “thin” modes of presentation and “thick” and “thin” concepts which are relevant for the notions of “thick” and “thin” conceivability, and to that effect relevant for the gappy and non-gappy identities. The last section of the paper discusses the issue of the intelligibility of explanations. One of the conclusions is that the explanatory (...)
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  39. What Does the Nation of China Think About Phenomenal States?Bryce Huebner, Michael Bruno & Hagop Sarkissian - 2010 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (2):225-243.
    Critics of functionalism about the mind often rely on the intuition that collectivities cannot be conscious in motivating their positions. In this paper, we consider the merits of appealing to the intuition that there is nothing that it’s like to be a collectivity. We demonstrate that collective mentality is not an affront to commonsense, and we report evidence that demonstrates that the intuition that there is nothing that it’s like to be a collectivity is, to some extent, culturally specific rather (...)
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  40. Against qualia theory.James John - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 147 (3):323 - 346.
    Representational theorists identify experiences’ phenomenal properties with their representational properties. Qualia theorists reject this identity, insisting that experiences’ phenomenal properties can come apart from and completely outrun their representational properties. Qualia theorists account for phenomenal properties in terms of “qualia,” intrinsic mental properties they allege experiences to instantiate. The debate between representational theorists and qualia theorists has focused on whether phenomenal properties really can come apart from and completely outrun representational properties. As a result, qualia theorists have failed (1) to (...)
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  41. Will Science and Consciousness Ever Meat? Complexity, Symmetry and Qualia.Roger Vergauwen - 2010 - Symmetry 2 (3):1250-1269.
    Within recent discussions in the Philosophy of Mind, the nature of conscious phenomenal states or qualia (also called ‘raw feels’ or the feel of ‘what it is like to be’) has been an important focus of interest. Proponents of Mind-Body Type-Identity theories have claimed that mental states can be reduced to neurophysiological states of the brain. Others have denied that such a reduction is possible; for them, there remains an explanatory gap. In this paper, functionalist, physicalist, epiphenomenalist, and biological models (...)
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  42. Still epiphenomenal qualia: Response to Muller.Dan Cavedon-Taylor - 2009 - Philosophia 37 (1):105-107.
    Hans Muller has recently attempted to show that Frank Jackson cannot assert the existence of qualia without thereby falsifying himself on the matter of such mental states being epiphenomenal with respect to the physical world. I argue that Muller misunderstands the commitments of qualia epiphenomenalism and that, as a result, his arguments against Jackson do not go through.
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  43. Explaining the Qualitative Dimension of Consciousness: Prescission Instead of Reification.Marc Champagne - 2009 - Dialogue 48 (1):145-183.
    This paper suggests that it is largely a want of notional distinctions which fosters the “explanatory gap” that has beset the study of consciousness since T. Nagel’s revival of the topic. Modifying Ned Block’s controversial claim that we should countenance a “phenomenal-consciousness” which exists in its own right, we argue that there is a way to recuperate the intuitions he appeals to without engaging in an onerous reification of the facet in question. By renewing with the full type/token/tone trichotomy developed (...)
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  44. The Scientific Explanation of Colour Qualia.Jeff Foss - 2009 - Dialogue 48 (3):479.
    ABSTRACT: Qualia, the subjectively known qualities of conscious experience, are judged by many philosophers and scientists to lie beyond the domain of scientific explanation, thus making the conscious mind partly incomprehensible to the objective physical sciences. Some, like Kripke and Chalmers, employ modal logic to argue that explanations of qualia are impossible in principle. I argue that there already exist perfectly normal scientific explanations of qualia, and rebut the arguments of those who deny this possibility.
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  45. On the coherence of inversion.Clayton Littlejohn - 2009 - Acta Analytica 24 (2):127-137.
    In this paper, I shall evaluate a strategy recently used to try to demonstrate the impossibility of behaviorally undetectable spectrum inversion. After showing that the impossibility proof proves too much, I shall identify where it goes wrong. In turn, I shall explain why someone attracted to functionalist and representationalist assumptions might rightly remain agnostic about the possibility of inversion.
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  46. Computationalism and the locality principle.David Longinotti - 2009 - Minds and Machines 19 (4):495-506.
    Computationalism, a specie of functionalism, posits that a mental state like pain is realized by a ‘core’ computational state within a particular causal network of such states. This entails that what is realized by the core state is contingent on events remote in space and time, which puts computationalism at odds with the locality principle of physics. If computationalism is amended to respect locality, then it posits that a type of phenomenal experience is determined by a single type of computational (...)
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  47. Fine-grained functionalism: Prospects for defining qualitative states.George Seli - 2009 - Philosophical Psychology 22 (6):765 – 783.
    Inverted spectrum and absent-qualia arguments have at least shown that giving the functional role of a qualitative state is challenging, as it is arguable that the same functional organization among one's inputs, outputs, and mental states can be preserved despite having one's qualia radically altered or eliminated. Sydney Shoemaker has proposed a promising strategy for the functionalist: defining a given qualitative state as being disposed to cause a belief that one is in such a state. Such beliefs would be different (...)
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  48. How to define consciousness—and how not to define consciousness.Prof Max Velmans - 2009 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 16 (5):139-156.
    Definitions of consciousness need to be sufficiently broad to include all examples of conscious states and sufficiently narrow to exclude entities, events and processes that are not conscious. Unfortunately, deviations from these simple principles are common in modern consciousness studies, with consequent confusion and internal division in the field. The present paper gives example of ways in which definitions of consciousness can be either too broad or too narrow. It also discusses some of the main ways in which pre-existing theoretical (...)
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  49. Structural description and qualitative content in perception theory.Johannes Andres & Rainer Mausfeld - 2008 - Consciousness and Cognition 17 (1):307-311.
    The paper is a critical comment on D. Hoffman. The Scrambling Theorem: A simple proof of the logical possibility of spectrum inversion. Consciousness and Cognition, 2006, 15, 31–45.
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  50. Consciousness and cognitive access.Ned Block - 2008 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 108 (1pt3):289-317.
    This article concerns the interplay between two issues that involve both philosophy and neuroscience: whether the content of phenomenal consciousness is 'rich' or 'sparse', whether phenomenal consciousness goes beyond cognitive access, and how it would be possible for there to be evidence one way or the other.
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