Qualia and Materialism

The materialist version of the mind/brain identity theory has met with considerable challenges from philosophers of mind. The author first dispenses with a popular objection to the theory based on the law of indiscernibility of identicals. By means of discussing the vexatious problem of phenomenal qualities, he explores how the debate may be advanced by seeing each dualist and monist ontology through the lens of an evolutionary epistemology. The author suggests that by regarding each ontology as the core of a (...) scientific research programme, each of these logically irrefutable hypotheses can be tested rationally. (shrink)

For diverse reasons, the problem of phenomenal consciousness is persistently challenging. Mental terms are characteristically ambiguous, researchers have philosophical biases, secondary qualities are excluded from objective description, and philosophers love to argue. Adhering to a regime of efficient causes and third-person descriptions, science as it has been defined has no place for subjectivity or teleology. A solution to the “hard problem” of consciousness will require a radical approach: to take the point of view of the cognitive system itself. To facilitate (...) this approach, a concept of agency is introduced along with a different understanding of intentionality. Following this approach reveals that the autopoietic cognitive system constructs phenomenality through acts of fiat, which underlie perceptual completion effects and “filling in”—and, by implication, phenomenology in general. It creates phenomenality much as we create meaning in language, through the use of symbols that it assigns meaning in the context of an embodied evolutionary history that is the source of valuation upon which meaning depends. Phenomenality is a virtual representation to itself by an executive agent (the conscious self) tasked with monitoring the state of the organism and its environment, planning future action, and coordinating various sub- agencies. Consciousness is not epiphenomenal, but serves a function for higher organisms that is distinct from that of unconscious processing. While a strictly scientific solution to the hard problem is not possible for a science that excludes the subjectivity it seeks to explain, there is hope to at least psychologically bridge the explanatory gulf between mind and matter, and perhaps hope for a broader definition of science. (shrink)

In this paper we begin categorizing a plurality of possible worlds on the basis of permitting or not permitting ontologically different things to be causally connected. We build the work on the dual principle that all universes are causally closed either because no universe causes anything outside itself or because no universe has anything in it that is caused by another universe.

Some metaphysics are provided showing that what is commonly called ‘the physical world’ can be deconstructed into three ‘levels’: a single, unified ‘noumenal world’ on which everything supervenes; a ‘phenomenal world’ that we each privately experience through direct perception of phenomena; and a ‘collective world’ that people in any given ‘language using group’ experience through learning, using and adapting that group’s language. This deconstruction is shown to enable a clear account of qualia and of how people can hold some things (...) to be physically real even when it is clear no one can ever directly experience those things as phenomena. It is further shown to enable a single, internally consistent, largely empirically supported conceptual framework – a ‘metacosmology’ – able to encompass not only the physical world as people conceive of it for everyday purposes, and as scientists conceive of it for scientific purposes, but also people’s first person phenomenal experience of a physical world and, prospectively, the mechanisms by which such first person, conscious experiences can be generated. (shrink)

Panmicropsychism is the view that the fundamental physical ingredients of our universe are also its fundamental phenomenal ingredients. Since there is only a limited number of fundamental physical ingredients, panmicropsychism seems to imply that there exists only a small set (palette) of basic phenomenal qualities. How does this limited palette of basic phenomenal qualities give rise to our rich set of experiences? This is known as ‘the palette problem’. One class of solutions to this problem, large-palette solutions, simply denies that (...) the palette is limited. These solutions assume that all types of phenomenal qualities (color, sound, odor, taste, etc., and presumably also types not experienced by humans) were created fully formed at the birth of our universe. On this view, brains evoke conscious experiences by sampling primordial, preexisting phenomenal spaces. My main claim in this paper is that, by analogy with the mathematical description of the fundamental physical ingredients of our universe, which exhibits simplicity, symmetry, and beauty, panmicropsychists should expect the mathematical description of the fundamental phenomenal ingredients of our universe to exhibit similar features. The goal of this paper is to exemplify this claim using what is arguably the simplest of all types of phenomenal qualities—color. Specifically, I utilize phenomenological data on color to construct the maximally symmetric mathematical description of phenomenal color space. I then show that this mathematical description is isomorphic to the mathematical description of two-state quantum systems in a mixed state. Based on this isomorphism, I suggest that color may be the phenomenal dual aspect of two-state quantum systems. (shrink)

[This manuscript is outdated; read chapter 7 of my book "Information, Intelligence and Idealism" instead, which is also available as full text on PhilPapers] Despite recent breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) – or more specifically machine learning (ML) algorithms for object recognition and natural language processing – it seems to be the majority view that current AI approaches are still no real match for natural intelligence (NI). More importantly, philosophers have collected a long catalogue of features which (...) imply that NI works differently from current AI not only in a gradual sense, but in a more substantial way: NI is closely related to consciousness, intentionality and experiential features like qualia (the subjective contents of mental states)1 and allows for understanding (e.g., taking insight into causal relationships instead of ‘blindly’ relying on correlations), as well as aesthetical and ethical judgement beyond what we can put into (explicit or data-induced implicit) rules to program machines with. Additionally, Psychologists find NI to range from unconscious psychological processes to focused information processing, and from embodied and implicit cognition to ‘true’ agency and creativity. NI thus seems to transcend any neurobiological functionalism by operating on ‘bits of meaning’ instead of information in the sense of data, quite unlike both the ‘good old fashioned’, symbolic AI of the past, as well as the current wave of deep neural network based, ‘sub-symbolic’ AI, which both share the idea of thinking as (only) information processing: In symbolic AI, the name explicitly references to its formal system based, i.e. essentially rule-based, nature, but also sub-symbolic AI is (implicitly) rule-based, only now via globally parametrized, nested functions. In the following I propose an alternative view of NI as information processing plus ‘bundle pushing’, discuss an example which illustrates how bundle pushing can cut information processing short,and suggest first ideas for scientific experiments in neuro-biology and information theory as further investigations. (shrink)

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 (...) of introspective psychological material seems to hint that, under the threshold of our ordinary waking awareness, there exist further ‘submerged’ or ‘subliminal’ layers of consciousness which constitute a hidden foundation and support and another source of our phenomenal intuitions. These ‘submerged’ layers might help explain certain puzzling phenomena concerning subliminal perception, such as the apparently ‘unconscious’ multisensory integration and learning of subliminal stimuli. (shrink)

Assume that a quale as we experience it is a perspective on an underlying physical state, rather than the physical state as such – the reality as known as distinct from the reality as such. Assume, further, that this inner perspective is integral to, and materially co-extensive with, the physical state itself. Assume, finally, that the physical state in question is known as a brain state of a particular kind by an external observer of the brain in which it occurs. (...) The result is a perspective in which a quale is entirely physical; a position that resolves several known difficulties for physicalism, including those associated with the explanatory gap, Jackson’s knowledge argument, and Chalmers’ hard problem of consciousness. (shrink)

A physicalist view of qualia labelled non-eliminative reductionism is outlined. If it is true, qualia and physicalism can co-exist without difficulty. First, qualia present no particular problem for reductionist physicalism - they are entirely physical, can be studied and explained using the standard scientific approach, and present no problem any harder than any other scientists face. Second, reductionist physicalism presents no particular problem for qualia – they can be encompassed within an entirely physicalist position without any necessity, either to reduce (...) them to non-existence, or to treat them as new fundamental properties. It is suggested that the position also has sufficient explanatory power to successfully deal with the 'why like anything – why does experience exist at all' question and to counter both Chalmers' Conceivability Argument and Jackson's Knowledge Argument. (shrink)

I outline and develop a particular physicalist perspective on qualia, and suggest that it may be the basis of a correct account of the relationship of mental states to the physical world. Assume that a quale is a perspective on a physical state in the organism – the reality as known as distinct from the reality as such – but that the perspective, though it entails irreducible experiential knowledge, has no physical substance over that encompassed in the physical state itself. (...) Assume this physical state is also a brain state. The position is a useful one. First, reductionist physicalism is true, but experiential qualities are irreducible physical knowledge, and a required part of our physical world view. Second, experiences are not additional problems over those addressed externally, but only how these problems seem when known internally – an experience just is the physical state that underlies its external counterpart, and the same standard scientific account suffices to explain both, permitting a science of consciousness to develop by applying the same standard external–observer–based methods adopted in older scientific disciplines. Finally, challenges to physicalism associated with the ‘unbridgeable gap’, Leibniz's Law, Jackson's knowledge argument, and Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness are successfully countered. (shrink)

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)

I argue that our direct experience and some physical facts do not go well with an understanding of perception as a mechanism producing a representation of a ''truly'' outer world. Instead, it is much more coherent to treat what is traditionally considered an image in this context as a closed structure equipped in its own ontology, replacing the ''truly'' outer one from the point of view of an agent possessing it. In such a framework, the notion of existence is taken (...) to be defined by consciousness in a way similar to qualia, making it subjective on the one hand, and reducing it to a tool on the other. This implies, in turn, that we need a form of mind-brain dualism; the best we can do in such circumstances about explaining consciousness as an epistemic device - a role intuitively imposing itself in a variety of situations - is to embed it in an abstract ontology merely serving the purpose of a ''true'' reality with the help of the mind-brain link. Obviously, the approach favors subjectivity as a foundation in the ontological sense. Objectivity is considered here only as a suitably understood product from an ''observer's'' point of view, although a functional and useful one. The paper is addressed to readers with interest in both the mind-body problem and ontological foundations of present-day physics, specifically quantum theory. The main conclusion can be absorbed without the quantum part, although it is a bit less convincing then. (shrink)

I wish to draw attention to a connection between current changes in the concept of mind and cultural trends that disfavor the cultivation of conscious experience. There is a strain in contemporary philosophy and science that questions the very existence of consciousness. At the same time, trends in our culture, accelerated lately by technological developments, undermine the incentives and space to attend to conscious awareness. A view of the mind that denies the existence of consciousness leads us further away from (...) engagement with consciousness at a time when our ability for such engagement has already been seriously undermined by the digitalization of our lives, social media, and AI. At the same time, these technological changes might make us more receptive to the corrosive view that we lack consciousness. (shrink)

The great task of cognitive science is to explain the phenomenal, first-person experience through the brain’s biophysical processes. This articles takes up this challenge by presenting the theory of how to reconcile the distinguishable properties of a material and mental processes. For this purpose, I describe how knowledge representations arise and how they can correlate with the emotions that accompany their formation. These associations can lead to first-person sense impressions, that is, qualia, which are the gist of phenomenal awareness. I (...) hypothesize that perception and consciousness and their causal role can only be explained by pointing to two aspects of consciousness: The event reporting aspect responsible for being aware of what is happening and the executive aspect responsible for the body’s actions and bodily responses. Both of these aspects are functionally accomplished by two separate neural mechanisms. Explaining the stream of consciousness required diversification of the concept of consciousness and the distinction of “executive” and “reporting” consciousness, respectively. Impression of feeling, a stream of consciousness, and a train of thought felt as conscious perception are the effect of stimulation of the lower sensory fields of the brain by feedback stimuli from upper cerebral areas. Subjectively perceived sequences of such recreated images only accompany brain processes but do not affect them directly. However, they are not objectively epiphenomenal since they modify the neural representations of knowledge embedded in memory and thus influence future states of consciousness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In recent decades, various sources of scientific evidence have been used to disprove the idea that we have free will. Conceptual confusion has tended to lurk behind such claims, however, for it often turns out that what researchers mean by “free will” is something extremely implausible. A similar problem persists in the literature on the causal role of consciousness. Various sources of psychological evidence have been used to show that consciousness is not among the causes of our behaviour. However, consciousness (...) is often assumed to be both non-physical and non-functional, and causation is often poorly understood or not defined at all. The aim of this paper is to clear up these issues by urging that (1) future research on this topic remains neutral on the metaphysics of consciousness, (2) avoids assuming that phenomenal consciousness is functionless, (3) is more precise in specifying what is doing the causal work when discussing conscious mental states, and (4) adopts the practice of being clearer on what it takes for something to count as a cause. Much unwarranted scepticism about whether consciousness is causally efficacious has resulted from this fragmented thinking, and much is to be gained by clearing it up. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for an often-neglected solution to the conceivability argument: the reconciliatory response. Its advocates state that, even if zombies are metaphysically possible, it does not follow that all versions of physicalism are false. To make the reconciliatory response, we must construct a theory that counts as a version of physicalism (because it makes higher-level facts count as physical) but also allows for the metaphysical possibility of zombies. Call any physicalist theory that can make the reconciliatory response (...) type-R physicalism. In this paper, I discuss one version of type-R physicalism: stochastic ground physicalism (SGP). First, I argue that type-R physicalism, construed as SGP, offers physicalists an attractive rationalist package that no other version of physicalism can provide. Second, I address two concerns that have been underexplored in the literature. First, the charge that SGP is incoherent because it fails to provide metaphysical explanations. Second, the charge that type-R physicalism is not a genuine form of physicalism because the supervenience of the phenomenal on the physical is a necessary condition for any formulation of physicalism. I argue that both concerns are ill-founded. (shrink)

P-zombies are creatures that are physically (functionally, behaviourally) like you and I and yet lack phenomenal consciousness. If such creatures are possible, it’s (typically) taken to show property dualism is true: phenomenal consciousness isn’t reducible to – nor does it supervene on – physical states. If inverted qualia are possible, it’s possible that you and I have identical physical states and yet you see tomatoes as green and I see tomatoes as red. If this is the case, then (again) property (...) dualism is (typically) taken to be true. In this article, I???ll show that p-zombies and inverted qualia – if they are actually possible – prove more than previously thought: if one thinks p-zombies or inverted qualia are possible, then one should endorse one of the four following theses: (i) substance dualism, (ii) we have even more reason to reject p-zombies and inverted qualia since they entail an even more radical conclusion than previously thought (i.e. substance dualism), (iii) eliminativism about selves, or (iv) friends of p-zombies and inverted qualia have homework: they need to show a relevant, plausible disanalogy between arguments for p-zombies and inverted qualia as traditionally stated and my parallel arguments that entail substance dualism. My purpose here isn’t to defend any of these particular options. Instead, my purpose is to highlight that these are the four options available to take. (shrink)

It is usually, and without much disagreement, regarded that ‘knowing one’s own consciousness’ is strikingly and fundamentally different from ‘knowing other things’. The peculiar way in which conscious subjects introspectively know their own consciousness in their immediate awareness is of immense importance with regard to the understanding of consciousness insofar as it has a direct bearing upon consciousness’ fundamental existence. However, when it comes to the understanding of consciousness, the role of consciousness’ introspective knowledge is rather downplayed or not given (...) much importance with regard to its ontology. With this in the background, the whole purpose of this paper is, first, to make the rather obvious point that the very existence of consciousness in its most fundamental form is constituted by this introspective knowledge of it or its epistemic dimension, whereby its ontology gets its epistemological or epistemic nature. Second, it aims to strengthen the explanatory gap argument by appealing to our enhanced understanding of consciousness in terms of its epistemic ontology. (shrink)

With its strategic consideration of phenomenal consciousness illusorily seeming to us, illusionism claims to deny phenomenality and thereby obviate the hard problem of consciousness. The problem with illusionism, however, is that, although its thesis appears persuasively simple, it strikes as absurd insofar as the phenomenal illusions themselves also seem as much as phenomenality, keeping no fundamental differences between the two. In short, it reinforces the same phenomenon/issue, i.e., phenomenality, that it claims to deny/avoid. This single absurdity is reflective of its (...) self-refuting nature, and it alone is enough for a rejection of illusionism. However, does illusionism have any reasonable justification to defend itself in the face of the experientially undeniable reality of phenomenal consciousness? This paper attempts to find out if there is any such illusionist justification. (shrink)

Recent philosophy has seen a resurgence of the realist view of sensible qualities such as colour. The view holds that experienced qualities are properties of the objects in the physical environment, not mentally instantiated properties like qualia or merely intentional, illusory ones. Some suggest that this move rids us of the explanatory gap between physical properties and the qualitative features of consciousness. Others say it just relocates the problem of qualities to physical objects in the environment, given that such qualities (...) cannot be derived from the non-qualitative properties of objects, and it does not resolve the problem of consciousness either. I argue that such an outcome is welcome: if the physical world is full of explanatory gaps, then the mind–body explanatory gap is not so special. Moreover, the explanatory gaps regarding qualities of objects are less puzzling than the brain-qualia gap. In order to counter the usual worries concerning realism about objective qualities, I introduce ‘imperfect realism’ as an alternative to colour pluralism and complex reductionism, which accommodates realism in the face of widespread perceptual error. I conclude with a discussion of how this ‘multiple-gaps view’ sits better with a naturalistic framework compared to the Galilean-Cartesian account of qualities. (shrink)

Illusionism claims that we are not conscious, that there is nothing it is like, in the usual sense of the word, to feel sad, or to smell lavender. According to Illusionists, we are, in a technical sense, zombies. Instead of arguing for the falsity of Illusionism directly, I will explain why the main philosophical motivations for it are mistaken – and I trust the rest will be taken care of by the extreme implausibility of the view. I want to spread (...) the good news to Illusionists that they don’t need to resort to this highly counterintuitive, strange, and as I will argue later, morally corrosive idea. One can be a physicalist and phenomenal realist since neither of the two types of arguments Illusionists rely on – the conceivability arguments, and the debunking arguments against physicalist phenomenal realism – work. In the last part of the paper, I will say something about the corrosive effect this metaphysics has on our moral and evaluative outlook. (shrink)

Lo scopo dell’elaborato è presentare il problema della causalità del mentale e cercare di dare una soluzione fisicalista al problema che possa includere anche i qualia, da sempre considerati come l’ultima difesa a favore dell’irriducibilità della mente al fisico. Il primo capitolo ha il compito di trovare la teoria metafisica del mentale migliore che riesca sia a rendere conto della causalità del mentale e sia a resistere all’argomento di Kim. Dopo aver esposto in dettaglio l’argomento di Kim sono affrontati i (...) limiti della teoria dell’identità di tipo, in particolare viene esposta la critica di Hilary Putnam conosciuta come “realizzabilità multipla”. Come alternativa all’identità di tipo sono state analizzate le due principali varianti del funzionalismo, ovvero quello del ruolo e quello dell’occupante, e infine quest’ultimo è risultato avere maggiori vantaggi teorici. Sono stati esposti i problemi del funzionalismo e in particolare il problema dell’incapacità del linguaggio funzionalista di rendere conto dei qualia. A tal proposito è stato esposto l’argomento del “cervello-cinese” di Ned Block e ne sono stati individuati i limiti mostrando che la conclusione dell’argomento non può essere data per scontata. Per quest’ultimo motivo è stato elaborato un esperimento mentale volto a mostrare l’incapacità del linguaggio fisicalista nel descrivere qualia, e ne sono stati mostrati i vantaggi teorici rispetto all’esperimento mentale di Block; anche se un cervello-cinese presentasse qualia, un linguaggio funzionalista non potrebbe descriverli. Nel secondo capitolo è esposto il problema del “gap esplicativo” elaborato da Levine, utilizzato spesso a supporto di posizioni non riduzioniste. È stato esposto e analizzato l’esperimento mentale degli “zombie filosofici” di David Chalmers volto a dimostrare che i qualia non sono riducibili a qualcosa di fisico. È stato poi elaborato un altro esperimento mentale volto a mostrare che almeno intuitivamente, i qualia sembrano essere necessari per il darsi di alcuni comportamenti umani e che se l’esperimento mentale degli zombie prevede l’assenza di qualia allora la fisica di quel mondo dovrebbe essere in grado di predeterminare tutti i comportamenti degli zombie. Si è mostrato che così facendo si ammetterebbe la concepibilità di un mondo-zombie fisicamente predeterminato, e dunque anche la possibilità metafisica. È stata analizzata questa intuizione attraverso un’analisi controfattuale incentrata sulla somiglianza tra mondi possibili secondo la teoria dei controfattuali di Lewis, mostrando che un controfattuale del tipo “se non ci fossero qualia, allora alcuni comportamenti non potrebbero darsi” risulta vero. Infine viene proposto un argomento che dovrebbe mostrare, che se effettivamente i qualia sono necessari per alcuni tipi di comportamenti, allora l’esperimento mentale degli zombie non può funzionare. Se la fisica del mondo zombie deve permettere il realizzarsi di azioni che nel mondo attuale avverrebbero solo per la presenza di qualia, allora un mondo-zombie è possibile solo se si includono nella fisica di quel mondo anche i qualia. Questo mostra che seppure i qualia non possono essere descritti da un linguaggio fisicalista possono essere compresi in una metafisica fisicalista. (shrink)

This chapter is Grace Andrus de Laguna’s discussion of the relationship between mind and brain.

This paper argues that qualia share their physical correlates' locations. The first premise comes from the theory of relativity: If something shares a time with a physical event in all reference frames, it shares that physical event’s location. The second premise is that qualia share times with their correlates in all reference frames. Having qualia and correlates share locations makes relations between them easier to explain, improving both physicalist and dualist theories.

I present considerations surrounding pre-reflective self-consciousness, arising in work I am conducting on a new physicalist, process-based account of [phenomenal] consciousness. The account is called the meta-causal account because it identifies consciousness with a certain type of arrangement of meta-causation. Meta-causation is causation where a cause or effect is itself an instance of causation. The proposed type of arrangement involves a sort of time-spanning, internal reflexivity of the overall meta-causation. I argue that, as a result of the account, any conscious (...) process has PRSC. Hence, PRSC does not need to be taken as a stipulation or argued for on purely phenomenological grounds or as a necessary support for reflective consciousness. I also show how it is natural to the account that PRSC is not an additional, peripheral, sort of consciousness, but is intrinsic to all consciousness, thereby fitting claims about self-intimation and co-constitution by various authors, and also being amenable to an adverbial account. As part of this, consciousness of an external object is just the form that current self-consciousness takes, the meta-causal constitution of it being inextricably modulated by the causal relationship with the object. The article also discusses how MCA helps explore issues of for-me-ness, transparency of perceptual consciousness, and possible immediacy and non-relationality of self-consciousness. (shrink)

This book is about trying to comprehend the mind from both scientific and philosophical standpoints. In recent years interest has revived in the difficult problem of consciousness. The many difficulties of understanding our minds have been considered in the past, mainly from philosophical or religious viewpoints, but only more recently from scientific perspectives. The book charts the landscape and proposes that the fundamental thing in the world is an arrangement, and this concept can encompass both material objects and things of (...) the mind. This eliminates the old contrast between mind and matter as both should be properly considered as arrangements, producing a philosophical monism that is consistent with modern science. The idea that all mental activity should be viewed as essentially physical is considered not wrong but misconceived and irrelevant, as it is far from the most parsimonious explanation of many mental events. A viewpoint is developed that is sufficiently wide to encompass most human activities but narrowed to exclude certain philosophical puzzles. Suggestions are made about how some of the tough problems in the philosophy of mind, such as causality, intentionality, and the nature of qualia, can be resolved by considering the fundamental structures and limitations of thought, linguistic processes, and our position in the web of life and its evolution. The nature of acts of creation and their importance in the arts are considered, and suggestions are made about the place in our lives for spiritual beliefs. This book is different from others as it aims to provide a complete overview of the territory of the mind in a way that removes older philosophical dilemmas but is compatible with modern science. It offers a new perspective on the old difficulties of understanding the mind and presents new avenues of thought. (shrink)

Sometimes when we describe our own sensory experiences we seem to attribute to experience itself the same sorts of familiar properties – such as shape or colour – as we attribute to everyday physical objects. But how literally should we understand such descriptions? Can there really be phenomenal elements or aspects to an experience which are, for example, quite literally square? This paper examines how these questions connect to a wide range of different commitments and theories about the metaphysics of (...) mind. In particular, I consider whether there may be phenomenological reasons to accept or reject the idea that there are elements or aspects of conscious experience itself which instantiate familiar spatial properties. I also explore how some general theses about the nature of empirical properties can motivate different answers to these questions. (shrink)

Qualitative consciousness is conscious experience marked by the presence of sensory qualities, like the experienced painfulness of having a piano dropped on your foot, or the consciousness of seeing the brilliant reds and oranges of a sunset. Over his career, philosopher David Rosenthal has defended an influential theoretical approach to explaining qualitative consciousness. This approach involves the development of two theories – the higher-order thought theory of mental state consciousness and the quality space theory of sensory quality. If the problem (...) of explaining qualitative consciousness is divided into two more manageable pieces, the door opens to a satisfying explanation of what is seen by some to be an intractable explanatory puzzle. This interdisciplinary collection develops, criticizes, and expands upon themes inspired by Rosenthal's work. The result is an exciting collection of new essays by philosophers and scientists, which will be of interest to all those engaged in consciousness studies. (shrink)

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 (...) that color scientists and philosophers gave to the definitional and location questions in the 20th century. We identify some of the different points at which their work intersected, as well as the most prominent schisms between them. One overarching theme of the chapter is the surprising proliferation of different views on color. Whereas some assume that progress in science must take the form of convergence, the 20th century history of color exhibited a marked divergence in views. This chapter leaves it an open question whether an ultimate unification of views is possible, or whether the only thing that ties together the study of “color” is the shared inheritance of a word. (shrink)

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, (...) pains feel inherently unpleasant, and that explains why they cause avoidance behaviour, and the felt location and intensity of pain indicates the location and extent of damage to the body. I discuss some other possible gaps in our understanding the relationship between the mental and the physical, and conclude that the fit between functional role and phenomenal character goes a long way, though probably not the whole way, to closing the explanatory gap. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that bodily pain, as a phenomenal property, is an essentially and substantial dispositional property. To this end, I maintain that this property is individuated by its phenomenal roles, which can be internal -individuating the property per se- and external -determining further phenomenal or physical properties or states. I then argue that this individuation allows phenomenal roles to be organized in a necessarily asymmetrical net, thereby overcoming the circularity objection to dispositionalism. Finally, I provide reasons to (...) argue that these roles satisfy modal fixity, as posited by Bird, and are not fundamental properties, contra Chalmers’ panpsychism. Thus, bodily pain can be considered a substantial dispositional property entrenched in non-fundamental laws of nature. (shrink)

This Target paper is about the hard problem of phenomenal consciousness (i.e., how is subjective experience possible given the scientific presumption that everything from molecules to minerals to minds is wholly physical?). I first argue that one of the most valuable tools in the scientific arsenal (metaphor) cannot be recruited to address the hard problem due to the inability to forge connections between the stubborn fact of subjective experience and physically grounded models of scientific explanation. I then argue that adherence (...) to the physicalist tenets of contemporary science has a limiting effect on a full appreciation of the phenomenon under discussion. (shrink)

In recent literature on the metaphysics of consciousness, and in particular on the prospects of physicalism, there are two interesting strands of discussion. One strand concerns the so-called ‘thesis of revelation’, the claim that the essences of phenomenal properties are revealed in experience. The other strand concerns the intuition of dualism, the intuition that consciousness is nonphysical. With a particular focus on the former, this paper advances two main arguments. First, it argues that the thesis of revelation is intuitive; it (...) is part of our ordinary, implicit conception of experience. Second, it brings the two strands of discussion together and puts forward a rational explanation of the intuition of dualism in terms of the intuitiveness of the thesis of revelation. (shrink)

En el presente texto se evalúan las posibilidades conceptuales de una interpretación fisicalista de la conciencia. Con dicho fin se toman en cuenta posiciones representativas en el ámbito de la filosofía, así como investigaciones neurocientíficas recientes. Ambas líneas de investigación suponen el cuestionamiento de los acercamientos de sentido común al tema de la conciencia. No obstante, no suponen una completa eliminación de lo que dicho acercamiento puede representar. En este sentido, se propone una interpretación epistemológica de la perspectiva intuitiva de (...) primera persona en relación con la perspectiva científica de tercera persona. (shrink)

Du Bois-Reymond’s Ignorabimus could have been a game changer in the last decades of 19th century, but it wasn’t. The sound argument of the German physiologist concerning the limits of natural science, although it was indeed taken seriously and confronted by all means, was in fact so severely distorted by opponents that one could hardly recognize it in the straw men generated in the process. By scrutinizing three less known approaches dug up from 19th century Romanian literature, the present paper (...) focuses on the theoretical commitments that prevented the consciousness issue to be properly addressed. (shrink)

According to phenomenal transparency, phenomenal concepts are transparent where a transparent concept is one that reveals the nature of that to which it refers. What is the connection between phenomenal transparency and our concept of a subject of experience? This paper focuses on a recent argument, due to Philip Goff, for thinking that phenomenal transparency entails transparency about subjecthood. The argument is premissed on the idea that subjecthood is related to specific phenomenal properties as a determinable of more specific determinates. (...) I argue that the argument fails, which opens the door for one to endorse phenomenal transparency while denying transparency about the concept of a subject of experience. I draw out the consequences of this for certain versions of the combination problem for panpsychist metaphysics and moreover argue that rejecting the transparency of subjecthood does not undermine anti-physicalist arguments premissed on considerations relating to phenomenal transparency. (shrink)

We review existing strategies for bringing modal intuitions to bear against materialist theories of consciousness, and then propose a new strategy. Unlike existing strategies, which assume that imagination (suitably constrained) is a good guide to modal truth, the strategy proposed here makes no assumptions about the probative value of imagination. However, unlike traditional modal arguments, the argument developed here delivers only the conclusion that we should not believe that materialism is true, not that we should believe that it is false.

What exactly does an android experience? Could an android have experiences as rich as humans, or are there limits? The Westworld T V series (Jonathan Noland, 2016- ) offers the opportunity to explore philosophical questions related to human and android experiences through its depiction of a fictional Wild West theme park with androids playing the main characters. Among the most fascinating scenes in the Westworld TV series are the interviews between the android characters Bernard Lowe and Dolores Abernathy. These interviews (...) occur in a windowless room and appear to portray Dolores at different stages of her development, though what comprises this development is not revealed to the viewer. It’s probably a good guess that Dolores’ development consists in software upgrades as well as her own learning episodes—her own learning history. There are a host of interesting questions that could be raised about the meetings between Bernard and Dolores, about her software updates and her learning history, but there are particular, philosophical questions about what Dolores experiences that I would like to focus on in this essay. These questions have to do with possible limits to her experience, and whether these limits correspond to limits we—intuitively, at least—apply to human beings. (shrink)

Chalmers’ meta-problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining “problem reports”; i.e. reports to the effect that phenomenal consciousness has the various features that give rise to the hard problem. Chalmers (Journal of Consciousness Studies 25: 6–61, 2018, 8) suggests that solving the meta-problem will likely “shed significant light on the hard problem.” Against this, I argue that work on the meta-problem will likely fail to make the hard problem any easier. For each of the main stances on the hard (...) problem can provide an account of problem reports, and we have no way of deciding which of these accounts gives the correct explanation of an individual’s problem reports without presupposing a stance on the hard problem. We thus cannot determine which of the available solutions to the meta-problem is correct without having already solved the hard problem. (shrink)

Thought experiments, one of the most effective ways of acquiring knowledge, are an intellectual tool frequently used by scientists or thinkers in their fields of study. Thought experiments used to respond to scientific issues are considered scientific thought experiments, while thought experiments used for philosophical problems are called philosophical thought experiments. In this context, firstly, the differences between scientific and philosophical thought experiments are determined in the article. In particular, philosophical thought experiments are often needed in discussions within the field (...) of epistemology. For this reason, in the rest of the study, the knowledge argument put forward against the idea of physicalism, which is one of the important views in epistemology and which claims that the natural world is basically physical and that everything can be explained by physical laws is included. The knowledge argument briefly argues that there are non-physical properties and information that can only be discovered through conscious experience. Accordingly, it is argued that someone who has all physical knowledge about another conscious may lack knowledge of what it would feel like to have subjective experiences of that entity such as qualia. Consequently, the main idea of the article is to reveal how an epistemological thesis has been questioned by various philosophers in the context of philosophical thought experiments such as Mary’s room, ‘What is it like to be a Bat’, The Martian and the Philosophical Zombie. - Bilgi edinmenin en etkili yollarından bir tanesi olarak değerlendirilen düşünce deneyleri bilim insanları ya da düşünürler tarafından kendi çalışma alanları içerisinde sıklıkla başvurulan düşünsel bir araçtır. Bilimsel konulara cevap vermek amacıyla gerçekleştirilen düşünce deneyleri bilimsel düşünce deneyleri olarak değerlendirilirken, felsefi sorunlara yönelik kullanılan düşünce deneyleri ise felsefi düşünce deneyleri olarak adlandırılmaktadır. Bu kapsamda makalede ilk olarak bilimsel ve felsefi düşünce deneyleri arasındaki farklılıklar belirlenmektedir. Özellikle, epistemoloji alanı içerisinde yer alan tartışmalarda felsefi düşünce deneylerine sıklıkla ihtiyaç duyulmaktadır. Bu nedenle çalışmanın devamında epistemolojide önemli görüşlerden bir tanesi olan ve doğal dünyanın en temelde fiziksel olduğu ve fiziksel yasalarla her şeyin açıklanabileceği iddiasında bulunan fizikalizm düşüncesine karşı ileri sürülmüş bilgi argümanına yer verilmektedir. Bilgi argümanı kısaca sadece bilinçli deneyim yoluyla elde edilebilen ve fiziksel olarak ifade edilemeyen öznel deneyimlerin ve özelliklerin olduğunu savunmaktadır. Buna göre, başka bir bilinçli varlık hakkında bütün fiziksel bilgiye sahip olan birinin, o varlığın qualia gibi öznel deneyimlerine sahip olmasının nasıl bir his olduğu konusundaki bilgilerden yoksun olabileceği fikri savunulmaktadır. Bu doğrultuda, makalenin temel savı fizikalizm gibi epistemolojik bir teze Mary’nin Odası, ‘Yarasa Olmak Nasıl Bir Şeydir’, Marslı ve Felsefi Zombi gibi felsefi düşünce deneyleri bağlamında çeşitli filozoflarca nasıl itiraz edildiğini ve düşünce deneylerinin bu bağlamda nasıl kullanıldığını ortaya koymaktır. (shrink)

The IASP definition of 'pain' defines pain as a subjective experience. The Note accompanying the definition emphasizes that as such pains are not to be identified with objective conditions of body parts (such as actual or potential tissue damage). Nevertheless, it goes on to state that a pain "is unquestionably a sensation in a part or parts of the body, but it is also always unpleasant and therefore also an emotional experience." This generates a puzzle that philosophers have been well (...) familiar with: how to understand our utterances and judgments attributing pain to body parts. (The puzzle is of course general extending to all sensations routinely located in body parts.) The present work tackles this puzzle. I go over various options specifying the truth-conditions for pain attributing judgments, and at the end make my own recommendation which is an adverbialist, qualia-friendly proposal with completely naturalistic credentials that is also compatible with forms of weak intentionalism. The results are generalizable to other bodily sensations and can be used to illustrate, quite generally, the viability of a qualia-friendly adverbialist (but naturalist and weakly intentionalist) account of perception. (shrink)

How, if at all, consciousness can be part of the physical universe remains a baffling problem. This article outlines a new, developing philosophical theory of how it could do so, and offers a preliminary mathematical formulation of a physical grounding for key aspects of the theory. Because the philosophical side has radical elements, so does the physical-theory side. The philosophical side is radical, first, in proposing that the productivity or dynamism in the universe that many believe to be responsible for (...) its systematic regularities is actually itself a physical constituent of the universe, along with more familiar entities. Indeed, it proposes that instances of dynamism can themselves take part in physical interactions with other entities, this interaction then being “meta-dynamism” (a type of meta-causation). Secondly, the theory is radical, and unique, in arguing that consciousness is necessarily partly constituted of meta-dynamic auto-sensitivity, in other words it must react via meta-dynamism to its own dynamism, and also in conjecturing that some specific form of this sensitivity is sufficient for and indeed constitutive of consciousness. The article proposes a way for physical laws to be modified to accommodate meta-dynamism, via the radical step of including elements that explicitly refer to dynamism itself. Additionally, laws become, explicitly, temporally non-local in referring directly to quantity values holding at times prior to a given instant of application of the law. The approach therefore implicitly brings in considerations about what information determines states. Because of the temporal non-locality, and also because of the deep connections between dynamism and time-flow, the approach also implicitly connects to the topic of entropy insofar as this is related to time. (shrink)

Revelation, or the view that the essence of phenomenal properties is presented to us, is as intuitively attractive as it is controversial. It is notably at the core of defences of anti-physicalism. I propose in this paper a new argument against Revelation. It is usually accepted that low-level sensory phenomenal properties, like phenomenal red, loudness or brightness, stand in relation of similarity and quantity. Furthermore, these similarity and quantitative relations are taken to be internal, that is, to be fixed by (...) what their relata are. I argue that, under some plausible additional premises, no account of what grounds these relations in the essence of their relata is consistent with Revelation, at least if we take common phenomenological descriptions for granted. As a result, the plausibility of Revelation is undermined. One might however resist this conclusion by weakening the epistemic relation postulated between subjects and their phenomenal properties. (shrink)

Research on natural and artificial brains is proceeding at a rapid pace. However, the understanding of the essence of consciousness has changed slightly over the millennia, and only the last decade has brought some progress to the area. Scientific ideas emerged that the soul could be a product of the material body and that calculating machines could imitate brain processes. However, the authors of this book reject the previously common dualism—the view that the material and spiritual-psychic processes are separate and (...) require a completely different substance as their foundation. -/- Reductive Model of the Conscious Mind is a forward-thinking book wherein the authors identify processes that are the essence of conscious thinking and place them in the imagined, simplified structure of cells able to memorize and transmit information in the form of impulses, which they call neurons. The purpose of the study is to explain the essence of consciousness to the degree of development of natural sciences, because only the latter can find a way to embed the concept of the conscious mind in material brains. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 works to convince readers that the emergence of consciousness does not require detailed knowledge of the structure and morphology of the brain, with the exception of some specific properties of the neural network structure that the authors attempt to point out. Part 2 proves that the biological structure of many natural brains fulfills the necessary conditions for consciousness and intelligent thinking. Similarly, Part 3 shows the ways in which artificial creatures imitating natural brains can meet these conditions, which gives great hopes for building artificially intelligent beings endowed with consciousness. Covering topics that include cognitive architecture, the embodied mind, and machine learning, this book is ideal for cognitive scientists, philosophers of mind, neuroscientists, psychologists, researchers, academicians, and advanced-level students. The book can also help to focus the research of linguists, neurologists, and biophysicists on the biophysical basis of postulated information processing into knowledge structures. (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)

A primary goal of this chapter is to correct a widespread misunderstanding about how epistemic issues shape the debate between dualists and physicalists. According to a familiar picture, dualism is motivated by armchair reflection, and dualists accord special significance to our ways of conceptualizing consciousness and the physical. In contrast, physicalists favor empirical data over armchair reflection, and physicalism is a relatively straightforward extension of scientific theorizing. This familiar picture is inaccurate. 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. My discussion highlights these neglected epistemic parallels between dualism and physicalism, and identifies the key epistemic questions that drive this debate. (shrink)

In his paper “Double Vision, Phosphenes and Afterimages: Non-Endorsed Representations rather than Non-Representational Qualia,” Işık Sarıhan addresses the debate between strong representationalists and qualia theorists. He argues that qualia theorists like Ned Block and Amy Kind who cite double-vision, afterimages, etc., as evidence for the existence of qualia are mistaken about the actual nature of these states. According to Sarıhan, these authors confuse the fact that these states are non-endorsed representational states with the fact that they are at least partly (...) non-representational. I argue that Sarıhan’s argument contains gaps that suggest that he misidentifi es the mistake that leads these qualia theorists to their conclusion. In my view, these qualia theorists do not confuse the fact that the states in question are non-endorsed states with the fact that they are non-representational, but rather mistake certain representational contents, or certain aspects of these contents, for qualia. (shrink)

This commentary focuses on explaining the intuition of revelation, an issue that Chalmers (2018) raises in his paper. I first sketch how the truth of revelation provides an explanation for the intuition of revelation, and then assess a physicalist proposal to explain the intuition that appeals to Derk Pereboom’s (2011, 2016, 2019) qualitative inaccuracy hypothesis.