Theories of Consciousness

This paper contains two sections. In the first one, some ideas on human mind Dennett presents in his book Consciousness Explained are sketched. In the second section, a critical review is made on Dennett's Multiple Drafts Theory. It is concluded that some of its proposals do not find enough experimental support from research on Cognitive Neuroscience. Even though there is no cardinal point in the brain, both functional and anatomical criteria can be found to distinguish conscious and unconscious information processing (...) in the human brain. (shrink)

This thesis is about animal minds: which have them, and how we can know that. There are two phases in my approach. I first consider attitudinal states, especially beliefs, before turning to phenomenal consciousness. In my view, these topics are deeply related. Consciousness is best understood as the use of sensory information in cognition. There is nothing that it is like to be an animal which is not capable of a certain kind of belief. ;In order to keep this work (...) manageable I decided at a very early stage to embrace "chimpophobia" , for the most part setting aside consideration of the minds of higher primates. It seems to me that the primates raise issues which, while important, add a further dimension of complexity which would lead away from a discussion of simple perceptual attitudes. As such the role of communication, "theory of mind" issues, including deception, and social cognition in general, as well as disputes about primate culture, and especially the ape language controversy, are largely ignored here. ;Chapter one criticizes excessively permissive views about ascribing attitudes to animals. The second chapter explores the themes of adaptive versatility and parsimony, especially in the form of Morgan's canon. There I also address sceptical worries about the possibility of animal belief. Chapter three assesses the unique contributions of Dennett, and uses his work as a springboard into a discussion of animal consciousness. Recent sceptical arguments he offers about bats and snakes are also answered. The final chapter is exclusively devoted to a discussion of consciousness. I argue that the phenomenon of blindsight suggests a number of heretofore unnoticed, but important, revisions in our thinking about phenomenal subjectivity: Higher-order representational theories of consciousness are poorly motivated, Lower-order theories are in need of an important refinement, some, but not all, animals are a kind of natural zombie. ;1The title of this work is derived from a parody of Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women usually attributed to Thomas Taylor. It will soon become apparent to the reader that I wish to turn the tables on Taylor. (shrink)

A glance at the contents of this book might be enough to persuade that it is absolutely required reading for anyone interested in the study of consciousness. The discussion is replete with insight into a number of neglected topics: colour in dream experience (chapter 1), echolocation in auditory experience (chapter 4) and closed-eye visualisations (chapter 8). More familiar themes such as the spatial qualities presented in visual experience (chapter 2), visual imagery (chapter 3), the introspectionist movement (chapter 5), conscious attention (...) and multisensory experience (chapter 6) are given genuinely novel treatment. Chapter 7, titled ‘The Unreliability of Introspection’ is almost a microcosm of the book as a whole; it is not quite representative of the entire book but it gives a strong flavour of the style of argument employed elsewhere, so the half-interested (or hurried) reader would be well advised to take it in as a taster. The book is written in accessible prose suitable for an .. (shrink)

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

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

The idea that only complex brains can possess genuine representations is an important element in mainstream philosophical thinking. An alternative view, which I label ‘liberal representationalism’, holds that we should accept the existence of many more full-blown representations, from activity in retinal ganglion cells to the neural states produced by innate releasing mechanisms in cognitively unsophisticated organisms. A promising way of supporting liberal representationalism is to show it to be a consequence of our best naturalistic theories of representation. However, several (...) philosophers and scientists have recently argued against this strategy. In the paper I counter these objections in defense of liberal representationalism. (shrink)

This paper explains why Clark’s Extended Mind thesis is not capable of sufficiently grasping how and in what sense external objects and technical artifacts can become part of our human cognition. According to the author, this is because a pivotal distinction between inside and outside is preserved in the Extended Mind theorist’s account of the relation between the human organism and the world of external objects and artifacts, a distinction which they proclaim to have overcome. Inspired by Charles S. Peirce’s (...) philosophy of mind, in particular, the author tries to find a way out of this ‘inside–outside’ fallacy. External objects, artifacts or processes should, according to him, not be conceived as inanimate and unintelligent matter utilised by a separately living, inner mental sphere that has set certain pre-established goals for itself. Mind has rather an artifactual character. It is not extended by an inner biological cognitive core but rather unfolds itself through objects and artifacts. Mind as such is, especially in our modern technological culture, shaped by virtue of and through technical artifacts. Recognizing this artifactual dimension of mind will, the author concludes, enable a more critical analysis of contemporary claims that ascribe certain original and irreducible features to thinking. (shrink)

van der Velde & de Kamps make a case for neural blackboard architectures to address four questions raised by human language. Unfortunately, they neglect a sizable literature relating blackboard architectures to other fundamental cognitive questions, specifically consciousness and voluntary control. Called “global workspace theory,” this literature integrates a large body of brain and behavioral evidence to come to converging conclusions.

The world of our experience consists at all times of two parts, an objective and a subjective part . . . The objective part is the sum total of whatsoever at any given time we may be thinking of, the subjective part is the inner 'state' in which the thinking comes to pass.

John Searle and Daniel Dennett have had their horns locked over different issues in the philosophy of mind for close to two decades. Both participants state that their disagreement is about such things as the nature of consciousness, the viability of strong artificial intelligence, the possibility of zombies, and other such issues. After close to two decades of debate about the same set of issues, one should suspect that perhaps something deeper is responsible for generating and sustaining this apparent disagreement. (...) ;This deeper level to a debate is the level that must be examined if there is going to be any hope of terminating this debate. Searle and Dennett have been arguing past each other by focusing on the wrong set of concerns. Searle and Dennett should be mindful of some of the implicit presuppositions that are responsible for generating and maintaining their debate. ;This project does not attempt to defend either Searle's or Dennett's particular theory. Rather it attempts to show that the various objections each makes against the other reduce to different Implicit Presuppositions Matrixes . The Dennett/Searle debate serves as a test case for the IPM thesis. To help clarify the IPM thesis and illuminate its strengths in dealing with this debate and others of its kind, it is compared to three theories which bear a resemblance to it: W. T. Jones's theory on World Views, Walter Watson's theory on Archic variables, and Tom Kuhn's theory of paradigms and paradigm shifts. Once the deficiencies of these theses in dealing with the Dennett/Searle debate are exposed, the strengths of the IPM thesis in dealing with this debate is further addressed. (shrink)

In this paper, the arguments against the mind-body identity thesis from the author’s [1994] paper, “Mental Properties,” are presented but in significantly more detail. It is shown that, because of scientific essentialism, two currently popular arguments against the identity thesis -- the multiple-realizability argument and the Nagel-Jackson knowledge argument -- are unsatisfactory as they stand and that their problems are incurable. It is then shown that a refutation of the identity thesis in its full generality can be achieved by weaving (...) together two traditional Cartesian arguments -- the modal argument and the certainty argument. This argument establishes, not just the falsity of the identity thesis, but also the metaphysical possibility of disembodiment. The paper ends with a discussion of the nature of the relation between the mind and the body. (shrink)

Beenfeldt assesses Dennett's approach to the philosophical problem of consciousness.

Selon la théorie représentationnelle de la conscience phénoménale , le caractère phénoménal d’une expérience consciente serait épuisé par son contenu représentationnel. Certaines remarques de Christopher Peacocke soulèvent un problème majeur pour la TRCP. Dans son livre Consciousness , où il défend une version de la TRCP, Christopher Hill propose une solution à ce problème, selon laquelle les qualia visuels seraient des «apparences visuelles» conçues comme des propriétés relationnelles d’objets externes. Je soulève deux problèmes auxquels la solution de Hill doit faire (...) face. Pour surmonter ces problèmes, je suggère une interprétation différente de l’idée selon laquelle les qualia visuels sont des apparences visuelles. According to a representational theory of phenomenal consciousness , the phenomenal character of a conscious experience is completely exhausted by its representational content. Some considerations suggested by Christopher Peacocke raise an important problem for the RTPC. In his recent book Consciousness , where he defends a version of the RTPC, Christopher Hill argues that to solve Peacocke’s problem, visual qualia must be identified with “visual appearances” understood as relational properties of external objects. I raise two problems for Hill’s solution and I suggest an alternative way of understanding visual qualia as visual appearances. (shrink)

(1999). Information self‐organization and consciousness—towards a holoinformational theory of consciousness. World Futures: Vol. 53, No. 4, pp. 309-327.

Dehaene and Naccache, Dennett and Jack and Shallice “see convergence coming from many different quarters on a version of the neuronal global workspace model†(Dennett, p. 1). (Boldface references are to papers in this volume.) On the contrary, even within this volume, there are commitments to very different perspectives on consciousness. And these differing perspectives are based on tacit differences in philosophical starting places that should be made explicit.  Indeed, it is not clear that different uses of “consciousness†and (...) “awareness†in this volume can be taken to refer to the same phenomenon. More specifically, I think there are three different concepts of consciousness in play in this issue. The global workspace model makes much more sense on one of these than on the others. (shrink)

consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp.

There are two concepts of consciousness that are easy to confuse with one another, access-consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. However, just as the concepts of water and H 2 O are different concepts of the same thing, so the two concepts of consciousness may come to the same thing in the brain. The focus of this paper is on the problems that arise when these two concepts of consciousness are conflated. I will argue that John Searle's reasoning about the function of (...) consciousness goes wrong because he conflates the two senses. And Francis Crick and Christof Koch fall afoul of the ambiguity in arguing that visual area V1 is not part of the neural correlate of consciousness. Crick and Koch's work raises issues that suggest that these two concepts of consciousness may have different neural correlates – despite Crick and Koch's implicit rejection of this idea. (shrink)

In his paper, “Is There an ‘Anomalous’ Section of the Laffer Curve?”, Walter Block describes some situations in which it appears that a libertarian should violate the non-aggression principle. To rectify this, Block proposes a different perspective on libertarianism which he calls punishment theory. This paper argues that no new theory is needed, as the non-aggression principle can be used to resolve the apparent conundrums.

In the field of machine consciousness, it has been argued that in order to build human-like conscious machines, we must first have a computational model of qualia. To this end, some have proposed a framework that supports qualia in machines by implementing a model with three computational areas (i.e., the subconceptual, conceptual, and linguistic areas). These abstract mechanisms purportedly enable the assessment of artificial qualia. However, several critics of the machine consciousness project dispute this possibility. For instance, Searle, in his (...) Chinese room objection, argues that however sophisticated a computational system is, it can never exhibit intentionality; thus, would also fail to exhibit consciousness or any of its varieties. This paper argues that the proposed architecture mentioned above answers the problem posed by Searle, at least in part. Specifically, it argues that we could reformulate Searle’s worries in the Chinese room in terms of the three-stage artificial qualia model. And by doing so, we could see that the person doing all the translations in the room could realize the three areas in the proposed framework. Consequently, this demonstrates the actualization of self-consciousness in machines. (shrink)

This paper summarizes the main features of the microgenetic account of consciousness, of the transition from self to image, act and object, the epochal nature of this transition, and its relation to introspection, imagination, and agency. The affinities of microgenetic theory to many aspects of process thought should be evident to readers of this journal, but the theory, which was developed in pathological case study, rests on a wealth of clinical detail that is beyond the scope of this article. In (...) brief, the micro-temporal transition from archaic to recent formations (distributed systems) in the phyletic history of forebrain constitutes the absolute mental state, with consciousness the relation of self to image and/or object. The discussion touches on the overlap of states, the continuity of the core over successive states, and subjective time experience. (shrink)