About this topic
Summary The phrase "what it is like" is often used to invoke phenomenal consciousness.  For example, one can ask what it is like to be a bat, or what it is like to see red, in effect asking about the associated conscious states.  "Knowing what it is like" is often used to invoke knowledge of conscious states.  Some have argued that no amount of physical knowledge suffices to know what it is like to be in these states.
Key works The locus classicus here is Nagel 1974, though predecessors using the phrase include Farrell 1950 and Maxwell 1966.  Analyses of the phrase are given by Lormand 2004 and Hellie 2007.  Critics of this usage include Hacker 2002 and Mellor 1993.  A positive discussion of what it is like to be a bat is given by Akins 1993.
Introductions Nagel 1974.
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121 found
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  1. Can Science Explain consciousness? Toward a solution to the 'hard problem'.Dan J. Bruiger - manuscript
    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 (...)
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  2. A Parsimonious Solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness: Complexity and Narrative.Maxson J. McDowell - manuscript
    Three decades after Chalmers named it, the ‘hard problem’ remains. I suggest a parsimonious solution. Biological dynamic systems interact according to simple rules (while the environment provides simple constraints) and thus self-organize to become a new, more complex dynamic system at the next level. This spiral repeats several times generating a hierarchy of levels. A leap to the next level is frequently creative and surprising. From ants, themselves self-organized according to physical/chemical laws, may emerge an ant colony self-organized according to (...)
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  3. No Form Action Theory.Hongbo Sun - manuscript
    The thinking demonstrated by the "no form action" theory is completely new, and no one has ever used this kind of thinking to consider problems. Using no form and form as the two dimensions to describe this world is like using the x-axis and y-axis as the two dimensions of a Cartesian coordinate system in mathematics. The no form here means having no form at all. The theory established by these two dimensions is called two-dimensional theory, which avoids the shortcomings (...)
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  4. So THAT'S what it's like!Sean Allen-Hermanson - forthcoming - In Companion to the Philosophy of Animal Minds. Routledge.
    Many philosophers have held that we cannot say what it is like to be a bat as they present a fundamentally alien form of life. Another view held by some philosophers, bat scientists, and even many laypersons is that echolocation is, somehow, at least in part, a kind of visual experience. Either way, bat echolocation is taken to be something very mysterious and exotic. I utilize empirical and intuitive considerations to support an alternative view making a much more mundane contention (...)
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  5. Going Out of My Head: An Evolutionary Proposal Concerning the “Why” of Sentience.Stan Klein, Bill N. Nguyen & Blossom M. Zhang - forthcoming - Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice.
    The explanatory challenge of sentience is known as the “hard problem of consciousness”: How does subjective experience arise from physical objects and their relations? Despite some optimistic claims, the perennial struggle with this question shows little evidence of imminent resolution. In this article I focus on the “why” rather than on the “how” of sentience. Specifically, why did sentience evolve in organic lifeforms? From an evolutionary perspective this question can be framed: “What adaptive problem(s) did organisms face in their evolutionary (...)
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  6. Taking Phenomenology at Face Value: The Priority of State Consciousness in Light of the For-me-ness of Experience.Alberto Barbieri - 2023 - Argumenta.
    An important distinction lies between consciousness attributed to creatures, or subjects, (creature consciousness) and consciousness attributed to mental states (state consciousness). Most contemporary theories of consciousness aim at explaining what makes a mental state conscious, paying scant attention to the problem of creature consciousness. This attitude relies on a deeper, and generally overlooked, assumption that once an explanation of state consciousness is provided, one has also explained all the relevant features of creature consciousness. I call this the priority of state (...)
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  7. Degrees of Consciousness.Andrew Y. Lee - 2023 - Noûs 57 (3):553-575.
    Is a human more conscious than an octopus? In the science of consciousness, it’s oftentimes assumed that some creatures (or mental states) are more conscious than others. But in recent years, a number of philosophers have argued that the notion of degrees of consciousness is conceptually confused. This paper (1) argues that the most prominent objections to degrees of consciousness are unsustainable, (2) examines the semantics of ‘more conscious than’ expressions, (3) develops an analysis of what it is for a (...)
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  8. X-Phi and the challenge from ad hoc concepts.Michelle Liu - 2023 - Synthese 201 (5):1-25.
    Ad hoc concepts feature prominently in lexical pragmatics. A speaker can use a word or phrase to communicate an ad hoc concept that is different from the lexically encoded concept and the hearer can construct the intended ad hoc concept pragmatically during utterance comprehension. I argue that some philosophical concepts have origins as ad hoc concepts, and such concepts pose a challenge for experimental philosophy regarding these concepts. To illustrate this, I consider philosophers’ ‘what-it’s-like’-concepts and experimental philosophy of consciousness.
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  9. Pre-Reflective Self-Consciousness: A Meta-Causal Approach.John A. Barnden - 2022 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 13 (2):397-425.
    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 (...)
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  10. Two Notions of Resemblance and the Semantics of 'What it's Like'.Justin D'Ambrosio & Daniel Stoljar - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    According to the resemblance account of 'what it's like' and similar constructions, a sentence such as 'there is something it’s like to have a toothache' means 'there is something having a toothache resembles'. This account has proved controversial in the literature; some writers endorse it, many reject it. We show that this conflict is illusory. Drawing on the semantics of intensional transitive verbs, we show that there are two versions of the resemblance account, depending on whether 'resembles' is construed notionally (...)
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  11. Objective Phenomenology.Andrew Lee - 2022 - Erkenntnis 87 (5).
    This paper examines the idea of objective phenomenology, or a way of understanding the phenomenal character of conscious experiences that doesn’t require one to have had the kinds of experiences under consideration. My central thesis is that structural facts about experience—facts that characterize purely how conscious experiences are structured—are objective phenomenal facts. I begin by precisifying the idea of objective phenomenology and diagnosing what makes any given phenomenal fact subjective. Then I defend the view that structural facts about experience are (...)
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  12. Indigenous Concepts of Consciousness, Soul, and Spirit: A Cross-Cultural Perspective.Radek Trnka & Radmila Lorencova - 2022 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 29 (1-2):113-140.
    Different cultures show different understandings of consciousness, soul, and spirit. Native indigenous traditions have recently seen a resurgence of interest and are being used in psychotherapy, mental health counselling, and psychiatry. The main aim of this review is to explore and summarize the native indigenous concepts of consciousness, soul, and spirit. Following a systematic review search, the peer-reviewed literature presenting research from 55 different cultural groups across regions of the world was retrieved. Information relating to native concepts of consciousness, soul, (...)
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  13. The Debate on the Problem of For-me-ness: A Proposed Taxonomy.Alberto Barbieri - 2021 - Argumenta.
    Several philosophers claim that a mental state is phenomenally conscious only if it exhibits so-called for-me-ness, or subjective character, i.e., the fact that there is something it is like to be in a conscious state not just for everyone but only for the subject who undergoes it. Consequently, they stress, a proper explanation of consciousness requires to address the question of what the nature of for-me-ness is. This question forms what I call the problem of for-me-ness. Although the debate on (...)
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  14. Consciousness, Concepts and Natural Kinds.Tim Bayne & Nicholas Shea - 2020 - Philosophical Topics 48 (1):65-83.
    We have various everyday measures for identifying the presence of consciousness, such as the capacity for verbal report and the intentional control of behavior. However, there are many contexts in which these measures are difficult to apply, and even when they can be applied one might have doubts as to their validity in determining the presence/absence of consciousness. Everyday measures for identifying consciousness are particularly problematic when it comes to ‘challenging cases’—human infants, people with brain damage, nonhuman animals, and AI (...)
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  15. Review of Philosophers of Our Times. [REVIEW]Subhasis Chattopadhyay - 2020 - Prabuddha Bharata or Awakened India 125 (03):380-382.
    Ted Honderich's edited volume, with introductions to his chosen philosophers shows his contempt/ignorance of the non-white world's thinkers. Further, this review points out the iterative nature of Western philosophy today. The book under review is banal and shows the pathetic state of philosophising in the West now in 2020.
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  16. On ambitious higher-order theories of consciousness.Joseph Gottlieb - 2020 - Philosophical Psychology 33 (3):421-441.
    ABSTRACTAmbitious Higher-order theories of consciousness – Higher-order theories that purport to give an account of phenomenal consciousness – face a well-known objection from the possibility of ra...
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  17. The Reality of Free Will.Claus Janew - 2020 - Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research 11 (1):1-16.
    The uniqueness of each standpoint, each point of effect, can only be "overcome" by the standpoint changing to other standpoints and returning. In such alternation, which can also appear as constant change, lies the unity of the world. The wholeness of an alternation, however, is a structure of consciousness due to the special relationship between the circumscribing periphery and the infinitesimal center. This process structure unites determinacy and indeterminacy also totally in every place. Therefore, everywhere we are dealing with forms (...)
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  18. Hylomorphism and the Construct of Consciousness.William Jaworski - 2020 - Topoi 39 (5):1125-1139.
    The hard problem of consciousness has held center stage in the philosophy of mind for the past two decades. It claims that the phenomenal character of conscious experiences—what it’s like to be in them—cannot be explained by appeal to the operation of physiological subsystems. The hard problem arises, however, only given the assumption that hylomorphism is false. Hylomorphism claims that structure is a basic ontological and explanatory principle. A human is not a random collection of physical materials, but an individual (...)
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  19. Panpsychism and Cosmopsychism.Khai Wager - 2020 - Dissertation, University of Birmingham
    This collection of papers centres around a novel approach to the problem of phenomenal consciousness called cosmopsychism. A simple version of cosmopsychism says that the cosmos as a whole is conscious. In this collection, I focus on a comparison between arguably the most promising versions of cosmopsychism and panpsychism, called constitutive cosmopsychism and constitutive panpsychism, respectively. -/- The first paper, ‘A Blueprint for Cosmopsychism’ offers a blueprint for a cosmopsychist approach, comparing it to the panpsychist approach. It highlights how following (...)
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  20. Damasio’s body-map-based view, Panksepp’s affect-centric view, and the evolutionary advantages of consciousness.Jane Anderson - 2019 - South African Journal of Philosophy 38 (4):419-432.
    Although dualism has the advantage of being intuitively plausible, it is not compatible with a 21st-century (scientific) world view. Jaak Panksepp and Antonio Damasio are contemporary writers who reject dualism, and whose views take the form of “biological naturalism”. I first discuss how their views compare in five specific respects; and then I look more closely at how the different emphases of the views affect their ability to account for the evolutionary advantages of consciousness, specifically. Both authors agree that “consciousness” (...)
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  21. The ant colony as a test for scientific theories of consciousness.Daniel A. Friedman & Eirik Søvik - 2019 - Synthese (2):1-24.
    The appearance of consciousness in the universe remains one of the major mysteries unsolved by science or philosophy. Absent an agreed-upon definition of consciousness or even a convenient system to test theories of consciousness, a confusing heterogeneity of theories proliferate. In pursuit of clarifying this complicated discourse, we here interpret various frameworks for the scientific and philosophical study of consciousness through the lens of social insect evolutionary biology. To do so, we first discuss the notion of a forward test versus (...)
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  22. Phänomenale Begriffe.Martina Fürst - 2019 - In Vera Hoffmann-Kolss & Nicole Rathgeb (eds.), Handbuch Philosophie des Geistes. J.B. Metzler. pp. 1-11..
    Viele unserer Bewusstseinszustände sind dadurch charakterisiert, dass es irgendwie für uns ist (Nagel 1974), in diesen Zuständen zu sein. In der Philosophie des Geistes werden derartige Zustände als ‚phänomenale Zustände‘ bezeichnet. ‚Phänomenale Begriffe‘ sind nun spezielle Begriffe, mittels derer wir uns auf phänomenale Zustände beziehen. Paradigmatische Beispiele für phänomenale Zustände, von denen wir einen phänomenalen Begriff besitzen können, sind das bewusste Erlebnis, die Farbe Blau zu sehen, den Klang einer Violine zu hören oder Schmerz zu fühlen. Zentral ist, dass sich (...)
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  23. A Defence of the Resemblance Meaning of ‘What it’s like’.Richard Gaskin - 2019 - Mind 128 (511):673-698.
    It is often held to be definitive of consciousness that there is something it is like to be in a conscious state. A consensus has arisen that ‘is like’ in relevant ‘what it is like’ locutions does not mean ‘resembles’. This paper argues that the consensus is mistaken. It is argued that a recently proposed ‘affective’ analysis of these locutions fails, but that a purported rival of the resemblance analysis, the property account, is in fact compatible with it. Some of (...)
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  24. Consciousness as a concrete physical phenomenon.Jussi Jylkkä & Henry Railo - 2019 - Consciousness and Cognition 74 (C):102779.
    The typical empirical approach to studying consciousness holds that we can only observe the neural correlates of experiences, not the experiences themselves. In this paper we argue, in contrast, that experiences are concrete physical phenomena that can causally interact with other phenomena, including observers. Hence, experiences can be observed and scientifically modelled. We propose that the epistemic gap between an experience and a scientific model of its neural mechanisms stems from the fact that the model is merely a theoretical construct (...)
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  25. Knowing What an Experience Is Like and the Reductive Theory of Knowledge‐wh.Kevin Lynch - 2019 - Analytic Philosophy 61 (3):252-275.
    This article discusses a kind of knowledge classifiable as knowledge-wh but which seems to defy analysis in terms of the standard reductive theory of knowledge-wh ascriptions, according to which they are true if and only if one knows that p, where this proposition is an acceptable answer to the wh-question ‘embedded’ in the ascription. Specifically, it is argued that certain cases of knowing what an experience is like resist such treatment. I argue that in some of these cases, one can (...)
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  26. Qualia and intentionality.Manas Kumar Sahu - 2019 - Journal of the All Orissa Philosophy Association 5 (1):76-87.
    The problem of consciousness has become one of the biggest unsolved problem in philosophy from the last few decades. Qualia and intentionality are the two feature of consciousness. Qualia represents the conscious awareness, subjectivity or phenomenality whereas intentionality represents the understanding or object-directedness. These are the two major issues in the philosophy of mind while we address the problem of consciousness. The objective of this paper is to give an overview of these two features of consciousness namely intentionality and qualia. (...)
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  27. Alternatives to Physicalism: Memoirs of a Friend.Peter E. Ells - 2018 - In Time, Science and the Critique of Technological Reason: Essays, in Honour of Hermínio Martins, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 69-74.
    This memoir recalls friendly discussions with Hermínio Martins regarding the essential character of the furniture of the universe. Physicalism, despite the successes of the natural sciences, fails to account for experiences such as pain. As will be shown, Martins and the writer preferred alternative metaphysical systems that avoid such pitfalls.
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  28. Verbal Disputes in the Theory of Consciousness.Joseph Gottlieb - 2018 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5.
    The primary aim of a theory of consciousness is to articulate existence conditions for conscious states, i.e. the conditions under which a mental state is conscious rather than unconscious. There are two main broad approaches: The Higher-Order approach and the First-Order approach. Higher-Order theories claim that a mental state is conscious only if it is the object of a suitable state of higher-order awareness. First-Order theories reject this necessary condition. However, both sides make the following claim: for any mental state (...)
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  29. Does the Explanatory Gap Rest on a Fallacy?François Kammerer - 2018 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 10 (4):649-667.
    Many philosophers have tried to defend physicalism concerning phenomenal consciousness, by explaining dualist intuitions within a purely physicalist framework. One of the most common strategies to do so consists in interpreting the alleged “explanatory gap” between phenomenal states and physical states as resulting from a fallacy, or a cognitive illusion. In this paper, I argue that the explanatory gap does not rest on a fallacy or a cognitive illusion. This does not imply the falsity of physicalism, but it has consequences (...)
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  30. Qualitative Attribution, Phenomenal Experience and Being.Mark Pharoah - 2018 - Biosemiotics 11 (3):427-446.
    I argue that the physiological, phenomenal and conceptual constitute a trichotomous hierarchy of emergent categories. I claim that each category employs a distinctive type of interactive mechanism that facilitates a meaningful kind of environmental discourse. I advocate, therefore, that each have a causal relation with the environment but that their specific class of mechanism qualifies distinctively the meaningfulness of that interaction and subsequent responses. Consequently, I argue that the causal chain of physical interaction feeds distinctive value-laden constructions that are ontologically (...)
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  31. Two Epistemic Issues for a Narrative Argument Structure.Gilbert Plumer - 2018 - In Steve Oswald (ed.), Argumentation and Inference. Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on Argumentation, Fribourg 2017. College Publications. pp. 519-526.
    The transcendental approach to understanding narrative argument derives from the idea that for any believable fictional narrative, we can ask—what principles or generalizations would have to be true of human nature in order for the narrative to be believable? I address two key issues: whether only realistic or realist fictional narratives are believable, and how could it be established that we have an intuitive, mostly veridical grasp of human nature that grounds believability?
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  32. The Knowledge Argument and Two Interpretations of 'Knowing What it's Like'.Daniel Stoljar - 2018 - In Dale Jacquette (ed.), The Bloomsbury Companion to the Philosophy of Consciousness. London, UK:
  33. Quantum Mechanics and Cognitive Science: The Probe and Probed.R. B. Varanasi Varanasi Varanasi Ramabrahmam, Ramabrahmam Varanasi, V. Ramabrahmam - 2018 - Cosmos and History, The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 14 (No. 1):123-141..
    Quantum mechanics is currently being tried to be used as a probe to unravel the mysteries of consciousness. Present paper deals with this probe, quantum mechanics and its usefulness in getting an insight of working of human consciousness. The formation of quantum mechanics based on certain axioms, its development to study the dynamical behavior and motions of fundamental particles and quantum energy particles moving with the velocity of light, its insistence on wave functions, its probability approach, its dependence on uncertainty (...)
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  34. Human Cognitive Closure and Mysterianism: Reply to Kriegel.Erhan Demircioglu - 2017 - Acta Analytica 32 (1):125-132.
    In this paper, I respond to Kriegel’s criticism of McGinn’s mysterianism. Kriegel objects to a particular argument for the possibility of human cognitive closure and also gives a direct argument against mysterianism. I intend to show that neither the objection nor the argument is convincing.
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  35. There is nothing it is like to see red: holism and subjective experience.Anthony F. Peressini - 2017 - Synthese 195 (10):4637-4666.
    The Nagel inspired “something-it-is-like” conception of conscious experience remains a dominant approach in philosophy. In this paper I criticize a prevalent philosophical construal of SIL consciousness, one that understands SIL as a property of mental states rather than entities as a whole. I argue against thinking of SIL as a property of states, showing how such a view is in fact prevalent, under-warranted, and philosophically pernicious in that it often leads to an implausible reduction of conscious experience to qualia. I (...)
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  36. Against McGinn's Mysterianism.Erhan Demircioğlu - 2016 - Cilicia Journal of Philosophy 3 (1):1-10.
    There are two claims that are central to McGinn’s mysterianism: (1) there is a naturalist and constructive solution of the mind-body problem, and (2) we human beings are incapable in principle of solving the mind-body problem. I believe (1) and (2) are compatible: the truth of one does not entail the falsity of the other. However, I will argue that the reasons McGinn presents for thinking that (2) is true are incompatible with the truth of (1), at least on a (...)
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  37. On an Argument from Analogy for the Possibility of Human Cognitive Closure.Erhan Demircioglu - 2016 - Minds and Machines 26 (3):227-241.
    In this paper, I aim to show that McGinn’s argument from analogy for the possibility of human cognitive closure survives the critique raised on separate occasions by Dennett and Kriegel. I will distinguish between linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive closure and argue that the analogy argument from animal non-linguistic cognitive closure goes untouched by the objection Dennett and Kriegel raises.
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  38. Science and Consciousness: Models and Challenges.Assen Dimitrov - 2016 - Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria: "Faber".
    The first part of the book offers a hypothetical answer to the following questions: What is intelligent behaviour? What is information? How does the intelligent subject extract energy and information from the external environment? What are the mental states? How do the mental states occur? Despite the immense diversity of disciplines, topics and issues relating to the structure and the dynamics of the nervous system, of human consciousness, of intelligence in a synchronous and evolutionary perspective, two main philosophical and theoretical (...)
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  39. ‘What it is Like’ Talk is not Technical Talk.Jonathan Farrell - 2016 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 23 (9-10):50-65.
    ‘What it is like’ talk (‘WIL-talk’) — the use of phrases such as ‘what it is like’ — is ubiquitous in discussions of phenomenal consciousness. It is used to define, make claims about, and to offer arguments concerning consciousness. But what this talk means is unclear, as is how it means what it does: how, by putting these words in this order, we communicate something about consciousness. Without a good account of WIL-talk, we cannot be sure this talk sheds light, (...)
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  40. Meta-Illusionism and Qualia Quietism.Pete Mandik - 2016 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 23 (11-12):140-148.
    Many so-called problems in contemporary philosophy of mind depend for their expression on a collection of inter-defined technical terms, a few of which are qualia, phenomenal property, and what-it’s-like-ness. I express my scepticism about Keith Frankish’s illusionism, the view that people are generally subject to a systematic illusion that any properties are phenomenal, and scout the relative merits of two alternatives to Frankish’s illusionism. The first is phenomenal meta-illusionism, the view that illusionists such as Frankish, in holding their view, are (...)
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  41. The Semantics of ‘What it’s like’ and the Nature of Consciousness.Daniel Stoljar - 2016 - Mind 125 (500):1161-1198.
    This paper defends a novel view of ‘what it is like’-sentences, according to which they attribute certain sorts of relations—I call them ‘affective relations’—that hold between events and individuals. The paper argues in detail for the superiority of this proposal over other views that are prevalent in the literature. The paper further argues that the proposal makes better sense than the alternatives of the widespread use of Nagel’s definition of conscious states and that it also shows the mistakes in two (...)
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  42. On the Appearance and Reality of Mind.Demian Whiting - 2016 - Journal of Mind and Behavior 37 (1):47-70.
    According to what I will call the “appearance-is-reality doctrine of mind,” conscious mental states are identical to how they subjectively appear or present themselves to us in our experience of them. The doctrine has had a number of supporters but to date has not received from its proponents the comprehensive and systematic treatment that might be expected. In this paper I outline the key features of the appearance-is-reality doctrine along with the case for thinking that doctrine to be true. I (...)
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  43. 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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  44. The Puzzle of Consciousness.Erhan Demircioğlu - 2015 - Kilikya Felsefe Dergisi / Cilicia Journal of Philosophy 2 (2):76-85.
    In this article, I aim to present some of the reasons why consciousness is viewed as an intractable problem by many philosophers. Furthermore, I will argue that if these reasons are properly appreciated, then McGinn’s so-called mysterianism may not sound as far-fetched as it would otherwise sound.
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  45. The Philosophy of Phenomenal Consciousness.Zoe Drayson - 2015 - In Drayson Zoe (ed.), The Constitution of Phenomenal Consciousness. pp. 273-292.
    A primer on the philosophical issues relating to phenomenal consciousness, part of a collection of new papers by scientists and philosophers on the constitution of consciousness.
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  46. Actual Consciousness By Ted Honderich. [REVIEW]Andreas Elpidorou - 2015 - Analysis 75 (4):682-684.
  47. Consciousness: Individuated Information in Action.Jakub Jonkisz - 2015 - Frontiers in Psychology 6.
    Within theoretical and empirical enquiries, many different meanings associated with consciousness have appeared, leaving the term itself quite vague. This makes formulating an abstract and unifying version of the concept of consciousness – the main aim of this article –into an urgent theoretical imperative. It is argued that consciousness, characterized as dually accessible (cognized from the inside and the outside), hierarchically referential (semantically ordered), bodily determined (embedded in the working structures of an organism or conscious system), and useful in action (...)
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  48. The Feeling of Personal Ownership of One’s Mental States: A Conceptual Argument and Empirical Evidence for an Essential, but Underappreciated, Mechanism of Mind.Stan Klein - 2015 - Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 2 (4):355-376.
    I argue that the feeling that one is the owner of his or her mental states is not an intrinsic property of those states. Rather, it consists in a contingent relation between consciousness and its intentional objects. As such, there are (a variety of) circumstances, varying in their interpretive clarity, in which this relation can come undone. When this happens, the content of consciousness still is apprehended, but the feeling that the content “belongs to me” no longer is secured. I (...)
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  49. Analogy, Mind, and Life.Vitor Manuel Dinis Pereira - 2015 - In Quoc Nam Tran & Hamid Arabnia (eds.), Emerging Trends in Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier. pp. 377–388.
    I'll show that the kind of analogy between life and information [argued for by authors such as Davies (2000), Walker and Davies (2013), Dyson (1979), Gleick (2011), Kurzweil (2012), Ward (2009)] – that seems to be central to the effect that artificial mind may represent an expected advance in the life evolution in the Universe – is like the design argument, and that if the design argument is unfounded and invalid, the argument to the effect that artificial mind may represent (...)
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  50. Occipital and Left Temporal EEG Correlates of Phenomenal Consciousness.Vitor Manuel Dinis Pereira - 2015 - In Quoc Nam Tran & Hamid Arabnia (eds.), Emerging Trends in Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier. pp. 335–354.
    In the first section, Introduction, we present our experimental design. In the second section, we characterise the grand average occipital and temporal electrical activity correlated with a contrast in access. In the third section, we characterise the grand average occipital and temporal electrical activity correlated with a contrast in phenomenology and conclude characterising the grand average occipital and temporal electrical activity co-occurring with unconsciousness.
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