John Searle claims that consciousness is ontologically subjective, since conscious mental phenomena only exist as long as they are experienced. Therefore, mental phenomena are essentially conscious, insofar as their mental character depends on their connection with consciousness. However, to align the acceptance of unconscious mental phenomena with his Cartesian view of consciousness, Searle defends adispositional account of the unconscious. The problem is that some cases of unconscious mental causation require that certain decisive mental properties exist in an occurrent way, and (...) not merely as dispositions. By accepting unconscious mental causation, Searle commits himself to a mental existence that isindependent from consciousness. Such unconscious existence implies that certain mental phenomena are ontologically objective, and not subjective as he claims, because they exist without being experienced.Keywords: Ontological subjectivity, unconscious, disposition, mental causation, objectivity. (shrink)

This article reviews the causal exclusion argument and confronts it with some recently proposed refutations based on the interventionist account of causation. I first show that there are several technical and interpretative difficulties in applying the interventionist account to the exclusion issue. Different ways of accommodating the two to one another are considered and all are shown to leave the issue without a fully satisfactory resolution. Lastly, I argue that, on the most consistent construal, the interventionist approach can provide grounds (...) for thinking that higher-level causal notions are as legitimate as lower-level causal notions, but it does not provide grounds for postulating inter-level causal interactions. (shrink)

Feinberg and Mallatt, in their presentation of neurobiological naturalism, have suggested that visual consciousness was acquired by early vertebrates and inherited by a wide range of descendants, and that its neural basis has shifted to nonhomologous nervous structures during evolution. However, their evolutionary scenario of visual consciousness relies on the assumption that visual consciousness is closely linked with survival, which is not commonly accepted in current consciousness research. We suggest an alternative idea that visual consciousness is linked to a specific (...) class of agency, consequently justifying their phylogenetic claim. We also examine the implication of their phylogenetic claim: visual consciousness is homologous across vertebrates, but its neural basis is not. This apparent incongruence illustrates a general phenomenon of homology, and that the resulting hierarchical view of visual consciousness and its neural basis can be straightforwardly accommodated by neurobiological naturalism. Throughout these discussions, we aim to address the potential theoretical issues in neurobiological naturalism and refine the picture illustrated by Feinberg and Mallatt regarding phylogenetic distribution and trajectories of visual consciousness. (shrink)

Nonreductive physicalism states that actions have sufficient physical causes and distinct mental causes. Nonreductive physicalism has recently faced the exclusion problem, according to which the single sufficient physical cause excludes the mental causes from causal efficacy. Autonomists respond by stating that while mental-to-physical causation fails, mental-to-mental causation persists. Several recent philosophers establish this autonomy result via similar models of causation :1031–1049, 2016; Zhong, J Philos 111:341–360, 2014). In this paper I argue that both of these autonomist models fail on account (...) of the problem of Edwards’s Dictum. However, I appeal to foundational principles of action theory to resuscitate mental-to-mental causation in a manner that is consistent with the models of causation endorsed by these autonomists. (shrink)

In my article I evaluate Searle's account of mental causation, in particular his account of the causal efficacy of unconscious intentional states. I argue that top-down causation and overdetermination are unsolved problems in Searle's philosophy of mind, despite his assurances to the contrary. I also argue that there are conflicting claims involved in his account of mental causation and his account of the unconscious. As a result, it becomes impossible to understand how unconscious intentional states can be causally efficacious. My (...) conclusion will be that if Searle's conception of unconscious intentionality is to play a genuine role in the causal explanation of human action, it needs to be rethought. (shrink)

Resumen En el marco de la filosofía de la mente, este artículo aborda el problema de la causación mental en el proyecto naturalista biológico de John Searle. A partir de la concepción de la mente como un fenómeno emergente de procesos cerebrales, evalúo las críticas que Jaegwon Kim realiza a la eficacia causal de la consciencia, centrándome en los argumentos de sobredeterminación y violación del principio de clausura físico causal. Luego analizo el debate de la causación mental a partir de (...) los descubrimientos de Benjamin Libet respecto a la existencia de actividad neuronal pre-consciente en la conducta motora voluntaria. Dicha actividad, llamada potencial de preparación, junto a la noción de causación trabajada en neurociencia, avala la eficacia causal de los estados mentales, pero en un sentido distinto al propuesto por Searle.Within the framework of philosophy of mind, this paper addresses the problem of mental causation in John Searle's biological naturalist project. Beginning with the conception of the mind as a phenomenon emerging from cerebral processes, I evaluate the criticisms that Jaegwon Kim makes to the causal efficacy of consciousness, focusing on the arguments of overdetermination and violation of the principle of physical causal closure. Then, I analyze the debate on mental causation from the findings of Benjamin Libet regarding the existence of pre-conscious neural activity in voluntary motor behavior. This activity, called readiness potential, and the notion of causation worked in neuroscience, support the causal efficacy of mental states, but in a different sense from that proposed by Searle. (shrink)

En este trabajo se discuten algunos problemas epistemológicos de la teoría de la mente de Searle, que derivan de su realismo externo (metafísico) e ingenuo. Éste le lleva, en primer lugar, a una problemática separación entre ontología y epistemología, que le permitirá sostener que hay hechos evidentes, previos e independientes a las teorías. Entre esos hechos incuestionables, en segundo lugar, sitúa las características que el sentido común atribuye a la mente y que trata de encajar, aunque es dudoso que lo (...) consiga, en un planteamiento científico, que exigiría cambiar la idea de objetividad. Finalmente, el realismo le aboca a un dualismo implícito contrario a su pretendido fisicalismo y más radical que el que le gustaría admitir. (shrink)

This essay is a contrasting of John Searle's biological naturalist view of the mind with Gilbert Ryle's deconstruction of the problem of mind-body interaction. These two positions are most uniquely suited for this purpose since, together they constitute the best positive theory and criticism of the same problem. It will be argued that consciousness - a feature of human experience which proves to be one of the most difficult to account for, from the perspective of the naturalist can be regarded (...) as a dispositional attribute of a complex biological organism. Considered as such, it is what Searle would term a causally-emergent-system-feature. This thesis will focus on a single modification that needs to be made to make John Searle's theory consistent with his own criticism of the traditional mind-body problem and sensitive to the devastating criticism that Ryle formulated in the first half of the twentieth century. The biological naturalist's explanation for the occurrence of conscious states must assume a post-Rylean perspective on the problem of interaction and must be consistent with the notion of "conscious awareness" as a dispositional attribute. (shrink)

The article discusses the limitations of psycho-physical parallellism and the implications of a pscycho-physical interaction paradigm considering the notion Downward Causation. The focus is on the notion of levels in nature and their interrelations, and it argues that the notion of rule-based systems should be considered a subcategory of rule-generating systems partly based on redundancy functions rather than rules.