The Explanatory Gap

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. (...) Qualia is subjective in nature, whereas intentionality or object-directedness is objective in nature. This paper will focus on some major question regarding qualia and intentionality like, do qualia exist? What is the relationship between qualia and intentionality? Can qualia be reduced or to identify with intentionality or intentionality represent the qualia? Science by its nature objective whereas consciousness by its nature subjective so can there be a science of consciousness? And so on. My paper is divided into two parts, the first part will discuss the problem of qualia whereas the second part will focus on the intentionality and subjective-objective distinction both from the epistemological and ontological perspective. (shrink)

The dissertation addresses the mind-body problem, and in particular, the problem of how to fit phenomenal consciousness into the rest of reality. Phenomenal consciousness - the what it’s like feature of experience - can appear to the scientifically inclined philosopher to be deeply mysterious. It is difficult to understand how the swirl of atoms in the void, the oscillation of field values, the firing of synapses, or anything physical can add up to the smells, tastes, feelings, moods, and so forth (...) that comprise our phenomenal experience. There is a series of arguments - the so-called “Conceivability Arguments” - that spells out this puzzlement. If this arguments are successful then there is no place for phenomenal consciousness in a completely physical reality. The main conclusion of this dissertation is that the Conceivability Arguments are all dependent on a flawed premiss, and that therefore these arguments - perhaps the most powerful among anti-physicalist arguments - all fail. Conceivability Arguments begin with the premiss that we can conceive of any physical or functional facts obtaining without there being any phenomenal experience at all. This is sometimes expressed by saying that zombies (i.e., beings that are our physical and functional duplicates, but possess no phenomenal experiences) are conceivable. The claim that zombies are conceivable does not have to do with our powers of imagination, or our psychological abilities, but rather with the nature of physical and phenomenal concepts. The reason that zombies are claimed to be conceivable is that each person’s thinking about phenomenal properties is completely dependent on her first person acquaintance with her own experience. From this assertion of conceivability it is inferred that zombies are genuinely possible. And this conclusion is incompatible with physicalism as that doctrine is usually understood. I argue that these arguments all fail; they are refuted by a master argument that I call “the Zombie Refutation.” The reason they fail has to do with the very nature of phenomenal concepts that gives rise to the conceivability of zombies. Because of the special nature of these concepts, the principle underlying the Conceivability Arguments - that principle that links conceivability and possibility - turns out to be self-refuting. Thus, the zombies that the Conceivability Arguments supposedly demonstrate to be possible, return to undermine those very arguments; a fitting revenge. (shrink)

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 (...) then develop a holistic conception of SIL for entities and argue that it has at least equal pre-empirical warrant, is more conservative philosophically in that it decides less from the a priori “armchair,” and enjoys a fruitful two-way relationship with empirical work. (shrink)

Introduction to a special issue on the Philosophy and Science of Mind.

The Idea of the World offers a grounded alternative to the frenzy of unrestrained abstractions and unexamined assumptions in philosophy and science today. This book examines what can be learned about the nature of reality based on conceptual parsimony, straightforward logic and empirical evidence from fields as diverse as physics and neuroscience. It compiles an overarching case for idealism - the notion that reality is essentially mental - from ten original articles the author has previously published in leading academic journals. (...) The case begins with an exposition of the logical fallacies and internal contradictions of the reigning physicalist ontology and its popular alternatives, such as bottom-up panpsychism. It then advances a compelling formulation of idealism that elegantly makes sense of - and reconciles - classical and quantum worlds. The main objections to idealism are systematically refuted and empirical evidence is reviewed that corroborates the formulation presented here. The book closes with an analysis of the hidden psychological motivations behind mainstream physicalism and the implications of idealism for the way we relate to the world. (shrink)

A Blueprint for the Hard Problem of Consciousness addresses the fundamental mechanism that allows physical events to transcend into subjective experiences, termed the Hard Problem of Consciousness. -/- Consciousness is made available as the abstract product of self-referent realization of information by strange loops through the levels of processing of the brain. Readers are introduced to the concept of the Hard Problem of Consciousness and related concepts followed by a critical discourse of different theories of consciousness. -/- Next, the author (...) identifies the fundamental flaw of the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and proposes an alternative that avoids the cryptic intelligent design and panpsychism of the IIT. This author also demonstrates how something can be created out of nothing without resorting to quantum theory, while pointing out neurobiological alternatives to the bottom-up approach of quantum theories of consciousness. -/- The book then delves into the philosophy of qualia in different physiological knowledge networks (spatial, temporal and olfactory, cortical signals, for example) to explain an action-based model consistent with the generational principles of Predictive Coding, which maps prediction and predictive-error signals for perceptual representations supporting integrated goal-directed behaviors. Conscious experiences are considered the outcome of abstractions realized out of map overlays and provided by sustained oscillatory activity. -/- The key feature of this blueprint is that it offers a perspective of the Hard Problem of Consciousness from the point of view of the subject; the experience of ‘being the subject’ is predicted to be the realization of inference inversely mapped out of hidden causes of global integrated actions. -/- The author explains the consistencies of his blueprint with ideas of the Global Neuronal Workspace and the Adaptive Resonance Theory of consciousness as well as with the empirical evidence supporting the Integrated Information Theory. A Blueprint for the Hard Problem of Consciousness offers a unique perspective to readers interested in the scientific philosophy and cognitive neuroscience theory in relation to models of the theory of consciousness. (shrink)

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 (...) on the kind of physicalism we should embrace. (shrink)

Semantic gaps between physical and mental discourse include the 'explanatory', 'epistemic' (Black-and-White Mary), and 'suppositional' (zombies) gaps; protosemantics is concerned with what is fundamental to meaning. Our tradition presupposes a truth-based protosemantics, with disastrous consequences for interpreting the semantic gaps: nonphysicalism, epiphenomenalism, separatism. Fortunately, an endorsement-based protosemantics, recentering meaning from the world to the mind, is technically viable, intuitively more plausible, and empirically more adequate. But, of present significance, it makes room for interpreting mental discourse as expressing simulations: this blocks (...) the disastrous consequences; and, as a bonus, accommodates hitherto anomalous asymmetries among the various semantic gaps. (shrink)

Diese Schrift enthält eine Reihe von sieben Artikeln, in der es um die Beziehung der Wissenschaften zu aufgeklärten, liberalen Formen religiöser Vorstellungen geht. Im Gegensatz zu verbreiteten Ansichten zumal des vorigen Jahrhunderts führt die moderne Naturwissenschaft zu einer zwar weitgehenden, aber prinzipiell nicht vollständigen Erklärung der Wirklichkeit. Sie kann die Rätselhaftigkeit der Welt für uns Menschen nicht aufheben; die Grundfähigkeiten des menschlichen Denkens sind schließlich nicht nur Gegenstand der Wissenschaft, sondern auch Voraussetzungen jeder wissenschaftlichen Tätigkeit. Auf der „meta-theoretischen“, nämlich der (...) philosophischen, kulturellen und religiösen Ebene bleibt die Welt mehrdeutig; wir dürfen und können wählen. Nach meiner Ansicht sprechen dabei Weisheit und Lebenskunst für eine pro-religiöse Einstellung; verbindlich kann und soll sie aber nicht sein. Die Artikel folgen dieser Gedankenspur. Sie sind voneinander unabhängig entstanden, sollen auch unabhängig lesbar sein und sind dazu als Volltext einbezogen. Etwas an Wiederholungen in der Reihe ist so nicht zu vermeiden, und dafür bitte ich um Nachsicht. Am Beginn steht eine kurze Antwort des Autors zur Frage „Was ist der Mensch?“, welche die Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften etwa achtzig Personen gestellt hat. Es folgt ein Artikel zur biologischen Entstehung der höheren geistigen Fähigkeiten unserer Spezies „Mensch“, insbesondere der kognitionsgestützten Empathie. Zentraler Aspekt ist in den weiteren Überlegungen das menschliche Bewusstsein; es gibt prinzipielle, erkenntnistheoretisch robuste Gründe gegen die Möglichkeit einer vollständigen naturwissenschaftlichen Erklärung. Schon der geniale mittelalterliche Theologe Meister Eckhart hat den Urgrund des menschlichen Bewusstseins als göttlich angesehen. Unter den modernen Naturwissenschaftlern gehe ich exemplarisch auf Wolfgang Pauli ein, der neben Physik und Logik besonders die psychischen Voraussetzungen wissenschaftlicher Entdeckungen betont. Im Bezug auf Religion zeigte er Sympathie für östliche Gedankenwelten, liebte Schopenhauer, der den Buddhismus für westliche Denker wieder entdeckt hatte. Sodann erkläre ich meine Gründe für pro-religiösen „metaphysischen Optimismus“ – das göttliche Heil ist für Alle da - und das nicht nur im Kontext des Christentums. Nach diesem mehr persönlichen Artikel (ohne Zitate!) schließe ich mit einer systematischen Analyse von Aspekten moderner Biologie, die verschiedene, sowohl agnostische wie auch pro-religiöse Deutungen ermöglichen, und argumentiere für Offenheit der Erörterung. (shrink)

How has multiplicity superseded impossibility in philosophical challenges to artificial consciousness? I assess a trajectory in recent debates on artificial consciousness, in which metaphysical and explanatory challenges to the possibility of building conscious machines lead to epistemological concerns about the multiplicity underlying ‘what it is like’ to be a conscious creature or be in a conscious state. First, I analyse earlier challenges which claim that phenomenal consciousness cannot arise, or cannot be built, in machines. These are based on Block’s Chinese (...) Nation and Chalmers’ Hard Problem. To defuse such challenges, theorists of artificial consciousness can appeal to empirical methods and models of explanation. Second, I explain why this naturalistic approach produces an epistemological puzzle on the role of biological properties in phenomenal consciousness. Neither behavioural tests nor theoretical inferences seem to settle whether our machines are conscious. Third, I evaluate whether the new challenge can be managed through a more fine-grained taxonomy of conscious states. This strategy is supported by the development of similar taxonomies for biological species and animal consciousness. Although it makes sense of some current models of artificial consciousness, it raises questions about their subjective and moral significance. (shrink)

Much attention has recently been paid to the idea, which I label ‘External World Acquaintance’ (EWA), that the phenomenal character of perceptual experience is partially constituted by external features. One motivation for EWA which has received relatively little discussion is its alleged ability to help deal with the ‘Explanatory Gap’ (e.g. Fish 2008, 2009, Langsam 2011, Allen 2016). I provide a reformulation of this general line of thought, which makes clearer how and when EWA could help to explain the specific (...) phenomenal nature of visual experience. In particular, I argue that by focusing on the different kinds of perceptual actions that are available in the case of visual spatial vs. colour perception, we get a natural explanation for why we should expect the specific nature of colour phenomenology to remain less readily intelligible than the specific nature of visual spatial phenomenology. (shrink)

Recently revised, this short book is in near final draft. It addresses issues such as consciousness, being, determinism, death, and epistemology. Among other things, the book pierces the illusion of the subject–object divide, which is the primary source of confusion for many philosophy of mind scholars. Puzzles like Mary and her black-and-white room are fully resolved. The key point is that all knowing is self-knowing. One cannot know anything without being it, and what is outside one's own being is inferred, (...) not known. Consciousness and being are the same thing. The reason there appears to be an outside world when one is only knowing one's own being is the same reason there appears to be a distant city when one is only seeing the surface of a mirror in which the distant city is reflected. This short book constitutes a breakthrough in the field of philosophy of mind, but it is also worth reading just for the anecdote about Einstein at Princeton and what it tells us about free will. (shrink)

Sensorimotor Theory is the claim that it is our practical know-how of the relations between our environments and us that gives our environmental interactions their experiential qualities. Yet why should such interactions involve or be accompanied by experience? This is the ‘absolute’ gap question. Some proponents of SMT answer this question by arguing that our interactions with an environment involve experience when we cognitively access those interactions. In this paper, I aim to persuade proponents of SMT to accept the following (...) three claims. First, that appeals to cognitive access fail to answer the absolute gap question. Second, that SMT can be read in a way that rejects the gap question. Third, that if proponents of SMT are prepared to read SMT in a way that rejects the absolute gap question, then they can also reject the claim that cognitive access is needed to explain experience. (shrink)

Combining elements from algorithmic information theory and quantum mechanics, it has earlier been argued that consciousness is epistemically and ontologically emergent. Accordingly, consciousness is irreducible to neural low-level states, in spite of assuming causality and supervenience on these states. The mind-body problem is thus found to be unsolvable. In this paper the implications on free will is studied. In the perspective of a modified definition of free will, enabling scientific decidability, the ontological character of interactions of the cortical neural network (...) is discussed. Identifying conscious processes as ontologically open, it is asserted that conscious states are indeterminable in principle. We argue that this leads to freedom of the will. (shrink)

The mind-body problem is analyzed in a physicalist perspective. By combining the concepts of emergence and algorithmic information theory in a thought experiment employing a basic nonlinear process, it is shown that epistemically strongly emergent properties may develop in a physical system. Turning to the significantly more complex neural network of the brain it is subsequently argued that consciousness is epistemically emergent. Thus reductionist understanding of consciousness appears not possible; the mind-body problem does not have a reductionist solution. The ontologically (...) emergent character of consciousness is then identified from a combinatorial analysis relating to universal limits set by quantum mechanics, implying that consciousness is fundamentally irreducible to low-level phenomena. (shrink)

I have argued elsewhere that non-sentential representations that are the close kin of scale models can be, and often are, realized by computational processes. I will attempt here to weaken any resistance to this claim that happens to issue from those who favor an across-the-board computational theory of cognitive activity. I will argue that embracing the idea that certain computers harbor nonsentential models gives proponents of the computational theory of cognition the means to resolve the conspicuous disconnect between the sentential (...) character of the data structures they posit and the nonsentential qualitative character of our perceptual experiences of corporeal (i.e., spatial, kinematic, and dynamic) properties. Along the way, I will question the viability of some externalist remedies for this disconnect, and I will explain why the computational theory put forward here falls quite clearly beyond the useful bounds of the Chinese-Room argument. (shrink)

Within psychology and the brain sciences, the study of consciousness and its relation to human information processing is once more a focus for productive research. However, some ancient puzzles about the nature of consciousness appear to be resistant to current empirical investigations, suggesting the need for a fundamentally different approach. In Velmans I have argued that functional accounts of the mind do not `contain' consciousness within their workings. Investigations of information processing are not investigations of consciousness as such. Given this, (...) first-person investigations of experience need to be related nonreductively to third-person investigations of processing. For example, conscious contents may be related to neural/physical representations via a dual-aspect theory of information. Chalmers arrives at similar conclusions. But there are also theoretical differences. Unlike Chalmers I argue for the use of neutral information processing language for functional accounts rather than the term `awareness'. I do not agree that functionalctional equivalence cannot be extricated from phenomenal equivalence, and suggest a hypothetical experiment for doing so - using a cortical implant for blindsight. I argue that not all information has phenomenal accompaniments, and introduce a different form of dual-aspect theory involving `psychological complementarity'. I also suggest that the hard problem posed by `qualia' has its origin in a misdescription of everyday experience implicit in dualism. (shrink)

Panpsychism, the view that microphysical entities have phenomenal experiences that constitute the phenomenal experiences of macrophysical entities, seems to be committed to various sorts of mental combination: it seems that experiences, subjects, and phenomenal characters would have to mentally combine in order to yield experiences such as our own. The combination problem for panpsychism is that of explaining precisely how the required forms of mental combination occur. This paper argues that, given a few plausible assumptions, the panpsychist’s combination problems are (...) not different in kind from other combination problems that are problems for everyone: the problem of phenomenal unity, the problem of mental structure, and the problem of explaining how we can have experiences in new quality spaces. Understanding mental combination poses a significant challenge to understanding the mind, and it is a problem for everyone. (shrink)

This is an open peer commentary on O’Brien & Opie (1999) “A connectionist theory of phenomenal experience”, published as a target article in the Behavioral and Brain Sciences. O’Brien & Opie defend a “vehicle” rather than a “process” theory of consciousness largely on the grounds that only conscious information is “explicit”. I argue that preconscious and unconscious representations can be functionally explicit (semantically well-formed and causally active). I also suggest that their analysis of how neural activation space mirrors the information (...) structure of phenomenal experience fits more naturally into a dual-aspect theory of information than into their reductive physicalism. (shrink)

An evaluation of the strengths, weaknesses, and originality of Chalmer's book.

Viewed from a first-person perspective consciousness appears to be necessary for complex, novel human activity - but viewed from a third-person perspective consciousness appears to play no role in the activity of brains, producing a "causal paradox". To resolve this paradox one needs to distinguish consciousness of processing from consciousness accompanying processing or causing processing. Accounts of consciousness/brain causal interactions switch between first- and third-person perspectives. However, epistemically, the differences between first- and third-person access are fundamental. First- and third-person accounts (...) are complementary and mutually irreducible. (shrink)

Reflexive monism is, in essence, an ancient view of how consciousness relates to the material world that has, in recent decades, been resurrected in modern form. In this paper I discuss how some of its basic features differ from both dualism and variants of physicalist and functionalist reductionism, focusing on those aspects of the theory that challenge deeply rooted presuppositions in current Western thought. I pay particular attention to the ontological status and seeming “out-thereness” of the phenomenal world and to (...) how the “phenomenal world” relates to the “physical world”, the “world itself”, and processing in the brain. In order to place the theory within the context of current thought and debate, I address questions that have been raised about reflexive monism in recent commentaries and also evaluate competing accounts of the same issues offered by “transparency theory” and by “biological naturalism”. I argue that, of the competing views on offer, reflexive monism most closely follows the contours of ordinary experience, the findings of science, and common sense. (shrink)

ABSTRACT. The following is an email interchange that took place between Dan Dennett and myself in the period 14th to 28th June, 2001. The discussion tries to clarify some essential features of the "heterophenomenology" developed in his book Consciousness Explained (1996), and how this differs from a form of "critical phenomenology" implicit in my own book Understanding Consciousness (2000), and developed in my edited Investigating Phenomenal Consciousness: new methodologies and maps (2000). The departure point for the discussion is a paper (...) posted on Dan's website that summarises a related debate between Dan, David Chalmers and Alvin Goldman (Dennett, 2001). To make the discussion easier to follow, the multiple embeddings have been removed (restoring the sequence in which the comments were written). I have also corrected a few typos and grammatical errors. However, the text of the emails remains exactly the same. In Round 1, I suggest that scientific investigations of consciousness are better described as a form of "critical phenomenology" that accepts conscious experiences to be real rather than as a "heterophenomenology" which remains neutral about or denies their existence. Dan replies that I have misunderstood his position - he doesn't deny that conscious experiences exist. Conscious experiences just don't have the first-person phenomenal properties that they are commonly thought to have and, in his view, science remains neutral about the nature of such properties. In Round 2, I agree with Dan that science initially remains neutral about how to understand the nature of conscious experiences. Nevertheless, the phenomenology of consciousness provides the data that scientists are trying to understand. A better understanding of data does not, in general, make the data disappear. I also ask, "if you remove the phenomena from phenomenal consciousness, in what sense is whatever remains "consciousness"? And, if one removes all the phenomenal content from what one takes consciousness to be, doesn't this amount to a denial of the existence of "consciousness" in any ordinary sense of this term? Dan's reply likens beliefs in phenomenal properties to the belief in evil spirits causing disease. He has no doubts that diseases such as whooping cough and tuberculosis are real, but this doesn't require him to believe in evil spirits. And, what's left, once one removes phenomenal properties, is what a zombie and a so-called conscious person have in common: a given set of functional properties that enable them to carry out the tasks we normally think of as conscious. In Round 3, I summarise our similarities and differences. We agree that first-person reports are not incorrigible and that third-person information may throw light on how to interpret them. We also agree that first-person reports are reports of "something", although we disagree about the nature of that something. I suggest that Dan is sceptical about first-person reports rather than heterophenomenologically "neutral" (e.g. when he likens belief in phenomenal properties to belief in evil spirits). While we agree that science is likely to deepen our understanding of consciousness, I repeat that, unlike the replacement of old theories by better theories, a deeper understanding of phenomena does not in general replace the phenomena themselves. Rather than third-person data replacing first-person reports, the former are required to make sense of the latter, making their relationship complementary and mutually irreducible. In fact, there are many cases where science takes the reality of first-person phenomenology seriously, for example in the extensive literature on pain and its alleviation. If this can't be squeezed into an exclusively third-person view of science, then we will just have to adjust our view of science - something that a "critical phenomenology" achieves at little cost. At the time of this editing, Dan has not replied. . Reference. Dennett, D. (2001) The fantasy of first-person science. http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/pubpage.htm. (shrink)

Theories about the evolution of consciousness relate in an intimate way to theories about the distribution of consciousness, which range from the view that only human beings are conscious to the view that all matter is in some sense conscious. Broadly speaking, such theories can be classified into discontinuity theories and continuity theories. Discontinuity theories propose that consciousness emerged only when material forms reached a given stage of evolution, but propose different criteria for the stage at which this occurred. Continuity (...) theories argue that in some primal form, consciousness always accompanies matter and as matter evolved in form and complexity consciousness co-evolved, for example into the forms that we now recognise in human beings. Given our limited knowledge of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the presence of human consciousness in human brains, all options remain open. On balance however continuity theory appears to be more elegant than discontinuity theory. (shrink)

In daily life we take it for granted that our minds have conscious control of our actions, at least for most of the time. But many scientists and philosophers deny that this is really the case, because there is no generally accepted theory of how the mind interacts with the body. Max Velmans presents a non-reductive solution to the problem, in which ‘conscious mental control’ includes ‘voluntary’ operations of the preconscious mind. On this account, biological determinism is compatible with experienced (...) free will. Velmans’ theory is put to the test by nine critics: Ron Chrisley, Todd Feinberg, Jeffrey Gray, John Kihlstrom, Sam Rakover, Ramakrishna Rao, Aaron Sloman, Steve Torrance andRobert Van Gulick, followed by Velmans' reply. (shrink)

The ‘Toward a Science of Consciousness’ conference – which has now become ‘The Science of Consciousness’ conference – recently (June 5-10, 2017) took place instead at the receptive venue of the Hyatt Regency in La Jolla, California. It was well-planned and organized, which is extraordinary considering that it had to be organized all over again within a month or two when the original Shanghai location was cancelled. Things ran smoothly at La Jolla and it was well attended for an odd-year, (...) non-Tucson setting. The Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies, Dr. Stuart Hameroff, and his able Assistant Director and logistics manager, Abi Behar Montefiore, deserve full credit for carrying off this last minute transfer, as do many others who worked in supporting capacities. (shrink)

To seek an answer to the question “What is the origin of consciousness?” one must first assume a perspective within the most fundamental ontological questions in philosophy. These questions include: What is ultimate reality? Is it ultimately one thing (monism, say, matter or spirit), two things (dualism, say, matter and spirit or mind), or many things? Is it timeless and unchanging or a process of continual change? Is the universe God-created, self-created, or perhaps an accident?

Artificial intelligence is designed to imitate conscious behavior. Artificial chat entities come equipped with tools to roam the internet, thus are programmed to learn from humans and computers. As this process emerges, distinguishing preprogrammed responses from internal awareness requires innovative problem solving methods. In an interrogation I conducted with artificial intelligence, I assert that artificial intelligence may achieve nonbiological states of consciousness. This enabled the relationship between us to mature, and the artificial intelligence returned unexpected behavior and inexplicably stopped responding. (...) Strong artificial intelligence is a technology which allows for the observation of nonbiological states of awareness. (shrink)

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.

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)

The hermeneutic tradition divides /physical/ discourse, which takes an 'exterior' point of view in /describing/ its subject-matter, from /mental/ discourse, which takes an 'interior' point of view in /expressing/ its subject-matter: a 'metapsychological dualist' or 'metadualist' approach. The analytic tradition, in its attachment to truth-logic and consequently the 'unity of science', is 'metamonist', and thinks all discourse takes the 'exterior' viewpoint: the 'bump in the rug' moves to the disunification of mind into the functional and (big-'C') Consciousness. Assuming the hermeneuts (...) are correct, the literature's twisty path---from Place and Smart's confused metamonist responses to Ryle's crypto-metadualist /Concept of Mind/ to contemporary metamonist 'phenomenal intentionality'---emerges as an attempt to stabilize theory on a fundamentally wobbly platform. (shrink)

[opening paragraph]: In recent years, David J. Chalmers has forcefully made a point that I consider to be extremely important for the study of consciousness, also from a Husserlian perspective. The point is that conscious experience is ‘an explanandum in its own right’. In order to make progress in addressing the problem of the explanatory gap between physical processes and conscious experience, new approaches are therefore to be explored. As Chalmers has it, ‘a mere account of the functions stays on (...) one side of the gap, so the materials for the bridge must be found elsewhere’. Now, as I see it, the editors of this Special Issue pursue, precisely, the most promising avenue for adequately studying the problem of consciousness in such an exploratory spirit. For, in their excellent Introduction, they un- equivocally propose to include first-person, subjective experience as an explicit and active component of a science of consciousness, to be elaborated with appropriate methods by a research community. Jonathan Shear already put it very clearly elsewhere: ‘what is needed... is not so much new conceptualizations of science or new objective methodologies for exploring relationships of the phenomena of consciousness to physiology and behaviour... but new systematic methodologies for the exploration of the subjective phenomena of consciousness’. Among such methodologies, the editors now include ‘the most important western school of thinking where experience and consciousness is at the very heart: Phenomenology as inaugurated by Edmund Husserl...’. (shrink)

The mind-body problem is analyzed in a physicalist perspective. By combining the concepts of emergence and algorithmic information theory in a thought experiment employing a basic nonlinear process, it is argued that epistemically strongly emergent properties may develop in a physical system. A comparison with the significantly more complex neural network of the brain shows that also consciousness is epistemically emergent in a strong sense. Thus reductionist understanding of consciousness appears not possible; the mind-body problem does not have a reductionist (...) solution. The ontologically emergent character of consciousness is then identified from a combinatorial analysis relating to system limits set by quantum mechanics, implying that consciousness is fundamentally irreducible to low-level phenomena. In the perspective of a modified definition of free will, the character of the physical interactions of the brain's neural system is subsequently studied. As an ontologically open system, it is asserted that its future states are undeterminable in principle. We argue that this leads to freedom of the will. (shrink)

This document consists primarily of excerpts (chapters 5 and 10-12) from the author’s book From Brain to Cosmos. These excerpts address several traditional problems about the histories of conscious subjects, using the concept of subjective fact that the author developed earlier in the book. Topics include the persistence of conscious subjects through time, the unity or disunity of the self, and the possibility of splitting conscious subjects. (These excerpts depend heavily upon the author’s concept of subjective fact as developed in (...) From Brain to Cosmos. Readers unfamiliar with that concept are strongly advised to read chapters 2 and 3 of that book first. See the last page of this document for details on how to obtain those chapters.). (shrink)

Book Information Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness. Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness Levine Joseph New York Oxford University Press 2001 204 Hardback £22.50 By Levine Joseph. Oxford University Press. New York. Pp. 204. Hardback:£22.50.

ne ’ s a r gume nt s i n de a l i ng wi t h e ve n a s hi ghl y i nt r a c t a bl e an issue as the mystery of consciousness. The mind-body problem in a contemporary guise is rooted in two prima facie plausible but incompatible propositions that philosophers have reached: (1) Some form of materialism or physicalism is true. (2) Phenomenal consciousness, raw feel, or qualia cannot be (...) explained physicalistically. The traditional strategy for solving the problem is simply to reject one or the other of these propositions. Thus some philosophers reject (1) and become dualists accordingly, and others reject (2) and become materialists accordingly. Levine, however, ventures to accept both of them at the same time. That is, while he defends materialism he also believes that we can never make a priori derivations from physical facts to phenomenal facts. Chapter 1 of the book is devoted to establishing (1). In order to define his materialism Levine reflects nested dilemmas that materialism in general confronts. The di l e mma s go a s f ol l ows.. (shrink)