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This Thesis Has Been Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for a Postgraduate Degree (E.G This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: • This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. • A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. • The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. • When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Peter Fazekas Tagging the World: Descrying Consciousness in Cognitive Processes PhD Thesis School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences The University of Edinburgh 2012 Word Count Full: 116 524 Preliminaries: 3 435 Main text: 91 564 Footnotes: 16 260 Bibliography: 5 265 Table of Contents Table of Contents i Declaration vi Note on Publication vii Abstract viii Introduction ix PART 1: SETTING THE STAGE Chapter 1: Physicalism 1.1 The Doctrine of Physicalism 1 1.2 The Causal Argument for Physicalism 3 1.2.1 Prima facie non-physical causes having physical effects 4 1.2.2 The causal completeness of the physical 5 1.2.3 No overdetermination 7 1.3 Understanding ‘Nothing Over and Above‘ 8 1.3.1 Eliminative physicalism 8 1.3.2 Reductive physicalism 10 1.3.3 Non-reductive physicalism 14 1.4 Interpreting ‘Nothing Over and Above’ as Metaphysical Determination 18 1.4.1 Understanding (E3) 19 1.4.2 Understanding (E2) 21 1.4.3 Understanding (E1) 23 1.4.4 Distinguishing physicalism and emergentism 25 1.5 A Problem with the Metaphysical/Nomological Distinction 27 1.5.1 Jessica Wilson’s objection 27 1.5.2 The core argument against Wilson’s objection 29 1.5.3 Refining the core argument—round 1: trans-ordinal laws as causal laws 32 i 1.5.4 Refining the core argument—round 2: a different understanding of emergent causation 35 1.5.5 Refining the core argument—round 3: property individuation and full-fledged dispositional essentialism 37 1.6 What is Physical? 40 1.6.1 A note on how to understand metaphysical necessity: focus on the base set 41 1.6.2 Hempel’s dilemma and the via negativa 44 1.6.3 Conflicting intuitions 47 1.6.4 The ultimate via negativa: physicalism relativised 51 Chapter 2: Physicalism about Consciousness and the Epistemic Gap 2.1 Conscious Experience 55 2.1.1 The phenomenal character of conscious experience 56 2.1.2 The hard problem 58 2.2 Epistemic Arguments against Physicalism about Consciousness 61 2.2.1 The general strategy 61 2.2.2 Levine’s explanatory gap 63 2.2.3 Chalmers’ conceivability argument 67 2.2.4 Jackson’s knowledge argument 71 2.3 The Entailment Thesis and A Priori Physicalism 74 Chapter 3: Phenomenal Concept Strategy 3.1 Introducing Phenomenal Concepts 77 3.1.1 There is something about Mary 78 3.1.2 Phenomenal Concept Strategy 79 3.1.3 A posteriori physicalism 81 3.2 The Locus Classicus: Brian Loar’s Account 82 3.2.1 Recognitional concepts 82 3.2.2 Conceptual independence 84 ii 3.2.3 Direct reference 86 3.2.4 Own mode of presentation 88 3.3 Elaborating on the Direct Reference Claim 90 3.3.1 The causal-recognitional account 90 3.3.2 The demonstrative/indexical account 94 3.4 Elaborating on the Own Mode of Presentation Claim 100 3.4.1 The higher-order experience account 101 3.4.2 The constitutional account 105 3.5 Phenomenal Concepts and Perception 111 3.5.1 Perceptual Concepts 111 3.5.2 Phenomenal Concepts 115 PART 2: THE MONADIC MARKER ACCOUNT Chapter 4: Monadic Markers 4.1 Three Observations about Conscious Experience 119 4.1.1 Structure in experiences 119 4.1.2 Structure and phenomenal character 124 4.1.3 Further defending the observations made 128 4.2 Three Claims about Perceptual Representations 133 4.2.1 Simple and complex representations 135 4.2.2 Representational hierarchy according to contemporary cognitive neuroscience 139 4.2.3 Refining the claims: representational hierarchy and central access 141 4.3 Monadic Markers 145 4.3.1 Unstructured representations 145 4.3.2 Unstructured representations due to sensitivity threshold and monadic markers 148 4.3.3 The Monadic Marker Account of conscious experience 152 iii Chapter 5: Monadic Markers in Action 5.1 Monadic Markers within Dretske’s Framework 158 5.1.1 The information-theoretic framework 158 5.1.2 Sensation, perception, and cognition within the information-theoretic framework 164 5.1.3 Monadic markers as the sensory bases of sensory/phenomenal concepts 171 5.2 Monadic Markers & Fodorian Psycho-Semantics 179 5.2.1 General Fodorian framework 179 5.2.2 Causal role exchange and functional un-analysability 182 5.2.3 Explaining the epistemic gap within the Fodorian framework 184 5.3 The Explanatory Power of the Monadic Marker Account 188 5.3.1 Explaining the primary-secondary quality distinction 189 5.3.2 Explaining functional un-analysability 193 5.3.3 Explaining the epistemic gap 196 PART 3: REDUCTIVE EXPLANATION Chapter 6: Reduction, Reductive Explanation, and Identities 6.1 Reduction and Reductive Explanation 203 6.1.1 Reduction and physicalism 205 6.1.2 Reductive explanation 207 6.2 Models of Reduction 210 6.2.1 Nagelian theory reduction 210 6.2.2 Hooker’s reduction 214 6.2.3 Functional reduction 217 6.3 Identities and Reductive Explanation 221 6.3.1 Identities are justified by reductive explanation 222 6.3.2 Identities do not need explanation 227 iv 6.3.3 Identities are justified by inference to the best explanation 235 6.3.4 Is the non-transparent model really a version of reductive explanation? 243 Chapter 7: Reductive Explanation and Prior Identities 7.1 Does transparent reductive explanation deliver? 251 7.1.1 From H2O to water 254 7.1.2 Kim’s functional reduction 263 7.1.3 The Chalmers-Jackson proposal 266 7.2 Reductive Explanation via ‘Prior Identities‘ 277 7.2.1 Mechanistic explanation and prior identities 279 7.2.2 Hooker’s model of reduction and prior identities 290 7.2.3 The role of prior identities in reductive explanations 295 7.3 Conclusion: the Monadic Marker Account as Reductive Explanation Via Prior Identities 302 Bibliography 306 v Declaration Hereby, I declare that this PhD thesis is my own work, and has not been submitted for any other professional degree or qualification. Peter Fazekas vi Note on Publication Parts of Chapter 5, Chapter 6, and Chapter 7 have been published, with support from Prof. Jesper Kallestrup. Parts of Chapter 5 (§5.2) were published as: Cognitive Architecture and the Epistemic Gap: Defending Physicalism without Phenomenal Concepts (2011). Philosophia, 39(1), 21-29. DOI: 10.1007/s11406-010-9274-5 Parts of Chapter 6 (§6.2) and parts of Chapter 7 (§7.2.2) were published as: Reconsidering the Role of Bridge Laws in Inter-Theoretical Reductions (2009). Erkenntnis, 71(3), 303-322. DOI: 10.1007/s10670-009-9181-y Parts of Chapter 7 (§7.2.1) were published as: Causation at Different Levels—Tracking the Commitments of Mechanistic Explanations (2011). [with Gergely Kertész] Biology and Philosophy, 26(3), 365-383. DOI: 10.1007/s10539-011-9247-5 vii Abstract Although having conscious experiences is a fundamental feature of our everyday life, our understanding of what consciousness is is very limited. According to one of the main conclusions of contemporary philosophy of mind, the qualitative aspect of consciousness seems to resist functionalisation, i.e. it cannot be adequately defined solely in terms of functional or causal roles, which leads to an epistemic gap between phenomenal and scientific knowledge. Phenomenal qualities, then, seem to be, in principle, unexplainable in scientific terms. As a reaction to this pessimistic conclusion it is a major trend in contemporary science of consciousness to turn away from subjective experiences and re-define the subject of investigations in neurological and behavioural terms. This move, however, creates a gap between scientific theories of consciousness, and the original phenomenon, which we are so intimately connected with. The thesis focuses on this gap. It is argued that it is possible to explain features of consciousness in scientific terms. The thesis argues for this claim from two directions. On the one hand, a specific identity theory is formulated connecting phenomenal qualities to certain intermediate level perceptual representations which are unstructured for central processes of the embedding cognitive system. This identity theory is hypothesised on the basis of certain similarities recognised between the phenomenal and the cognitive-representational domains, and then utilised in order to uncover further similarities between these two domains. The identity theory and the further similarities uncovered are then deployed in formulating explanations of the philosophically most important characteristics of the phenomenal domain—i.e. why phenomenal qualities resist functionalisation, and why the epistemic gap occurs. On the other hand, the thesis investigates and criticises existing models of reductive explanation. On the basis of a detailed analysis of how successful scientific explanations proceed a novel account of reductive explanation is proposed, which viii utilises so-called prior identities. Prior identities are prerequisites rather than outcomes of reductive explanations. They themselves are unexplained but are nevertheless necessary for mapping the features to be explained onto the features the explanation relies on.
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