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Philosophy 575 Prof. Clare Batty Qualia Jackson, “Epiphenomenal Qualia” Physicalism: all the facts about the world are physical facts. 1. The Knowledge Argument Jackson argues that physicalism is false. The story: “Mary is a brilliant scientist…forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white monitor.” She “specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on.” “What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor?” “Will she learn anything or not?” Jackson: “yes”. “It just seems obvious that she will learn something about the world and our experience of it…But she had all the physical information. Ergo…Physicalism is false” The Knowledge Argument: 1. Imprisoned Mary knows all the physical facts. 2. If physicalism is true, Mary (before her release) knows all the facts. (from 1 + physicalism) 3. After her release, Mary learns something–something she couldn’t have known while imprisoned. 4. If Mary learns something, she learns a fact. 5. So, Mary learns a fact. (from 3, 4) 6. So, physicalism is false. (from 2, 5) Further conclusion: 7. Our experiences have “qualia”. Qualia are “certain [nonphysical] features of bodily sensations [and] perceptual experiences...the hurtfulness of pains, the itchiness of itches [etc.]” 2. The Modal Argument (The Zombie Argument) 1. It is possible that there be zombies. 2. If it is possible that there be zombies, then consciousness is nonphysical. 3. So, consciousness is nonphysical 3. Epiphenomenalism Something is epiphenomenal if and only if it does not function causally in the world. Some philosophers argue that the qualia freak’s position is untenable because it leaves qualia as epiphenomenal. 1 This is taken to be bad because: i. “It is supposed to be just obvious that the hurtfulness of pain is partly responsible for the subject seeking to avoid pain…”. (But is it?) ii. Darwin’s theory of evolution. (How does Jackson respond?) iii. Knowledge of other minds. (How does Jackson respond?) Are Jackson’s responses adequate? If not, why not? 2 .

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The Knowledge Argument Against Physicalism
Handout 8 The Knowledge Argument against Physicalism 1. Some Terminology Physicalism – all information is physical information (Another possible formulation: all facts are physical facts) Physical information - The information given by science (note: Jackson doesn’t regard this as a definition, since it’s somewhat vague) A Qualia Freak – Someone who thinks that there are features of bodily sensations and perceptual experiences that no amount of physical information includes. These features are called “qualia”: the hurtfulness of pain, the itchiniess of itches, how it feels to be jealous, taste a lemon, etc. 2. The Knowledge Argument for Qualia Fred – Fred can make all the color discriminations we make plus more. Show him a batch of ripe tomatoes and he’ll sort them into two piles which he says are as different to him in terms of color appearance as yellow is from blue. He calls these calls “red1” and “red2.” 1. We can gain all the physical information about Fred that we like and we still won’t know certain information about Fred: what kind of experience Fred has when he says red1 and red2. 2. Not all information is physical information (This can be dramatized by imagining that Fred donates his body to science and they are able to transplant his optical system into somebody else. After the operation this person will know more about Fred than was known before). Mary – Mary is a brilliant scientist who has spent her whole life in a black and white room. She is an expert on color vision and neurophysiology and knows all the physical information one could possibly know about color vision.
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Russellian Panpsychism: Do We Need It and Is It Enough?
Russellian Panpsychism: Do We Need It and Is It Enough? By Damian Aleksiev Submitted to Central European University Department of Philosophy In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy Supervisor: Philip Goff CEU eTD Collection May 2016 Abstract The main aim of this thesis is to clarify the ontological status of phenomenal experience. In order to do this, I first examine how pure physicalism explains phenomenality. Pure physicalism relies on the structural and causal vocabulary of physics, and is compatible with the causal closure of the physical. Nonetheless, I argue that pure physicalism is false since it cannot account for our intuitive understating of phenomenal experience as something beyond-structural. I supplement these intuitions, first with the knowledge and conceivability arguments, and second with my own argument for the transparency of phenomenal concepts called the argument from solipsism. Then, I investigate Russellian panpsychism as a promising alternative to pure physicalism that attempts to solve its problems without any drawbacks. Russellian panpsychism places phenomenal experience at the fundamental ontological level, and at the same time remains compatible with the causal closure of the physical. Finally, I argue against Russellian panpsychism based on the combination problem, as well as my own: reverse conceivability argument, and combination problem for value. The conclusion of this enquiry is that neither pure physicalism nor Russellian panpsychism can provide a satisfactory account of phenomenal experience. CEU eTD Collection I Acknowledgments I would like to thank my supervisor Philip Goff for his continual support and willingness to discuss my ideas during the entire academic year.
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Is the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness Compatible with Russellian Panpsychism?
Is the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness Compatible with Russellian Panpsychism? Hedda Hassel Mørch Erkenntnis (2018) Penultimate draft – please refer to published version for citation. Abstract: The Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is a leading scientific theory of consciousness, which implies a kind of panpsychism. In this paper, I consider whether IIT is compatible with a particular kind of panpsychism known as Russellian panpsychism, which purports to avoid the main problems of both physicalism and dualism. I will first show that if IIT were compatible with Russellian panpsychism, it would contribute to solving Russellian panpsychism’s combination problem, which threatens to show that the view does not avoid the main problems of physicalism and dualism after all. I then show that the theories are not compatible as they currently stand, in view of what I call the coarse-graining problem. After I explain the coarse-graining problem, I will offer two possible solutions, each involving a small modification of IIT. Given either of these modifications, IIT and Russellian panpsychism may be fully compatible after all, and jointly enable significant progress on the mind–body problem. 1 Introduction Panpsychism is the view that every physical thing is associated with consciousness. More precisely, it is the view that every physical thing is either (1) conscious as a whole, (2) made of parts which are all conscious, or (3) itself forms part of a greater conscious whole. Humans and animals (or certain areas of human and animal brains) are conscious in the first sense—our consciousness is unified, or has a single, subjective point of view.
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The Causal Efficacy of Consciousness
entropy Article The Causal Efficacy of Consciousness Matthew Owen 1,2 1 Yakima Valley College, Yakima, WA 98902, USA; [email protected] 2 Center for Consciousness Science, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA Received: 10 June 2020; Accepted: 17 July 2020; Published: 28 July 2020 Abstract: Mental causation is vitally important to the integrated information theory (IIT), which says consciousness exists since it is causally efficacious. While it might not be directly apparent, metaphysical commitments have consequential entailments concerning the causal efficacy of consciousness. Commitments regarding the ontology of consciousness and the nature of causation determine which problem(s) a view of consciousness faces with respect to mental causation. Analysis of mental causation in contemporary philosophy of mind has brought several problems to the fore: the alleged lack of psychophysical laws, the causal exclusion problem, and the causal pairing problem. This article surveys the threat each problem poses to IIT based on the different metaphysical commitments IIT theorists might make. Distinctions are made between what I call reductive IIT, non-reductive IIT, and non-physicalist IIT, each of which make differing metaphysical commitments regarding the ontology of consciousness and nature of causation. Subsequently, each problem pertaining to mental causation is presented and its threat, or lack thereof, to each version of IIT is considered. While the lack of psychophysical laws appears unthreatening for all versions, reductive IIT and non-reductive IIT are seriously threatened by the exclusion problem, and it is difficult to see how they could overcome it while maintaining a commitment to the causal closure principle.
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Great Philosophers 2 Lucretius
What is the relationship between the mind and the brain? Ben White 05.02.2019 What distinguishes the mental from the non- mental? Mental Non-mental • Consciousness • Mass • Belief • Charge • Desire • Shape • Thought • Size • Memory • Solidity • Sensation • Velocity • Perception • Location • Emotion • Density • Imagination • Weight • Rationality • Physical/Chemical composition What distinguishes the mental from the non- mental? The members of the class of mental phenomena thus seem like a very mixed bag… What, if anything, qualifies them for membership in this class? Philosophers have frequently identified two characteristics that seem distinctive of mentality, in that all (and only) mental phenomena exemplify at least one of these two features: • Intentionality • Phenomenal consciousness Intentionality Some mental states, e.g. thoughts, beliefs, desires, and perceptions, have a certain “aboutness” in that they represent or are directed towards certain things beyond themselves. Intentionality Such mental states are said to possess intentionality and are often referred to as intentional states. Note that many activities presuppose the possession of certain intentional states: e.g. hunting, worshiping, speaking. Intentionality Mental Non-mental • Consciousness • Mass • Belief • Charge • Desire • Shape • Thought • Size • Memory • Solidity • Sensation • Velocity • Perception • Location • Emotion • Density • Imagination • Weight • Rationality • Physical/Chemical composition Phenomenal Consciousness Some mental states have certain experiential qualities such that there is something it is like for us to be in them. • the experience of yellow • the sensation of pain • the feeling of a sore muscle • the sound of a trumpet • the smell of rotten eggs • the taste of cantaloupe Phenomenal Consciousness Such states are said to be phenomenally conscious or to have a certain phenomenal character.
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The Elusive Origins of Consciousness: a Philosophical Argument for Panpsychism Over Competing Metaphysical Theories of Mind
Trinity College Trinity College Digital Repository Trinity Publications (Newspapers, Yearbooks, The Trinity Papers (2011 - present) Catalogs, etc.) 2019 The Elusive Origins of Consciousness: A Philosophical Argument for Panpsychism over Competing Metaphysical Theories of Mind Tommy Tobias Aahlberg Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/trinitypapers Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Aahlberg, Tommy Tobias, "The Elusive Origins of Consciousness: A Philosophical Argument for Panpsychism over Competing Metaphysical Theories of Mind". The Trinity Papers (2011 - present) (2019). Trinity College Digital Repository, Hartford, CT. https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/trinitypapers/79 The Elusive Origins of Consciousness: A Philosophical Argument for Panpsychism over Competing Metaphysical Theories of Mind Tommy Tobias Aahlberg Introduction Underpinning everything that constitutes our perceived reality is consciousness. The fact that there is something that it is like to be us is at the foundation of everything we consequently come to care about in our lives. Every observation, sensation, thought, and emotion is predicated on the phenomenon that there is something that it is like to observe, sense, think, and feel. The awareness and experience of a world is the essential factor that separates our universe from any conceivable zombie universe where nothing is observed, sensed, thought, or felt. Necessarily, we filter every single moment through our consciousness. If consciousness did not exist there would be no groundwork for meaning as it would hold no basis in any conceivable creature’s awareness, and therefore such a universe would be meaningless. Despite, or perhaps due to, its fundamental nature and important implications – consciousness is poorly understood by contemporary science and philosophy alike, at least in the theoretical sense of understanding.
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Empfindungsfähigkeit Und Moralischer Status Eine Kritik Der Pathozentrischen Ethik
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1 the Many-Worlds Theory of Consciousness Christian List* Abstract: This Paper Sketches a New and Somewhat Heterodox Metaphysica
1 The many-worlds theory of consciousness Christian List* Discussion paper, this version posted 2 March 2021 Abstract: This paper sketches a new and somewhat heterodox metaphysical theory of consciousness: the “many-worlds theory”. It drops the assumption that all conscious subjects’ experiences are features of one and the same world and instead associates different subjects with different “first-personally centred worlds”. We can think of these as distinct “first- personal realizers” of a shared “third-personal world”, where the latter is supervenient, in a sense to be explained. This is combined with a form of modal realism, according to which different subjects’ first-personally centred worlds are all real, though only one of them is present for each subject. The theory offers a novel way of capturing the irreducibly subjective nature of conscious experience without lapsing into solipsism. The paper also looks at some scientific theories of consciousness, such as integrated information theory, through the proposed lens and reconsiders the hard problem of consciousness. 1. Introduction The aim of this paper is to sketch a somewhat heterodox metaphysical theory of consciousness: the “many-worlds theory”. The theory seeks to give an account of how consciousness, in the sense of subjective experience, fits into the world and how it relates to other, non-subjective features. To capture the irreducibly subjective nature of conscious experience, the theory drops the common assumption that all conscious experiences – yours, mine, and those of everyone else – are features of one and the same world and postulates instead that different conscious subjects are associated with different “first-personally centred worlds”.
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A Priori Physicalism and the Knowledge Argument
teorema Vol. XXXIX/2, 2020, pp. 87-103 ISSN: 0210-1602 [BIBLID 0210-1602 (2020) 39:2; pp. 87-103] A Priori Physicalism and the Knowledge Argument Tufan Kıymaz RESUMEN Defiendo el argumento del conocimiento de Frank Jackson de la objeción de corte fisicista a priori de que, por todo lo que sabemos, la tesis de la deducibilidad (es decir, la tesis de que el conocimiento fenoménico es deducible en principio del conocimiento físi- co/funcional) es verdadera. Analizo la fuerza de la intuición ordinaria contra la tesis de la deducibilidad y la plausibilidad de los intentos que hay en la literatura por defenderla. De- fiendo que los fisicistas a priori fracasan tanto a la hora librarse de la carga de la prueba que les obliga a convencernos de que la tesis de la deducibilidad es plausible, como a la hora de proporcionar una situación inteligible en la que el conocimiento fenoménico puede ser deducido del conocimiento físico/funcional. PALABRAS CLAVE: fisicismo a priori, deducibilidad, argumento del conocimiento, conciencia fenoménica. ABSTRACT I defend Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument against the a priori physicalist ob- jection that for all we know, the deducibility thesis, the thesis that phenomenal knowledge is in principle deducible from physical/functional knowledge, is true. I discuss the force of the common intuition against the deducibility thesis and the plausibility of the attempts in the literature in defense of the deducibility thesis. I argue that a priori physicalists both fail to remove the burden of proof from their shoulders to convince us that deducibility thesis is plausible and fail to offer an intelligible scenario in which phe- nomenal knowledge is possibly deduced from physical/phenomenal knowledge.
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The Many-Worlds Theory of Consciousness
1 The many-worlds theory of consciousness Christian List* Discussion paper, this version posted in March 2020 Abstract This exploratory paper discusses a somewhat heterodox metaphysical theory of consciousness: the “many- worlds theory”. The theory gives up the common assumption that all conscious experiences are features of one and the same world and asserts instead that different conscious subjects are associated with different “first- personally centred worlds”. We can think of these as distinct and “parallel” first-personal realizers of a shared “third-personal world”. This is combined with a form of modal realism, according to which different subjects’ first-personally centred worlds are all real, though only one of them is present for each subject. The relationship between first-personally centred and third-personal worlds can in turn be captured in a levelled ontology, where the first-personal level is subvenient and the third-personal supervenient. The described setup is intended to capture the irreducibly subjective nature of conscious experience without lapsing into solipsism. The paper also looks at some existing scientific theories of consciousness, such as integrated information theory, through the lens of the present metaphysical theory and discusses its implications for the hard problem of consciousness. 1. Introduction The aim of this paper is to explore a somewhat heterodox metaphysical theory of consciousness: the “many-worlds theory”. The theory seeks to offer an account of how consciousness, in the sense of subjective experience, fits into the world and how it relates to other, non-subjective features. To capture the irreducibly subjective nature of conscious experience, the theory gives up the common assumption that all conscious experiences – yours, mine, and those of everyone else – are features of one and the same world and asserts instead that different conscious subjects are associated with different “first-personally centred worlds”.
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Epiphenomenalism and the Causal Theory of Knowing ______
Beytulhikme Int J Phil 10 (4) 2020 Doi: 10.18491/beytulhikme.1673 Research Article: 1219-1234 ___________________________________________________________ Epiphenomenalism and the Causal Theory of Knowing ___________________________________________________________ Epifenomenalizm ve Nedensel Bilme Kuramı PAKİZE ARIKAN SANDIKCIOĞLU İzmir Katip Çelebi University s o p h y o Received: 01.10.2020Accepted: 23.12.2020 Abstract: Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument, which is based on a thought P h i l experiment about Mary, a brilliant neuroscientist, living in a black and white surrounding, is one of the most important challenges for physicalistic concep- tions of the mind. The argument roughly aims at indicating that a complete physical knowledge of the world, would not include the knowledge of phenom- enal properties of experience, therefore physicalism is false. In addition to his anti-physicalist thesis, Jackson further claims that phenomenal qualities of ex- periences are epiphenomenal. However, according to the inconsistency objec- tion that is based upon a causal theory of knowledge, the knowledge argument undermines epiphenomenalism, because gaining the knowledge of phenomenal experience requires that phenomenal states are causally potent. However, the rnational Journal of criticism can be challenged by developing a causal account of phenomenal knowledge without attributing a causal function of phenomenal properties. In this paper, it will be claimed that such a causal account is possible based on the notions of “reliability” and of “common
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The Real Combination Problem: Panpsychism, Micro-‐Subjects, And
The Real Combination Problem: Panpsychism, Micro-Subjects, and Emergence1 0. Introduction Panpsychists hold that all matter possesses mental properties of some form. The main motivation for panpsychism is the perceived failure of reductive physicalism—the project of explaining, inter alia, the instantiation of conscious experience solely in terms of conventionally understood physical matter and properties. Such physical matter and properties are presumed not to include mental properties at the basic level.2 According to panpsychists, the moral of anti-physicalist arguments like the knowledge argument and the zombie argument is that from ingredients entirely lacking in consciousness, consciousness cannot derive.3 To adequately account for the instantiation of consciousness in beings like us, panpsychists aver, we must take mental properties as part of the fundamental furniture of the material world.4 I consider overall that the panpsychist explanatory project is well-motivated, and that panpsychists are in the right ballpark for a here-and-now solution to the mind/body problem.5 I won’t attempt to motivate panpsychism with respect to physicalism, but take it that if a viable panpsychist theory could be described, it would represent at least an attractive option on the field of metaphysics of mind. My concern is with difficulties internal to panpsychism, and with where the intuitions driving panpsychism should propel one if those difficulties turn out to be insuperable. The discussion should be of interest to any theorists who still hope for an explanation of consciousness in terms of its material underpinnings: 1 Thanks to Gregg Rosenberg in particular for helpful comments on this paper, as well as the attendees of the ‘Panpsychism on the Reef’ conference of July 2012 organised by David Chalmers, and an anonymous referee for this journal.
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