Metaphysics or The Philosophy of Consciousness: Phenomenal and Real

Metaphysics or the Philosophy of Consciousness, Phenomenal and Real

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Buddhism Science by Paul Dahlke. A Critique of Kant by Kuno Fischer. Green's Theory of Reality by Roger B. Hypothesis for a Ceptacle Theory by Oren B.

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Elements of Psychology by Henry Noble Day. Harvard College Library by James Walker.

The Arché Metaphysics and Mind Reading Group

Psychology by Antonio Rosmini Serbati Vol. Australasian Association of Philosophy , July Fundamental Approaches , Tokyo, June Metaphysical Mayhem , Syracuse, August Conference on Consciousness , Amsterdam, June Two-Dimensionalism , Barcelona, June Metaphysics of Human Beings , Syracuse, July Consciousness Symposium , Cornell, January Workshop on Consciousness , Rio de Janiero, May Australasian Association of Philosophy , Adelaide, July Workshop on Cosciousness , Taipei, July Workshop on Consciousness , Taipei, July Northwest Philosophy Conference Necessity , October Conceivability, Explanation, and Physicalism , Copenhagen, November The Ontology of Color , Fribourg, November Workshop on Modality , St.

Toward a Science of Consciousness , Tucson, April Knowledge and Skepticism , Moscow, Idaho, April Philosophy of Mind Workshop , Florence, June Physicalism , Bowling Green Ohio , April Metametaphysics , ANU, June Australasian Association of Philosophy , Sydney, July Festival of Ideas , Adelaide, July Consciousness at the Beach , Kioloa, August Arizona Ontology Conference , Tucson, January Inland Northwest Philsophy Conference: Idaho State University, March Norms and Analysis , Sydney, June Australasian Association of Philosophy Presidential Address.

Experimental Philosophy Meets Conceptual Analysis. World Congress of Philosophy Seoul, August Consciousness and Thought , Dubrovnik, August Hyperintensionality and Impossible Worlds: Alaska Undergraduate Conference , Anchorage, April Philosophical Methodology , St. Australasian Association of Philosophy. Salt Lake City, July Propositions and Same-Saying , Macquarie, January Spatial Perception , Harvard, October Pacific APA, April The Epistemology of Philosophy , Cologne, June Emergence and Panpsychism , Munich, June Ordinary Language, Linguistics, and Philosophy , St.

Philosophical Progress , Harvard University, September Consciousness, Intentionality, and Phenomenality. Rice University, October Unity of Consciousness and Sensory Integration. Brown University, November Shalem Institute, Jerusalem, December University of Western Australia, February Alan Turing Centenary Conference. University of Hertfordshire, April College of Charleston, May Minds, Bodies, and Problems.

Bilkent University, Ankara, June University of Crete, June University of Aberdeen, June Russian Cognitive Science Conference. Carolina Metaphysics Workshop , June Workshop on Attention , University of Antwerp, September Naturalistic Dualism , Fordham University, October Philosophy Without Intuitions , London, December Phenomenal Concepts , Rio de Janiero, January Arizona Ontology Conference , Tucson, February Concepts and Modal Epistemology , Lyon, May Perception and Concepts , Riga, May Constructing the World , Bonn, May Reference and Frege Puzzles.

Panpsychism and Russellian Monism , Oslo, August Narrow Content , Oslo, August Modal Epistemology , Lisbon, August Workshop on Epistemology , British Columbia, March TED , Vancouver, March Consciousness and Intentionality , Mississippi, April Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness.

Metaphysics, Or, the Philosophy of Consciousness, Phenomenal and Real (Hardcover)

Workshop on Panpsychism , Byron Bay, July American-German Conference on Formal Philosophy. New York, September Memorial Workshop for Brian Loar. Rutgers University, October Verbal Disputes and their Role in Philosophy. Emergence and Grounding , Glasgow, May The Interface between Epistemology and the Philosophy of Mind. Toward a Science of Consciousness. The Return of Consciousness. Avesta, Sweden, June Mid-Atlantic Conference on the Philosophy of Language.

University of West Virginia, August Metaphysics and Epistemology at the Ranch. The Science of Consciousness , Tucson, April Consciousness and Grounding , University of Birmingham, June Reflexive Theories of Consciousness: Australian National University, July Russellian Monism , Budapest, August The Question of Ontology , Madrid, February The Meta-Problem of Consciousness. Alvin Goldman Conference , Rutgers, February Consciousness and Intelligence in Humans and Machines.

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Structuralism as a Response to Skepticism. Philosophy of Mind Workshop , Medellin, May Conceptual Engineering and Verbal Disputes.

Consciousness and Physicalism: A Defense of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy

Carnap and Chalmers on Metaphilosophy , Vienna, June Consciousness , Barcelona, June The Virtual and The Real: Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot? Armstrong on The Meta-Problem of Consciousness. Mind Brazil , Tiradentes, August University of Chicago, January Indiana University, April Washington University, February Ohio State University, May Princeton University, October University of Memphis, November California Institute of Technology, December University of Cincinatti, January Johns Hopkins University, January Cornell University, January Rice University, January UC Santa Cruz, January UC Los Angeles, February, Tufts University, February Yale University, February Stanford University, February Yale University, September UC Berkeley, October UC San Francisco, December New York University, April Colorado University, April University of Arizona, April Stanford University, April University of California, Santa Barbara, May Australian National University, January Australian National University, February Sydney University, March The hard problem relates closely to the claim that Mary learns new truths about color experiences when she first has such experiences.

Arguably, if she learns new truths at that time, this is because the nature of color experiences cannot be fully explained in purely physical terms; otherwise, the reasoning runs, she would have already known the relevant truths.

Worldview Naturalism

If such experiences are fully explicable in physical terms, then they should be objectively comprehensible, and Mary seems well positioned to grasp all objectively comprehensible properties. The general idea here is sometimes expressed as the claim that there is an explanatory gap Levine between the physical and the phenomenal. A second argument often associated with the hard problem is the conceivability argument Kripke , Chalmers According to one version of the conceivability argument, also called the zombie argument, one can conceive of a micro-physical duplicate of a human that lacks conscious experiences.

Given this, it is argued, such a micro-physical duplicate is possible, which entails that the physical facts do not necessitate the phenomenal or experiential facts. This, according to most philosophers, indicates that physicalism is false. While many philosophers doubt that the conceivability of these zombie duplicates is indicative of their possibility, the hard problem primarily concerns the first step of the argument. If we can conceive of micro-physical duplicates of ourselves that lack consciousness, then we lack a complete explanation for why the physical facts give rise to the experiential or phenomenal facts.

This again shows the existence of an explanatory gap. There is no consensus about the status of the explanatory gap. Reductionists deny that the gap exists.

They argue that the hard problem reduces to a combination of easy problems or derives from misconceptions about the nature of consciousness. For example, Daniel Dennett argues that, on reflection, consciousness is functionally definable.

On his view, once the easy problems are solved, there will be nothing about consciousness and the physical left to explain. Reductionists often appeal to analogies from the history of science. These philosophers compare nonreductionists, who accept the existence of the explanatory gap, to 17th Century vitalists concerned about the hard problem of life. Comparisons are also made to the scientifically ignorant concerned about hard problems of heat or light Churchland Science has shown that the latter concerns are overblown: Likewise, say reductionists, for consciousness.

Nonreductionists usually reject such analogies.

Part of the analogy is usually accepted: However, what the vitalists sought to explain was how certain functions are performed. By contrast, consciousness does not seem to consist in the performance of functions. Nonreductionists take that difference to undermine the analogy between the hard problem of consciousness and the alleged hard problem of life. Reductionism is entailed by influential theories in the philosophy of mind , including philosophical behaviorism , analytic functionalism , and eliminative materialism.

Some philosophers take the merits of those positions, such as their relative parsimony, to provide grounds for a reductionist approach to the hard problem. Other philosophers accept the existence of the explanatory gap and thus regard the hard problem as evidence against those theories.

For nonreductionist physicalists, the gap reflects something about our perspective on the world, not the world itself. These philosophers hold that consciousness is an entirely physical phenomenon, and thus that phenomenal truths are nothing over and above physical truths, even though phenomenal truths cannot be deduced from micro-physical truths or the sorts of truths that Mary learns from her lectures.

Non-reductionists must explain how to reconcile physicalism with the explanatory gap. Reductionists do not share this burden, since they reject the gap. Here nonreductionists sometimes invoke analogies to Kripkean empirical necessities.

According to Kripke, the fact that heat is decoherent molecular motion is absolutely necessary—there is no possible situation in which there is one without the other—even though that fact was discovered empirically. One might object on the grounds that we can easily imagine a situation in which there is heat but, it turns out, no molecular motion.

Against this, Kripke argues that on reflection such a situation is inconceivable.

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