Intentionality and Phenomenality: A Phenomenological Take on the Hard Problem

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 63-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Zahavi
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Process Information ◽  
Conscious Mind ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
Ice Cube ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Mind

In his bookThe Conscious MindDavid Chalmers introduced a now-familiar distinction between the hard problem and the easy problems of consciousness. The easy problems are those concerned with the question of how the mind can process information, react to environmental stimuli, and exhibit such capacities as discrimination, categorization, and introspection (Chalmers 1996, 4; 1995, 200). All of these abilities are impressive, but they are, according to Chalmers, not metaphysically baffling, since they can all be tackled by means of the standard repertoire of cognitive science and explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. This task might still be difficult, but it is within reach. In contrast, the hard problem — also known astheproblem of consciousness (Chalmers 1995, 201) — is the problem of explaining why mental states have phenomenal or experiential qualities. Why is it like something to ‘taste coffee,’ to ‘touch an ice cube,’ to ‘look at a sunset,’ etc.? Why does it feel the way it does? Why does it feel like anything at all?

Zombies and Dolls

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcello Massimini ◽  
Giulio Tononi
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Turing Test ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

This chapter uses thought experiments and practical examples to introduce, in a very accessible way, the hard problem of consciousness. Soon, machines may behave like us to pass the Turing test and scientists may succeed in copying and simulating the inner workings of the brain. Will all this take us any closer to solving the mysteries of consciousness? The reader is taken to meet different kind of zombies, the philosophical, the digital, and the inner ones, to understand why many, scientists and philosophers alike, doubt that the mind–body problem will ever be solved.

Contemporary Echoes of the World Soul

2021 ◽  
pp. 320-342
Author(s):  
Valia Allori
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Quantum Theories ◽  
The World ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way

Quantum mechanics is a groundbreaking theory: it not only is extraordinarily empirically adequate but also is claimed to having shattered the classical paradigm of understanding the observer-observed distinction as well as the part-whole relation. This, together with other quantum features, has been taken to suggest that quantum theory can help one understand the mind-body relation in a unique way, in particular to solve the hard problem of consciousness along the lines of panpsychism. In this chapter, after having briefly presented panpsychism, Valia Allori discusses the main features of quantum theories and the way in which the main quantum theories of consciousness use them to account for conscious experience.

scholarly journals LINGUAGEM E ENATIVISMO

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcos Silva ◽  
Iana Cavalcanti ◽  
Hugo Mota
Keyword(s):  
Representational Content ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Linguistic Practices ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
Hard Problem Of Content ◽  
Internal Mental States

Language does not have to be held as a problem for radical enactivists. The scope objection usually presented to criticize enactivist explanations is a problem only if we have a referentialist and representationalist view of the nature of language. Here we present a normative hypothesis for the great question concerning the hard problem of content, namely, on how linguistic practices develop from minds without content. We carry representational content when we master inferential relations and we master inferential relations when we master normative relations, especially when we are introduced into frameworks of authorizations and prohibitions. Inspired by the anti-intellectualism of the later Wittgenstein and Brandom’s inferentialism, we present the hypothesis that language emerges from inferentially articulated action from normative elements and not from manipulation in internal mental states of contents fixed by reference to external things.

Explaining the “hard” problem

2019 ◽  
pp. 116-139
Author(s):  
Peter Carruthers
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Explanatory Gap ◽  
Phenomenal Concepts ◽  
Reductive Explanation ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
Global Workspace ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
Global Workspace Theory

This chapter shows that global-workspace theory can be developed into a satisfying, fully reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness. It shows how globally broadcast nonconceptual content enables higher-order thoughts about that content, where those thoughts can lack conceptual connections with physical, functional, or representational facts. As a result, zombies are conceivable and an (epistemic) explanatory gap is opened up. But the thoughts in question can themselves be given a fully naturalistic explanation. Hence all of the facts involved in consciousness can be fully explained. The chapter defends the reality of the phenomenal concepts needed to make this account work, and replies to a dilemma for the account proposed by David Chalmers.

scholarly journals Psychopathology and the Enactive Mind

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanna Colombetti
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Living Organism ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Specific Structure ◽  
Enactive Approach ◽  
The Mind ◽  
In Virtue Of

According to the "enactive" approach in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, mental states are neither identical with, nor reducible to, brain activity. Rather, the mind is enacted or brought forth by the whole situated living organism in virtue of its specific structure and organization. Although increasingly influential in cognitive science, the enactive approach has had little to do with psychopathology so far. This chapter first outlines this approach in some detail, and then illustrates its conceptual and methodological connections to psychopathology. It also provides some indications on how to develop a more explicitly "enactive psychopathology."

INCOMPLETE NATURE AND SELF - BODY PROBLEM: EMERGENTIST TRANSCENDENCE OF THE DUALISM OF SPIRIT AND MATTER

METOD ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 77-90
Author(s):  
Ivan Fomin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Dynamic Coupling ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
Material Information ◽  
The Way

The article presents an overview of the key arguments of Terrence Deacon's theory of how mind emerged from matter. Deacon’s emergentism is analyzed as a way of refocusing the «hard problem» of consciousness. He suggests considering the phenomenon of consciousness as a dynamic coupling of mutually constraining processes. Such coupling is the defining feature of the subjective self and other teleodynamic phenomena. So self cannot be found as something embodied in existing material substrates. Consciousness is not present in such substrates themselves, but in the way different processes unfolding in these substrates constrain each other. Deacon shows that even looking at the simplest forms of life (autogens) one can observe that in them each part, interacting with other parts, creates the whole, and the whole as a synergetic complex makes possible the reproduction of its parts. The same principle underlies the organization of subjective consciousness, as subjective consciousness is hierarchically entangled with other levels of sentience. Thus, Deacon's emergentism is an attempt to take seriously the problem of the interrelation of spirit and matter by not simply to disregarding explanations that refer to the spiritual substance, but by offering the models of consciousness, sentience and purposiveness that could convincingly solve fundamental questions about the nature of consciousness in an alternative way. It is also an attempt to avoid the «naturalistic dualism» of David Chalmers, which involves splitting material information into physical and phenomenal aspects. According to Deacon, in explaining subjective self, one can do without both Cartesian spiritual substance and Chalmers' phenomenal information, but then what is necessary is to acknowledge the significance of absential phenomena (the phenomena that are intrinsically existing in relation to something missing, separate or nonexistent).

Bio-centric Views of the Origin of Consciousness: The Search for the Solution to the Hard Problem

2018 ◽  
pp. 78-122
Author(s):  
Arthur S. Reber
Keyword(s):  
Distinct Type ◽  
The Other ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Two strategies are used to review the many efforts to solve (or resolve or dissolve) the Hard Problem. One searches for the neurocorrelates of consciousness, the effort to answer the question: “How does the brain make the mind?” The other looks for the first appearance of true consciousness in phylogenesis. Both approaches are reviewed and found wanting. The reason is they all begin with human consciousness and use it as the basis for the explorations. This, it is argued, has lead to a “category error” where the H. sap. mind is treated as a distinct type and not as a token on the same existential continuum as other minds. It also reveals the existence of the “emergentist’s dilemma” or the difficulty of determining how consciousness could spring into existence when one cosmic moment before, it didn’t exist. The chapter ends by anticipating criticism of these arguments and of the CBC and providing prophylactic arguments.

Philosophy and Psychology

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Antony ◽  
Georges Rey
Keyword(s):  
Computer Science ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Research Program ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind

Philosophy and psychology have always been inseparable, particularly with regard to issues of methodology. The chapter begins with a brief history of the a priori and introspectivist traditions of both, and of the various forms of behaviorism that were a reaction to them. It then turns to the “computational” and “functionalist” approaches to the mind that grew out of the development of the computer and especially the linguistic work of Noam Chomsky. These blossomed into the research program of “cognitive science” that combines work in linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, biology, and computer science to empirically address questions about the nature and architecture of the mind, and issues in semantics, epistemology, and moral psychology. the chapter concludes by briefly discussing two important cases concerning the nature of consciousness, its supposed “unity,” and various forms of self-blindness, which raise surprising empirical questions about our introspective access to our mental states.

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