Functionalism and qualia

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-26
Author(s):  
Zivan Lazovic
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
The Other ◽  
Explanatory Gap ◽  
Current State ◽  
Specific Proposal ◽  
Brain States ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Functionalist Approach ◽  
The Explanatory Gap ◽  
In Virtue Of

The more recent mind-body debate depicts the problem of consciousness as a problem of the explanatory gap. Established correlations between physical brain states and particular conscious experiences may give us a strong reason to believe that one depends upon the other, but they don't in themselves give us an understanding of how the mental and the physical fit together. This paper falls into two main parts. In the first, the author outlines a diagnosis of the current state of the mind-body debate. In the second, he defends a functionalist approach with a specific proposal that he regards as bringing us much closer to a resolution of the underlying problem. Namely, he argues that there are no a priori reasons against the possibility of a functionalist analysis that will characterize a set of functionalist conditions that could be satisfied only by systems with genuine qualia. This thesis is supported by an example which shows how a physical system's state could have very specific causal role (function) in virtue of its phenomenal property.

Russellian Monism and Epistemic Pessimism

SATS ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ståle Gundersen
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Explanatory Gap ◽  
Other Minds Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Explanatory Gap ◽  
Russellian Monism

AbstractRussellian monism is any view that proposes that we cannot solve the mind-body problem because natural science cannot tell us about the aspects of physical reality that are necessary to know to explain consciousness. I argue that Russellian monism should be combined with the Heil-Martin theory about dispositions. However, this combination becomes a theory with some profound epistemic pessimistic consequences, namely that we cannot bridge the explanatory gap between physical and conscious states and that we cannot solve the other minds problem. However, this epistemic pessimism does not constitute an unacceptable kind of “mystery-mongering” because we can also find analogous results in the well-established sciences. This may make it easier to accept Russellian monism’s epistemic pessimism.

Two conceptions of access-consciousness

1997 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-147
Author(s):  
Derek Browne
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Explanatory Gap ◽  
Intuitive Idea ◽  
The Explanatory Gap

Block's (1995) cognitive conception of consciousness might be introduced in the service of two different projects. In one, the explanatory gap between science and folklore remains. In the other, a reductive claim is advanced, but the intuitive idea of consciousness is abandoned.

Explaining the Qualitative Dimension of Consciousness: Prescission Instead of Reification

Dialogue ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Champagne
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Explanatory Gap ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Explanatory Gap ◽  
Qualitative Dimension

ABSTRACT: This paper suggests that it is largely a want of notional distinctions which fosters the “explanatory gap” that has beset the study of consciousness since T. Nagel’s revival of the topic. Modifying Ned Block’s controversial claim that we should countenance a “phenomenal-consciousness” which exists in its own right, we argue that there is a way to recuperate the intuitions he appeals to without engaging in an onerous reification of the facet in question. By renewing with the full type/token/tone trichotomy developed by C. S. Peirce, we think the distinctness Block (rightly) calls attention to can be seen as stemming not from any separate module lurking within the mind, but rather from our ability toprescindqualities from occurrences.

scholarly journals Is There a Metaphysics of Consciousness Without a Phenomenology of Consciousness? Some Thoughts Derived from Husserl's Philosophical Phenomenology

2010 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 141-154
Author(s):  
Eduard Marbach
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Mental Acts ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Philosophical Phenomenology

AbstractThe paper first addresses Husserl's conception of philosophical phenomenology, metaphysics, and the relation between them, in order to explain why, on Husserl's view, there is no metaphysics of consciousness without a phenomenology of consciousness. In doing so, it recalls some of the methodological tenets of Husserl's phenomenology, pointing out that phenomenology is an eidetic or a priori science which has first of all to do with mere ideal possibilities of consciousness and its correlates; metaphysics of consciousness, on the other hand, has to do with its reality or actuality, requiring an eidetic foundation in order to become scientifically valuable. Presuming that, if consciousness is to be the subject-matter of a metaphysics which is not simply speculative or based on prejudice, it is crucial to get the phenomenology of consciousness right, the paper then engages in a detailed descriptive-eidetic analysis of mental acts of re-presenting something and tries to argue that their structures, involving components of non-actual experiencing, pose a serious problem for a materialistic or physicalistic metaphysics of consciousness. The paper ends with a brief comment on Husserl's broader view of metaphysics, having to do with the irrationality of the transcendental fact, i.e. the constitution of the factual world and the factual life of the mind.

The Aristotelian Categories

1925 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. M. Gillespie
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
The Other ◽  
Precise Position ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

The precise position to be assigned to the Categories in the Aristotelian system has always been somewhat of a puzzle. On the one hand, they seem to be worked into the warp of its texture, as in the classification of change, and Aristotle can argue from the premiss that they constitute an exhaustive division of the kinds of Being (An. Post. I. 22, p. 83 b 15). On the other hand, both in the completed scheme of his logic and in his constructive metaphysic they retire into the background, giving place to other notions, such as causation, change, actuality and potentiality. Investigation has, moreover, been hampered, especially in Germany, by attempts to correlate them with the Kantian Categories, with which they have obvious points of contact. But Kant's formal a priori concepts by which the mind makes for itself a world, to use Mr. Bosanquet's phrase, imply an attitude to knowledge and reality so utterly opposed to the Aristotelian that the comparison has tended to confusion rather than elucidation. Scholars now realize better that the Aristotelian Categories can only be understood in connexion with the problems of Aristotle's own age.

scholarly journals Angel in “the Cartesian theatre” – Aquinas and the mind-body problem

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 66-79
Author(s):  
Tomasz Stępień
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Human Action ◽  
The Body ◽  
Explanatory Gap ◽  
Philosophical Discussion ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Explanatory Gap

One of the solutions of the mind-body problem, which returns to the philosophical discussion on consciousness is the “soul hyphotesis”. Existence of the soul can clear the “explanatory gap”, but it brings yet another problems in explanation of how consciousness works. The magiority of those issues exist because of very specific understanding of the mind-body relations in Cartesian way as two separated substances. Some of the schoars propose to overlap the Cartesian approach by returning to the philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas. This article shows that in the writings of Aquinas we can find exact analogy of the Cartesian view of the body-soul relations in the description of how immaterial angel assums the body. For Aquinas angel exist and acts in assumed human body in the very same way as Descartes describes the soul acting in human body, and angel’s mode of perception is similar to what is usually called as “the Cartesian theatre”. For Aquinas angel in assumed body cannot perfom any human action, it only pretends to perform it, because it operates bodily organs as the form, which is not united with this specific body. St Thomas explanation of the relation of body and soul in human being relies on the claim of unity of body and soul, which together are one substance. Such approach was even called biological, because of the stress on the role which body plays in human actions. Therefore Aquinas proposition could be perceived the way of overcoming the dualism and removing some of the dilemas which are linked with “soul hypothesis” understood in traditional way.

scholarly journals Is Information a Sufficient Basis for Cognition? Part 2: Physical Foundations

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-376
Author(s):  
José María Díaz Nafría ◽  
Mario Pérez-Montoro
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Wave Length ◽  
The Other ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
The One ◽  
Wave Phenomena ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Physical Boundary ◽  
Homogeneous Environment

In this second part of our inquiry into the relation between information and cognition, we delve into the physical limits of the manifestation of an arbitrary object first with independence of any observer, then considering the nature of perception. The analysis of the manifestations of an object in a homogeneous environment by means of wave phenomena shows that the information carried by such manifestations offers a constitutive fuzziness and ambiguity of the observed object. On the one hand, the details that can be specified concerning the object are strictly limited by the wave length; on the other hand, the volumetric details of the object (i.e. its bowls) are outlawed to the observer, not in virtue of the object opacity, but to the very dimension or complexity of the wave phenomenon in the space surrounding the object. The analysis of perception, considering this physical boundary and the specificity of the animal sensitivity, shows the combined role of other concurrent or previous percept and some a priori knowledge in the perception and awareness of reality.

Descartes on Subjects and Selves

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-117
Author(s):  
Vili Lähteenmäki
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Embodied Self ◽  
The Mind ◽  
In Virtue Of

Descartes makes a double commitment about selves. While he argues that the ‘I’ is nothing but a thinking thing he also identifies it with the union of the mind and body. This chapter explores this tension by analyzing Descartes’ account of our experience of ourselves and argues that in the background of Descartes’ usage of ‘I’ in reference to both the mind and the union is an idea of a subject of experience taking herself in one or the other way. When a subject refers to herself with ‘I’, the ‘I’ always picks out a subject of experience regardless of whether the subject understands what it, metaphysically, picks out. Body-dependent features partaking in what one takes oneself to be are a matter of representation. However, embodied self-presence is on a par with purely intellectual self-presence, because the latter is likewise a matter of representation. This means that thoughts are constitutive of selfhood not because they ontologically belong to the thinking substance as its modifications, but rather in virtue of conveying content that affects what we take ourselves to be.

Reductive Explanation and the 'Explanatory Gap'

2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Carruthers
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
The Other ◽  
Explanatory Gap ◽  
Natural Explanation ◽  
Reductive Explanation ◽  
The One ◽  
The Explanatory Gap

Can phenomenal consciousness be given a reductive natural explanation? Exponents of an ‘explanatory gap’ between physical, functional and intentional facts, on the one hand, and the facts of phenomenal consciousness, on the other, argue that there are reasons of principle why phenomenal consciousness cannot be reductively explained: Jackson (1982), (1986); Levine (1983), (1993), (2001); McGinn (1991); Sturgeon (1994), (2000); Chalmers (1996), (1999). Some of these writers claim that the existence of such a gap would warrant a belief in some form of ontological dualism (Jackson, 1982; Chalmers, 1996), whereas others argue that no such entailment holds (Levine, 1983; McGinn, 1991; Sturgeon, 1994). In the other main camp, there are people who argue that a reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness is possible in principle (Block and Stalnaker, 1999), and yet others who claim, moreover, to have provided such an explanation in practice (Dennett, 1991; Dretske, 1995; Tye, 1995,2000; Lycan, 1996; Carruthers, 2000).

scholarly journals Consciousness regained? Philosophical arguments for and against reductive physicalism

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-63
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Explanatory Gap ◽  
Multiple Realizability ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
Reductive Physicalism ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
Conceivability Arguments ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Explanatory Gap ◽  
Methodological Reflection

This paper is an overview of recent discussions concerning the mind-body problem, which is being addressed at the interface between philosophy and neuroscience. It focuses on phenomenal features of consciousness or "qualia," which are distinguished from various related issues. Then follows a discussion of various influential skeptical arguments that question the possibility of reductive explanations of qualia in physicalist terms: knowledge arguments, conceivability arguments, the argument of multiple realizability, and the explanatory gap argument. None of the arguments is found to be very convincing. It does not necessarily follow that reductive physicalism is the only option, but it is defensible. However, constant conceptual and methodological reflection is required, alongside ongoing research, to keep such a view free from dogmatism and naivety.

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