David Chalmers

The " Natural Problem of Consciousness " is the problem of understanding why there are presently conscious beings at all. Given a non-reductive naturalist framework taking consciousness as an ontologically subjective biological phenomenon, how can we rationally explain the fact that the actual world has turned out to be one where there are presently living beings that can feel, rather than having developed as a zombie-world in which there would be no conscious experiences of any kind? This book introduces the Natural Problem by relating it to central problems in the philosophy of mind (metaphysical mind-body problem, Hard Problem of consciousness) and emphasizing the distinctive interest of its diachronic dimension. Ranging from philosophy to biology and neuroscience, it offers a thorough analysis aimed at better understanding what could explain why phenomenal consciousness has been preserved throughout evolution by natural selection. This is an original, engaging, and thought provoking philosophical study of a neglected but fundamental question regarding the nature and origin of consciousness.

How does our brain give rise to the rich world of our conscious experience?  Each lecture in this course approaches this fundamental philosophical question by focusing on a specific issue regarding thinking, minds, and brains.  Topics include little-known facts about consciousness, what it is like to be a bat, the 'inner theater' view of consciousness, Charles Babbage's steam-driven computing engines, and how optical illusions work.  Philosophical theories of mind are at the core of the course, from Plato and Aristotle through Descartes and Locke to contemporary work by Daniel Dennett, David Chalmers, and Paul and Patricia Smith Churchland.  In addition, the course draws from psychology, neurophysiology, linguistics, and the amazing history of attempts at building thinking machines.

Abstract:
According to Tim Crane, “the ’hard problem’ of consciousness is supposed to be the real heart of the mind-body problem in today’s philosophy”. The idea of the problem can be expressed in the following way: Why are the physical processes in our brain accompanied by the qualitative (or phenomenal) feel? The mere qualitative feel or qualia are those to be explained. The originator of the problem’s name is the Australian philosopher David Chalmers who divided the problems of consciousness into the ‘easy’ problems and the ‘hard’ problem. The former are ‘easy’ because they can be functionally explained. The ‘hard’ problem, in its turn, cannot. From this, it follows that the explanation of the hard problem of consciousness must be found elsewhere. Chalmers’ nonreductive theory of consciousness (or naturalistic dualism) is a serious candidate for a such-like explanation. In general, it suggests conscious experience as one of the fundamental features of our world, together with such fundamental world features as mass, charge etc. It is a general overview of David Chalmers’ philosophy of mind that is carrying out in the proposed paper.

Key words: the ‘easy’ problems and the ‘hard’ problem of consciousness, the phenomenal and psychological concepts of mind, awareness, experience, something it is like, qualia, supervenience, zombie, naturalistic dualism, the principle of structural coherence, the principle of organizational invariance, the double-aspect theory of information.

Dualists and the so-called "mysterians" aren't the only people who believe that Daniel Dennett is a "scientistic philosopher" – Dennett thinks that about himself! That is, Dennett refers to his own overriding philosophical position as "third-person absolutism".

So what does a third-person absolutist believe? According to David Chalmers, Dennett believes that “what is not externally verifiable cannot be real”. To be more explicit: there's a fundamental connection between any x being real (or existing) and whether or not we can “externally verify” that x. Thus, if we can't externally verify x, it doesn't exist. It's not real.

Dennett explains his third-person absolutism when he states the following:

"I wouldn't know what I was thinking about if I couldn't identify them by their functional differentia."

It's not surprising, then, that Dennett has asked David Chalmers

“to provide 'independent' evidence (presumably behavioral or functional evidence) for the 'postulation' of experience”.

As for David Chalmers: he classes himself as a “dualist”; or, more accurately, his position is one of "naturalistic dualism". Why “naturalist”? Because Chalmers believes that mental states and consciousness itself are caused by physical systems. So why “dualist”? Because Chalmers believes that mental states - or consciousness generally - are ontologically distinct and also irreducible to the physical.

"George Derfer, Zhihe Wang and Michel Weber (eds.), The Roar of Awakening. A Whiteheadian Dialogue Between Western Psychotherapies and Eastern Worldviews, Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster, ontos verlag, 2009. (251 p. ; ISBN: 978-3-86838-039-2 ; 89 €)
The primary goal of this volume is to describe the contemporary state of affairs in Western psychotherapy, and to do so in a Whiteheadian spirit: with genuine openness to the relative ways in which creativity, beauty, truth and peace manifest themselves in various cultural traditions. To do so, it chooses to explore afresh a cross-elucidatory path that was born with the field of history of religion (and Religionwissenschaft): what have we, and can we, learn from a dialogue with Eastern worldviews? In order to generate meaningful contrasts between these different systems of thought, all the papers address the following core issues. On the one hand, how does the given system understand the interaction of individuality, society, and nature (or cosmos)? Especially: what is its standpoint with regard to the nature of consciousness and with regard to the mind/body problem?; how far is it dualistic?; how are destiny and historicity assessed? On the other hand, what is the paradigm of all mal-adjustment (or pathology) and what is its typical tuning-in (or curative) pattern? What are furthermore the ins and outs of the diagnostic and therapeutic assessments involved? Wherever possible, some (meta)theoretical and clinical issues are addressed from the vantage point of selected material from abnormal psychology or psychiatry.
Table of contents
Contents
Contributors
Foreword — George Derfer, Zhihe Wang and Michel Weber
Introduction — Michel Weber
I. The View from the East
1. Consciousness: The Vedantic Approach to Life and Reality, Francis-Vincent Anthony
2. Dual-Aspect Framework for Consciousness, RamLakhan Pandey Vimal
3. The Paradoxes of Radical Asceticism: Jainism as a Therapeutic Paradigm, Jeffery D. Long
4. Yoga Therapeutics: Philosophical, Scientific and Humanistic Approaches, Ashok Kumar Malhotra
5. Can Indian spiritual practices be used in psychotherapy?, R L Kapur
II. Transcultural Dialogue
6. Ineradicable Frustration and Liberation in Tiantai Buddhism, Brook Ziporyn
7. An Exploration and Analysis into Chinese Traditional Psychotherapy Ideas—A Concurrent Comment on the Integrative point of view of Whitehead’s Organic Philosophy, Fengqiang Gao and Yingmin Chen
8. The Kyoto School and self-awareness in the field of the absolute nothingness —A comparison with Whitehead’s philosophy, Eiko Hanaoka
9. Jung and Hisamatsu Re-envisioning Religiosity: Jungian Psychotherapy and the Kyoto School, Tokiyuki Nobuhara
10. Reconstructing the Meaning of Being Human: A Postmodern Reinterpretation of Frankl in the Framework of Whitehead’s Philosophy, Yoshihiro Hayashi
11. The Development of Binswanger’s Daseinsanalysis, Shoji Muramoto
12. The Intercultural and Daseinsanalytical Psychiatry of Kimura Bin, Bernard Stevens
13. A Certain Form of Psychotherapy (Kenosis, Prajna, Jung, and Hillman), David T. Bradford
14. Vedanta, Process and Psychotherapy, Joseph Grange
15. On Zen Buddhism, Clive Sherlock
"

The last several years have brought a renewed willingness to take seriously the phenomena we stab at with such terms and phrases as “subjectivity,” “consciousness,” and “the character of human existence.” The tone of today’s discussion, however, is very different from that which surrounded these words a half-century ago. Then, “existentialism” referred to issues of individual authenticity and commitment, “consciousness” was closely linked with concerns about action and with notions of social and historical determination, and Jean-Paul Sartre was the master thinker. The context in which existence, subjectivity, and consciousness were discussed was predominantly moral and political. In an important sense, as today’s talk about “subject position” and “the performance of identity” suggests, that discussion is still very much alive, though the terms are different, the context has changed from History-with-a-capital-“H” to matters of justice and liberty here and now, and Michel Foucault has displaced Sartre. At the same time, though, a different kind of inquiry into existence, subjectivity, and consciousness has taken shape, focused more squarely on the nature of these phenomena: on what sort of “thing” consciousness is, for example, on whether it can be explained, and, if so, what sort of explanation is required, and on why and how it matters.

The article is a critical review of two methodological approaches presented in David Chalmers’ book Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. The first one is a problem of possible applications of quantum mechanics in the search for consciousness; the second one is its reversal, i.e. problem of possible applications of the research on consciousness in the study of quantum mechanics. Author presents shortly the history of the connection between mind and quantum mechanics, then describes Chalmers’ views on the subject and finally proposes a criticism of them. The issues under discussion are relatively fresh, quantum mechanics theory is approximately 100 years old, and modern, interdisciplinary approach to consciousness is almost equally new. The idea of their connection appeared around the time of the first formulation of quantum physics. Today, many philosophers, Chalmers included, are enthusiastic about the potential of quantum mechanics to face the “hard problem of consciousness”; all the more so because they are convinced of the major role that consciousness plays in quantum physics.

A holoflux theory of consciousness as energy is hypothesized and shown to support both local and non-local properties. This thesis emerges from an integral evaluation of evidence drawn from three sources: (1) the holonomic mind/brain theories of Karl Pribram, (2) the ontological interpretation of quantum theory by David Bohm, and (3) the hyperphysics of consciousness developed by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Applying an integral methodology to superimpose and correlate seemingly disparate concepts from among these sources and others, a composite theory emerges, a “holoflux” theory of consciousness, after the term favored by Karl Pribram to describe David Bohm’s “holomovement.” This Pribram–Bohm composite holoflux theory is shown to be congruent with established principles of physics, mathematics, and electrical engineering, as well as with what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin termed “hyperphysics.” Extending the panpsychist paradigm that consciousness is inherent in the structure of the u...

Though most neomaterialists share a commitment to the Copernican decentring of humans from the world stage, there is disagreement on the purposes of such an endeavour. The polemic stems from a fundamental discrepancy about what the return to materiality entails: is matter the principle of the non-thinking as such, or is it always already imbued with some sort of subjectivity? Is the new materialism's goal to come to terms with the non-living origin of life? Or is it rather to recognize that seemingly dead materials are always in some sense incipiently alive? For convenience , we can think of two neomaterialist perspectives: the rationalist or elim-inative neomaterialism, and the vitalist or panpsychist neomaterialism. I explore some of the conceptual problems faced by both camps and, drawing from the recently developed theory of consciousness as integrated information (Tononi), as well as its quantum physical construal by Max Tegmark, I suggest some provisional ways to address those issues.

A Memética é, então, a ciência que estuda como memes se propagam. O que a genética faz com os genes, a Memética faz com os memes. Ou, mais precisamente, o que a genética de populações e a epidemiologia fazem com as informações genéticas, a Memética faz com as informações culturais. O ponto a ser discutido então é apenas se os modelos matemáticos aplicados na primeira podem também ser usados na segunda. Isso, é claro, levanta enormes problemas. Será que a cultura realmente pode ser dividida em unidades de informação? De que são feitos os memes? Como eles são passados? Como saber se eles foram realmente passados ou não? O que determina que um meme vai infectar a mente de uma pessoa e de outra não? Quem manda no meu comportamento sou eu ou meus memes? Eu posso escolher quais memes vão me infectar? Utilizar modelos biológicos para tratar a cultura não seria reducionista e mecanicista? [...] É com este espírito que o livro foi escrito. Mas, antes de tudo, é um livro de divulgação científica. Pretende dar ao leitor a fundamentação filosófica e científica para discutir os conceitos aqui tratados. Pode, então, ser lido por um não-filósofo que só sabe de biologia aquilo que aprendeu na escola

Updated February 2022:
The creation, or emergence, of a technological singularity is the subject of a wide array of speculations. Due to their lack of tangible criteria, the prospect of an upcoming singularity is still unclear, if not completely mysterious. This paper proposes to unfold a precise and exhaustive profile that may be applicable to any class of emergent singularity. The guideline for this endeavor is Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy, as expressed in his tripartite epistemological groundwork, The Three Critiques. As Kant never intended the first two of them (Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason) to be merely descriptions of ‘human’ or ‘psychic’ cognition, they have always been an invitation to ponder non-human forms of scientific world-exploration, technical world-building, and moral behavior.
Even the Critique of Judgement, which is more focused on the evolution and culture of actual human beings, can teach us a great deal about a singularity to come. The working hypothesis is that Kant’s Three Critiques are a complete set of universal concepts and principles, involving scientific, technical, and moral reason, and that they must, as such, contain a blueprint for technological singularities. Hence, this paper deduces a set of ten laws that will govern any future singularity. By the force of these laws, the singularity must be a polycentric subject – just as we humans are. In the process, we will confirm Nick Bostrom’s orthogonality thesis, solve David Chalmers’ “hard problem” of consciousness, and confirm the unwavering validity of Kant’s critical philosophy for science and technology in the 21st century, and beyond.

Gustav Fechner, the German experimental psychologist, coined the term psychophysics in 1860, publishing the first mathematical equation to model human consciousness. Fechner assumed that any future approaches to consciousness would include mathematical and physical underpinnings. In 1995, the cognitive scientist and philosopher David Chalmers coined the phrase "the hard problem" as being that of connecting consciousness with some physical substrate.  According to Chalmers, "The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. Most existing theories of consciousness either deny the phenomenon, explain something else, or elevate the problem to an eternal mystery." As Chalmers points out, unfortunately, the modern scientific community has not yet produced a model of consciousness supported by mathematics and physics, thus no progress in Fecher's "psychophysics." 
However there is growing interest among the scientific community in string theory, the only branch of mathematical geometry that has successfully explained recent discoveries in high energy particle physics. The mathematical proof of string theory requires the existence of a ten dimensional universe.  But in trying to map consciousness, science continues to limit its data search within time and the three spatial dimensions, ignoring six of string theory's ten dimensions  Perhaps because mainstream science tacitly limits itself to four of the ten dimensions, progress has come to a dead end. Accordingly, the most widely accepted theory among neurophysiologists is that consciousness is somehow a "byproduct" of the electrical sparking of neurons, an accidental epiphenomenon of the activities of nerve-filled wet meat.
This paper considers data beyond the four dimensional constraints of the scientific establishment. It is my contention that many recorded accounts of philosophers, mystics, and shamans can and should be considered as data. My thesis is that these accounts express experience and observation within one or more of the additional dimensions predicted by string theory. Any advance in psychophysics must take into account not only the language and domains of mathematics, particle physics, and neurobiology, but also the experiential domains of philosophers and mystics. It is in regarding data from these multiple domains of inquiry that a new model of consciousness will emerge. In this paper I hypothesize a psychophysics, woven of strands from mathematics, mysticism, and physics, to address and solve "the hard problem."

These are the slides for an introductory talk about modal epistemology that I was invited to give in the context of the "What's up with …?" series at our department in Graz.
For more on this series of talks see:
http://philosophie-gewi.uni-graz.at/de/veranstaltungen/detail/cal/event/tx_cal_phpicalendar/2014/11/24/whats_up_with_modal_epistemology/

Gustav Fechner, the German experimental psychologist, coined the term psychophysics in 1860, publishing the first mathematical equation to model human consciousness.  Fechner assumed that any future approaches to consciousness would include mathematical and physical underpinnings. In 1995, the cognitive scientist and philosopher David Chalmers coined the phrase "the hard problem" as being that of connecting consciousness with some physical substrate.  According to Chalmers, "The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. Most existing theories of consciousness either deny the phenomenon, explain something else, or elevate the problem to an eternal mystery."  As Chalmers points out, unfortunately, the modern scientific community has not yet produced a model of consciousness supported by mathematics and physics, thus no progress in Fecher's "psychophysics." 
However there is growing interest among the scientific community in string theory, the only branch of mathematical geometry that has successfully explained recent discoveries in high energy particle physics. The mathematical proof of string theory requires the existence of a ten dimensional universe.  But in trying to map consciousness, science continues to limit its data search within time and the three spatial dimensions, ignoring six of string theory's ten dimensions  Perhaps because mainstream science tacitly limits itself to four of the ten dimensions, progress has come to a dead end. Accordingly, the most widely accepted theory among neurophysiologists is that consciousness is somehow a "byproduct" of the electrical sparking of neurons, an accidental epiphenomenon of the activities of nerve-filled wet meat.
This paper considers data beyond the four dimensional constraints of the scientific establishment. It is my contention that many recorded accounts of philosophers, mystics, and shamans can and should be considered as data. My thesis is that these accounts express experience and observation within one or more of the additional dimensions predicted by string theory. Any advance in understanding consciousness must take into account not only the language and domains of mathematics, particle physics, and neurobiology, but also the experiential domains of philosophers and mystics. It is in regarding data from these multiple domains of inquiry that a new model of consciousness will emerge. In this paper I hypothesize a psychophysics of consciousness, woven of strands from mathematics, mysticism, and physics, as well as contemplative participatory practice, to address and solve "the hard problem."

It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special nature of the concepts used to describe conscious states. Marc Champagne draws on the neglected branch of philosophy of signs or semiotics to develop a new take on this strategy. 

The term “semiotics” was introduced by John Locke in the modern period – its etymology is ancient Greek, and its theoretical underpinnings are medieval. Charles Sanders Peirce made major advances in semiotics, so he can act as a pipeline for these forgotten ideas. Most philosophers know Peirce as the founder of American pragmatism, but few know that he also coined the term “qualia,” which is meant to capture the intrinsic feel of an experience. Since pragmatic verification and qualia are now seen as conflicting commitments, Champagne endeavors to understand how Peirce could (or thought he could) have it both ways. The key, he suggests, is to understand how humans can insert distinctions between features that are always bound.

Recent attempts to take qualities seriously have resulted in versions of panpsychism, but Champagne outlines a more plausible way to achieve this. So, while semiotics has until now been the least known branch of philosophy ending in –ics, his book shows how a better understanding of that branch can move one of the liveliest debates in philosophy forward.

This paper explores the role that "information" may play in a new theory of consciousness.  Through the convergence of physics and neuroscience, I will argue that information is the monistic "common denominator" through which the Cartesian mind-body problem may be resolved.  The paper begins with a speculative quantum mechanical model that potentially provides the information reservoir the philosopher David Chalmers believes a "fundamental theory of consciousness" requires.  The paper next examines the model's underlying assumptions and provides supporting arguments based on Black Hole cosmology and Reversible Computers.  In the following "meditations," the model is restated, first as modes of thought and next in the context of the Hindu Aum (or Om).  Finally, the paper briefly explores the model's implications in our lives, including how prayer and intentionality may alter the probabilities of what occurs in our lives.

Gerhard Preyer

Materialismus, phänomenales Bewusstsein und eigenpsychische Basis
William G. Lycans Theory der mentalen Repräsentation und des phänomenalen Externalismus

Hardcover
https://humanities.verlags-shop.de/philosophie/materialismus-phaenomenales-bewusstsein-und-eigenpsychische-basis---1926.html

PDF
https://humanities.verlags-shop.de/philosophie/materialismus-phaenomenales-bewusstsein-und-eigenpsychische-basis-pdf---1928.html

Description

The presented study claims to orient its reader about the philosophy of the mental since the 1950s. The realization of its basic problems arose as a re-sult of the restructuring that began in the 1990s. The problem situation of the philosophy of the mental came to a head in the debate between materi-alism and antimaterialism. This is not accidental, because the antimaterial-ists, for example, Jackson and Chalmers, claimed to refute materialism. The two currents part ways in answering the ontology of phenomenal con-sciousness.
Wilham G. Lycan's theory of mental representation and phenomenal externalism is therefore a prominent position because he takes the anti-materialist arguments seriously and claims to place the analysis of phenom-enal consciousness and the subjectivity of mental states within materialism. It therefore differs from other materialists who claim to demystify it. How-ever, the study also addresses epistemological, metaphysical, and epistemo-logical issues.

Beschreibung

Die vorgelegte Untersuchung hat den Anspruch, ihren Leser über die Philosophie des Mentalen seit den 1950er Jahren zu orientieren. Die Erkenntnis ihrer Grundprobleme stellte sich in der Folge der Umschichtung seit den 1990er Jahren ein. Die Problemsituation der Philosophie des Mentalen spitzte sich in der Debatte zwischen Materialismus und Antimaterialismus zu. Das ist nicht zufällig, da die Antimaterialisten, z.B. Jackson und Chalmers, den Materialismus zu widerlegen beanspruchten. Die Wege zwischen den beiden Strömungen trennen sich in der Beantwortung der Ontologie des phänomenalen Bewusstseins.
William G. Lycans Theorie der mentalen Repräsentation und des phänomenalen Externalismus ist deshalb eine herausragende Position, da er die antimaterialistischen Argumente ernst nimmt und beansprucht, die Analyse des phänomenalen Bewusstseins und der Subjektivität von mentalen Zuständen in den Materialismus einzuordnen. Er unterscheidet sich deshalb von anderen Materialisten, die es zu entzaubern beanspruchen. Die Studie behandelt aber auch erkenntnistheoretische, metaphysische und wissenschftstheoretische Fragestellungen.


Keywords
Materialismus, Antimaterialismus, Internalismus, Externalismus, Fledermaus, Mary- und Zombie Argumente, Ontologie des Mentalen, phänomenales Bewusstsein und Sinnesdaten, Farbtheorie, Erkenntnistheorie, Wissenschaftstheorie,  Problemsituation der Philosophie des Mentalen seit den 1950er Jahren, Heidelberger Schule

The Pribram-Bohm holoflux theory, a model describing the topology of consciousness in the universe, is presented here to address the issue posed by David Chalmers in his “hard problem of consciousness.” The theory emerges from an integral evaluation of evidence drawn from two sources: (1) the holonomic mind/brain theories of Karl Pribram, (2) the ontological interpretation of quantum theory by David Bohm. From their work emerges the holoflux theory, after a term proposed by Karl Pribram to express the flow characterized by David Bohm as the “holomovement,” a two-way flow of consciousness between the explicate order and the implicate order. This hypothesis supports both local and non-local phenomena in the observable cosmos.
Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance and Ervin László’s holofield theory are examined and shown to be congruent with the holoflux theory. László’s postulated existence of two domains or dimensions of cosmological architecture, an “A-dimension” equivalent to Bohm’s implicate order and an “M-dimension,” equivalent to Bohm’s explicate, space–time material domain. Sheldrake’s morphic resonance biological forms are described as products of a Fourier transform-like process between these same two domains.
Concluding remarks support the congruence of the Pribram–Bohm topological model with other major paradigms of consciousness, including those elaborated by Chalmers, Lilly, Block, and Teilhard de Chardin.

Panpsychism, the view that phenomenal perception is a fundamental property of the universe, is one of the oldest theories in philosophy of mind. While it may seem counter-intuitive at first glance, panpsychism deftly avoids many of the glaring problems in the various forms of dualism and materialism. The central challenge to panpsychism is the combination problem: How to integrate fundamental units of conscious experience, which is usually considered an indivisible property, into one larger individual subject; in other words, how to form a macro-subject from micro-subjects. Several authors consider the combination problem to be insurmountable, and to require a retreat from a strong panphsychist view to a neutral monism. I argue that a reappraisal of the work of Leibniz in this area gives an informative perspective on this problem, and moves us further toward its dissolution.

David Chalmers gives the classical statement of the mind-body problem, which is that of finding a physical basis for our conscious experiences.  As Chalmers writes, “we have no good explanation of why and how [consciousness] so arises.”  To solve the “hard problem” of consciousness requires an “explanatory bridge” that would link conscious processes to “the structure and dynamics of physical processes.”  But, up to the present, no satisfactory linkage has been proposed.  In this article, I shall take a novel approach to this problem.  First, I shall trace its source to the transformation of science initiated by Descartes’ mathematization of nature, a mathematization that drains time from space.  Against this, I will argue that space and time cannot be conceived apart from each other.  I will then propose that their common ground is to be found in what, following the Czech philosopher, Jan Patočka, we can call “ontological” motion.  Such motion, understood as actualization, will be seen to ground both being and appearing.  As such, it realizes the physical processes occurring in our brains and the appearing that is their correlate.  This ontological motion, I will argue, is recursive.

"Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes (eds.), Process Approaches to Consciousness in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Philosophy of Mind, Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 2009. (484 p. ; ISBN 978-1-4384-2941-0 ; 65,32 €) (Jan 2011, paperback, ISBN 978-1-4384-2940-3)
A good part of what fuels the current boom in consciousness studies is the robust progress of cognitive psychology and neuroscience toward reaching consensus explanations of just about anything except consciousness. Despite hopes that empirical research and computational modeling would constrain theory, it seems that scholarly debate has not so much reached an impasse as remained at one reached in the 17th century. Given the massive effort currently invested in research and debate, the lack of progress towards a general (and generally accepted) theory of consciousness begins indeed to make consciousness look like a kind of 21st century Philosopher’s Stone, whose hidden nature seems to hold the key to the greatest mysteries, but continues to elude us. Accordingly, the present volume taps leading researchers and theorists in the study of consciousness and Whitehead scholars to explore an interface between process thinking and the burgeoning field of consciousness studies. In sum, the rationale for such a project has two main facets: first, the state of an educated debate that seems, first, unproductive and peculiarly burdened by its deep modernist origins; and, secondly, marked more by disciplinary rivalry than interdisciplinary synthesis.
Table of Contents
List of Contributors
Preface, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes
1. Main Themes of the Book
2. Précis of the Contributions
I. Introductory Essays, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes
1. Process Thought as a Heuristic for Investigating Consciousness
2. Whitehead as a Neglected Figure of 20th Century Philosophy
3. Consciousness as a Topic of Investigation in Western Thought
4. Whitehead’s Unique Approach to the Topic of Consciousness
II. Psychology and Philosophy of Mind
5. Consciousness as a Subjective Form, David Ray Griffin (Claremont)
6. The Interpretation and Integration of the Literature on Consciousness from a Process Perspective, Michael W. Katzko (Nijmegen)
7. Windows on Nonhuman Minds, Donald R. Griffin (Harvard)
III. From Metaphysics to (Neuro-)Science and Back Again
8. Panexperientialism, Quantum Theory, and Neuroplasticity, George W. Shields (Kentucky State)
9. The Evolution of Consciousness, Max Velmans (Goldsmiths)
10. The Carrier Theory Of Causation, Gregg H. Rosenberg (New York)
IV. Applications to Psychiatry: Consciousness as Process
11. The Microgenetic Revolution in Contemporary Neuropsychology and Neurolinguistics, Maria Pachalska (Lublin and Gdansk) and Bruce Duncan MacQueen (Bydgoszcz)
12. From Coma to Consciousness, Avraham Schweiger (Tel Aviv), Michael Frost (Tel Aviv) , Ofer Keren (Raanana and Tel-Aviv)
13. Consciousness and Rationality from a Process Perspective, Michel Weber (Chromatiques)
V. History (and Future?) of Philosophy
14. Consciousness, Memory, and Recollection according to Whitehead, Xavier Verley (Toulouse le Mirail)
15. Consciousness and Causation in Light of Whitehead’s Phenomenology of Becoming, Anderson Weekes (New York)"

In "Psychopower and Ordinary Madness" my ambition, as it relates to Bernard Stiegler's recent literature, was twofold: 1) critiquing Stiegler's work on exosomatization and artefactual posthumanism-or, more specifically, nonhumanism-to problematize approaches to media archaeology that rely upon technical exteriorization; 2) challenging how Stiegler engages with Giuseppe Longo and Francis Bailly's conception of negative entropy. These efforts were directed by a prevalent techno-cultural qualifier: the rise of Synthetic Intelligence (including neural nets, deep learning, predictive processing and Bayesian models of cognition). This paper continues this project but first directs a critical analytic lens at the Derridean practice of the ontologization of grammatization from which Stiegler emerges while also distinguishing how metalanguages operate in relation to object-oriented environmental interaction by way of inferentialism. Stalking continental (Kapp, Simondon, Leroi-Gourhan, etc.) and analytic traditions (e.g., Carnap, Chalmers, Clark, Sutton, Novaes, etc.), we move from artefacts to AI and Predictive Processing so as to link theories related to technicity with philosophy of mind. Simultaneously drawing forth Robert Brandom's conceptualization of the roles that commitments play in retrospectively reconstructing the social experiences that lead to our endorsement(s) of norms, we compliment this account with Reza Negarestani's deprivatized account of intelligence while analyzing the equipollent role between language and media (both digital and analog).

This is the initial draft of my upcoming talk in the International Hegel Congress in Tampere.

The motivation of this talk is to sketch the outline of a potential application of Hegel's metaphysics to a specific problem in contemporary philosophy of mind. Specifically, I will argue that approaching what David Chalmers called as the hard problem of consciousness equipped with Hegel's concept of the true infinite opens up some novel conceptual possibilities on this central problem of the contemporary philosophy of mind.

Surveys and contextualizes recent New Zealand artists' cinema by genre including, Landscape, Psychodrama, Identity Politics, Visual Music, Installed & Expanded Cinemas, and Animation. Touches on aspects of Asian and Western philosophy that resonate with cinema, art, perception and consciousness. From Diary of a Viewer, Part Three
Includes updates and revisions covering some work produced after the initial publication of this article in Illusions Magazine.

See also: Before Artists' Cinema

Our point is to show that the hard-problem of consciousness is not a scientific problem but a methodological problem. If we understand that the physicalism  of consciousness is a reduce view of an macro phenomena, it become easy to exceed it. How ? By a true thinking of the organism : not the cartesian one, the machine, but the autopoietic one. By putting subjectivity in the center of his ontology of living, Francisco Varela gives us all we need ton explain how consciousness is embodied. If experience is subjective, it is because structures who give rise to it are too.

I suggest that John Dewey’s approach to the problem of consciousness is both methodologically and metaphysically superior to those found in contemporary debates. Dewey advances a picture of consciousness that avoids the mistakes present in the three major tendencies in contemporary philosophy of consciousness, namely, David J. Chalmers’s Naturalistic Dualism, the Phenomenal Concept Strategy, and Daniel C. Dennett’s A Priori Physicalism. I argue that Dewey’s philosophy of consciousness shows that Naturalistic Dualism is wrong, that the Phenomenal Concept Strategy could be better, and thar A Priori Physicalism goes too far.

In this paper, I will critically consider Clark and Chalmers' hypothesis of the «extended mind» in order to sketch a possible phenomenological account of active externalism, by following three steps: (i) I will consider Clark and Chalmers' hypothesis within the broader context of the so-called «physical symbol system hypothesis» theorized by Herbert A. Simon; (ii) I will connect the problem of the «extended mind» to that of the «extended self», with particular regard to the context of digitalization; (iii) I will take into account an explanatory dimension that has been fundamentally underrated by externalist theories: the dimension of the human body and its relationship to mind, which I understand from a phenomenological perspective. My ultimate goal is to show how phenomenology could provide the missing theoretical framework to develop a more complex and comprehensive theory of the (digitally) extended self.

The Twin Earth scenario assumes reference to natural kinds is unique and never changes (rigid designation), and that we can give justice to the intuition of reference-permanence and things having a deep structure only by pushing meaning outside the brain or mind (semantic externalism). This, I'll show, doesn't follow. Besides, the intuition itself is misconstrued here. To say the term “water” expressed a thought or concept or belief denoting H2O before its actual discovery around 1750, is to make a claim without real content and be guilty of after-the-fact rationalizing. If anything, Twin Earth undercuts the theory of semantic externalism and its core-notion of rigid designation. A pluralized, descriptivist model of reference, I claim, is a better fit for our scientific data and ordinary intuitions either way.

O argumento dos zumbis surgiu em 1974 em um artigo de Robert Kirk, mas foi com o livro The Conscious Mind (1996), de David Chalmers, que ele ganha um papel de destaque dentro da filosofia da mente. Tal argumento, que tem várias versões diferentes, tem como principal objetivo uma refutação do materialismo. De maneira muito resumida, ele diz que se for possível pensar em um zumbi físico, ser que seria fisicamente idêntico a um ser humano, mas sem estados qualitativos conscientes, ou seja, sem qualia, então tais estados não podem ser físicos. Se tais estados fossem físicos teria que faltar algo a tal zumbi. Deste modo, a única coisa que precisaria ser feita para refutar o materialismo seria mostrar que tal ser é concebível. No entanto, várias críticas surgiram e seu principal crítico, Daniel Dennett, tem ganhado apoio em sua defesa de que tais zumbis são logicamente impossíveis, ou seja, são inconcebíveis.

A experiência é considerada o verdadeiro ‘problema difícil’' (“hard problem”) da consciência. O problema só é difícil (e, para alguns, intratável!) diante da insistência em explicá-la sob uma perspectiva materialista. Nas linhas abaixo tentarei resumir porque o materialismo não tem sequer um ponto de partida para explicar a experiência, e porque abordagens não-reducionistas parecem fazer muito mais sentido. Explicações não-reducionistas colocam a experiência numa posição privilegiada na natureza, elevando-a ao status de um
primitivo ontológico, i.e, uma entidade/propriedade fundamental no Cosmos, tal como cargas e forças eletromagnéticas, massa e espaço-tempo. Também levantarei alguns problemas com a perspectiva não-reducionista pampsiquista de David Chalmers e sinalizarei alguns tópicos de pesquisa empírica que andam levando importantes cientistas e teóricos a passar a admitir a falsidade do materialismo mecanicista-reducionista até mesmo para lidar com os 'problemas fáceis' da consciência.

This paper suggests that reference to phenomenal qualities is best understood as involving iconicity, that is, a passage from sign-vehicle to object that exploits a similarity between the two. This contrasts with a version of the ‘phenomenal concept strategy’ that takes indexicality to be central. However, since it is doubtful that phenomenal qualities are capable of causally interacting with anything, indexical reference seems inappropriate. While a theorist like David Papineau is independently coming to something akin to iconicity, I think some of the awkwardness that plagues his account would be remedied by transitioning to a more inclusive philosophy of signs.

In this paper, I try to reconstruct in maximum detail the notion of qualia using some important ideas coming from the phenomenological tradition (i.e. pre-reflexive self-consciousness, embodied cognition, cognitive qualia) as well as empirical results of neuroscience (i.e. split-brain, blindsight, visual perception, microconsciousness). Then, I look for a theory which best describes the notion of qualia, received in this way. I show that most of phenomenological, neurobiological and common-sense postulates are met by two representational theories of qualia – Tye’s FOR and Carruthers’ HOT. A metatheoretical problem, which I deal with, is the ontological status of qualia – namely whether they are reducible to physical properties. In this respect, I analyse Chalmers’ zombie argument against this sort of reduction and materialists’ replicas. I show that a certain type of phenomenal concept strategy replies is a promising way of dealing with the two-dimensional version of zombie argument. Moreover, I provide and explanation of how the representational theories, which are type B materialism according to Chalmers’ typology, can support these versions of phenomenal concept strategies.

Chalmers proposes a notion of conceivability such that it entails possibility of a certain kind - primary possibilities, and defines the a priori in terms of primary necessities. I discuss problems with his project. I will also point out that what he takes to be primarily possible, that water is XYZ, is not primarily possible. I will end with a positive account.

How do we know what is or is not possible? Traditionally, the answer was that whatever is conceivable is possible. However, since Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity and Identity and Necessity, this line of thought has fallen on hard times. Modal Skepticism replaced modal rationalism. This paper explores the issue of modal epistemology, arguing that through conceiving properly, we can have some reliable modal knowledge despite incidents of modal error.

To begin, the editors cite their approved very general definition of their central term: “Panpsychism is the doctrine that mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throughout the universe” (p. 1). However, this generic definition says nothing about the size, shape, or nature of the original or primal “minds” or “mind” from which all other minds derive. This question of the fundamental nature of experiencing entities or fields seems to be the major one being addressed in these pages.

Bir aşçı hayvanlara zulüm ile suçlandı. Aşçı, sıcak tabağa acı içinde bükülüp kıvranan canlı karidesler koymuştu. Davası düştü, çünkü karideslerin acı çekip çekmediği hususunda uzman görüşü almak imkansızdı. Karideslerin davranışları, gerçekten acı çektiklerini düşünmeyi kolaylaştırmış olsa da belki de davranıştan daha fazla bir şey yoktu -belki de gerçekten bir lastik bandın gevşeyip bükülmesinden daha fazla herhangi bir duyguya sahip değillerdi.

Der alte Streit zwischen Materialisten und Cartesianer ist noch heute virulent, auch wenn – oder gerade weil – die heutigen »Internalisten« und »Naturalisten« kaum zur Kenntnis nehmen, dass die Rahmenbedingungen ihrer Kontroverse unmittelbar aus der frühen Neuzeit entlehnt sind. Diese historische und begriffliche Herkunft ihrer Grundsätze und Problemstellungen möchte ich in drei Hauptschritten herausarbeiten. Zunächst wird das maßgebliche Argument gegen den Naturalismus noch einmal betrachtet, gegen das Frederick Dretske in seiner Naturalisierung des Geistes (1998) argumentiert (§ 2). Dieses Argument wird sich als purer Cartesianismus erweisen, dessen heute noch gängiger methodologischer Grundsatz sogar noch viel älter ist. Letzter Grundsatz wird in methodologischer sowie historischer Hinsicht kritisch geprüft (§§ 3–5). Anschließend werden die Grundprinzipien von Dretskes »Repräsentationsthese« herausgestellt (§ 6) und gleichermaßen kritisch geprüft (§ 7). Im Endergebnis zeichnet sich eine „geänderte Methode der Denkungsart“ ab, die aufschließt, dass weite Teile der »heutigen« Philosophie, besonders im angelsächsischen Sprachraum, grundsätzlich vorkantisch, ja sogar mittelalterlich sind (§ 8).