It’s often held that undetectable inversion of mental qualities is, if not possible, at least conceivable. It’s thought to be conceivable that the mental quality your visual states exhibit when you see something red in standard conditions is literally of the same type as the mental quality my visual states exhibit when I see something green in such circumstances. It’s thought, moreover, to be conceivable that such inversion of mental qualities could be wholly undetectable by any third-person means. And since (...) first- person access is limited to a single individual, and so could not reveal a disparity in mental quality between us, third-person undetectability means undetectability tout court. (shrink)

MS, under submission, derived from a Powerpoint presentation at a Conference on Consciousness, Memory, and Perception, in honor of Larry Weiskrantz, City University, London, September 15, 2006.

A touchstone of much modern theorizing about the mind is the idea, still tac- itly accepted by many, that a state's being mental implies that it's conscious. This view is epitomized in the dictum, put forth by theorists as otherwise di-.

Quality-space theory (QST) explains the nature of the mental qualities distinctive of perceptual states by appeal to their role in perceiving. QST is typically described in terms of the mental qualities that pertain to color. Here we apply QST to the olfactory modalities. Olfaction is in various respects more complex than vision, and so provides a useful test case for QST. To determine whether QST can deal with the challenges olfaction presents, we show how a quality space (QS) could be (...) constructed relying on olfactory perceptible properties and the olfactory mental qualities then defined by appeal to that QS of olfactory perceptible properties. We also consider how to delimit the olfactory QS from other modalities. We further apply QST to the role that experience plays in refining our olfactory discriminative abilities and the occurrence of olfactory mental qualities in non-conscious olfactory states. QST is shown to be fully applicable to and useful for understanding the complex domain of olfaction. (shrink)

Conscious mental states are states we are in some way aware of. I compare higher-order theories of consciousness, which explain consciousness by appeal to such higher-order awareness (HOA), and first-order theories, which do not, and I argue that higher-order theories have substantial explanatory advantages. The higher-order nature of our awareness of our conscious states suggests an analogy with the metacognition that figures in the regulation of psychological processes and behaviour. I argue that, although both consciousness and metacognition involve higher-order psychological (...) states, they have little more in common. One thing they do share is the possibility of misrepresentation; just as metacognitive processing can misrepresent one’s cognitive states and abilities, so the HOA in virtue of which one’s mental states are conscious can, and sometimes does, misdescribe those states. A striking difference between the two, however, has to do with utility for psychological processing. Metacognition has considerable benefit for psychological processing; in contrast, it is unlikely that there is much, if any, utility to mental states’ being conscious over and above the utility those states have when they are not conscious. (shrink)

in Encyclopedia of Consciousness, ed. William P. Banks, Amsterdam: Elsevier, forthcoming in 2009.

I begin by discussing an objection often lodged against higher-order theories of consciousness. The objection is that those theories do not preclude consciousness from misrepresenting the mental properties of our conscious states. I argue that there are several reasons why this objection cannot succeed. Sam Coleman agrees that the objection fails, but sees it as pointing to a related objection, which he argues poses difficulties the higher-order theorist cannot avoid. His solution is a variant theory of consciousness that invokes mental (...) quotation in the content of a higher-order awareness. I’ll argue that mental quotation cannot be understood in any way that helps with the objection. I’ll argue also that the objection Coleman articulates is question begging, since it in effect simply channels a first-order approach to consciousness, and has no independent basis apart from that. Resumo: Começo por discutir uma objeção muitas vezes apresentada contra as teorias da consciência de ordem superior. A objeção é que essas teorias não impedem a consciência de representar de modo errôneo as propriedades mentais de nossos estados conscientes. Eu argumento que existem várias razões pelas quais essa objeção não pode ter sucesso. Sam Coleman concorda que a objeção falha, mas a vê como apontando para uma objeção relacionada, que ele argumenta apresentar dificuldades que o teórico do pensamento de ordem superior não pode evitar. Sua solução é uma variante desta teoria, que invoca a “citação mental” como conteúdo da consciência de ordem superior. Eu argumentarei que a citação mental não pode ser entendida de alguma forma que satisfaça tal objeção. Argumentarei também que a objeção que Coleman articula incorre em petição de princípio, uma vez que, na prática, ela simplesmente escolhe uma abordagem de primeira ordem para a consciência, e não tem nenhuma justificativa independente para isso. (shrink)

Birch et. al. see their model as incompatible with higher-order-thought (HOT) theories of consciousness, on which a state is conscious if one is in some suitable way aware of that state. They see higher-order (HO) awareness as an “extra ingredient”. But since Birch et al go on to say that “[t]his is not the place for a detailed discussion of HOT theories,” they don’t address why they take HO awareness to be an extra ingredient or why HOT theorists are convinced (...) that it’s needed. In this commentary we argue that higher-order theories are a crucial for understanding consciousness. (shrink)

Moore’s paradox occurs with sentences, such as (1) It’s raining and I don’t think it’s raining. which are self-defeating in a way that prevents one from making an asser- tion with them.1 But Mark Crimmins has given us a case of a sentence that is syntactically just like (1) but is nonetheless assertible. Suppose I know somebody, and know or have excellent reason to believe that I know that very person under some other guise. I do not know what that (...) other guise is, though I do know that I believe that the person I know under that other guise is an idiot. (shrink)

All mental states, including thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and sensations, often occur consciously. But they all occur also without being conscious. So the first thing a theory of consciousness must do is explain the difference between thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and sensations that are conscious and those which are not.

A recent fMRI study by Webb et al. (Cortical networks involved in visual awareness independent of visual attention, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2016;113:13923–28) proposes a new method for finding the neural correlates of awareness by matching atten- tion across awareness conditions. The experimental design, however, seems at odds with known features of attention. We highlight logical and methodological points that are critical when trying to disentangle attention and awareness.

consciousness. Such unconscious processing always " Cambridge, UK " tends to re?ect habitual or strong responses. From this.

There are a few things I’d like to say in reply to Adrienne Prettyman’s interesting paper, “Empty Thoughts: An Explanatory Problem for Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness,” in which she discusses the objection to higher-order theories from the possibility those theories leave open that a higher-order awareness represents one as being in a state that one is not actually in.

The major goal of René Descartes’s rich and penetrating recent book, Meditations on First Philosophy, is to develop a methodology for the discovery of the truth, more specifically, a methodology that accommodates the dictates of a mathematical physics for our view of physical reality. Such a methodology must accordingly deal with and seek to defuse the apparent conflict between a mathematical physics and our commonsense picture of things, a conflict that continues to pose difficult challenges. Though much in the book (...) is devoted to an account of the mind, that focus results from the broader goal of finding a methodology for discovery that will deliver an overall picture of reality consonant with a mathematical physics. Much that Descartes says in this book may strike many readers as extravagant and implausible, and perhaps hardly worth serious consideration. But there is a line of argument one can extract that is challenging and often compelling, even if not in the end wholly convincin .. (shrink)

MS., for an Eastern Division APA Author-Meets-Critics Session on Dorit Bar-On, Speaking My Mind: Expression and Self-Knowledge, Baltimore, December 2007.

The main goal of Deborah Modrak's penetrating and compelling discussion is to show that Aristotle subscribed "to an integrated model of perceptual and noetic functions" (268). Using Aristotle's phrase (Γ4, 429b13, 21), Modrak describes the integrated model as the view that "the noetic faculty is the perceptual faculty differently disposed" (283). She notes that this interpretation faces certain difficulties, but argues forcefully and incisively that it can nonetheless be sustained.

In these comments on Bernard Williams's probing and provocative paper, I shall first try to develop a line of response to the pair of problems Williams poses concerning Aristotle's account of soul. I shall then offer some reactions, of a more general sort, to his discussion of hylomorphism (henceforth "HMism"). In particular, I want to suggest that, though HMism is in part a form of inoffensive materialism, it is more than just that. And I want to urge also that HMism (...) need not be tempted towards the quasi-dualist position that Williams describes. (shrink)

in Mind and Consciousness: Five Questions, ed. Patrick Grim, New York and London: Automatic Press, forthcoming.

1. To refute this theory: consciousness is intrinsic to being an intentional or sensory mental state; one cannot understand what it is for states to have sensory or intentional character without knowing what it is for those states to be conscious.

(not intended for publication), Replies to Strawson and Block in Colloquium at the CUNY Graduate Center, December 13, 2006.

A striking difference between those fields we classify as humanities and those we regard as sciences is the attitude within each field toward its history. Learning about literature, music, or the visual arts requires becoming knowledgeable about a significant amount of the history of those areas. And education in these fields, at whatever level, invariably involves some study of great accomplishments in the past. By contrast, scientific work and standard scientific textbooks make little reference to the history of the science (...) in question, and such reference is typically relegated to the appreciative mention in passing of important empirical discoveries or theoretical innovations. And professional training in the sciences, both graduate and undergraduate, involves no serious examination of the achievements or methodology of past scientific work, no matter how impressive and influential those achievements may have been. Progress dominates thinking in the sciences, and that emphasis may seem to explain such casual and occasionally condescending reference to the history of the sciences. But progress occurs in the humanities as well; even if some of the greatest artistic accomplishments are well in the past, there is remarkable innovation in style, technique, and methodology in the various arts. Some of the most monumental accomplishments in the sciences, moreover, are historical; nobody is likely to surpass the quality and importance of Newton's achievements, and few will ever equal those of Einstein. So it is unlikely that attitudes towards progress or past accomplishments can explain the divergent attitudes that fields in the sciences and humanities exhibit towards their own history. We can better understand this contrast by appeal to a characteristic feature of the arts. Nobody today writes in the manner of Milton, Racine, or Shakespeare, or composes in the manner of Bach or Beethoven, or paints in the style of Vermeer, Renoir, or Da Vinci. Even Picasso's early, somewhat ostentatious paintings in the styles of various past masters were more to show his prodigious abilities than they were original artistic endeavors.. (shrink)

PowerPoint presentation at Tucson VII, Toward a Science of Consciousness 2006, session on Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness.

Few contemporary researchers in psychology, philosophy, and the cognitive sciences have any doubt about whether mental phenomena occur without being conscious. There is extensive and convincing clinical and experimental evidence for the existence of thoughts, desires, and related mental states that aren’t conscious. We characterize thoughts, desires, intentions, expectations, hopes, and many other mental states in terms of the things they are about and, more fully, in terms of their content, as captured by a sentence nominalization, such as a clause (...) beginning with the word ‘that’. The philosophical literature follows Franz Brentano’s adaptation of Thomist terminology in referring to all such states as intentional states. But there is another type of mental phenomena, which lack intentionality and whose mental nature consists instead of some qualitative feature. These states include bodily sensations, such as aches and pains, and perceptual states, such as visual sensations of color and tactile sensations of heat and cold. And these states all exhibit some mental quality or another, such as the mental quality distinctive of pain or the mental quality of red or blue.1 And even theorists who acknowledge that intentional states can and do occur without being conscious have sometimes insisted that qualitative states cannot. There is, according to these theorists, nothing to a state’s being qualitative or exhibiting some mental quality unless that state is conscious – unless it is, as we might metaphorically say, “lighted up”. It’s striking that Freud himself seems to have adopted this double standard toward the two types of mental state. In his metapsychological paper, “The Unconscious”, for example, he writes that “all the categories which we employ to describe conscious mental acts, such as ideas, purposes, resolutions, and so forth, can be applied to [unconscious mental occurrences]” (Freud 1915e, p. 168). But he seems here to have in.. (shrink)

But there is another reason, equally important. We distinguish among thoughts, feelings, and sensations by virtue of their characteristic representational properties. In particular, we describe thoughts and emotions in terms of the things they are about and how they represent those things. And we characterize sensations by reference to their qualitative properties and the things..

A full description of the emotions does inevitably make reference to their intentional content. States such as joy, fear, anger, astonishment, sorrow, delight, and disappointment are all about things, and they all represent those things as having certain properties. The emotions, like cognitive states, do have intentional content, but it is equally plain that the emotions are not just special cases of propositional attitudes, but are distinctive types of mental state. What is it, then, that distinguishes the emotions from cognitive (...) states? Part of the answer doubtless lies with the phenomenal feel that emotions exhibit. There is normally a particular way one feels when one is angry, joyful, jealous, afraid, or sad, whereas the propositional attitudes have no such phenomenal aspect. Although the occurrence of some phenomenal feel or other is characteristic of most emotions, phenomenal feel is a lot less central to the nature of those states than is often supposed. There is more to something's being a self than the collection of mental states it is in; those states must go together in a way that results in some characteristic unity and individuality. After briefly reviewing some general issues that arise in explaining consciousness, I put forth and briefly defend a hypothesis about what it is for mental states to be conscious and about how conscious mental states differ from those which are not. Using that hypothesis, then, I develop an explanation both of why all verbally expressed cognitive states are conscious and why affective states may well fail to be conscious even when verbally expressed. (shrink)

, encapsulates his deep hostility to Marxist thinking. his deep hostility to Marxist thinking. his deep hostility to Marxist thinking. his deep hostility to Marxist thinking. By contrast, my own allusion is friendly, By contrast, my own allusion is friendly, and is meant to point up a nice parallel and is meant to point up a nice parallel my argument has with a schematic my argument has with a schematic aspect of Marx’s thinking. aspect of Marx’s thinking.

The focus of Mark Rowlands’s admirable, richly argued book is phenomenal consciousness, in particular, how such consciousness arises from processes that are not themselves phenomenally conscious. Rowlands examines several views on this question, arguing that their failures point toward his own intriguing, novel position, which he develops in the final three chapters.