Abstract

This thesis includes both critical and constructive components. It presents ontological and epistemic arguments against reductive, physicalist accounts of consciousness and develops a limited form of content-first dual aspect theory as an alternative. Phenomenally conscious states, states that it is like something to have, are hypothesized to be dependent on, but irreducible to, certain sorts of information states. The cost of this position is not the unity of science but the inflation of our ontology. ;The case for inflation is supported by three lines of discussion. The second part of the thesis presents a general argument undermining theories that seek to reduce phenomenal consciousness to intentional, representational relations. It is argued that conceived as an intentional property, information is agent dependent because it is interest dependent. This dependence on normative properties renders information, and thus phenomenal consciousness, irreducible to states described in wholly physical terms. The third part of the thesis provides a typology of consciousness and shows that certain kinds of phenomenal states are particularly resistant to reduction. The forth and final set of chapters show that, in addition to the standard "hard problem" of explaining how any sort of phenomenal state could occur, there is a further question that must be answered by any satisfactory theory of phenomenal consciousness, and that although it cannot be decided empirically, we can at least understand something of why it cannot be so decided. In the course of presenting these three objections to reductionism, the assumptions and implications of a content-first limited dual aspect theory are discussed. The final chapter sets this theory out in some detail