... Omnistent, Arch-istent, and Prim-istent Realities l "Searching for the Ox. The beast has never gone astray, and what is the use of searching for him? ...

Could robots be genuinely intelligent? Could they be conscious? Could there be zombies? Prompted by these questions Robert Kirk introduces the main problems of consciousness and sets out a new approach to solving them. He starts by discussing behaviourism, Turing's test of intelligence and Searle's famous Chinese Room argument, and goes on to examine dualism – the idea that consciousness requires something beyond the physical – together with its opposite, physicalism. Probing the idea of zombies, he concludes they (...) are logically impossible. Having presented the central problems, he sketches his solution: a version of functionalism, according to which consciousness consists in the performance of functions. While there is wide agreement among philosophers about what the main problems of consciousness are, there is little agreement on how to go about solving them. With this powerful case for his version of functionalism, Kirk offers an engaging introduction to both the problems and a possible solution. (shrink)

A guide to aligning your life with the frequencies of the Nine Waves of Creation.

What do psychedelics reveal about consciousness? What impact have psychedelics had on philosophy? In this rapidly growing area of study, this is the first volume to explore the philosophy of psychedelic experience, from a range of interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives. In doing so, Philosophy and Psychedelics reveals just why the place of psychedelics in our societies should not be left to medical sciences alone, as psychedelic experience opens up new perspectives on fundamental philosophical questions relating to human experience, ethics, (...) and the metaphysics of mind. Mapping a range of philosophical responses to the surge in studies into psychedelic drugs in the cognitive sciences, this go-to volume examines topics including psychedelics and the role of governance; psychedelics and mysticism; what psychedelics can tell us about dyadic thankfulness; and psychedelics as ways to gain new knowledge. Written by leading international scholars, the essays cover Western and non-Western traditions, from analytic philosophy to Zen Buddhism, and discuss a variety of hallucinogens, such as LSD, MDMA, and Ayahuasca, in order to build a much-needed bridge between the rapidly growing scientific research and the philosophy behind psychedelic experience. (shrink)

What should philosophical theology look like after the critique of Onto-theology, after Phenomenology, and in the age of Speculative Realism? What does Kabbalah have to say to Philosophy? Since Kant and especially since Husserl, philosophy has only permitted itself to speak about how one relates to God in terms of the intentionality of consciousness and not of how God is in himself. This meant that one could only ever speak to God as an addressed and yearned-for holy Thou, but (...) not to God as infinite creator of all. In this book-length essay, the author argues that reality itself is made up of the Holy Name of God. Drawing upon the set-theoretical ontology of Alain Badiou, the computational theory of Stephen Wolfram, the physics of Frank Tipler, the psychoanalytical theory of Jacques Lacan, and the genius of Georg Cantor, the author works to demonstrate that the universe is a computer processing the divine Name and that all existence is made of information (the bit). As a result of this ontic pan-computationalism, it is shown that the future resurrection of the dead can take place and how it may in fact occur. Along the way, the book also offers compelling critiques of several significant theories of reality, including the phenomenological theologies of Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion, Process Theology, and Object-Oriented Ontology. Reality in the Name of God explores how the concepts of Jewish mysticism can be articulated and deployed as philosophical theses within current metaphysical debates. It provides a new and dynamic Structural Realist ontology of information. Ultimately, the book aims to deal a death blow to the restriction of philosophy and theology in relation to elaborations of a how a believer relates to a God outside the mind and to return thought to a direct encounter with the divine nature of reality itself and its creator"--Website of the publisher, October 19, 2020. (shrink)

The book is an extended study of the problem of consciousness. After setting up the problem, I argue that reductive explanation of consciousness is impossible , and that if one takes consciousness seriously, one has to go beyond a strict materialist framework. In the second half of the book, I move toward a positive theory of consciousness with fundamental laws linking the physical and the experiential in a systematic way. Finally, I use the ideas and arguments (...) developed earlier to defend a form of strong artificial intelligence and to analyze some problems in the foundations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Little, Brown, 1992 Review by Glenn Branch on Jul 5th 1999 Volume: 3, Number: 27.

I. Homeric Hymn to Apollo 334: κκλντε νν μοι γαα κα ορανòσ ερσ περθεν, TιτǴνεσ τε θεοιí π χθον ναιετοντεσ τρταρον μφ μγαν, τν ξ νδρεσ τε θεο τε.

οδ γρ εδεης νδρ νον οδ γυναι πρν πειρηθεης σπερ ποζγου, οδ κεν εκσσαις σπερ ποτ’ ς ριον λθν. πολλκι γνμην ξαπατσ’ δαι. ς ριον A , σριον the rest.

Amidst the many brain events evoked by a visual stimulus, which are specifically associated with conscious perception, and which merely reflect non-conscious processing? Several recent neuroimaging studies have contrasted conscious and non-conscious visual processing, but their results appear inconsistent. Some support a correlation of conscious perception with early occipital events, others with late parieto-frontal activity. Here we attempt to make sense of those dissenting results. On the basis of a minimal neuro-computational model, the global neuronal workspace hypothesis, we propose a (...) taxonomy which distinguishes between vigilance and access to conscious report, as well as between subliminal, preconscious and conscious processing. We suggest that these distinctions map onto different neural mechanisms, and that conscious perception is systematically associated with a sudden surge of parieto-frontal activity causing top-down amplification. (shrink)

How can we disentangle the neural basis of phenomenal consciousness from the neural machinery of the cognitive access that underlies reports of phenomenal consciousness? We can see the problem in stark form if we ask how we could tell whether representations inside a Fodorian module are phenomenally conscious. The methodology would seem straightforward: find the neural natural kinds that are the basis of phenomenal consciousness in clear cases when subjects are completely confident and we have no reason (...) to doubt their authority, and look to see whether those neural natural kinds exist within Fodorian modules. But a puzzle arises: do we include the machinery underlying reportability within the neural natural kinds of the clear cases? If the answer is ‘Yes’, then there can be no phenomenally conscious representations in Fodorian modules. But how can we know if the answer is ‘Yes’? The suggested methodology requires an answer to the question it was supposed to answer! The paper argues for an abstract solution to the problem and exhibits a source of empirical data that is relevant, data that show that in a certain sense phenomenal consciousness overflows cognitive accessibility. The paper argues that we can find a neural realizer of this overflow if assume that the neural basis of phenomenal consciousness does not include the neural basis of cognitive accessibility and that this assumption is justified by the explanations it allows. (shrink)

How can phenomenal consciousness exist as an integral part of a physical universe? How can the technicolour phenomenology of our inner lives be created out of the complex neural activities of our brains? Many have despaired of finding answers to these questions; and many have claimed that human consciousness is inherently mysterious. Peter Carruthers argues, on the contrary, that the subjective feel of our experience is fully explicable in naturalistic terms. Drawing on a variety of interdisciplinary resources, he (...) develops and defends a novel account in terms of higher-order thought. He shows that this can explain away some of the more extravagant claims made about phenomenal consciousness, while substantively explaining the key subjectivity of our experience. Written with characteristic clarity and directness, and surveying a wide range of extant theories, this book is essential reading for all those within philosophy and psychology interested in the problem of consciousness. (shrink)

It is well known that Hegel’s earliest explicit mention of Adam Smith is to be found in the first set of the Jenaer Systementwurfe, a text previously known under J. Hoffmeister’s title Jenenser Realphilosophie I. In this text, Hegel sums up the example by which Smith illustrates the division of labor: the manufacturing of pins. In a marginal note to this exposition, the name “Smith” appears with a page reference. It is quite significant that his first reference to Smith is (...) not to some marginal or merely historical point of Smith’s analysis, but to the crucial treatment of the division of labor, upon which, as a modern commentator put it, “the discipline of economics was nurtured.” Other indications of the importance which Hegel ascribed to Smith’s treatment are. (shrink)

The Conscious Brain brings neuroscientific evidence to bear on enduring philosophical questions. Major philosophical and scientific theories of consciousness are surveyed, challenged, and extended.

The Spectrum of Consciousness (1977)--one of the founding texts of transpersonal psychology--introduces the full-spectrum model, showing how the psychological systems of the West can be integrated with the contemplative traditions of the East. No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth (1979) is a simple yet comprehensive guide to psychologies and therapies available from both Western and Eastern sources. Several important early articles: "The Psychologia Perennis," "Are the Chakras Real?" and "Where It Was, I Shall Become.".

Can we consciously see more items at once than can be held in visual working memory? This question has elud- ed resolution because the ultimate evidence is subjects’ reports in which phenomenal consciousness is filtered through working memory. However, a new technique makes use of the fact that unattended ‘ensemble prop- erties’ can be detected ‘for free’ without decreasing working memory capacity.

Consciousness fits uneasily into our conception of the natural world. On the most common conception of nature, the natural world is the physical world. But on the most common conception of consciousness, it is not easy to see how it could be part of the physical world. So it seems that to find a place for consciousness within the natural order, we must either revise our conception of consciousness, or revise our conception of nature. In twentieth-century (...) philosophy, this dilemma is posed most acutely in C. D. Broad’s The Mind and its Place in Nature . The phenomena of mind, for Broad, are the phenomena of consciousness. The central problem is that of locating mind with respect to the physical world. Broad’s exhaustive discussion of the problem culminates in a taxonomy of seventeen different views of the mental-physical relation.1 On Broad’s taxonomy, a view might see the mental as nonexistent , as reducible, as emergent, or as a basic property of a substance . The physical might be seen in one of the same four ways. So a four-by-four matrix of views results. At the end, three views are left standing: those on which mentality is an emergent characteristic of either a physical substance or a neutral substance, where in the latter case, the physical might be either emergent or delusive. (shrink)

Does consciousness collapse the quantum wave function? This idea was taken seriously by John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner but is now widely dismissed. We develop the idea by combining a mathematical theory of consciousness (integrated information theory) with an account of quantum collapse dynamics (continuous spontaneous localization). Simple versions of the theory are falsified by the quantum Zeno effect, but more complex versions remain compatible with empirical evidence. In principle, versions of the theory can be tested by (...) experiments with quantum computers. The upshot is not that consciousness-collapse interpretations are clearly correct, but that there is a research program here worth exploring. (shrink)

Consciousness is, perhaps, the aspect of our mental lives that is the most perplexing for both psychologists and philosophers. Daniel Dennett has described it as 'both the most obvious and the most mysterious feature of our minds' and attempts at definition often seem to move in circles. Thomas Nagel famously remarked that 'without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.'. These observations might suggest that consciousness - indefinable and mysterious (...) - falls outside the scope of rational enquiry, defying both scientific and philosophical investigation. In reality, however, the topic has been a focus of psychological investigation since William James and is increasingly vital in philosophical research. This book illustrates the various, interdisciplinary approaches to the problem, providing both pointers to a solution and a summary of the key positions. (shrink)

This is my first publication of the distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness, though not using quite those terms. It ends with this: "The upshot is this: If Searle is using the access sense of "consciousness," his argument doesn't get to first base. If, as is more likely, he intends the what-it-is-like sense, his argument depends on assumptions about issues that the cognitivist is bound to regard as deeply unsettled empirical questions." Searle replies: "He refers to (...) what he calls an "access sense of consciousness." On my account there is no such sense.". (shrink)

Is self-consciousness intentional? Consciousness of oneself-as-object is, in the sense that the subject is there taken as its own object of intentional consciousness. Contrastively, it has been argued that consciousness of oneself-as-subject is not intentional, precisely in that it does not involve taking oneself as an intentional object. Here, it is rather proposed that consciousness of oneself-as-subject is tied to intentionality in that it involves being conscious of oneself as an intentional subject, i.e. as a (...) subject directed at intentional objects transcending oneself-as-subject. This form of self-consciousness is neither reflective, in the sense that it does not involve to take oneself as an object of reflection, nor reflexive, in the sense that it does not involve to be related to oneself but to what-one-is-not, i.e. to the transcending intentional object. It is further argued that consciousness of oneself-as-subject involves two dynamics, as the subject would be indicated to himself by the objects towards which he directs himself. These considerations are here unfolded to consider in particular bodily self-consciousness. (shrink)

Perceptual attention is essential to both thought and agency, for there is arguably no demonstrative thought or bodily action without it. Psychologists and philosophers since William James have taken attention to be a ubiquitous and distinctive form of consciousness, one that leaves a characteristic mark on perceptual experience. As a process of selecting specific perceptual inputs, attention influences the way things perceptually appear. It may then seem that it is a specific feature of perceptual representation that constitutes what it (...) is like to consciously attend to an object. In fact conscious attention is more complicated. In what follows, I argue that the phenomenology of conscious attention to what is perceived involves not just a way of perceptually locking on to a specific object. It necessarily involves a way of cognitively locking on to it as well. (shrink)

It is well known that Hegel’s earliest explicit mention of Adam Smith is to be found in the first set of the Jenaer Systementwurfe, a text previously known under J. Hoffmeister’s title Jenenser Realphilosophie I. In this text, Hegel sums up the example by which Smith illustrates the division of labor: the manufacturing of pins. In a marginal note to this exposition, the name “Smith” appears with a page reference. It is quite significant that his first reference to Smith is (...) not to some marginal or merely historical point of Smith’s analysis, but to the crucial treatment of the division of labor, upon which, as a modern commentator put it, “the discipline of economics was nurtured.” Other indications of the importance which Hegel ascribed to Smith’s treatment are. (shrink)

A breathtaking look at the new science that can track consciousness deep in the brain How does our brain generate a conscious thought? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before. In this lively book, Stanislas Dehaene describes the pioneering work his lab and the labs of other cognitive neuroscientists worldwide have accomplished in defining, testing, and explaining the brain events (...) behind a conscious state. We can now pin down the neurons that fire when a person reports becoming aware of a piece of information and understand the crucial role unconscious computations play in how we make decisions. The emerging theory enables a test of consciousness in animals, babies, and those with severe brain injuries. A joyous exploration of the mind and its thrilling complexities, Consciousness and the Brain will excite anyone interested in cutting-edge science and technology and the vast philosophical, personal, and ethical implications of finally quantifying consciousness. (shrink)

Two distinguished philosophers present opposing views on the questions of howthe objects of consciousness are perceived. (Philosophy).

We have a much better understanding of physics than we do of consciousness. I consider ways in which intrinsically mental aspects of fundamental ontology might induce modifications of the known laws of physics, or whether they could be relevant to accounting for consciousness if no such modifications exist. I suggest that our current knowledge of physics should make us skeptical of hypothetical modifications of the known rules, and that without such modifications it’s hard to imagine how intrinsically mental (...) aspects could play a useful explanatory role. Draft version of a paper submitted to Journal of Consciousness Studies, special issue responding to Philip Goff’s Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness. (shrink)

Philosophers traditionally recognize two main features of mental states: intentionality and phenomenal consciousness. To a first approximation, intentionality is the aboutness of mental states, and phenomenal consciousness is the felt, experiential, qualitative, or "what it's like" aspect of mental states. In the past few decades, these features have been widely assumed to be distinct and independent. But several philosophers have recently challenged this assumption, arguing that intentionality and consciousness are importantly related. This article overviews the key views (...) on the relationship between consciousness and intentionality and describes our favored view, which is a version of the phenomenal intentionality theory, roughly the view that the most fundamental kind of intentionality arises from phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Explanation does not exist in a metaphysical vacuum. Conceptions of the structure of a phenomenon play an important role in guiding attempts to explain it, and erroneous conceptions of a phenomenon may direct investigation in misleading directions. I believe that there is a case to be made for thinking that much work on the neural underpinnings of consciousness—what is often called the neural correlates of consciousness—is driven by an erroneous conception of the structure of consciousness. The aim (...) of this paper is lay bare some connections between the explanation of consciousness and the structure of consciousness, and to argue for a conception of the structure of consciousness that is more adequate than that which currently drives much research into the neural correlates of consciousness. (shrink)

Are corporations and other complex groups ever morally responsible in ways that do not reduce to the moral responsibility of their members? Christian List, Phillip Pettit, Kendy Hess, and David Copp have recently defended the idea that they can be. For them, complex groups (sometimes called collectives) can be irreducibly morally responsible because they satisfy the conditions for morally responsible agency; and this view is made more plausible by the claim (made by Theiner) that collectives can have minds. In this (...) paper I give a new argument against the idea that collectives can be irreducibly morally responsible in the ways that individuals can be. Drawing on recent work in the philosophy of mind (what Uriah Kriegel calls "the phenomenal intentionality research program") and moral theory (David Shoemaker's tripartite theory of moral responsibility), I argue that for something to have a mind, it must be phenomenally conscious, and that the fact that collectives lack phenomenal consciousness implies that they are incapable of accountability, an important form of moral responsibility. (shrink)

This article concerns the interplay between two issues that involve both philosophy and neuroscience: whether the content of phenomenal consciousness is 'rich' or 'sparse', whether phenomenal consciousness goes beyond cognitive access, and how it would be possible for there to be evidence one way or the other.

I. Homeric Hymn to Apollo 334: κκλντε νν μοι γαα κα ορανòσ ερσ περθεν, TιτǴνεσ τε θεοιí π χθον ναιετοντεσ τρταρον μφ μγαν, τν ξ νδρεσ τε θεο τε.

It is usual, since Wolf, to print πέλει in 396 instead of ποτί. The authority for this is very slight: E. M. 214. 33 from Diogenes βρόμος κυρίως το πυρς. ᾒχος. πεποιημένη δέ στιν ων κατ μμησιν το ποτελουµνου ψόφου ν πυρ, οον τσος γε πέλει βρόμος αθοµνοιο. schol. Ap. Rhod. III. 861 the etymology of Bx03B1;θριµώ … ἢ παρ το βρµον το πυρός. τσσος γρ πλεται βρµος γρ θες λαµπαδοΧος. It is not certain that either of these quotations refer (...) to our line; in the former, as will be noticed, πυρς is out of place, and we cannot tell how the second would have continued. In any case, it is not obvious what turned such an easy word as πλει into the difficult ποτ. (shrink)

A new edition of the Homeric Hymns is in preparation by Mr. W. R. Halliday, Principal of King's College, London, and myself. In the meantime there are some passages in the Hymn to Hermes which call for longer treatment than would be natural in an edition. Some of these notes are suggested by the substantial and valuable edition of Professor L. Radermacher.

Testimony, even in the well-worked parts of antiquity, continues to accrue, some from new papyri, some from texts long known but overlooked. In the result the critic is discomfited, honest men come by their own. οιόνδ' πέβη τόδε πργμα. This document, which consists of two lives of Homer and the Agon inserted between them, has long been derived from the Μουσεîον of Alcidamas. The conjecture was contested and the survival of Alcidamas denied. The publication of twenty-five lines from a papyrus (...) of s. II.–III. p. C. by Professor J. G. Winter, containing a Homeric biography signed αλκι] δαμαντος περι ομηρου put an end to the matter. See on the whole question Mr. Winter's remarks and a paper by Sig. Carlo Gallavotti of Bologna, Rivista di Filologia, 1929, 31. (shrink)

A new edition of the Homeric Hymns is in preparation by Mr. W. R. Halliday, Principal of King's College, London, and myself. In the meantime there are some passages in the Hymn to Hermes which call for longer treatment than would be natural in an edition. Some of these notes are suggested by the substantial and valuable edition of Professor L. Radermacher.

Testimony, even in the well-worked parts of antiquity, continues to accrue, some from new papyri, some from texts long known but overlooked. In the result the critic is discomfited, honest men come by their own. οιόνδ' πέβη τόδε πργμα. This document, which consists of two lives of Homer and the Agon inserted between them, has long been derived from the Μουσεîον of Alcidamas. The conjecture was contested and the survival of Alcidamas denied. The publication of twenty-five lines from a papyrus (...) of s. II.–III. p. C. by Professor J. G. Winter , containing a Homeric biography signed αλκι] δαμαντος περι ομηρου put an end to the matter. See on the whole question Mr. Winter's remarks and a paper by Sig. Carlo Gallavotti of Bologna, Rivista di Filologia, 1929, 31. (shrink)

The least attentive Hellenist must have noticed that the Greek tongue contains a number of pairs of nouns of identical or nearly related meaning—one in the masculine, the other in the feminine. The subject attracted the notice of Lobeck, Pathoiogia, pp. 7 sq., Technologia, pp. 267 sq.; G. Meyer in Curtius' Studien V., p. 68; Stein in the introduction to his Herodotus, p. lx ; and the resultant list will be found in Kuhner-Blass I., pp. 501, 502. It is not (...) complete , and the question deserves investigation. The only doctrine that can be called such appears to be the remark in schol. BT on Σ 551 , δρεπανας] Iωνκως, οủτο αρ τρεπουσ πάντα είς τφρη, ταρη αστρααλη. (shrink)

The least attentive Hellenist must have noticed that the Greek tongue contains a number of pairs of nouns of identical or nearly related meaning—one in the masculine, the other in the feminine. The subject attracted the notice of Lobeck, Pathoiogia, pp. 7 sq., Technologia, pp. 267 sq.; G. Meyer in Curtius' Studien V., p. 68; Stein in the introduction to his Herodotus, p. lx ; and the resultant list will be found in Kuhner-Blass I., pp. 501, 502. It is not (...) complete, and the question deserves investigation. The only doctrine that can be called such appears to be the remark in schol. BT on Σ 551, δρεπανας] Iωνκως, οủτο αρ τρεπουσ πάντα είς τφρη, ταρη αστρααλη. (shrink)