ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to defend the thesis, found across the works of Edmund Husserl, that the most fundamental level of subjectivity – the so-called absolute consciousness – is given in time as an immediate unity. In order to do so, I first consider Martin Hägglund’s critique of the Husserlian absolute consciousness. My subsequent answer to Hägglund has two parts: firstly, I argue that Hägglund’s own account of subjectivity is contradictory; secondly, I offer a model of absolute (...) consciousness impervious to Hägglund’s critique. Drawing on Husserl’s “Bernau Manuscripts,” I demonstrate that time is, in fact, compatible with the notions of immediacy and unity, and that a correct account of the Husserlian absolute consciousness recognizes the latter to be given as a temporally differentiated immediate unity. (shrink)

While there is a general consensus around the role of religion in the abolition of the Slave Trade, historians continue to give little to no detail on exactly how Christian theology influenced the abolitionist movement. This article seeks to interrogate one major theological factor inherent in the spirituality that underpinned the activism of the British abolitionists, namely their notion of Divine Providence, and particularly its moral-emotive correlate: the fear of God’s wrath. These theological notions are discussed based mainly on the (...) analysis of the primary sources and within the theoretical framework of judicial providentialism, aptly captured by John Coffey among others. (shrink)

This volume on the semantic complexity of natural language explores the question why some sentences are more difficult than others. While doing so, it lays the groundwork for extending semantic theory with computational and cognitive aspects by combining linguistics and logic with computations and cognition. -/- Quantifier expressions occur whenever we describe the world and communicate about it. Generalized quantifier theory is therefore one of the basic tools of linguistics today, studying the possible meanings and the inferential power of quantifier (...) expressions by logical means. The classic version was developed in the 1980s, at the interface of linguistics, mathematics and philosophy. Before this volume, advances in "classic" generalized quantifier theory mainly focused on logical questions and their applications to linguistics, this volume adds a computational component, the third pillar of language use and logical activity. This book is essential reading for researchers in linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, logic, AI, and computer science. (shrink)

This book brings together for the first time two philosophers from different traditions and different centuries. While Wittgenstein was a focal point of 20th century analytic philosophy, it was Hegel’s philosophy that brought the essential discourses of the 19th century together and developed into the continental tradition in 20th century. This now-outdated conflict took for granted Hegel’s and Wittgenstein’s opposing positions and is being replaced by a continuous progression and differentiation of several authors, schools, and philosophical traditions. The development is (...) already evident in the tendency to identify a progression from a ‘Kantian’ to a ‘Hegelian phase’ of analytical philosophy as well as in the extension of right and left Hegelian approaches by modern and postmodern concepts. Assessing the difference between Wittgenstein and Hegel can outline intersections of contemporary thinking. (shrink)

The present book has the following structure: it proceeds chronologically in its main outline. Part II summarizes the philosophical background against which the distinction between internal and external relations emerged. Hegel and Bradley are addressed in Chapter 4. Russell and Moore—Wittgenstein's direct teachers—are the subject of Chapter 5. Part III is devoted to Wittgenstein's early writings. Chapter 6 distills the definition of the notions of internal and external relations from these texts. The subsequent chapters deal with the doctrine of external (...) relations, the nature of simple objects and the picture theory. Part IV deals with Wittgenstein's later writings from 1929 up to his death in 1951. Its structure is similar to the previous part. Chapter 10 provides some definitions of internal and external relations in these texts. The following chapters explore various themes from Wittgenstein's later philosophy in which the distinction between internal and external relations is important. Part IV begins with a discussion of intentionality and continues with rule-following, mathematics, colors, the standard meter, aspect-seeing, aesthetics and art. The concluding Part V gives the rationale for Wittgenstein’s method of analysis based on the distinction between internal and external relations. Internal relations do not—in the final analysis—belong to things; they are not constitutive of things. They are the means of representation of things. Internal relations can be—in an unattainable ideal—simply left behind. (shrink)

Both Hegel and the later Wittgenstein were concerned with the problem of how to begin speculation, or the problem of beginning. I argue that despite many differences, there are surprising similarities between their thinking about the beginning. They both consider different kinds of beginnings and combine them into complex analogies. The beginning has a subjective and an objective moment. The philosophizing subject has to begin with something, with an object. For Hegel, the objective moment is pure being. For Wittgenstein, the (...) objective moment is something that cannot be doubted. As regards the subjective moment, the philosophizing subject has to decide, without any reason, to conclude her quest for the presuppositionless beginning and finally begin at the beginning. The arational moment of this decision is echoed throughout any rational thought. Any application of a rule is, ultimately, a blind decision to apply this rule. (shrink)

A key component of the susceptibility to cognitive biases is the ability to monitor for conflict between intuitively cued “heuristic” answers and logical principles. While there is evidence that pe...

According to panqualityism, a form of Russellian monism defended by Sam Coleman and others, consciousness is grounded in fundamental qualities, i.e. unexperienced qualia. Despite panqualityism’s significant promise, according to David Chalmers panqualityism fails as a theory of consciousness since the reductive approach to awareness of qualities it proposes fails to account for the specific phenomenology associated with awareness. I investigate Coleman’s reasoning against this kind of phenomenology and conclude that he successfully shows that its existence is controversial, and so Chalmers’s (...) critique is inconclusive. I then present a critique of panqualityism that avoids this controversial posit, arguing that the panqualityist treatment of awareness faces an explanatory gap, failing to account for the intimate cognitive access to qualities which we are afforded, i.e. for our ‘strong awareness’ of qualities. The real worry for panqualityists is thus not the contested phenomenology of awareness, which Chalmers relies on, but rather the special way in which we are aware of qualities. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 109 Heft: 2 Seiten: 352-356.

This article interprets critiques of secularity and the related concept of history as progress in the work of Dipesh Chakrabarty and Judith Butler. At the same time, it defends their approach against the criticism voiced by Gregor McLennan. It shows that the postsecular conception of the politics of both authors is not just an attempt to open public space to a wider range of religious and cultural voices. Rather, it is a critique of the way in which political secularism and (...) the ideology of progress are used by the modern state to legitimize the exercise of its own power. Butler and Chakrabarty's postsecular policy is thus based primarily on coalition building against these legitimization frameworks, which opens up the possibility of forming new postsecular political subjects. It illustrates the theoretical approach of both authors with an example of the church sanctuary movement in Germany. (shrink)

According to some interpreters, Foucault's encounter with the Greek and Roman ethics led him to reconsider his earlier work and to turn away from politics. Drawing mostly from Foucault's last and hitherto unpublished lecture course, this paper argues that Foucault's turn to ethics should not be interpreted as a turn away from his previous work, but rather as its logical continuation and an attempt to resolve some of the outstanding questions. I argue that the 1984 lectures on parrhesia should be (...) interpreted as Foucault's philosophical apology, as an attempt to defend himself against the charges of moral and epistemological nihilism, which were raised in response to his earlier work. In his last lectures, the Nietzschean Foucault somewhat surprisingly describes his earlier work as authentic Socratic philosophy and as ethical practice of freedom. In the conclusion, I assess the plausibility of Foucault's apology and speculate in which direction his work might have developed, had it not been cut off by his death. (shrink)

Ecopsychology—the use of nature for understanding and healing the soul—has become accepted as a legitimate tool by theorists and practitioners alike. Yet one important dimension of the field has been ignored: metaphysical tracking. This article brings to light a number of mystical phenomena that trackers, ancient and modern, have experienced, and suggests their common root in the so-called energy body. The implications for psychospiritual growth are then described. Finally, alternative explanations and new avenues for research are discussed.

This special issue addresses the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological viewpoint, especially contemporary phenomenological research on selfhood. In the introduction, we first offer a brief survey of the various classic questions related to personal identity according to Locke’s initial proposal and sketch out key concepts and distinctions of the debate that came after Locke. We then characterize the types of approach represented by post-Hegelian, German and French philosophies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We argue that whereas the (...) Anglophone debates on personal identity were initially formed by the persistence question and the characterization question, the “Continental” tradition included remarkably intense debates on the individual or the self as being unique or “concrete,” deeply temporal and—as claimed by some philosophers, like Sartre and Foucault—unable to have any identity, if not one externally imposed. We describe the Continental line of thinking about the “self” as a reply and an adjustment to the post-Lockean “personal identity” question. These observations constitute the backdrop for our presentation of phenomenological approaches to personal identity. These approaches run along three lines: debates on the layers of the self, starting from embodiment and the minimal self and running all the way to the full-fledged concept of person; questions of temporal becoming, change and stability, as illustrated, for instance, by aging or transformative life-experiences; and the constitution of identity in the social, institutional, and normative space. The introduction thus establishes a structure for locating and connecting the different contributions in our special issue, which, as an ensemble, represent a strong and differentiated contribution to the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological perspective. (shrink)

In this paper, we address reports of “selfless” experiences from the perspective of active inference and predictive processing. Our argument builds upon grounding self-modelling in active inference as action planning and precision control within deep generative models – thus establishing a link between computational mechanisms and phenomenal selfhood. We propose that “selfless” experiences can be interpreted as cases in which normally congruent processes of computational and phenomenal self-modelling diverge in an otherwise conscious system. We discuss two potential mechanisms – within (...) the Bayesian mechanics of active inference – that could lead to such a divergence by attenuating the experience of selfhood: “self-flattening” via reduction in the depth of active inference and “self-attenuation” via reduction of the expected precision of self-evidence. (shrink)

We examine the verification of simple quantifiers in natural language from a computational model perspective. We refer to previous neuropsychological investigations of the same problem and suggest extending their experimental setting. Moreover, we give some direct empirical evidence linking computational complexity predictions with cognitive reality.<br>In the empirical study we compare time needed for understanding different types of quantifiers. We show that the computational distinction between quantifiers recognized by finite-automata and push-down automata is psychologically relevant. Our research improves upon hypothesis and (...) explanatory power of recent neuroimaging studies as well as provides<br>evidence. (shrink)

The article’s aim is to clear the ground for the idea of aesthetic archaeology as an aesthetic analysis of remote artifacts divorced from aesthetic criticism. On the example of controversies surrounding the early Cycladic figures, it discusses an anxiety motivating the rejection of aesthetic inquiry in archaeology, namely, the anxiety about the heuristic reliability of one’s aesthetic instincts vis-à-vis remote artifacts. It introduces the claim that establishing an aesthetic mandate of a remote artifact should in the first place be part (...) of a quest after the norms of engagement an artifact’s kind signaled to the intended audience by its appearance. Rather than advocating for a new subdiscipline, the concept of aesthetic archaeology serves to bring into theoretical focus an aesthetic engagement with an artifact’s appearance under circumstances that rule out any acquired competence in distinguishing its aesthetic mandate perceptually—and thus rule out any aesthetic expertise. (shrink)

_Pragmatic Perspectives in Phenomenology_ offers a complex analysis of the pragmatic theses that are present in the works of leading phenomenological authors, including not only Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, as it is often the case within Hubert Dreyfus’ tradition, but also Husserl, Levinas, Scheler, and Patocka. Starting from a critical reassessment of existing pragmatic readings which draw especially on Heidegger’s account of Being-in-the-world, the volume’s chapters explore the following themes as possible justifications for speaking about the pragmatic turn in phenomenology: the (...) primacy of the practical over theoretical understanding, criticism of the representationalist account of perception and consciousness, and the analysis of language and truth within the context of social and cultural practices. Having thus analyzed the pragmatic readings of key phenomenological concepts, the book situates these readings in a larger historical and thematic context and introduces themes that until now have been overlooked in debates, including freedom, alterity, transcendence, normativity, distance, and self-knowledge. This volume seeks to refresh the debate about the phenomenological legacy and its relevance for contemporary thought by enlarging the thematic scope of pragmatic motives in phenomenology in new and revealing ways. It will be of interest to advanced students and scholars of phenomenology who are interested in moving beyond the analytic-continental divide to explore the relationship between practice and theory. (shrink)

Quantifiers in phrasal and clausal comparatives often seem to take distributive scope in the matrix clause: for instance, the sentence John is taller than every girl is is true iff for every girl it holds that John is taller than that girl. Broadly speaking, two approaches exist that derive this reading without postulating the wide scope of the quantifier: the negation analysis and the interval analysis of than-clauses. We propose a modification of the interval analysis in which than-clauses are not (...) treated as degree intervals but as degree pluralities. This small change has significant consequences: it yields a straightforward account of differentials in comparatives and it correctly predicts the existence of hitherto unnoticed readings, viz. cumulative readings of clausal comparatives. Finally, this paper also makes the case that using degree pluralities is conceptually appealing: it allows us to restrict the analysis of comparatives by mechanisms that are postulated independently in the semantics of pluralities. (shrink)

Cognitive architectures have often been applied to data from individual experiments. In this paper, I develop an ACT-R reader that can model a much larger set of data, eye-tracking corpus data. It is shown that the resulting model has a good fit to the data for the considered low-level processes. Unlike previous related works, the model achieves the fit by estimating free parameters of ACT-R using Bayesian estimation and Markov-Chain Monte Carlo techniques, rather than by relying on the mix of (...) manual selection + default values. The method used in the paper is generalizable beyond this particular model and data set and could be used on other ACT-R models. (shrink)

In the renewed Russian Fundamental Law, in addition to a number of provisions introducing changes to the political system, there are also statements of programmatic importance, as well as several provisions with symbolic and identity function. In this article these provisions are subject to functional and semiotic-cultural analysis. Particular emphasis has been placed on legally irrelevant content transmitted by the new regulations, on their semantic connections with the content of the preamble and on their cultural context. The research procedure carried (...) out allows us to state that, compared with the 1993 text, the Russian Constitution in its current version participates to a much greater extent in the complex system of transmission of symbolic content, as well as the narratives that contribute to social memory, cultural and historical identity. In doing so, it goes beyond its genre limitations, opening the basic text to the functions assigned to the preamble. In the fragments I have analysed in the paper there are undoubtedly functional and genre disturbances, and with them changes the mode of semiosis of the legal text, both in its normative and programmatic form. Renewed Constitution is the case in which a legal text, by its very nature designing the possible future world, does so through ideas about the past. (shrink)

Father Jakub Gorczyca, a Polish Jesuit, is a professor of philosophy at the Gregorian University in Rome. The subject of his particular concern is the set of problems encountered in philosophical anthropology, fundamental ethics and the philosophy of religion. Gorczyca draws philosophical inspiration from the intellectual tradition of Christianity, from phenomenology, and from the philosophy of dialogue.

In the dissertation we study the complexity of generalized quantifiers in natural language. Our perspective is interdisciplinary: we combine philosophical insights with theoretical computer science, experimental cognitive science and linguistic theories. -/- In Chapter 1 we argue for identifying a part of meaning, the so-called referential meaning (model-checking), with algorithms. Moreover, we discuss the influence of computational complexity theory on cognitive tasks. We give some arguments to treat as cognitively tractable only those problems which can be computed in polynomial time. (...) Additionally, we suggest that plausible semantic theories of the everyday fragment of natural language can be formulated in the existential fragment of second-order logic. -/- In Chapter 2 we give an overview of the basic notions of generalized quantifier theory, computability theory, and descriptive complexity theory. -/- In Chapter 3 we prove that PTIME quantifiers are closed under iteration, cumulation and resumption. Next, we discuss the NP-completeness of branching quantifiers. Finally, we show that some Ramsey quantifiers define NP-complete classes of finite models while others stay in PTIME. We also give a sufficient condition for a Ramsey quantifier to be computable in polynomial time. -/- In Chapter 4 we investigate the computational complexity of polyadic lifts expressing various readings of reciprocal sentences with quantified antecedents. We show a dichotomy between these readings: the strong reciprocal reading can create NP-complete constructions, while the weak and the intermediate reciprocal readings do not. Additionally, we argue that this difference should be acknowledged in the Strong Meaning hypothesis. -/- In Chapter 5 we study the definability and complexity of the type-shifting approach to collective quantification in natural language. We show that under reasonable complexity assumptions it is not general enough to cover the semantics of all collective quantifiers in natural language. The type-shifting approach cannot lead outside second-order logic and arguably some collective quantifiers are not expressible in second-order logic. As a result, we argue that algebraic (many-sorted) formalisms dealing with collectivity are more plausible than the type-shifting approach. Moreover, we suggest that some collective quantifiers might not be realized in everyday language due to their high computational complexity. Additionally, we introduce the so-called second-order generalized quantifiers to the study of collective semantics. -/- In Chapter 6 we study the statement known as Hintikka's thesis: that the semantics of sentences like ``Most boys and most girls hate each other'' is not expressible by linear formulae and one needs to use branching quantification. We discuss possible readings of such sentences and come to the conclusion that they are expressible by linear formulae, as opposed to what Hintikka states. Next, we propose empirical evidence confirming our theoretical predictions that these sentences are sometimes interpreted by people as having the conjunctional reading. -/- In Chapter 7 we discuss a computational semantics for monadic quantifiers in natural language. We recall that it can be expressed in terms of finite-state and push-down automata. Then we present and criticize the neurological research building on this model. The discussion leads to a new experimental set-up which provides empirical evidence confirming the complexity predictions of the computational model. We show that the differences in reaction time needed for comprehension of sentences with monadic quantifiers are consistent with the complexity differences predicted by the model. -/- In Chapter 8 we discuss some general open questions and possible directions for future research, e.g., using different measures of complexity, involving game-theory and so on. -/- In general, our research explores, from different perspectives, the advantages of identifying meaning with algorithms and applying computational complexity analysis to semantic issues. It shows the fruitfulness of such an abstract computational approach for linguistics and cognitive science. (shrink)

The discussion centres around two issues: the issue of meaning, and the question whether the tools of rhetoric viewed as the basic tool in interpersonal communication can be helpful in reading and interpreting meaning. The author understands meaning after G. Frege: […] let the following phraseology be established: A proper name expresses its sense, stands for or designates its reference. By means of a sign we express its sense and designate its reference. The purpose of the discussion is also to (...) answer a much more general question: whether through rhetoric can one say something important about the world, so do they define a philosophical thesis or only, from various perspectives, one searches for the most probable answer to a hypothesis. The presented assumption is a result of the suggestion of Willard van Orman Quine: Rhetoric is the literary technology of persuasion, for good or ill, and it entails something which Randal Marlin defined as referentially translucent expressions. Therefore, the hypothesis I shall try to prove is the following: can the sense of any expression be, using the tools of rhetoric, defined to such an extent so that it becomes a philosophical thesis and not a hypothesis? So that in terms of both the subject and the object the expression could be considered as true. Then and only then can one say that such an expression has/contains some sense. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine the motive of inner truthfulness in the moral philosophy of Kant, which came to the fore in his work in the 1790s. Truthfulness and sincerity are interpreted as the roots of all morality. In the first chapter, I present two interpretations of inner honesty from two different perspectives: in relation to a duty to oneself and to the issue of conscience. The second chapter (the core of the essay) works out the main demand of truthfulness, (...) especially in the context of the theory of radical evil from Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. As a last step, I show that with the motive of truthfulness, Kant’s philosophy meets the thinking of F. Nietzsche, with its emphasis on sincerity. (shrink)

Is the celebrated elegance of Cycladic marble figurines an effect their Early Bronze Age producers intended? Can one adequately appreciate an Assyrian regal statue described by a cuneiform inscription as beautiful? What to make of the apparent aesthetic richness of the traditional cultures of Melanesia, which, however, engage in virtually no recognizable aesthetic discourse? Questions such as these have been formulated and discussed by scholars of remote cultures against the backdrop of a general scepticism about the prospects of escaping the (...) conditioning of one’s own aesthetic culture and attuning to the norms of a remote one. This book makes a radical move: it treats the remote observers’ lack of aesthetic insight not as a hindrance to aesthetic analysis, but as a condition requiring an aesthetic theory that would make room for an aesthetic analysis independent of the model of competent aesthetic judgement or appreciation. -/- Objects of Authority represents a rare effort at bringing together methods and concepts that are often addressed by separate disciplines. It will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on philosophical, art-historical, and anthropological theories of visual art and material culture. (shrink)

Jakub Gorczyca SJ, „An Outline of Fundamental Ethics. Being for Others”.

We study the computational complexity of polyadic quantifiers in natural language. This type of quantification is widely used in formal semantics to model the meaning of multi-quantifier sentences. First, we show that the standard constructions that turn simple determiners into complex quantifiers, namely Boolean operations, iteration, cumulation, and resumption, are tractable. Then, we provide an insight into branching operation yielding intractable natural language multi-quantifier expressions. Next, we focus on a linguistic case study. We use computational complexity results to investigate semantic (...) distinctions between quantified reciprocal sentences. We show a computational dichotomy<br>between different readings of reciprocity. Finally, we go more into philosophical speculation on meaning, ambiguity and computational complexity. In particular, we investigate a possibility to<br>revise the Strong Meaning Hypothesis with complexity aspects to better account for meaning shifts in the domain of multi-quantifier sentences. The paper not only contributes to the field of the formal<br>semantics but also illustrates how the tools of computational complexity theory might be successfully used in linguistics and philosophy with an eye towards cognitive science. (shrink)

Locke claims that a person’s identity over time consists in the unity of consciousness, not in the sameness of the body. Similarly, the phenomenological approach refuses to see the criteria of identity as residing in some externally observable bodily features. Nevertheless, it does not accept the idea that personal identity has to consist either in consciousness or in the body. We are self-aware as bodily beings. After providing a brief reassessment of Locke and the post-Lockean discussion, the article draws on (...) phenomenological arguments that show the body as lived, that is, lived as one’s own body, but also possibly as “other” or “strange.” Against what has been claimed in recent writing, especially in literature on Merleau-Ponty, the author argues that the “mineness” of the body and its “alterity” are not two mutually exclusive features. In the final part of the article, the author suggests that the becoming strange of one’s own body may legitimately be considered as a prominent experience of what it means to be a person. (shrink)

Narrative identity theory in some of its influential variants makes three fundamental assumptions. First, it focuses on personal identity primarily in terms of selfhood. Second, it argues that personal identity is to be understood as the unity of one’s life as it develops over time. And finally, it states that the unity of a life is articulated, by the very person itself, in the form of a story, be it explicit or implicit. The article focuses on different contemporary phenomenological appraisals (...) of the narrative account. The survey of this partly critical debate is followed by concluding observations concerning a possible phenomenological theory of personal identity. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a heated debate on how to accommodate John Perry's observations about the essentiality of indexicality into our models of linguistic communication. This article is an attempt at providing a new perspective on this issue. I argue that we should jettison two elements taken for granted by the views I present, and criticize, here: no centring, uncentring, recentring and multicentring. These elements are: (1) taking the asserted content to be a part of the communication process (...) and (2) assumptions that the indexical belief of the speaker, when successfully communicated, must be acquired by the hearer as indexical, too. The theory of indexical communication that I propose here is laid out in the mental files framework and devoid of the two aforementioned elements. (shrink)

In their Anachronic Renaissance, Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood identify two principles upon which, in fifteenth-century Europe, a work of art might establish its validity or authority: substitution and performance. It has become established wisdom that the dual schema of substitution and performance follows Hans Belting's dualism of the medieval cult of the image and the modern aesthetic system of art. This, I submit, is not just a mistake, but also prevents from evaluating one of the book's most ambitious contributions (...) to art-historical theory on its own merits. An analysis of the structure of the claims made by Nagel and Wood brings to light that the two concepts—substitution and performance—do not play the same role as the conceptual pair of Bild and Kunst in Belting's influential work. (shrink)

Lascar described E KP as a composition of E L and the topological closure of E L (Casanovas et al. in J Math Log 1(2):305–319). We generalize this result to some other pairs of equivalence relations. Motivated by an attempt to construct a new example of a non-G-compact theory, we consider the following example. Assume G is a group definable in a structure M. We define a structure M′ consisting of M and X as two sorts, where X is an (...) affine copy of G and in M′ we have the structure of M and the action of G on X. We prove that the Lascar group of M′ is a semi-direct product of the Lascar group of M and G/G L . We discuss the relationship between G-compactness of M and M′. This example may yield new examples of non-G-compact theories. (shrink)

Within theoretical and empirical enquiries, many different meanings associated with consciousness have appeared, leaving the term itself quite vague. This makes formulating an abstract and unifying version of the concept of consciousness – the main aim of this article –into an urgent theoretical imperative. It is argued that consciousness, characterized as dually accessible (cognized from the inside and the outside), hierarchically referential (semantically ordered), bodily determined (embedded in the working structures of an organism or conscious system), and useful in action (...) (pragmatically functional), is a graded rather than an all-or-none phenomenon. A gradational approach, however, despite its explanatory advantages, can lead to some counterintuitive consequences and theoretical problems. In most such conceptions consciousness is extended globally (attached to primitive organisms or artificial systems), but also locally (connected to certain lower-level neuronal and bodily processes). For example, according to information integration theory (as introduced recently by Tononi and Koch, 2014), even such simple artificial systems as photodiodes possess miniscule amounts of consciousness. The major challenge for this article, then, is to establish reasonable, empirically justified constraints on how extended the range of a graded consciousness could be. It is argued that conscious systems are limited globally by the ability to individuate information (where individuated information is understood as evolutionarily embedded, socially altered, and private), whereas local limitations should be determined on the basis of a hypothesis about the action-oriented nature of the processes that select states of consciousness. Using these constraints, an abstract concept of consciousness is arrived at, hopefully contributing to a more unified state of play within consciousness studies itself. (shrink)