Non-reductive consciousness Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

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... more

According to event-causal libertarian accounts of free will, human actions are indeterministically caused by some of the agent's mental states and events, or their neural correlates. The disappearing agent objection put forward by Derk... more

According to event-causal libertarian accounts of free will, human actions are indeterministically caused by some of the agent's mental states and events, or their neural correlates. The disappearing agent objection put forward by Derk Pereboom shows how such a view comes short of endowing the agent with sufficient control over her action. The best alternative is agent-causal libertarianism, according to which it is the agent as an irreducible substance that brings about her undetermined decisions and actions. However, this view is often accused of being implausible as it seems to contradict our current best science. After arguing for agent-causal libertarianism's philosophical merits, I present its main assumptions and the empirical commitments they entail: neuronal indeterminism, downward causation and a non-aggregational self. I then turn to shown how these commitments are not very demanding: either they are perfectly consistent with contemporary science, or they regard areas that are beyond scientific reach, in principle or in practice, and conflict only with metaphysical assumptions about which there is little to no consensus.

Contemporary theories of consciousness are based on widely different concepts of its nature, most or all of which probably embody aspects of the truth about it. Starting with a concept of consciousness indicated by the phrase " the... more

Contemporary theories of consciousness are based on widely different concepts of its nature, most or all of which probably embody aspects of the truth about it. Starting with a concept of consciousness indicated by the phrase " the feeling of what happens " (the title of a book by Antonio Damásio), we attempt to build a framework capable of supporting and resolving divergent views. We picture consciousness in terms of Reality experiencing itself from the perspective of cognitive agents. Each conscious experience is regarded as composed of momentary feeling events that are combined by recognition and evaluation into extended conscious episodes that bind cognitive contents with a wide range of apparent durations (0.1 secs to 2 or more secs, for us humans, depending on circumstances and context). Three necessary conditions for the existence of consciousness are identified: a) a ground of Reality, envisaged as an universal field of potentiality encompassing all possible manifestations, whether material or 'mental'; b) a transitional zone, leading to; c) a manifest world with its fundamental divisions into material, 'informational' and quale-endowed aspects. We explore ideas about the nature of these necessary conditions, how they may relate to one another and whether our suggestions have empirical implications.

Following recent work by Don Ross (Ross, 2000; Ross & Spurrett, 2004), I contrast the influential theories of Daniel Dennett and Paul Churchland in information-theoretic terms. Dennett makes much of the fact that the morphological... more

Following recent work by Don Ross (Ross, 2000; Ross & Spurrett, 2004), I contrast the influential theories of Daniel Dennett and Paul Churchland in information-theoretic terms. Dennett makes much of the fact that the morphological shorthand which emerges before a witness as she looks upon cohesive aggregates of matter commands some measure of predictive power. This, for him, speaks against eliminating recourse to an intentional vocabulary. By contrast, the eliminative materialism defended by Churchland does not gloss such informational compressibility as an explanatory desideratum, and thus regards the informational noise which accrues at higher levels of description as patently unacceptable. Yet, since it is unlikely, as Ross et al. (2007) have recently suggested, that anything remains once we subtract the appeal to patterns, I argue that the ubiquity of informational compression in scientific explanation seriously undermines the claim that talk of the mental could be eliminated.