Download or read book Non physicalist Theories of Consciousness written by Hedda Hassel Mørch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is consciousness a purely physical phenomenon? Most contemporary philosophers and theorists hold that it is, and take this to be supported by modern science. But a significant minority endorse non-physicalist theories such as dualism, idealism and panpsychism, among other reasons because it may seem impossible to fully explain consciousness, or capture what it's like to be in conscious states (such as seeing red, or being in pain), in physical terms. This Element will introduce the main non-physicalist theories of consciousness and explain the most important arguments for them, and consider how they each respond to the scientific and other arguments in support of physicalism. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Download or read book Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity written by Robert J. Howell and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-06-13 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert J. Howell offers a new account of the relationship between conscious experience and the physical world, based on a neo-Cartesian notion of the physical and careful consideration of three anti-materialist arguments. His theory of subjective physicalism reconciles the data of consciousness with the advantages of a monistic, physical ontology.

Download or read book Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism written by Derk Pereboom and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-22 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Derk Pereboom explores how physicalism might best be formulated and defended against the best anti-physicalist arguments. Two responses to the knowledge and conceivability arguments are set out and developed. The first exploits the open possibility that introspective representations fail to represent mental properties as they are in themselves; specifically, that introspection represents phenomenal properties as having certain characteristic qualitative natures, which these properties might actually lack. The second response draws on the proposal that currently unknown fundamental intrinsic properties provide categorical bases for known physical properties and would also yield an account of consciousness. While there are non-physicalist versions of this position, some are amenable to physicalism. The book's third theme is a defense of a nonreductive account of physicalism. The type of nonreductivism endorsed departs from others in that it rejects all token identity claims for psychological and microphysical entities. The deepest relation between the mental and the microphysical is constitution, where this relation is not to be explicated by the notion of identity.

Download or read book Non physicalist Theories of Consciousness written by Hedda Hassel Mørch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-31 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is consciousness a purely physical phenomenon? Most contemporary philosophers and theorists hold that it is, and take this to be supported by modern science. But a significant minority endorse non-physicalist theories such as dualism, idealism and panpsychism, among other reasons because it may seem impossible to fully explain consciousness, or capture what it's like to be in conscious states (such as seeing red, or being in pain), in physical terms. This Element will introduce the main non-physicalist theories of consciousness and explain the most important arguments for them, and consider how they each respond to the scientific and other arguments in support of physicalism. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Download or read book Consciousness and Fundamental Reality written by Philip Goff and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first half of this book argues that physicalism cannot account for consciousness, and hence cannot be true. The second half explores and defends Russellian monism, a radical alternative to both physicalism and dualism. The view that emerges combines panpsychism with the view that the universe as a whole is fundamental.

Download or read book The Waning of Materialism written by Robert C. Koons and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-03-25 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-three philosophers examine the doctrine of materialism find it wanting. The case against materialism comprises arguments from conscious experience, from the unity and identity of the person, from intentionality, mental causation, and knowledge. The contributors include leaders in the fields of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, who respond ably to the most recent versions and defences of materialism. The modal arguments of Kripke and Chalmers, Jackson’s knowledge argument, Kim’s exclusion problem, and Burge’s anti-individualism all play a part in the building of a powerful cumulative case against the materialist research program. Several papers address the implications of contemporary brain and cognitive research (the psychophysics of color perception, blindsight, and the effects of commissurotomies), adding a posteriori arguments to the classical a priori critique of reductionism. All of the current versions of materialism — reductive and non-reductive, functionalist, eliminativist, and new wave materialism — come under sustained and trenchant attack. In addition, a wide variety of alternatives to the materialist conception of the person receive new and illuminating attention, including anti-materialist versions of naturalism, property dualism, Aristotelian and Thomistic hylomorphism, and non-Cartesian accounts of substance dualism.

Download or read book Re emergence written by Gerald Vision and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A philosopher offers a non-physicalist theory of mind, revisiting and defending a key doctrine of emergentism. The presence of sentience in a basically material reality is among the mysteries of existence. Many philosophers of mind argue that conscious states and properties are nothing beyond the matter that brings them about. Finding these arguments less than satisfactory, Gerald Vision offers a nonphysicalist theory of mind. Revisiting and defending a key doctrine of the once widely accepted school of philosophy known as emergentism, Vision proposes that conscious states are emergents, although they depend for their existence on their material bases. Although many previous emergentist theories have been decisively undermined, Vision argues that emergent options are still viable on some issues. In Re-Emergence he explores the question of conscious properties arising from brute, unthinking matter, making the case that there is no equally plausible non-emergent alternative. Vision defends emergentism even while conceding that conscious properties and states are realized by or strongly supervene on the physical. He argues, however, that conscious properties cannot be reduced to, identified with, or given the right kind of materialist explanation in terms of the physical reality on which they depend. Rather than use emergentism simply to assail the current physicalist orthodoxy, Vision views emergentism as a contribution to understanding conscious aspects. After describing and defending his version of emergentism, Vision reviews several varieties of physicalism and near-physicalism, finding that his emergent theory does a better job of coming to grips with these phenomena.

Download or read book Beyond Physicalism written by Edward F. Kelly and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-02-19 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of modern science has brought with it increasing acceptance among intellectual elites of a worldview that conflicts sharply both with everyday human experience and with beliefs widely shared among the world’s great cultural traditions. Most contemporary scientists and philosophers believe that reality is at bottom purely physical, and that human beings are nothing more than extremely complicated biological machines. On such views our everyday experiences of conscious decision-making, free will, and the self are illusory by-products of the grinding of our neural machinery. It follows that mind and personality are necessarily extinguished at death, and that there exists no deeper transpersonal or spiritual reality of any sort. Beyond Physicalism is the product of an unusual fellowship of scientists and humanities scholars who dispute these views. In their previous publication, Irreducible Mind, they argued that physicalism cannot accommodate various well-evidenced empirical phenomena including paranormal or psi phenomena, postmortem survival, and mystical experiences. In this new theory-oriented companion volume they go further by attempting to understand how the world must be constituted in order that these “rogue” phenomena can occur. Drawing upon empirical science, metaphysical philosophy, and the mystical traditions, the authors work toward an improved “big picture” of the general character of reality, one which strongly overlaps territory traditionally occupied by the world’s institutional religions, and which attempts to reconcile science and spirituality by finding a middle path between the polarized fundamentalisms, religious and scientific, that have dominated recent public discourse. Contributions by: Harald Atmanspacher, Loriliai Biernacki, Bernard Carr, Wolfgang Fach, Michael Grosso, Michael Murphy, David E. Presti, Gregory Shaw, Henry P. Stapp, Eric M. Weiss, and Ian Whicher

Download or read book Human and Machine Consciousness written by David Gamez and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2018-03-07 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consciousness is widely perceived as one of the most fundamental, interesting and difficult problems of our time. However, we still know next to nothing about the relationship between consciousness and the brain and we can only speculate about the consciousness of animals and machines. Human and Machine Consciousness presents a new foundation for the scientific study of consciousness. It sets out a bold interpretation of consciousness that neutralizes the philosophical problems and explains how we can make scientific predictions about the consciousness of animals, brain-damaged patients and machines. Gamez interprets the scientific study of consciousness as a search for mathematical theories that map between measurements of consciousness and measurements of the physical world. We can use artificial intelligence to discover these theories and they could make accurate predictions about the consciousness of humans, animals and artificial systems. Human and Machine Consciousness also provides original insights into unusual conscious experiences, such as hallucinations, religious experiences and out-of-body states, and demonstrates how ‘designer’ states of consciousness could be created in the future. Gamez explains difficult concepts in a clear way that closely engages with scientific research. His punchy, concise prose is packed with vivid examples, making it suitable for the educated general reader as well as philosophers and scientists. Problems are brought to life in colourful illustrations and a helpful summary is given at the end of each chapter. The endnotes provide detailed discussions of individual points and full references to the scientific and philosophical literature.

Download or read book New Work for Non reductive Theories of Consciousness written by Thomas Bradford Saad and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conscious states are ones that there is something it is like to undergo. There are three senses in which this dissertation delivers new work for non-reductive theories of consciousness. First, it supports non-reductive theorizing about consciousness by defending two new arguments against reductive physicalism about consciousness. Second, it introduces and argues in favor of three non-reductive theories of consciousness. Third, it motivates these theories by showing how they are distinctively well-suited to perform certain explanatory work. Each chapter of the dissertation is self-contained. Chapter 1 develops an empirically motivated argument against reductive physicalism. The argument distinguishes different interpretations of the special theory of relativity and argues that none provides a hospitable environment for reductive physicalism. Chapter 2 develops a new modal argument against reductive physicalism. The argument appeals to the possibility of aliens, i.e. (roughly) subjects of physically irreducible conscious states that are uninstantiated in the actual world. The argument has advantages and consequences that distinguish it from the more familiar anti-physicalist arguments that appeal to zombies and ghosts. I conclude the chapter by proposing quasi-reductive physicalism—a form of grounding physicalism—that retains some of reductive physicalism’s virtues but which is unthreatened by aliens. Chapter 3 introduces a second non-reductive theory of consciousness: tracking dualism. On tracking dualism, a fundamental psychophysical law fixes the distribution of conscious states by operating on facts about what features of the environment brain states “track”. I use a puzzle about spatial experience to argue that tracking dualism is an attractive theory for dualists. Chapter 4 motivates a stringent set of constraints on constructing a dualist theory of consciousness, explains why existing dualist theories satisfy only some of them, and constructs a dualist theory that satisfies all of them. On the resulting theory—which I call delegatory dualism—experiences uphold causal responsibilities “delegated” to them by physical states

Download or read book Mind and its Place in the World written by Alexander Batthyány and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is mind? What is its relationship to the physical world? Is consciousness a causative agent in the physical world? With much progress being made in the neurosciences, many have thought that these questions could be answered by reducing them to questions about physical systems such as the brain. But this approach has foundered on the core problem of consciousness: Why is it that some brain processes are accompanied by conscious awareness? This anthology points out new sources and unexamined paths of consciousness research. By presenting a wide spectrum of non-reductive theories, the volume endeavours to overcome the dichotomy between dualism and monism that keeps plaguing the debate in favour of new and more differentiated positions.

Download or read book Consciousness Explained written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 707 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daniel Dennett's "brilliant" exploration of human consciousness — named one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times — is a masterpiece beloved by both scientific experts and general readers (New York Times Book Review). Consciousness Explained is a full-scale exploration of human consciousness. In this landmark book, Daniel Dennett refutes the traditional, commonsense theory of consciousness and presents a new model, based on a wealth of information from the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence. Our current theories about conscious life — of people, animal, even robots — are transformed by the new perspectives found in this book. "Dennett is a witty and gifted scientific raconteur, and the book is full of fascinating information about humans, animals, and machines. The result is highly digestible and a useful tour of the field." —Wall Street Journal

Download or read book Ignorance and Imagination written by Daniel Stoljar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ignorance and Imagination advances a novel way to resolve the central philosophical problem about the mind: how it is that consciousness or experience fits into a larger naturalistic picture of the world. The correct response to the problem, Stoljar argues, is not to posit a realm of experience distinct from the physical, nor to deny the reality of phenomenal experience, nor even to rethink our understanding of consciousness and the language we use to talk about it. Instead, we should view the problem itself as a consequence of our ignorance of the relevant physical facts, Stoljar shows that this change of orientation is well motivated historically, empirically, and philosophically, and that it has none of the side effects it is sometimes thought to have. The result is a philosophical perspective on the mind that has a number of far-reaching consequences: for consciousness studies, for our place in nature, and for the way we think about the relationship between philosophy and science.

Download or read book Consciousness in the Physical World written by Torin Alter and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-01 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to Russellian monism, an alternative to the familiar theories in the philosophy of mind that combines attractive components of physicalism and dualism, matter has intrinsic properties that both constitute consciousness and serve as categorical bases for the dispositional properties described in physics. Consciousness in the Physical World collects various works on Russellian monism, including historical selections, recent classics, and new pieces. Most chapters are sympathetic with the view, but some are skeptical. Together, they constitute the first book-length treatment of the view itself, its relationship to other theories, its motivations, and its problems.

Download or read book The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul written by Simona Ginsburg and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 665 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new theory about the origins of consciousness that finds learning to be the driving force in the evolutionary transition to basic consciousness. What marked the evolutionary transition from organisms that lacked consciousness to those with consciousness—to minimal subjective experiencing, or, as Aristotle described it, “the sensitive soul”? In this book, Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka propose a new theory about the origin of consciousness that finds learning to be the driving force in the transition to basic consciousness. Using a methodology similar to that used by scientists when they identified the transition from non-life to life, Ginsburg and Jablonka suggest a set of criteria, identify a marker for the transition to minimal consciousness, and explore the far-reaching biological, psychological, and philosophical implications. After presenting the historical, neurobiological, and philosophical foundations of their analysis, Ginsburg and Jablonka propose that the evolutionary marker of basic or minimal consciousness is a complex form of associative learning, which they term unlimited associative learning (UAL). UAL enables an organism to ascribe motivational value to a novel, compound, non-reflex-inducing stimulus or action, and use it as the basis for future learning. Associative learning, Ginsburg and Jablonka argue, drove the Cambrian explosion and its massive diversification of organisms. Finally, Ginsburg and Jablonka propose symbolic language as a similar type of marker for the evolutionary transition to human rationality—to Aristotle's “rational soul.”

Download or read book The Soul Hypothesis written by Mark C. Baker and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: >

Download or read book Theories of Consciousness written by William Seager and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-12 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite recent strides in neuroscience and psychology that have deepened understanding of the brain, consciousness remains one of the greatest philosophical and scientific puzzles. The second edition of Theories of Consciousness: An Introduction and Assessment provides a fresh and up-to-date introduction to a variety of approaches to consciousness, and contributes to the current lively debate about the nature of consciousness and whether a scientific understanding of it is possible. After an initial overview of the status and prospects of physicalism in the face of the problem of consciousness, William Seager explores key themes from Descartes - the founder of the modern problem of consciousness. He then turns to the most important theories of consciousness: identity theories and the generation problem higher-order thought theories of consciousness self-representational theories of consciousness Daniel Dennett’s theory of consciousness attention-based theories of consciousness representational theories of consciousness conscious intentionality panpsychism neutral monism. Thoroughly revised and expanded throughout, this second edition includes new chapters on animal consciousness, reflexive consciousness, combinatorial forms of panpsychism and neutral monism, as well as a significant new chapter on physicalism, emergence and consciousness. The book’s broad scope, depth of coverage and focus on key philosophical positions and arguments make it an indispensable text for those teaching or studying philosophy of mind and psychology. It is also an excellent resource for those working in related fields such as cognitive science and the neuroscience of consciousness.