Search results for "Consciousness"
showing 10 items of 338 documents
Radical disruptions of self-consciousness
2020
This special issue is about something most of us might find very hard to conceive: states of consciousness in which self-consciousness is radically disrupted or altogether missing.
Consciousness and Moral Status of Animals
2021
Consciousness is the basis for granting moral status, but it is ephemeral and elusive. Both the ontological and epistemic dimension of consciousness cause hard problems for modern science and the philosophy of mind. On the one hand, consciousness is subjective, and includes conscious states with a phenomenal or qualitative character – “qualia”. It consists of mental states which are accessible to a subject only from the first-person perspective. A being is phenomenally conscious when there is something that is like to be that being. Utilitarianism uses the hedonistic strategy of the moral status, ascribing to that the demand for us to treat sentience as the fundamental property for obtainin…
2013
This metatheoretical paper develops a list of new research targets by exploring particularly promising interdisciplinary contact points between empirical dream research and philosophy of mind. The central example is the MPS-problem. It is constituted by the epistemic goal of conceptually isolating and empirically grounding the phenomenal property of "minimal phenomenal selfhood," which refers to the simplest form of self-consciousness. In order to precisely describe MPS, one must focus on those conditions that are not only causally enabling, but strictly necessary to bring it into existence. This contribution argues that research on bodiless dreams, asomatic out-of-body experiences, and ful…
Beyond Conceptual Dualism
2008
Francesc Forn I ARGIMON: Editorial Foreword: Special Series in Cognitive Science John R. SEARLE: Guest Foreword Preface Introduction One: Problems and Theories: The Mind-Body Problem in Contemporary Philosophical Debate Two: Biological Naturalism: A Naturalistic and Non-Reductive Ontology of Consciousness Three: Functionalistic Models of Consciousness: Dennett, Chalmers, and the Desubstantialization of Mind Four: Holism and Mental Causation in the Theory of Intentionality Five: John Searle and Contemporary Neuroscience. Holism, Mental Causation, and the Roots of Subjectivity Conclusion Works Cited About the Author Index
Why Is Mind-Wandering Interesting for Philosophers?
2018
This chapter explores points of contact between philosophy of mind and scientific approaches to spontaneous thought. While offering a series of conceptual instruments that might prove helpful for researchers on the empirical research frontier, it begins by asking what the explanandum for theories of mind-wandering is, how one can conceptually individuate single occurrences of this specific target phenomenon, and how one might arrive at a more fine-grained taxonomy. The second half of this contribution sketches some positive proposals as to how one might understand mind-wandering on a conceptual level, namely, as a loss of mental autonomy resulting in involuntary mental behavior, as a highly…
2013
This metatheoretical paper investigates mind wandering from the perspective of philosophy of mind. It has two central claims. The first is that on a conceptual level, mind wandering can be fruitfully described as a specific form of mental autonomy loss. The second is that most of what we call “conscious thought” is better analysed as a subpersonal process that more often than not lacks crucial properties traditionally taken to be the hallmark of personal-level cognition, such as mental agency, explicit, consciously experienced goal-directedness, or availability for veto control. I claim that for roughly two thirds of our life-time we do not possess mental autonomy (M-autonomy) in this sense…
Eurípides: de la moral pensada a la moral vivida
2011
ResumenLa tragedia griega sigue siendo un gran referente de reflexión filosófica. En este artículo nos centraremos en la figura de Eurípides, concretamente en el tema de los juicios morales que trasmiten sus obras trágicas. La cuestión es que si en Esquilo la razón triunfaba sobre el dilema trágico, en Eurípides no se ve claro ese triunfo si viene impuesto desde fuera y no ha arraigado en el corazón de los ciudadanos. La razón tiene muchas dificultades para ejercer su control sobre la acción y orientarla hacia el bien común. Eurípides planteará que es la persona, su conciencia interior, la que debe de estar convencida de que algo le obligue moralmente. El paso de una moral pensada a una mor…
The Apodicticity of Absence
1995
Husserl criticizes traditional metaphysics. Nevertheless, for Derrida, ‘metaphysics’ finest hour is represented by Husserl—The ‘return to the things themselves’ is precisely this ultimate effacement of metaphysics in the act of its predominance. The ‘principle of principles,’ that which guarantees the truth of the things themselves is an essential metaphysical one: the presence of presence to itself.”1 Derrida himself says: “The ultimate form of ideality, the ideality of ideality,... is the living present, the self-presence of transcendental life. Presence has always been and will always, forever, be the form in which, we can say apodictically, the infinite diversity of contents is produced…
Cudworth on Types of Consciousness
2010
Panpsychism, The Combination Problem, and Plural Collective Properties
2018
ABSTRACTPanpsychism claims that each fundamental entity is conscious, but then faces the problem of how such entities combine to make up our ordinary consciousness. In this paper, I show how panpsy...