seager - theories of consciousness - introduction and assessment (routledge, 1999)

[...]... particular theories of consciousness In broadest terms, there are but two themes of central interest: the nature of consciousness and the production of consciousness A now commonplace worry about the former theme is that the term consciousness covers such a broad range of phenomena (even, perhaps, some pseudo-phenomena) that there is no hope and should be no expectation of discovering the nature of consciousness. .. representation to the problem of the mind and the fundamental problem of the genesis of consciousness both stem from Descartes A closer look at some infrequently appreciated aspects of Descartes’s philosophy of mind will set the stage for all of the modern theories to come and highlight the problems they will face So I begin with the great-great-grandfather of the mind–body problem William Seager Bathaven, 1998... constitutes our consciousness This is an interesting view even if one that many would find highly implausible It is, however, quite in line with the intuition, which I share, that all consciousness is consciousness of something, 5 THEORIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS and of that something as something or other In Cartesian terms, the view can be summed up as denying that the formal reality of our states of consciousness. . .THEORIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS way it feels to be alive and they are, I am sure, the ultimate source and ground of all value The problem of qualia is of that peculiar sort that arises in philosophy where a good many students of the subject doubt the very existence of the ‘objects’ supposedly creating the problem This doubt sent us down an enticing path If the problem of consciousness could... makes the problem somewhat tractable and nicely encompasses the extant philosophical theories of consciousness It provides an elegant entry into one of the key issues now dividing philosophers: the nature of qualia or the problem of subjective experience The Cartesian dilemma also demands an examination of something else which is often neglected in discussions of consciousness: what is representational... ‘representational consciousness and current theories of representational content is not entirely friendly This makes the problem of consciousness harder but also potentially more illuminating Box 1.2 • Two Main Questions What is the nature of consciousness, and how is it generated or ‘implemented’ by the brain, are the two primary questions that any theory of consciousness must address A way to get a handle on... substantial and implausible assumptions about the nature of thought and concepts, and alarmingly appears to ‘dissolve’ the whole enterprise of cognitive science More subtle efforts at dissolution ask us to rethink our idea of consciousness in various ways, some of them quite radical Many of the theories examined below attempt this sort of moderate dissolution So the idea that the matter /consciousness. .. for all of that (for more on the peculiar problem of de-counterfactualization, see chapter 9 below) A really solid identity hypothesis will provide the ground of the distinction between the conscious and the non-conscious systems of course, but at the cost of returning to the first of our disjuncts If, say, we identify consciousness with brain state X then consciousness persists just so long as, and through... of some motion of the pineal gland, for the mind has powers of its own at least sufficient for pure intellectual apprehension of a certain class of ideas.14 We recognize this motion-theory as an attempted solution to a high-level example of what are now called ‘binding problems’ (the solution to one version is the topic of Francis Crick’s recent book, The Astonishing Hypothesis 1994) This version of. .. reinforced notion that in any state of consciousness a multitude of distinct features are combined into a unified state It is an atomicmolecular theory of the generation of states of consciousness This basic model is so general that one might object to it on the ground of unfalsifiability It must be admitted that alternatives to the ‘atomic-molecular’ picture of the generation of any phenomenon are hard to . Pictures James Robert Brown THEORIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS An introduction and assessment William Seager THEORIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS An introduction and assessment William Seager London and New York First published. out of a hat made of mere matter. Theories of Consciousness explores a number of ways to understand consciousness and its place in the physical world. Spectacularly diverse, the spectrum of theories. linking consciousness to the notion of representation and his brain-theory of the generation of consciousness. Since Descartes maintains that every state of consciousness involves an idea and ideas