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Explanatory Optimism About The Hard Problem Of Consciousness
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Book Synopsis Explanatory Optimism about the Hard Problem of Consciousness by : Josh Weisberg
Download or read book Explanatory Optimism about the Hard Problem of Consciousness written by Josh Weisberg and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-08-25 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explanatory Optimism about the Hard Problem of Consciousness argues that despite the worries of explanatory pessimists, consciousness can be fully explained in “easy” scientific terms. The widespread intuition that consciousness poses a hard problem is plausibly based on how consciousness appears to us in first-person access. The book offers a debunking argument to undercut the justificatory link between the first-person appearances and our hard problem intuitions. The key step in the debunking argument involves the development and defense of an empirical model of first-person access: Automated Compression Theory (ACT). ACT holds that first-person access to consciousness is accomplished by automated accessing of compressed sensory information. Because of the distorting nature of this compressed access, it seems to subjects that consciousness possesses “exceptional” properties—properties leading to the hard problem—even though no such properties are present. If there are no exceptional properties to explain, then an explanation in easy terms can fully account for conscious experience. The book presents a range of empirical evidence for ACT and concludes that the burden of proof is now on the pessimists to show why we shouldn’t be optimistic about explaining consciousness.
Book Synopsis Explanatory Optimism about the Hard Problem of Consciousness by : Josh Weisberg
Download or read book Explanatory Optimism about the Hard Problem of Consciousness written by Josh Weisberg and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-08-25 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explanatory Optimism about the Hard Problem of Consciousness argues that despite the worries of explanatory pessimists, consciousness can be fully explained in “easy” scientific terms. The widespread intuition that consciousness poses a hard problem is plausibly based on how consciousness appears to us in first-person access. The book offers a debunking argument to undercut the justificatory link between the first-person appearances and our hard problem intuitions. The key step in the debunking argument involves the development and defense of an empirical model of first-person access: Automated Compression Theory (ACT). ACT holds that first-person access to consciousness is accomplished by automated accessing of compressed sensory information. Because of the distorting nature of this compressed access, it seems to subjects that consciousness possesses “exceptional” properties—properties leading to the hard problem—even though no such properties are present. If there are no exceptional properties to explain, then an explanation in easy terms can fully account for conscious experience. The book presents a range of empirical evidence for ACT and concludes that the burden of proof is now on the pessimists to show why we shouldn’t be optimistic about explaining consciousness.
Book Synopsis The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness by : Susan Schneider
Download or read book The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness written by Susan Schneider and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 848 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Updated and revised, the highly-anticipated second edition of The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness offers a collection of readings that together represent the most thorough and comprehensive survey of the nature of consciousness available today. Features updates to scientific chapters reflecting the latest research in the field Includes 18 new theoretical, empirical, and methodological chapters covering integrated information theory, renewed interest in panpsychism, and more Covers a wide array of topics that include the origins and extent of consciousness, various consciousness experiences such as meditation and drug-induced states, and the neuroscience of consciousness Presents 54 peer-reviewed chapters written by leading experts in the study of consciousness, from across a variety of academic disciplines
Book Synopsis Phenomenal Consciousness by : Dimitris Platchias
Download or read book Phenomenal Consciousness written by Dimitris Platchias and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-05 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can the fine-grained phenomenology of conscious experience arise from neural processes in the brain? How does a set of action potentials (nerve impulses) become like the feeling of pain in one's experience? Contemporary neuroscience is teaching us that our mental states correlate with neural processes in the brain. However, although we know that experience arises from a physical basis, we don't have a good explanation of why and how it so arises. The problem of how physical processes give rise to experience is called the 'hard problem' of consciousness and it is the contemporary manifestation of the mind-body problem. This book explains the key concepts that surround the issue as well as the nature of the hard problem and the several approaches to it. It gives a comprehensive treatment of the phenomenon incorporating its main metaphysical and epistemic aspects, as well as recent empirical findings, such as the phenomenon of blindsight, change blindness, visual-form agnosia and optic ataraxia, mirror recognition in other primates, split-brain cases and synaesthesia.
Book Synopsis The Problem of Consciousness by : Colin McGinn
Download or read book The Problem of Consciousness written by Colin McGinn and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1993-03-02 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can consciousness be fitted into a naturalistic worldview or is it inherently mysterious? In virtue of what d does a physical organism come to have an inner conscious life? This book argues that we are not equipped to understand the workings of conciousness, despite its objective naturalness. Introspection does not reveal the hiddent structure of consciousness and it is this that joins experience to the material world.
Download or read book Explaining Consciousness written by and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis A Faithful Guide to Philosophy by : Peter S. Williams
Download or read book A Faithful Guide to Philosophy written by Peter S. Williams and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2019-02-14 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Faithful Guide to Philosophy is the only British Christian introduction to philosophy, a book that will be used as a course textbook and by church study groups and individual readers alike. It covers a broad range of subjects of central importance to the Christian worldview, and will be prized by many.
Book Synopsis Consciousness, The Hard Problem Solved by : Stephen Hawley Martin
Download or read book Consciousness, The Hard Problem Solved written by Stephen Hawley Martin and published by . This book was released on 2019-11-16 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What scientists today call the "Hard Problem" is coming up with a theory that explains how the brain creates consciousness. For the past hundred years or more, ever since Scientific Materialism came to dominate the field of science, scientists have been trying to figure out how matter is able to create consciousness. This is because the undeniable implication of Scientific Materialism from a philosophical standpoint is "physicalism," the metaphysical thesis that "everything is physical," that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical. Therefore, mind or consciousness, the sense each of us has of "I am," must be produced solely by the brain, which according to Materialism is comprised of unthinking matter. This book presents compelling evidence to the contrary, evidence shows "physicalism" to be a bankrupt philosophy and Scientific Materialism to be based on false assumptions.The reader is hereby forewarned that this book is not for everyone. Only those truly open-minded individuals committed to considering the findings of research that may conflict with their beliefs should read this book. If, for example, you are convinced to your core that any of the statements listed below is an irrefutable, established fact, if no amount of evidence to the contrary will convince you otherwise, do not purchase or read this book because evidence will be revealed indicates these statements are untrue:1) There is an anthropomorphic God that created the physical universe and exists outside of it. 2) Mainstream Christian doctrine and everything stated in the Bible is literally true. 3) Nothing in the universe exists except material substance. 3) Life came about by chance. 4) Evolution works solely through random, chance mutations and the mechanism of "survival of the fittest" or "natural selection." 5) Consciousness and intelligence did not exist until evolution produced a brain. 6) Mind cannot produce matter. According to the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer [1788-1860], "All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident." Empirical evidence indicates that many Christian fundamentalists and Scientific Materialists, though at opposit ends of the belief spectrum, are stuck in the ridicule-violently-opposed stages when it comes to the research findings this book imparts. If you fall into one of those two categories, save yourself a case of indigestion and move on to something else. If, however, you are open-minded and willing to consider facts that may not fit your current worldview, this book is a must-read. It may take a generation or two, but it is only a matter of time before what it reveals about the reality we live in will be "accepted as self-evident."
Download or read book Consciousness written by Peter Carruthers and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2005-05-26 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Carruthers's essays on consciousness and related issues have had a substantial impact on the field, and many of his best are now collected here in revised form. The first half of the volume is devoted to developing, elaborating, and defending against competitors one particular sort of reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness, which Carruthers now refers to as 'dual-content theory'. Phenomenal consciousness - the feel of experience - is supposed to constitute the 'hard problem' for a scientific world view, and many have claimed that it is an irredeemable mystery. But Carruthers here claims to have explained it. He argues that phenomenally conscious states are ones that possess both an 'analog' (fine-grained) intentional content and a corresponding higher-order analog content, representing the first-order content of the experience. It is the higher-order analog content that enables our phenomenally conscious experiences to present themselves to us, and that constitutes their distinctive subjective aspect, or feel. The next two chapters explore some of the differences between conscious experience and conscious thought, and argue for the plausibility of some kind of eliminativism about conscious thinking (while retaining realism about phenomenal consciousness). Then the final four chapters focus on the minds of non-human animals. Carruthers argues that even if the experiences of animals aren't phenomenally conscious (as his account probably implies), this needn't prevent the frustrations and sufferings of animals from being appropriate objects of sympathy and concern. Nor need it mean that there is any sort of radical 'Cartesian divide' between our minds and theirs of deep significance for comparative psychology. In the final chapter, he argues provocatively that even insects have minds that include a belief/desire/perception psychology much like our own. So mindedness and phenomenal consciousness couldn't be further apart. Carruthers's writing throughout is distinctively clear and direct. The collection will be of great interest to anyone working in philosophy of mind or cognitive science.
Book Synopsis Explaining Consciousness - the "hard Problem" by : Jonathan Shear
Download or read book Explaining Consciousness - the "hard Problem" written by Jonathan Shear and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Illusionism written by Keith Frankish and published by Andrews UK Limited. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illusionism is the view that phenomenal consciousness (in the philosophers' sense) is an illusion. This book is a reprint of a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies devoted to this topic. It takes the form of a target paper by the editor, followed by commentaries from various thinkers, including leading defenders of the theory such as Daniel Dennett, Nicholas Humphrey, Derk Pereboom and Georges Rey. A number of disciplines are represented and different viewpoints are discussed and defended. The colleciton is tied together with a response to the commentaries from the editor.
Book Synopsis The Consciousness Paradox by : Rocco J. Gennaro
Download or read book The Consciousness Paradox written by Rocco J. Gennaro and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A defense of a version of the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness with special attention to such topics as concepts and animal consciousness. Consciousness is arguably the most important area within contemporary philosophy of mind and perhaps the most puzzling aspect of the world. Despite an explosion of research from philosophers, psychologists, and scientists, attempts to explain consciousness in neurophysiological, or even cognitive, terms are often met with great resistance. In The Consciousness Paradox, Rocco Gennaro aims to solve an underlying paradox, namely, how it is possible to hold a number of seemingly inconsistent views, including higher-order thought (HOT) theory, conceptualism, infant and animal consciousness, concept acquisition, and what he calls the HOT-brain thesis. He defends and further develops a metapsychological reductive representational theory of consciousness and applies it to several importantly related problems. Gennaro proposes a version of the HOT theory of consciousness that he calls the "wide intrinsicality view" and shows why it is superior to various alternatives, such as self-representationalism and first-order representationalism. HOT theory says that what makes a mental state conscious is that a suitable higher-order thought is directed at that mental state. Thus Gennaro argues for an overall philosophical theory of consciousness while applying it to other significant issues not usually addressed in the philosophical literature on consciousness. Most cognitive science and empirical works on such topics as concepts and animal consciousness do not address central philosophical theories of consciousness. Gennaro's integration of empirical and philosophical concerns will make his argument of interest to both philosophers and nonphilosophers.
Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind by : Brian McLaughlin
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind written by Brian McLaughlin and published by Oxford University Press (UK). This book was released on 2009-01-15 with total page 833 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the most authoritative and comprehensive guide ever published to the state of the art in philosophy of mind, a flourishing area of research. An outstanding team of contributors offer 45 new critical surveys of a wide range of topics.
Book Synopsis Cutting the Problem of Consciousness Down to Size by : Jonathan E. Dorsey
Download or read book Cutting the Problem of Consciousness Down to Size written by Jonathan E. Dorsey and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Physicalists, according to whom everything is physical, typically believe that the mind is the brain and that the former's properties are to be somehow referred to physical properties of the latter. Physicalists, then, had better be able to explain how consciousness, an absolutely central feature of the mind, comes from the physical. This challenge is not yet met; in fact, some think it probably never will be. The contention here is that the physicalist's difficulties are blown out of proportion. Physicalists have a way to explain at least some consciousness and potentially very much of it. This thesis is advanced primarily in Chapter Four. The first three chapters pave the way to it. Chapter One details the physicalist's problem of consciousness, also known as the explanatory gap. Chapter Two surveys problematic definitions of 'physical' and presents a temporary fix that some endorse, including some who advance the explanatory gap. Chapter Three argues against the temporary fix and suggests that it just might create more problems than it solves: for example, the problem of consciousness. That, it turns out, is an overstatement. Still, by seeing what physicalists can do once the "fix" is discontinued (in Chapter Four), a better view can be found. From that view, one can explain at least some consciousness and potentially very much of it. Chapter One: The Explanatory Gap and "Physicalism". Chapter One primarily concerns the explanatory gap and is a detailed presentation of it. It begins with the preliminary tasks of clarifying the thesis of physicalism (through a contrast with substance dualism) and identifying the gap's two relata, or what the explanatory gap is supposed to hold between. Then, the gap itself is presented: that is, what it even means to say that an "explanatory gap" exists and why one is thought to exist between the physical and consciousness. Chapter One also concerns, in a limited way, the issue of better defining the term 'physical', thereby better defining 'physicalism'. One suggestion for how to understand these terms is presented, namely, that of Joseph Levine who is the champion of the explanatory gap. Chapter Two: A Closer Look at the Body Problem. Chapter Two takes a closer look at "the body problem": that is, the surprisingly difficult task of defining the term 'physical'. More-conventional definitions (for example, 'x is spatially located') are considered, as well as the more recently developed "physics-based" and "object-based" definitions. Each of these definitions turns out to have significant problems. The upshot is that the body problem stands, at least for now, despite efforts to treat the problem. The second part of Chapter Two returns to Levine's understanding of the term 'physical' (and hence 'physicalism'). Beside Levine, it has been advocated by others, especially Jessica Wilson, and named (by her) the "NFM constraint": that is, the no fundamental mentality constraint (on the definition of 'physical'). The constraint is presented and, importantly, clarified. It is thought that this constraint may be a good temporary fix (not really a solution) to the body problem. Chapter Three: On the Supposed Limits of Physicalist Theories of Mind. Chapter Three concerns whether the NFM constraint is rightly imposed on the definition of 'physical'. Two arguments in favor of it are considered and rejected. It is then argued on the basis of a key distinction introduced here (between different senses of 'fundamental mentality') that it is wrongly imposed. Provided that, it is a temporary fix to the body problem that ought not to be accepted. Chapter Four: Cutting the Physicalist's Problem of Consciousness Down to Size: Hemipsychism. Chapter Four begins with a brief (re)introduction to physicalism, phenomenal consciousness, and the explanatory gap (also known as "the hard problem"). After that, the important issue opened up by Chapter Three is explored. It turns out that, if the argument of Chapter Three is correct, physicalists can be panpsychists if they want: that is, physicalists can believe that everything, beside being physical, is also conscious. This, though a very radical view, just might help with the physicalist's problems with consciousness. The rest of the Chapter is dedicated to defending an original view introduced here called "Hemipsychism" (named after the brain's hemispheres). It requires nothing as extreme as panpsychism (not even close) and preserves what is good about panpsychism. The conclusion of the chapter, and hence the dissertation, is that one cannot clearly close the explanatory gap but that the physicalist does not clearly have to do so to explain some consciousness. Some consciousness can be explained via Hemipsychistic physicalism, and potentially very much of it.
Book Synopsis The Knowledge Argument by : Sam Coleman
Download or read book The Knowledge Argument written by Sam Coleman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cutting-edge and groundbreaking set of new essays by top philosophers on key topics related to the ever-influential knowledge argument.
Author :Research School of Social Sciences The Australian National University Daniel Stoljar Senior Fellow Publisher :Oxford University Press, USA ISBN 13 :0198041853 Total Pages :263 pages Book Rating :4.1/5 (98 download)
Book Synopsis Ignorance and Imagination : The Epistemic Origin of the Problem of Consciousness by : Research School of Social Sciences The Australian National University Daniel Stoljar Senior Fellow
Download or read book Ignorance and Imagination : The Epistemic Origin of the Problem of Consciousness written by Research School of Social Sciences The Australian National University Daniel Stoljar Senior Fellow and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2006-05-01 with total page 263 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.
Book Synopsis The Conscious Mind Revisited by : Seyedreza Maleeh
Download or read book The Conscious Mind Revisited written by Seyedreza Maleeh and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
