Consciousness Revisited

by Tye, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780262012737
• ISBN10: 0262012731
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-03-31
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

We are material beings in a material world, but we are also beings who have experiences and feelings. How can these subjective states be just a matter of matter? To defend materialism, philosophical materialists have formulated what is sometimes called "the phenomenal-concept strategy," which holds that we possess a range of special concepts for classifying the subjective aspects of our experiences. InConsciousness Revisited, the philosopher Michael Tye, until now a proponent of the the phenomenal-concept strategy, argues that the strategy is mistaken. A rejection of phenomenal concepts leaves the materialist with the task of finding some other strategy for defending materialism. Tye points to four major puzzles of consciousness that arise: How is it possible for Mary, in the famous thought experiment, to make a discovery when she leaves her black-and-white room? In what does the explanatory gap consist and how can it be bridged? How can the hard problem of consciousness be solved? How are zombies possible? Tye presents solutions to these puzzles-solutions that relieve the pressure on the materialist created by the failure of the phenomenal-concept strategy. In doing so, he discusses and makes new proposals on a wide range of issues, including the nature of perceptual content, the conditions necessary for consciousness of a given object, the proper understanding of change blindness, the nature of phenomenal character and our awareness of it, whether we have privileged access to our own experiences, and, if we do, in what such access consists. Representation and Mind series

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. ix
Introduction	p. xi
Phenomenal Consciousness	p. 1
Preliminary Remarks	p. 2
Phenomenal Consciousness and Self-Representation	p. 4
The Connection between Phenomenal Consciousness and Creature Consciousness	p. 8
Consciousness of Things	p. 10
Real-World Puzzle Cases	p. 18
Why Consciousness Cannot Be Physical and Why It Must Be	p. 25
What Is the Thesis of Physicalism?	p. 25
Why Consciousness Cannot Be Physical	p. 29
Why Consciousness Must Be Physical	p. 33
Physicalism and the Appeal to Phenomenal Concepts	p. 39
Some Terminological Points	p. 39
Why Physicalists Appeal to Phenomenal Concepts	p. 42
Various Accounts of Phenomenal Concepts	p. 44
My Earlier View on Phenomenal Concepts	p. 51
Are There Any Phenomenal Concepts?	p. 56
Phenomenal Concepts and Burgean Intuitions	p. 63
Consequences for A Priori Physicalism	p. 74
The Admissible Contents of Visual Experience	p. 77
The Existential Thesis	p. 78
The Singular (When Filled) Thesis	p. 80
Kaplanianism	p. 83
The Multiple-Contents Thesis	p. 86
The Existential Thesis Revisited	p. 88
Still More on Existential Contents	p. 91
Conclusion	p. 94
Consciousness, Seeing, and Knowing	p. 95
Knowing Things and Knowing Facts	p. 95
Nonconceptual Content	p. 103
Why the Phenomenal Character of an Experience Is Not One of Its Nonrepresentational Properties	p. 109
Phenomenal Character and Representational Content: Part I	p. 112
Phenomenal Character and Representational Content: Part II	p. 115
Phenomenal Character and Our Knowledge of It	p. 116
Solving the Puzzles	p. 123
Mary, Mary, How Does Your Knowledge Grow?	p. 123
The Explanatory Gap	p. 133
The Hard Problem	p. 144
The Possibility of Zombies	p. 145
Change Blindness and the Refrigerator Light Illusion	p. 155
A Closer Look at the Change-Blindness Hypotheses	p. 158
The "No-See-Um" View	p. 164
Sperling and the Refrigerator Light	p. 168
Phenomenology and Cognitive Accessibility	p. 171
A Further Change-Blindness Experiment	p. 174
Another Brick in the Wall	p. 176
Privileged Access, Phenomenal Character, and Externalism	p. 183
The Threat to Privileged Access	p. 183
A Burgean Thought Experiment	p. 185
Social Externalism for Phenomenal Character?	p. 187
A Closer Look at Privileged Access and Incorrigibility	p. 188
How Do I Know That I Am Not a Zombie?	p. 191
Phenomenal Externalism	p. 193
Notes	p. 201
References	p. 217
Index	p. 227
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