Phenomenal Qualities Sense, Perception, and Consciousness

by Coates, Paul; Coleman, Sam

• ISBN13: 9780198712718
• ISBN10: 0198712715
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-10-20
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

What are phenomenal qualities, the qualities of conscious experiences? How do the phenomenal aspects of conscious experiences relate to brain processes? To what extent do experiences represent the things around us, or the states of our own bodies? Are phenomenal qualities subjective, belonging to inner mental episodes of some kind, and merely dependent on our brains? Or should they be seen as objective, belonging in some way to the physical things in the world around us? Are they physical properties at all? The problematic nature of phenomenal qualities makes it hard to understand how the mind is related to the physical world. There is no settled view about these issues, which concern some of the deepest, and most central, problems in philosophy.
Fourteen original papers, written by a team of distinguished philosophers and psychologists and set in context by a full introduction, explore the ways in which phenomenal qualities fit in with our understanding of mind and reality.
The topics covered include: phenomenal concepts, the relation of sensory qualities to the modalities, the limits of current theories about physical matter; problems about the nature of perceptual experience, projectivism, and the extent to which perception is direct; non-conceptual content, the representational nature of pain experience, and the phenomenology of thought; and issues relating to empirical work on synaesthesia, psychological theories of attention, and prospects for unifying the phenomenal array with neurophysiological accounts of the brain. This volume offers an indispensable resource for anyone wishing to understand the nature of conscious experience.

Author Biography

Paul Coates, University of Hertfordshire,Sam Coleman, University of Hertfordshire

Paul Coates is Professor Emeritus of philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire, where he was head of philosophy. He served a term as president of the Mind Association, and has given invited lecture tours in Scotland, and in the United States. Paul has been the recipient of a number of research awards, including from the USA National Endowment for the Humanities, and recently from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to lead a project exploring the nature of Phenomenal Qualities. His main research interests are in the fields of perception, rule-following, and the philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars.


Sam Coleman is Senior Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire. He has published papers in the philosophy of mind and continues to work on matters around consciousness, content and ontology.

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Nature of Phenomenal Qualities, Paul Coates and Sam Coleman
Section I. The Ontology of Phenomenal Qualities
1. Quality Spaces and Sensory Modalities, David Rosenthal
2. Neuro-Cosmology, Sam Coleman
3. Phenomenal Qualities: What They Must Be, and What They Cannot Be, Howard Robinson
4. Real Acquaintance and Physicalism, Philip Goff
Section II. Perception and Phenomenal Qualities
5. Moore's Dilemma, Michael Martin
6. Projection, Revelation, and the Function of Perception, Paul Coates
7. Real Direct Realism: Reflections on Perception, Galen Strawson
Section III. The Kinds and Character of Phenomenal Qualities
8. A New Argument for Realism from Perceptual Content, E. J. Lowe
9. Can We Really See a Million Colours?, David Papineau
10. The Nature of Pain and the Appearance/Reality Distinction, Michael Tye
11. The Life of the Mind, Michelle Montague
Section IV. Phenomenal Qualities and Empirical Findings
12. A Function-Centered Taxonomy of Visual Attention, Ronald A. Rensink
13. Can Sounds be Red? A New Account of Synaesthesia as Enriched Experience, Ophelia Deroy
14. Technical Issues in Naive Sense-Datum Theory, John M. Nicholas