David Bohm is famous for inventing a ‘hidden variables’ interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which particles possess definite positions and momenta, but nonetheless preserve distinctively quantum phenomena perfectly in line with orthodox quantum mechanics. Bohm achieved this by interpreting the quantum wave function as a kind of universal ‘guidance wave’. But his particulate model does not...
Idealism is the view that consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality. Idealism goes further by asserting that consciousness is all there is to reality. A picture of the world grounded on physics may not fund a satisfactory answer to the problem of consciousness. Panpsychism is the view that some form of consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of nature. But, unlike...
One of the most vivid aspects of consciousness is the experience of emotion, yet this topic is given relatively little attention within consciousness studies. Emotions are crucial, for they provide quick and motivating assessments of value, without which action would be misdirected or absent. Emotions also involve linkages between phenomenal and intentional consciousness. This paper examines...
Jaegwon Kim is one of the most pre-eminent and most influential contributors to the philosophy of mind and metaphysics. This collection of essays presents the core of his work on supervenience and mind with two sets of postscripts especially written for the book. The essays focus on such issues as the nature of causation and events, what dependency relations other than causal relations connect...
Like a leaky roof, the phenomena of consciousness continue to drip cold water on otherwise virtually watertight physicalist pretensions. There are no current prospects for any sort of scientific theory of consciousness and the various speculative attempts to point in the direction of such a theory of consciousness all appear to suffer from the rather basic problem of being, in the words of...