10 papers in the library · 86 citations · publishing 2011-2023
Routledge eBooks June 28, 2023 Josh Weisberg
This chapter closes off some final worries for the Automated Compression Theory (ACT) approach and further demonstrates how ACT explains our hard problem intuitions. First, the chapter outlines an “ability hypothesis” response to the knowledge argument using ACT resources. The chapter then defuses the worry that any easy explanation of the problematic appearances of consciousness will simply...
Routledge eBooks June 28, 2023 Josh Weisberg
This chapter introduces the Automated Compression Theory (ACT). ACT holds that when we consider our conscious experience from the first-person perspective, we automatically access compressed information chunks, and this process explains in easy terms the appearances underwriting our hard problem intuitions. ACT is supported by general engineering constraints: any well-built cognitive system...
Routledge eBooks June 28, 2023 Josh Weisberg
This chapter presents in detail the main reasons offered for a pessimistic belief in the hard problem, notably the five central arguments offered by David Chalmers. These arguments are rooted in our first-person access to consciousness, and they provide the central line of justification for our problem intuitions about consciousness. The chapter then introduces Derk Pereboom’s “qualitative...
Routledge eBooks June 28, 2023 Josh Weisberg
This chapter lays out in detail the problematic appearances of consciousness requiring explanation. Considerations from pessimists like Chalmers and Joseph Levine are considered, and the chapter distills out the claim that our first-person access seems to put us in direct contact with indescribable, simple properties, properties only contingently connected to the structural, dynamical, and...
June 28, 2023 Josh Weisberg
This chapter introduces the debate between explanatory pessimists and optimists on the hard problem of consciousness. Pessimists reject the claim that consciousness can be explained in ordinary scientific terms of structure, dynamics, and function. Optimists accept this claim. The chapter then motivates the optimists’ position by considering the historical success of naturalistic, scientific...
The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness July 9, 2020 Josh Weisberg
Higher-order (HO) theories of consciousness hold that a mental state is conscious when it is appropriately represented by a ‘higher-order’ state, a state about another mental state. The higher-order perception (HOP) theory holds that HO representation is best modeled on perceptual processes, while the higher-order thought (HOT) theory holds that it is best modeled on thought. In addition, some...
ProtoSociology 2019 Josh Weisberg
It is widely held that consciousness is partially constituted by a “pre-reflective” self-consciousness. Further, it’s argued that the presence of pre-reflective self-consciousness poses a problem for “higher-order” theories of consciousness. Higher-order theories invoke reflective representation and so do not appear to have the resources to explain pre-reflective self-consciousness. This...
Philosophical Psychology June 17, 2011 Josh Weisberg 6 citations
Most materialist responses to the zombie argument against materialism take either a “type-A” or “type-B” approach: they either deny the conceivability of zombies or accept their conceivability while denying their possibility. However, a “type-Q” materialist approach, inspired by Quinean suspicions about a priority and modal entailment, rejects the sharp line between empirical and conceptual...
Analysis May 16, 2011 Josh Weisberg 77 citations
Ned Block argues that the higher order (HO) approach to explaining consciousness is ‘defunct’ because a prominent objection (the ‘misrepresentation objection’) exposes the view as ‘incoherent’. What’s more, a response to this objection that I’ve offered elsewhere (Weisberg 2010) fails because it ‘amounts to abusing the notion of what-it’s-like-ness’ (Block 2011: 427).1 In this response, I wish...
Mind April 1, 2011 Josh Weisberg 3 citations
The idea that conscious states are about both the world and themselves is an old one, tracing its roots back to Brentano and perhaps even as far back as Aristotle. There is, according to this picture, an intrinsic reflexiveness at the heart of conscious experience. In his important and provocative book Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory, Uriah Kriegel approaches this...