10 papers in the library · 15 citations · publishing 2011-2025
Religious Studies August 1, 2025 Sam Coleman
Abstract If panpsychism is true then consciousness pervades the cosmos, and there exist many more conscious subjects than other worldviews contemplate. Panpsychism’s explanatory story about how human material composition and complexity grounds human consciousness seems to entail that there exist, notably, various conscious subjects within human organisms. Given the plausibility of the thesis...
Philosophy 2025 Sam Coleman
Abstract Stephen Yablo suggested that the relation of mental properties to physical properties is the same as that between red and scarlet: one of determinable property to determinate property. So just as being scarlet is a specific way of being red, on Yablo’s proposal a subject’s having a certain neurological property (c-fibres firing, say) is a specific way of a subject’s having a certain...
Mind and Matter July 20, 2024 Sam Coleman
In an influential article, Thomas Nagel (1979) was one of the first to address the doctrine of panpsychism after a long time of silence about it. The present paper focuses on Nagel's account in detail, and how it seems to oscillate between the apparently conflicting positions of panpsychism and neutral monism. To resolve the tension between them it is proposed to consider the mental and the...
Cambridge University Press eBooks September 30, 2022 Sam Coleman 1 citation
Qualitative consciousness is conscious experience marked by the presence of sensory qualities, like the experienced painfulness of having a piano dropped on your foot or the consciousness of seeing the brilliant reds and oranges of a sunset. Over his career, philosopher David Rosenthal has defended an influential theoretical approach to explaining qualitative consciousness. This approach...
Phenomenology and Mind 2022 Sam Coleman
According to Brentano, mentality is essentially intentional in nature. Other philosophers have emphasized the phenomenal-qualitative aspect of conscious experiences as core to the mind. A recent philosophical wave – the ‘phenomenal intentionality programme’ – seeks to unite these conceptions in the idea that mental content is grounded in phenomenal qualities. However, a philosophical and...
The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness July 9, 2020 Philip Goff, Sam Coleman 4 citations
Russellian monism is a quite general approach to the problem of consciousness, which comes in a variety of forms depending on what is said about the categorical properties of basic physical entities. We can usefully distinguish between panpsychist and panprotopsychist forms. Panpsychist Russellian monists hold that the categorical properties of basic physical entities are experiential...
December 16, 2019 Torin Alter, Sam Coleman
Panpsychism has recently gained interest among analytic philosophers of mind. This is due largely to its close relationship with Russellian monism, according to which consciousness is constituted at least partly by intrinsic properties that serve as categorical grounds of dispositional properties posited by fundamental physics.1 On a leading version of this view, those intrinsic properties are...
Trans/Form/Ação 2018 Sam Coleman
Abstract Over many years and in many publications David Rosenthal has developed, defended and applied his justly well-known higher-order thought theory of consciousness.2 In this paper I explain the theory, then provide a brief history of a major objection to it. I suggest that this objection is ultimately ineffectual, but that behind it lies a reason to look beyond Rosenthal's theory to...
February 14, 2015 Sam Coleman
Abstract Due to their reliance on constitutive higher-order representing to generate the qualities of which the subject is consciously aware, I argue that the major existing higher-order representational theories of consciousness insulate us from our first-order sensory states. In fact on these views we are never properly conscious of our sensory states at all. In their place I offer a new...
The Journal of Philosophy 2011 Sam Coleman 10 citations
On the basis of two argumentative examples plus their ‘parity principle’, Andy Clark and David Chalmers argue that mental states like beliefs can extend into the environment. I raise two problems for the argument. The first problem is that it is more difficult than Clark and Chalmers think to set up the Tetris example so that application of the parity principle might render it a case of...