Philosophical Perspectives
October 18, 2023
Angela Mendelovici, David Bourget
We distinguish between different problems of “aboutness”: the “hard” problem of explaining the everyday phenomenon of intentionality and three less challenging “easy” sets of problems concerning the posits of folk psychology, the notions of representation invoked in the mind‐brain sciences, and the intensionality (with an “s”) of mental language. The problem of intentionality is especially hard...
Philosophical Perspectives
October 17, 2023
Claudia Passos-Ferreira
46 citations
Abstract I argue that newborn infants are conscious. I propose a methodology for investigating infant consciousness and I present two approaches for determining whether newborns are conscious. First, I consider behavioral and neurobiological markers of consciousness.Second, I investigate the major theories of consciousness, including both philosophical and scientific theories, and I discuss...
Philosophical Perspectives
December 1, 2017
Adam Pautz
39 citations
Should [reductionism about consciousness] convince us that the line between the conscious and the non-conscious is of no great metaphysical significance?--John Hawthorne ( 2006)What might a philosophy might be like that began to give up all reductionist dreams?--Hilary Putnam (1992)
Philosophical Perspectives
December 1, 2017
Anil Gomes
9 citations
What method should we use to determine the nature of perceptual experience?My focus here is the Kantian thought that transcendental arguments can be used to determine the nature of perceptual experience.I set out a dilemma for the use of transcendental arguments in the philosophy of perception, one which turns on a comparison of the transcendental method with the first-personal method of early...
Philosophical Perspectives
1995
Robert van Gulick
15 citations
Intentionality and phenomenal consciousness are the two traditional defining characteristics of the mental. Paradigmatically mental states have both, and both serve to anchor our basic concept of what it is for to be mental. When I have a visual experience of my office laid out before me, my mental state is clearly about or directed at in the intentional sense. My experience is an experience of...
Philosophical Perspectives
1990
James van Cleve
123 citations
1. Human beings are complex systems composed entirely of matter. (Material Composition, or Anti-Dualism)3 2. Mental properties are not logically implied by any physical properties. (Anti-Reductivism) 3. Human beings do have mental properties. (Anti-Eliminativism) 4. There are no emergent properties. That is to say, all properties of a complex system that are not relations between it and...