ISSN 0034-0006
11 papers in the library · 75 citations · publishing 2004-2026
Ratio April 28, 2026 R. P. Koutedakis
Most naïve realists do not distinguish between perception and consciousness; to say that I perceive the table is akin to saying that I am conscious of the table. Doing so leads many to maintain that if the character of experience is constituted by anything other than the table, I do not perceive it, and so naïve realism fails. I argue that although most attempts to account for the character in...
Ratio December 28, 2025 Song Lin
The revelation thesis, namely the claim that introspection or phenomenal concepts reveal the full essence of conscious states, has recently become a central topic in the philosophy of mind. On the one hand, many argue that the plausibility of anti‐physicalist arguments (such as conceivability arguments) depends on it. On the other hand, the revival of panpsychism has also invoked the revelation...
Ratio March 1, 2024 Işık Sarıhan
AbstractRecent philosophy has seen a resurgence of the realist view of sensible qualities such as colour. The view holds that experienced qualities are properties of the objects in the physical environment, not mentally instantiated properties like qualia or merely intentional, illusory ones. Some suggest that this move rids us of the explanatory gap between physical properties and the...
Ratio April 8, 2023 James Porter Moreland
Abstract In the last decade, there has been a notable upsurge in property (PD) and generic substance dualism (SD). By SD I mean the view that there is a spiritual substantial soul that is different from but variously related to its body. SD includes Cartesian, certain forms of late Medieval hylomorphic (e.g., Aquinas'), and Haskerian emergent SD. Nevertheless, some form of physicalism remains...
Ratio October 22, 2018 Sebastian Watzl 19 citations
Abstract Phenomenal consciousness, what it is like for each particular subject, seems to be at the heart of subjectivity and the primary home of the self. But is there in fact a role for the self in phenomenal consciousness? According to the phenomenal no‐self challenge, reflection on the character of phenomenal consciousness reveals no self and no subjectivity. I articulate an argument for...
Ratio September 28, 2018 Amber D. Carpenter 4 citations
Abstract Buddhist ethics generally favour attention over action, and mental cultivation as the means of ethical transformation. Buddhaghosa’s treatment ofsamādhi– meditation – in thePath of Purification(Visuddhimagga) exemplifies this view that practices of attention are morally transforming. His detailed discussion of which forms of attentional exercises are transformative to whom reveal that...
Ratio August 7, 2018 Bronwyn Finnigan 11 citations
Abstract This article examines contemporary Buddhist defences of the idea that consciousness is reflexively aware or self‐aware. Call this the Self‐Awareness Thesis. A version of this thesis was historically defended by Dignāga but rejected by Prāsaṅgika Mādhyamika Buddhists. Prāsaṅgikas invoke a distinction between two truths or realities; they deny an ultimate reality but admit the use of...
Ratio August 2, 2018 Jonardon Ganeri 2 citations
Abstract Buddhist philosophy of mind is fascinating because it denies that there is a self in one of the ways that has traditionally seemed best able to make sense of that idea: the idea that the self is the agent of actions including the thinking of thoughts. In the Buddhist philosophy of mind of the fifth century thinker Buddhaghosa what does the explanatory work is instead attention....
Ratio April 1, 2018 Earl Conee
Abstract: Metaphysical functionalism holds that the nature of the mental is its functional role. Proponents of the absent qualia objection to functionalism assert that mental states with essential phenomenal qualities might have had functional duplicates without qualia. Michael Tye has argued that this purported possibility is incoherent. Robert van Gulick has criticized Tye's argument. It is...
Ratio February 26, 2018 Miguel Ángel Sebastián 1 citation
Abstract The non‐transitivity of the relation looks the same as has been used to argue that the relation has the same phenomenal character as is non‐transitive—a result that jeopardizes certain theories of consciousness. In this paper, I argue against this conclusion while granting the premise by dissociating lookings and phenomenology; an idea that some might find counter‐intuitive. However,...
Ratio November 17, 2004 Bas C. van Fraassen 38 citations
Abstract I exist, but I am not a thing among things; X exists if and only if there is something such that it=X. This is consistent, and it is a view that can be supported. Calvino’s novel The Non‐Existent Knight can be read so as to illustrate this view. But what is my relation to the things there are if I am not identical with any of them – things such as my arms, my garden, the city I live...