ABSTRACT This article provides a contemporary introduction to issues in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science that are studied within the emerging field of digital minds research. We explore the potential for AI systems to have mental states. Questions that we address include whether artificially intelligent systems can be phenomenally conscious and whether they can have propositional...
ABSTRACT Phenomenal salience is the experiential contribution of attention to how things seem; namely, the character of perceptual experience. Two aspects of phenomenal salience have been of interest to philosophers. The first is about the uniformity of the phenomenology of perceptual salience. This aspect concerns how salience organizes objects of experience. The second is about the...
ABSTRACT The evolution of phenomenal consciousness remains a central challenge in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Although many argue that consciousness can be understood as a biological phenomenon, there is considerable disagreement about its origins. Competing theories range from early evolution views, which trace consciousness back to the Cambrian period around 540 million...
ABSTRACT The reemergence of serotonergic psychedelics in clinical research and practice has sparked numerous debates within bioethics. This paper aims to provide an overview of the key issues discussed in the emerging field of psychedelic ethics. It organizes these issues into four (partly overlapping) categories: (1) the implementation and execution of psychedelic research and practice, (2)...
Novel developments in neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology have spawned a thriving empirical literature on religious experience. Previous literature in the cognitive science of religion has largely ignored empirical results from these fields, focusing narrowly on results from evolutionary psychology. Additionally, it has ignored the epistemological relevance of non‐paradigmatic cases of...
The distinction between perception and cognition frames countless debates in philosophy and cognitive science. But what, if anything, does this distinction actually amount to? In this introductory article, we summarize recent work on this question. We first briefly consider the possibility that a perception-cognition border should be eliminated from our scientific ontology, and then introduce...
Abstract: Panpsychism is the view, found in ancient and modern, Eastern and Western philosophies, that mind is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the universe. This article explores the use of panpsychism to support different views of God. It is seen that as a family of views, panpsychism is a theologically flexible position that has been used to support atheism, pantheism, panentheism,...
Abstract There is a chasm in current analytic philosophy of perception between disjunctivists (and naïve realists), on the one hand, and ‘conjunctivists’ (intentionalists), on the other. For more than a decade, scholars of phenomenology have debated how classical phenomenologists such as Husserl and Merleau‐Ponty are to be located vis‐à‐vis this chasm. While there seems to be an emerging...
'Sentience' sometimes refers to the capacity for any type of subjective experience, and sometimes to the capacity to have subjective experiences with a positive or negative valence, such as pain or pleasure. We review recent controversies regarding sentience in fish and invertebrates and consider the deep methodological challenge posed by these cases. We then present two ways of responding to...
Abstract In this essay I explore the controversial issue of sense perception in the Zhuangzi 莊子. Although scholars have not explicitly addressed this aspect of the Chinese text, a common assumption is that the Zhuangzi proposes a mysticism that undermines sense perception in favour of a transcendent self. After an overview of this interpretation, and after analysing some key passages of the...
Abstract Sleep is phenomenologically rich, teeming with different kinds of conscious thought and experience. Dreaming is the most prominent example, but there is more to conscious experience in sleep than dreaming. Especially in non‐rapid eye movement sleep, conscious experience, sometimes dreamful, sometimes dreamless, also alternates with a loss of consciousness. Yet while dreaming has become...
Abstract: One of Anton Wilhelm Amo's core contributions to philosophy is his study of the human mind. Amo argues that the human mind is a purely active, immaterial substance that always acts spontaneously and cannot itself be acted upon. Amo's account of the mind has far‐reaching consequences for how he views the relation between mind and body, and our cognitive relation to the sensible world...
Abstract This article is part II of a consideration of phenomenology of religion focusing in this part on the conversation in contemporary French phenomenology. It begins with a brief comment about Heidegger's phenomenology of religious life and then engages most heavily those thinkers who discuss the phenomenon of religion in the Francophone context: Jean Héring, Emmanuel Lévinas, Jean‐Luc...
Abstract The first part of this survey article offered a cartography of some of the more extensively studied forms of multisensory processing. In this second part, I turn to examining some of the different possible ways in which the structure of conscious perceptual experience might also be characterized as multisensory. In addition, I discuss the significance of research on multisensory...
Abstract: Multisensory processing encompasses all of the various ways in which the presence of information in one sensory modality can adaptively influence the processing of information in a different modality. In Part I of this survey article, I begin by presenting a cartography of some of the more extensively investigated forms of multisensory processing, with a special focus on two distinct...
Abstract Integrative and naturalistic philosophy of mind can both learn from and contribute to the contemporary cognitive sciences of dreaming. Two related phenomena concerning self‐representation in dreams demonstrate the need to bring disparate fields together. In most dreams, the protagonist or dream self who experiences and actively participates in dream events is or represents the dreamer:...
Abstract There has in recent years been a significant surge of interest in non‐materialist accounts of the mind. Property dualists hold that all substances (concrete particulars that persist over time) are material, but mental properties are distinct from physical properties. Substance dualists maintain that the mind or person is a non‐material substance. This article considers the prospects...
Abstract Perception is typically distinguished from cognition. For example, seeing is importantly different from believing. And while what one sees clearly influences what one thinks, it is debatable whether what one believes and otherwise thinks can influence, in some direct and non‐trivial way, what one sees. The latter possible relation is the cognitive penetration of perception . Cognitive...
Abstract: Contemporary philosophers of mind tend to accept either some version of dualism or physicalism when considering the mind–body problem. Likewise, recent philosophers of religion typically assume that we must work within these two categories when considering problems related to the possibility of bodily resurrection. Recently, some philosophers have reintroduced the Thomistic version of...
Abstract: Consciousness is now a hot topic in both philosophy and the cognitive sciences, yet there is much controversy over how to measure it. First, it is not clear whether biased subjective reports should be taken as adequate for measuring consciousness, or if more objective measures are required. Ways to benefit from the advantages of both these measures in the form of ‘Type 2’...
Abstract Recent years have seen a growing interest in Buddhist thought as a potential source of alternative conceptions of the nature of the mind and the relation between the mental and the physical. This article considers and assesses three different models of what contemporary philosophy of mind can learn from Buddhist thought. One model, advocated by Alan Wallace, holds that we can learn...
Abstract What is the philosophical significance of attention? The present article provides an overview of recent debates surrounding the connections between attention and other topics of philosophical interest. In particular, it discusses the interplay between attention and consciousness, attention and agency, and attention and reference. The article outlines the questions and contemporary...
Abstract Berkeley didn’t write very much about his ‘philosophy of mind’ and what he did write is rather perplexing and perhaps inconsistent. The most basic problem is that it just isn’t clear what a mind (or, more accurately, a spirit) is for Berkeley. Unsurprisingly, many interpretations tend to understand Berkeleian spirit in models provided by other philosophers – interpretations in which...
Abstract Locke’s account of personal identity has been highly influential because of its emphasis on a psychological criterion. The same consciousness is required for being the same person. It is not so clear, however, exactly what Locke meant by ‘consciousness’ or by ‘having the same consciousness’. Interpretations vary: consciousness is seen as identical to memory, as identical to a first...
Abstract It’s a common idea in philosophy that we possess concepts of a peculiar kind by which we can think about our conscious states in ‘inner’ and ‘direct’ ways, as for example, when I attend to the way a current pain feels and think about this feeling as such. Such ‘phenomenal concepts’ figure in a variety of theoretical contexts. The bulk of this article discusses their use in a certain...