ISSN 0020-174X
13 papers in the library · 61 citations · publishing 1993-2026
Inquiry October 17, 2026 Anton Alexandrov, Sebastian Sunday Grève
This paper argues that the concept of human mindedness may be employed as a Carnapian explicatum that enables progress to be made in the debate about strong AI, that is, the thesis that ‘the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind’. It is shown that a holistic notion of human mindedness – conceived as all of what may typically occur in the mental life of a human being – yields...
Inquiry July 15, 2026 Aleks Knoks, Johan Largo, Thomas Raleigh
This paper identifies and criticizes a common line of argument for the negative conclusion that Large Language Models (LLMs) cannot think, or for the closely related conclusions that they cannot understand or that their outputs are meaningless. This line of argument can be found in several recent papers. We begin by discussing a representative example – Stoljar, D., and Z. Zhang. 2026. “Why...
Inquiry November 14, 2025 Dan Degerman, Jae Ryeong Sul 1 citation
This paper clarifies the experiential profile of depressive rumination, a form of repetitive and persistent negative thinking that is phenomenologically and aetiologically central in depression. Phenomenological analyses of depression have generally remained too high-level to account for this centrality. Drawing on first-person depression narratives and recent philosophy of psychiatry and...
Inquiry December 23, 2024 A. Prettyman
ABSTRACT Rapid advancements in large language models (LLMs) have renewed interest in the question of whether consciousness can arise in an artificial system, like a digital computer. The general consensus is that LLMs are not conscious. This paper evaluates the main arguments against artificial consciousness in LLMs and argues that none of them show what they intend. However strong our...
Inquiry May 26, 2023 Pierre Steiner 5 citations
ABSTRACT The purpose of the paper is twofold. It first aims at clarifying and developing an important tension within enactivism concerning the relations between intentionality and content, once representationalism has been abandoned. In which sense(s) do enactivists (still) say that intentionality is contentful and not contentful? Secondly, it puts this tension in perspective with two...
Inquiry November 12, 2022 P. Zięba
This paper controverts the ability of intentionalism about perception to account for unique epistemic signi fi cance of phenomenal consciousness. More speci fi cally, the intentionalist cannot explain the latter without denying two well-founded claims: the transparency of experience, and the possibility of unconscious perception. If they are true, intentionality of perception entails that...
Inquiry September 27, 2018 C. Fowles
ABSTRACT While much recent attention has been directed towards Nietzsche’s reflections on the mind, and on consciousness in particular, his often-suggestive comments about thinking have thus far avoided comparable scrutiny. Starting from Nietzsche’s claims that we ‘think constantly, but [do] not know it’, and that only our conscious thinking ‘takes place in words,’ I draw out the distinct...
Inquiry July 2, 2018 Giuseppina D’Oro, Paul Giladi, Alexis Papazoglou 1 citation
This paper discusses the metaphilosophical assumptions that have dominated analytic philosophy of mind, and how they gave rise to the central question that the best-known forms of non-reductivism available have sought to answer, namely: how can mind fit within nature? Its goal is to make room for forms of non-reductivism that have challenged the fruitfulness of this question, and which have...
Inquiry October 13, 2017 David Bourget 5 citations
If there is content that we reason on, cognitive content, it is in the head and accessible to reasoning mechanisms. This paper discusses the phenomenal theory of cognitive content, according to which cognitive contents are the contents of phenomenal consciousness. I begin by distinguishing cognitive content from the closely associated notion of narrow content. I then argue, drawing on prior...
Inquiry July 13, 2010 Patrick Stokes 9 citations
In recent years a significant debate has arisen as to whether Kierkegaard offers a version of the “narrative approach” to issues of personal identity and self-constitution. In this paper I do not directly take sides in this debate, but consider instead the applicability of a recent development in the broader literature on narrative identity—the distinction between the temporally-extended...
Inquiry April 1, 2005 Julian Young 14 citations
The feeling of the sublime is, says Kant, the bitter‐sweet combination of fear and utter security that one experiences in the face of, for instance, the night sky or the raging torrent. Fear of what? Fear of – this, I suggest, was Kant's seminal insight – death. But how can these feelings co‐exist? Surely the one cancels the other out? Schopenhauer's great insight, I argue, was that the...
Inquiry September 1, 1994 John Smythies 18 citations
This paper examines the impact that recent advances in clinical neurology, introspectionist psychology and neuroscience have upon the philosophical psycho‐neural Identity Theory. Topics covered include (i) the nature and properties of phenomenal consciousness based on a study of the ‘basic’ visual field, i.e. that obtained in the complete dark, the Ganzfeld, and during recovery from occipital...
Inquiry March 1, 1993 Michael Lockwood 8 citations
Drawing on data from contemporary experimental psychology and research in artificial intelligence, Dennett argues for a multiple drafts model of human consciousness, which he offers as an alternative to what he calls Cartesian materialism. I argue that the considerations Dennett advances do not, in fact, call for the abandonment of Cartesian materialism. Moreover, the theory presented by...