Philosophical Studies
September 18, 2020
Cecily M. K. Whiteley
39 citations
Aphantasia, the inability to generate visual mental imagery while awake, poses a challenge to theories that claim dreams are essentially imaginative experiences. Recent studies show that most aphantasics still have rich visual dreams, contradicting the view that dreaming constitutively involves the kind of imagery aphantasics lack. The paper argues that this empirical finding can be reconciled if the imagination theory is revised to hold that dreams are inactive and involve non-voluntary forms of imagination, rather than the active imagery proposed by Jonathan Ichikawa. Further research is suggested to test this revised hypothesis.
Philosophical Studies
January 1, 2018
Jonathan Farrell
26 citations
Ambitious higher-order theories of consciousness claim to explain conscious states in terms of what-it-is-like-ness. This paper examines two arguments that bear on this claim: the misrepresentation argument, which suggests that radical misrepresentation leads to a contradiction, and the awareness argument, which aims to support higher-order theories by asserting that subjects are aware of all their conscious states. The paper shows that higher-order theorists can adopt a specific reading of what-it-is-like-ness and there being something it is like that seems to address both arguments. However, on this reading, the awareness argument provides no support for ambitious theories, and the response to the misrepresentation argument simply ignores it. The paper concludes that higher-order theories cannot account for what-it-is-like-ness.
Philosophical Studies
February 1, 2011
C. Kidd
9 citations
A self-representational theory of phenomenal consciousness can avoid problems of misrepresentation by making self-representations contingently infallible when they occur within conscious mental states. This approach acknowledges the logical possibility of self-misrepresentation while preventing actual errors. Three other self-representational models—by Kriegel, Van Gulick, and Gennaro—each reveal the need for such infallibility. The account is naturalistically acceptable only if self-representations have neo-Fregean, directly referring indexical content and conscious states have a specific ontological structure, drawing on work by Perry and Kaplan.
Philosophical Studies
September 27, 2024
Seth Goldwasser
3 citations
Episodic remembering—recalling specific past events from one's own life—is a form of mental action, not a passive occurrence. It belongs to the same category as active imagining, because both involve deliberately constructing imagistic content in the mind. An agent can bring an episodic memory to mind simply by intending or trying to do so, and the ability to actively remember depends on controlling the construction of the remembered scene. This scene construction is a process of exploring one's personal past as a limited region of possible experience, aimed at accurately representing what actually happened.
Philosophical Studies
June 6, 2026
Tom Roberts
Talkative artificial systems can create a realistic impression of intelligent agency by generating fluent, context-sensitive text. Realism about AI interprets this linguistic skill as evidence for underlying cognitive capacities, treating these technologies as subjects of psychological states. This paper challenges the realist view from the perspective of embodied cognition, questioning how digital systems could undergo interoceptive, affective, perceptual, and action-oriented mental states tied to an animate body. The author proposes that an anti-realist view aligns with a fictionalist attitude: when conversing with a talkative AI, we often imagine or pretend that our interlocutor is an autonomous agent, similar to engaging with fictional characters. These fictions are distinctive for being interactive, co-constructed, self-involving, and capable of blending reality with imagination.
Philosophical Studies
January 1, 2025
Bradford Saad
A dualist theory of experience must meet five constraints: experiences cause physical effects without violating physical causal closure, avoid overdetermination, follow psychophysical laws linking them to physical states, and ensure functional duplicates share the same phenomenology. Existing dualist theories fail on one or more points. The paper constructs 'delegatory dualism,' in which physical states delegate causal responsibilities to experiences, satisfying all constraints.
Philosophical Studies
January 1, 2022
Donnchadh O'Conaill
The conceivability of ghosts challenges physicalism, suggesting that if these entities—whose existence is solely defined by consciousness—are conceivable, then they could be metaphysically possible. Goff's argument posits that this undermines a priori physicalism. However, drawing from insights on conceivability, the ability to imagine such scenarios may weaken the reliability of conceivability as a guide to reality. With a focus on philosophical discourse, this perspective indicates that while ghosts can be conceived, a posteriori physicalists might not need to fear their implications.
Philosophical Studies
June 26, 2024
Wanja Wiese
The assumption that the right form of neural computation is sufficient for consciousness does not automatically mean that a digital simulation of those computations is conscious. From the perspective of Karl Friston's free energy principle, self-organising systems like living organisms have properties that are not present in classical von Neumann computer architectures. One such property—a specific kind of causal flow—can distinguish systems that merely simulate consciousness from those that actually replicate it.
Philosophical Studies
January 1, 2022
Andrea Marchesi
A defense of the actualist higher-order thought theory of consciousness against four objections: that the theory is circular, that it cannot account for the privileged epistemic access we have to our own conscious states, that it cannot account for the evidence that all conscious states are represented, and that it fails to capture the intimacy we have with those states. The defense is partly heterodox, conceding to critics that the theory results from conceptual analysis, yet showing that the objections can still be answered.