ISSN 0031-8116
12 papers in the library · 95 citations · publishing 2010-2026
Philosophical Studies June 6, 2026 Tom Roberts
Abstract Talkative artificial systems can sustain a realistic impression of intelligent agency, by generating quick, fluent, and context-sensitive strings of text in response to human input. Realism about AI treats this linguistic proficiency as evidence for an underlying suite of cognitive capacities, and so regards these technologies as subjects of psychological states. Firstly, I raise a...
Philosophical Studies June 12, 2025 Azenet Lopez
Split-brain subjects can consciously perceive and identify two stimuli presented simultaneously but separately in opposite hemifields. Yet, they seem to lack a conscious experience of the two stimuli together, as they cannot judge whether these are the same or different. Such breakdowns in experiential or phenomenal unity would carry important implications for philosophical reflection on the...
Philosophical Studies February 1, 2025 F. Kammerer
Ulysses, the strong illusionist, sails towards the Strait of Definitions. On his left, Charybdis defines “phenomenal consciousness” in a loaded manner, which makes it a problematic entity from a physicalist and naturalistic point of view. This renders illusionism attractive, but at the cost of committing a potential strawman against its opponents – phenomenal realists. On the right, Scylla...
Philosophical Studies 2025 Bradford Saad
Dualism holds that experiences somehow arise from physical states, despite being neither identical with nor grounded in such states. This paper motivates a stringent set of constraints on constructing a dualist theory of experience. To meet the constraints, a dualist theory must: (1) construe experiences as causes of physical effects, (2) ensure that experiences do not cause observable...
Philosophical Studies September 27, 2024 Seth Goldwasser 3 citations
Abstract This essay defends the claim that episodic remembering is a mental action by arguing that episodic remembering and sensory- or experience-like imagining are of a kind in a way relevant for agency. Episodic remembering is a type of imaginative project that involves the agential construction of imagistic-content and that aims at (veridically) representing particular events of the...
Philosophical Studies June 26, 2024 Wanja Wiese
Does the assumption of a weak form of computational functionalism, according to which the right form of neural computation is sufficient for consciousness, entail that a digital computational simulation of such neural computations is conscious? Or must this computational simulation be implemented in the right way, in order to replicate consciousness? From the perspective of Karl Friston’s free...
Philosophical Studies 2022 Donnchadh O'Conaill
One of the most widely-discussed arguments against physcialism appeals to the conceivability of zombies, being which are physically or functionally identical to humans but which have no conscious experiences. Philip Goff (Philos Phenomenol Res 81(1): 119-139, 2010; Consci Cognit 21(2): 742-746, 2012a; in Sprevak M, Kallestrup J (eds) New waves in philosophy of mind. Palgrave, 2014) has recently...
Philosophical Studies 2022 Andrea Marchesi
I defend the actualist higher-order thought theory against four objections. The first objection contends that the theory is circular. The second one contends that the theory is unable to account for the alleged epistemic position we are in with respect to our own conscious mental states. The third one contends that the theory is unable to account for the evidence we have for the proposition...
Philosophical Studies September 18, 2020 Cecily M. K. Whiteley 39 citations
Abstract Aphantasia is a recently discovered disorder characterised by the total incapacity to generate visual forms of mental imagery. This paper proposes that aphantasia raises important theoretical concerns for the ongoing debate in the philosophy and science of consciousness over the nature of dreams. Recent studies of aphantasia and its neurobehavioral correlates reveal that the majority...
Philosophical Studies 2018 Jonathan Farrell 26 citations
Ambitious higher-order theories of consciousness aim to account for conscious states when these are understood in terms of what-it-is-like-ness. This paper considers two arguments concerning this aim, and concludes that ambitious theories fail. The misrepresentation argument against HO theories aims to show that the possibility of radical misrepresentation-there being a HO state about a state...
Philosophical Studies February 1, 2011 C. Kidd 9 citations
In this paper, I argue against the claim recently defended by Josh Weisberg that a certain version of the self-representational approach to phenomenal consciousness cannot avoid a set of problems that have plagued higher-order approaches. These problems arise specifically for theories that allow for higher-order misrepresentation or—in the domain of self-representational...
Philosophical Studies May 22, 2010 Jonathan Eric Dorsey 18 citations
Is physicalism compatible with either panpsychism or so-called “fundamental mentality”? Minimal physicalism, I contend, is compatible with both. We should therefore jettison the “No Fundamental Mentality” constraint, a proposed constraint on the definition of “the physical”, not to mention the false limits it places on physicalist theories of mind.