Argues that theories of consciousness face a 'quadrilemma': they cannot simultaneously respect 'first-person realism', 'non-solipsism', 'non-fragmentation', and 'one world', though any three are mutually consistent. Because agreement on which claim to give up is unlikely, the author contends that competing theories persist, each with pros and cons, and maps theory types onto the four horns.
Abstract
Abstract In this paper, I argue that no theory of consciousness can simultaneously respect four initially plausible metaphysical claims—namely ‘first-person realism’, ‘non-solipsism’, ‘non-fragmentation’, and ‘one world’—but that any three of the four claims are mutually consistent. So, theories of consciousness face a ‘quadrilemma’. Since it will be hard to achieve a consensus on which of the four claims to retain and which to give up, we arrive at a landscape of competing theories, all of which have pros and cons. I will briefly indicate which kinds of theories correspond to the four horns of the quadrilemma.