Perceptual experience seems to relate us not only to non-temporal features of objects such as colors and shapes, but also to certain temporal properties such as succession and duration, as well as to the sensible properties of temporally extended events such as movements and other kinds of change. But can such properties really be represented in experience itself, and if so, what does this tell us about the nature of experience? Different theories of time consciousness answer this question in different ways. Atomists deny that experience represents temporal properties and maintain instead that in experience we only represent non-temporal properties, "snapshots" of the world. Retentionalists maintain that, while experiences may be instantaneous mental states, they simultaneously represent temporally extended periods of time, while extensionalists claim that experiences themselves extend in time, either only for very short periods or over whole streams of consciousness. I articulate and defend a version of the latter view, which I call 'simple extensionalism', lay out its ontological foundations, and argue that it accounts for the temporal phenomena of perceptual experience better than its rivals. / text

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Many well-known arguments in the philosophy of mind use thought experiments to elicit intuitions about consciousness. Often, these thought experiments include mechanistic explanations of a systems’ behavior. I argue that when we understand a system as a mechanism, we are not likely to understand it as an agent. According to Arico, Fiala, Goldberg, and Nichols’ (2011) AGENCY Model, understanding a system as an agent is necessary for generating the intuition that it is conscious. Thus, if we are presented with a mechanistic description of a system, we will be very unlikely to understand that system as conscious. Many of the thought experiments in the philosophy of mind describe systems mechanistically. I argue that my account of consciousness attributions is preferable to the “Simplicity Intuition” account proposed by David Barnett (2008) because it is more explanatory and more consistent with our intuitions. Still, the same conclusion follows from Barnett’s “Simplicity” account and from my own account: we should reassess the conclusions that have been drawn from many famous thought experiments.

When you enjoy a conscious mental state or episode, you can knowledgeably self-ascribe that state or episode, and your self-ascription will have a special security and authority (as well as several other distinctive features). This thesis argues for an epistemic but nonintrospectionist account of why such self-ascriptions count as knowledge, and why they have a special status. The first part of the thesis considers what general shape an account of self-knowledge must have. Against a deflationist challenge, I argue that your judgments about your own conscious states and episodes really do constitute knowledge, and that their distinctive features must be explained by the epistemic credentials that make them knowledge. However, the most historically influential non-deflationist account—according to which such self-ascriptive judgments are based on introspective experiences of your conscious states and episodes— misconstrues the unique perspective that you have on your own conscious mind. The second part of the thesis argues that the occurrence in your consciousness of a state or episode of a certain type, with a certain content, can itself suffice for you to have a reason to judge that you are enjoying a state or episode of that type, with that content. Self-ascriptions made for such reasons will count as knowledge. An account along these lines can explain the special status of self-knowledge. In particular, I show that a self-ascription of a content, made for the reason you have in virtue of entertaining that content, will be true and rational, partly because it is an exercise of a general capacity, which I call “grasp of the first-/third-person distinction”, that is fundamental to our cognition about the world. A self-ascription of a particular type of conscious state or episode, made for the appropriate reason, will be true and rational in virtue of features distinctive of states or episodes of that type—features that contribute to determining which judgments are rational for a subject, without themselves being reasons that the subject has. I consider in detail the cases of perceptual experience and of judgment. The thesis concludes by arguing that this kind of account is well placed to explain how selfknowledge fulfills its central role in the reflective rationality that is characteristic of persons.

This thesis presents a comparison of the ideas of two philosopher-psychologists, James and Bergson, and studies the theory and techniques in the three works of fiction that comprise "The Aviary Trio."

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / My essential purpose in this dissertation was to explore the relationship of Nietzsche's views on consciousness to his general theory of valuation. In order to carry out this project it was necessary to elaborate the two principal modes of man's being in the world for Nietzsche, the Apollonian and the Dionysian, inasmuch as this distinction provides the cornerstone of his entire philosophy of value creation. The Apollonian represents the impulse toward discipline, structure, restraint, and order, while the Dionysian stands for the impulse toward ultimate self-abandonment, the urge toward direct participation in life's most intense passions. The key to producing genuine value, for Nietzsche, lies in reconciling these two divergent aspects of man's existence. This dualism was interpreted in terms of the states of mind, the modes of awareness, which they reflect so that his formula for value creation could be meaningfully translated into distinct forms of consciousness. Reflective, or self, consciousness was found to be normative of the Apollonian impulse and unreflected, or non-self, consciousness was found to be normative of the Dionysian. Correspondingly, both reflective and unreflected elements were found to participate in the condition which represents their eventual synthesis as well as Nietzsche's axiological ideal. I next presented Nietzsche's explicit treatment of mentalistic psychology, as expressed particularly in the Twilight of Idols. It was brought out that Nietzsche distrusts reflection and introspection, since he claims that they are full of what he calls "will-o'-the-wisps", because they suggest the existence of such phantom entities as a self, causality, freedom of the will, etc. Nietzsche wants to hold an epiphenomenal view of consciousness; he insists that consciousness is merely concomitant to physiological processes, which is where, he believes, actions originate. Nietzsche does not distrust sensation, however. "Reality" is defined as co-extensive with immediate experience. Introspection is therefore seen as artificial and obscuring, since in such moments, reflection becomes the 'primary reality for us; and this is just an abstraction and removal from that which Nietzsche considers to be metaphysically most real. Next I showed that this view is incompatible with his own theory of value creation. The distinguishing traits of the Apollonian life, self-conscious, responsible, and disciplined action, are all intimately connected with both his aesthetic and ethical ideals. Yet such an individualistic theory, which places such a premium upon deliberation and calculation, cannot be reconciled with a view which would deny the validity of reflection, free will, and the causal efficacy of consciousness. Furthermore, his epistemological emphasis upon immediate experience would entail the primacy and self-sufficiency of the unreflected (Dionysian) mode of consciousness, despite the fact that he claims that this form of awareness is only a necessary, and not a sufficient, condition of the realization of value. Finally, it was shown that Nietzsche's thought does exhibit a certain unity, even though it does not fit together logically at many points. He succeeds, in spite of his treatments of consciousness and value, in virtue of his existential attempt to realize and to express his own most distinct desires, needs, and potentialities in his works. And in this he represents the individual's effort to find meaning for his life in the midst of the alienating influences wrought by modern culture. / 2031-01-01

We examine the nature of causality as it exists within large-scale brain networks by first providing a rigorous conceptual analysis of probabilistic causality as distinct from deterministic causality. We then use information-theoretic methods, including the linear autoregressive modeling technique of Wiener-Granger causality (WGC), and Shannonian transfer entropy (TE), to explore and recover causal relations between two neural masses. Time series data were generated by Stefanescu-Jirsa 3D model of two coupled network nodes in The Virtual Brain (TVB), a novel neuroinformatics platform used to model resting state large-scale networks with neural mass models. We then extended this analysis to three nodes to investigate the equivalence of a concept in probabilistic causality known as ‘screening off’ with a method of statistical ablation known as conditional Granger causality. Finally, we review some of the empirical and theoretical work of nonlinear neurodynamics of Walter Freeman, as well as metastable coordination dynamics and investigate what impact they have had on consciousness research. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

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