Chalmers (2007) has argued that any version of the phenomenal concept strategy will fail, given that phenomenal concepts will either fail to explain our epistemic situation, or fail to be physically explicable themselves. Carruthers and Veillet (2007) have offered a response, arguing that zombies do share our epistemic situation. In the following paper I aim to show that philosophical-zombies do not share our epistemic situation concerning phenomenal consciousness. I will begin with some background material regarding the general dialectic I am addressing in section (I) before outlining the debate between Chalmers (2007) and Carruthers and Veillet (2007) in more detail and its relevance for mind-body considerations in section (II). Next, in section (III) I will suggest a worry related to Carruthers and Veillet’s position: that phenomenal concepts fail to refer in zombie worlds in the first place. Finally, in section (IV) I will argue that even if a zombie’s phenomenal concepts successfully refer, there is still good reason to think that zombies will fail to share our epistemic situation. I will defend this claim by explaining three asymmetries between me and my zombie twin’s corresponding epistemic situations. / Master of Arts

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This thesis will explore whether those interested in Buddhist practices such as mindfulness but who approach such practices from a broadly secular perspective can be offered reasons to take rebirth seriously as an afterlife possibility. It will begin by exploring some of the history of mindfulness and its adoption from Buddhism to show how foundational cosmological elements such as rebirth have been side-lined as part of a wider movement to bring Buddhism in line with modernist, particularly scientific, discourses. The thesis will investigate the philosophical principles behind the Buddhist multi-life perspective in order to see whether arguments could be rallied in defence of it. This will involve focussing specifically on the argument in defence of rebirth offered by Dharmakīrti and show how its premises draw from philosophical principles adopted by the earliest Buddhist philosophical systems. Dharmakīrti’s argument will be examined within the context of contemporary philosophy of consciousness where philosophers such as Evan Thompson and Galen Strawson have challenged the view that consciousness could arise from entirely unconscious factors. This challenge aligns with a key premise of Dharmakīrti’s argument for rebirth as well as Buddhist Abhidharma principles. Arguments against the emergence of consciousness from unconscious factors strengthen the case for claiming that consciousness cannot simply appear at the beginning of life and disappear at death. Whilst supporting Strawson’s arguments, the thesis will ultimately reject his claim that an individual consciousness could be constructed from, and ultimately collapse into, multiple consciousnesses. From here it will be argued that conscious experiences arise as part of an unbroken stream that can neither arise from nor collapse into rudimentary factors that are devoid of the distinctive characteristics of consciousness. The argument will conclude by suggesting that the stream of consciousness involves an inseparable capacity for retention and recall. This capacity provides the possibility for the sort of psychological continuity between lives that, within traditional Buddhist cosmology, allows an ordinary being to cultivate the extraordinary personal qualities of a Buddha.

A given qualitative mental experience possesses qualitative aspects, or qualia, that identify and distinguish it from other qualitative mental states. While some philosophers explained the mental phenomena by positing nonphysical kinds of entities, some others propose wholly physical explanations. Even if those physicalistic explanations of the mental shed some light on the issue of body-mind relation, Joseph Levine claims that there still exists an explanatory gap between a qualitative mental state and the physical state supposedly responsible for it, since there is no explanation of how and why a certain kind of physical state gives rise to a specific kind of quale.This thesis is an exploration of this problem and evaluation of some of the views that interpret the gap as either ontological or epistemological in order to find out whether the gap is compatible with physicalism or not. The focus is on the Phenomenal Concept Strategy that proposes a physicalistic account for the existence of the gap that is based on the character of phenomenal concepts. I examine whether this strategy is satisfactory or not and propose a possible physicalist account to the special character of phenomenal concepts.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:25:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2008-08-05Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:47:58Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 pinto_aca_me_mar.pdf: 405012 bytes, checksum: aca58a9a663ea6374bcedd3a0b74933f (MD5) / A consciência é um conceito extremamente polêmico, gerando uma série de modelos e teorias na filosofia e na ciência. Um dos maiores problemas é a questão do aspecto qualitativo da consciência. Alguns teóricos preferem negar tal aspecto, tanto por sua dificuldade ontológica, como por sua dificuldade em termos metodológicos. Outros assumem a consciência como fenomênica, entretanto a qualificam como epifenomênica em relação ao mundo físico. Uma outra possibilidade é que a consciência seja fenomênica em sua definição e que tenha sido selecionada no processo evolutivo por apresentar vantagens adaptativas. O presente trabalho tem por objetivo estudar se a consciência pode ser uma estratégia adaptativa, considerando-a como sendo qualitativa, por definição. A idéia defendida, por nós, é que a consciência foi selecionada no percurso evolutivo, inicialmente, por ajudar o organismo a se afastar de situações perigosas e aproximar-se de situações benéficas, sendo que provavelmente, mais tarde, a consciência tenha se sofisticado, tornando-se uma via de contato social, propiciando a compreensão do contexto e a conseqüente resposta adequada a este. / Click electronic access below.

Some unanswered questions about consciousness as a biological phenomenon lie in its evolutionary origin and distribution among living organisms. Which animals are conscious and when did consciousness appear in the history of life on earth? The purpose of this thesis is to shed light on these long-standing questions by reviewing the literature on the evolutionary approaches to the fundamental concept of phenomenal consciousness. In agreement with the “Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness,” this study aims to introduce three recently developed theories, with a particular emphasis on examining one model. The “Cellular Basis of Consciousness” (CBC) is a reductionist, cellular-based model that argues all organisms from unicellular to humans are sentient. Another theory based on neuroevolutionary arguments is called the “Neurobiological Naturalism.” It suggests that consciousness first appeared duringthe Cambrian period about 550 million years ago. This model considers vertebrates, arthropods and cephalopods as conscious animals. An alternative framework, which is the main focus of this thesis, is the “Unlimited Associative Learning” (UAL). The UAL model employs a novel method to formulate a transition marker as an indicator of consciousness. Although the UAL framework is a promising method for tracing the evolution of consciousness, it also has significant limitations. Nevertheless, the literature review reveals that as an innovative framework, UAL has the potential to generate fruitful research programs. Rather than providing a final answer, it can be considered a significant starting point for unraveling the origin of consciousness.

Chapter 1 of Phenomenal Acquaintance is devoted to taking care of some preliminary issues. I begin by distinguishing those states of awareness in virtue of which we’re acquainted with the phenomenal characters of our experiences from those states of awareness some claim are at the very nature of experience. Then I reconcile the idea that experience is transparent with the claim that we can be acquainted with phenomenal character. In Chapter 2 I set up a dilemma that is the primary focus of the dissertation. In the first part of this chapter I argue that phenomenal acquaintance has three key features, what I call its ‘directness’, ‘thickness’, and ‘infallibility’. In the second part I argue, however, that it’s really quite puzzling how thoughts about phenomenal character (or any thoughts, for that matter) could have them. In the next two chapters I consider how we might resolve the dilemma described above. I begin in Chapter 3 by considering an account of phenomenal acquaintance inspired by Bertrand Russell’s discussion of acquaintance. The general idea here is to excise mental representation from phenomenal acquaintance, and I ultimately reject the proposal. Chapter 4 is the core chapter of Phenomenal Acquaintance. In it I propose an account of phenomenal acquaintance that doesn’t excise mental representation. My account is comprised of three theses. First, token experiences are complex and have instances of phenomenal properties as components. Second, instances of phenomenal properties are mental representations, and they represent themselves. Third, the attention relevant to phenomenal acquaintance is underwritten by self-representation. I argue that my account explains how phenomenal acquaintance is direct, thick, and infallible, thereby resolving our dilemma. I argue in Chapter 5 that my account of phenomenal acquaintance explains why there is an explanatory gap between the phenomenal and non-phenomenal truths. Accordingly, I conclude that the explanatory gap doesn’t pose a problem for physicalism. Here I implement what has come to be called the ‘phenomenal concept strategy’ for responding to the challenge posed by the explanatory gap.

Within the Philosophy of Mind two features of our mental life have been acknowledged as the most perplexing - consciousness, the phenomenal "what it is likeness" of our mental states, and intentionality, the aboutness or directedness of our mental states. As such, it has become commonplace to develop theories about these phenomena which seek to explain them naturalistically, that is, without resort to magic or miracles. Traditionally this has been done by analyzing consciousness and intentionality apart from one another. However, in more recent years the tide has turned. In contemporary theories these phenomena are typically analyzed in terms of the other. This results in two competing views: Representationalism, which seeks to ground consciousness in intentionality, and Phenomenalism, which seeks to ground intentionality in consciousness. David Chalmers has proposed an alternative view to these which takes consciousness and intentionality as essentially interdependent, neither more fundamental than the other. This thesis explores the motivations for Representationalism and Phenomenalism, outlines their extraneous commitments, and analyzes their merits - as well as assessing whether Chalmers' view is a defensible middle ground. This involves an analysis of the metaphysical doctrine of physicalism, phenomenal consciousness, intentionality, and the nature of mental content. I argue that the view which Chalmers advocates is the best supported. Yet, I argue, it could benefit by adopting a thoroughgoing externalism of mental content.

Philosophers of mind have recently debated over whether or not there exists a unique cognitive phenomenology – a “what it’s like”-ness to our conscious cognitive mental states. Most of these debates have centered on the ontological question of whether or not cognitive phenomenology exists. I suggest that assuming cognitive phenomenology does exist, it would have important consequences for other areas of philosophy. In particular, it would have important consequences for moral epistemology – how we come to know the moral truths we seem to know. I argue that adopting cognitive phenomenology and the epistemic principle of phenomenal conservatism can do “double duty” for the moral realist: they provide the moral realist with prima facie grounds for belief in the objectivity of morality, while epistemically vindicating the specific contents of their beliefs. / Master of Arts

Les états mentaux peuvent essentiellement avoir deux types de propriétés : des propriétés intentionnelles, qui font en sorte que les états mentaux ont un contenu, et des propriétés phénoménales, qui font en sorte que les états mentaux sont consciemment vécus. L’instanciation de chacun de ces deux types de propriétés constitue respectivement ce qu’on appelle l’intentionnalité et la conscience phénoménale. Une question cruciale en philosophie de l’esprit contemporaine consiste à se demander quelle est la relation entre l’intentionnalité et la conscience phénoménale. Les théories de l’intentionnalité phénoménale, qui ont gagné en popularité dans les dernières années, soutiennent que l’intentionnalité dépend fondamentalement de la conscience phénoménale. Comme ces théories représentent aujourd’hui une des principales conceptions de l’intentionnalité disponibles, il est crucial d’évaluer leur plausibilité, ce que je me propose de faire dans le présent mémoire. Or, comme je tenterai de le montrer, les propriétés intentionnelles ne dépendent pas des propriétés phénoménales au sens où l’entendent les défenseurs des théories de l’intentionnalité phénoménale. En effet, les théories de l’intentionnalité phénoménale ne sont pas en mesure d’expliquer une des caractéristiques fondamentales de l’intentionnalité, à savoir le fait que les états intentionnels s’accompagnent de conditions de satisfaction, et si elles y parviennent ce n’est qu’en présupposant l’intentionnalité en attribuant des caractéristiques intentionnelles aux états phénoménaux. Ce résultat nous contraint à nous tourner vers une autre conception de la relation entre l’intentionnalité et la conscience phénoménale. / Mental states can essentially have two types of properties: intentional properties, in virtue of which mental states have content, and phenomenal properties, in virtue of which mental states are consciously experienced. The instantiation of each of these two types of properties constitutes respectively what is called intentionality and phenomenal consciousness. A crucial question in contemporary philosophy of mind is to ask what the relationship between intentionality and phenomenal consciousness is. The phenomenal intentionality theories, which have gained popularity in recent years, argue that intentionality is fundamentally dependent on phenomenal consciousness. Since these theories now represent one of the main conceptions of intentionality available, it is crucial to assess their plausibility, which I propose to do in this master’s thesis. As I will try to show, intentional properties do not depend on phenomenal properties as understood by the advocates of the phenomenal intentionality theories. Indeed, the phenomenal intentionality theories are not able to explain one of the fundamental characteristics of intentionality, namely the fact that intentional states are accompanied by conditions of satisfaction, and that if they succeed in doing so, it is only by presupposing intentionality by assigning intentional characteristics to phenomenal states. This result forces us to turn to another conception of the relationship between intentionality and phenomenal consciousness.