Si la conscience semble d’abord poser un ensemble de problèmes philosophiques, l’étude de la conscience est aussi un domaine florissant des neurosciences cognitives. Au lieu d’un travail de philosophie de l’esprit visant à déterminer a priori si la conscience est explicable scientifiquement, cette thèse offre une analyse détaillée des pratiques scientifiques impliquées dans l’étude de la conscience, et d’un ensemble de problèmes philosophiques surgissant de l’intérieur même de ce programme de recherche. Cette nouvelle approche, relevant de la philosophie des sciences, donne toute sa place à un problème identifié comme central dans la constitution des sciences de la conscience, celui de développer des procédures permettant de déterminer si les sujets ont des états mentaux conscients, ou non, c’est-à-dire, des procédures de détection de la conscience. Parce qu’elle présente une synthèse complète des procédures de détection de la conscience utilisées par les scientifiques, et des problèmes impliqués par l’utilisation de ces procédures, cette thèse s’adresse tout à la fois aux philosophes soucieux de comprendre la façon dont les scientifiques étudient la conscience, et aux scientifiques à la recherche des fondements épistémologiques de leur discipline. Les sceptiques, enfin, y trouveront un ensemble de réponses à leurs arguments, fondées pour la première fois sur une épistémologie cohérente des sciences de la conscience. / Although consciousness might appear as a primarily philosophical topic, the scientific study of consciousness has been an integral part of cognitive neuroscience for about thirty years. Instead of a work in philosophy of mind, debating whether or not consciousness can be explained scientifically, this dissertation provides a detailed examination of the scientific practices involved in the scientific study of consciousness, and of a wide variety of philosophical problems arising from within the science of consciousness itself. Through its original philosophy of science approach to the scientific study of consciousness, this dissertation focuses on one of the most central problems in the field: that of developing procedures for determining whether subjects have conscious or unconscious mental states, namely, procedures for detecting consciousness. As the first detailed epistemological analysis of the detection procedures used in consciousness science, and the problems they face, this dissertation is of interest for philosophers who want do understand how scientists study consciousness, aswell as for scientists who desire to reflect on the epistemological foundations of their field. Those who are skeptical about the prospects of the scientific study of consciousness will also find, for the first time, answers to their arguments based on a coherent epistemology of consciousness science.

When a Black person sees a display on stage of a fellow Black person getting killed by a White person, why do they not intervene to stop that killing from happening? One would answer, ‘Because it is just a performance. That Black person is not literally getting killed. It is all an act'. Fair enough. Then why does that spectating Black person get a heavy heart when he sees that killing being portrayed on stage? Is it because it is an experience he is familiar to? He has seen his fellow Blacks getting killed in front of his eyes. What does he do about what he sees on stage? What does the play do to his psyche? Richard Schechner, using Goffman's words, argues that the events on stage must be experienced as, what he deems, ‘actual realization': meaning that “the reality of performance is in the performing” (Bennet, 1997:11). Because the violence taking place on stage is only a performance, the spectator does not intervene as he might in an actual violence he would see taking place outside the theatre hall. However, that does not, as Schechner puts it, make the violence ‘less real' but ‘different real' (Bennet, 1997:11). The imaginary world of theatre is not an entirely ‘unreal' world, it is a world based on real occurrences. These real occurrences are taken to the imaginary world with hopes that when they are returned to the real world they will impact it in different ways, in ways set to transform it.

The main objective of this master thesis is to clarify the nested structure in time consciousness, depending on mental time travel and episodic memory. Time consciousness, mental time travel and episodic memory are connected, and function depending on each other. Mental time travel ability enables us to imagine personal future events. Episodic memory allows us to travel mentally into both past and future. Similarity between remembering the past and imagining the future indicates that episodic memory system contribute to future-directed personal mental time travel competence, and justifies the relation between episodic memory and mental time travel into both past and future. Episodic memory requires autonoetic consciousness, which can be applied to mental time travel competence, and mental time travel is a function of episodic memory. Distinguishing humans and non-humans is a method to understand the role of episodic memory and mental time travel in time consciousness. Episodic memory and mental time travel indicate to a higher-level time consciousness in humans, because mental time travel, episodic memory, autonoetic consciousness and recursive language are unique to humans, while non-humans show future-directed acts, possess episodic-like memory, and communicate with limited ways. Time consciousness is derived from the notion of autonoetic consciousness and it is a sort of temporal consciousness which enables us to be conscious of ourselves who travels in time and aware of ourselves along the temporal line. Non-humans have a rudimentary form of time consciousness, even they are deprived of autonoetic consciousness.

Thesis (M.A. (English Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2020 / This mini dissertation examines the influence of the Black Consciousness Philosophy on Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali’s Post-Colonial protest poetry. This is done in the form of analysing selected poems to highlight the influence that the Black Consciousness Philosophy had on the poems that Mtshali wrote about the experiences of black people under a suppressive apartheid system. The aim of this study was to explore how Mtshali’s poetry exposed the extent to which black people had been socio-economically deprived and misled to a negative and false belief of their inferiority and subservience. The title of the mini dissertation, suggests that Black Consciousness poetry claims to have had an influence on the protest poetry of Oswald Mtshali. The poems were analysed to ascertain this. The poems were examined with the express aim of identifying and understanding their themes and the socio-economic context from which they emanate.

In this dissertation, I examine the nature and structure of consciousness. Conscious experience is often said to be phenomenally unified, and subjects of consciousness are often self-conscious. I ask whether these features necessarily accompany conscious experience. Is it necessarily the case, for instance, that all of a conscious subject's experiences at a time are phenomenally unified? And is it necessarily the case that subjects of consciousness are self-conscious whenever they are conscious? I argue that the answer to the former is affirmative and the latter negative. In the first chapter, I set the stage by distinguishing phenomenal unity from other species of conscious unity. A pair of conscious states is phenomenally unified if they are experienced together as part of a single experience that encompasses them both. In this and the next two chapters I defend the thesis that, necessarily, for any subject (of conscious mental states) at any time, all of that subject's conscious mental states (at that time) are part of a single, maximal state of consciousness. I call this thesis the "Unity Thesis." I proceed by considering some preliminary questions that might be raised about the Unity Thesis. For instance, the thesis presupposes that it is coherent to talk about parts of mental states. I consider objections by Tye and Searle and argue that the notion of an experiential part is unproblematic. In the remaining pages of the chapter, I present the source of the biggest challenge to the Unity Thesis: the data gathered from split-brain subjects. The Unity Thesis is formulated using the notion of a maximal state of consciousness. In the second chapter, I attempt to precisify this notion in a way that does not pre-emptively decide the debate over the Unity Thesis. In informal terms, a maximal state of consciousness is a sum of conscious states that are i) simultaneous, ii) have the same subject, and iii) all have a conjoint phenomenology. I call this the Consensus View. I then consider two unorthodox views that the Consensus View does not take off the table: the views that a "collective consciousness" and a "spread consciousness" are possible. A collective subject is one that can enjoy the experiences of an indeterminate number of "lesser" subjects of consciousness by sharing them together with those subjects. A spread subject is one that can enjoy the experiences of an indeterminate number of lesser subjects of consciousness, but it does so, not by sharing those experiences with the lesser subjects, but by absorbing the lesser subjects of experience into itself, thereby erasing the traditional boundaries between the entities we intuitively think of as subjects of experience. I argue that, although the Consensus View does not decide against them, these views stretch the bounds of coherence and should not, therefore, be accepted. Having presented an account of what maximal state of consciousness is, I define a stream of consciousness in terms of a maximal states of consciousness. In the rest of chapter two, I consider and argue against a number of different ways of interpreting the split-brain data that are either inconsistent with the Unity Thesis or attribute more than one subject of consciousness to split-brain subjects. Among the views I consider are Lockwood's partial-unity view and the views, by theorists such as Sperry, Koch, Puccetti, Marks, and Tye, that split-brain subjects have two non-overlapping streams of consciousness. In chapter three, I consider a recent attempt by Bayne to account for the split-brain data in a way that does not attribute two streams of consciousness to them. According to Bayne's Switch Model, the consciousness of split-brain subjects can be likened to that of a ball that is passed back and forth between the two hemispheres of the upper-brain. The hemispheres take turns supporting a single stream of consciousness. I consider the empirical data in some detail and argue that the data is not as compatible with the Switch Model as Bayne claims. I close the chapter by presenting the rough outline of an interpretation of the split-brain data that is consistent with both the Unity Thesis and the split-brain data. In chapter four, I turn from defending the Unity Thesis to examining an attempt to account for conscious unity. Rosenthal has offered a theory of conscious unity as an extension of his higher-order theory of consciousness. I consider his account of conscious unity in light of a well-known objection to his theory: the (Representational) Mismatch Objection. It can be asked what it is like for a subject of experience when a higher-order state misrepresents its target first-order state. If what it is like for the subject corresponds to the content of the higher-order state, then it appears as though higher-order representation is unnecessary for conscious experience, for it would appear as though it is possible for a state to be conscious without being represented by a higher-order state. If what it is like corresponds to the content of the lower-order state, then it would again seem as though representation at the higher-order level is unnecessary for conscious experience, for the higher-order state would not seem to be doing any work in generating the experience. I consider and argue against two recent defences of Rosenthal's higher-order theory from the Mismatch Objection. Then I turn to Rosenthal's account of conscious unity. Rosenthal's account posits two mental mechanisms. I refer to the ways of accounting for conscious unity via these two mechanisms as the "gathering strategy" and the "common-ascription strategy" respectively. Both of these strategies, I argue, appear to locate the basis for certain phenomenal facts in higher-order representational facts. This raises a prima facie question: does Rosenthal's account of conscious unity land him square within the sights of the Mismatch Objection? Although the gathering strategy may ultimately be understood in a way that does not make it subject to the Mismatch Objection, Rosenthal has certain commitments that bar this strategy from serving as a complete account of conscious unity. This is problematic for Rosenthal, I argue, because his common-ascription strategy faces some difficult questions. This strategy makes conscious unity due to an implicit expectation a subject of consciousness has that, whenever he or she engages in introspection, an explicit sense of conscious unity will be generated. I argue that it is very difficult to see how such an implicit sense could both avoid the Mismatch Objection and do the work it needs to do in order to account for conscious unity. In chapter five, the discussion turns from the unity of consciousness to self-consciousness. The question that is considered in this and the last chapter is the question whether conscious experience is necessarily accompanied by self-consciousness. The affirmative answer to this question I call the Ubiquity Thesis. I spend some time distinguishing robust conceptions of self-consciousness from minimal conceptions of self-consciousness. The notion of self-consciousness invoked by the Ubiquity Thesis is a minimal one. In spite of the fact that the Ubiquity Thesis invokes only a minimal or thin conception of self-consciousness, I believe the thesis to be false and argue against it. In this chapter I take up the views of Husserl. Husserl is often regarded as the progenitor of the phenomenological tradition, a tradition in which many philosophers affirm the Ubiquity Thesis. I examine and argue against an interpretation of Husserl's work, one defended by Zahavi, according to which Husserl could be seen to defend the Ubiquity Thesis. One claim that Husserl makes is that, in order for an object to become the intentional target of a conscious state, it must be given to consciousness beforehand. It is possible, during acts of deliberate introspection, for consciousness to take itself as its object. On Husserl's view, this requires consciousness to be given to itself beforehand. This self-givenness of consciousness, argues Zahavi, can be seen as a kind of minimal self-consciousness. Husserl has also offered an account of this self-givenness of consciousness and it appears in his discussion of inner time-consciousness. I attempt to argue, using some of Husserl's other views regarding psychological stances (or standpoints), that consciousness is not given to itself outside of the adoption of a certain psychological standpoint. I also offer an alternative way of accounting for inner time-consciousness, one that does not have, as a built-in feature, that consciousness always has itself as a secondary object. In the sixth and final chapter, I take up a contemporary defence of the Ubiquity Thesis. Kriegel, a higher-order theorist like Rosenthal, has argued that every conscious state is conscious in virtue of the fact that it represents itself. This self-representation is understood as a kind of self-consciousness and, thus, his theory can be seen as affirming the Ubiquity Thesis. In the first part of the chapter, I take issue with the way in which Kriegel lays out the conceptual terrain. In particular, Kriegel countenances a property he calls "intransitive state self-consciousness." I argue that this way of speaking is confused. I then turn to considering Kriegel's account. Kriegel identifies the species of self-consciousness that pervades all of conscious experience with a peripheral awareness of one's own mental states. I argue that such a peripheral inner awareness does not accompany all of our mental states and, thus, that Kriegel's views do not give us reason to accept the Ubiquity Thesis.

Borderline conscious creatures are neither definitely conscious nor definitely not conscious. In this thesis, I explain what borderline consciousness is and why it poses a significant epistemological challenge to scientists who investigate phenomenal consciousness as a natural kind. When these scientists discover more than one overlapping kind in their samples of conscious creatures, how can they identify the kind to which all and only conscious creatures belong? After assessing three pessimistic responses, I argue that different groups of scientists can legitimately use the concept of phenomenal consciousness to refer to different kinds, in accord with their empirical interests. They can thereby resolve three related impasses on the status of borderline conscious creatures, the neural structure of phenomenal consciousness, and the possibility of artificial consciousness. The thesis has three parts: First, I analyse the concept of borderline consciousness. My analysis counters several arguments which conclude that borderline consciousness is inconceivable. Then I explain how borderline consciousness produces the multiple kinds problem in consciousness science. Second, I assess three recent philosophical responses to this problem. One response urges scientists to eliminate the concept of consciousness, while another judges them to be irremediably ignorant of the nature of consciousness. The final response concludes that scientific progress is limited by the concept's referential indeterminacy. I argue that these responses are too pessimistic, though they point to a more promising approach. Third, I propose that empirically constrained stipulation can solve the multiple kinds problem. Biologists face the same problem because of their longstanding controversy over what counts as a species. Building on new arguments for stipulating the reference of species concepts, I demonstrate that this use of stipulation in biology is neither epistemologically complacent nor metaphysically capricious; it also need not sow semantic confusion. Then I defend its use in consciousness science. My approach is shown to be consistent with our understanding of natural kinds, borderline cases, and phenomenal consciousness.

Published Article / This paper explores comparatively the voices of the orphaned adolescents living in an orphanage and foster homes. Currently the emphasis is on children's rights; it is believed that children have rights to have their opinions heard, to refuse a demand, to voice their dissatisfaction and, in the case of orphans, to question the reasons for their status. This study is qualitative in nature and utilises the discourse analysis approach (analogue and dialogical method). A sample of ten orphaned adolescents (OAs) was randomly selected in an informal settlement in Inanda. Semi-structured interviews and diaries were used to collect data. Critical consciousness is explored in addressing silences using the adolescents' lenses as a platform for meaning-making. Through in-depth interpretation of their problems, self-awareness of the OAs was also attained, which is best for a person to develop and thrive (or not) despite challenges.

The controversial play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett is a play in which nothing but waiting really seems to happen. Throughout the play, the two characters Vladimir and Estragon continue waiting for Godot despite the fact that he never comes. While they are waiting they appear to conduct absurd and meaningless exchanges and games to pass the time. This essay explores the nature of the waiting for the absent character Godot: what is implied by this persistent waiting and what is the result of them doing so? The essay tries to explain the waiting through exploring the ideas of habit. Furthermore, it also deals with existential theories of consciousness and meaning through the ideas of Sartre. The essay argues that the meaning of the play emerges through the two characters’ act of waiting, and that the seemingly meaningless activities that Vladimir and Estragon perform are highly important as they provide the two characters with their raison d’être. The essay also shows that the two characters’ existence is dependent on Godot, because through the acknowledgement that he exists and in the hope that he will come to save them, they create their own rationale for waiting, regardless of it being true or not. Thus Vladimir and Estragon are able to create their meaning by choosing to continue waiting for Godot. They are also able to create this meaning through the conscious interaction between their surroundings and one another by the games they play while waiting. The essay also argues that the waiting is a conscious choice, and that the seemingly unreflective habitual games they play are as well. Furthermore, the choice of waiting is then reflected in the audience by their conscious choice to watch the play and join the character in their waiting for Godot. Thus, Beckett has created a play in which the focus is the experience and meaning of waiting, regardless of whether the one on which we are waiting will come or not.

Although having conscious experiences is a fundamental feature of our everyday life, our understanding of what consciousness is is very limited. According to one of the main conclusions of contemporary philosophy of mind, the qualitative aspect of consciousness seems to resist functionalisation, i.e. it cannot be adequately defined solely in terms of functional or causal roles, which leads to an epistemic gap between phenomenal and scientific knowledge. Phenomenal qualities, then, seem to be, in principle, unexplainable in scientific terms. As a reaction to this pessimistic conclusion it is a major trend in contemporary science of consciousness to turn away from subjective experiences and re-define the subject of investigations in neurological and behavioural terms. This move, however, creates a gap between scientific theories of consciousness, and the original phenomenon, which we are so intimately connected with. The thesis focuses on this gap. It is argued that it is possible to explain features of consciousness in scientific terms. The thesis argues for this claim from two directions. On the one hand, a specific identity theory is formulated connecting phenomenal qualities to certain intermediate level perceptual representations which are unstructured for central processes of the embedding cognitive system. This identity theory is hypothesised on the basis of certain similarities recognised between the phenomenal and the cognitive-representational domains, and then utilised in order to uncover further similarities between these two domains. The identity theory and the further similarities uncovered are then deployed in formulating explanations of the philosophically most important characteristics of the phenomenal domain—i.e. why phenomenal qualities resist functionalisation, and why the epistemic gap occurs. On the other hand, the thesis investigates and criticises existing models of reductive explanation. On the basis of a detailed analysis of how successful scientific explanations proceed a novel account of reductive explanation is proposed, which utilises so-called prior identities. Prior identities are prerequisites rather than outcomes of reductive explanations. They themselves are unexplained but are nevertheless necessary for mapping the features to be explained onto the features the explanation relies on. Prior identities are hypothesised in order to foster the formulation of explanatory claims accounting for target level phenomena in terms of base level processes—and they are justified if they help projecting base level explanations to new territories of the target level. The thesis concludes that the identity theory proposed is a prior identity, and the explanations of features of the phenomenal domain formulated with the aid of this identity are reductive explanations proper. In this sense, the thesis introduces the problem of phenomenal consciousness into scientific discourse, and therefore offers a bridge between the philosophy and the science of consciousness: it offers an approach to conscious experience which, on the one hand, tries to account for the philosophically most important features of consciousness, whereas, on the other hand, does it in a way which smoothly fits into the everyday practice of scientific research.

This thesis describes the "shifting center-of-consciousness" literary technique and then presents a fictional work written by the author using that technique.