Advanced Introduction to Philosophy of Mind, G83.1103 Wednesday
2-4
Consciousness
Course Requirements:
· First 10 page paper due October 22nd. Sample topics here
· Draft of second 10 page paper due November 19th
Look at Jim Pryor’s Guidelines for
Writing a Philosophy Paper
· Second 10 page paper due December 4th (Instead of a second 10 page paper, you can elect to expand your first 10 page paper to 20 pages, also due December 4th.)
No Incompletes in this course
Background assumed: the equivalent of an undergraduate degree in philosophy. Although no specific background in philosophy of mind will be assumed, those who have no knowledge of philosophy of mind might browse through an introductory text such as
Alternatively, you might browse through
·
·
· N. Block, O. Flanagan and G. Güzeldere, The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates (MIT Press, 1997).
· David Papineau, Thinking about Consciousness, Oxford 2002
·
David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind,
· S. Dehaene, The Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness, MIT Press, 2001 (We are only reading 3 papers from this book, and they are all available on the web.)
Remember: no Incompletes in this course!
Items from Block, Flanagan Güzeldere are marked “BFG”. (Apologies to Roald Dahl.) Many items are on the web as indicated. There are a few items that will be xeroxed and place on reserve. Please send me email if you find links on this site that don't work properly.
September
3: Introduction: the main metaphysical theories of mind
September 10: Concepts of Consciousness
Ned Block, “Some
Concepts of Consciousness”, in Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of Mind,
Dan Dennett, "The Path Not Taken",
BFG 417
David Chalmers, "Availability:
The Cognitive Basis of Experience?", BFG 421
Jennifer Church, "Fallacies
or Analyses?", BFG 425
Ned Block, replies Some
(pp144-165) objections and my replies
are on the web. These
replies are slightly corrected.
Tyler Burge, "Two Kinds of
Consciousness" BFG 427
September
17 Functionalism vs Physicalism
in an empirical context
Susan Hurley and Alva Noe, "Neural plasticity and
consciousness." Biology and Philosophy 18, 1, pp 131-168. The
article is accessible here in
published form. If you use the version
from Noë’s web site, figures here
in a somewhat distorted form, or download
here
Ned Block, ""Spatial
Perception via Tactile Sensation," (or here)
Trends
in Cognitive Sciences Volume
7, Issue 7 , July 2003, Pages 285-286. (Note:
the journal incorrectly reversed the noun phrases in the title.)
Susan
Hurley and Alva Noë,
Neural
plasticity and consciousness: Reply to Block Trends
in Cognitive Sciences Volume 7, Issue 78August, 2003 issue. This paper, and many others on this site
require a university email account for access. If you have an NYU web account, but are not logging in from an NYU site, you will need
to tell your browser to use an NYU proxy. Click here for instructions. It will take you 10
minutes to solve this problem. If you
are having trouble, send me email about it.
In the meantime, click here.
September 24 Eliminativism
Daniel Dennett, "Quining
Qualia" (also in BFG 619-642)
Daniel Dennett and Marcel
Kinsbourne, "Time
and the Observer: The Where and When of Consciousness in the Brain"
(also in BFG 141-174)
Ned Block, "Begging the
Question against Phenomenal Consciousness" 175-180 in BFG
Robert Van Gulick, "Time for
More Alternatives", 181-184 in BFG
October 1: Inverted Spectrum
Sydney Shoemaker, "The
Inverted Spectrum", 643-662 in BFG
Robert Stalnaker, "Comparing
Qualia Across Persons," in The Philosophy of Sydney Shoemaker,
Philosophical Topics, 26. 385-404.
Stephen Palmer, “Color,
Consciousness, and the Isomorphism Constraint” or here, in The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22, 6, 1999.
The first link is the better since it is corrected and also has
responses.
Recommended reading that may not be
discussed in class
Stephen White, "The Curse of
the Qualia", 695-718 in BFG
October 8 Representationism
David Chalmers, “The
Representational Character of Experience”, To appear in B. Leiter (ed.) The Future
for Philosophy (
Christopher Peacocke,"Sensation
and the Content of Experience: A Distinction" BFG, 341-354
Ned Block, “Mental
Paint” forthcoming in a book of essays on Tyler Burge
Michael Tye, “Representationalism
and the Transparency of Experience,” Nous 36, 1, 2002
Recommended readings that may not be discussed in
class:
Alex Byrne, "Intentionalism
Defended" [PDF] The Philosophical Review
William Lycan, “The
Case for Phenomenal Externalism”
Michael Tye, "A
Representational Theory of Pains and Their Phenomenal Character" BFG,
329-340
Gilbert Harman, The Intrinsic
Quality of Experience, BFG, 663-676
Ned Block, "Inverted
Earth" BFG, 677-694
October
15: Higher order Thought
David Rosenthal, "A Theory of
Consciousness" BFG 729-754
David Rosenthal, “"How Many Kinds of
Consciousness?", Consciousness and Cognition, 11, 4 (December
2002),
William Lycan, “A
simple argument for a higher-order representation theory of
consciousness,” Analysis 61, 1, January, 2001.
Neil Campbell Manson, “The
limitations and costs of Lycan’s ‘simple’ argument”,
Analysis 61, 4, October 2001
Alex Byrne "Some Like It HOT:
consciousness and higher-order thoughts", Philosophical Studies
86, 1997
Recommended readings
that may not be discussed in class:
Robert Van Gulick, "Inward
and Upward—Reflection, Introspection and Self-Awareness"
Peter Carruthers, higher-order
theories (Stanford Encyclopedia)
October 22: Phenomenal Concepts and Jackson’s
Mary
Papineau: Chapter 2, 4
Robert van Gulick,
"Understanding the Phenomenal Mind: Are we all Just Armadillos? Part
I" BFG 559
Frank Jackson, "What Mary
Didn't Know", BFG 567
Paul Churchland, "Knowing
Qualia": A Reply to
Frank Jackson, “Mind
and Illusion”, forthcoming in Philosophy
October 29: Modal
Arguments for Dualism 1
Saul Kripke, "The Identity
Thesis", BFG 445
David Chalmers, three chapters
from The Conscious Mind,1997 (Web; for copyright reasons, these chapters
require a password for access.)
§ Chapter 2: "Supervenience and Explanation"
§ Chapter 3: "Can Consciousness be Reductively Explained?"
§ Chapter 4: "Naturalistic Dualism"
(Those who want to see a different
version of these ideas can consult Frank Jackson, "Finding the Mind in the
Natural World", BFG 483-492 or
Recommended
Papineau, Chapter 3
November 5: Modal Arguments for Dualism 2
Ned Block and Robert Stalnaker,
"Conceptual
Analysis, Dualism and the Explanatory Gap", or here,
or here for economy pdf or here for high quality pdf. The Philosophical Review 108, No 1,
1999
David Chalmers and Frank Jackson "Conceptual
Analysis and Reductive Explanation", The Philosophical Review
Recommended reading that may not be discussed in class:
Stephen Yablo, Textbook Kripkeanism & the Open
Texture of Concepts
November 12, The Property Dualism Argument
Stephen White, "Why
the Property Dualism Argument Won't Go Away", or in PDF
form, forthcoming in the Journal of
Philosophy
Ned Block, "
Max Black’s Objection to Mind-Body Identity"
November
19: Intensions
Alex Byrne and Jim Pryor, “Bad Intensions” If this link doesn’t get to the paper,
go to Alex Byrne’s
or Jim Pryor’s web site
and get the paper there.
David Chalmers’ brief
remarks on Byrne and Pryor
November 26: The Harder Problem of Consciousness
Ned Block, "The
Harder Problem of Consciousness". The Journal of Philosophy
XCIX, No. 8, August 2002, 1-35. The version that came out in The Journal of
Philosophy was shortened considerably because of space limitations in the
journal. Some of the cuts have been restored in the version here.
Click here to download Acrobat Reader, which is
needed to view PDF files.
Papineau, Chapter 7
Brian McLaughlin, A
Naturalist-Phenomenal Realist Response To Block's Harder Problem," Philosophical
Issues, 13, (2003):163-204.
December 3: The
Search for the Neural Correlate of Consciousness
Nancy Kanwisher, "Neural
events and perceptual awareness". This article and the next are in
Dehaene. They are also available in Cognition,
Volume
79, Issues 1-2, Pages 1-237 (April 2001) usually in both html and PDF
versions. (I have linked to the html versions when available.)
Other library sites will also have this journal.
Stanislas Dehaene and Lionel
Naccache, "Towards
a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness: basic evidence and a workspace
framework," Pages 1-37
Daniel Dennett, Are we explaining
consciousness yet?, Pages 221-237 of Dehaene and of Cognition issue
Ned Block "Paradox
and Cross Purpose in Recent Work on Consciousness" Better to read this
than the version in Dehaene or on the Cognition web site.
Recommended readings that may not be discussed in
class:
Jon Driver and Patrik Vuilleumier,
Perceptual
awareness and its loss in unilateral neglect and extinction, Pages 39-88 of
Dehaene
Geraint Rees, et.al., “Neural
correlates of consciousness in humans”, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 3, 261-270
David Chalmers, "What is a
Neural Correlate of Consciousness?"
in Neural Correlates of Consciousness: Empirical and Conceptual
Questions (T. Metzinger, ed), published with MIT Press in 2000
Omitted: The Zombie
Within
Andy Clark,
"Visual Experience and Motor Action: Are the Bonds Too Tight?"
Phil Review Oct 2001.
Crick,
F. and Koch, C A framework for consciousness. Nature Neuroscience (2003)
6, 119-126
Koch,
C. and Crick, F.C. The zombie within. Nature (2001) 411, 893-893
A login
name and password will be announced in class
Ø
Burge
on Concepts of Consciousness
Ø
Representationism. Also,
a pointer to a paragraph on unconscious representation
WEB RESOURCES ON CONSCIOUSNESS:
Encyclopedia articles on philosophy of mind
David Papineau, “Functionalism”
Ned Block, "What is Functionalism?"
Ned
Block, "The Mind as the Software of the
Brain"
Frank Jackson, “Identity Theory of Mind”
Daniel Stoljar, Physicalism
Kim Sterelny, “Reductionism in the Philosophy of Mind”
Howard Robinson, “Materialism in the Philosophy of Mind”
General articles specifically on consciousness:
Martin Davies "Consciousness"
Michael Tye "qualia "
Eric Lormand “Consciousness”
William Lycan “The Plurality of Consciousness”
Janet Levin, “Qualia”
Güven Güzeldere,
"Introduction: The Many Faces of Consciousness: A Field Guide", BFG
Many philosophers who write on this topic have web sites
(mainly from Dave Chalmers' web site)
Torin Alter (qualia, free will, etc)
Michael Antony (consciousness, etc)
Tim Bayne (consciousness, personal identity)
Karen
Bennett (mind, metaphysics)
Ned Block (consciousness, reduction, content, etc)
Alex
Byrne (consciousness, metaphysics, etc.)
Peter Carruthers (consciousness, language)
David Chalmers (philosophy of mind and language, cognitive
science, metaphysics)
Austen Clark (color, consciousness, vision)
David Cole
(consciousness, language)
Martin Davies (mind, language, metaphysics)
Craig DeLancey (emotion, consciousness)
Daniel
Dennett (philosophy of mind)
Shaun Gallagher (phenomenology, self-consciousness)
Brie Gertler (consciousness, introspection, metaphysics)
Benj Hellie (consciousness, Nietzsche)
Ted Honderich (consciousness, free will, ethics)
Susan
Hurley (consciousness, perception, political philosophy)
Frank Jackson (mind, language, metaphysics)
Sean
Kelly (perceptual experience, action)
Peter Lloyd (consciousness, idealism)
Eric
Lormand (consciousness, meaning, cognitive architecture)
William Lycan
(consciousness, epistemology)
Thomas Metzinger (consciousness)
Alva Noë (perception, consciousness)
Gerard O'Brien (consciousness, connectionism)
David Papineau (consciousness, epistemology, philosophy
of science)
Tom
Polger (consciousness, evolution)
Jesse Prinz
(consciousness, emotion, concepts, moral psychology)
William Robinson (consciousness, qualia)
Gregg Rosenberg (A Place
for Consciousness, etc.)
David Rosenthal (consciousness, intentionality, etc.)
William Seager (consciousness, metaphysics)
John Searle (consciousness, AI; and here)
Susanna Siegel (mind, language, metaphysics)
Daniel Stoljar
(mind, language, metaphysics)
Pär Sundström (consciousness)
Nigel
Thomas (imagery, consciousness, zombie
killer)
Michael
Tye (consciousness, qualia, content)
Websites of organizations
Association
for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
Center for Consciousness Studies
(Arizona),
Consciousness
in the Natural World Project
,
Journal of Consciousness
Studies
The on-line directory of
papers on consciousness
NEH Summer Institute on
Consciousness and Intentionality