Consciousness

N. Block, O. Flanagan and G. Güzeldere, The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates (MIT Press, 1997). This book will be referred to below as 'BFG' (apologies to Roald Dahl). This book is available at the NYU bookstore, as well as Amazon and MIT Press

SYLLABUS

If you are not already highly familiar with reading philosophy, read Jim Pryor’s Guidelines on Reading Philosophy

The Explanatory Gap

Thomas Nagel, "What is it Like to be a Bat?" BFG 519

Qualia: The Inverted Spectrum

Ned Block, “Wittgenstein and Qualia”, forthcoming in a volume of Philosophical Perspectives edited by John Hawthorne

Alex Byrne, “Inverted Qualia”, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Daniel Dennett, "Quining Qualia" (also in BFG 619)

Extra Reading: Sydney Shoemaker, "The Inverted Spectrum", BFG 643

Consciousness vs. Attention

Daniel Simons & Ron Rensink, Change Blindness: Past, Present, and Future Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9: 16-20. 2005

Christof Koch & Naotsugu Tsuchiya, Attention and Consciousness: Two Distinct Brain Processes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2007) 11, 16-22

Susana Martinez-Conde, “Blindsight: The Blind Leading the Sighted”, the Scientific American blog, Mind Matters, September 4, 2007

Victor Lamme, V. (2003) Why visual attention and awareness are different. Trends in Cognitive

Sciences 7:12–18.

Concepts of Consciousness

Ned Block, “Some Concepts of Consciousness”, in Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of Mind, Oxford, 2002

Daniel Dennett, "The Path Not Taken", BFG 417

David Chalmers, "Availability: The Cognitive Basis of Experience?", BFG

Jennifer Church, "Fallacies or Analyses?", BFG 425

Ned Block replies to Church and Dennett in “How Many Concepts of Consciousness?”, p. 216-218, and to Chalmers here, starting on p. 159. Or this link or this link.

Tyler Burge, “Reflections on Two Kinds of Consciousness,” in Foundations of Mind: Essays by Tyler Burge, vol. II, Oxford, OUP, 2007

Extra Reading: Tyler Burge, "Two Kinds of Consciousness" BFG 427

Consciousness and Cognitive Access

Ned Block, ”Consciousness, Accessibility and the Mesh between Psychology and Neuroscience,” forthcoming in Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Some of the 32 commentaries on this paper will also be assigned

Higher Order Theories of Consciousness

Peter Carruthers, Higher-Order Theories (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

David Rosenthal, "Explaining Consciousness," in Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, ed. David J. Chalmers, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 406-421

David Rosenthal, "How Many Kinds of Consciousness?", Consciousness and Cognition, 11, 4 (December 2002): 653-665

Uriah Kriegel, The Self-Representational Theory of Consciousness.” Introductory chapter of Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory Further readings on this topic in: U. Kriegel and K. Williford (eds.), Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness (pp. 143-170). Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2006

Eliminativism about Consciousness

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

The Zombie Within

Christof Koch & Frances Crick, The zombie within. Nature (2001) 411, 893, or, if that link doesn’t work use library access to the Nature web site

Andy Clark, "Visual Experience and Motor Action: Are the Bonds Too Tight?" Phil Review Oct 2001.

Sensorimotor Theories of Consciousness

Susan Hurley and Alva Noe, "Neural plasticity and consciousness." Biology and Philosophy 18, 1, pp 131-168

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 78, August, 2003 issue.

Alva Noë, Precis of Action in Perception, Psyche 12,1, 2006, p. 1-34

Commentaries in the same issue of Psyche

Andy Clark Vision as Dance?

Pierre Jacob - Why Visual Experience is Likely to Resist Being Enacted

Jesse Prinz - Putting the Brakes on Enactive Perception

William Lycan - Enactive Intentionality

Ned Block, Review of Alva Noë, Action in Perception, The Journal of Philosophy, CII, 5, May 2005, 259-272

Alva Noe and Evan Thompson, "Are There Neural Correlates of Consciousness?"

Agency, Ownership and the Body

Matthew Botvinick & Jonathan Cohen, “Rubber hands ‘feel’ touch that eyes see”, Nature 391, 1998, p. 756.

Matthew Botvinick, “Probing the Neural Basis of Body Ownership,” Science 305, 2004, pp. 782-783

Manos Tsakiris & Patrick Haggard, “The Rubber Hand Illusion Revisited: Visuotactile Integration and Self-Attribution, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2005, 31, 1, 80-91

H. Henrik Ehrsson, “The Experimental Induction of Out-of-Body Experiences” Science 317, 2007, p. 1048. See also Greg Miller, “Out-of-Body Experiences Enter the Laboratory,” Science 317, 2007, p. 1020a and Bigna Lenggenhager, Tej Tadi, Thomas Metzinger & Olaf Blanke, “Video Ergo Sum: Manipulating Bodily Self-Consciousness,” Science 317, 2007, p. 1096.

Frédérique de Vignemont, Habeas Corpus: The Sense of Ownership of One’s Own Body, Mind & Language 22, 4, 427-449, September 2007

Neural Correlates of Consciousness

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

Frances Crick & Christof Koch, A framework for consciousness, Nature Neuroscience 2003, 6, 119-126

Stanislas Dehaene. And J-P Changeux (2005), “Neural Mechanisms for Access to Consciousness”, The Cognitive Neurosciences III, Gazzaniga, M. (ed) MIT Press: Cambridge

The Self

Galen Strawson, The self and the SESMET. In Models of the Self. Thorverton UK: Imprint Academic.

Thomas Metzinger - Précis: Being No One Psyche 11 (5) 2005

ASSIGNMENTS

NO LATE PAPERS. Papers are due at 5 PM on the day mentioned. SEE RULES. Before writing your first paper, read Jim Pryor’s Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper

Assignment 1 Due September 14

Assignment 2 Due September 21st

Assignment 3 Due September 28th

Assignment 4 Due October 10th

Assignment 5 Due October 17th

Assignment 6 Due October 26th

Assignment 7 Due November 2nd

Assignment 8 Due November 9th

Assignment 9 Due November 16th

Assignment 10 Due November 23rd

Assignment 11 Due November 30th

Assignment 12 Due December 7th

SLIDES

Access to slides is limited to students in the course and requires a password that was given out in class. If you don’t know the password, send email to Mihailis Diamantis or Gina Rini

Links for classes that have not happened yet do not work

Slides from:

September 4, 6, 11, 13, 18, 20, 25, 27

October 2, 9, 11, 16, 18, 23, 25, 30

November 6, 8, 13, 15, 20, 27, 29

December 4, 6

RULES

1. There will be a 3-5 page writing assignment posted each week and due the following week. You must choose three of these assignments, including one of Assignments 1-3, and one of Assignments 7-12.

2. There will be a final examination, the questions of which will be very similar to questions on the weekly writing assignments. So you should be satisfied that you understand the questions even for assignments that you do not do in writing.

3. The writing assignments will normally require statements of positions taken by one of the authors that you've read. These statements should be couched in your own words, explaining how you see what the author has said. No quotations; no paraphrases.

4. Grading: Each of the three papers will count for one fifth of the grade, the final will count for one fifth of the grade and participation in class (including section) will be another one fifth. If you do four papers, then each will count one sixth, the final will count one sixth and participation in class will be another sixth.

5. Joint work is encouraged. Arguing about your views with others is the best way to find out where your position leads. If your paper is a product of joint work, all of the participants should turn in their own versions, with the communal ideas stated in each paper in the writer's own words. When you do work together on an assignment, this must be stated on each paper. All participants in joint work get full credit.

6. NO LATE PAPERS. Papers are due at 5 PM. If you can’t get it in by 5 PM, just do the next one.

LINKS

David Chalmers’ web site is a fantastic resource on consciousness and philosophy of mind generally. Here are some sub-sites of it: list of people with on-line papers in philosophy, list of web resources on consciousness, list of on-line papers on the philosophy and science of consciousness (as of November, 2007, this site contained almost 7000 papers), on-line bibliography in philosophy of mind (which as of November, 2007 listed 18000 papers on the philosophy of mind, very easily searchable too)

Blogs: