What happens when a psychologist who's spent the last 30 years developing a method of introspecti... more What happens when a psychologist who's spent the last 30 years developing a method of introspective sampling and a philosopher whose central research project is casting skeptical doubt on the accuracy of introspection write a book together? The result, Hurlburt & Schwitzgebel's thought-provoking Describing Inner Experience?, is both encouraging and disheartening. Encouraging, because the book is a fine example of fruitful and open-minded interdisciplinary engagement; disheartening, because it makes clear just how difficult it is to justify the accuracy of introspective methods in psychology and philosophy. Since debates in consciousness studies largely turn on fine points of introspective detail, this is no minor methodological stumbling block.
The idea that conscious states are about both the world and themselves is an old one, tracing its... more The idea that conscious states are about both the world and themselves is an old one, tracing its roots back to Brentano and perhaps even as far back as Aristotle. There is, according to this picture, an intrinsic reflexiveness at the heart of conscious experience. In his important and provocative book Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory, Uriah Kriegel approaches this venerable idea with the sophisticated tool-kit of contemporary analytic philosophy of mind.
COMMENTARY ON: Metzinger, T. (2003) Being No One. The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridg... more COMMENTARY ON: Metzinger, T. (2003) Being No One. The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press xii + 699pp. ISBN: 0-262-13417-9.
When you have ruled everything else out, then what you are left with, no matter how improbable, m... more When you have ruled everything else out, then what you are left with, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. This adage from Doyle describes the path taken by Leopold Stubenberg in his book, Consciousness and Qualia. He spends most of the work critically examining and then discarding potential explications of consciousness before finally, in the last chapter, offering his own theory, carefully selected to avoid the pitfalls that did in rival accounts. He delivers a bold and simple slogan that distills the essence of his view: "To be conscious is to have qualia" (262).
Subscriptions: A subscription to Analysis comprises 4 issues. Prices include postage by surface m... more Subscriptions: A subscription to Analysis comprises 4 issues. Prices include postage by surface mail; or for subscribers in the USA and Canada, by airfreight; or in India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, by Air Speeded Post. Airmail rates are available on request. Analysis Advance Access contains papers that have recently been accepted but have not yet been included within an issue. Advance Access is updated daily. Annual Subscription Rates (Volume 71, 4 issues, 2011): Institutional
The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why any physical state is consciou... more The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why any physical state is conscious rather than nonconscious. It is the problem of explaining why there is “something it is like” for a subject in conscious experience, why conscious mental states “light up” and directly appear to the subject. The usual methods of science involve explanation of functional, dynamical, and structural properties—explanation of what a thing does, how it changes over time, and how it is put together.
ABSTRACT In his 1997 article “Some Like it HOT: Consciousness and Higher-order Thoughts,” Alex By... more ABSTRACT In his 1997 article “Some Like it HOT: Consciousness and Higher-order Thoughts,” Alex Byrne presents two objections to the higher-order thought hypothesis of state consciousness developed by David Rosenthal. The first objection concerns an alleged failure of higher-order thought to capture the richness of perceptual experience. The second objection attempts to show that the higher-order thought hypothesis collapses into a nonrelational theory of consciousness with no explanatory advantage over its rivals.
What happens when a psychologist who's spent the last 30 years developing a method of introspecti... more What happens when a psychologist who's spent the last 30 years developing a method of introspective sampling and a philosopher whose central research project is casting skeptical doubt on the accuracy of introspection write a book together? The result, Hurlburt & Schwitzgebel's thought-provoking Describing Inner Experience?, is both encouraging and disheartening. Encouraging, because the book is a fine example of fruitful and open-minded interdisciplinary engagement; disheartening, because it makes clear just how difficult it is to justify the accuracy of introspective methods in psychology and philosophy. Since debates in consciousness studies largely turn on fine points of introspective detail, this is no minor methodological stumbling block.
The idea that conscious states are about both the world and themselves is an old one, tracing its... more The idea that conscious states are about both the world and themselves is an old one, tracing its roots back to Brentano and perhaps even as far back as Aristotle. There is, according to this picture, an intrinsic reflexiveness at the heart of conscious experience. In his important and provocative book Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory, Uriah Kriegel approaches this venerable idea with the sophisticated tool-kit of contemporary analytic philosophy of mind.
COMMENTARY ON: Metzinger, T. (2003) Being No One. The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridg... more COMMENTARY ON: Metzinger, T. (2003) Being No One. The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press xii + 699pp. ISBN: 0-262-13417-9.
When you have ruled everything else out, then what you are left with, no matter how improbable, m... more When you have ruled everything else out, then what you are left with, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. This adage from Doyle describes the path taken by Leopold Stubenberg in his book, Consciousness and Qualia. He spends most of the work critically examining and then discarding potential explications of consciousness before finally, in the last chapter, offering his own theory, carefully selected to avoid the pitfalls that did in rival accounts. He delivers a bold and simple slogan that distills the essence of his view: "To be conscious is to have qualia" (262).
Subscriptions: A subscription to Analysis comprises 4 issues. Prices include postage by surface m... more Subscriptions: A subscription to Analysis comprises 4 issues. Prices include postage by surface mail; or for subscribers in the USA and Canada, by airfreight; or in India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, by Air Speeded Post. Airmail rates are available on request. Analysis Advance Access contains papers that have recently been accepted but have not yet been included within an issue. Advance Access is updated daily. Annual Subscription Rates (Volume 71, 4 issues, 2011): Institutional
The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why any physical state is consciou... more The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why any physical state is conscious rather than nonconscious. It is the problem of explaining why there is “something it is like” for a subject in conscious experience, why conscious mental states “light up” and directly appear to the subject. The usual methods of science involve explanation of functional, dynamical, and structural properties—explanation of what a thing does, how it changes over time, and how it is put together.
ABSTRACT In his 1997 article “Some Like it HOT: Consciousness and Higher-order Thoughts,” Alex By... more ABSTRACT In his 1997 article “Some Like it HOT: Consciousness and Higher-order Thoughts,” Alex Byrne presents two objections to the higher-order thought hypothesis of state consciousness developed by David Rosenthal. The first objection concerns an alleged failure of higher-order thought to capture the richness of perceptual experience. The second objection attempts to show that the higher-order thought hypothesis collapses into a nonrelational theory of consciousness with no explanatory advantage over its rivals.
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