Abstract: I question whether it is completely accurate to think of the philosophical meaning of consciousness as being switched-on or switched-off. It may be that, once consciousness is switched-on, it is then found in degrees in animals we deem conscious. In which case, consciousness is more like a switched-on rheostat, rather than a simple on-off switch. Christian de Quincey (2006) gives a list of what would be considered the marks of consciousness, including 'experience, subjectivity, sentience, feeling, or mentality of any kind'. He also seems to conflate awareness with experience when speaking about the light of consciousness being on. In keeping with de Quincey's desire to get clear about the meaning of consciousness, I will put forward an idea of consciousness as the experience of oneself as a being subject to past, present, and future events, and contrast this idea with a state of awareness. De Quincey claims that 'any entity that is a subject -- that feels its own being -- possesses consciousness'. I want to add to this meaning of consciousness by noting the subject's sense of temporality, so as to further qualify the meaning of consciousness and show how awareness is distinct from consciousness

Abstract: The project that Dan Lloyd has undertaken is admirable and audacious. He has tried to boil down the substrate of information-processing that underlies conscious experience to some very simple elements, in order to gain a better understanding of the phenomenon. Some people will suspect that by considering a model as simple as a connectionist network, Dan has thrown away everything that is interesting about consciousness. Perhaps there is something to that complaint, but I will take a different tack. It seems to me that if we apply his own reasoning, we can see that Dan has not taken things far _enough_. When we have boiled things down to a system as simple as a connectionist network, it seems faint-hearted to stop there, and perhaps a little arbitrary as well. So I will take things further, and ask what seems to be the really interesting question in the vicinity: what is it like to be a thermostat?

Abstract: In this paper I first examine two important assumptions underlying the argument that physicalism entails panpsychism. These need unearthing because opponents in the literature distinguish themselves from Strawson in the main by rejecting one or the other. Once they have been stated, and something has been said about the positions that reject them, the onus of argument becomes clear: the assumptions require careful defence. I believe they are true, in fact, but their defence is a large project that cannot begin here. So, in the final section I comment on what follows if they are granted. I agree with Strawson that --broadly -- 'panpsychism' is the direction in which philosophy of mind should be heading; nevertheless, there are certain difficulties in the detail of his position. In light of these I argue for changes to the doctrine, bringing it into line with the slightly — but significantly — different panexperientialism

Abstract: 'Consciousness' has been called the 'final frontier' for science, philosophy's 'hard problem', and the greatest mystery in mysticism. It is a central focus in philosophy of mind. Yet confusion abounds about what 'consciousness' means -- even among philosophers, scientists, and mystics who have built careers exploring the mind. Different scholars and different disciplines use the same word to mean very different things. Debates and dialogues on consciousness often run aground because scholars conflate two radically different uses of the term. This paper addresses the problem by elucidating a fundamental distinction between the philosophical and psychological uses of 'consciousness'

Abstract: from non-conscious components by positing that consciousness is a universal primitive. For example, the double aspect theory of information holds that infor- mation has a phenomenal aspect. How then do you get from phenomenal infor- mation to human consciousness? This paper proposes that an entity is conscious to the extent it amplifies information, first by trapping and integrating it through closure, and second by maintaining dynamics at the edge of chaos through simul- taneous processes of divergence and convergence. The origin of life through autocatalytic closure, and the origin of an interconnected worldview through conceptual closure, induced phase transitions in the degree to which informa- tion, and thus consciousness, is locally amplified. Divergence and convergence of cognitive information may involve phenomena observed in light e.g. focusing, interference, and resonance. By making information flow inward- biased, clo- sure shields us from external consciousness; thus the paucity of consciousness may be an illusion

Abstract: We make powerful motor cars by suitably assembling items that are not themselves powerful, but we do not do this by 'adding in the power' at the very end of the assembly line; nor, if it comes to that, do we add portions of power along the way. Powerful motor cars are nothing over and above complex arrangements or aggregations of items that are not themselves powerful. The example illustrates the way aggregations can have interesting properties that the items aggregated lack. What can we say of a general kind about what can be made from what by nothing over and above aggregation? I think that this is the key issue that Galen Strawson (2006) puts so

Abstract: i>: This paper explores the plausibility of panexperientialism by an examination of Gregg Rosenberg’s development of the view in _A Place for Consciousness_. By focusing on experience rather than mentality, panexperientialism can avoid some of the traditional objections to panpsychism. However, panexperientialism’s commitment to the claim that experience outruns cognition, and its corresponding commitment to the existence of states of pure experience, opens the view to a charge of incoherence. As I suggest, it is not possible for us to make any real sense of the notion of non-conscious experience

Abstract: This paper is divided into two main sections. The first articulates what I believe Strawson’s position to be. I first contrast Strawson’s usage of ‘physicalism’ with the mainstream use. I then explain why I think that Strawson’s position is one of property dualism and substance monism. In doing this, I outline his view and Locke’s view on the nature of sub- stance. I argue that they are similar in many respects and thus it is no surprise that Strawson actually holds a view on the mind much like one plausible interpretation of Locke’s position. Strawson’s use of ter- minology cloaks this fact and he does not himself explicitly recognize it in his paper. In the second section, I outline some of Strawson’s assumptions that he uses in arguing for his position. I comment on the plausibility of his position concerning the relation of the mind to the body compared with mainstream physicalism and various forms of dualism. Before embarking on the two main sections, in the remainder of this introduction, I very briefly sketch Strawson’s view

Abstract: This paper is an explication and critique of a new theory of causation found in part II of Gregg Rosenberg's _A Place for Consciousness._ According to Rosenberg's Theory of Causal significance, causation constrains indeterminate possibilities, and according to his Carrier Theory, physical properties are dispositions which have phenomenal properties as their causal bases. This author finds Rosenberg's metaphysics excessively speculative, with disappointing implications for the place of consciousness in the natural world

Abstract: I argue that Gregg Rosenberg’s panexperientialism is either extremely implausible or irrelevant to the mystery of consciousness by introducing metaphysical and conceptual objections to his appeal to the notion of ‘protoconsciousness’

Abstract: Galen Strawson (2006) thinks it is 'obviously' false that 'the terms of physics can fully capture the nature or essence of experience' (p. 4). He also describes this view as 'crazy' (p. 7). I think that he has been carried away by first impressions. It is certainly true that 'physicSalism', as he dubs this view, is strongly counterintuitive. But at the same time there are compelling arguments in its favour. I think that these arguments are sound and that the contrary intuitions are misbegotten. In the first two sections of my remarks I would like to spend a little time defending physicSalism, or 'straightforward' physicalism, as I shall call it ('S' for 'straightforward', if you like). I realize that the main topic of Strawson's paper is panpsychism rather than his rejection of straightforward physicalism. But the latter is relevant as his arguments for panpsychism depend on his rejection of straightforward physicalism, in ways I shall explain below

Abstract: Rosenberg does not provide arguments for some crucial premises in his argument against physicalism. In particular, he gives no independent argument to show that physicalists must accept the entry-by-entailment thesis. The arguments provided establish weaker premises than those that are needed. As a consequence, Rosenberg’s general anti-physicalist argument is found wanting

Abstract: Consciousness is a refugee. It gathers the interest and sympathy of many disciplines without claiming a true home in any of them. Often abused by skeptics, it has been protected by moralists and exploited by dreamers. Until recently it was ignored by experimentalists, and theorists have not always taken it seriously. If any important and fundamental piece of nature could lay claim to being an intellectual exile, consciousness has been it. The purpose of this book is to find a place for consciousness

Abstract: Strawson’s challenging and provocative defence of panpsychism1 begins by sensibly insisting that physicalism, properly understood, must unflinchingly countenance the occurrence of conscious experi- ences. No view, he urges, will count as ‘real physicalism’ (p. 4) if it seeks to get around or soften that commitment, as versions of so- called physicalism sometimes do

Abstract: 1 Non-reductive physicalists deny that there is any explanation of mentality in purely physical terms, but do not deny that the mental is entirely determined by and constituted out of underlying physical structures. There are important issues about the stability of such a view which teeters on the edge of explanatory reductionism on the one side and dualism on the other (see Kim 1998). 2 Save perhaps for eliminative materialism (see Churchland 1981 for a classic exposition). In fact, however, while

Abstract: Rosenberg’s general argumentative strategy in favour of panpsychism is an extension of a traditional pattern. Although his argument is complex and intricate, I think a model that is historically significant and fundamentally similar to the position Rosenberg advances might help us understand the case for panpsychism. Thus I want to begin by considering a Leibnizian argument for panpsychism

Abstract: Strawson’s case in favor of panpsychism is at heart an updated version of a venerable form of argument I’ll call the ‘intrinsic nature’ argument. It is an extremely interesting argument which deploys all sorts of high caliber metaphysical weaponry (despite the ‘down home’ appeals to common sense which Strawson frequently makes). The argument is also subtle and intricate. So let’s spend some time trying to articulate its general form

Abstract: Whitehead’s philosophy is of perennial scholarly interest as one of the relatively few really serious attempts at a systematic metaphysics. But unlike almost all major ‘philosophical systems’ it is not merely an historical curiosity, but retains contemporary supporters actively deploying Whitehead’s viewpoint in discussion of a variety of live philosophical problems. Furthermore, Whitehead’s metaphysics is the sole example of a comprehensive philosophical system which aims to take into account the radical transformation of science which occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century with the development of relativity and quantum mechanics, developments with which Whitehead was, as a first rate mathematician, highly familiar

Abstract: By most accounts, the mind arises from the integrated activity of large populations of neurons distributed across multiple brain regions. A contrasting model is presented in the present paper that places the mind/brain interface not at the whole brain level but at the level of single neurons. Specifically, it is proposed that each neuron in the nervous system is independently conscious, with conscious content corresponding to the spatial pattern of a portion of that neuron's dendritic electrical activity. For most neurons, such as those in the hypothalamus or posterior sensory cortices, the conscious activity would be assumed to be simple and unable to directly affect the organism's macroscopic conscious behavior. For a subpopulation of layer 5 pyramidal neurons in the lateral prefrontal cortices, however, an arrangement is proposed to be present such that, at any given moment: i) the spatial pattern of electrical activity in a portion of the dendritic tree of each neuron in the subpopulation individually manifests a complexity and diversity sufficient to account for the complexity and diversity of conscious experience; ii) the dendritic trees of the neurons in the subpopulation all contain similar spatial electrical patterns; iii) the spatial electrical pattern in the dendritic tree of each neuron interacts nonlinearly with the remaining ambient dendritic electrical activity to determine the neuron's overall axonal response; iv) the dendritic spatial pattern is reexpressed at the population level by the spatial pattern exhibited by a synchronously firing subgroup of the conscious neurons, thereby providing a mechanism by which conscious activity at the neuronal level can influence overall behavior. The resulting scheme is one in which conscious behavior appears to be the product of a single macroscopic mind, but is actually the integrated output of a chorus of minds, each associated with a different neuron

Abstract: For some two millennia, Western civilization has predominantly viewed mind and consciousness as the private domain of the human species. Some have been willing to extend these qualities to certain animals. And there has been a small but very significant minority of philosophers who have argued that the processes of mind are universal in extent, and resident in all material things – the concept of panpsychism. The traditional ‘man-alone’, or ‘man-and-higher-animals’, views of mind have come under increasing criticism of late, and their philosophical weaknesses seem increasingly insurmountable. This has caused some thinkers to reexamine the ancient and venerable concept of panpsychism, and to apply it anew in contemporary theories of mind. The present essay reintroduces panpsychism, and demonstrates something of its legacy in Western thought