Conscious Life Blog

Special handout: Attention and gunk

shake it don't break it: Download Gunk-attention

Handout for segment 6: Ignorance by acquaintance

Do you want it? Yeah. Do you want it? Yeah. If you had it would you flaunt it? Yeah. Then it's yours: Download Ignorance-acquaintance

By the way, the handout posted earlier gets really bad at the end so I took it down.

Forthcoming ...

... from OUP. Yay!

Arguments for my view

It occurred to me in the course of thinking over the referees' reports on the Long Precis that I actually have several independent arguments for E = A, the view that the kinds of experience are the kinds of action.

A) There is a formally valid "direct argument" running as follows:

1. The K is a kind of action just if a K can occur attentively;
2. A K can occur attentively just if a K can occur consciously;
3. A K can occur consciously just if the K is a kind of experience.

Comment on the schematic letters: Here I'm using 'the K' and 'a K' as a "generic" and an "indefinite description", respectively, along the following lines: 'the tiger is a mammal just if a tiger can be born live'.

Ad 1: LR says that anything that can be done can be done attentively; RL says that anything that can't be done can't even occur attentively. Counterexamples to LR would be like /daydreaming/; strategy for managing this would be to go for a notion of attentiveness which pushes laboriousness into the act. Counterexamples to RL would be like /seeing/; strategy for managing this is standard pro-Ryle/anti-Place stuff.

Ad 2: thought here is that attentiveness is a high-grade form of consciousness, a fairly traditional idea. LR says that anything that can occur attentively can occur consciously; RL says that anything that can occur consciously can occur attentively. Counterexamples to LR might be zombie-type cases; strategy for managing this might be to go for something like Chalmers's functional/conscious distinction in terminology. Counterexamples to RL would be /seeing/ again; strategy for managing it would be a combination of the multifariousness of 'conscious' and undermining the plausibility that seeing is intrinsically conscious via Gorilla considerations. 

Ad 3: thought here is somewhat along the lines of co-defining what I mean by "kind of experience" and "consciously" in case there was any doubt. 

General reflections:

1. We see attention as the sort of "conceptual bridge" between action and experience here. This is a nice synergy with the view that which actions/experiences one is performing when + the diachronic flow of attentiveness = the facts about conscious life, where we once again see action, consciousness, and attentiveness in this sort of interplay.
2. Adverbialism plays a central role in preserving the sort of "thick behaviorism" I am defending. This is a nice synergy with the historical stuff, on which Ryle lost the thread due to his half-hearted adverbialism.

B) There is a sort of "historical" argument: according to the mythology of Intro Mind, the contemporary philosophy of mind got kicked off when Ryle's behaviorism was overthrown for Place's central state materialism. This was in turn overthrown for some version of functionalism; which was (perhaps) overthrown for some version of dualism. These positions all concern the nature of phenomenal states: what is it to be in pain? The behaviorist says this is to behave as if in pain, and so forth.

Bracket the question of whether central state materialism should be overthrown (tho speaking personally I'm sympathetic to functionalism for Chomsky-Marr type stuff and dualism for real mental stuff). Why should /Ryle/ have been overthrown?

According to the legend, it was all about incurable paralytics and X-worlders and the like: people who behave or are disposed to behave a certain way but can conceivably be regarded as varying mentally despite this. 

Puzzle 1: this wasn't Place's reason (or Smart's, or Lewis 1966's). This didn't show up until Putnam 1961.

Puzzle 2: is this really a problem for Ryle? Ryle is notoriously hard to interpret, especially in light of the passage about James Joyce: in which he seems to be saying something like there are aspects of mentality that don't have much to do with behavior but they're not very interesting. /Interesting/? What does that have to do with the nature of pain? 

The Intro Mind legend leaves us uncertain what Ryle was doing, and why Place thought it would be a good idea to stop doing it and start being a central state materialist. 

The answer is that Ryle -- or at least his cousin, Repaired Ryle -- was doing what I am doing; and that Place rejected Ryle because he (unlike Repaired Ryle, but like Ryle in some moods) rejected the adverbial theory of attention. But since the adverbial theory of attention is true, there was never any reason to move to central state materialism from Repaired Ryle's view. 

Respect for precedent, then, says that we should rewind the tape, and endorse the views of Repaired Ryle, as the oldest unrefuted view on the table. 

That's a bit of a joke of course. A real argument would look at whether Ryle has good arguments for Repaired Ryle's view: I'm inclined to think that there is more in the worries about the Ghost in the Machine than Ryle typically gets credit for; more on that later. It would also assess whether there is a good argument by any of the post-central state theorists against Repaired Ryle: short answer, not from the functionalist, from the dualist only if Repaired Ryle is a materialist but he is not.

Arguments (C) and (D), respectively, are a phenomenological argument moving step-by-step from the phenomenal state conception to my view; and a version of the Mabel argument on which my view gives the best account of ordinary discourse (I can provide a straightforward pragmatic story for why we discuss perceptual states and "happenings", my opponent must provide a more complex story for why we discuss actions). More on these later.

Announcement

No class on "virtual Monday" -- see you on 18 Nov. 

We're bouncing to segment 6. Should get started on the Chalmers paper early on cos it's loooong and intricate

Handout for segment 4: The master argument

Yours to nab: Download Argts

Handouts for segment 3: Action

Handout 1 Download Launch-action

Handout 2 Download Intention-action

Announcements

Messed around with the readings for segment 3 a bit more.

Read for segment 4.A: doubt we'll get to B.

Announcement

Today we're still on segment 3, 'action'. Stuff on attention up next week.

Handout for segment 2: Occurrences

Come 'n' get it Download Occurrences

Announcement

I monkeyed with the readings for segment 3 slightly: you can get the new stuff below.

Announcements

1. No class on 30 Sep -- I'm off for a week after ACL surgery on 24 Sep

2. Do you know about PhilPapers? This amazing site has a great searchable and categorized database of almost all philosophical articles, along with direct links to the article accessible to U of T (and other university-affiliated) users. Go try it out! 

Handout for segment 1: How experience became phenomenal

for your downloading pleasure: Download HowXBecamePhenomenal

Announcements

1. Some changes to the readings for segment 1
2. This blog is now available at http://clife09.notlong.com

Open thread

Welcome to the course blog for the Conscious Life seminar. Resources here include the syllabus and powerpoints from the first meeting, and a mostly complete set of course readings in the form of uploads.

You are also encouraged to start threading about stuff on this blog. If discussion takes off I'll post period open threads where you can talk about X. I'll check this stuff periodically and weigh in from time to time.

I don't want to legislate up front what the best place to begin a discussion of X is (on the readings post? on the handout post? on an open thread?) -- custom can settle that.

Readings for segment 8 (What is fundamental?)

Schaffer, Cameron 

A. Siewert

B. Bayne and Chalmers

C. Olson, Chalmers

Readings for segment 7 (The very notion of phenomenality)

A. Martin Download Losa published, Siegel Download Disj_vol, Hellie

B. Jackson, Martin Download Look, Gisborne Download GisborneLook

Readings for segment 6 (Direct access to experience)

A. Chalmers, Hawthorne

B. Heal

Readings for segment 5 (Gorillas and Gibson)

A. Block, Phillips (email me)

B. Burge 

Readings for segment 4 (The master argument)

A. Byrne 

B. Mole (email me)

Readings for segment 3 (Action)

CORRECTION 11 Oct: Read Lewis's Radical Interpretation (below under segment 1), and all of 'Naive action theory'; revised upload here (had to split in half for computery reasons): Download NAT1; Download NAT2 

Downgraded to optional: Davidson 'Actions, reasons, and causes': Download ARC

Chief aim: contrast the perspective of decision theory with that of MThompson's action holism

Readings for segment 2 (Varieties of occurrence)

(a) Vendler Download Vendler; (b) Phillips Download Perceivetemporalproperties

On W 6 October we will be talking about (a) the ontology of temporalia (getting serious about the state/process distinction) and (b) a difficulty for stative theories of experience

Readings for segment 1 (History)

CORRECTION (14 September)

For the next meeting strike B(2) and B(3) below and substitute

Lewis 'Argument for the identity theory' Download LewisIdentity

Optional:

Lewis 'Should a materialist believe in qualia?' Download LewisMatQ

Smart 'Sensations and brain processes' Download SmartSensations

=================

A. Chalmers (sections 6--8 optional)

B. (1) Place Download Place-heed (2) Lewis Download Radicalinterp (3) Block 

Precis of Conscious Life

This is my long precis of my book MS in progress. Download CL-initialdescription-Aug09

Phenomenal states v parts of life: moving pix

These powerpoint slides give the pictures involved in the phenomenal-state and part-of-life conceptions of experience. Download CSLifePix 

Syllabus

This is the syllabus for my Fall 2009 seminar. Download Syllabus

CORRECTION (10 September 09): Word length of assignments for grad students is now 4--6000 (rather than 6000); for undergrads, 2--3000 (rather than 4000).