The Engaged Thomist

In “Availability: The cognitive basis of experience”, David Chalmers argues that a slightly modified notion of A-consciousness makes it “empirically inseparable” from P-consciousness, which Chalmers, in turn, uses to argue for irreducibility of P-consciousness (148). Chalmers begins by arguing that a better definition of A-consciousness is that “a content is A-conscious … when it is directly available for use in directing a wide range of behaviors” (148). He points out that this definition is not that different from Block’s definition and also that it has the benefit of being able to accommodate cases where contents are consciously available , instead of only allowing for cases where contents are consciously accessible . With this conceptual framework in place, Chalmers argues that, empirically, A-consciousness and P-consciousness always occur together. He gives the example of a module where “nine letters in a square array are experienced, but only three can be reported at a time” (148...

  heogony by Hesiod is the earliest work of poetry in the Western canon and serves as a foundation for the rational-mythical dialectic which characterizes the Western tradition. Theogony is, at first glance, a mythical account of the origin of the gods and the divine realm, but it fundamentally wrestles with the question of origins. While Hesiod’s poetry seems to represent a purely mythical vision of reality, the issue it engages is also a philosophical one. Moreover, though Hesiod exploits legends to parse this query, the means through which he divulges such myths convey philosophical considerations as well. Through his exploration of divine origins, Hesiod poses the question of origins and answers it in a primarily mythical frame, but his answer examines the notions of fundamentality and explanation, thus opening the door to rational, philosophical inquiry. The exploration of divine origins in Theogony shows the mythical elements of the work. The word ‘theogony’ is a compound...

In “Epiphenomenal Qualia,” Frank Jackson tries to argue that physicalism is false because it fails to account for the existence of qualia. Jackson offers a thought experiment about a neuroscientist named Mary. Though Mary lives in black and white room and only sees the world through black and white mediums, such as “black and white television,” she knows all the physical facts about color such as the wavelengths of each color and also how the human eye registers these different wavelengths of light as different colors. Jackson then tells us to imagine what would happen if Mary were to step out of her room and see colors. “Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will”. After seeing color, Mary will learn what it is like to see color, she will now have experiential, phenomenal knowledge of whichever color she sees, which is something that she could not gather from merely analyzing the physical facts about color. However, if physicalism were true, Mary would alread...

In “The Two-Dimensional Argument Against Materialism,” David Chalmers argues that metaphysical zombies, beings who act in every way as if they are conscious but have no phenomenal experiences, are possible and uses this to argue that materialism is false. Chalmers begins by arguing that a world which has “all” the same “microphysical truths about the universe” and yet no phenomenal experiences is conceivable in a way which provides evidence for its possibility (1). He makes a distinction between something which is “ prima facie conceivable,” which is when something is conceivable given an initial a priori conceptual inspection, and something which is “ ideally conceivable,” which is something which is conceivable after a priori inspection and “ideal rational reflection,” which is rational reflection abstracted from contingent states of the mind (2). Chalmers then engages with some objections to the conceivability-possibility link, such as the Goldbach conjecture, and shows that the...