The Engaged Thomist

In “The Intrinsic Quality of Experience,” Gilbert Harman argues that qualia can be explained in functionalist terms. There is a particularly important passage: "Look at a tree and try to turn your attention to intrinsic features of your visual experience. I predict you will find that the only features there to turn your attention to will be features of the presented tree, including relational features of the tree 'from here'" (39). What Harman is trying to elucidate in this quote is that our qualia are nothing over and above the data that we encounter. In other words, the qualities of experience we possess are not properties of the experience itself, but rather these qualities are properties of the thing experienced. So, in the tree example, the intrinsic qualities which we often associate, or even identify with, qualia which are over-and-above the thing experienced are actually just features of the tree. Now, the broader point of Harman’s paper is to show that qualia...

In “A Theory of Consciousness,” Rosenthal argues that some mental states can be non-conscious and that this poses a problem for most theories of consciousness which say that all mental states are conscious. Rosenthal begins by drawing a distinction between conscious and non-conscious mental states. Rosenthal ultimately thinks that “intentional and sensory properties” are a better marker for mental states “than consciousness” (734). He uses the fact that we sometimes have desires before we are aware of those desires as his first indication that there is a distinction between these two kinds of states. Other examples Rosenthal provides include cases of emotion: “we will occasionally recognize  that we ourselves  are  sad or angry only  after somebody else points it out to us” (731). He also says that “subliminal  perception and peripheral vision  remind  us  that perceptual sensations can occur without our being aware of them” (731). Once he has arg...

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...

In an excerpt from Naming and Necessity , Kripke argues that the type-type identity theory, which states that for every brain state there is corresponding mental state which is identical to that brain state, is rendered absurd using modal metaphysical notions, particularly the notion of rigid designation. Kripke explains that a rigid designator “designates the same object” “in every possible world” where that object exists (2). He then goes on to state that if there are two rigid designators, such as “‘ R 1 ’” and “‘ R 2 ’”, which are in fact identical to each other, as represented by “‘ R 1 = R 2 ’”, then, if it is true that “‘ R 1 = R 2 ’”, it is necessarily true that “‘ R 1 = R 2 ’” (9). This is because truths about identity are necessary truths. He then applies this to the type-type identity theory. He states that on this view, brain states are identical to mental states and so they necessarily share the same properties. Kripke uses the example of  “C-fiber stimulation” to illu...