Subjective Holism and the Problem of Consciousness

Springer eBooks, 1988

Western philosophers since the time of Descartes and Locke, have struggled to comprehend the nature of consciousness. Starting in the 1980's, an expanding community of neuroscientists and psychologists have associated themselves with a field called "Consciousness studies". First, this paper will take a quick look to these approaches and we will underline that if consciousness is by essence subjective, it cannot be properly studied using the objective methodology of science. Then we will present our Theory of consciousness which's originality is to call into question the Postulate of objectivity on which science is based.

European Journal of Philosophy, 1997

A commonly held view about the relation between consciousness and reference can be summarised, roughly, as follows. Demonstrative reference to objects we perceive is object-dependent: which objects our experience-based thoughts refer to depends on which objects in our immediate environment are, in fact, the cause of our experiences. How things are from within the perspective of consciousness, on the other hand, is object-independent. Experiences as of qualitatively indistinguishable objects are the same from within the perspective of consciousness, irrespective of the identity of the particular object, if any, that is the cause of the experience. In slogan form the claims are: reference is object-dependent and consciousness is object-independent. 1 The basic argument for object-dependence of demonstrative reference is Strawson's. 2 The possibility of massive reduplication of any one section of the universe onto another means that descriptions in purely general terms cannot fix the reference of any singular term. Reference to particular spatio-temporal objects must be anchored by demonstrative ways of thinking which are such that we can determine their referents by appealing to subjects' de facto perceptual relations with objects in their environment. The second claim, that how things are from the perspective of consciousness is object-independent, says that such object-dependence in reference goes beyond what is available from within the perspective of consciousness. From within that perceptive all that is given are general properties. If two objects are qualitatively indistinguishable there can be no difference for the subject in how things are from within the perspective of consciousness. The fact of numerical distinctness is a fact that is extrinsic to the delineation of how things are from within consciousness. 3 Though commonly held, this is a wholly unacceptable combination of claims. Consciousness is what makes knowledge possible. The realm of consciousness is the realm of how things are for the subject, from her perspective. If it were the case that consciousness is object-independent, and reference determination object-dependent, the conclusion would have to be that we cannot have knowledge of which objects our experience-based singular thoughts concern. A brazen response to this charge, which will not be my concern in this paper, is to claim that the insistence on a connection between consciousness and knowledge and reference is a manifestation of lingering Cartesian tendencies that must

Studia Humana, Volume 8:4 (2019), pp. 27—33, 2019

This article demonstrates that certain issues of philosophy of mind can only be explained via strict observance of the logical law of identity, that is, use of the term "consciousness" in only one meaning. Based on the understanding of consciousness as space in which objects distinguished by the subject are represented, this article considers problems such as the fixation of the consciousness level, correlation between consciousness and thought, between the internal and the external, and between consciousness and the body. It demonstrates the insufficiency of the reactive conception of action for the resolution of the hard problem of consciousness and the necessity of a transition to an active paradigm in which many issues in philosophy of mind would be formulated differently.

The solution of the mind-body problem as the problem of interrelation and interconditionality of mental and physiological faces contradictions when one proceeds from the classical subject-object opposition. Accepting the subject-object opposition only as the convenient way for a scientist to speak about the phenomena of this world (the way that shouldn’t be equal to the world itself), it is already senseless to look for the reason of a mental event either in biology nor in sociality. The subject-object opposition itself is possible, because the event of proportionality of human being and world have happened. In this event the human being and the world are defined by a finite way and until it neither the human being, nor the world can’t be defined. The human physiology (as well as a sociality which is sometimes unfairly identified with spirituality) can be considered as a marker of such definiteness, it is minimum of the being of consciousness. However in addition to this minimum there is also another aspect. Indeed, in every act of perception two events are realized simultaneously (not in a sequence): perception of a certain seeming (what is possible if human being and world are already defined, i.e. the act of proportionality of human being and world have happened) and a certain content. The content is always related to a certain idea. Ideas, in its turn, can be subdivided into two classes. To the first we will attribute the ideas which are the result of generalization of preceding experience and which give an opportunity to speak in an ordered way about the phenomena of the surrounding world. But there are also ideas of another sort – those that give an opportunity to the human being to newly recreate himself each time in the complete and ordered state. These ideas organize human life as human one, they are initiated by culture, but they are not a result of generalization. Such are a conscience, good, moral, love and the similar phenomena for which there are no external reasons – here the basis of a phenomenon coincide with the phenomenon itself. So, human physiology (including work of human brain) is the only side which characterizes the minimum of life of consciousness, it is the marker of human being and world are defined now. We are always after this definiteness (or, more precisely, inside it) when we perceive events of the world, and one shouldn’t search the conditions of any event of life of consciousness (the point of interests of ontology) either in biology nor in sociality. Every conscious act is complete and self-sufficient, and the consciousness basis (being actually the basis of human being) can be found only in consciousness.

Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, 2021

The 'hard' problem of consciousness is the seemingly intractable one of explaining the properties of consciousness in terms of the properties of physical objects. This is often seen mistakenly as a metaphysical problem, whereby the properties of physical things are of such a nature and so unlike mental properties that it is difficult to understand how the physical could ever explain consciousness. This view of the physical is not however the true reason for the hardness of the problem, rather it is epistemic, that of defining the physical as those features of the world that may be known objectively, coupled with the contention that only those objectively known properties are real. This makes the explanation of subjective consciousness in terms physical properties not just hard but impossible. The answer is to hold that the world is indeed all physical, but have the physical no longer defined as what may be known only objectively, and hold that some physical properties may be known subjectively. This eliminates the hard problem of consciousness as it is no longer required that the explanation of subjective properties of physical things be in terms of the objective properties of physical things.

This paper distinguishes three conceptual problems that attend philosophical accounts of consciousness. The first concerns the problem of properly characterizing the nature of consciousness itself, the second is the problem of making intelligible the relation between consciousness and the ‘physical’, and the third is the problem of creating the intellectual space for a shift in philosophical framework that would enable us to deal adequately with the first two problems. It is claimed that physicalism, in both its reductive and non-reductive forms, fails to deal adequately with either the first or second problem. The diagnosis of this failure is connected to the fact that consciousness cannot be treated in its own terms while being simultaneously fitted into an object-based conceptual schema. In light of this, it is proposed that a Bradleian version of absolute idealism may provide a metaphysical and epistemological framework which would enable us to recognize the conceptual diversity required to treat conscious phenomena on their own terms without forcing us to abandon naturalism.

Synthesis Philosophica, 2008

This paper proposes that the ‘problem of consciousness’, in its most popular formulation, is based upon a misinterpretation of the structure of experience. A contrast between my subjective perspective (A) and the shared world in which I take up that perspective (B) is part of my experience. However, descriptions of experience upon which the problem of consciousness is founded tend to emphasise only the former, remaining strangely oblivious to the fact that experience involves a sense of belonging to a world in which one occupies a contingent subjective perspective. The next step in formulating the problem is to muse over how this abstraction (A) can be integrated into the scientifically described world (C). I argue that the scientifically described world itself takes for granted the experientially constituted sense of a shared reality. Hence the problem of consciousness involves abstracting A from B, denying B and then trying to insert A into C, when C itself presupposes B. The problem in this form is symptomatic of serious phenomenological confusion. No wonder then that consciousness remains a mystery.

A conceptual framework for demystifying consciousness from a physicalist perspective. Attempting to address the "hard problem" of subjective experience.

Immanuel Kant is known for his contribution on the idea of " Perspectivism " which came from Plato and become one of the major problems of the Modern Philosophy and the history of Western philosophy in general. This concept is how we should view thing that which is not appears but rather how our mind imposes its understanding on the object. In this paper, we will tackle the similarities of Kant's Copernican Revolution and Edmund Husserl's Intentionality. These similarities of these two concepts must know is all about how we know things in the light of how mind gives meaning to the things being cogitated. We will understand how these concepts work together and also what will be the future of phenomenology especially like those of Heidegger.

Philosophy Study, 2017

Chalmers introduced the hard problem of consciousness as a profound gap between experience and physical concepts. Philosophical theories were based on different interpretations concerning the qualia/concept gap, such as interactive dualism (Descartes), as well as mono aspect or dual aspect monism. From a bio-psychological perspective, the gap can be explained by the different activity of two mental functions realizing a mental representation of extra-mental reality. The function of elementary sensation requires active sense organs, which create an uninterrupted physical chain from extra-mental reality to the brain and reflect the present. The function of categorizing reflection no longer needs sense organs, so that the physical chain to extra-mental reality is interrupted and now reflects the past. Whereas elementary sensation is an open system, categorizing reflection remains a closed system, separated from extra-mental reality. This creates the potentiality/reality gap, since prediction from the closed to the open system remains always uncertain. Elementary sensation is associated to specific qualia for each sense organ. Chalmers also attributed qualia to thoughts, with more neutral thought qualia. Thus at the qualia level, there is also an important gap, but now between specific sense qualia and neutral thought qualia. Since all physical concepts are simultaneously linked to neutral thought qualia, the hard problem might be explained by a qualia/qualia gap instead of a qualia/concept gap. The mental function of categorizing reflection induces the change from sense qualia to thought qualia by a categorization process. The specific sense qualia mosaic of an apple is reduced to physical concepts with neutral qualia by progressive categorization first to fruit, then to food, to chemicals and finally to calories. This might explain the gap felt in the hard problem, since specific sense qualia are completely different from neutral thought qualia, so that the hard problem could already be encountered at the qualia level. Since the gap of the hard problem is due to the interaction of different mental functions, it is compatible with a philosophical monism.