The Nature of Consciousness
Ned Block, Owen J. Flanagan, and Guven Guzeldere (MIT Press: Aug 1997), 873 pages.Intended for anyone attempting to find their way through the large and confusingly interwoven philosophical literature on consciousness, this reader brings together most of the principal texts in philosophy (and a small set of related key works in neuropsychology) on consciousness through 1997, and includes some forthcoming articles. Its extensive coverage strikes a balance between seminal works of the past few decades and the leading edge of philosophical research on consciousness. As no other anthology currently does, The Nature of Consciousness provides a substantial introduction to the field, and imposes structure on a vast and complicated literature, with sections covering stream of consciousness, theoretical issues, consciousness and representation, the function of consciousness, subjectivity and the explanatory gap, the knowledge argument, qualia, and monitoring conceptions of consciousness. Of the 49 contributions, 18 are either new or have been adapted from a previous publication.
Table of Contents
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- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Sources
- Introduction: The Many Faces of Consciousness: A Field Guide 1
- 1 The Stream of Consciousness 71
- 2 The Cartesian Theater and “Filling In” the Stream of Consciousness 83
- 3 The Robust Phenomenology of the Stream of Consciousness 89
- 4 Prospects for a Unified Theory of Consciousness or, What Dreams Are Made Of 97
- 5 Consciousness, Folk Psychology, and Cognitive Science 111
- 6 Can Neurobiology Teach Us Anything about Consciousness? 127
- 7 Time and the Observer: The Where and When of Consciousness in the Brain 141
- 8 Begging the Question against Phenomenal Consciousness 175
- 9 Time for More Alternatives 181
- 10 Contrastive Phenomenology: A Thoroughly Empirical Approach to Consciousness 187
- 11 Visual Perception and Visual Awareness after Brain Damage: A Tutorial Overview 203
- 12 Understanding Consciousness: Clues from Unilateral Neglect and Related Disorders 237
- 13 Modularity and Consciousness 255
- 14 Towards a Neurobiological Theory of Consciousness 277
- 15 Consciousness and Content 295
- 16 Externalism and Experience 309
- 17 A Representational Theory of Pains and Their Phenomenal Character 329
- 18 Sensation and the Content of Experience: A Distinction 341
- 19 Conscious Inessentialism and the Epiphenomenalist Suspicion 357
- 20 On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness 375
- 21 The Path Not Taken 417
- 22 Availability: The Cognitive Basis of Experience? 421
- 23 Fallacies or Analyses? 425
- 24 Two Kinds of Consciousness 427
- 25 Understanding the Phenomenal Mind: Are We All Just Armadillos? Part II: The Absent Qualia Argument 435
- 26 The Identity Thesis 445
- 27 Reductionism and the Irreducibility of Consciousness 451
- 28 A Question about Consciousness 461
- 29 Finding the Mind in the Natural World 483
- 30 Breaking the Hold: Silicon Brains, Conscious Robots, and Other Minds 493
- 31 The First-Person Perspective 503
- 32 What Is It Like to Be a Bat? 519
- 33 Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem? 529
- 34 On Leaving Out What It’s Like 543
- 35 Understanding the Phenomenal Mind: Are We All Just Armadillos? Part I: Phenomenal Knowledge and Explanatory Gaps 559
- 36 What Mary Didn’t Know 567
- 37 Knowing Qualia: A Reply to Jackson 571
- 38 What Experience Teaches 579
- 39 Phenomenal States 597
- 40 Quining Qualia 619
- 41 The Inverted Spectrum 643
- 42 The Intrinsic Quality of Experience 663
- 43 Inverted Earth 677
- 44 Curse of the Qualia 695
- 45 What Is Consciousness? 721
- 46 A Theory of Consciousness 729
- 47 Consciousness as Internal Monitoring 755
- 48 Conscious Experience 773
- 49 Is Consciousness the Perception of What Passes in One’s Own Mind? 789
- References to Introduction 807
- Suggested Readings compiled by Guven Guzeldere 817
- Index 825