The character of consciousness

625 Pages·2.56 MB·English

by  Chalmers, David John

THE CHARACTER OF CONSCIOUSNESS
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
Series Editor: David J. Chalmers, Australian National University
Self Expressions Simulating Minds
Owen Flanagan Alvin I. Goldman
Deconstructing the Mind Gut Reactions
Stephen Stich Jesse J. Prinz
Th e Conscious Mind Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal
David J. Chalmers Knowledge
Torin Alter, Sven Walter (editors)
Minds and Bodies
Colin McGinn Beyond Reduction
Steven Horst
What’s Within?
Fiona Cowie What Are We?
Eric T. Olson
Th e Human Animal
Eric T. Olson Supersizing the Mind
Andy Clark
Dreaming Souls
Owen Flanagan Perception, Hallucination, and Illusion
William Fish
Consciousness and Cognition
Michael Th au Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind
Robert D. Rupert
Th inking Without Words
José Luis Bermúdez Th e Character of Consciousness
David J. Chalmers
Identifying the Mind
U.T. Place (author), George Graham, Elizabeth Perceiving the World
R. Valentine (editors) Bence Nanay (editor)
Purple Haze Th e Senses
Joseph Levine Fiona Macpherson (editor)
Th ree Faces of Desire Th e Contents of Visual Experience
Timothy Schroeder Susanna Siegel
A Place for Consciousness Attention is Cognitive Unison
Gregg Rosenberg Christopher Mole
Ignorance and Imagination Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism
Daniel Stoljar Derk Pereboom
THE CHARACTER OF
CONSCIOUSNESS
DAVID J. CHALMERS

2010
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chalmers, David John, 1966–
Th e character of consciousness / David J. Chalmers.
p. cm. — (Philosophy of mind series)
ISBN 978-0-19-531110-5; 978-0-19-531111-2 (pbk.)
1. Consciousness. I. Title.
B808.9.C48 2009
126—dc22 2009038337
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to far too many people to mention for discussion of the many
topics in this book. Some but not all of them are acknowledged below for
their help with individual chapters.
Th e chapters in this book were written over a period of just over a decade
at four institutions: Washington University, University of California Santa
Cruz, the University of Arizona, and the Australian National University. I
am grateful to Andy Clark, David Hoy, Chris Maloney, and Frank Jackson
for creating the conditions that made all of these institutions terrifi c places
to work. I am also grateful to the Australian Research Council for a Feder-
ation Fellowship, which made much of this work possible.
A number of the chapters of this book were infl uenced by the extraordi-
nary Summer Institute on Consciousness and Intentionality at UC Santa
Cruz in 2002, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
I am grateful to the NEH, to my codirector, David Hoy, and to the partic-
ipants in that institute for a remarkable intellectual experience.
I am also grateful to my coauthors, Tim Bayne and Frank Jackson, for their
permission to include coauthored material in this book; to Karen Downing
and Máire Ní Mhórdha for their help in preparing the manuscript; to Ole
Koksvik and Brian Rabern for proof-reading and preparing the index respec-
tively; to Berit Brogaard, Uriah Kriegel, and Susanna Siegel for their com-
ments on the introduction; and to Robert Miller and Peter Ohlin at Oxford
University Press for all their help with the process and for their patience.
A s always, I am grateful to my (three) parents for their love and support.
Th is book is dedicated to them.
C hapter 1 is drawn from J ournal of Consciousness Studies 2: 200–19, 1995.
Th is m aterial was fi rst presented at the 1994 “Toward a Science of Conscious-
ness” conference in Tucson and was subsequently presented at conferences in
Mexico City, Montreal, and Philadelphia and in talks at Caltech, Ohio State,
UC San Francisco, UC Santa Cruz, and Yale. Th anks to Francis Crick, Peggy
DesAutels, Matthew Elton, Liane Gabora, Stuart Hameroff , Christof Koch,
Paul Rhodes, Gregg Rosenberg, and Sharon Wahl for their comments. Th e
vi acknowledgments
afterword draws on “Moving Forward on the Problem of Consciousness,”
published in Journal of Consciousness Studies 4 (1997): 3–46.
C hapter 2 is drawn from M. Gazzaniga, ed., Th e Cognitive Neurosciences III
(MIT Press, 2004). It was fi rst presented at a conference at King’s College,
L ondon, in 1999 and subsequently at conferences in Amsterdam, Paris, Rio de
Janeiro, Taipei, Tokyo, and Zaragoza, and in talks at Arizona, the Central
Intelligence Agency, Cornell, CSU Long Beach, Mississippi, Montana,
Northwestern, Prague, Queensland, Starlab (Brussels), Victoria, and Virginia.
For commentaries in London and Paris, thanks to Scott Sturgeon and Jean
Michel Roy. For comments on the written version, thanks to Christof Koch.
C hapter 3 is drawn from T. Metzinger, ed., Neural Correlates of Conscious-
ness: Empirical and Conceptual Issues (MIT Press, 2000). It was fi rst presented
at the 1998 Association for the Scientifi c Study of Consciousness (ASSC) con-
ference on “Neural Correlates of Consciousness” in Bremen, and subsequently
in talks at the Australian National University (ANU), Arizona, Delaware, and
the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. For comments, my thanks go
to Stephen Engel, Christof Koch, Th omas Metzinger, and Alva Noë.
C hapter 4 is drawn from S. Hameroff , A. Kaszniak, and A. Scott, eds.,
Toward a Science of Consciousness II: Th e Second Tucson Discussions and
Debates (MIT Press, 1998). It was fi rst presented at the 1996 Tucson con-
sciousness conference (this chapter is based on a transcript of that talk) and
subsequently in talks at ANU, Berkeley, and Stanford.
Chapter 5 is drawn from S. Stich and F. Warfi eld, eds., Th e Blackwell
Guide to the Philosophy of Mind (Blackwell, 2003) and from D. J. Chalmers,
ed., Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2002). Th anks to Farid Masrour for comments.
A much-abridged version of chapter 6 appears in B. McLaughlin,
A. Beckermann, and S. Walter, eds. Th e Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of
Mind (Oxford University Press, 2009). Some of the material in this chapter
is drawn from “Materialism and the Metaphysics of Modality” ( Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research 59: 473–93, 1999); “Does Conceivability
Entail Possibility?” in T. S. Gendler and J. Hawthorne, eds., Conceiv-
ability and Possibility (Oxford University Press, 2002); and “ Imagination,
Indexicality, and Intensions” (P hilosophy and Phenomenological Research 68:
182–90, 2004). Earlier versions of this material were presented as “Modal
Rationalism and the Mind-body Problem,” starting in 1998, at conferences
in Arkansas, Buff alo, Kirchberg, Santa Barbara, South Bend, and Sydney,
and at colloquia at ANU, NYU, Princeton, Stanford, the University of Lon-
don, and the University of Nevada, Reno. Th anks go to too many people to
mention for discussion and especially to Torin Alter, Ned Block, Tamar Gen-
dler, John Hawthorne, Chris Hill, David Lewis, Brian Loar, Tom Nagel,
Susanna Siegel, Daniel Stoljar, and Steve Yablo.
acknowledgments vii
Chapter 7 is drawn from the P hilosophical Review 110 (2001): 315–61.
Th anks to Ned Block and two Philosophical Review referees for com-
ments.
C hapters 8 and 9 are drawn from “Th e Content and Epistemology of
Phenomenal Belief,” in Q. Smith and A. Jokic, eds., C onsciousness: New
Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 2003). Th is material
was fi rst presented at ANU in 1997 and subsequently at Princeton, UC
Santa Cruz, the APA (Pacifi c Division), Metaphysical Mayhem (Syracuse),
and the World Congress of Philosophy (Boston) and in Antwerp, Arizona,
Delaware, Fribourg, Miami, Munich, Sydney, and Utah. Th anks to Fred
Dretske, Alvin Goldman, Delia Graff , John Hawthorne, Mark J ohnston,
Keith Lehrer, John Pollock, and Tim Williamson for feedback. Special
thanks to Martine Nida-Rümelin, Susanna Siegel, and Daniel Stoljar for
lengthy discussions.
C hapter 10 is drawn from T. Alter and S. Walter, eds., Phenomenal
C oncepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and
Physicalism (Oxford University Press, 2006). It was greatly infl uenced
by a round-table discussion at the 2002 NEH Summer Institute on
Consciousness and Intentionality, involving Kati Balog, Ned Block,
John Hawthorne, Joe Levine, and Scott Sturgeon, among many others.
I was also infl uenced by Levine’s paper, “Phenomenal Concepts and the
Materialist Constraint,” which develops closely related considerations
by diff erent sorts of arguments. Th is chapter was fi rst formally pre-
sented at a session on David Papineau’s book Th inking about Conscious-
ness at the 2003 Pacifi c APA and has also been presented at ANU, Ari-
zona, Birkbeck College, Sydney, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Victoria, and
Wisconsin, as well as at workshops in Buenos Aires and Copenhagen.
Th anks to all those present on those occasions for very useful reactions.
For comments on the written version, thanks also to Torin Alter, Murat
Aydede, Janet Levin, Adam Pautz, David Papineau, Susanna Siegel,
Scott Sturgeon, Daniel Stoljar, and Michael Tye.
Chapter 11 is drawn from Brian Leiter, ed., Th e Future for Philosophy
(Oxford University Press, 2004). It was presented, starting in 2001, at
Brown, Cornell, MIT, Rutgers, and the 2002 NEH Summer Institute on
Consciousness and Intentionality. I would like to thank the audiences on
all of these occasions for discussion. Special thanks to all of the partici-
pants in the NEH Institute for many valuable conversations and to Torin
Alter, Justin Fisher, Terry Horgan, Uriah Kriegel, Brian Leiter, David Pitt,
Sydney Shoemaker, Susanna Siegel, Brad Th ompson, Leora Weitzman,
and Wayne Wright for comments on a draft. Brad Th ompson’s dissertation
on phenomenal content explores many of the same issues as this chapter,
and I had much valuable discussion with him. Th is chapter has been
viii acknowledgments
infl uenced by the work of others in various obvious ways, but it has been
infl uenced by the work of Sydney Shoemaker and Charles Siewert in ways
that may be deeper than the obvious.
Chapter 12 is drawn from T. S. Gendler and J. Hawthorne, eds., P erceptual
Experience (Oxford University Press, 2006). I owe a special debt to George
Bealer for suggesting the central metaphor of this chapter in a memorable
conversation at O’Hare airport. In discussing whether perfect properties
could be instantiated in any possible world, George said, “Maybe that’s how
it was in Eden.” I also owe a debt to Brad Th ompson, whose exploration of
a Fregean approach to phenomenal content in his dissertation helped to
spark the line of thinking here. Conversations with John Hawthorne
and Mark Johnston about primitivist views also had a signifi cant infl uence
on the ideas here. I fi rst presented this material at a conference on the
o ntology of color in Fribourg in 2003, and comments from all of the par-
ticipants there, especially Alex Byrne, Larry Hardin, Barry Maund, and
Martine Nida-Rümelin, were very helpful. Th is material has also been pre-
sented at Arizona, Nottingham, NYU, and Virginia, and at conferences in
San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Florence. For their commentaries at
NYU and at the Santa Barbara and Florence conferences, I am grateful to
Tom Nagel, Gideon Rosen, Susanna Siegel, and Aaron Zimmerman.
Chapter 13 was fi rst published in the philosophy section of Th e Matrix
website (t hematrix.com) in 2003 and in C. Grau, ed., Philosophers Explore the
Matrix (Oxford University Press, 2005). It was fi rst presented at Davidson
College and at the Metaphysical Mayhem conference in Syracuse in 2002
and subsequently at conferences in Adelaide, Barcelona, Colorado, Idaho,
Oxford, and Tucson and in lectures at Arizona, ANU, Bates, British Colum-
bia, Dartmouth, Harvard, Maui, Montana, Nevada (Las Vegas), New Mexico
State, Queensland, Texas Tech, UCLA, Vermont, Victoria, and Wisconsin.
Th anks to people on all of these occasions and many others for discussion.
Chapter 14 is drawn from A. Cleeremans, ed., Th e Unity of Consciousness:
Binding, Integration, Dissociation (Oxford University Press, 2003). It was
fi rst presented at the 2000 ASSC conference on the unity of consciousness
in Brussels and subsequently at conferences in Boulder and Skaneateles
and in talks at Alabama, Arizona, Barcelona, Munich, Skovde, University
College London, and Wake Forest. Th anks to audience members on all of
those occasions for helpful comments. Special thanks to Barry Dainton,
Bernie Kobes, Graham Macdonald, and Paul Studtmann.
Th e appendix is abridged from “Two-dimensional Semantics” in E. Lepore
and B. Smith, eds., Th e Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Language
(Oxford University Press, 2006). Th anks to Brendan Jackson, Bernhard
Nickel, and Adam Pautz for comments.
CONTENTS
Introduction xi
I. Th e Problems of Consciousness
1. Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness 3
Afterword: From “Moving Forward on the Problem of
Consciousness” 28
II. Th e Science of Consciousness
2. How Can We Construct a Science of Consciousness? 37
Afterword: First-Person Data and First-Person Science 52
3. What Is a Neural Correlate of Consciousness? 59
4. On the Search for the Neural Correlate of Consciousness 91
III. Th e Metaphysics of Consciousness
5. Consciousness and Its Place in Nature 103
6. Th e Two-Dimensional Argument against Materialism 141
Afterword: Other Anti-Materialist Arguments 192
7. Conceptual Analysis and Reductive Explanation (with Frank
Jackson) 207
IV. Concepts of Consciousness
8. Th e Content of Phenomenal Concepts 251
9. Th e Epistemology of Phenomenal Belief 277
10. Phenomenal Concepts and the Explanatory Gap 305