Consciousness in animals

2019 ◽  
pp. 140-164
Author(s):  
Peter Carruthers
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
First Person ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Global Workspace ◽  
Asking Questions ◽  
Global Workspace Theory

This chapter argues that if a global workspace theory of phenomenal consciousness is correct, and is fully reductive in nature, then we should stop asking questions about consciousness in nonhuman animals. But this is not because those questions are too hard to answer, but because there are no substantive facts to discover. The argument in support of this conclusion turns on the idea that while global broadcasting is all-or-nothing in the human mind, it is framed in terms that imply gradations across species. Yet our concept of phenomenal consciousness doesn’t permit mental states to be to some degree conscious. Moreover, the first-person concepts that give rise to the problem of consciousness cannot intelligibly be projected into minds significantly different from our own.

Global broadcasting and self-interpretation

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Pereplyotchik
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Strong Version ◽  
Prior Model ◽  
Global Workspace ◽  
Global Workspace Theory

AbstractCarruthers claims that global workspace theory implies that sensory states, unlike propositional attitudes, are introspectible in a non-interpretative fashion. I argue that this claim is false, and defend a strong version of the “mindreading is prior” model of first-person access, according to which the self-ascription of all mental states, both propositional and sensory, is interpretative.

Explaining the “hard” problem

2019 ◽  
pp. 116-139
Author(s):  
Peter Carruthers
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Explanatory Gap ◽  
Phenomenal Concepts ◽  
Reductive Explanation ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
Global Workspace ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
Global Workspace Theory

This chapter shows that global-workspace theory can be developed into a satisfying, fully reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness. It shows how globally broadcast nonconceptual content enables higher-order thoughts about that content, where those thoughts can lack conceptual connections with physical, functional, or representational facts. As a result, zombies are conceivable and an (epistemic) explanatory gap is opened up. But the thoughts in question can themselves be given a fully naturalistic explanation. Hence all of the facts involved in consciousness can be fully explained. The chapter defends the reality of the phenomenal concepts needed to make this account work, and replies to a dilemma for the account proposed by David Chalmers.

Global-workspace theory

2019 ◽  
pp. 96-115
Author(s):  
Peter Carruthers
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Neural Correlates Of Consciousness ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Global Workspace ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Global Workspace Theory

The present chapter outlines and defends the empirical case supporting global-workspace theory as the best account of the functional/neural correlates of consciousness, at least. The chapter explains the theoretical background to global-workspace theory and the evidence that supports it. It shows how the theory is well-supported by raft of findings in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, as well as by recent experiments tracking conscious contents in the brain. The chapter also replies to a variety of critiques and alleged forms of counter-evidence. It concludes by considering whether the fact that much of this evidence has been collected in work with nonhuman animals begs the consciousness-question that forms our topic (arguing that it does not).

scholarly journals Global Workspace Theory and Animal Consciousness

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-37
Author(s):  
Jonathan Birch ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Healthy Adult ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Double Standard ◽  
Paradigm Case ◽  
Animal Consciousness ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Global Workspace ◽  
Global Broadcast ◽  
Global Workspace Theory

Peter Carruthers has recently argued for a surprising conditional: if a global workspace theory of phenomenal consciousness is both correct and fully reductive, then there are no substantive facts to discover about phenomenal consciousness in nonhuman animals. I present two problems for this conditional. First, it rests on an odd double-standard about the ordinary concept of phenomenal consciousness: its intuitive non-gradability is taken to be unchallengeable by future scientific developments, whereas its intuitive determinacy is predicted to fall by the wayside. Second, it relies on dismissing, prematurely, the live empirical possibility that phenomenal consciousness may be linked to a core global broadcast mechanism that is (determinately) shared by a wide range of animals. Future developments in the science of consciousness may lead us to reconsider the non-gradability of phenomenal consciousness, but they are unlikely to lead us to accept that there are no facts to discover outside the paradigm case of a healthy adult human.

Stop Caring about Consciousness

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Peter Carruthers ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Grounded Theory ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Phenomenal Concept ◽  
Similarity Space ◽  
Global Workspace ◽  
Phenomenal Concept Strategy ◽  
Mental Paint ◽  
Global Workspace Theory

The best empirically grounded theory of first-personal phenomenal consciousness is global workspace theory. This, combined with the success of the phenomenal-concept strategy, means that consciousness can be fully reductively explained in terms of globally broadcast representational content. So there are no qualia (and there is no mental paint). As a result, the question of which other creatures besides ourselves are phenomenally conscious is of no importance, and doesn’t admit of a factual answer in most cases. What is real, and what does matter, is a multidimensional similarity space of functionally organized minds.

Do infants and nonhuman animals attribute mental states?

2018 ◽  
Vol 125 (3) ◽  
pp. 409-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler Burge
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Nonhuman Animals

Seeming to Seem

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Order Theory ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Psychological State ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
First Person ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Higher Order Theory ◽  
The Third Person

Dennett’s account of consciousness starts from third-person considerations. I argue this is wise, since beginning with first-person access precludes accommodating the third-person access we have to others’ mental states. But Dennett’s first-person operationalism, which seeks to save the first person in third-person, operationalist terms, denies the occurrence of folk-psychological states that one doesn’t believe oneself to be in, and so the occurrence of folk-psychological states that aren’t conscious. This conflicts with Dennett’s intentional-stance approach to the mental, on which we discern others’ mental states independently of those states’ being conscious. We can avoid this conflict with a higher-order theory of consciousness, which saves the spirit of Dennett’s approach, but enables us to distinguish conscious folk-psychological states from nonconscious ones. The intentional stance by itself can’t do this, since it can’t discern a higher-order awareness of a psychological state. But we can supplement the intentional stance with the higher-order theoretical apparatus.

scholarly journals Ecstasy from a physiological point of view

1982 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 74-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaj Björkqvist
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Body ◽  
Biological Study ◽  
Physiological Basis ◽  
Slowing Down ◽  
Psychosomatic Diseases ◽  
The Brain

The biological study of man is one of today's most rapidly advancing sciences. There is no reason for not utilizing these methodologies of research and the knowledge already gained when studying ecstasy and other similar religious phenomena. Drugs have been used in all parts of the world as an ecstasy technique. Since mental states and physiological correlates always accompany each other, it is obvious that the human mind can be affected by external means, for instance by drugs. But the opposite is also true; mental changes affect the body, as they do in the case of psychosomatic diseases. Ecstasy is often described as an extremely joyful experience; this pleasure must necessarily also have a physiological basis. It is of course too early to say anything for certain, but the discovery of pleasure centres in the brain might offer an explanation. It is not far-fetched to suggest that when a person experiences euphoric ecstasy, it might, in some way or other, be connected with a cerebral pleasure center. Can it be, for example, that religious ecstasy is attained only by some mechanism triggering off changes in the balance of the transmitter substances? Or is it reached only via a change in the hormonal balance, or only by a slowing down of the brain waves, or is a pleasure centre activated? When a person is using an ecstasy technique, he usually does so within a religious tradition. When he reaches an experience, a traditional interpretation of it already exists.

scholarly journals Ramsey and Joyce on deliberation and prediction

Synthese ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 197 (10) ◽  
pp. 4365-4386
Author(s):  
Yang Liu ◽  
Huw Price
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
First Person

Abstract Can an agent deliberating about an action A hold a meaningful credence that she will do A? ‘No’, say some authors, for ‘deliberation crowds out prediction’ (DCOP). Others disagree, but we argue here that such disagreements are often terminological. We explain why DCOP holds in a Ramseyian operationalist model of credence, but show that it is trivial to extend this model so that DCOP fails. We then discuss a model due to Joyce, and show that Joyce’s rejection of DCOP rests on terminological choices about terms such as ‘intention’, ‘prediction’, and ‘belief’. Once these choices are in view, they reveal underlying agreement between Joyce and the DCOP-favouring tradition that descends from Ramsey. Joyce’s Evidential Autonomy Thesis is effectively DCOP, in different terminological clothing. Both principles rest on the so-called ‘transparency’ of first-person present-tensed reflection on one’s own mental states.

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