Ted Honderich
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780198714385
- eISBN:
- 9780191782794
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198714385.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
Does cognitive and affective consciousness consist only in conscious representations? In only a two-term relation? Our holds on our own conscious representations give us their likeness to linguistic ...
More
Does cognitive and affective consciousness consist only in conscious representations? In only a two-term relation? Our holds on our own conscious representations give us their likeness to linguistic representions—spoken or written representations. So are thinking and wanting to be understood as only or purely representations? Understood by way of the doctrines of a language of thought, or evolutionary causalism as an understanding of representation, or relationism related to functionalism, or the persuasive lingualism of Searle and others? No. The last theory takes conscious representations to be causal intermediaries but also, more importantly, to be semantic and syntactic signs, of which it gives a good account. Conscious representations in actual consciousness are such things, but with the additional essential characteristic that they are indeed actual—as other things talked of with thinking and wanting definitely are not, say self, direction, vehicle, medium, and neural properties.Less
Does cognitive and affective consciousness consist only in conscious representations? In only a two-term relation? Our holds on our own conscious representations give us their likeness to linguistic representions—spoken or written representations. So are thinking and wanting to be understood as only or purely representations? Understood by way of the doctrines of a language of thought, or evolutionary causalism as an understanding of representation, or relationism related to functionalism, or the persuasive lingualism of Searle and others? No. The last theory takes conscious representations to be causal intermediaries but also, more importantly, to be semantic and syntactic signs, of which it gives a good account. Conscious representations in actual consciousness are such things, but with the additional essential characteristic that they are indeed actual—as other things talked of with thinking and wanting definitely are not, say self, direction, vehicle, medium, and neural properties.
Ted Honderich
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780198714385
- eISBN:
- 9780191782794
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198714385.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
What is it for the conscious representations of cognitive and affective consciousness to be actual? It is for them to be subjectively physical in their own way, differently from the subjective ...
More
What is it for the conscious representations of cognitive and affective consciousness to be actual? It is for them to be subjectively physical in their own way, differently from the subjective physical worlds of perceptual consciousness. Their characteristics are counterparts of the characteristics of the objective physical world and of subjective physical worlds, some identical, more of them not. They are within the inventory of science and its method. They are spatial but not actual as such.Their lawful dependencies are different, including a unique dependency on subjective physical worlds. They are not within points of view and do not have primary and secondary properties. They are more similar to subjective physical worlds with respect to their characteristics of subjectivity, starting with inseparability from consciousness. In terms of a well-known line by Fodor, being actual is the something else that conscious representations are in virtue of which they are real.Less
What is it for the conscious representations of cognitive and affective consciousness to be actual? It is for them to be subjectively physical in their own way, differently from the subjective physical worlds of perceptual consciousness. Their characteristics are counterparts of the characteristics of the objective physical world and of subjective physical worlds, some identical, more of them not. They are within the inventory of science and its method. They are spatial but not actual as such.Their lawful dependencies are different, including a unique dependency on subjective physical worlds. They are not within points of view and do not have primary and secondary properties. They are more similar to subjective physical worlds with respect to their characteristics of subjectivity, starting with inseparability from consciousness. In terms of a well-known line by Fodor, being actual is the something else that conscious representations are in virtue of which they are real.
Ted Honderich
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780198714385
- eISBN:
- 9780191782794
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198714385.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
What is it to be conscious in the primary ordinary sense? Five leading ideas—qualia, what it’s like to be something, subjectivity, intentionality or aboutness, phenomenality—all fail to give an ...
More
What is it to be conscious in the primary ordinary sense? Five leading ideas—qualia, what it’s like to be something, subjectivity, intentionality or aboutness, phenomenality—all fail to give an adequate initial clarification of this consciousness. However, there is much data, some in the ideas, for a figurative initial clarification of all consciousness. Being conscious is something’s being actual. This results in the literal and explicit theory or analysis that is Actualism. Right or wrong, it is unprecedented. As against other theories, it is true to our three-part distinction between consciousness in seeing or hearing and thinking and wanting in generic senses—perceptual, cognitive, and affective consciousness. It rests first on a clarification of objective physicality. Then what is actual with perceptual consciousness is demonstrated to be subjective physical worlds. Your being perceptually conscious now is only the existence of such a world out there, probably a room. Its being actual is its being subjectively physical, which includes taking up space, being causal, being lawfully dependent both on the objective physical world and you neurally. Cognitive and affective consciousness, differently, consists in representations, related to linguistic representations but distinguished by being actual—differently subjectively physical. Actualism uniquely satisfies accumulated criteria for an adequate theory of consciousness, one to do with its reality and thus physicality, another with its difference in kind. Is the question what it is to be conscious in the primary ordinary sense a right question? Yes it is.Less
What is it to be conscious in the primary ordinary sense? Five leading ideas—qualia, what it’s like to be something, subjectivity, intentionality or aboutness, phenomenality—all fail to give an adequate initial clarification of this consciousness. However, there is much data, some in the ideas, for a figurative initial clarification of all consciousness. Being conscious is something’s being actual. This results in the literal and explicit theory or analysis that is Actualism. Right or wrong, it is unprecedented. As against other theories, it is true to our three-part distinction between consciousness in seeing or hearing and thinking and wanting in generic senses—perceptual, cognitive, and affective consciousness. It rests first on a clarification of objective physicality. Then what is actual with perceptual consciousness is demonstrated to be subjective physical worlds. Your being perceptually conscious now is only the existence of such a world out there, probably a room. Its being actual is its being subjectively physical, which includes taking up space, being causal, being lawfully dependent both on the objective physical world and you neurally. Cognitive and affective consciousness, differently, consists in representations, related to linguistic representations but distinguished by being actual—differently subjectively physical. Actualism uniquely satisfies accumulated criteria for an adequate theory of consciousness, one to do with its reality and thus physicality, another with its difference in kind. Is the question what it is to be conscious in the primary ordinary sense a right question? Yes it is.
Ted Honderich
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780198714385
- eISBN:
- 9780191782794
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198714385.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
There is an ordinary division into consciousness in perceiving and consciousness of thinking and of wanting—perceptual, cognitive and affective consciousness. Each of us has a hold on our own ...
More
There is an ordinary division into consciousness in perceiving and consciousness of thinking and of wanting—perceptual, cognitive and affective consciousness. Each of us has a hold on our own consciousness, misnamed introspection, and we have a common sense definition of consciousness. But there is pessimism, greater and lesser, about our coming to a theory or analysis of consciousness in the primary ordinary sense, an account of its nature. Has this been owed in part to the absence of an adequate initial clarification of the consciousness under discussion? To not answering the same question? Has it resulted in particular from a conflation of conscious and unconscious mentality in science in particular but also philosophy? Clearly there is a distinction between, say, dispositional and occurring belief, between knowing where the 43 bus goes when you are having no such thought, and believing it when you are doing so.Less
There is an ordinary division into consciousness in perceiving and consciousness of thinking and of wanting—perceptual, cognitive and affective consciousness. Each of us has a hold on our own consciousness, misnamed introspection, and we have a common sense definition of consciousness. But there is pessimism, greater and lesser, about our coming to a theory or analysis of consciousness in the primary ordinary sense, an account of its nature. Has this been owed in part to the absence of an adequate initial clarification of the consciousness under discussion? To not answering the same question? Has it resulted in particular from a conflation of conscious and unconscious mentality in science in particular but also philosophy? Clearly there is a distinction between, say, dispositional and occurring belief, between knowing where the 43 bus goes when you are having no such thought, and believing it when you are doing so.
