Tag Archives: phenomenal consciousness

Daniel Dennett on why phenomenal consciousness is access consciousness

Posted on February 17, 2020 by

This old talk by Daniel Dennett touches on a lot of topics we’ve discussed recently.  Dennett explains why it’s wrong to regard phenomenal consciousness (the “what it’s likeness” or “raw experience” version) as separate from access consciousness (the cognitive access … Continue reading →

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The phenomenal concept strategy and issues with conceptual isolation

Posted on February 2, 2020 by

I’ve often pondered that the hard problem of consciousness, the perceived problem of understanding how phenomenal consciousness can happen in physical systems, arises due to the fact that our intuitive model of the phenomenal is very different from our intuitive … Continue reading →

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Massimo on consciousness: no illusion, but also no spookiness

Posted on December 16, 2019 by

Massimo Pigliucci has a good article on consciousness at Aeon.  In it, he takes aim both at illusionists as well as those who claim consciousness is outside the purview of science.  Although I’d say he’s more worked up about the … Continue reading →

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A standard model of consciousness?

Posted on September 29, 2019 by

I’ve often noted that I find more consilience than disagreement between the empirically grounded theories of consciousness.  They seem to be looking at the problem at differing levels of organization, and together they may present a growing scientific consensus about … Continue reading →

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The reflex and the feeling

Posted on August 22, 2019 by

Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel have an interesting article at Aeon on emotions.  Their main thesis is that many emotions are biological, universal, and rooted in evolution.  And that they arise through “the strata of consciousness”: the physiological, the … Continue reading →

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Chalmers’ theory of consciousness

Posted on July 7, 2019 by

Ever since sharing Ned Block’s talk on it, phenomenal consciousness has been on my mind.  This week, I decided I needed to go back to the main spokesperson for the issue of subjective experience, David Chalmers, and his seminal paper … Continue reading →

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What is it about phenomenal consciousness that’s so mysterious?

Posted on June 16, 2019 by

I learned something new this week about the online magazine The Conversation.  A number of their articles that are shared around don’t show up in their RSS feeds or site navigation.  It appears these articles only come up in searches, … Continue reading →

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The sparsity of phenomenal consciousness, or of cognition, or both

Posted on May 27, 2019 by

Ned Block gave a Google talk (embedded below) that was ostensibly supposed to be about why AI approaches to cognition won’t work.  However, while he does address this topic briefly, it’s toward the end and he admits he hasn’t really … Continue reading →

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The illusion of phenomenal consciousness?

Posted on December 12, 2016 by

Philosopher Peter Hankins at Conscious Entities has a write-up on the November 12 issue of the JCS (Journal of Consciousness Studies) in which philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists such as Keith Frankish, Daniel Dennett, Susan Blackmore, and Michael Graziano, debate whether it makes … Continue reading →

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