“How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin, when Aladdin rubbed his lamp.”
T. H. Huxley, Lessons on Elementary Physiology
There is no reality of consciousness independent of the effects of various vehicles of content on subsequent action (and hence, of course, on memory).
Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained
Course description
In this course, we’ll examine major philosophical issues concerning consciousness. We’ll begin by considering how questions of consciousness are best approached methodologically, how consciousness is one part of the larger mind–body problem, and whether consciousness serves any function. We’ll then turn to phenomenological perspectives on consciousness, which emphasize the irreducibility of qualitative aspects of conscious states and their role in knowledge and explanation. We’ll conclude by examining several attempts to reduce these aspects to different kinds of mental content, representational or otherwise. Throughout the course, we’ll return to the apparent tension between a physicalist worldview and the phenomenon of consciousness as experienced by humans and possibly other creatures.
Course objectives
- To survey classic articles in the philosophical literature on consciousness.
- To introduce recent developments in neurobiology concerning consciousness.
- To build skills in critical and analytical writing.
Required texts
- Ned Block, Owen J. Flanagan and Güven Güzeldere, eds. The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates (MIT Press, 1997) ISBN 0262522101
- Additional readings—to be distributed
Course overview and requirements
By the end of this course, you’ll be able to talk and think about consciousness in a theoretical and philosophically sophisticated way. To help you achieve these abilities, this course will do two things.
First, it will introduce you to ideas and arguments that are crucial to philosophical discussions of consciousness. The texts we’ll be reading are all major and historically important papers in these debates. You’ll need to read them slowly and carefully and, in some cases, more than once—say, before and after each class. You’ll also need to attend class regularly. Some of class will be lecture, in which I’ll train you to interpret and respond to the reading assignments. Some of class will be discussion, in which you’ll want to raise questions, express reactions, and try out arguments of your own.
In addition to readings, a second part of the course will involve assignments of two sorts:
Discussion questions (10 sets of 3 questions each, 20%) will help you to read our texts closely and carefully. They’ll also give you the opportunity to think more about the issues in them and focus on parts that interest or puzzle you. These questions must be submitted via email by 9p on Sunday of each week. These questions should NOT be descriptive textual questions (e.g., “What cognitive systems do Crick and Koch discuss?”) or bio-historiographical questions (e.g., “When did Daniel Dennett write this article?”). They should be complex, analytical questions that reflect parts of our readings that intrigue, puzzle, or disturb you. Which weeks you prepare questions for is your choice; you must prepare 10 by the end of our 14 reading weeks. If you plan ahead, you should be able to skip all weeks when papers are due.
Response papers (4 papers of 1,000 words each, 20% each) will give you the chance to voice your own positions and reactions to the texts we’ve read. Questions for the response papers will be distributed at the end of each unit and due as indicated in the course schedule. You are allowed a one-week extension on a response paper of your choice. Use this wisely; any subsequent papers submitted after deadline will receive no credit.
Academic integrity
Plagiarism and cheating are intellectual crimes and will not be tolerated, regardless of whether they’re deliberate or accidental. Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab defines plagiarism as (a) documenting sources incorrectly, (b) failing to document or (c) relying way too heavily on external resources. Your work must be original or documented, even if you’re using as few as three words from someone else. If I determine that any of your work is not your own, you will fail the course.
Course schedule
This is a tentative outline of our readings and topics for the course. All readings listed below are available in the course textbook or will be distributed in class (*); these distributed readings will be available for download on Blackboard. I may, on occasion, add, delete, or substitute readings. Any changes will be announced in class and posted to Blackboard.
Consciousness, Science, and Methodology
- Mon 1/26 Introduction: Historical Background
- Mon 2/2 First- and Third-Person Data—Chalmers, “How Can We Construct a Science of Consciousness?” (*)
- Mon 2/9 Neural Correlates of Consciousness—Patricia Churchland, “Can Neurobiology Teach Us Anything about Consciousness?” (127–140) and Crick and Koch, “Towards a Neurobiological Theory of Consciousness” (277–292)
- Mon 2/16 NO CLASS—President’s Day
- Mon 2/23 Phenomenology and Evidence—Goldman, “Consciousness, Folk Psychology, and Cognitive Science” (111–125) and Baars, “Contrastive Psychology: A Thoroughly Empirical Approach” (187–202)
Consciousness, Bodies, and Function
- Mon 3/2 Consciousness and the Mind-Body Problem—Kripke, “The Identity Thesis” (445–450), Searle, “Reductionism and the Irreducibility of Consciousness” (451–460), and Jackson, “Finding the Mind in the Material World” (482–492)
- DUE Paper 1
- Mon 3/9 Consciousness in NonHuman Systems—Searle, “Breaking the Hold: Silicon Brains, Conscious Robots, and Other Minds” (493–502) and Allen and Bekoff, “Animal Consciousness” (*)
- Mon 3/16 Epiphenomenalism—Flanagan, “Conscious Inessentialism and the Epiphenomenalist Suspicion” (357–374)
Phenomenology and Consciousness
- Mon 3/23 The Explanatory Gap—Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (519–528) and Levine, “On Leaving Out What It’s Like” (543–556)
- DUE Paper 2
- Mon 3/30 The Knowledge Argument—Jackson, “What Mary Didn’t Know” (567–570) and Lewis, “What Experience Teaches” (579–596)
- Mon 4/6 Qualia—Paul Churchland, “Knowing Qualia: A Reply to Jackson” (571–575), Dennett, “Quining Qualia” (619–642)
- Mon 4/13 NO CLASS—Spring Break
Consciousness and Mental Content
- Mon 4/20 Kinds of Consciousness?—Block, “On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness” (375–416)
- DUE Paper 3
- Mon 4/27 Consciousness and Representation—Tye, “A Representational Theory of Pains and Their Phenomenal Character” (329–340) and Peacocke, “Sensation and the Content of Experience: A Distinction” (341–354)
- Mon 5/4 Higher-Order Theories—Rosenthal, “A Theory of Consciousness” (729–754)
- Mon 5/11 Reconciliations—Van Gulick, “Time for More Alternatives” (181–184), Sellars, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man” (*)
- 5/18 DUE Paper 4 (by 5pm via email to csula@gc.cuny.edu)
