Andrew Brook (Institute
of Cognitive Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada) alábbi két előadására minden érdeklődőt
szeretettel
várunk:
1. 2005. május 2, 16:00:
Zombies
and Imprisoned Minds
Andrew
Brook and Paul Raymont
Abstract
Thought
experiments (TEs) about zombies are one standard way to argue for
anti-cognitivism about consciousness, the view that consciousness is
not a
cognitive (information processing) property of minds. Another class of
TEs are
actually more interesting in this regard, TEs about what we call
imprisoned
minds. Imprisoned minds are minds that have no way of expressing
themselves
behaviourally. Unlike zombies, they actually exist, which adds to their
interest – administration of curare and certain massive strokes in the
brain
stem can both produce imprisoned minds, curare temporally, strokes
permanently.
In both cases, one has to add an exotic premise
to get an anti-cognitivist argument going. For zombie TEs, the exotic
premise
is that an utterly nonconscious zombie could be behaviourally,
cognitively, or
even molecule-for-molecule identical to us conscious beings. The exotic
premise
in the case of imprisoned mind TEs is that in addition to no
behavioural
expression, the activities of an imprisoned mind could also make no
neural
difference. (We call such minds Radically Imprisoned Minds [RIMs].)
As has often been noted, part of what makes
zombie TEs difficult to assess is their close kinship to the
traditional
problem of knowledge of other minds. In particular, we do not know by
what
criterion or criteria we could settle whether another being is
conscious. The
same is true of imprisoned minds. It turns out, interestingly enough,
that it
is easier to resolve the knowledge problem that arises in connection
with each
TE than it is to settle whether they have any potential as arguments
for
anti-cognitivism. The reason is the same in both cases: the exotic
premise
required for the TEs to work as arguments for anti-cognitivism,
premises that
are very difficult to assess, do not affect the knowledge problem.
As arguments for anti-cognitivism, the two TEs
are different. As we will show, zombie TEs do not work as arguments for
anti-cognitivism. By contrast, we know of no definitive cognitivist
response to
imprisoned minds TEs.
Biographical
Notes
Andrew
Brook (D.Phil., Oxon.) is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the
Paul
Raymont (Ph.D.,
Helyszín: Tudományfilozófiai szeminárium, ELTE Tudománytörténet és Tudományfilozófia Tanszék, Pázmány P. sétány 1/A, 6. emelet, 654, terem
május 3, 17:00:
The
Representational Base of Consciousness
Andrew
Brook and Paul Raymont
Abstract
Everyone agrees,
no matter what else they think about consciousness, that it has a
representational base. However, there have been relatively few
worked-out attempts
to say what this base might be like. The two best developed are perhaps
the
higher-order thought (HOT) model of David Rosenthal and the
transparency approach
of Fred Dretske and others. As we will show, both face serious
problems.
Our alternative to these models
starts from the notion of a self-presenting representation, a
representation
that presents not only what it is about (if it is about anything; not
all
representations have an object) but also itself to the representing
subject.
Thus, seeing text on the computer display tells one not only about the
text but
also about this representations of it, that, for example, one is seeing
it, not
touching it. Indeed, in our view, representations, being
self-presenting, are
the representational base for not just for consciousness of their
objects
(when they have one) and of themselves. They are also the
representational base
for consciousness of oneself as subject.
Though we take mainly a
philosophical approach, we hope that the unified picture of
consciousness that
flows from our picture of the representational base will assist
research on
consciousness no matter what the approach.
Biographical
Notes
Andrew
Brook (D.Phil., Oxon.) is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the