Claim 5: Causation by Consciousness Properties

1. ` For Thursday, read (and write about) Michael Tye, “New Troubles for the Qualia Freak” (chapter 17). For next week, we’ll read Jesse Prinz’s “All Consciousness Is Perceptual” (ch. 19) Comments questions about final papers? FCQs on Thursday

2. Claim 5: Causation by Consciousness Properties Consciousness properties “often (but not always) owe their causal powers to subject causation or to the underlying physiological process” (p. 280). In the attached note, Nida-Rumelin says she’s convinced by Kim’s exclusion argument. How, then, do we make sense of the qualification “but not always”?

3. Why Believe Any of This? Nida-Rümelin argues from common sense or manifest intuition. If this is how things seem to us, then we should believe it, unless there is very good reason to believe otherwise. We don’t have good reason to believe otherwise. So, we should accept that things are the way they normally seem (and the associated metaphysics).

4. Zombie Argument It conceivable that there are zombies, that is, perfect physical duplicates of normal humans, but who don’t have (full-blown) conscious experiences. Therefore, it’s possible that there be zombies. If it’s possible, then qualia are nonphysical. Therefore, qualia are nonphysical.

5. Suppressed Premises Conceivability entails possibility. If it’s possible that a perfect physical physical copy of x lack a property that x has, then that property is not physical (otherwise it would have been carried over during duplication).

6. What Might Consciousness Be, If It’s Physical? Tye: all consciousness properties are representational properties (combined with externalist semantics). Add functional roles? Only syntax and functional roles?