Abstracts of the Shortlisted Essays for the CNCC Competition on Consciousness

 

Indicative Conditionals and Rationality

The main goal of the paper is to investigate the relation between indicative conditionals and rationality. We will do this by considering several interpretations of a very well-known example of reasoning involving conditionals, i.e. the Wason selection task, and showing how those interpretations have di_erent bearings on the notion of rationality. In particular, in the first part of the paper, after having briefly presented the selection task, we will take a look at two pragmatic responses to the challenge posed by the task, through Wason's notionof confirmation bias and Grice's theory of conversational implicature. The second part will introduce Adams' probabilistic view of indicative conditionals and will give reasons for preferring his account to those
aforementioned. The conclusion will evaluate the question of human rationality in the light of the new standpoint acquired.

 

The Minimal Sense of Self, Temporality and the Brain

This paper explores the possibility of a neuroscientific explanation of consciousness, and what such an explanation might look like. More specifically, I will be concerned with the claim that for any given experience there is neural representational system that is the minimal supervenience base of that experience. I will call this hypothesis the minimal supervenience thesis. I argue that the minimal supervenience thesis is subject to two readings, which I call the localist and holist readings. Localist theories seek to identify the minimal supervenience base for specific experiences. They sideline questions about the nature of creature consciousness, treating the neural basis of creature consciousness as merely a causally necessary background condition for a particular conscious experience. Holists on the other hand prioritise creature consciousness and argue that we can only account for particular states of consciousness in the context of an account of creature consciousness. I argue that any scientific explanation of consciousness must account for what I will call a minimal sense of self that is intrinsic to every conscious state. Holist theories are best able to accommodate this feature. I finish up by connecting the minimal sense of self with the temporal structure of consciousness and sketch two (related) information processing frameworks, which I suggest will contribute to a holist account of the neural basis of the minimal sense of self.

 

On the Necessity of Bodily Awareness for Bodily Action

There appears to be an intimate connexion between feeling our limbs ‘from the inside’ and our power to act directly with them. This essay attempts to evaluate the strongest understanding of the connexion between bodily awareness and bodily agency: that feeling a body part ‘from the inside’ is necessary for any instance of acting directly with that body part. The most influential defence of this claim is to be found in O’Shaughnessy’s work on action. I lay out O’Shaughnessy’s arguments and analyse them. It turns out that there are two different strands implicit in O’Shaughnessy’s account. I tease these strands apart and evaluate them separately. I then consider three counterexamples against his account: (one) deafferented agents; (two) direct brain control of physical apparatus made possible by brain-machine interface technologies; and (three) the automatic character of the majority of our bodily actions. Each case presents different difficulties for O’Shaughnessy. I end by drawing the upshot of these counterexamples for O’Shaughnessy and explore to what extent he can respond to them

Acting on (bodily) experience

After clarifying the term ‘bodily experience’ I sketch a recent puzzle concerning its spatial content that stems from a failure to appreciate, among other things, the action-orientated nature of egocentric spatial perception. Demonstration of this favours the ‘structural affordance theory’ that I develop along the way.

The Agent in Magenta: Action, Colour and Consciousness

How should we understand the relationship between conscious perception and action?  Does an appeal to action have any place in an account of colour experience?  This essay argues for an answer to the first question by giving a positive response to the second.  I consider two types of enactive approach to perceptual consciousness, and two corresponding types of enactive approach to colour perception.  Each approach to colour perception faces serious objections.  However, the two views can be combined in a way that resists the criticisms to each.  Furthermore, the hybrid view we arrive at lets us see which account of perceptual consciousness we should prefer in the case of colour.  I end by suggesting that this preference should not be restricted to the domain of colour perception – considering the case of colour, yields general morals about the relationship between action and perception.

 

Searching for the Source of Executive Attention

Attention can be divided into two types: selective attention is a loose collection of mechanisms that select stimuli for differential processing, and executive attention is thought of as a supervisory control system. Executive attention is often conceptualized in terms of ‘cause theories’ rather than ‘effect theories’, which leads to philosophically suspect claims about the source of attentional control. Some recent work in neuropsychology tries to sidestep this problem by providing evidence that areas of prefrontal cortex are involved in tasks requiring executive attention, and have the properties expected of a supervisory control system. However, this line of argument depends on an equivocation between different types of so-called Cartesian errors, and ultimately fails.