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Single Idea 4092

[filed under theme 15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / e. Cause of consciousness ]

Full Idea

The three arguments that have been used to articulate the problem of consciousness are the knowledge argument ('Mary'), the possibility of 'zombies' (creatures like us but lacking phenomenal consciousness), and the explanatory gap (the Hard Question).

Clarification

All of them suggest that experience is more than its physical basis

Gist of Idea

The core of the consciousness problem is the case of Mary, zombies, and the Hard Question

Source

Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 3.26)

Book Ref

Crane,Tim: 'Elements of Mind' [OUP 2001], p.89

A Reaction

All of these push towards the implausible claim that there could never be a physical explanation of why we experience things. Zombies are impossible, in my opinion.

The 18 ideas with the same theme [what causes minds to be conscious]:

23665 Consciousness is the power of mind to know itself, and minds are grounded in powers [Reid]
20118 Only our conscious thought is verbal, and this shows the origin of consciousness [Nietzsche]
9286 Consciousness is not a stuff, but is explained by the relations between experiences [James]
7394 Conscious events can only be explained in terms of unconscious events [Dennett]
7890 Maybe a creature is conscious if its mental states represent things in a distinct way [Papineau]
4921 Quantum states in microtubules could bind brain activity to produce consciousness [Penrose]
3141 Is consciousness 40Hz oscillations in layers 5 and 6 of the visual cortex? [Rey]
4092 The core of the consciousness problem is the case of Mary, zombies, and the Hard Question [Crane]
2386 Hard Problem: why brains experience things [Chalmers]
2416 What turns awareness into consciousness? [Chalmers]
2423 Going down the scale, where would consciousness vanish? [Chalmers]
4916 There is enormous evidence that consciousness arises in the frontal lobes of the brain [Carter,R]
4930 Consciousness arises from high speed interactions between clusters of neurons [Edelman/Tononi]
9312 Consciousness is reductively explained either by how it represents, or how it is represented [Kriegel/Williford]
9313 Experiences can be represented consciously or unconsciously, so representation won't explain consciousness [Kriegel/Williford]
9315 Red tomato experiences are conscious if the state represents the tomato and itself [Kriegel/Williford]
9316 How is self-representation possible, does it produce a regress, and is experience like that? [Kriegel/Williford]
23516 Maybe a system is conscious if the whole generates more information than its parts [Seth]