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Single Idea 7890

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

Full Idea

The thesis of 'representational theories of consciousness' is that a creature is conscious just in case it is in a certain kind of representational state, some state which represents in a certain way.

Gist of Idea

Maybe a creature is conscious if its mental states represent things in a distinct way

Source

David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002])

Book Ref

Papineau,David: 'Thinking about Consciousness' [OUP 2004], p.221


A Reaction

[He cites Harman, Dretske and Tye] The immediate impediment I see to this view is the extreme difficulty of explaining what the special 'way' is that turns representations into consciousness. Some mental states are not representational, and vice versa.


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

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