2: Philosophical Issues

The philosophy behind, and an overview of, the research programs in the search for and understanding of the processes by which consciousness arises. Some history of the philosophy of mind: Classical to Descartes to now; the current setup of the debate. Getting issues clarified: What we think consciousness is, its definition.

Go to The Philosophy behind Ordinary Consciousness Part 1: Pre-20th Century and Part 2: The 20th Century which includes talks from Robert Kirk and David Chalmers.

Robert Kirk, of the Dept of Philosophy, Nottingham University. In which he describes what it is to be conscious in terms of what he calls the Basic Package. A set of behaviours that all conscious beings have but which is lacked by non-conscious creatures and inanimate objects. The Basic Package consists in the capacity of a creature to gather and use information for itself in the modification of its activities and behaviours in dealing with the world.

Robert Kirk: "The Basic Package"

David Chalmers, of the Dept. of Philosophy, University of California at Santa Cruz. In which he talks about his division of the question of how it is that we are conscious into the hard and the easy problems. He argues that delineation of the anatomy and physiology of the brain - the description of, say, the visual system or the systems of speech, the physiological pathways of pain, etc. - no matter how difficult to carry out are all soluble and therefore of the class of "Easy" problems. The "Hard" problem for Chalmers is: given all the physiology and so on, this still does not explain how it is that we have a subjective view of the world and ourselves. So the Hard Problem is: Where does this subjectivity come from? How does all the physiology produce subjectivity? Chalmers speculates that there may be two aspects to information, a physical aspect and a phenomenal aspect.

David Chalmers: "The Hard Problem"

See also Michael Lockwood: "The Enigma of Sentience" [see section 4: Quantum Physics]