Robert Kirk
talks to Stephen Jones at Tucson II.

SJ: So if you'd like to outline the Basic Package, then we can extend it from there.

Robert Kirk: Right, well, what I'm interested in is the fact that we and other animals perceive the world consciously. We see the colours and shapes of things, we smell, we're sensitive to all aspects of the world. And there's something it's like for us to see the world, hear and smell and taste things. As there is, many of us think, for cats and dogs, horses, cattle, chickens, and no doubt lots of other animals too. Now, this is a fact but there's something puzzling about it, because we and the other animals are physical systems, really. Complex physical organisms and there are lots of other physical things around us, tables and chairs, and things, but we don't think that they perceive the world.

Now we can do a lot of things differently from inanimate things like tables and chairs. Is it just the fact that we behave differently from these other things that makes us conscious? Well I don't think that's quite right, I think that just behaving in the right way is not enough. I think that the internal processes inside the organism make a difference. So they have to be the right kind of internal processes. And now the question is: What is it about those internal processes that makes us subjects of conscious experience? That makes us have experiences of the world, visual experiences, auditory experiences and the rest? So what I want to do is give a framework in terms of which we can understand this, and I want to do this as simply as possible.

I just want to make it possible for us to understand how it can be that an object can be a subject. That something, a structure of neurones and other bits of matter or perhaps a structure made out of bits of silicon and wires and so on, can at the same time be something that it is like something to be.

There are two stages in my approach to this. The first stage is to set out what I call the basic package which is a set of capacities that an organism has, either all of, or none of. Having explained that, which I think is reasonably straitforward, I then want to go to the second stage, and the second stage is explaining what else is needed beyond having the basic package in order to be a subject of conscious perceptual experience, in order to be something that is like something to be.