The Nature of Consciousness

Ned Block is Silver Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at New York University and was Chair of the Philosophy Program at MIT from 1990 to 1995. He is a coeditor of The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates (MIT Press, 1997).

Owen Flanagan is James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. He is the author of Consciousness Reconsidered and The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World, both published by the MIT Press, and other books.

Güven Güzeldere is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Duke University. He is coeditor (with Ned Block and Owen Flanagan) of The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical and Scientific Debates (MIT Press, 1998) and a founding associate editor of Psyche: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Consciousness.

Intended for anyone attempting to find their way through the large and confusingly interwoven philosophical literature on consciousness, this reader brings together most of the principal texts in philosophy (and a small set of related key works in neuropsychology) on consciousness through 1997, and includes some forthcoming articles. Its extensive coverage strikes a balance between seminal works of the past few decades and the leading edge of philosophical research on consciousness.As no other anthology currently does, The Nature of Consciousness provides a substantial introduction to the field, and imposes structure on a vast and complicated literature, with sections covering stream of consciousness, theoretical issues, consciousness and representation, the function of consciousness, subjectivity and the explanatory gap, the knowledge argument, qualia, and monitoring conceptions of consciousness. Of the 49 contributions, 18 are either new or have been adapted from a previous publication.

Part 1 Stream of consciousness: the stream of consciousness, William James; the Cartesian theatre and "filling in" the stream of consciousness, Daniel C. Dennett; the robust phenomenology of the stream of consciousness, Owen Flanagan. Part 2 Consciousness, science and methodology: prospects for a unified theory of consciousness or, what dreams are made of, Owen Flanagan; consciousness, folk psychology and cognitive science, Alvin I. Goldman; can neurobiology teach us anything about consciousness?, Patricia Smith Churchland; time and the observer -the where and when of consciousness in the brain, Daniel C. Dennett and Marcel Kinsbourne; begging the question against phenomenal consciousness, Ned Block; time for more alternatives, Robert Van Gulick. Part 3 The psychology and neuropsychology of consciousness: contrastive phenomenology - a thoroughly empirical approach to consciousness, Bernard J. Baars; visual perception and visual awareness after brain damage - a tutorial overview, Martha J. Farah; understanding consciousness - clues from unilateral neglect and related disorders, Edoardo Bisiach; modularity and consciousness, Tim Shallice; towards a neurobiological theory of consciousness, Francis Crick and Christof Koch. Part 4 Consciousness and content: consciousness and content, Colin McGinn; externalism and experience, Martin Davies; a representational theory of pains and their phenomenal character, Michael Tye; sensation and the content of experience - a distinction, Christopher Peacocke. Part 5 Function of consciousness: conscious inessentialism and the epiphenomenalist suspicion, Owen Flanagan; on a confusion about a function of consciousness, Ned Block; the path not taken, Daniel C. Dennett; availability - the cognitive basis of experience?, David J. Chalmers; fallacies or analyses?, Jennifer Church; two kinds of consciousness, Tyler Burge; understanding the phenomenal mind - are we all just armadillos?, part 2 - the absent qualia argument, Robert Van Gulick. Part 6 Metaphysics of consciousness: the identity thesis, Saul A. Kripke; reductionism and the irreducibility of consciousness, John R. Searle; a question about consciousness, Georges Rey; finding the mind in the neural world, Frank Jackson; breaking the hold - silicon brains, conscious robots and other minds, John R. Searle; the first-person perspective, Sydney Shoemaker. Part 7 Subjectivity and explanatory gap: what is it like to be a bat?, Thomas Nagel; can we solve the mind-body problem?, Colin McGinn; on leaving out what it's like, Joseph Levine. Part 8 The knowledge argument: understanding the phenomenal mind - are we all just armadillos?, part 1 - phenomenal knowledge and explanatory gaps, Robert Van Gulick; what Mary didn't know, Frank Jackson; knowing qualia - a reply to Jackson, Paul M. Churchland; what experience teaches, David Lewis; phenomenal states, Brian Loar. Part 9 Qualia: quining qualia, Daniel C. Dennett; the inverted spectrum, Sydney Shoemkaer; the intrinsic qualit