Andrew Bailey—draft papers

Qualia and the Argument from Illusion: A Defence of Figment.

This paper attempts to resurrect two discredited ideas in the philosophy of mind. The first is the idea that perceptual illusion might have something metaphysically significant to tell us about the nature of phenomenal consciousness. The second is the idea that the colours and other qualities that ‘fill’ our sensory fields are occurrent properties (rather than, say, representations of properties) which are nevertheless to be distinguished from the ‘objective’ properties of things in the external world. I argue that theories of consciousness must recognise the existence of what Dennett mockingly labels ‘figment,’ but that this result—though metaphysically and epistemologically significant—is not incompatible with either physicalism or naturalized semantics.  [view PDF]

 

Zombies Support Biological Theories of Consciousness.

Philosophical zombies are theoretically stipulated creatures which are outwardly, behaviourally, perhaps even physiologically indistinguishable from normal human beings, but which lack consciousness. The possibility of zombies is appealed to in contemporary philosophy of mind to show either a) that consciousness is not essential for intelligence, or b) that physicalism must be false and some form of metaphysical dualism or neutral monism true. In this paper I argue that the appeal to zombies may be sufficient to refute functionalism as a theory of phenomenal consciousness, but that the notion of zombies which are physiologically identical with human beings while lacking consciousness is conceptually incoherent, and so physicalism with respect to consciousness should not only be considered immune to zombie-based attacks but is in fact vindicated by their failure. The preposterousness of physiological zombies is shown in three different ways; considerations intended to show that they are nevertheless coherently imaginable are considered and rejected; and it is argued that the coherence of the notion of functional zombies combined with the incoherence of that of physiological zombies has significant consequences for the proper direction of the study of consciousness, in particular suggesting a biologically, rather than computationally, oriented approach. [view PDF]

 

The Unsoundness of Arguments From Conceivability

It is widely suspected that arguments from conceivability, at least in some of their more notorious instances, are unsound. However, the reasons for the failure of conceivability arguments are less well agreed upon, and it remains unclear how to distinguish between sound and unsound instances of the form. In this paper I provide an analysis of the form of arguments from conceivability, and use this analysis to diagnose a systematic weakness in the argument form which reveals all its instances to be, roughly, either uninformative or unsound. I illustrate this conclusion through a consideration of David Chalmers' modal argument against physicalism. [view PDF]

 

Multiple Realizability, Qualia and Natural Kinds

This paper addresses the question: are qualia natural kinds? I raise the prospect that the phenomenon of multiple realizability is a prima facie obstacle to natural kindhood—or at least, membership in a natural physical kind—because it shows that the similarities among certain ‘manifest' kinds are not supported by underlying, scientifically interesting commonalities. I draw upon recent work by John Heil, Stephen Yablo and others to suggest that the phenomenon of multiple realizability is best understood as a version of the determinable/determinate relation, and use this model to explore and defend the notion that qualia—phenomenal kinds—might properly be treated as scientifically respectable, causally active natural kinds. [view PDF]

 

James, Brown and “The Will to Believe”

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This page was last updated October 26, 2004