Consciousness and Mind presents David Rosenthal's influential work on
the nature of consciousness. Central to that work is Rosenthal's
higher-order-thought theory of consciousness, according to which a
sensation, thought, or other mental state is conscious if one has a
higher-order thought (HOT) that one is in that state. The first four
essays develop various aspects of that theory. The next three essays
present Rosenthal's homomorphism theory of mental qualities and
qualitative consciousness, and show how that theory fits with and
helps sustain the HOT theory. A crucial feature of homomorphism theory
is that it individuates and taxonomizes mental qualities independently
of the way we're conscious of them, and indeed independently of our
being conscious of them at all. So the theory accommodates the
qualitative character not only of conscious sensations and
perceptions, but also of those which fall outside our stream of
consciousness. Rosenthal argues that, because this account of mental
qualities makes no appeal to consciousness, it enables us to dispel
such traditional quandaries as the alleged conceivability of
undetectable quality inversion, and to disarm various apparent
obstacles to explaining qualitative consciousness and understanding
its nature. Six further essays build on the HOT theory to explain
various important features of consciousness, among them the complex
connections that hold in humans between consciousness and speech, the
self-interpretative aspect of consciousness, and the compelling sense
we have that consciousness is unified. Two of the essays, one an
extended treatment of homomorphism theory, appear here for the first
time. There is also a substantive introduction, which draws out the
connections between the essays and highlights their implications.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780191568589
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Oxford University Press Academic UK
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter