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A number of conceptual difficulties arise when considering the evolutionary origin of consciousness from the pre-conscious condition. There are parallels here with biological pattern formation, where, according to Alan Turing's original formulation of the problem, the statistical properties of molecular-level processes serve as a source of incipient pattern. By analogy, the evolution of consciousness can be thought of as depending in part on a competition between alternative variants in the microstructure of synaptic networks and/or the activity patterns they generate, some of which then serve as neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs). Assuming that NCCs perform this function only if reliably ordered in a particular and precise way, Turing's formulation provides a useful conceptual framework for thinking about how this is achieved developmentally, and how changes in neural structure might correlate with change at the level of conscious experience. The analysis is largely silent concerning the nature and ultimate source of conscious experience, but shows that achieving sentience is sufficient to begin the process by which evolution elaborates and shapes that first experience. By implication, much of what evolved consciousness achieves in adaptive terms can in principle be investigated irrespective of whether or not the ultimate source of real-time experience is known or understood. This includes the important issue of how precisely NCCs must be structured to ensure that each evokes a particular experience as opposed to any other. Some terminological issues are clarified, including that of "noise," which here refers to the statistical variations in neural structure that arise during development, not to sensory noise as experienced in real time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two papers, Ned Block has argued that representationalists have trouble with the empirical discovery that differences in the degree of visual attention to an object can lead to a difference in how the object looks. I here respond on behalf of the representationalist. Against the argument of Block, I give a "companions-in-guilt" argument that the dilemma Block claims to find for the representationalist will, in fact, arise for anyone who accepts that attention can alter appearance in the described manner. I conclude that the facts about attention's effects on appearance give no specific reason to reject representationalism alone. Meanwhile, I argue that Block fails to adequately motivate a key claim, the 'phenomenal precision principle' upon which he relies. I conclude that the representationalist has nothing to fear from. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hard problem of consciousness has held center stage in the philosophy of mind for the past two decades. It claims that the phenomenal character of conscious experiences—what it's like to be in them—cannot be explained by appeal to the operation of physiological subsystems. The hard problem arises, however, only given the assumption that hylomorphism is false. Hylomorphism claims that structure is a basic ontological and explanatory principle. A human is not a random collection of physical materials, but an individual composed of physical materials with a structure that accounts for what it is and what it can do—the powers it has. What is true of humans is true of their activities as well. The latter are not random physiological changes, but structured ones: we engage in them by coordinating the ways our parts manifest their powers. Structured activities include perceptual experiences. Consequently, everything about a perceptual experience, including its phenomenal character, can be explained by describing the perceiver's perceptual subsystems, the powers of those subsystems, and the coordination that unifies their activities into the activity of the perceiver as a whole. Conscious experiences thus fit unproblematically into the natural world—just as unproblematically as the phenomenon of life. Even exponents of the hard problem of consciousness agree that there is no hard problem of life. Consequently, if hylomorphism is true, there can be no hard problem of consciousness. To insist that there is such a problem, then, is implicitly to reject hylomorphism. The concept of consciousness that motivates the hard problem is as much a theoretical construct, therefore, as the concept of life that motivates an obstinate vitalist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russellian monism—an influential doctrine proposed by Russell (The analysis of matter, Routledge, London, 1927/1992)—is roughly the view that physics can only ever tell us about the causal, dispositional, and structural properties of physical entities and not their categorical (or intrinsic) properties, whereas our qualia are constituted by those categorical properties. In this paper, I will discuss the relation between Russellian monism and a seminal paradox facing epiphenomenalism, the paradox of phenomenal judgment: if epiphenomenalism is true—qualia are causally inefficacious—then any judgment concerning qualia, including epiphenomenalism itself, cannot be caused by qualia. For many writers, including Hawthorne (Philos Perspect 15:361–378, 2001), Smart (J Conscious Stud 11(2):41–50, 2004), and Braddon-Mitchell and Jackson (The philosophy of mind and cognition, Blackwell, Malden, 2007), Russellian monism faces the same paradox as epiphenomenalism does. I will assess Chalmers's (The conscious mind: in search of a fundamental theory. Oxford University Press, New York, 1996) and Seager's (in: Beckermann A, McLaughlin BP (eds) The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind. Oxford University Press, New York, 2009) defences of Russellian monism against the paradox, and will put forward a novel argument against those defences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A zombie world is a possible world in which all the microphysical truths are identical to the truths in our world, but no one is phenomenally conscious. A zombie is an individual in a possible world whose microphysical truths are identical to the microphysical truths of an individual in our world, but who has none of the phenomenal conscious experiences of the individual in our world. An inverted is an individual in a possible world whose microphysical truths are not only identical to the microphysical truths of an individual in our world, but who also has phenomenal conscious experiences. These experiences, however, are qualitatively different from the ones of the individual in our world. The first premise of Chalmers' conceivability argument against materialism is that a zombie world, a zombie and an inverted are ideally conceivable. This paper rejects this premise in claiming that: given that current physics does not allow philosophers to establish a clear concept of the physical that could be opposed to something else non-physical, a zombie world, a zombie and an inverted are merely prima facie, but not ideally conceivable. This objection is called the Obscurity of the Physical Objection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two studies are reported related to musical instrument timbre qualia. In the first study, open-ended interviews were conducted with 23 musicians who were asked to describe their phenomenal experiences of imagined sounds for 20 Western instruments. A content analysis of the transcribed interviews suggests 77 qualitative categories underlying the musicians' descriptions. In a second study, 460 musician participants rated subsets of the same 20 imagined instrument sounds according to the 77 categories derived from Study 1. Principal component analyses were applied to the results of Study 2, yielding several models. Researcher interpretations of the components in these models were combined with the results of supplementary polls where musicians rated the descriptive utility of each candidate component, producing a final 20-dimensional timbre qualia model. The model dimensions include rumbling/low, soft/singing, watery/fluid, direct/loud, nasal/reedy, shrill/noisy, percussive, pure/clear, brassy/metallic, raspy/grainy, ringing/long decay, sparkling/brilliant, airy/breathy, resonant/vibrant, hollow, woody, muted/veiled, sustained/even, open, and focused/compact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can providing less textual information about a fictional character make his or her mind more transparent and accessible to the reader? This is the question that emerges from an empirical study of reader response conducted by Kotovych et al. Taking my cue from this study, I discuss the role of implied information in readers' interactions with characters in prose fiction. This is the textual strategy I call 'character-centered implicature.' I argue that the inferential work cued by implicature creates an intersubjective dynamic analogous to what philosophers Zahavi and Rochat discuss under the heading of 'experiential sharing.' Effectively, readers complement the textual evocation of mind by drawing on their own past experiences, which leads to a distinctive first-person plural ('we') perspective—a sharing of cognitive resources that is responsible for the perceived transparency of the character's mind. While this experiential sharing may result in empathetic perspective-taking, not all instances of empathy for fictional characters involve sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The materiality or intrinsic qualia of stone can account for the religious worship of extraordinary rock outcrops throughout the world. However, the differing agency of stony powers was largely the product of specific ideologies embedded in ontologically grounded semiotic registers. I support this argument through a comparison of the semiotic affordances of sculpted and unmodified stone in the ancient Andes and Angkorian Southeast Asia. I first interpret Khmer liṅgas and other religious carvings in relationship to the naturally occurring Svāyaṃbhuliṅga (self-manifested Śiva) that towered over the temple of Wat Phu, Laos. I then examine how the Inca incorporated stone wak'as into architectural complexes to subdue other-than-human powers. The final case study of revered rock outcrops and adobe temple architecture from the Jequetepeque Valley, Peru demonstrates that Moche ontologies of being, permanence, and transformation – as relates to animate boulders and mountains – differed significantly from both Inca and Angkorian semiotics of stone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adrian Ghenie (1977) is one of the most distinguished painters of Contemporary Art. He represented Romania at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) with project titled "Darwin's Room" curated by Mihai Pop. His paintings display a baroque grandeur. His style shows intertextual and transpictorial creative strategies. The facts of Modern History in anachronistic sense, post-communist era of Romania and personal memory records are intertwined within his works. Gheni's approach to history is reminiscent of Walter Benjamin's Angelus Novus. Moreover as an artist he reveals an 'Angelus Novus' performance. He use both historical and actual mass communication perspectives. He appropriates styles of Velasquez, Géricault, Van Gogh, Rothko, Pollock and Bacon. Ghenie is an expressionist painter in an abstract and figurative sense. Sometime, the intensive use of colour, brush and the other painting tools embody qualia that provide the materialization of the historical and cultural meaning of his painting beyond his technical style. In this study, the subject described above is analyzed using a descriptive method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the paper, the formal model of the noetic synthesis functions is presented. Together with the functions of noematic synthesis, they are understood as components of functions of intentional reference, which are meant to be, in turn, formalizations of intentional acts of reference performed in the stream of consciousness. This research perspective allows us to extend the category of speech acts to the category of all intentional acts of reference. The functions of noetic synthesis are understood as composed of the function of noetic intention acting on qualia, noetic moods and noetic modes. The model allows us to explain the phenomenon of autism as having its source in disorders of the noetic synthesis functions. The constructed model is not intended as the faithful reconstruction of the Husserlian conception of noesis. Intuitions of the creator of phenomenology are treated as the only source of inspiration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physicalists commonly argue that conscious experiences are nothing more than states of the brain, and that conscious qualia are observer-independent, physical properties of the external world. Although this assumes the ‘mantle of science’, it routinely ignores the findings of science, for example in sensory physiology, perception, psychophysics, neuropsychology and comparative psychology. Consequently, although physicalism aims to naturalise consciousness, it gives na unnatural account of it. It is possible, however, to develop a natural, nonreductive, reflexive model of how consciousness relates to the brain and the physical world. This paper introduces such a model and how it construes the nature of conscious experience. Within this model the physical world as perceived (the fenomenal world) is viewed as part of conscious experience not apart from it. While in everyday life we treat this phenomenal world as if it is the "physical world", it is really just one biologically useful representation of what the world is like that may differ in many respects from the world described by physics. How the world as perceived relates to the world as described by physics can be investigated by normal science (e.g. through the study of sensory physiology, psychophysics and so on). This model of consciousness appears to be consistent with both third-person evidence of how the brain works and with first-person evidence of what it is like to have a given experience. According to the reflexive model, conscious experiences are really how they seem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To make progress on the problem of consciousness, we have to confront it directly. In this paper, I first isolate the truly hard part of the problem, separating it from more tractable parts and giving an account of why it is so difficult to explain. I critique some recent work that uses reductive methods to address consciousness, and argue that such methods inevitably fail to come to grips with the hardest part of the problem. Once this failure is recognized, the door to further progress is opened. In the second half of the paper, I argue that if we move to a new kind of nonreductive explanation, a naturalistic account of consciousness can be given. I put forward my own candidate for such an account: a nonreductive theory based on principles of structural coherence and organizational invariance, and a double-aspect theory of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many people are attracted to the idea that plants experience phenomenal conscious states like pain, sensory awareness, or emotions like fear. If true, this would have wide-ranging moral implications for human behavior, including land development, farming, vegetarianism, and more. Determining whether plants have minds relies on the work of both empirical disciplines and philosophy. Epistemology should settle the standards for evidence of other minds, and science should inform our judgment about whether any plants meet those standards. We argue that evidence for other minds comes either from testimony, behavior, anatomy/physiology, or phylogeny. However, none of these provide evidence that plants have conscious mental states. Therefore, we conclude that there is no evidence that plants have minds in the sense relevant for morality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: Conscious perception; prefrontal cortex; qualia; Global Neuronal Workspace; Attention-schema theory; internal models EN Conscious perception prefrontal cortex qualia Global Neuronal Workspace Attention-schema theory internal models 180 183 4 07/11/20 20200501 NES 200501 How we consciously perceive the external world has troubled humans since the beginning of the scientific inquiry. More specifically, it separates theoretical accounts of consciousness into those that pertain to i (information)-consciousness and to m (mysterious)-consciousness. According to Graziano and colleagues, the belief in the existence of m-consciousness originates in an inaccurate, distorted and imperfect internal model that the human brain uses to represent i-consciousness, and which is also deployed for predicting the attention of others. [Extracted from the article]

"Adamorobe signing is sweet," "The signing in Adamorobe is hard," "Adamorobe's deaf people should sign in an eye‐hard way." These are discourses about signing in Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL), a sign language used in Adamorobe, an Akan farmer village in southern Ghana distinguished by a history of hereditary deafness. By calling AdaSL sweet, hard and so on, deaf people in Adamorobe attribute qualia (sensuous qualities which can include hardness, lightness, dryness, and so on) to different forms of signing. Based on fieldwork stints in Adamorobe spread over a period of 10 years, I analyze how qualic evaluations of AdaSL are expressed differently by deaf people from different generations who have had different rates of exposure to Ghanaian Sign Language in addition to AdaSL. Qualic evaluations of AdaSL are related to qualic evaluations of behavior (Gal 2013; Harkness 2015): there are parallels in discourses about AdaSL being hard and deaf people being hard of character and being hardworking strong farmers. Qualic evaluations of language and social relationships permeate discourses about intergenerational differences, constituting a recurrent theme in the language ideological assemblage (i.e., clusters of language ideologies and other ideologies that impact on language) (Kroskrity 2018). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tononi's Integrated Information Theory (IIT) explains consciousness as integrated information (Φ), that is, the informational state produced by the whole system over the sum of its parts. Many philosophers are drawn to IIT, for it offers a way to explain consciousness in a systematic mathematical form. In this paper, I assess whether IIT satisfies the demands of philosophers. I argue that IIT cannot address the "hard problem" of consciousness. In particular, even though IIT is not a standard form of functionalism, some arguments against functionalism (such as absent qualia and inverted spectrum) can be adapted to refute IIT. Besides the concern about the hard problem, I also argue that IIT implies that consciousness is epiphenomenal, and that consciousness identified with integrated information is not a fundamental property. Despite Tononi's claim to the contrary, integrated information is not ontologically fundamental because it is grounded in the causal relations within a system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a rather famous "Fitch argument" that not everything that is true is knowable. There is a rather famous "Mary argument" that is often used to argue that reductive physicalism is false. This paper sets out the two side by side as the Fitch Knowability Paradox and the Mary Knowability Paradox. It is found that they have the same logical form and thus the question of validity can be evaluated with the same tools. Likening the two is useful, since it avoids the problem that since the logical forms involved in intentional and experiential contexts are unknown, we cannot be in a position to evaluate whether the Mary is deductively valid without begging questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Power Without Knowledge, Jeffrey Friedman contends that ideational complexity can stymie social-scientific understanding and prevent the reliable predictive knowledge required of a well-functioning technocracy. However, even this somewhat pessimistic outlook may understate the problem. Ideational complexity has both cognitive and phenomenal dimensions, each of which poses unique dilemmas. Further, due to its methodological individualism, Friedman's vision may neglect emergent layers of knowledge produced through social interaction, creating yet another source of unknowns. Given these two factors, social science should embrace a pluralism regarding levels of analysis. This would recognize the multifaceted limitations on social-science knowledge production, furthering epistemic humility about the potential role of social science in technocratic policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The philosophers' concept of qualia is an artifact of bad theorizing, and in particular, of failing to appreciate the distinction between the intentional object of a belief (for instance) and the cause(s) of that belief. Qualia, like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, have a history but that does not make them real. The cause of a hallucination, for instance, may not resemble the intentional object hallucinated at all, and the representation in the brain is not rendered in special subjective properties (qualia). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In English we use the word "invention" in two ways. First, to mean a new device or process developed by experimentation, and designed to fulfill a practical goal. Second, to mean a mental fabrication, especially a falsehood, designed to please or persuade. In this paper I argue that human consciousness is an invention in both respects. First, it is a cognitive faculty, evolved by natural selection, designed to help us make sense of ourselves and our surroundings. But then, second, it is a fantasy, conjured up by the brain, designed to change the value we place on our existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relevance of bacteria to subjective experiences or qualia is underappreciated. Here, I make four proposals. Firstly, living systems traverse sequences of active states that determine their behaviour; these states result from competitive coherence, which depends on connectivity-based competition between a Next process and a Now process, whereby elements in the active state at time n+1 are chosen between the elements in the active state at time n and those elements in the developing n+1 state. Secondly, bacteria should help us link the mental to the physical world given that bacteria were here first, are highly complex, influence animal behaviour and dominate the Earth. Thirdly, the operation of competitive coherence to generate active states in bacteria, brains and other living systems is inseparable from qualia. Fourthly, these qualia become particularly important to the generation of active states in the highest levels of living systems, namely, the ecosystem and planetary levels.

The premise of the study is that poets strive in their communications to convey meanings that are intensely personal to themselves, in language which is communal. The concept of love was chosen as exemplar as this is perhaps the most human of emotions, universal in experience and traditionally supposed therefore to be so in language. The study indicates the discontinuities that exist within cognition of the concept, however, synchronically and diachronically as demonstrated by the poetry of Sappho. Although theoretically a poet’s communication is accessible to readers through a shared language, authors’ and readers’ experiences of that language are embedded in phenomena which, at their most intensely personal level, are mutually irreconcilable.

According to constitutive reductionism of Derek Parfit, a subject/person is not a separate existing being but his existence consists in the existence of a brain and body, performance of actions, thinking and occurrence of other physical and mental events. The identity of the subject in time comes down only to “Relation R” - mental consistency and/or connectedness – elicited by appropriate reasons. In the following article, I will try, relying on Frank Johnson's Knowledge Argument, to argue in favour of the following conclusions: (1) a person/subject is a “fact”irreducible to body and physical relations with the environment and (2) a subject is something/”fact” non-reducible to mental occurrences.

Consciousness is a unified state of mind, a qualitative and subjective state. And one of its most special forms is self-awareness, which allows us to be aware that we are aware and reflect on our own thoughts (section 1). This consciousness endows the human being with the ability to interpret the world and also respond to it. Thus (therefore), thanks to qualia, we have the ability to behave according to the circumstances (section 2). It is important to know the brain correlates and causes that give rise to consciousness. The capacity to be conscious lies in the cerebral cortex. The unity of perception might be related to the synchronization of neurons or functional integration (section 3). However, the problem of consciousness is not only to know its nature (material), but also to know how the emergence of the subjective imagination occurs, question for which no answer exists at the moment and even if it did it would not have any practical benefit for the species (section 4).

The communicative phenomena of tonal music and speech observed in all human societies differ qualitatively from other human sound expressions. This difference consists mainly of the fact that both tonal music and speech are generative, i.e., they are composed of a limited number of discrete, perceptual units organized according to some tacit rules. In the case of tonal music, these units are experienced as pitch classes ordered in time. Listening to tonally organized pitch classes leads to the experience of specific and relative emotions. These emotional qualities are called tonal qualia (often described as different tinges of tension and relaxation, or instability and stability), which are elicited thanks to our predictions concerning musical pitch structure. However, the emotional component of the recognition of musical structure seems to be incomparable with the experience of speech structure or other generative phenomena. Therefore, I propose that emotional reactions to mentally discrete pitches became an important part of the cognitive mechanism designated for music perception. I suggest that the general mechanism of prediction which acts permanently during the perception of the external world was specifically incorporated into the processing of musical pitch structure. As a result, a new, cortico-subcortical loop evolved that enables the recognition of musical pitch structure. The connection and exploitation of separate, evolutionarily old mechanisms for a new adaptive function is accordant with the evolutionary operational rule called “tinkering.” I will also discuss possible adaptive functions of pitch structure and the evolution of the ability to recognize tonal qualia by means of the Baldwin effect.

Following a brief review of current efforts to identify the neuronal correlates of conscious processing (NCCP) an attempt is made to bridge the gap between the material neuronal processes and the immaterial dimensions of subjective experience. It is argued that this “hard problem” of consciousness research cannot be solved by only considering the neuronal underpinnings of cognition. The proposal is that the hard problem can be treated within a naturalistic framework if one considers not only the biological but also the socio-cultural dimensions of evolution. The argument is based on the following premises: perceptions are the result of a constructivist process that depends on priors. This applies both for perceptions of the outer world and the perception of oneself. Social interactions between agents endowed with the cognitive abilities of humans generated immaterial realities, addressed as social or cultural realities. This novel class of realities assumed the role of priors for the perception of oneself and the embedding world. A natural consequence of these extended perceptions is a dualist classification of observables into material and immaterial phenomena nurturing the concept of ontological substance dualism. It is argued that perceptions shaped by socio-cultural priors lead to the construction of a self-model that has both a material and an immaterial dimension. As priors are implicit and not amenable to conscious recollection the perceived immaterial dimension is experienced as veridical and not derivable from material processes—which is the hallmark of the hard problem. These considerations let the hard problem appear as the result of cognitive constructs that are amenable to naturalistic explanations in an evolutionary framework.

Durante el conflicto armado, después de largas negociaciones entre representantes de los Estados de El Salvador y Honduras, ACNUR y los salvadoreños refugiados en este último país, fue posible el retorno de miles de salvadoreños en 1987. Esto condujo al surgimiento de las comunidades rurales conocidas como repoblaciones. En este artículo se examina la formación de un grupo particular al interior de una repoblación: los lisiados de guerra. Por medio de la narrativización de las experiencias de heridas de guerra, argumento cómo el cuerpo de los lisiados y, particularmente, la sensación de dolor es uno de los principales terrenos de negociación del legado del conflicto armado a través del régimen nacional de lisiados que el Estado salvadoreño instaura como parte de los Acuerdos de Paz. Realidad: Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades No. 153, 2019: 135-161

The article focuses on the consensual view on picture of consciousness given by neuroscience and mentions psychological research into decision-making. Topics discussed include operation of brain in relation to world in ways of automatic and preconscious, physical basis for qualia along with disappearance of the schism and goal of self definition reflecting on question of artificial intelligence.

The article discusses the use of Predictive Processing Models(PP), developed using computational neuroscience, to explore subjective consciousness. Topics include core themes from PP models of perception, action, and emotion, capturing of many aspects of experience by PP models, suggesting powerful new bridges between phenomenology and the sciences of mind, and conditions under which a being will infer the presence of qualia and begin to find them puzzling.

Following a brief review of current efforts to identify the neuronal correlates of conscious processing (NCCP) an attempt is made to bridge the gap between the material neuronal processes and the immaterial dimensions of subjective experience. It is argued that this "hard problem" of consciousness research cannot be solved by only considering the neuronal underpinnings of cognition. The proposal is that the hard problem can be treated within a naturalistic framework if one considers not only the biological but also the socio-cultural dimensions of evolution. The argument is based on the following premises: perceptions are the result of a constructivist process that depends on priors. This applies both for perceptions of the outer world and the perception of oneself. Social interactions between agents endowed with the cognitive abilities of humans generated immaterial realities, addressed as social or cultural realities. This novel class of realities assumed the role of priors for the perception of oneself and the embedding world. A natural consequence of these extended perceptions is a dualist classification of observables into material and immaterial phenomena nurturing the concept of ontological substance dualism. It is argued that perceptions shaped by socio-cultural priors lead to the construction of a self-model that has both a material and an immaterial dimension. As priors are implicit and not amenable to conscious recollection the perceived immaterial dimension is experienced as veridical and not derivable from material processes—which is the hallmark of the hard problem. These considerations let the hard problem appear as the result of cognitive constructs that are amenable to naturalistic explanations in an evolutionary framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits some classic thought experiments in which experiences are detached from their characteristic causal roles, and explores what these thought experiments tell us about qualia epiphenomenalism , i.e. the view that qualia are epiphenomenal properties. It argues that qualia epiphenomenalism is true just in case it is (nomologically) possible for experiences of the same type to have entirely different causal powers. This is done with the help of new conceptual tools regarding the concept of an epiphenomenal property. One conclusion is that it is not obvious if qualia epiphenomenalism is false; and it is also not obvious what should make us believe that it is false—or for that matter, true. Connections between qualia epiphenomenalism, physicalism, and non-physicalist property dualism are further explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that perceptual experience is transparent is generally used by naïve realists and externalist representationalists to promote an externalist account of the metaphysics of perceptual experience. It is claimed that the phenomenal character of our perceptual experience can be explained solely with reference to the externally located objects and properties which (for the representationalist) we represent, or which (for the naïve realist) partly constitute our experience. Internalist qualia theorists deny this and claim that the phenomenal character of our perceptual experience is internally constituted. However, my concern in this paper is not with the metaphysical debate but with transparency as a phenomenological feature of perceptual experience. Qualia theorists have presented a number of examples of perceptual experiences which, they claim, do not even seem to be transparent; these experiences involve objects or properties which seem to be internally realized. I argue, contrary to the qualia theorist's claim, that the phenomenal character of perceptual experience can in fact be characterized solely with reference to externally located objects and properties, and the sense in which some features of our perceptual experiences do not seem external is due to cognitive, not perceptual, phenomenology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Through an analysis of the way the qualia of noise and quiet are invoked and either given value or stigmatized in a school in Oslo, Norway, this paper traces the ways that people's bodies, their voices, and their material environments are constructed as being either similar or opposed to the 'us' of middle-class, majority Norwegians. I build on Inoue (2003)'s argument that modes of hearing are the effect of a particular regime of social power. This attention to qualia allows us to develop clearer insight into the creation of one implicit form of exclusion within the city. Highlights • Regimes of hearing help show how similarities are constructed and enforced. • Labeling migrants as loud naturalizes differences between them and Oslo Norwegians. • Qualia allow us to develop insight into the creation of implicit form of exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subjective and behavioral effects of intracranial electrical stimulation (iES) have been studied for decades, but there is a knowledge gap regarding the relationship between the magnitude of electric current and the type, intensity and valence of evoked subjective experiences. We report on rare iES data from 18 neurosurgical patients with implanted intracranial electrodes in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the insula (INS) and the anterior portion of cingulate cortex (ACC). ACC stimulation elicited somatic and visceral sensations, whereas OFC stimulation predominantly elicited olfactory and gustatory responses, and INS stimulation elicited a mix of effects involving somatic and visceral sensations, olfaction and gustation. Further, we found striking evidence that the magnitude of electric current delivered intracranially correlated positively with the perceived intensity of subjective experience and the evoked emotional state, a relationship observed across all three regions. Finally, we observed that the majority of reported experiences were negatively valenced and unpleasant, especially those elicited by ACC stimulation. The present study provides novel case studies from the human brain confirming that these structures contribute causally to the creation of affective states and demonstrates a direct relationship between the magnitude of electrical stimulation of these structures and the qualia of elicited subjective experience. Summary: This study provides critical knowledge about the effect of electrical charge magnitude on the intensity of human subjective experiences and emotional states. We shed light on the fundamental relationship between the electrical (physical) state of cortical tissue and the modality and intensity of human (subjective) experience. As electroceutical interventions are increasingly employed to treat neurological and psychiatric disorders, these findings highlight the importance of electrical stimulation magnitude for eliciting specific changes in human subjective experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent philosophy of mind has seen an increase of interest in theories of intentionality in offering a functional account of mental states. The standard intentionalist view holds that mental states can be exhaustively accounted for in terms of their representational contents. An alternative view proposed by Tim Crane, called impure intentionalism, specifies mental states in terms of intentional content, mode, and object. This view is also suggested to hold for states of sensory awareness. This paper primarily develops an alternative to the impure intentionalist account of states of sensory awareness. On the basis of Husserl's phenomenological work, I argue that a focus on intentionality at the level of sensory awareness is phenomenologically implausible. The final part offers an alternative functional account of sensory awareness based on what Husserl called 'immanent association'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]