Philosophy of mind

What is consciousness?

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Contents

1. Consciousness
   1. Introduction
   2. Perception
2. Dualism
   1. Introduction
   2. Criticism
3. Physicalism
4. Externalism
5. Panpsychism
6. Illusionism
7. Neuroscience
   1. Theoretical neuroscience
   2. Experimental neuroscience
   3. Computational neuroscience
8. Language
   1. Origin of language
   2. Universal grammar
   3. Animal cognition
9. Free will
10. Artificial intelligence and mind
    1. Introduction
    2. Symbolic vs connectionist AI
    3. Criticism
    4. Counter criticism
    5. Computer vision and mind
    6. Language models and mind
11. My thoughts
12. Annotated bibliography
    1. Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat?
    2. Dennett, D. (1991). Consciousness Explained.
    3. Chalmers, D. (1996). The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory.
    4. Kurzweil, R. (2012). How to Create a Mind.
    5. More articles to do
13. Links and encyclopedia articles
    1. SEP
    2. IEP
    3. Wikipedia
    4. Others
    5. Videos
14. References

Consciousness

Introduction

• Consciousness, sentience, self-awareness, sapience
• Embodiment
• Subconscious
• Hume
  • bundle theory: A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I.iv, section 6
• Freud
• Jung
• Mach¹
• Putnam
• Nagel²
• Phenomenal vs access consciousness
  • Ned Block
• Searle: a biological process like digestion
• Churchland’s
• Dennett³
• Chalmers⁴

Perception

• Is perception veridical?
• Descartes
• Mark, J.T., Marion, B.B, & Hoffman, D.D. (2010). Natural selection and veridical perceptions.⁵
• Gefter, A. & Hoffman, D.D. (2016). The case against reality. The Atlantic.⁶

See also:

• Realism and antirealism in the Outline on scientific realism

Dualism

Introduction

• Mind-body problem
• Plato
• Descartes
• Gödel
• Kripke

• Grego, R. (2022). Is Western thought marching towards Eastern Idealism?

Criticism

• Gilbert Ryle
  • “the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine”
  • The Concept of Mind (1949)
• Bunge
  • Bunge, M. (2010). Mind and Matter: A Philosophical Inquiry.⁷

Physicalism

• Materialism
• Descartes and Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia
  • Tollefsen, D. (1999). Princess Elisabeth and the problem of mind-body interaction.⁸
• Marx
• Montero⁹
• Dennett
  • Dennett, D.C. (2012). The mystery of David Chalmers.¹⁰
• Churchland’s¹¹
• Nail
• Ney
• Sean Carroll on QFT and experimental high energy physics ruling out the role of any newphysics in the functioning of the brain.
  • https://twitter.com/RyanDavidReece/status/1285682311112122370
  • YouTube: Is there free will? | David Eagleman and Lex Fridman

See also:

• Bracketing human experience in the Outline on the philosophy of physics
• Physicalism in the Outline on naturalism
• Physicalism in the Outline on the human condition

Externalism

• Distributed cognition
• Carney, J. (2020). Thinking avant la lettre: A Review of 4E Cognition.¹²
• John Vervaeke

Panpsychism

• Chalmers
• Rejection of dualism vs physicalism dichotomy
• Harris, A. (2022). The strong assumption.

See also:

• Idealism

Illusionism

• Ross, D. (2000). Dennett’s Philosophy: A comprehensive assessment.¹³
• Frankish, K. (2016). Illusionism as a theory of consciousness.¹⁴
• Dennett, D.C. (2016). Illusionism as the obvious default theory of consciousness.¹⁵
• Dennett, D.C. (2023). How, when, and why can we trust our brains? Johns Hopkins Natural Philosophy Forum annual Distinguished Lecture.

Neuroscience

Theoretical neuroscience

• Connectionism
  • Fodor, J.A. & Pylyshyn, Z.W. (1988). Connectionism and cognitive architecture: A critical analysis.¹⁶
• Information integration
  • Tononi, G. (2004). An information integration theory of consciousness.¹⁷
  • Tononi, G. (2010). Information integration: Its relevance to brain function and consciousness.¹⁸
• Active inference
  • Free energy principle (FEP)
  • Friston, K. (2010). The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?¹⁹
  • Andrews, M. (2021). The math is not the territory: Navigating the free energy principle.²⁰
• Predictive encoding

Experimental neuroscience

• Libet experiments
• Tononi, G. & Edelman, G.M. (1998). Consciousness and complexity.²¹
• Koch, C., Massimini, M., Boly, M., & Tononi, G. (2016). Neural correlates of consciousness: Progress and problems.²²
• Cohen, M.A., Dennett, D.C., & Kanwisher, N. (2016). What is the bandwidth of perceptual experience?.²³

Computational neuroscience

• Blue Brain Project
  • Markram, H. et al. (2017). Blue Brain team discovers a multi-dimensional universe in brain networks.
  • Reimann, M.W. et al. (2017). Cliques of neurons bound into cavities provide a missing link between structure and function.²⁴
  • Markram, H. et al. (2020). New evidence for innate knowledge.
• Neuromorphic computing

Language

Origin of language

• Origin of language
• Language of thought hypothesis
• Fodor, J.A. (1975). The Language of Thought.²⁵
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis AKA Linguistic relativity
• Hurlburt, R.T. (2011). Not everyone conducts inner speech.
• Grzankowski, A. (2015). Not all attitudes are propositional.²⁶
• McCarthy, C. (2017). The Kekulé Problem.²⁷
  • “the unconscious is a machine for operating an animal.”
• Wolpert, D.H. (2022). A sliver of reality.

See also:

• Symbolic vs connectionist AI

Universal grammar

• Noam Chomsky
  • innatism
  • Syntactic Structures (1957)
  • Kantian?
• Criticism
  • Peter Norvig
    • Norvig, P. (2011). On Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning.²⁸
    • Liberman, M. (2011). Language Log (blog): Norvig channels Shannon contra Chomsky.

Animal cognition

• Davidson, D. (1982). Rational animals.²⁹
• Clever Hans
• Washoe the chimpanzee
• Pianalto, M. (2012). Thoughts, propositions, and animals.

Free will

• Reflections on Free Will - Daniel Dennett
• The Marionette’s Lament - Sam Harris
• Caricaturing free will - Pawel Pachniewski
• Dennett and Harris try to bridge the gap - Waking Up podcast
• Free will is dead, let’s bury it. - Sabine Hossenfelder
• Sam Harris: Free Will is an Illusion - Lex Fridman podcast
• Judea Pearl on the illusion of free will
• Aaronson, S. (2006). Lecture notes: Free will.
• Aaronson, S. (2013). The ghost in the quantum Turing machine.³⁰

Artificial intelligence and mind

Introduction

• Strong vs weak, general vs narrow AI
• Kurzweil, R. (2012). How to Create a Mind.³¹

Proposal (1955) for the Dartmouth Workshop:

The speeds and memory capacities of present computers may be insufficient to simulate many of the higher functions of the human brain, but the major obstacle is not lack of machine capacity, but our inability to write programs taking full advantage of what we have.³²

See also:

• Deep learning
• Artificial intelligence

Symbolic vs connectionist AI

• TODO

See also:

• Language

Criticism

• Lucas-Penrose Argument about Gödel’s Theorem - IEP
• John Searle - Chinese room argument
• Hubert Dreyfus
  • Dreyfus, H.L. (1965). Alchemy and artificial intelligence.³³
  • Dreyfus, H.L. (1972). What Computers Can’t Do.³⁴
  • Video: Being in the World: A tribute to Hubert Dreyfus.
  • Video: Hubert Dreyfus interview - AI, Heidegger, meaning in the modern world.
  • Hubert Dreyfus’s views on artificial intelligence

See also:

• Existentialists
• Incompleteness

Counter criticism

• Comic by Dennett

Computer vision and mind

• Takagi, Y. & Nishimoto, S. (2022). High-resolution image reconstruction with latent diffusion models from human brain activity.³⁵

Language models and mind

• Browning, J. & LeCun, Y. (2022). AI and the limits of language.³⁶
• Piantadosi, S.T. (2023). Modern language models refute Chomsky’s approach to language.³⁷
• Katzir, R. (2023). Why large language models are poor theories of human linguistic cognition: A reply to Piantadosi.³⁸

Experimentallly:

Overall, these results suggest that, beyond the marginal effects of the models’ architectures, the middle—but not the outer—layers of deep language models systematically converge towards brain-like representations.³⁹

See also:

• Word meanings

My thoughts

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Annotated bibliography

Links and encyclopedia articles

References

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1. Mach (1914).↩︎

2. Nagel (1974).↩︎

3. Dennett (1991).↩︎

4. Chalmers (1996).↩︎

5. Mark & Marion (2010).↩︎

6. Gefter & Hoffman (2016).↩︎

7. Bunge (2010).↩︎

8. Tollefsen (1999).↩︎

9. Montero (1999).↩︎

10. Dennett (2012).↩︎

11. MacFarquhar (2014).↩︎

12. Carney (2020).↩︎

13. Ross (2000).↩︎

14. Frankish (2016).↩︎

15. Dennett (2016).↩︎

16. Fodor & Pylyshyn (1988).↩︎

17. Tononi (2004).↩︎

18. Tononi (2010).↩︎

19. Friston (2010).↩︎

20. Andrews (2021).↩︎

21. Tononi & Edelman (1998).↩︎

22. Koch, Massimini, Boly, & Tononi (2016).↩︎

23. Cohen, Dennett, & Kanwisher (2016).↩︎

24. Reimann, M.W. et al. (2017).↩︎

25. Fodor (1975).↩︎

26. Grzankowski (2015).↩︎

27. C. McCarthy (2017).↩︎

28. Norvig (2011).↩︎

29. Davidson (1982).↩︎

30. Aaronson (2013).↩︎

31. Kurzweil (2012).↩︎

32. J. McCarthy, Minsky, Rochester, & Shannon (1955).↩︎

33. Dreyfus (1965).↩︎

34. Dreyfus (1972).↩︎

35. Takagi & Nishimoto (2022).↩︎

36. Browning & LeCun (2022).↩︎

37. Piantadosi (2023).↩︎

38. Katzir (2023).↩︎

39. Caucheteux & King (2020).↩︎