Contents

Refereed Paper

Michael Beaton  abstract
What RoboDennett Still Doesn’t Know
Harry T. Hunt  abstract
Synaesthesia, Metaphor and Consciousness: A Cognitive-Developmental Perspective
Murray Shanahan  abstract
Global Access, Embodiment, and the Conscious Subject
Neil Levy  abstract
Libet’s Impossible Demand

Continuing Debate

Gilberto Gomes
Is Consciousness Epiphenomenal? Comment on Susan Pockett

Cartoon Strip

Ed Subitzky
Inkland

Book Reviews

Hugh Noble
Alwyn Scott (ed.), Encyclopedia of Nonlinear Science
Chris Nunn
Paul Marshall, Mystical Encounters with the Natural World

Annual Index

Index of Titles 2005
Index of Authors 2005

ABSTRACTS

Michael Beaton

What RoboDennett Still Doesn’t Know

The explicit aim of Daniel Dennett’s new paper ‘What RoboMary Knows’ is to show that Mary (the hypothetical colour-blind neuroscientist) will necessarily be able to come to know what it is like to see in colour, if she fully understands all the physical facts about colour vision. I believe we can establish that Dennett’s line of reasoning is flawed, but the flaw is not as simple as an equivocation on ‘knows’. Rather, it goes to the heart of functionalism and hinges on whether or not Dennett is correct to claim that there is ‘no fact of the matter’ about what subjective experience consists in.

Correspondence: Mike Beaton, Centre for Research in Cognitive Science, University of Sussex, Falmer, Sussex,  BN1 9QH, UK. Email: M.J.S.Beaton@sussex.ac.uk

Harry T. Hunt

Synaesthesia, Metaphor and Consciousness: A Cognitive-Developmental Perspective

Abstract: A cognitive-developmental theory of synaesthesias — those subjective states fusing separate perceptual modalities — is supported by research indicating their neocortical basis and first appearance as part of the semantic learning of words, letters, numbers, and time in the early grade school years. It contrasts with models of a primitive, anomalous holdover from an earlier neural hyperconnectivity, widely assumed in recent neuroscience approaches. Classical synaesthesias, occurring most vividly in high ‘fantasy proneness’ children, as well as the more normative and less stereotyped ‘synaesthetic meanings’ of mid childhood, would later be internalized as the imagistic side of Vygotsky’s ‘inner speech’ — then introspectable as the typically diffuse felt sense of semantic significance. A synaesthetically structured felt meaning becomes the matrix for the development of metaphoric understanding in later childhood. The further exteriorized development of the full range of synaesthesias in adults high in imaginative absorption and creativity becomes central to the arts, culture, and meditative states of consciousness.
 This approach overlaps with that of Ramachandran on synaesthesia as a window to the evolution of language and metaphor, but separates the human capacity for cross-modal translation, as the root of all symbol formation, from the full range of synaesthesias that would be its later mid childhood differentiation and adds in the wider adult potential for higher developments of this normally implicit synaesthetic consciousness.

Correspondence: H. Hunt, Dept. of Psychology, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. Email: hhunt@brocku.ca

Neil Levy

Libet’s Impossible Demand

Abstract: Libet’s famous experiments, showing that apparently we become aware of our intention to act only after we have unconsciously formed it, have widely been taken to show that there is no such thing as free will. If we are not conscious of the formation of our intentions, many people think, we do not exercise the right kind of control over them. I argue that the claim this view presupposes, that only consciously initiated actions could be free, places a condition upon freedom of action which it is in principle impossible to fulfil, for reasons that are conceptual and not merely contingent. Exercising this kind of control would require that we control our control system, which would simply cause the same problem to arise at a higher-level or initiate an infinite regress of controllings. If the unconscious initiation of actions, as well as the takings of decisions, is incompatible with control over them, then free will is impossible on conceptual grounds. Thus, Libet’s experiments do not constitute a separate, empirical, challenge to our freedom.

Correspondence: Dr Neil Levy, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Department of Philosophy, University of Melbourne, Parkville Vic 3010, Australia. Email: nllevy@unimelb.edu.au

Murray Shanahan

Global Access, Embodiment, and the Conscious Subject

Abstract: The objectives of this article are twofold. First, by denying the dualism inherent in attempts to load metaphysical significance on the inner/outer distinction, it defends the view that scientific investigation can approach consciousness in itself, and is not somehow restricted in scope to the outward manifestations of a private and hidden realm. Second, it provisionally endorses the central tenets of global workspace theory, and recommends them as a possible basis for the sort of scientific understanding of consciousness thus legitimised. However, the article goes on to argue that global workspace theory alone does not constitute a fully worked-out objective account of the conscious subject. This requires additional attention to be paid to (at least) the issue of embodiment, and to the possibility of indexicality that arises when an instantiation of the global workspace architecture inhabits a spatially localised body.

Correspondence: Murray Shanahan, Department of Computing, Imperial College London, 180 Queen’s Gate, London SW7 2AZ, UK. Email: m.shanahan@imperial.ac.uk

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