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Max Velmans
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Frederick Adams and Kenneth Aizawa, The Bounds of Cognition
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John Dance
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Galen Strawson, Real Materialism and other essays
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Gary Fuhrman
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Sřren Brier, Cybersemiotics: Why Information Is Not Enough!
ABSTRACTS
Pete Mandik
Beware of the Unicorn: Consciousness as Being Represented and Other Things
that Don’t Exist
Abstract: Higher-Order Representational theories of consciousness — HORs
— primarily seek to explain a mental state’s being conscious in terms of
the mental state’s being represented by another mental state. First-Order
Representational theories of consciousness — FORs — primarily seek to explain
a property’s being phenomenal in terms of the property being represented
in experience. Despite differences in both explanans and explananda, HORs
and FORs share a reliance on there being such a property as being represented.
In this paper I develop an argument — the Unicorn Argument — against both
HORs and FORs. The core of the Unicorn is that since there are mental representations
of things that do not exist, there cannot be any such property as being
represented, and thus no such property with which to identify either being
conscious or being phenomenal.
Correspondence: MandikP@wpunj.edu
Miri Albahari
Witness-Consciousness: Its Definition, Appearance and Reality
Abstract: G.E. Moore alludes to a notion of consciousness that is diaphanous,
elusive to attention, yet detectable. Such a notion, I suggest, approximates
what Bina Gupta has called ‘witness-consciousness’ — in particular, the
aspect of mode-neutral awareness with intrinsic phenomenal character. This
paper offers a detailed definition and defence of the appearance and reality
of witness-consciousness. While I claim that witness-consciousness captures
the essence of subjectivity, and so must be accounted for in the ‘hard
problem’ of consciousness, it is not to be confused with the more commonly
defended notion of ‘for-me-ness’.
Correspondence: Miri Albahari, Philosophy Dept., The University of Western
Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley WA 6009, Australia. Email: albahari@cyllene.uwa.edu.au
Mike Wammes & Imants Barušs
Characteristics of Spontaneous Musical Imagery
Abstract: This study follows upon Steven Brown’s 2006 article in The Journal
of Consciousness Studies about the ‘perpetual music track’, a form of constant
musical imagery. With Brown’s assistance, a Musical Imagery Questionnaire
was developed. The questionnaire was then administered to 67 participants
with the intention of establishing relevant scales for quantifying the
presence and extent of spontaneous musical imagery in individuals. In addition
to the Musical Imagery Questionnaire, the Six Factor Personality Questionnaire,
as well as the Transliminality Scale, which is a measure of openness to
psychological material, was used in order to explore the correlations of
spontaneous musical imagery to personality constructs. Factor analysis
of the responses to the Musical Imagery Questionnaire revealed six meaningful
dimensions of spontaneous musical imagery that were labeled as Unconscious,
Persistent, Entertainment, Completeness, Musicianship, and Distraction.
Participants who scored high on Transliminality also tended to have more
persistent, distracting, and unconscious musical imagery. There were also
some smaller correlations with other personality variables.
Correspondence: Imants Barušs, King’s University College, 266 Epworth
Ave., London, Ontario, Canada N6A 2M3. E-mail: baruss@uwo.ca.
Nicolas J. Bullot
Material Anamnesis and the Prompting of Aesthetic Worlds: The Psycho-Historical
Theory of Artworks
Abstract: Many scholars view artworks as the products of cultural history
and arbitrary institutional conventions. Others construe art as the result
of psychological mechanisms internal to the organism. These historical
and psychological approaches are often viewed as foes rather than friends.
Is it possible to combine these two approaches in a unified analysis of
the perception and consciousness of artworks? I defend a positive answer
to this question and propose a psycho-historical theory, which argues that
artworks are historical and material artefacts designed to prompt mental
activities and elicit the conscious experience of aesthetic worlds. My
argument suggests that the material components of artworks — termed their
‘material substrata’ — are crucial mediators between historical contexts
and the mental activities elicited by the perception of artworks.
Correspondence: Centre de recherches sur les arts et le langage (CRAL),
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), 96 Bd Raspail, 75006,
Paris, France. Email: bullot.cral.cnrs@gmail.com.
