Journal of Consciousness Studies

Journal of Consciousness Studies
Volume 8, No. 4, March 2001

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Table of Contents

REFEREED PAPERS

Ted Honderich
Mind the Guff: A Response to John Searle  abstract
Charles Whitehead
Social Mirrors and Shared Experiential Worlds  abstract
John Bolender
An Argument for Idealism  abstract

CONFERENCE REPORTS

Ernst von Glasersfeld
The Enigma of Consciousness (Lucerne, January 2001)  full text
Anthony Freeman
Creativity, Mind & Brain (London, March 2001)  full text

BOOK REVIEWS

Rüdiger Vaas
It Binds, Therefore I Am: Review of R. Llinás, I of the Vortex  full text
Timo Järvilehto
Consciousness ‘Within’ or ‘Without’?: Review of J.S. Jordan, Modeling Consciousness Across the Disciplines  full text
Douglas B. Meehan
Valerie Gray Hardcastle, The Myth of Pain  full text
Gary Fuhrman
Manfred Spitzer, The Mind Within the Net  full text

ABSTRACTS

Ted Honderich

Mind the Guff: A Response to John Searle

Abstract: (I) John Searle’s conception of consciousness in the ‘Mind the Gap’ issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies remains short on content, no advance on either materialism or traditional dualism. Still, it is sufficiently contentful to be self-contradictory. And so his Biological Subjectivity on Two Levels, like materialism and dualism, needs replacing by a radically different conception of consciousness — such as Consciousness as Existence. (II) From his idea that we can discover ‘gaps’, seeming absences of causal circumstances, in our experience of deciding and acting, Searle is led to the positing of a self and to mysterious causing. (III) In fact philosophers of determinism and freedom over three centuries have concerned themselves with what are now termed ‘gaps’. Searle’s advance is a useful terminological one. Compatibilist philosophers of freedom, contrary to what is said, have not missed any point at all. A successor to both Compatibilism and Incompatibilism is needed. (IV) Searle’s previous account of deciding and acting in Biological Subjectivity on Two Levels does indeed fail because of its epiphenomenalism. (V) The culmination of his paper, his preferred hypothesis now about deciding and acting, is that down–up causation is true of it but not left–right causation. Quantum Theory as often interpreted does not work down–up but does work left–right. The hypothesis is entirely in the tradition of the Incompatibilist and Libertarian philosophers of determinism and freedom, whom Searle has joined, but is factually incredible.

Correspondence: t.honderich@ucl.ac.uk

Charles Whitehead

Social Mirrors and Shared Experiential Worlds

We humans have a formidable armamentarium of social display behaviours, including song-and-dance, the visual arts, and role-play. Of these, role-play is probably the crucial adaptation which makes us most different from other apes. Human childhood, a sheltered period of ‘extended irresponsibility’, allows us to develop our powers of make-believe and role-play, prerequisites for human cooperation, culture, and reflective consciousness.


Social mirror theory, originating with Dilthey, Baldwin, Cooley and Mead, holds that there cannot be mirrors in the mind without mirrors in society. I will present evidence from the social and behavioural sciences to argue that self-awareness depends on social mirrors and shared experiential worlds. The dependence of reflectivity on shared experience requires some reframing of the ‘hard problem’, and suggests a non-trivial answer to the zombie question.

Correspondence: Charles Whitehead, 19 Rydal Road, London SW16 1QF, UK

John Bolender

An Argument For Idealism

According to Russell, the intrinsic nature of the physical is the same as or deeply analogous to phenomenal qualities, those properties known through acquaintance in one’s subjective experience. I defend his position and argue that it implies a kind of idealism, specifically the view that any intrinsic physical property instance can only exist as an object of acquaintance. This follows because a necessary feature of physicality is spatial location, and hence the intrinsic nature of the physical must share with phenomenal qualities whatever makes some of them suitable space occupants. That feature is their occupying phenomenal spaces. There are reasons for believing that it is conceptually impossible for there to be a phenomenal space without a subject acquainted with its contents. Therefore, intrinsic physical properties must be objects of acquaintance. This view is shown to be compatible with contemporary science, and a scientific idealist metaphysic is briefly sketched.
 

Correspondence: John Bolender, Department of Philosophy, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey 06531.
Email: johnbolender@hotmail.com


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