PLEASE NOTE this is a sample reading list for the 2010-11 academic year
– precise seminar content may change from year to year.
Week
Topic
1
Concepts of Consciousness
2
Phenomenal Consciousness and the “Hard” Problem
3
Introspection, Qualia and the Transparency of Experience
4
The Objects of Conscious Experience
5
The Content of Conscious Experience
6
[Reading week - no lectures or seminars]
7
Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness
8
Naïve Realism and Relational Views of Experience
9
Bodily Sensation
10
The Unity of Consciousness
Reading Lists
1. Concepts of Consciousness
*Van Gulick, Robert, ‘Consciousness’ (Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/ - (Available Online)
Armstrong, D. M. 1981. What is consciousness? In The Nature of Mind. Cornell University
Press.
Rosenthal, D. 1986. “Two concepts of consciousness.” Philosophical Studies, 49: 329-59
Rosenthal, D. M. 1990. The independence of consciousness and sensory quality. In (E.
Villanueva, ed) Consciousness. Ridgeview.
Rosenthal, D. M. 1994. State consciousness and transitive consciousness. Consciousness and
Cognition 2:355-63
Manson, N. 2000. State consciousness and creature consciousness: A real distinction.
Philosophical Psychology 13:405-410 (Available online)
On the state of wakeful consciousness:
O'Shaughnessy, B. 1991. The anatomy of consciousness. In (E. Villanueva, ed)
Consciousness. Ridgeview. And in Philosophical Issues 1991 (available online JSTOR).
(See also O’Shaughnessy, (2000) Consciousness and the World, Ch. 2.
2. Phenomenal Consciousness and the “Hard” Problem
*Nagel, T. 1974. “What is it like to be a bat?” Philosophical Review, 83: 435-456
*Chalmers, D. J. 2003. Consciousness and its place in nature. In (S. Stich & T. Warfield, eds)
Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Mind. Blackwell. (Available online)
Block, N. 2002. The harder problem of consciousness. Journal of Philosophy 99:391-425.
(Available online)
Levine, J. 1983. “Materialism and qualia: the explanatory gap”. Pacific Philosophical
Quarterly, 64: 354-361.
Chalmers, D. J. 1995. The puzzle of conscious experience. Scientific American 273(6):80-86
(Available online)
Kirk, Robert, "Zombies", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2009 Edition),
Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/zombies/>
Eilan, N. 2000. Primitive consciousness and the 'hard problem'. Journal of Consciousness
Studies 7:28-39.
3. Introspection, Qualia, and the Transparency of Experience
On Transparency:
*Tye, M. (2010) ‘The Puzzle of Transparency’, the Norton Introduction to Philosophy ed. A.
Byrne, J. Cohen, G. Rosen, and S. Shiffrin. Norton, 2010. (available online)
Harman, G. 1990. “The intrinsic quality of experience”. In J. Tomberlin, ed. Philosophical
Perspectives, 4. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing
Moore, G.E. 1903, ‘The Refutation of Idealism’, Mind XII (4) 433-453.
Tye, M. 1992, ‘Visual Qualia and Visual Content’, in The Contents of Experience, Crane
(ed.), Cambridge University Press.
M. G. F. Martin (1998). Setting Things before the Mind. Royal Institute of Philosophy
Supplement, 43, pp 157-179 doi:10.1017/S1358246100004355
Siewert, Charles. (2003), ‘Is Experience Transparent?’, Philosophical Studies 117:
15-41.
Stoljar, Daniel (2004), ‘The Argument from Diaphonousness’, Canadian
Journal of Philosophy
More on Qualia:
Tye, Michael, "Qualia", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2009 Edition),
Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/qualia/>.
Byrne, Alex, "Inverted Qualia", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2010
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2010/entries/qualia-inverted/>.
Shoemaker, S. 1990. “109-131.Qualities and qualia: what's in the mind,” Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, Supplement, 50
4. The Objects of Conscious Experience
The argument from illusion and sense-datum theories.
*Tim Crane, ‘The Problem of Perception’, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perceptionproblem/ (Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy – available online)
William Fish, Philosophy of Perception: A Contemporary Introduction. See Ch. 2, ‘Sense
Datum Theories’
H. Robinson, Perception, in particular Chs. III, VI & VIII
P.F. Strawson, ‘Perception & Its Objects’, in G.F.Macdonald, ed., Perception & Identity,
reprinted in Dancy
J.J. Valberg, ‘The Puzzle of Experience’, in Crane ed. The Contents of Experience.
Martin, M.G.F. (2000). ‘Beyond Dispute: Sense Data, Intentionality and the Mind-Body
Problem’, in Crane and Patterson eds. The History of the Mind-Body Problem. Routledge.
5. The Content of Conscious Experience
*Siegel, Susanna. ‘The Contents of Perception’. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perceptioncontents/ (Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy – Available online)
Martin, M.G.F., “Perceptual Content” in Guttenplan (ed.) 1995 A Companion to the
Philosophy of Mind
William Fish, Philosophy of Perception: A Contemporary Introduction. See Ch. 5,
Intentional Theories
Byrne, A. (2001). ‘Intentionalism Defended’, Philosophical Review 110: 199-239
J. Searle, Intentionality, Ch.2
D. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of the Mind, ch. 10, reprinted in Dancy ed. Perceptual
Knowledge
T. Burge, ‘Vision and Intentional Content’, in R. van Gulick & E. Lepore, edd., John Searle &
His Critics
F. Dretske, Knowledge & the Flow of Information, Ch. 6 reprinted in Dancy ed.
C. Peacocke, A Study of Concepts, Ch.3 of which an earlier version, ‘Scenarios, Concepts &
Perception’, can be found in Crane ed.
On Representational Theories of Consciousness:
Lycan, William, "Representational Theories of Consciousness", The Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/consciousness-representational/>.
Chalmers, D.J. (2004). ‘The Representational Character of Experience’, in B. Leiter (ed.),
The Future for Philosophy. (Oxford: Oxford University Press.)
Dretske, F. (1993). ‘Conscious Experience’, Mind 102: 263-83.
Tye, M. (2002). ‘Representationalism and the Transparency of Experience’, Noûs 36: 137-51.
Tye, M. (2003a). ‘Blurry Images, Double Vision, and Other Oddities: New Problems for
Representationalism?’, in Smith and Jokic (2003).
6. Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness
*Carruthers, P. 2001. ‘Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness’. Stanford Encyclopaedia of
Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-higher/ (Available online)
Byrne, A. 1997. Some like it HOT: consciousness and higher-order thoughts. Philosophical
Studies 2:103-29. (Available Online)
Byrne, A. 2004. What phenomenal consciousness is like. In (R. Gennaro, ed) Higher-Order
Theories of Consciousness: An Anthology. John Benjamins (Avaliable online)
Carruthers, P. 1989. Brute experience. Journal of Philosophy 258-69. (Available online)
Dretske, F. 1993. Conscious experience. Mind 102:263-283
Dretske, F. 1995. Are experiences conscious? In Naturalizing the Mind. MIT Press
Levine, J. 1997. Are qualia just representations? (Critical notice of Tye.) Mind and Language
12:101-13.
Lycan, W. G. 1995. Consciousness as internal monitoring, I. Philosophical Perspectives 9:114.
Lycan, W. G. 2001. A simple argument for a higher-order representation theory of
consciousness. Analysis 61:3-4
Rosenthal, D. M. 1986. Two concepts of consciousness. Philosophical Studies 49:329-59.
Rosenthal, D. M. 1997. A theory of consciousness. In (N. Block, O. Flanagan, and G.
Guzeldere, eds) The Nature of Consciousness. MIT Press
7. Naive Realism and Relational Views of Experience
*J. McDowell, ‘Criteria, Defeasibility & Knowledge’, reprinted abridged form in Dancy, ed.,
also in his Mind, Value & Reality
Martin, M. G. F. 2002. The transparency of experience. Mind and Language 4:376-425.
(Available online)
Soteriou, Matthew (online). The Disjunctive Theory of Perception. Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Fall 2009 edition).
Byrne, Alex & Logue, Heather (2009). Introduction. In Alex Byrne & Heather Logue (eds.),
Disjunctivism: Contemporary Readings. MIT Press
Haddock, Adrian & Macpherson, Fiona (eds.) (2008).Introduction. Disjunctivism:
Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.
Byrne, Alex and Logue, Heather, 2008, “Either/Or”, in Disjunctivism: Perception, Action,
Knowledge, Adrian Haddock and Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press,
pp. 57–94
Brewer, Bill (2004). Realism and the nature of perceptual experience. Philosophical Issues
14 (1):61-77.
Martin, M.G.F., 2004, “The Limits of Self-Awareness”, Philosophical Studies, 120: 37–89.
Siegel, S., 2004, “Indiscriminability and the Phenomenal”, Philosophical Studies, 120: 90–
112.
Siegel, S., 2008, “The Epistemic Conception of Hallucination”, in Disjunctivism: Perception,
Action, Knowledge, Fiona Macpherson and Adrian Haddock (eds.), Oxford: Oxford
University Press, pp. 205–224.
Crane, T., 2006. ‘Is there a Perceptual Relation?’, in Perceptual Experience, Tamar S.
Gendler and John Hawthorne (eds), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
8. Bodily Sensation
*Murat Aydede, ‘Pain’, entry in Stanford Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy; available
from
http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html:
http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/maydede/pain/pain.sep.pdf
Tye, M. (1997). A Representational Theory of Pains and their Phenomenal Character.
The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates, N. Block, O. Flanagan and G.
Güzeldere (Eds.), Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Armstrong, D.M. (1962). Bodily Sensations. Section on the location of sensations. London:
Routledge.
Armstrong, D.M. (1962). A Materialist Theory of Mind. Section on the Representational
Theory of Perception.
Dennett, D. C. (1978). Why You Can’t Make a Computer that Feels Pain. Brainstorms
Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press
Grahek, Nikola. Feeling Pain & Being in Pain, secs. 7 & 8.
Hardcastle, Valerie Gray. (1997). ‘When a Pain is Not’, Journal of Philosophy.
Langsam, H. (1995). ‘Why Pains are Mental Objects.’ The Journal of Philosophy, 92(6):
303–313.
Pitcher, G. (1970). ‘Pain Perception’, Philosophical Review, 79: 368-393.
Wittgenstein, L. (1969). Blue and Brown Books, 2nd edition, Oxford: Blackwell, 49-55
9. The Unity of Consciousness
*Brook, Andrew and Raymont, Paul, "The Unity of Consciousness", The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2010/entries/consciousness-unity/>.
Bayne, T. and Chalmers, D., 2003. What is the unity of consciousness? In Cleeremans 2003
The Unity of Consciousness: Binding, Integration and Dissociation
Dainton, B., 2000. Stream of Consciousness, London: Routledge
Nagel, T., 1971. Brain bisection and the unity of consciousness. Synthese, 22: 396–413.
Shoemaker, S., 1996. Unity of consciousness and consciousness of unity. In The First-Person
Perspective and Other Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Hurley, S., 2003. Action and the unity of consciousness. In Cleeremans 2003
Tye, M., 2003. Consciousness and Persons: Unity and Identity, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press