Reading Philosophy

John Searle discusses the unity of consciousness across multiple different aspects like modality (sight, hearing, touch etc.) and time. He rejects a common metaphor to characterise consciousness in favour of his own 'field' view.

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John Searle discusses ten structural features of consciousness: ontological subjectivity, unity and two types of integration, two types of access to the world, mood, structure, attention, situatedness, familiarity, overflow and valence.

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John Searle considers three common philosophical claims about consciousness and finds them to be mistaken.

Subjective direct access does not give us certainty about our own conscious states.

There is no special faculty of introspection.

Consciousness does not always entail self-consciousness.

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John Searle introduces the notion of intentionality as a key link between consciousness and causation.

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John Searle asks what the function of consciousness is, taking an evolutionary perspective. How or why has it evolved? And what might that tell us about its causal power?

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John Searle considers how his view differs from epiphenomenalism, which is the view that minds have no causal power over the body. He argues that such a view is not logically impossible, but believing that it is likely relies on several mistakes.

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John Searle asks whether consciousness can be reduced to the underlying brain processes. Can we give a complete account of mental phenomena purely in terms biochemical activity? If not, why not?

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John Searle argues that we have to start with the facts we know and then we will be able to see how the mind fits in with science and metaphysics: consciousness is the higher level effect of lower level brain processes.

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John Searle considers the incompatibility of dualism and materialism and argues that we should reject both, because they are based on faulty concepts.

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John Searle lays out the three basic features that any theory of consciousness must account for. Conscious phenomena are inner, qualitative and ontologically subjective.

Searle also rejects the idea that consciousness cannot be studied by science.

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