One of the distinctive properties of conscious states is the peculiar selfawareness implicit in them. Two rival accounts of this self-awareness are discussed. According to a Neo-Brentanian account, a mental state M is conscious iff M represents its very own occurrence. According to the Higher-Order Monitoring account, M is merely accompanied by a numerically distinct representation of its occurrence. According to both, then, M is conscious in virtue of figuring in a higher-order content. The disagreement is over the question whether the higher-order content is carried by M itself or by a different state. While the Neo-Brentanian theory is phenomenologically more attractive, it is often felt to be somewhat mysterious. It is argued (i) that the difference between the Neo-Brentanian and Higher-Order Monitoring theories is smaller and more empirical than may initially seem, and (ii) that the Neo-Brentanian theory can be readily demystified. These considerations make it prima facie preferable to the Higher-Order Monitoring theory.

Formal ontology, as the science of the formal relations that structure reality as a whole, aims at a theory of categories corresponding to the most general features of possible objects, whether existing or non-existing. The present paper is an attempt to summarise and extend recent research in analytical metaphysics in a formalised theory of objects. Existence is characterised as a formal property, suggesting that the use of quantifiers alone does not involve any existential assumptions about the objects quantified over. However, the only non-existing objects allowed for in the present account are real or objective possibilities. De re modalities as well as ontological dependence are defined on the basis of a counterpart-theoretic specification of possibilia. The present framework allows for necessary and non-relative identity as well as for a granular parthood relationship satisfying the thesis of composition as partial identity. The paper culminates in the formalisation of an Aristotelian four-category ontology allowing for universals and particulars, substances and particularised properties; in this context, the redundance of higher-order material universals as well as moderate haecceitism is argued for. After a short analysis of relationality and extrinsicness, a theory of spatial and temporal objects is sketched and a temporal counterpart theory is proposed as a solution to the problem of temporary intrinsics. The paper concludes with some general remarks on the relation between ontology and the theory of subjectivity, defending a modal approach to consciousness and a counterpart theoretic analysis of intentionality.

This essay is a sustained attempt to bring new light to some of the perennial problems in philosophy of mind surrounding phenomenal consciousness and introspection through developing an account of sensory and phenomenal concepts. Building on the information-theoretic framework of Dretske (1981), we present an informational psychosemantics as it applies to what we call sensory concepts, concepts that apply, roughly, to so-called secondary qualities of objects. We show that these concepts have a special informational character and semantic structure that closely tie them to the brain states realizing conscious qualitative experiences. We then develop an account of introspection which exploits this special nature of sensory concepts. The result is a new class of concepts, which, following recent terminology, we call phenomenal concepts: these concepts refer to phenomenal experience itself and are the vehicles used in introspection. On our account, the connection between sensory and phenomenal concepts is very tight: it consists in different semantic uses of the same cognitive structures underlying the sensory concepts, such as the concept of red. Contrary to widespread opinion, we show that information theory contains all the resources to satisfy internalist intuitions about phenomenal consciousness, while not offending externalist ones. A consequence of this account is that it explains

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Introduction The problem of consciousness, also known as the Mind-Body Problem, is probably the largest outstanding obstacle in our quest to scientifically understand reality. The science of physics is not yet complete, but it is well-understood. The science of biology has explained away most of the mysteries surrounding the nature of life. Where there are gaps in our understanding of these fields, the gaps do not seem intractable; we at least have some idea of the direction in which solutions might lie. In the science of mind, things are not quite so rosy. Much progress is being made in the study of cognition, but consciousness itself is as much of a problem as it ever was. The term "consciousness" usually serves as a convenient catch-all for all that is truly mysterious about mentality. When using the term, one must therefore be careful not to collapse important distinctions, allowing confusion. The most important distinction in the study of co

Imagine the day when physics is complete. A theory is in place which unifies all the forces of nature in one self-consistent and empirically verified set of absolutely basic principles. There are some who see this day as perhaps not too distant (e.g. Hawking 1988, Weinberg 1992, Horgan 1996). Of course, the mere possession of this theory of everything will not give us the ability to provide a complete explanation of everything: every event, process, occurrence and structure. Most things will be too remote from the basic theory to admit of explanation in its terms; even relatively small and simple systems will be far too complex to be intelligibly described in the final theory. But seeing as our imagined theory is fully developed and mathematically complete it will enable us to set up detailed computer simulations of physical systems. The range of practicable simulations will in fact be subject to the same constraints facing the explanatory use of the theory; the modelling of even very simple systems will require impossibly large amounts of computational resources. Nonetheless, possession of a computational implementation of our final theory would be immensely useful. Real versions of something very like my imaginary scenario now exist and are already fruitful. For example, there are computer models of quantum

The unity of consciousness is our capacity to be conscious of a number of items all at once, in what could be called a single conscious act. Such unity is found in at least three places: consciousness of the world in general, consciousness of self in general, and paying focal attention to aspects of either. In all three, unified consciousness has both a synchronic and a diachronic dimension. That is to say, consciousness is unified both at a given moment and over time. Unified consciousness can be breached in two ways: by splitting (into two unified centres of consciousness, as in brain bisection operations) and by shattering (as in some severe schizophrenias and dysexecutive disorder). Studying it in its breakdown conditions is a good way to throw light on it. In this paper, we will delineate the unity of consciousness, explore some situations in which it breaks down, and relate it to some other mental unities.

This essay is a sustained information-theoretic attempt to bring new light on some of the perennial problems in the philosophy of mind surrounding phenomenal consciousness and introspection. Following Dretske (1981), we present and develop an informational psychosemantics as it applies to what we call sensory concepts, concepts that apply, roughly, to so-called secondary qualities of objects. We show that these concepts have a special informational character and semantic structure that closely tie them to the brain states realizing conscious qualitative experiences. We then develop an account of introspection utilizing this special nature of sensory concepts. The result is a principled naturalistic account of a class of concepts used in the introspection of experiences, which, following recent terminology, we call phenomenal concepts. Contrary to widespread opinion, we show that information theory contains all the resources to satisfy internalist intuitions about phenomenal consciousness, while not offending externalist ones. A consequence of this account is that it explains and predicts the so-called conceivability arguments against physicalism on the basis of the special nature of sensory and phenomenal concepts. Thus we not only show why physicalism is not threatened by such arguments, but also demonstrate its strength in virtue of its ability to predict and explain away such arguments in a principled way. However, we take the main contribution of this work not so much as a response to conceivability arguments as a substantive account of the interface between sensory and conceptual systems, and the mechanisms of introspection as based on the special nature of the information flow between them.

The main aim of this thesis is to defend the metaphysical doctrine of physicalism (which claims that everything is physical) from a very powerful class of antiphysicalist arguments, namely, the so-called conceivability arguments. These arguments are concerned with phenomenal consciousness, that is, the aspect of mentality having to do with what it is like to undergo mental states. Conceivability arguments purport to show that phenomenal consciousness is not physical, and therefore, physicalism fails since there is at least one phenomenon that is not physical. Physicalism is usually characterised in terms of a supervenience thesis: physicalism is true if and only if all facts (including phenomenal facts) supervene on physical facts. Conceivability arguments try to show that the phenomenal does not supervene on the physical, that is, that there is at least one possible world that is physically identical to ours but where phenomenal facts differ. Conceivability arguments start by stating that we can conceive of a possible world physically identical to the actual world, but where phenomenal facts are different (for instance, zombie worlds). From this, they infer that such a world is possible. That is, they think that the conceivability of such a world entails its possibility. And as just noted, if such worlds are possible, physicalism fails. My goal is to argue that the conceivability-possibility link posited by advocates of conceivability arguments (such as Chalmers, Jackson, Kripke, White and others) is not correct. I examine two different strategies against such inference from conceivability to possibility, namely, the so-called exceptionalist and nonexceptionalist strategies, and I develop and defend both of them. One of my objectives is to show that the best over-all strategy is a combination of both exceptionalism and non-exceptionalism, which, I argue, is perfectly coherent. 2 A mis hermanas y mi padre, y en memoria de mi madre (To my sisters and my father, and in memory of my mother) 3

Understanding the nature of pain depends, at least partly, on recognizing its subjectivity. This in turn requires using a first-person experiential approach in addition to third-person experimental approaches to study it. This paper is an attempt to spell out what the former approach is and how it can be integrated with the latter. We start our discussion by examining some foundational issues raised by the use of introspection. We explain what makes such a first-person methodology indispensable in the scientific study of pain. We argue that there is no reason to think that the use of such a first-person approach is scientifically or methodologically suspect. We give examples approximating experiments that use the kinds of first-person methods that we propose and defend here, which we call the experiential or phenomenological approach that has its origins in the work of Price and Barrell (1980). We conclude that integrating such an approach to conventional third-person methodologies can only help us in having a fuller understanding of pain and of conscious experience in general.