Consciousness: Contemporary Perspectives - AFS500312

• Title: Consciousness: Contemporary Perspectives
• Guaranteed by: Institute of Philosophy and Religious Studies (21-UFAR)
• Faculty: Faculty of Arts
• Actual: from 2023 to 2023
• Semester: summer
• Points: 0
• E-Credits: 5
• Examination process: summer s.:
• Hours per week, examination: summer s.:0/2, C [HT]
• Capacity: unknown / unlimited (unknown)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment; priority enrollment if the course is part of the study plan
• Guarantor: prof. James Hill, Ph.D.; Mgr. Jakub Mihálik, Ph.D.
• Teacher(s): prof. James Hill, Ph.D.; Mgr. Jakub Mihálik, Ph.D.

Annotation

Last update: prof. James Hill, Ph.D. (21.02.2024)

Consciousness: Contemporary Perspectives

The existence and nature of phenomenal consciousness, the familiar property of some organisms, due to which there's something it's like (Nagel), subjectively, for an organism to be in various mental and physical states, is arguably among the remaining mysteries of science and philosophy. While for much of the 20th century, partly due to the influence of behaviorism, consciousness was (in the anglophone world) viewed as unworthy of serious scientific and philosophical attention, since at least the early 1990s, there has been a growing wave of systematic interdisciplinary focus on consciousness. In our course, we will investigate consciousness by trying to understand the main debates about this phenomenon in the analytic philosophy of mind. These will include (i) assessment of the "the hard problem" of consciousness; (ii) the debate about how widespread consciousness is in nature (here two extremes are illusionism, according to which consciousness doesn't exist at all, and panpsychism, according to which primitive consciousness is ubiquitous in nature); (iii) the pressing debate about whether AI systems, such as the ChatGPT, could in principle be conscious; (iv) the debate about whether and how consciousness can be incorporated into a neo-Darwinian evolutionary framework; and (v) the debate about how consciousness and introspection relate. By the end of the course, its participants will have gained a good understanding of how rich and varied the contemporary debate about consciousness is, and will be able to critically reflect upon the main arguments and positions in these debates.

Literature

Last update: prof. James Hill, Ph.D. (19.02.2024)

Butlin, P., Long, R. et al. (2023). Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2308.08708

Chalmers, D. J. (1995). Facing up to the problem of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 2 (3):200-19.

Chalmers, D. J. (2004). The representational character of experience. In Brian Leiter (ed.), The Future for Philosophy. Oxford University Press. pp. 153--181.

Chalmers, David (2013). Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism. Amherst Lecture in Philosophy 8.

Chalmers, D. J. (2023). Could a large language model be conscious? Boston Review. URL:<https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/could-a-large-language-model-be-conscious/>

Dennett, D. (2017). From Bacteria to Bach and Back. The Evolution of Minds. W. W. Norton.

Frankish, K. (2016). Illusionism as a theory of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 23 (11-12):11-39.
Kriegel, U. (2009). Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Kriegel, U. (2019). The value of consciousness. Analysis 79 (3):503-520.
Mendelovici, A. A. (2018). The Phenomenal Basis of Intentionality. New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review 83 (October):435-50.
Rosenthal, D. M. (2002). Explaining Consciousness. In D. J. Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings. Oxford University Press. pp. 109-131.
Strawson, G. (2006). Realistic monism: why physicalism entails panpsychism. In A. Freeman (ed.), Consciousness and its place in nature: does physicalism entail panpsychism? pp. 3-31.

Requirements to the exam

Last update: prof. James Hill, Ph.D. (21.02.2024)

There are two course requirements: (1) attendance on a weekly basis; (2) an oral exam involving discussion of the major topics from the course. The oral exam will take place at the end of the semester and will involve questions about three of the five topics that are described in the course outline. If a student wishes to submit a written paper of 4-6 standard pages in length, instead of the oral exam, they should consult the instructors.