Ron Chrisley
Leverhulme Research Fellow in Artificial Intelligence
School of Computer Science
University of Birmingham
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~rlc/
Although I have previously defended the possibility of a physicalist science of consciousness against three popular attacks (Jackson's knowledge argument, Chalmers' "the physical does not imply the experiential" argument, and Nagel's "one cannot have an objective perspective on the subjective" argument), it seems to me there is a potentially much more serious argument (with roots in the writings of Kant, Wittgenstein, Strawson, Searle and Husserl) against the possibility of any science of consciousness (physicalist, dualist or otherwise) at all. Roughly:
1) an ambitious science of consciousness must be (at least) a science of seemings
2) a science of X must be able to refer to X
3) for one to refer to X one must be able to make a distinction, at least in principle, between how X seems and how X is
4) one cannot make a seems/is distinction for seemings
Therefore:
5) There cannot be an ambitious science of consciousness Recent work in cognitive science tries to argue directly against premise 4. Specifically, the Grand Illusion hypothesis is that empirical findings concerning the nature of our perceptual apparatus and behaviour tell us that, e.g., although our visual seemings *seem* to be coloured all the way from the centre to the periphery, they actually *aren't*. I don't think this reply works and I'll say why. I'll also say where I think this leaves the prospects for a science of consciousness.