Por Carolyn Jennings (University of California).

As many have said before, consciousness is not a thing. They retort: it is a process, a function, a seeming. I argue, instead, that it is a relation—a relation between a subject and its world. This new metaphysics of consciousness provides a way forward on the problem of consciousness, likewise giving new direction to the associated scientific work. It resolves old puzzles: the non-localizability issues of consciousness, for example, are also true of relations. What follows is reasoning aimed at upending what I take to be a deep misconception, with the hope of better understanding and progress. Along the way I discuss findings from experimental philosophy on the Hard Problem, including my own original study, to support this “Relation View.

Bio: Carolyn Jennings is a Professor and Chair of Philosophy at University of California, Merced. She works across multiple disciplines, but especially philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. In general, her work aims at understanding the nature of attention and its impact on the mind (e.g. on perception, consciousness, and action). Distinctive about her work is the claim that attention is directed by a subject, or self. She defends this view, for example, in The Attending Mind (CUP 2020): she argues that evidence from neuroscience points to the existence of an emergent subject that directs attention, which I define in natural terms.

Transmissão via Zoom.