Cognition and Philosophy Lab, Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies, Department of Philosophy, Monash University, Room 429, 29 Ancora Imparo Way, Melbourne, VIC 3800, Australia.
3 papers in the library · 13 citations · publishing 2024-2025
Detecting errors in people's introspective reports about their own conscious experiences is often considered nearly impossible, posing a major challenge for consciousness science. Some researchers argue introspection should be abandoned as evidence, while others claim key questions cannot be answered empirically. The author argues these challenges can be overcome by using natural kind reasoning—iteratively applying inference to the best explanation to identify and exploit regularities in nature. This approach can detect introspective errors even in difficult cases like judgments about mental imagery. The conclusion is that worries about intractable methodological problems in consciousness science are misguided.
Mental imagery has traditionally been considered a conscious experience, but recent findings suggest it can occur unconsciously. People with aphantasia, who report no conscious imagery, often perform similarly to controls on imagery-requiring tasks, show imagery-based priming, and exhibit imagery-related neural activity in visual cortex. However, investigating unconscious imagery faces challenges: ensuring imagery is genuinely unconscious rather than unreported due to response biases, and clarifying how imagistic or indirect perceptual processing must be to qualify as imagery. This paper examines the evidence, argues it is less compelling than initially appears, and proposes a strategy for advancing research.
The neuroscience of consciousness has traditionally aimed to identify the minimal neural conditions sufficient for conscious experience. This paper argues for a shift to a mechanistic approach that seeks neural difference-makers—components that causally contribute to consciousness—rather than merely sufficient conditions. It clarifies how the mutual manipulability criterion can distinguish constitutive parts of a mechanism from merely causal influences. Applying this framework to debates about the prefrontal cortex, the author contends that the prefrontal cortex qualifies as part of the neural mechanisms underlying consciousness, even if it is not strictly necessary for every instance of consciousness.