The article reviews the enactive approach to perception, which emphasizes the role of objects, the subject, and the environment in shaping the phenomenal character of perception—the qualitative dimension of experience. It begins by examining hallucination and its implications for understanding perception's phenomenal character. Then it critically explores two positions in analytic philosophy of perception: representationalism and disjunctivism. Finally, it presents enactivism as a more promising alternative.
A philosophical paper argues against Peter Carruthers' view that there is no fact of the matter about whether animals have conscious states. Carruthers combines global workspace theory with the phenomenal concept strategy to reach this skeptical conclusion. The paper presents Carruthers' theses, including his all-or-nothing view of consciousness and his distinction between qualia realism and qualia irrealism, then reconstructs his arguments against attributing consciousness to animals. It offers two arguments challenging Carruthers' position, highlighting internal contradictions. The author concludes that, contrary to Carruthers, animal consciousness deserves attention from philosophy and cognitive sciences.
A detailed reconstruction of Chalmers's two-dimensional zombie argument against materialism isolates its central assumption: that the epistemic scenario verifying the zombie hypothesis corresponds to a nonintentionally individuated metaphysical world considered as actual. The paper argues that no non-viciously circular case for this assumption has been made, rendering the two-dimensional argument at best inconclusive.