Distinguished Lecture Series: David Rosenthal (City Univ. of New York)
Link to David Rosenthal’s slides (state: 3 November 2015) Consciousness has in recent years become a central topic of research in psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience. But this work seldom addresses the fundamental question of what consciousness is, instead simply taking for granted that we know well enough what it is “from the inside.” As a result, theoretical debates arise, which are difficult or impossible to resolve in the absence of any independently motivated, informative account of what consciousness consists in. I’ll develop and present support for a theoretical framework for understanding what consciousness is—in particular, what it is for states such as perceptions, sensations, feelings, and thoughts to occur consciously. And I’ll show how it applies successfully to some potentially problematic cases. David Rosenthal, Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Graduate Center, City University of New York
