Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T14:40:58.168Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Blindsight, the Absent Qualia Hypothesis, and the Mystery of Consciousness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Michael Tye
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

One standard objection to the view that phenomenal experience is functionally determined is based upon what has come to be called ‘The Absent Qualia Hypothesis’, the idea that there could be a person or a machine that was functionally exactly like us but that felt or consciously experienced nothing at all (see Block, 1980; Block and Fodor, 1980; Campbell, 1980; Nagel, 1980). Advocates of this hypothesis typically maintain that we can easily imagine possible systems that meet the appropriate functional specifications but that intuitively lack any phenomenal consciousness. Ned Block (1980), for example, asks us to suppose that a billion Chinese people are each given a two-way radio with which to communicate with one another and with an artificial (brainless) body. The movements of the body are controlled by the radio signals, and the signals themselves are made in accordance with instructions the Chinese people receive from a vast display in the sky which is visible to all of them. The instructions are such that the participating Chinese people together realize whatever programs the functionalist supposes underlie human phenomenal experience.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 34 , March 1993 , pp. 19 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Block, N. 1980, ‘Troubles with functionalism’, in Block, N. (ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume 1. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Block, N. and Fodor, J. 1980. ‘What psychological states are not’, in Block, N. (ed.) Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume 1. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Block, N. 1990 ‘Inverted earth’ in Tomberlin, J. (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives, Volume 4. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Campbell, K. 1980. Body and Mind. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Churchland, P. 1988. Matter and Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Crick, F. and Koch, C. 1990. ‘Toward a neurobiological theory of consciousness’, Seminars in the Neurosciences, 2, 263–275.Google Scholar
DeBellis, M. 1991. ‘The representational content of musical experience’, Philosophy and Phenomenolgical Research, 51, 303–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeBellis, M. forthcoming. Music and Conceptualization. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dennett, D. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Little Brown.Google Scholar
Efron, R. 1968. ‘What is perception?’ Boston Studies in Philosophy of Science 4, 159.Google Scholar
Farah, M. 1991. Visual Agnosia. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Godwin-Austen, R. 1965. ‘A case of visual disorientation’, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 28, 453–458.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Harman, G. 1990. ‘The intrinsic qualities of experience’, in Tomberlin, J. (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives, Volume 4, Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Heil, J. 1983. Perception and Cognition. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hecaen, H. and Ajuriaguerra, J. 1974 ‘Agnosie visuelle pour les objets inanimes par lesion unilaterale gauche’, Revue Neurologique, 12, 447–464.Google Scholar
Kosslyn, S. and Koenig, O. 1992. Wet Minds. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Landis, T., Graves, R., Benson, F., Hebben, N. 1982. ‘Visual recognition through kinaesthetic mediation’, Psychological Medicine, 12, 515–531.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lycan, W. 1987. Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Marr, D. 1982. Vision. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.Google Scholar
McGinn, C. 1991. The Problem of Consciousness. Oxford: Blackwells.Google Scholar
Mellor, H. 1977 ‘Conscious belief, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 68,87–101.Google Scholar
Moore, G. E. 1922. Philosophical Studies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Nagel, T. 1980. ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ in Block, N. (ed.) Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume 1, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Schneider, G. 1969. ‘Two visual systems’, Science, 163, 895–902.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Torjussen, T. 1978. ‘Visual processing in cortically blind hemifields’, Neuropsychologia 16, 15–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tye, M. 1986. ‘The subjective qualities of experience’, Mind, 95, 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tye, M. 1991a. ‘Visual qualia and visual content’, in Crane, T. (ed.), The Contents of Experience: Essays on Perception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tye, M. 1991b. The Imagery Debate. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Tye, M. 1992. ‘Naturalism and the mental’, Mind, 101, 421–441.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tye, M. forthcoming. ‘Qualia, content and the inverted spectrum’, Nous.Google Scholar
Tyler, H. 1968. ‘Abnormalities of perception with defective eye movements (Blaint's syndrome)’, Cortex, 3, 154–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ungerleider, L. and Mishkin, M. ‘Two cortical visual systems’, in Ingle, D., Goodale, M., and Mansfield, R. (ed.), Analysis of Visual Behavior. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Weiskrantz, L. 1986. Blindsight: A Case Study and its Implications. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weiskrantz, L. 1990. ‘Outlooks for blindsight : explicit methodologies for implicit processes’, Proceedings of the Royal Society London, 239, 247–278.Google ScholarPubMed