There is nothing it is like to see red

holism and subjective experience

Anthony F. Peressini

pp. 4637-4666

in: Wiebe van der Hoek, Wesley H. Holliday, Wen-fang Wang (eds), Logic, rationality and interaction (LORI-5), Synthese 195 (10), 2018.

Abstract

The Nagel inspired “something-it-is-like” (SIL) conception of conscious experience remains a dominant approach in philosophy. In this paper I criticize a prevalent philosophical construal of SIL consciousness, one that understands SIL as a property of mental states rather than entities as a whole. I argue against thinking of SIL as a property of states, showing how such a view is in fact prevalent, under-warranted, and philosophically pernicious in that it often leads to an implausible reduction of conscious experience to qualia. I then develop a holistic conception of SIL for entities (not states) and argue that it has at least equal pre-empirical warrant, is more conservative philosophically in that it decides less from the a priori “armchair,” and enjoys a fruitful two-way relationship with empirical work.

Cited authors

Nagel Thomas