Overview

Four major puzzles of consciousness philosophical materialism must confront after rejecting the phenomenal concept strategy. We are material beings in a material world, but we are also beings who have experiences and feelings. How can these subjective states be just a matter of matter? To defend materialism, philosophical materialists have formulated what is sometimes called ""the phenomenal-concept strategy,"" which holds that we possess a range of special concepts for classifying the subjective aspects of our experiences. In Consciousness Revisited, the philosopher Michael Tye, until now a proponent of the the phenomenal-concept strategy, argues that the strategy is mistaken. A rejection of phenomenal concepts leaves the materialist with the task of finding some other strategy for defending materialism. Tye points to four major puzzles of consciousness that arise: How is it possible for Mary, in the famous thought experiment, to make a discovery when she leaves her black-and-white room? In what does the explanatory gap consist and how can it be bridged? How can the hard problem of consciousness be solved? How are zombies possible? Tye presents solutions to these puzzles—solutions that relieve the pressure on the materialist created by the failure of the phenomenal-concept strategy. In doing so, he discusses and makes new proposals on a wide range of issues, including the nature of perceptual content, the conditions necessary for consciousness of a given object, the proper understanding of change blindness, the nature of phenomenal character and our awareness of it, whether we have privileged access to our own experiences, and, if we do, in what such access consists.

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9780262012737

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Reviews

This marvelously informed, powerfully argued book is Michael Tye's latest contribution to the task of finding a naturalistic understanding of consciousness. It is an agenda setter. --Frank Jackson, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University In opposing dualism, and defending the view that mind is a form of matter, modern materialists often substitute a dualism of their own--a dualism of concepts rather than properties. Tye has been a leading advocate of this materialist strategy, in his classic Consciousness, Color, and Content and elsewhere. Consciousness Revisited marks a radical intellectual break: Tye offers powerful arguments against his previous position, and a new way to defend materialism, leaning on Bertrand Russell's notion of knowledge by acquaintance. This book is terrific--the many admirers of the early Tye may be reassured that the later Tye is just as good. --Alex Byrne, Department of Philosophy, MIT and coeditor of Disjunctivism

[An] impressive contribution to the study of consciousnessI highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the study of consciousness and perception. -- Yaron Senderowicz, Pragmatics and Cognition

Author Information

Michael Tye is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Ten Problems of Consciousness (1995), Consciousness, Color, and Content (2000), and Consciousness and Persons (2003), all published by the MIT Press. Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi is Professor of Physiology in the Medical School at Northwestern University, with joint appointments in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Biomedical Engineering. He is also Founder and Director of the Robotics Laboratory at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

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