A Structuralist Defence of the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness

Date

2018-09-01

Author

Davoody Benı, Majıd

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

156
views

0
downloads

This paper addresses John Searle's criticism of the integrated information theory of consciousness (IITC for short). Among other things, Searle claimed that, since information is a syntactic notion, IITC cannot account for the content of consciousness. He also argued that IITC cannot explain consciousness in causal terms. In this paper, I demonstrate that the original formulation of IITC is compatible with a structuralist reading. After that, I explain how a structuralist reconstruction of IITC could deal with the objections that Searle raised. Among other things, I argue that IITC could provide genuine scientific explanations of consciousness, but the explanations are to be presented in structural, rather than causal, terms.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/93422

Journal

JOURNAL OF CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES

Collections

Department of Philosophy, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

An attempt to make a definition of existence and constructing a foundation for an axiomatic system of ontology Çağatay, Hasan; Grünberg, Teo; Department of Philosophy (2007) This thesis aims to make an analysis of the concepts of ‘existence’. It also constructs four new definitions based on the concept of ‘effect’ for different concepts of beings. By reasoning based on these definitions and some pre-suppositions, a foundation for an axiomatic system of ontology is tried to construct.
The Code Model of Biosemiotics and the Fate of the Structuralist Theory of Mental Representation Davoody Benı, Majıd (2017-04-01) In this paper I am advocating a structuralist theory of mental representation. For a structuralist theory of mental representation to be defended satisfactorily, the naturalistic and causal constraints have to be satisfied first. The more intractable of the two, i.e., the naturalistic constraint, indicates that to account for the mental representation, we should not invoke "a full-blown interpreting mind". So, the aim of the paper is to show how the naturalistic and causal constraints could be satisfied. It...
A critical evaluation of Gricean reductive analysis of meaning Dinçer, Şule Nur; Grünberg, David; Department of Philosophy (2019) The aim of this thesis is to examine Paul Grice’s reductive analysis of the concept of non-natural meaning (meaningNN for short). The two stages of Grice’s reductive analysis will be outlined. The utterer’s meaning in the first stage and utterance-type meaning in the latter will be explained. The thesis will state the important objections and amendments in chronological order made by the selected philosopher, as well as – if available – Grice’s own response to the criticisms. We shall critically evaluate th...
An integrative explanation of action Benı, Majıd Davoody (Elsevier BV, 2020-12-01) The Predictive Processing Theory (PP) and its foundational Free Energy Principle (FEP) provide a unifying theoretical groundwork that subsumes theories of perception, cognition, and action. Recently Colin Klein (2018) contends that PP-FEP cannot explain adaptive action with the same force that they deal with perceptions. In his answer to the objection, Clark (2020) points out that FEP explains action, desire and motivation on the basis of minimisation of energy. I argue that this answer begs the question of...
An inquiry into the disputable position of imagination in Kant’s philosophy Atala, Müge; Çırakman, Elif; Department of Philosophy (2012) My thesis aims to delve into Immanuel Kant’s formulation of the faculty of imagination in his Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of the Power of Judgment. In relation to the First Critique, it specifically concerns the relation of the “mysterious” function of imagination to the object and its representation as one of the fundamental steps of the emergence or production of theoretical knowledge. As regards the Third Critique, it scrutinizes the relation of imagination to reflective, as opposed to determina...

Citation Formats

M. Davoody Benı, “A Structuralist Defence of the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness,” JOURNAL OF CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES, vol. 25, no. 9-10, pp. 75–98, 2018, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/93422.