Phenomenal unity of consciousness in synchronic and diachronic aspects

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 123-135
Author(s):  
Maria A. Sekatskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Unity Of Consciousness ◽  
Phenomenal Unity

The Multiplicity of I

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-32
Author(s):  
Jonardon Ganeri
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Multiple Personality Disorder ◽  
Unity Of Consciousness ◽  
Multiple Personality ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Phenomenal Unity ◽  
Virtual Subjects

If in heteronymic simulation I am a subject other than the subject I am, there are evidently as many other I’s as there are possible acts of simulation. Pessoa, inhabiting countless lives, says that by creating in imagination a multiplicity of virtual subjects, each of which is him, he has ‘ubiquitized’ himself. So he affirms a thesis I will call ‘Subject Plurality’: I am many subjects other than the subject I am. We need, though, to distinguish two versions of this thesis, for it can be read as making either a diachronic claim or a synchronic one. Interpreters of Pessoa have been drawn to present the Pessoan self as a sort of parliament or confederation of souls. Despite Pessoa’s appeal, once, to the metaphor of a colony—and there only in connection with the phenomenal unity of consciousness rather than with reference to the multiplicity of heteronyms—the ‘confederation’ theory is not Pessoa’s. It is a Proustian, not a Pessoan, picture of multiplicity. An appreciation of this distinction is crucial to seeing why Pessoa’s multiplicity of I is not reducible to another mental illness, multiple personality disorder. The distinction between successive and simultaneous subject plurality has found a surprising application: understanding Afrofuturism’s experimentation with multiple sonic selves.

The Phenomenal Unity of Consciousness

2020 ◽  
pp. 207-229
Author(s):  
Farid Masrour
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Unity Of Consciousness ◽  
Natural Feature ◽  
Unity Thesis ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Phenomenal Unity

Philosophical interest in unity of consciousness goes back at least to Kant. A recent revival of interest among analytic philosophers of mind focuses on unity of consciousness, construed as phenomenal unity. This chapter will survey some of the issues and questions that have been central to this recent work before sketching an alternative to what may be seen as a dominant, though implicit, tendency in the recent literature on unity: to formulate the idea that phenomenal unity is a natural feature of consciousness in terms of what the chapter will term the Unity Thesis. According to this thesis, all synchronous experiences of a conscious subject at a moment are phenomenally unified with each other. The chapter then rebuts another trend in recent literature: the tendency to understand phenomenal unity as obtaining in virtue of a type of oneness or singularity. The chapter advances an alternative that sees phenomenal unity as obtaining in virtue of connectivity conditions over relations among phenomenal experiences.

scholarly journals Model Unity and the Unity of Consciousness: Developments in Expected Float Entropy Minimisation

Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (11) ◽  
pp. 1444
Author(s):  
Jonathan W. D. Mason
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Formulation ◽  
Fundamental Property ◽  
Initial Study ◽  
Relational Model ◽  
Relational Models ◽  
Unity Of Consciousness ◽  
System States ◽  
Unified Consciousness ◽  
Clear Statement ◽  
Phenomenal Unity

The unity of consciousness, or, more precisely, phenomenal unity, is an important property of consciousness and an important area of research in mathematical consciousness science and the scientific study of consciousness. Due to the numerous aspects and complexity of consciousness, the property tends to engender loose or inadequate characterizations. In this article, we introduce the concept and mathematical formulation of model unity. A system has model unity if a single relational model, stretched across the whole system, is optimal. Alternatively, model unity may only be present for subsystems, although there may still be unity at some higher level. As a development in the theory of expected float entropy minimisation, such relational models provide an interpretation of system states and the theory may help to provide insights into questions such as why experience of the visual field is unified and why different people do not have a unified consciousness, for example. This article constitutes a relatively small initial study of model unity. Four investigations were undertaken and are given as examples. A postulate is also given, distilling the foundations of EFE minimisation into a clear statement allowing others to consider whether or not the postulate identifies a self-evident fundamental property of consciousness.

Judging for Reasons

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Leech
Keyword(s):  
Unity Of Consciousness ◽  
The Relationship

What, if any, is the relation between modal judgment and our capacity to make judgments at all? On a plausible interpretation, Kant connects what he calls the modality of a judgment to its location in a course of reasoning: actual inferential relations between that act of judgment and others. However, there is a puzzling consequence of this interpretation. It is natural to understand Kant as claiming that every judgment has some modality, but if the modality of a judgment is its location in a course of reasoning, then the implication is that every judgment must occur as part of a course of reasoning. Why think this? This chapter proposes an answer that draws on the relationship between judgment, judging for reasons, and the unity of consciousness.

Idealism Without God

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Yetter-Chappell
Keyword(s):  
Unity Of Consciousness ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Familiar World ◽  
Attributes Of God ◽  
Physical Laws

This chapter develops a novel non-theistic (quasi-)Berkeleyan idealism. The strategy is to peel away the attributes of God that aren’t essential for the role he plays in idealist metaphysics. Neither God’s desires, intentions, beliefs, nor his status as an agent is relevant to the metaphysical work he does in sustaining a robust reality. When we peel away these things, we’re left with a view on which reality is a vast unity of consciousness, weaving together sensory experiences into the familiar world around us. The chapter argues that if reality is fundamentally phenomenal in this way, we can give a unique account of perception that robustly captures direct realist intuitions of reality forming the ‘constituents’ of our experiences. The chapter assesses the unique virtues and challenges such a view faces, paying particular attention to the question of whether idealism entails a profligacy of physical laws.

Unity of Consciousness and Bi-Level Externalism

2000 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 528-544 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard W. Kobes
Keyword(s):  
Unity Of Consciousness

scholarly journals Representation, Consciousness, and Time

Metaphysica ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-155
Author(s):  
Sean Allen-Hermanson
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Unity Of Consciousness ◽  
Intentional States ◽  
Empirical Argument

Abstract I criticize Bourget’s intuitive and empirical arguments for thinking that all possible conscious states are underived if intentional. An underived state is one of which it is not the case that it must be realized, at least in part, by intentional states distinct from itself. The intuitive argument depends upon a thought experiment about a subject who exists for only a split second while undergoing a single conscious experience. This, however, trades on an ambiguity in “split second.” Meanwhile, Bourget’s empirical argument is question-begging. My critique also has implications for debates about the essential temporality and unity of consciousness experience, and, phenomenal atomism.

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