Course Descriptions

Material objects experience acceleration the like, but we have subjective experiences, experiences that are like something for us as subjects undergoing them.  States and events of phenomenal consciousness are such that it is like something for us to be in them or to undergo them. The seminar will be concerned with the place of phenomenal consciousness in nature; more specifically, with “the hard problem of consciousness.”  The reading for the course will be a number of seminal texts that have been published over the course of the last 50 years or so as well as some as yet unpublished material. The theories that will be examined include, pansychism, panprotopsychism, neurobiologicalism, emergentism, functionalism, and representationalism.  There will be several visiting speakers, including, among others still to be arranged, Christopher Hill, Adam Pautz, Galen Strawson, and Robert van Gulick.  The requirements for the course will be a short in-class presentation and one substantive term paper.