Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-kwt9d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-12T18:07:20.648Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sidestepping the semantics of “consciousness”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2004

Michael V. Antony
Michael V. Antony*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel
*
antony@research.haifa.ac.il
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the 'Save PDF' action button.

Block explains the conflation of phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness by appeal to the ambiguity of the term “consciousness.” However, the nature of ambiguity is not at all clear, and the thesis that “consciousness” is ambiguous between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness is far from obvious. Moreover, the conflation can be explained without supposing that the term is ambiguous. Block's argument can thus be strengthened by avoiding controversial issues in the semantics of “consciousness.”

Information

Type
Continuing Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , April 2004, pp. 289 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2004

Footnotes

1. See, for example, Lyons (1977), Cruse (1986), and Pustejovsky (1996).

2. Lest one think that something like Chalmers’s (1996, Ch. 2) distinction between primary and secondary intensions suffices to show that “water” is ambiguous, notice that that could not be a kind of ambiguity relevant to the discussion in this commentary, since that would make all words (or at least all natural kind words) ambiguous, thus robbing the question whether conflation requires ambiguity, of any interest.

3. For more extended treatment of the issues discussed in this commentary, see Antony (2001; 2002).

References

Commentary on Ned Block (1995). On a confusion about a function of consciousness. BBS 18(2): 227–287.