Dennett’s theory of consciousness is often misread as broadly anti-realist. His aversion to ontology encourages readers to form their own interpretations, and the rhetoric he employs often seems to support the anti-realist reading. Dennett does offer defenses against the anti-realist charge, but these are piecemeal and diffuse. This paper examines Dennett’s most current expression, which proves insufficient on its own as a resolution to the ontological dispute. Drawing on related discussions in an attempt to find a resolution leads to a (...) further challenge from Schwitzgebel. Crucial distinctions between inner and outer, cause and effect, and reporting and expressing, unite in a general characterization of how a realist explanation of consciousness should bottom out. Dennett’s form of realism depends upon distinguishing the explananda of consciousness from their doomed explanans; anti-realism about the latter makes room for genuine explanation of how things seem to us. (shrink)

Integrated Information Theory posits a new kind of information, which, given certain constraints, constitutes consciousness. Searle objects to IIT because its appeal to information relies on observer-relative features. This misses the point that IIT’s notion of integrated information is intrinsic, the opposite of observer-relative. Moreover, Searle overlooks the possibility that IIT could be embraced as an extension of his theory. While he insists that causal powers of the brain account for consciousness, he maintains that these causal powers aren’t tied to (...) protoplasmic material. Whatever these causal powers are, they don’t consist in mere information-processing or computation. IIT agrees, and also positively characterizes the relevant causal powers as those involved in generating integrated information. Examining the further commitments of each theory reveals that IIT renews a fundamentally ontological challenge to information-processing and computational theories of mind. (shrink)

The relation of man to his environment is the relation of the historian to his theme.The individual apart from society would be both speechless and mindless.In every other European language, the eq...