Epiphenomenal Qualia

What is self-specific? Theoretical investigation and critical review of neuroimaging results.

“…Note that since it is nonreductionist, our approach is not targeted by classical skeptic arguments against reductionism, according to which it would be impossible to reduce mental subjective phenomena to physical objective processes (Jackson, 1982;Nagel, 1974). Moreover, the present work will not address the "hard problem" (Chalmers, 1995) of bridging the "explanatory gap" (Levine, 1983, p. 354) between an investigation of physical processes correlated with consciousness on the one hand and the understanding of why such physical processes elicit consciousness on the other.…”

The Researcher as Experimental Subject: Using Self-Experimentation to Access Experiences, Understand Social Phenomena, and Stimulate Reflexivity

“…Philosophers refer to this type of information as "qualia" (Jackson, 1982), and it is often invoked in defense of the notion that conscious phenomena cannot be fully understood until they are known both in terms of their objective third-person description as well as through subjective first-person experience. Thomas Nagel's (1974) "what is it like to be a bat?"…”

Knowing How without Knowing That

“…But clearly, on either disambiguation, knowing how to play the piano is still a kind of knowledge-that. 13 S&W claim that their account of knowledge-how is inconsistent with the ability hypothesis reply to Jackson's (1982Jackson's ( , 1986 knowledge argument. I dispute this claim in Cath (2009). 14 This claim is consistent with S&W's opposition to the idea that S know how to φ iff S possesses the ability to φ, for S&W (2001, p. 416) explicitly deny the entailment in the other direction: "ascriptions of knowledge-how do not even entail ascriptions of the corresponding abilities".…”