Panpsychism, the view that the phenomenal experiences of macrophysical items, like ourselves, are nothing over and above combinations of phenomenal experiences of microphysical items, seems to be committed to various sorts of mental combination: in order to yield experiences such as our own, it seems that experiences, subjects, and phenomenal characters would have to mentally combine. The combi...

This paper compares and contrasts Michael Huemer’s Principle of Phenomenal Conservatism with Husserl’s well-known Principle of All Principles. Despite some similarities, I argue that the two are quite different. I examine several cases in which the theories provide different assessments of a belief’s epistemic status, and argue that Husserl’s gives the correct answer in each case. I also argue ...

Illusions have become an invaluable tool for investigating how the sense of a body as one’s own is constructed and maintained: During the rubber hand illusion (RHI, Botvinick and Cohen, 1998), congruent touch to one’s hidden hand and a fake counterpart produces an illusion of feeling the touch on the fake hand and, more strikingly, an experience of the fake hand as part of one’s body (Ehrsson e...

OBJECTIVE In the past decade, much has been written about 'the hard problem' of consciousness in the philosophy of mind. However, a separate hard problem faces the scientific study of consciousness. The problem arises when distinguishing the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) and the neural constitution of consciousness. Here, I explain this correlation/constitution distinction and the pr...

This paper argues that it is possible for suffering to occur in the absence of phenomenal consciousness − in the absence of a certain sort of experiential subjectivity, that is. (‘Phenomenal’ consciousness is the property that some mental states possess, when it is like something to undergo them, or when they have subjective feels, or possess qualia.) So even if theories of phenomenal conscious...

Deviant phenomenal knowledge is knowing what it’s like to have experiences of, e.g., red without actually having had experiences of red. Such a knower is a deviant. Some physicalists have argued and some anti-physicalists have denied that the possibility of deviants undermines anti-physicalism and the Knowledge Argument. The current paper presents new arguments defending the deviant-based attac...

In everyday life, many diverse bits of information, simultaneously derived from the different sensory channels, converge into discrete brain areas, and are ultimately synthetized into unified percepts. Such multisensory integration can dramatically alter the phenomenal experience of both environmental events and our own body. Crossmodal illusions are one intriguing product of multisensory integ...

This paper draws on existing phenomenological discourse of place to examine presence during the experience of virtual worlds. By analysing the occupied and experienced places during the inworld experience – the physical and virtual surroundings, for example – this paper aims to understand how the user feels a sense of presence or a sense of being in a virtual place. I apply rigid phenomenologic...

The James-Lange theory considers emotional feelings as perceptions of physiological body changes. This approach has recently resurfaced and modified in both neuroscientific and philosophical concepts of embodiment of emotional feelings. In addition to the body, the role of the environment in emotional feeling needs to be considered. I here claim that the environment has not merely an indirect a...