Felipe De Brigard

RESUMEN Muchos psiquiatras se encuentran constantemente con pacientes cuyos síntomas incluyen trastornos o alteraciones de la conciencia. Infortunadamente, el significado del término conciencia es poco claro. Este artículo hace un repaso sistemático de varios significados atribuidos a dicho término, así como de diversos problemas filosóficos asociados. Asimismo, reconstruye varias teorías filosóficas y científicas de la conciencia, identificando sus ventajas y desventajas. Al final, ofrece algunas sugerencias para el uso del término conciencia en la psiquiatría. ABSTRACT Psychiatrists often encounter patients whose symptoms include disorders or impairments of consciousness. Unfortunately, the meaning of the term consciousness is not altogether clear. This article presents a systematic review of various meanings attributed to this term, as well as of diverse associated philosophical problems. Likewise, it reconstructs some philosophical and scientific theories of consciousness, identifying their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, it offers some suggestions for the use of the term consciousness in psychiatry.

How do people evaluate causal relationships? Do they just consider what actually happened, or do they also consider what could have counterfactually happened? Using eye tracking and Gaussian process modeling, we investigated how people mentally simulated past events to judge what caused the outcomes to occur. Participants played a virtual ball‐shooting game and then—while looking at a blank screen—mentally simulated (a) what actually happened, (b) what counterfactually could have happened, or (c) what caused the outcome to happen. Our findings showed that participants moved their eyes in patterns consistent with the actual or counterfactual events that they mentally simulated. When simulating what caused the outcome to occur, participants moved their eyes consistent with simulations of counterfactual possibilities. These results favor counterfactual theories of causal reasoning, demonstrate how eye movements can reflect simulation during this reasoning and provide a novel approach for investigating retrospective causal reasoning and counterfactual thinking.

Epiphenomenalism holds that mental events are caused by physical events while not causing any physical effects whatsoever. The self-stultification objection is a venerable argument against epiphenomenalism according to which, if epiphenomenalism were true, we would not have knowledge of our own sensations. For the past three decades, W.S. Robinson has called into question the soundness of this objection, offering several arguments against it. Many of his arguments attempt to shift the burden of proof onto the opponents of epiphenomenalism, hoping to show that epiphenomenalism is no less stultifying than its contenders, such as dualism, functionalism, or identity theory. In the current paper I attempt to shift the burden of proof back to Robinson, and thus to defend the self-stultification objection, by offering two counterarguments against one of Robinson's objections to one of the key premises of the self-stultification objection