Michael Tye

Philosophers who advocate an ontology without events must show how sentences containing apparent reference to events can be systematically paraphrased, or "regimented," into sentences which avoid ontological commitment to these putative entities. Two alternative proposals are set forth for regimenting statements containing putatively event-denoting definite descriptions. Both proposals eliminate the apparent reference to events, while still preserving the validity of inferences sanctioned by the surface grammar of the regimented sentences.

Philosophers who advocate an ontology without events must show how sentences containing apparent reference to events can be systematically paraphrased, or "regimented," into sentences which avoid ontological commitment to these putative entities. Two alternative proposals are set forth for regimenting statements containing putatively event-denoting definite descriptions. Both proposals eliminate the apparent reference to events, while still preserving the validity of inferences sanctioned by the surface grammar of the regimented sentences.

We are material beings in a material world, but we are also beings who have experiences and feelings. How can these subjective states be just a matter of matter? To defend materialism, philosophical materialists have formulated what is sometimes called "the phenomenal-concept strategy," which holds that we possess a range of special concepts for classifying the subjective aspects of our experiences. In Consciousness Revisited, the philosopher Michael Tye, until now a proponent of the the phenomenal-concept strategy, argues that the strategy is mistaken. A rejection of phenomenal concepts leaves the materialist with the task of finding some other strategy for defending materialism. Tye points to four major puzzles of consciousness that arise: How is it possible for Mary, in the famous thought experiment, to make a discovery when she leaves her black-and-white room? In what does the explanatory gap consist and how can it be bridged? How can the hard problem of consciousness be solved? How are zombies possible? Tye presents solutions to these puzzles -- solutions that relieve the pressure on the materialist created by the failure of the phenomenal-concept strategy. In doing so, he discusses and makes new proposals on a wide range of issues, including the nature of perceptual content, the conditions necessary for consciousness of a given object, the proper understanding of change blindness, the nature of phenomenal character and our awareness of it, whether we have privileged access to our own experiences, and, if we do, in what such access consists

One standard objection to the view that phenomenal experience is functionally determined is based upon what has come to be called ‘The Absent Qualia Hypothesis’, the idea that there could be a person or a machine that was functionally exactly like us but that felt or consciously experienced nothing at all. Advocates of this hypothesis typically maintain that we can easily imagine possible systems that meet the appropriate functional specifications but that intuitively lack any phenomenal consciousness. Ned Block, for example, asks us to suppose that a billion Chinese people are each given a two-way radio with which to communicate with one another and with an artificial body. The movements of the body are controlled by the radio signals, and the signals themselves are made in accordance with instructions the Chinese people receive from a vast display in the sky which is visible to all of them. The instructions are such that the participating Chinese people together realize whatever programs the functionalist supposes underlie human phenomenal experience.

Keith has just taken a hallucinogenic drug. A few minutes earlier, he was occupied with the beginning of H.H. Price's well-known book on perception. The combined effect of these activities is that Keith is now hallucinating a ripe tomato. This is not a de re hallucination. There is no particular tomato located elsewhere out of Keith's vision such that he is hallucinating that tomato as being before him. Keith is hallucinating a tomato without there being any particular tomato that he is hallucinating. What is the representational content of Keith‟s experience?