The Importance of Being Conscious

Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-0-19-887292-4
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 400 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

This volume is a collection of new work on the significance of consciousness: in what ways does conscious experience matter, and why? Many have thought that consciousness is not merely a theoretically puzzling phenomenon, but that it is important morally, epistemically, or in other ways. For example, this is a key reason why people care how consciousness is distributed: do animals, insects or even near future AIs have it? But in what sense (if at all) is this true, and why? And how does this relate to our view of what consciousness is? Do different theories of consciousness have different implications for how it matters? Does the view that consciousness reduces to a physical state of the brain imply that it does not matter in the way we think it does?

The Importance of Being Conscious brings together a variety of perspectives on these questions from leading theorists in ethics and philosophy of mind.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Lee, Geoffrey

Pautz, Adam

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction

- PART I: THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

- 1: David Chalmers: Sentience and Moral Status

- 2: Elizabeth Harman: Consciousness, Capacity, and Moral Status

- 3: Uriah Kriegel: Value of Consciousness to the One Who Has It

- 4: Gwen Bradford: Consciousness and Irreplaceable Value

- 5: Andrew Lee: Metaethical Experientialism

- PART II: THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE METAPHYSICS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

- 6: Geoffrey Lee: Consciousness, Pseudo-Consciousness, and the Moral Significance of Consciousness

- 7: David Papineau: Consciousness is not the Key to Moral Standing

- 8: Cian Dorr and John Hawthorne: Personites, Plenitude, and Intrinsicality

- 9: Brian Cutter: The Many-Subjects Argument against Physicalism

- 10: Jonathan Simon: The Moral Case for the Determinacy of Consciousness

- PART III: THE EPISTEMIC SIGNIFICANCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE METAPHYSICS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

- 11: Adam Pautz: Mary on Black and White Earth: The Significance Argument against Identity Physicalism

- 12: Helen Yetter-Chappell: Against Material Acquaintance

- 13: Declan Smithies: Understanding Concepts: Why Experience Matters

- 14: Katalin Balog: Contemplation in Retreat

Über Autor(innen)

Geoffrey Lee received his Ph.D from New York University in 2009. His research focuses on foundational questions about perception and consciousness. Lee is currently working on a new book about the philosophy and science of consciousness called The Search for the Inner Light: Finding Consciousness in a Material World.

Adam Pautz received his Ph.D. from New York University in 2004. He first taught at the University of Texas at Austin and since 2015 has been Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. Pautz works on traditional "big questions" about mind and nature by using a mix of empirically-informed arguments and "armchair" arguments. Alongside Daniel Stoljar, Pautz edited the collection Blockheads! (2019). Pautz is also the author of Perception (2021).