1. Terminology Materialism: The universe consists entirely of physical stuff. Normally associated with the contemporary scientific view of the world.

2. Two Varieties of Dualism Substance dualism: There are two kinds of substance in the universe: physical substance and nonphysical mental stuff. Property dualism: There are two kinds of properties that a thing can have, physical properties and nonphysical mental properties. (Consistent with all things being material things.)

3. Sketch of Rene Descartes’s famous argument for dualism: I can imagine myself existing without a physical body (or any physical basis). Thus, it’s possible for me to exist without a body. Thus, I’m not identical to a physical body. Therefore, my self is constituted by a nonphysical substance.

4. Is this an argument only for property dualism? Because I can imagine the mind and body separated, mental properties must not be identical to physical properties; but maybe the thing that has both kinds of properties is ultimately physical.

5. More Terminology Mind-Brain Identity Theory: A given kind of mental state is identical to a specific kind of brain state (faces the “chauvinism” objection) Functionalism: To be in mental state S is to be in some state or other that plays the distinctive causal role of states of type S.

6. Is functionalism a form of property-dualism? It’s plausible that functional properties are completely determined by physical ones. Is it possible for the two to come apart? Could something have a given functional property in a world with a completely different distribution of physical properties?

7. Chalmers’s distinction The easy problems of consciousness are standard cognitive scientific problems, having to do with access, reportability, and generally, the effects of various neural and cognitive states on each other and on behavior. The hard problem of consciousness: Accounting for the subjective quality of experience, its intrinsic character (the soft feel of fur, the tart taste of a lemon).

8. Easy problems and functionalism -Work on the easy problems presupposes functionalism (or perhaps identity theory) -From a scientific standpoint, though, it does not matter whether this amounts to property dualism, so long as, for each population, there is a correlation between physical structure and functional properties associated with consciousness.

9. Searle on Consciousness Searle says that, as a matter of fact, in our world biological properties cause conscious ones, including the qualia. If we can figure out which physical properties cause which conscious experiences (or cause consciousness to exist at all), the easy and hard problems are solved.

10. The properties to be explained -qualitativeness: a given conscious experience has distinctive, intrinsic characteristics -subjectivity: conscious experiences are necessarily experiences of a self or mind -unity: conscious experience is always part of a single unified field

11. Searle and dualism The physical properties cause conscious experience, but do conscious experiences cause anything to happen in the physical world? Movement? Speech? Reactions? If so, why isn’t this dualism?

12. The building block approach to the scientific study of consciousness We try identify the neural correlates of conscious states (NCC), for various aspects of our conscious experience; Then we figure out how they get bound together.

13. Unified field approach Figure out what brings about consciousness at all (versus unconsciousness), then study patterns of modification of the field. This motivates a different kind of research program than is often reported on in the literature. Not so much study of blindsight and binocular rivalry, and more study of, say, the thalamocortical loop.

14. Thalamocortical loop The thalamus is a complex subcortical structure that receives incoming sensory information, relays it to sensory cortices, and receives feedback from sensory cortices. In the laminated neocortex (six layers), thalamus projects to layer four, four projects to other layers, then six sends information back to the thalamus.