Michael Tye – författare

In the seventeenth century, the famous French philosopher, Rene Descartes, held that nonhuman animals, lacking souls, are organic automata without any consciousness. This led him to participate in vivisections on dogs, dismissing their howls as mere noises. Voltaire later ridiculed Descartes' view; and it is certainly a position to which hardly anyone would subscribe today. But just which animals are conscious? Most people would admit mammals generally; but what about fish? Honeybees? Crabs? Turning to the artificial realm, what about suitably complex robots? These questions are hard to answer in part because feelings and experiences are subjective things, and we have no direct access to the feelings and experiences of others. Exacerbating the issue is the fact that there are differences between human brains and the brains of nonhuman creatures. With the differences in neurophysiology, perhaps the crucial feature underwriting any spark of consciousness is missing with the result that the animals simply function in ways that are similar to us along various dimensions without feeling as we do on the inside or feeling anything at all for that matter. In some cases, the differences in neurophysiology seem acute. Take fish, for example, or insects. Fish lack a neocortex, as do insects, and, in humans, consciousness is often held to require cortical activity.The present book suggests a methodology for dealing with these questions, without endorsing any specific theory of the nature of consciousness (about which there is little agreement anyway), and offers concrete answers. In the final chapter, there is a discussion of the ethical treatment of animals and related issues, including whether we should be vegetarians.

When Alice stepped through the looking-glass, she encountered a peculiar world where she meets animated chess pieces, characters from nursery rhymes, and talking animals. Everything there is inside out and upside down: so it is with consciousness. Reflecting on the inception of consciousness, it is natural to suppose that there are just two alternatives. Either consciousness appeared in living beings suddenly, like a light switch turning on, or it appeared gradually, like the biological development of life itself, through borderline cases which became the collective experience over time. For the former theory, consciousness is an on/off matter, but once it was there it became richer over time, like a beam of light becoming brighter and broader in its sweep. For the latter theory this is not the case, and there are shades of grey in how consciousness develops.Unfortunately, both alternatives face deep problems. The solution to these problems lies in the realization, strange as it may be, that a key element of consciousness itself was always here, as a fundamental feature of micro-reality. Varying conscious states were not, however: they appeared gradually. In Vagueness and the Evolution of Consciousness, Michael Tye addresses the questions that this raises. Where in the brain is consciousness located? How can consciousness be casually efficacious with respect to behaviour? What is the extent of consciousness in the animal world? How can all of this be so?

When Alice steps through the looking-glass, she encounters a peculiar world where she meets animated chess pieces, characters from nursery rhymes, and talking animals. Everything there is inside out and upside down: so it is with consciousness.Reflecting on the inception of consciousness, it is natural to suppose that there are just two alternatives. Either consciousness appeared in living beings suddenly, like a light switch turning on, or it appeared gradually, just as life did, through a range of borderline cases. For the former theory, consciousness is an on/off matter, but once it was there it became richer over time, like a beam of light becoming brighter and broader in its sweep. For the latter theory this is not the case. There are shades of gray. There is no one moment at which consciousness appeared.Unfortunately, both alternatives face deep problems. The solution to these problems lies in the realization, strange as it may be, that a key element of consciousness itself was always here, as a fundamental feature of micro-reality. Varying conscious states were not, however: they appeared gradually. In Vagueness and the Evolution of Consciousness, Michael Tye explains in detail how this can be so. He also addresses questions about the location of consciousness in the brain, the causal efficacy of consciousness with respect to behaviour, and the extent of consciousness in the animal world.

How can one think about the same thing twice without knowing that it's the same thing? How can one think about nothing at all (for example Pegasus, the mythical flying horse)? Is thinking about oneself special? One could mistake one's car for someone else's, but it seems one could not mistake one's own headache for someone else's. Why not?Mark Sainsbury and Michael Tye provide an entirely new theory--called 'originalism'-- which provides simple and natural solutions to these puzzles and more. Originalism's central thesis is that concepts, the constituents of thoughts, are to be individuated by their origin, rather than epistemically or semantically. The doctrine has further valuable consequences for the nature of thought, our knowledge of our own thoughts, the nature of experience, the epistemology of perception-based beliefs, and for arguments based on conceivability. Sainsbury and Tye argue that although thought is special, there is no special mystery attaching to the nature of thought. Their account of the mind considers it as part of nature, as opposed to something with supernatural powers--which means that human beings have more opportunities to make mistakes than many have liked to think.

How can one think about the same thing twice without knowing that it's the same thing? How can one think about nothing at all (for example Pegasus, the mythical flying horse)? Is thinking about oneself special? One could mistake one's car for someone else's, but it seems one could not mistake one's own headache for someone else's. Why not?R. M. Sainsbury and Michael Tye provide an entirely new theory--called 'originalism'-- which provides simple and natural solutions to these puzzles and more. Originalism's central thesis is that concepts, the constituents of thoughts, are to be individuated by their origin, rather than epistemically or semantically. The doctrine has further valuable consequences for the nature of thought, our knowledge of our own thoughts, the nature of experience, the epistemology of perception-based beliefs, and for arguments based on conceivability. Sainsbury and Tye argue that although thought is special, there is no special mystery attaching to the nature of thought. Their account of the mind considers it as part of nature, as opposed to something with supernatural powers--which means that human beings have more opportunities to make mistakes than many have liked to think.