The Problem Of Consciousness

The Edge Foundation has posted a video interview with Alva Noë, Professor of Philosophy at UC-Berkeley, on the problem of consciousness. From the Web site:

The problem of consciousness is understanding how this world is there for us. It shows up in our senses. It shows up in our thoughts. Our feelings and interests and concerns are directed to and embrace this world around us. We think, we feel, the world shows up for us. To me that's the problem of consciousness. That is a real problem that needs to be studied, and it's a special problem.

A useful analogy is life. What is life? We can point to all sorts of chemical processes, metabolic processes, reproductive processes that are present where there is life. But we ask, where is the life? You don't say life is a thing inside the organism. The life is this process that the organism is participating in, a process that involves an environmental niche and dynamic selectivity. If you want to find the life, look to the dynamic of the animal's engagement with its world. The life is there. The life is not inside the animal. The life is the way the animal is in the world.

What is at issue is whether we can apply an objective causal model to explain our subjective conscious states to meaningfully explain the mystery of consciousness.

God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence

A solicitation for questions from Keith Augustine at infidels.org:

Last summer a series of philosophical debates titled "God or Blind
Nature?" was launched on the Secular Web. All four of the exchanges have now been published. Within the broader question of whether naturalism or theism is more likely to be true, eight issues are considered: the nature of the mind and its relationship to the brain; the irreducibility of consciousness and freedom of the will; the extent of apparently needless suffering in the world; whether reliable cognitive faculties could evolve purely by natural selection; whether there is room for anything external to the universe in an explanation of its existence; whether the universe is fine-tuned for life; whether the existence of nonresistant nonbelief entails the nonexistence of a loving God; and whether one ought to accept the existence of God simply because of the worldy benefits to happiness and longevity it purportedly produces.

See http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/debates/great-debate.html

Contributors include Alvin Plantinga, Quentin Smith, John Schellenberg, Andrew Melnyk, Paul Draper, Stewart Goetz, Charles Taliaferro, Robin Collins, and Jeffrey Jordan.

We are currently soliciting questions to pass on to any of these contributors about the issues they engage in these debates. We would greatly appreciate it if the subscribers to this list would pass this information on to their colleagues, and especially on to their students, as we would like average readers to have a unique opportunity to query these prominent philosophers and, if their questions are selected for publication, have these questions answered:

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/debates/great-questions.html

Since we anticipate publishing Q&A sessions in the Spring or Summer of this year, any assistance in getting a last-chance questions in as soon as possible would be greatly appreciated.