CONSCIOUSNESS

48 1. Philosophy
it as “beyond being in rank and power” [Republic 509b].) When one focuses, as the Platonic
tradition does, on the greater reality as oneself that’s achieved by self-determining beings including
those with minds, then other phenomena take on perhaps unfamiliar roles. In particular,
consciousness and the first-person point of view then derive their importance from their
contribution to one’s reality as oneself, through the increased self-determination that they
make possible. Thus Platonism confirms our sense (as against materialism) that consciousness
isn’t merely epiphenomenal. Consciousness enables beings to achieve greater reality as themselves.
Unlike dualism, however, Platonism unifies the whole range of reality under a single
feature (namely, increasing degrees of reality as oneself). Structure, growth, reproduction,
motility, sensation, consciousness, self-consciousness and abstract thought are all phases of
this one endeavor. Viewing them as phases on a scale, Platonism (unlike panpsychism) honors
the common-sense view that lower entities like rocks and plants don’t possess consciousness.
The Platonic view also differs from the “idealist” views of Bishop Berkeley, Immanuel Kant,
F.H. Bradley, Josiah Royce and others, as well as from A.N. Whitehead’s “process” thought
and from phenomenology. None of these get into focus the role of the Good and consciousness
in achieving reality as oneself, which Plato analyzed in the “Republic” etc., Aristotle in the
“De Anima” etc., Plotinus in the “Enneads,” and Hegel in his “Science of Logic” and “Encyclopedia
of the Philosophical Sciences”. (I have identified this theme in Hegel and analyzed
his account of it in extensive textual detail in my “Hegel’s Philosophy of Reality, Freedom,
and God” [Cambridge University Press, 2005].) If this conception reminds you of the “great
chain of being” that A.O. Lovejoy traced to Plato and Aristotle, you’re right. It’s a statement
of the original and defensible content of that idea. It conflicts in no way with modern science,
and it provides a more satisfying explanation of consciousness’s role and status in reality as a
whole than current science and philosophy of mind have been able to provide. P1
16 A Neutral Monism’s Theory of Mind and Matter Xinyan Zhang
(Shandong Univ., School of Medicine, Duesseldorf, Germany)
The author does not think either reductive physicalism or property dualism a solution for
the problem of consciousness, and tries in this paper to show how neutral monism may solve
it. By following Anaximander, Hume, Mach, Richard Avenarius, William James, Bertrand
Russell, Kenneth Sayre, philosophers of neutral monism are approaching a better understanding:
Consciousness is a real existence, realer than either mind or matter. The author has also
discussed in details the functional roles that consciousness plays in the whole activities of
human mind. P7
1.3 Materialism and dualism
17 Uniting “Hard-To-Classify” Responses to the Conceivability Argument Against
Materialism Dave Beisecker (Philosophy, University of
Nevada, Las Vegas, NV)
In “The Two-Dimensional Argument Against Materialism” (expanded version), Chalmers
notes that there are several responses to the conceivability argument that resist easy classification
according to his earlier taxonomy of responses. Chief among these ‘hard to classify’
responses are the conditional analysis reply advanced by Hawthorne, Braddon-Mitchell, and
Stalnaker, as well as various ‘reverse-zombie’ arguments promoted by Balog, Frankish, and
Brown. One thing that these responses have in common is the adoption of an indirect strategy
whereby allegedly parallel thought experiments are deployed in order to defuse or otherwise
blunt the compelling force of the original conceivability argument. These thought experiments
in turn bid us to consider seriously how matters would stand from the perspective of thoroughly
materialistic beings who apply something resembling phenomenal concepts in their
wholly material world. Thus we have Hawthorne’s Oracle, Balog’s Illuminati and Yogis, and
Frankish’s Anti-zombies, to say nothing of the eponymous question Stalnaker raises in ‘What
is it Like to be a Zombie?’ Despite this commonality, it is remarkable how divided proponents
of these responses are in their respective diagnoses of what goes wrong with the original conceivability
argument. Some (e.g., Stalnaker, Braddon-Mitchell) take these considerations to