Ted Honderich - Consciousness

Consciousness

Honderich's theory of the nature of consciousness is a view near to physicalism, and it is partly based on the proposition that the many existing theories of consciousness—which he divides up into two general categories, devout physicalism and spiritualism or Cartesian Dualism -- fail to satisfy a list of criteria for an adequate theory of consciousness. Physicalism reduces consciousness to nothing more than the physical. Spiritualism takes consciousness out of space and into mystery. Honderich's criteria of adequacy include taking account of the subjectivity of consciousness, which rules out devout physicalism but is an attraction of spiritualism. Other criteria are the reality of consciousness and its causal interaction with the physical world. These rule out spiritualism and seem to demand physicalism. His Theory of Radical Externalism, once called 'Consciousness as Existence', gets going with the question, 'What does it seem for you to be conscious of the room you are now in?' Honderich's answer is that it is for the room in a way to exist, to exist in a specified sense. It is for things to be in space and time outside your head, a world of perceptual consciousness dependent both on an external sub-world and on you neurally. This analysis of perceptual consciousness issues in further analyses of reflective and affective consciousness. Honderich argues that the theory does best at satisfying the criteria, succeeds where both physicalism and dualism fail.

The theory is expounded in On Consciousness and has been defended against 11 philosophers in an issue of The Journal of Consciousness Studies, republished as the book Radical Externalism: Honderich's Theory of Consciousness Discussed, edited by Anthony Freeman. The theory baffled most of the 11 philosophers. One contributor, E. J. Lowe, called it 'a genuinely new idea in the history of philosophy'.