Philosophy of Consciousness
Exploring the hard problem — why physical states give rise to subjective experience.
The hard problem of consciousness remains one of the deepest puzzles in philosophy and science. Why should there be something it is like to see red, feel pain, or taste wine? Why doesn’t all this information processing happen in the dark, without any inner light of experience?
My work in this area develops and defends a form of illusionism that reconceives phenomenal properties without eliminativism. Rather than denying that consciousness exists, I argue that our intuitive picture of it — as composed of ineffable, intrinsic qualia — is systematically misleading. The redness of red is not a property of experience itself but a way the brain represents its own states.
Key Questions
- What is the relationship between physical processes and subjective experience?
- Can illusionism account for the apparent ineffability of qualia?
- How do higher-order theories of consciousness explain the structure of awareness?
- What does the neuroscience of consciousness tell us about the metaphysics of mind?
Selected Publications
- The Illusion That Isn’t — Philosophical Review, 2023
- Against the Inner Theatre — MIT Press, 2022
- Consciousness and the Self (co-editor) — Cambridge University Press, 2021