Papers
Time-Consciousness and the Present
M.Litt. Dissertation, September 2008
Examines the interaction between the metaphysics and consciousness of temporal phenomena, including duration, succession and temporal passage. Several different models of time-consciousness are considered, including Husserl's phenomenology of internal time-consciousness, Dainton’s ‘overlap model’ and Varela and van Gelder’s dynamical systems based account. I argue that Dainton’s overlap model fails on several counts, including considerations relating to Dennett's multiple drafts model of consciousness. Varela’s dynamical systems model, on the other hand, is fully compatible with the existence of multiple drafts of conscious experience, and is able to make sense of various otherwise puzzling aspects of Husserl’s account. Although all of these models turn out to compatible with both presentism and eternalism, the latter offers a more convincing account of the phenomenon of temporal passage, and its relation to consciousness in general, without the need to posit the existence of past and future times, making it the more ontologically parsimonious theory.
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Does Attention Exist?
Published in the British Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy (BJUP), 2 (2), July 2007, pp. 153–68.
In the introduction to the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau‑Ponty (2002: 34) states that ‘Attention, […] as a general and formal activity, does not exist’. This paper examines the meaning and truth of this surprising statement, along with its implications for the account of perception given by theorists such as Dretske (1988) and Peacocke (1983). In order to elucidate Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological account of perception, I present two alternative models of how attention might be thought to operate. The first is derived from the works of the aforementioned theorists and is, I argue, based upon a largely inaccurate computational or mechanistic understanding of the mind. The second is drawn from the works of Merleau-Ponty and Alva Noë, and takes into account recent neurological theories concerning the role of attention in human consciousness. On the basis of these models I argue that attention is an essential, rather than incidental, characteristic of consciousness that is constitutive of both thought and perception, and which cannot be understood in terms of the independent faculty or ‘general and unconditioned power’ (ibid. 31) that Dretske et al’s account requires. I conclude by considering two potential counterexamples to my argument, and evaluating the threat that these pose to the phenomenological model.
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