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Status Reports
Status: Consciousness Studies (2023 - September)
(Text as at 04/10/2023 21:59:02)
This is the last Report for this project, which has been absorbed into my Personal Identity1 Project.
Rationale for this Project
- This is a philosophical topic that has interested me for many years. It would have been my primary area of research, had it not been so difficult and so heavily populated with philosophers.
- It can be considered as a supporting project for two of my other projects.
- Personal Identity2 (because of Consciousness3 of Self4, ie. Self-Consciousness5) and
- Philosophy of Religion6 (as phenomenal consciousness gives prima facie difficulties for materialism).
- This project remains in mothballs, except insofar as topics are required explicitly to support my other projects, when the time tends to be booked to them.
Summary of Progress during 22Q4 - 23Q3
- I have spent 0 hours YTD on this Project, or related work, where for "YTD" - Year to Date - I mean the (academic) year that commenced in October 2022). That's 0% of the planned7 effort. Overall, 0% of my Project effort YTD has been directed towards this project.
- Further details follow (for the latest Quarter: 23Q3):-
Consciousness
- I could not schedule any time for this project in 23Q3, and indeed did nothing.
- The only achievement over the last year was reading "Humphrey (Nicholas) - Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness", though I’ve not had time to write detailed notes thereon.
Summary of Progress during 22Q4-23Q3 (YTD Activity8)
- Consciousness (Total Hours = 11)
- Progress (if any) in the current quarter can be obtained from the relevant section of my Summary Task List9, and YTD in the current & future “automatic” editions of this report.
Plans for the Near Future:
Priority Reading Material
The priority books are given below.
- "Baars (Bernard) - In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind"
- "Baars (Bernard), Banks (William) & Newman (James) - Essential Sources in the Scientific Study of Consciousness"
- "Block (Ned), Flanagan (Owen) & Guzeldere (Guven) - The Nature of Consciousness"
- "Carruthers (Peter) - Phenomenal Consciousness"
- "Chalmers (David) - The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory"
- "Churchland (Paul) - The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul: Philosophical Journey into the Brain"
- "Crick (Francis) - The Astonishing Hypothesis - The Scientific Search for the Soul"
- "Dehaene (Stanislas) - Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts"
- "Dennett (Daniel) - Consciousness Explained"
- "Gray (Jeffrey) - Consciousness: Creeping up on the Hard Problem"
- "Hodgson (David) - The Mind Matters - Consciousness and Choice in a Quantum World"
- "Humphrey (Nicholas) - Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness"
- "Levine (Joseph) - Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness"
- "Marcel (Anthony J.) & Bisiach (Edoardo) - Consciousness in Contemporary Science"
- "McGinn (Colin) - The Problem of Consciousness: Essays Towards a Resolution"
- "Metzinger (Thomas), Ed. - Conscious Experience"
- "Noe (Alva) - Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness"
- "Papineau (David) - Introducing Consciousness"
- "Papineau (David) - Thinking About Consciousness"
- "Penrose (Roger) - The Emperor's New Mind"
- "Penrose (Roger) - Shadows of the Mind"
- "Searle (John) - The Rediscovery of the Mind"
- "Smith (Quentin) & Jokic (Aleksandar) - Consciousness: New Philosophical Essays"
Additionally, I’ve started to catalogue my back-issues of Journal of Consciousness Studies, for which the link below is the jumping-off point:-
Other Material
In-Page Footnotes:
Footnote 7: If zero hours are planned, "%age against plan" is meaningless, and appears as zero.
Footnote 8:
- As this project is substantially inactive, I don’t usually update the text quarterly as for the active projects, but only at the end of the academic year.
- YTD figures and tasks are somewhat redundant at the end of the first Quarter, but it saves remembering to update the report in future quarters.
- However, while the Quarterly figures appear against that plan and are “as at” the end of the last Quarter, the YTD figures and tasks are as at the date of production of the report.
- The YTD Activity-list is to make the end-year task easier, and to give a clearer idea of what – if anything – has been going on in the interim.
Footnote 10:
- There are other items addressed over recent years that need writing up and aren’t in the list below.
- So, maybe, my first task is to review them and integrate them with the list below, but also to undertake some pruning, as the list is already far too long to be addressed within my miniscule time-budget.
Table of the Previous 12 Versions of this Note: (of 53)
Summary of Notes Referenced by This Note
To access information, click on one of the links in the table above.
Summary of Notes Citing This Note
To access information, click on one of the links in the table above.
Authors, Books & Papers Citing this Note
| Author |
Title |
Medium |
Extra Links |
Read? |
| Todman (Theo) |
Thesis - Consciousness |
Paper  |
2 |
Yes |
| Todman (Theo) |
Thesis - Personal Identity |
Paper  |
|
Yes |
Text Colour Conventions
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025