^{page 473 note 1} ‘Intentionality and the Mental’, in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 11, ed. Feigl, H. et al. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1958), p. 507.Google Scholar

^{page 473 note 2} For the contemporary defence of dualism see Lewis, H. D., The Self and Immortality (New York: Seabury, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Persons and Life After Death (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1978)Google Scholar, as well as Popper, Karl and Eccles, John, The Self and Its Brain (New York: Springer International, 1997). My point is not that dualism is necessarily untenable, but that its tenability cannot be taken for granted.Google Scholar

^{page 474 note 1} See Hick, John, Philosophy of Religion, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1973), p. 101.Google Scholar

^{page 475 note 1} While it is mentioned here for the sake of completeness, libertarianism is not a major issue in the present paper.

^{page 475 note 2} This sentence is taken from my paper, ‘The Souls of Beasts and Men’, Religious Studies, 10 (1974) (cited hereafter as ‘Souls’), p. 272.Google Scholar

^{page 475 note 3} The word ‘soul’ has problematic connotations, but there seems to be nothing better. Mind' is preferable for humans but misleading as applied to animals. The only merit of ‘psychoid’ or ‘entelechy’ is that these words lack any ordinary usage and are probably too ugly ever to acquire one. The religious connotations of ‘soul’ may be bothersome — but I, who am prepared to speak of the souls of slugs, gnats, and termites, can scarcely be accused of trying to exploit them!

^{page 476 note 1} ‘Black Holes’, in Cosmology Now, ed. John, Laurie (New York: Taplinger, 1976), p. 124.Google Scholar

^{page 476 note 2} The conscious field is emergent roughly in the sense explicated by Meehl, P. E. and Sellars, Wilfrid (‘The Concept of Emergence’, in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 1, ed. Feigl, H. et al. , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956, pp. 239–52)Google Scholar. That is to say: the field manifests itself as a consequence of a certain functional integration of living matter, and is required for an adequate theoretical description of certain organisms because it affects their behaviour; i.e. the ordinary laws of chemistry and physics, adequate in inorganic contexts, will no longer suffice for the explanation of description of this behaviour. My version of emergentism diverges from the Meehl-Sellars analysis in that they assume, as I do not, that the behaviour of these organisms (including human beings) will be entirely predictable on the basis of emergent (but still deterministic) laws.

^{page 477 note 1} Eccles takes an interesting line here. During sleep and unconsciousness the self-conscious mind finds there is nothing to read out [from the brain]…Suddenly it is deprived of data and this is unconsciousness. Reading nothing gives nothing.’ But he also suggests that ‘the self-conscious mind has probably been, as it were, probing over or scanning over a cerebral cortex all through the sleep, searching for any modules that are open and can be utilized for an experience’ (The Self and Its Brain, p. 371). The ‘conscious mind’, then, is intensively active all during the time when it is unconscious!Google Scholar

^{page 478 note 1} ‘Souls’, pp. 265–7.Google Scholar

^{page 478 note 2} See ‘Souls’, p. 267. The relationship of dualism to evolution is extensively discussed by Popper in The Self and Its Brain. But Popper's dualism is definitely not Cartesian, and it may well be compatible with the emergentism discussed in the present paper.Google Scholar

^{page 481 note 1} This point was seen clearly by Kant (Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Smith, N. K., New York: St Martin's, 1965, p. 335)Google Scholar: ‘Every composite substance is an aggregate of several substances, and the action of a composite, or whatever inheres in it as thus composite, is an aggregate of several actions or accidents, distributed among the plurality of the substances. Now an effect which arises from the concurrence of many acting substances is indeed possible, namely, when this effect is external only (as, for instance, the motion of a by is the combined motion of all its parts). But with thoughts, as internal accidents belonging to a thinking being, it is different. For suppose it be the composite that thinks: Then every part of it would be a part of the thought, and only all of them taken together would contain the whole thought. But this cannot consistently be maintained. For representations (for instance, the single words of a verse), distributed among different beings, never make up a whole thought (a verse), and it is therefore impossible that a thought should inhere in what is essential’ composite. It is therefore possible only in a single substance, which, not being an aggregate of many, is absolutely simple.’ I am not overlooking the fact that Kant describes this argument as a ‘paralogism’! But it seems to me that in his subsequent discussion Kant fails entirely to refute it — at least when it is used for the limited purposes of the present paper. (I have no wish to follow Kant's ‘transcendental psychologist’ and make the argument the basis for a speculative proof of immortality!)

^{page 482 note 1} See Nagel, Thomas, ‘Brain Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness’, in Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 147–64.Google Scholar

^{page 483 note 1} ‘Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man’ (hereafter PSIM), in Science, Perception and Reality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 27Google Scholar. Sellars' principle is equivalent to the major premise of Kant's argument cited in note 1, p. 481Google Scholar. Sellars may, however, have left himself open to misunderstanding by calling this a principle of reducibility. As he notes, philosophers of science have often spoken of ‘reduction’ as a relationship which may hold between conceptual frameworks (e.g., scientific theories), whereas Sellars' principle ‘concerns the internal structure of coneptual frameworks, and belongs, properly speaking, to logic or general ontology, rather than to the philosophy of science’ (‘Science Sense Impressions, and Sensa’ (hereafter SSIS), Review of Metaphysics, 24 (1971), 411.) It is also important to see that this principle is compatible with ‘emergence’ as explicated by Meehl and Sellars (see note 2, p. 476).Google Scholar

^{page 483 note 2} SSIS, p. 393.Google Scholar

^{page 484 note 1} Except for relational properties. As Sellars notes, a formulation of the principle which applies to these would have to be more complex — but the points at issue here would not be affected (SSIS, p. 393, n. 4).Google Scholar

^{page 484 note 2} Perhaps I should not say that Sellars presents an answer to the problem of the unity of consciousness, since he does not discuss this problem as such. He is concerned rather with the problem of locating, in the Scientific Image, the ‘ultimate homogeneity’ of sensory qualities such as colour. But if Sellars' solution of this problem should turn out to be satisfactory, it would also solve the problem of the unity of consciousness.

^{page 485 note 1} See PSIM; also, ‘Phenomenalism’ (in Science, Perception, and Reality), pp. 95–105Google Scholar, and SSIS, pp. 406 ff.Google Scholar

^{page 485 note 2} The use of this and similar expressions reflects Sellars' commitment to an ‘adverbial’ analysis of the objects of sensing. This is important for Sellars' overall strategy, but makes no difference to the present discussion. Except for the awkwardness involved, I could have written all along ‘is-aware-visual-field-ishly’.

^{page 485 note 3} SSIS, pp. 429–40.Google Scholar

^{page 486 note 1} The phrase ‘verbal magic’ is applied by Sellars to Quine (SSIS, p. 398, note 8)Google Scholar. It should be noted that in SSIS (pp. 435–40)Google Scholar Sellars is at pains to refute Cornman's claim that according to Sellars, ‘If the scientific image is correct, then nothing, and a fortiori no person, has the property of sensing redly.’ But if the words in the quoted sentence are given their ordinary interpretation, as used in the Manifest Image (and no other use has been given to them, though the possibility of another use, in the Scientific Image, has been suggested), Cornman's inference from Sellars' position is justified.

Sellars comes closest to seeing the problem of the unity of consciousness in his discussion of Kant's second paralogism (note 1, p. 481 aboveGoogle Scholar; Sellars' discussion is in ‘Metaphysics and the Concept of a Person’, in Essays in Philosophy and Its History (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974), pp. 214–41)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Speaking of Kant, he says: ‘It is, he argues, indeed true that the subject of thought cannot be a many in the sense of many subjects of thought… But, Kant points out, it does not follow that the “I” which thinks cannot be a plurality or system’ (p. 239). No, this does not follow — unless, that is, one accepts the principle of reducibility!Google Scholar

^{page 487 note 1} SSIS, p. 411.Google Scholar

^{page 487 note 2} Sensa exist as constituents of certain sentient organisms, but not in inorganic nature. But these organism originated from inorganic nature, so sensa must be emergent. And Sellars is quite willing to characterize his own position as ‘emergentist’ (SSIS, p. 393).Google Scholar

^{page 487 note 3} Clearly the conscious field is not ‘physical₂’, that is, it is not definable ‘in terms of theoretical primitives necessary and sufficient to describe non-living matter’. Arguably, however, it might be ‘physical₁’, that is, belonging to the ‘spatio-temporal-causal order’ (SSIS, p. 393)Google Scholar. But Sellars contends (plausibly, I think) that a ‘physical theory’ which includes within its domain irreducibly intentional mental acts and their subjects would be ‘physical’ only in a trivial sense (see SSIS, pp. 402, 409, 420–4, 439, 446).Google Scholar