The Representational View Of Consciousness - 1450 Words

(1) What is representationalism about consciousness? What are the pros and cons of representationalism? Do you agree with this view or not? Why? Introduction This essay is on the representational view of consciousness, which is I admit one that I have had great difficulties coming to terms with as a viewpoint. I can relate with functionalism defining mental states as what they do but I agree they don’t solve the hard problem of consciousness. Representationalism seems to define the metal state or phenomenal property as what it represents. This essay mainly looks at Chalmers article â€Å"The Representational Character of Experience† and his view of impure representationalism, although his view seems to cover most objections, I don’t find that it accomplishes or approaches the hard problem of consciousness. That said it is worthwhile to look at its view, discussing what it is, and problems that it has. Properties To understand representationalism, we start with what is a representation and how it relates to properties. In our everyday life we are very familiar with something representing another thing, from a word, a descriptive paragraph to a visual picture or movie of an object. We don’t say that it is the object; for example: we don’t say a picture of my dog actually is my dog. What we express is that it has captured some of the attributes, it relative shape, hair style and colour, etc. Does a photograph represent the object photographed? The photograph is a twoShow MoreRelatedDeath Is A Bad Thing1495 Words   |  6 Pagesstate. In the scholarly article â€Å"Why is death bad?†, professors Brueckner and Fischer explain that we have asymmetric attitudes toward prenatal nonexistence and death. Both are long periods of time in which we do not exist and do not have any consciousness of what is going on around us. 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