Sleutels, Jan - Greek Zombies

10/27/2006

Routledge, Philosophical Psychology April 2006

Julian Jaynes writes that the Homeric Greeks might not have had some level of consciousness, or some level of concepts. This is dismissed by most, save possibly Dan Dennett, but in particular dismissed by Ned Block. Sleutels argues that this is not as obviously wrong as it first appears.

These might be 'fringe minds', but unfortunately we modern-day humans don't have the resources to think about what kind of consciousness might be in fringe minds. Jaynes gives a poor, negative example of what consciousness isn't on pg 181. He indicates two levels of consciousness, the 'mind-space' and the 'analog I'. The analog I does the introspection on concepts in the 'mind-space'. The Greeks have neither, according to Jaynes.

Block has the distinction between Phenomenal consciousness and Access consciousness, and clearly Greeks have P-con. Block doesn't take seriously that humans that are the same as we biologically not have A-con.

Author suggests the debate is over A-con. If consciousness is a social construction, this won't work to get A-con going, since A-con is the thing that considers the concepts involved in the very social construction itself. Social constructions take place in the realm of concepts, and without concepts, no social construction. Author suggests other concepts, B-concepts. These have only behavioral conditions to their identity-- they don't have 'inferential relations' cannot be introspected. This may avoid the primacy problem of concepts for social constructions.