Michael Tye
Biographic Data
| ID | 995569 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Tye |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Tye |
| SIGNATURE | TYE M |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Austin |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2925-3979 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 56 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
How Can We Tell if a Machine is Conscious
This essay is concerned to show that a clear methodology exists for answering the question “How Can We Tell if a Machine is Conscious?” The methodology does not deliver certainty but rather rational preference
Yes, Phenomenal Character Really Is Out There In The World
Pains and Reasons: Why It Is Rational to Kill the Messenger
In this paper, we defend the representationalist theory of phenomenal consciousness against a recent objection due to Hilla Jacobson, who charges representationalism with a failure to explain the role of pain in rationalizing certain forms of behaviour. In rough outline, her objection is that the representationalist is unable to account for the rationality of certain acts, such as the act of taking pain killers, which are aimed at getting rid of …
Précis of Consciousness Revisited: Materialism without Phenomenal Concepts
We are material beings. We live in a material world. But we also are beings who have experiences and feelings; and therein lies the rub. If experiences and feelings are themselves material then why is it conceivable and thus consistently thinkable that the subjective, felt character of our experiences is not a material phenomenon? Most contemporary philosophical materialists respond to this question by adopting the phenomenal concept strategy. Th…
Reply to Crane, Jackson and McLaughlin
The Admissible Contents of Visual Experience
Journal Article The Admissible Contents of Visual Experience Get access Michael Tye Michael Tye University of Texas at Austin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 59, Issue 236, July 2009, Pages 541–562, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2008.575.x Published: 28 May 2008
Consciousness Revisited: Materialism without Phenomenal Concepts
Four major puzzles of consciousness philosophical materialism must confront after rejecting the phenomenal concept strategy. We are material beings in a material world, but we are also beings who have experiences and feelings. How can these subjective states be just a matter of matter? To defend materialism, philosophical materialists have formulated what is sometimes called "the phenomenal-concept strategy," which holds that we possess a range o…
The Problem of Common Sensibles
Our experience of the qualities Locke classified as secondary qualities generates a problem, a version of which Aristotle raised. I call this problem “the problem of common sensibles.” The problem, as I discuss it, concerns cross-modal experienced togetherness or unity. On the view that we undergo distinct sense-specific experiences as we hear, smell, taste, see, and touch things, there seems no room for cross-modal unity at the experiential leve…
Intentionalism and the Argument From No Common Content
motivate their approach to perceptual experience by appealing in part to the claim that in cases of veridical perception the subject is directly in contact with the perceivedobject. When I perceive a table, for example, there is no table-like sense-impression that stands as an intermediary between the table and me. Nor am I relatedto the table as I am to a deer when I see its footprint in the snow. I do not experience the table by experiencing so…
Absent Qualia and the Mind-Body Problem
Research Article| April 01 2006 Absent Qualia and the Mind-Body Problem Michael Tye Michael Tye Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Philosophical Review (2006) 115 (2): 139–168. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-2005-013 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Michael Tye; Absent Qualia and the Mind-Body Problem. The Philosophical Review 1 April 2006; 115 (2): 139–168. doi: https://doi.or…
Absent Qualia and the Mind-Body Problem
At the very heart of the mind-body problem is the question of the nature of consciousness. It is consciousness, and in particular phenomenal consciousness, that makes the mind-body relation so deeply perplexing. Many philosophers hold that no definition of phenomenal consciousness is possible: any such putative definition would automatically use the concept of phenomenal consciousness and thus render the definition circular. The usual view is tha…
In Defense of Representationalism: Reply to Commentaries
Consciousness and Persons: Unity and Identity (Representation and Mind)
Consciousness and Persons: Unity and Identity
In Consciousness and Persons: Unity and Identity, Michael Tye takes on the thorny issue of the unity of consciousness and answers these important questions: What exactly is the unity of consciousness? Can a single person have a divided consciousness? What is a single person? Tye argues that unity is a fundamental part of human consciousness—something so basic to everyday experience that it is easy to overlook. For example, when we hear the sound …
Consciousness, Color, and Content
Experiences and feelings are inherently conscious states. There is something it is like to feel pain, to have an itch, to experience bright red. Philosophers call this sort of consciousness "phenomenal consciousness." Even though phenomenal consciousness seems to be a relatively primitive matter, something more widespread in nature than higher-order or reflective consciousness, it is deeply puzzling. In 1995 Michael Tye proposed a theory of pheno…
Shoemaker's The First-Person Perspective and Other Essays
This excellent collection of essays by Sydney Shoemaker covers his work over the last ten years in the philosophy of mind. Shoemaker's overarching concern in the collection is to provide an account of the mind that does justice to the first-person perspective. The two main topics are the nature of self-knowledge and the nature of sensory experience. The essays are insightful, careful, and thought-provoking. On the issue of self-knowledge, Shoemak…
Consciousness, Color, and Content (Representation and Mind)
In 1995 Michael Tye proposed a theory of phenomena consciousness now known as representationalism. This book is, in part, devoted to a further development of that theory along with replies to common objections. Tye's focus is broader than representationalism, however. Two prominent challenges for any reductive theory of consciousness are the explanatory gap and the knowledge argument. In part I of this book, Tye suggests that these challenges are…
Is Content-Externalism Compatible with Privileged Access
Externalist theories of thought content are sometimes arrived at by reflection upon Earth thought experiments of the sort made famous by Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge. The conclusion many philosophers draw from these thought experiments is that certain types of thought contents are individuated, in part, by environmental or socioenvironmental factors.' This doctrine of Twin Earth content-externalism implies that it is possible for thinkers that a…
Response to Discussants
Frank Jackson brings out very clearly a serious difficulty for some possible broadly physicalist view of experience. The view is not mine, however, and I confess that I am perplexed as to how Jackson could have thought that it was mine, given some of the basic commitments of the approach I lay out in the book. Phenomenal properties are properties of experiences. They are, I claim, representational properties of a certain sort. More precisely, sin…
Causal Roles and Higher-Order Properties
Two Cheers for Representationalism
Precis of Ten Prolems of Consciousness
Is Experiencing Just Representing
Raw Feeling: A Philosophical Account of the Essence of Consciousness
Ten Problems of Consciousness: A Representational Theory of the Phenomenal Mind
Sorites Paradoxes and the Semantics of Vagueness
via a million applications of modus ponens and universal instantiation. To treat this line of reasoning as a reductio of the denial of (1) is to concede that 'bald' is not vague, and hence, in the general case, to concede that no predicates are vague. This conclusion is, of course, itself paradoxical. What, then, has gone wrong? In this paper I want to present a novel semantics of vagueness which is, I maintain, invulnerable to Sorites Paradoxes …
Pains and Reasons: Why It Is Rational to Kill the Messenger
In this paper, we defend the representationalist theory of phenomenal consciousness against a recent objection due to Hilla Jacobson, who charges representationalism with a failure to explain the role of pain in rationalizing certain forms of behaviour. In rough outline, her objection is that the representationalist is unable to account for the rationality of certain acts, such as the act of taking pain killers, which are aimed at getting rid of …
A Causal Analysis of Seeing
Is Content-Externalism Compatible with Privileged Access
Externalist theories of thought content are sometimes arrived at by reflection upon Earth thought experiments of the sort made famous by Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge. The conclusion many philosophers draw from these thought experiments is that certain types of thought contents are individuated, in part, by environmental or socioenvironmental factors.' This doctrine of Twin Earth content-externalism implies that it is possible for thinkers that a…
The Adverbial Approach to Visual Experience
Is Experiencing Just Representing
Causal Roles and Higher-Order Properties
Metaphysical and Epistemological Problems of Perception
Yes, Phenomenal Character Really Is Out There In The World
Intentionalism and the Argument From No Common Content
motivate their approach to perceptual experience by appealing in part to the claim that in cases of veridical perception the subject is directly in contact with the perceivedobject. When I perceive a table, for example, there is no table-like sense-impression that stands as an intermediary between the table and me. Nor am I relatedto the table as I am to a deer when I see its footprint in the snow. I do not experience the table by experiencing so…
The Admissible Contents of Visual Experience
Journal Article The Admissible Contents of Visual Experience Get access Michael Tye Michael Tye University of Texas at Austin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 59, Issue 236, July 2009, Pages 541–562, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2008.575.x Published: 28 May 2008
Absent Qualia and the Mind-Body Problem
Research Article| April 01 2006 Absent Qualia and the Mind-Body Problem Michael Tye Michael Tye Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Philosophical Review (2006) 115 (2): 139–168. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-2005-013 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Michael Tye; Absent Qualia and the Mind-Body Problem. The Philosophical Review 1 April 2006; 115 (2): 139–168. doi: https://doi.or…
A Representational Theory of Pains and their Phenomenal Character
The fundamental assumption of cognitive psychology is that the cognitive mind is a representational system which mediates between sensory inputs and behavioral outputs. The primary task for the cognitive psychologist is one of explaining how the various cognitive capacities operate by reference to the structure of the salient parts of this representational system. The explanations offered are both functional and decompositional: they decompose th…
Material Beings
Consciousness and Causality: A Debate on the Nature of Mind
Two distinguished philosophers present opposing views on the questions of howthe objects of consciousness are perceived. (Philosophy)
The puzzle of Hesperus and Phosphorus
(1978). The puzzle of Hesperus and Phosphorus. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 56, No. 3, pp. 219-224.
A Causal Analysis of Seeing
The Adverbial Approach to Visual Experience
Consciousness and Causality: A Debate on the Nature of Mind
Two distinguished philosophers present opposing views on the questions of howthe objects of consciousness are perceived. (Philosophy)
Metaphysical and Epistemological Problems of Perception
The Picture Theory of Mental Images
The view that mental images are significantly picture-like (hereafter the picture theory) has a long and distinguished philosophical history, including among its adherents such diverse philosophers as Aristotle, Descartes, and Locke.' Despite its widespread acceptance, the picture theory of mental images was left largely unexplained in the traditional philosophical literature. Admittedly most of those who accepted the theory held that mental imag…
The Metaphysics of Mind
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access The Metaphysics of Mind. By Michael Tye. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Pp. viii + 215. Price £25.00.) W. D. Hart W. D. Hart University College London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 40, Issue 159, April 1990, Pages 255–257, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219816 Published: 01 April 1990
The Metaphysics of Mind
Material Beings
The Metaphysics of Mind
The Imagery Debate
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access The Imagery Debate. By Michael Tye. (Cambridge, Mass. and London: M.I.T. Press, 1991. Pp. xiv + 172. Price £19.95.) Alastair Hannay Alastair Hannay University of Oslo Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 43, Issue 171, April 1993, Pages 246–248, https://doi.org/10.2307/2220377 Published: 01 April 1993
The Imagery Debate
One central debate in cognitive science is over imagery. Do images constitute, or constitute evidence for, a distinctive, depictive form of mental representation? The most sophisticated advocacy of this view has been developed by Kosslyn and his coworkers. This paper focuses on his position and argues (i) that though Kosslyn has not developed a satisfactory account of depiction, there is nothing in principle unintelligible about the idea of depic…
Reflections on Dennett and Consciousness
There is much that is stimulating in Dennett's book for philosophers and non-philosophers alike. There is much too with which I find myself in agreement. I especially like Dennett's discussion of mental imagery, in which he shows himself now to be much closer to the quasi-pictorial array conception of images defended by Kosslyn and his followers than in his earlier work. I also think that Dennett's remarks on the representation of time in experie…
Naturalism and the Problem of Intentionality
Sorites Paradoxes and the Semantics of Vagueness
via a million applications of modus ponens and universal instantiation. To treat this line of reasoning as a reductio of the denial of (1) is to concede that 'bald' is not vague, and hence, in the general case, to concede that no predicates are vague. This conclusion is, of course, itself paradoxical. What, then, has gone wrong? In this paper I want to present a novel semantics of vagueness which is, I maintain, invulnerable to Sorites Paradoxes …
The Imagery Debate
Ten Problems of Consciousness: A Representational Theory of the Phenomenal Mind
Can neurophysiology ever reveal to us what it is like to smell a skunk or to experience pain? In what does the feeling of happiness consist? How is it that changes in the white and gray matter composing our brains generate subjective sensations and feelings? These are several of the questions that Michael Tye addresses, while formulating a new and enlightening theory about the phenomenal "what it feels like" aspect of consciousness. The test of a…
A Representational Theory of Pains and their Phenomenal Character
The fundamental assumption of cognitive psychology is that the cognitive mind is a representational system which mediates between sensory inputs and behavioral outputs. The primary task for the cognitive psychologist is one of explaining how the various cognitive capacities operate by reference to the structure of the salient parts of this representational system. The explanations offered are both functional and decompositional: they decompose th…
Is Consciousness Vague or Arbitrary
David Papineau's book on naturalism is clear, level-headed, and illuminating. It is also very broad in its sweep. Papineau considers a variety of different challenges to the naturalist's position, and he tries to meet each of these challenges head-on. There is no waffling or obscurantism. My focus in this paper will be on some of the remarks Papineau makes with respect to consciousness. I am sympathetic to much of Papineau's discussion here, but …
Raw Feeling: A Philosophical Account of the Essence of Consciousness
Ten Problems of Consciousness: A Representational Theory of the Phenomenal Mind
Is Content-Externalism Compatible with Privileged Access
Externalist theories of thought content are sometimes arrived at by reflection upon Earth thought experiments of the sort made famous by Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge. The conclusion many philosophers draw from these thought experiments is that certain types of thought contents are individuated, in part, by environmental or socioenvironmental factors.' This doctrine of Twin Earth content-externalism implies that it is possible for thinkers that a…
Response to Discussants
Frank Jackson brings out very clearly a serious difficulty for some possible broadly physicalist view of experience. The view is not mine, however, and I confess that I am perplexed as to how Jackson could have thought that it was mine, given some of the basic commitments of the approach I lay out in the book. Phenomenal properties are properties of experiences. They are, I claim, representational properties of a certain sort. More precisely, sin…
Causal Roles and Higher-Order Properties
Two Cheers for Representationalism
Philosophy (33 works) · Epistemology (28 works) · Psychology (24 works) · Philosophy (20 works) · Consciousness (16 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (15 works) · Classical Philosophy and Thought (12 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Contemporary philosophy (9 works) · Metaphysics (9 works)