Quality and Content: Essays on Consciousness, Representation, and Modality

Joseph Levine draws together a series of essays in which he has developed his distinctive approach to philosophy of mind. He explores such topics as the phenomenal concept strategy to defend materialism from anti-materialist intuitions, the doctrine of representationalism about phenomenal character, the modal argument against materialism, the nature of demonstrative thought, and cognitive phenomenology. All of the essays in some way respond to various materialist attempts to close the explanatory gap as well as outline a different conception of conscious experience that would accommodate the gap. Levine connects his work with related themes in contemporary psychology and with such hot philosophical topics as cognitive phenomenology.