Michael Schmitz

Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna

"Consciousness: What It Is and Why It Matters"

About the talk

Friends and foes of consciousness alike often tend to mystify it. Either they want to celebrate it as something all-important that resists all attempts at explanation; or the use this kind of characterization to raise doubt that something of this nature exists or even deny its existence outright. In my talk I will try to demystify consciousness through conceptual clarification and preserve a sense of its importance at the same time. Consciousness is the common denominator of the sleeping and waking states and essentially has degrees. It’s neither solely sensory, nor solely reflective, but essentially both. It’s ontologically subjective in the sense that it belongs to a subject and essentially participates in subject/object-relations: it is essentially directed at objects. It resists a certain kind of objectification: I can’t picture it as an object in a creature’s head – though it is, contra externalism, located in heads – but have to take or imagine that creature’s point of view. This characteristic sets it apart from other phenomena, including unconscious mental states (if such there be), but an epistemically objective science of consciousness is still possible. Consciousness can’t be explained through self-representation – for example, a state of consciousness is not a state a subject is aware of being in – but it still essentially involves the awareness a subject has of itself and of its position in the world. Consciousness is not all that matters, but if it did not exist, nothing would matter at all.

About the speaker

Academic Positions

10.2012–today | Assistant Professor, University of Vienna
01.2012–05.2012 | Visiting Lecturer, University of California at Berkeley
2005–2011 | Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Research Group Limits of Intentionality, University of Konstanz
10.2006–03.2007 | Jacobsen Visiting Fellow, Institute of Philosophy, University College London
2001–2005 | Research Fellow, Center for Intentionality, University of Konstanz

Areas of Specialization

• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Collective Intentionality / Social Ontology
• Philosophy of Action