Description du projet
La conscience et l’expérience inhérente
Qu’est-ce que la conscience? Des études évoquent la perception ou la connaissance de quelque chose en soi ou dans le monde. Mais pourquoi l’avons-nous? Le projet EXPERIENCE, financé par l’UE, examinera ce mystère intrigant en présentant un programme interdisciplinaire fondé sur des méthodes issues des neurosciences cognitives et une philosophie intégrative de l’esprit – l’étude de la nature de l’esprit, ses fonctions, ses événements et ses propriétés. Le projet ciblera les interactions entre la conscience et l’affect dans la perception et l’action dans le cadre de quatre lots de travaux abordant: l’expérience subjective intrinsèque; le champ phénoménal valencé; l’expérience subjective et l’action intentionnelle; et l’expérience subjective et les effets fonctionnels. Ses conclusions offriront des informations sur l’importance des expériences subjectives.
Objectif
Why would we do anything at all if the doing was not doing something to us? In other words: What is consciousness good for? Here, reversing classical views according to which subjective experience is a mere epiphenomenon that affords no functional advantage, I propose that the core function of phenomenal experience is to enable subject-level valuation: “What it feels like” is endowed with intrinsic value. Thus, I argue that it is only in virtue of the fact that conscious agents experience things and care about those experiences that they are motivated to act in certain ways and that they prefer some states of affairs vs. others. Conscious experience functions as a mental currency of sorts that makes it possible for agents to compare vastly different states of affairs in a common subject-centred mental quality space — a feature that explains that consciousness is unified. While my previous work was focused on the how question of consciousness, here, I propose to focus on the even more challenging question of the why of consciousness. EXPERIENCE will address this issue by pursuing a rich interdisciplinary program rooted in integrative philosophy of mind and in innovative cognitive neuroscience methods applied to the interactions between affect and consciousness in perception and action. The project is articulated over four work packages, each addressing a specific claim: (1) Subjective experience has intrinsic value, (2) The phenomenal field is valenced, (3) All intentional action is motivated by subjective experience & (4) Subjective experience has functional effects. EXPERIENCE is high-risk, for the function of subjective experience is largely unexplored territory, and high-gain, for it promises to question entrenched distinctions and to move the scientific approach of conscious a step closer to what we all know: That subjective experience matters. In fact, in many respects, it is the only thing that matters, as without it, life would simply not be worth living.
Champ scientifique
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
ERC - Support for frontier research (ERC)Institution d’accueil
1050 Bruxelles / Brussel
Belgique