Special Consideration and Late Submission Information:

Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, a 5% penalty (of the total possible mark) will be applied each day a written assessment is not submitted, up until the 7th day (including weekends). After the 7th day, a mark of ‘0’ (zero) will be awarded even if the assessment is submitted. Submission time for all written assessments is set at 11:55 PM. A 1-hour grace period is provided to students who experience a technical issue. This late penalty will apply to written reports and recordings only. Late submission of time sensitive tasks (such as tests/exams, performance assessments/presentations, scheduled practical assessments/labs will be addressed by the unit convenor in a Special consideration application.

 

Generative AI / Chatbots Based on Large Language Models

In this unit, unless notified otherwise in writing by the Unit Convenor, it is expected that the work you submit demonstrates your own understanding, analysis, research, reflection, critical thinking, and writing, and you will be marked on the basis of your demonstrated understanding of and engagement with the unit content and activities. This applies to all assessments, including online forums. If your teachers have concerns about whether a submission is your own work in a meaningful sense, you may be required to attend an interview with the Unit Convenor or other academic staff to discuss your work and demonstrate your attainment of unit and task learning outcomes. Further information and advice about policies and expectations around the use of Generative AI will be given in iLearn. 

PHIL3063/PHIX3063 lectures will be delivered in-person and will be recorded (via Echo360) for 'online flexible' students. There will be in-class tutorials for 'in person scheduled' students and asynchronous online fora for 'online flexible' students. This unit uses an iLearn website (https://ilearn.mq.edu.au/my/). The website contains links to the reading material, lecture notes, lecture recordings, and other learning materials such as video clips, weblinks, and images. Students will therefore require access to a computer and a good internet connection in order to access all the material and participate in the unit effectively.

Lectures are organised around key texts in which fundamental concepts and arguments are introduced and explained. Online flexible students will engage in these activities online via dedicated iLearn discussion fora. For tutorial times please consult the MQ Timetable website: https://publish.mq.edu.au/. This website will display up-to-date information on your tutorial locations.

 

Lectures

PHIL3063/PHIX3063 lectures will be delivered in-person and will be recorded (via Echo360) for 'online flexible' students. Lectures begin in Week 1 and end in Week 13.

 

Tutorials and Online Fora

Weekly tutorial classes/online fora begin in Week 1 and end in Week 12. Weekly discussion questions will be posted before the lectures.

 

Required and Recommended Texts and/or Materials

PHIL3063/PHIX3063 will be using electronically available readings available via Leganto on the iLearn website. Each week, you must read the required readings before the lecture.

W1: Introduction (Dr Regina Fabry)

26 February 2026

Description: In the first lecture, we will discover key topics, ideas, and questions that will guide our exploration of fascinating questions about consciousness and self. Furthermore, we will discuss the practical details of this unit (including requirements, assessments, expectations, and additional resources).

Required reading: None

 

W2: The Hard Problem of Consciousness (Dr Tom Montefiore)

5 March 2026

Description: Philosopher Patricia Churchland once bluntly said that the “grandest question” is: “out of meat, how do you get thought?” David Chalmers calls this question – the challenge of accounting for conscious experience – the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. But it isn’t clear this is a problem (let alone a hard problem), for everyone. This week we will think about the hard problem by locating it within a landscape of philosophical theories of consciousness, from materialist theories – which see qualitative experience as reducible to processes in the brain - to panpsychism – which sees everything as conscious! 

Required Reading: Chalmers, D. (1995). Facing up to the problem of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2(3), 200-219.

 

W3: Solving the Hard Problem (Dr Tom Montefiore)

12 March 2026

Description: This week, having now set the scene regarding some of the candidate theories of consciousness, we will dive deeper into the hard problem of consciousness. We will explore three key thought experiments that push the intuition that we have a hard problem on our hands: Jackson and Nagel’s knowledge arguments, and Chalmer’s modal argument. The first involving Mary the colour scientist seeing red for the first time, the second involving what it must be like to be a bat, and the third concerning the conceivability (or possibility) of philosophical zombies.

Required Reading: Ismael, J. (1999). Science and the Phenomenal. Philosophy of Science, 66(3), 351-369.

 

W4: The Value of Consciousness (Dr Tom Montefiore)

19 March 2026

Description: This week we will consider the question of whether consciousness is valuable. We will look at whether the value of consciousness is intrinsic – that consciousness is valuable in itself - or instrumental – that consciousness gives rise to things which are valuable. We will consider this question across a range of values: the true (epistemic value), the beautiful (aesthetic value) and the good (ethical value)? We also consider the possibility that consciousness isn’t valuable at all.

Required reading: Lee, A. Y. (2019). Is consciousness intrinsically valuable? Philosophical Studies, 176(3), 655–671. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1032-8

 

W5: Consciousness and Non-Human Animals (Dr Tom Montefiore)

26 March 2026

Description: Having considered the various ways in which consciousness is valuable for humans, we ask this week whether the same concerns ought to be applied to non-humans, specifically non-human animals. We explore just how important consciousness might be for other philosophical questions, such as: how should we treat other animals? And what about plants or slime mold? Does consciousness come in degrees? And should our treatment of others reflect this?

Required Reading: Andrews, K. (2015). Consciousness. In K. Andrews, The Animal Mind (pp. 51-79). New York: Routledge.

 

W6: Artificial Consciousness (Dr Regina Fabry)

2 April 2026

Description: For a long time, conscious artificial systems (e.g., robots, chatbots) have featured prominently in science fiction scenarios. With the recent rise of Artificial Intelligence, however, a new philosophical question has come to the fore: Given our current scientific knowledge, is artificial consciousness possible now, in the near future? In this lecture, we will explore this question and discuss its descriptive and normative implications.

Required reading: McClelland, T. (2025). Agnosticism about artificial consciousness. Mind & Language, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.70010

 

RECESS

 

W7: Conscious Experiences in Sleep and Wakefulness (Dr Regina Fabry)

23 April 2026

Description: For a long time, consciousness research assumed that the structure and phenomenal quality of our conscious states are categorically different across sleep and wakefulness. However, according to recent research on spontaneous thought, conscious states in dreaming and mind-wandering have similar structural and phenomenal characteristics. In this lecture, we will review and discuss this research and its implications for the philosophy and science of consciousness.

Required reading: Windt, J. M. (2020). How deep is the rift between conscious states in sleep and wakefulness? Spontaneous experience over the sleep–wake cycle. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 376(1817), 20190696. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0696

 

W8: The Embodied Self (Dr Regina Fabry)

30 April 2026

Description: In the aftermath of Cartesian mind-body dualism, empirically informed philosophers have begun to explore the possibility that the self is not an immaterial substance, but dependent on a physical body for its existence. But what does it mean to say that the self is embodied? In the first lecture on the self, we will explore and discuss proposed answers to this question with a focus on contemporary research on agency and body ownership.

Required Reading: De Vignemont, F. (2011). A self for the body. Metaphilosophy, 42(3), 230–247. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9973.2011.01688.x

 

W9: The Narrative Self (Dr Regina Fabry)

7 May 2026

Description: In the previous week, we have explored the embodied dimension of selfhood. In this week, we explore its narrative dimension. According to narrative accounts of selfhood, we are able to conceive of ourselves as selves that continue to exist across time, because we constantly tell narratives about ourselves and our various experiences. On some accounts of narrative selfhood, which we review and discuss this week, the socio-culturally shaped environment plays a crucial role for our narrative self-making and self-shaping practices.

Required Reading: Heersmink, R. (2018). The narrative self, distributed memory, and evocative objects. Philosophical Studies, 175(8), 1829–1849. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0935-0

 

W10: The Relational Self (Dr Regina Fabry)

14 May 2026

Description: For a long time, mainstream philosophy of mind has assumed that the notion of ‘the self’ refers to an isolated, atomistic, self-sufficient individual. More recently, however, feminist scholarship has emphasised the deep relationality of our modes of being and experiencing. Specifically, on relational accounts of selfhood, our selves are always causally influenced or even constituted by the socio-culturally shaped relationships with other agents. This week, we consider key accounts of the relational self. We will see that these considerations have ramifications for philosophical theorising on the embodied and narrative self.

Required Reading: Brison, S. J. (2017). Personal identity and relational selves. In A. Garry, S. J. Khader, & A. Stone (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy (pp. 218–230). Routledge.

 

W11: Disorders of the Self (Dr Regina Fabry)

21 May 2026

Description: After considering philosophical research on the embodied and narrative dimensions of the self and the relationality of selfhood, we are exploring challenges to existing mainstream theories of selfhood in the remainder of this session. One particularly interesting challenge we consider this week is presented by disorders of the self. As a case study, we will consider philosophical accounts of the Cotard delusion, the delusional reported conviction that one is dead or non-existent. We discuss the implications of current accounts of the Cotard delusion for philosophical theorising about selfhood.

Required Reading: Gerrans, P. (2023). A vessel without a pilot: Bodily and affective experience in the Cotard delusion of inexistence. Mind & Language, 38(4), 1059–1080. https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12441

 

W12: The No-Self Alternative in Buddhist Philosophy (Dr Regina Fabry)

28 May 2026

Description: Mainstream philosophy of mind in the analytic tradition has been dominated, largely without critical reflection, by Western or Westernised socio-cultural practices, norms, and values. This has also impacted philosophical theorising about (the) self. Not all socio-cultural communities share the belief that an entity such as (the) self exists, synchronically, diachronically, or both. This week, we look at Buddhist No-Self accounts and their implications for analytic theorising about the phenomenal and epistemic anchoring of our experiences, as well as our sense of agency and ownership.

Required Reading: Chadha, M. (2017). No-Self and the phenomenology of agency. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 16(2), 187–205. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-016-9455-1

 

W13: The No-Self Alternative in Western Philosophy (Dr Regina Fabry)

4 June 2026

Description: No-self views do not only have a long tradition in Buddhist philosophy, as we have seen last week, but have also found entry into recent empirically informed Western philosophy of mind. This week, we consider and critically discuss one influential theory, the self-model theory of subjectivity, which denies the existence of a self on ontological and metaphysical grounds. However, this theory leaves room for the idea that it seems to us as if we had or were a self through our continuous conscious experience that is anchored in a first-person perspective. With the discussion of this theory, we go full circle from the consideration of key aspects of (self-)consciousness in the first half of this session to contemporary considerations on the phenomenology and epistemology of selfhood.

Required Reading: Metzinger, T. (2011). The no‐self alternative. In S. Gallagher (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of the self (pp. 279–296). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199548019.003.0012