For those who care - my PhD research proposal.

It is my intention to further pursue issues arising from my honours thesis. I intend to investigate causal properties of qualia and their involvement in our ability to direct attention and explore the possibility that an iterated attention mechanism is a causal feature in the capacity for self awareness as experienced by human beings.

For my honours thesis I proposed a possible evolutionary trajectory for qualia that illustrated the importance of causal phenomenal qualia to the function of complex brains. I argued that qualia, via our senses, provide important information about our environment that are conducive to survival within it. To bolster the claim that qualia have causal properties, I used pain dissociation syndromes to illustrate that qualia we experience as one sensation are in fact made up of several modalities functioning in unison. This has implications for the view that some qualia are epiphenomenal and also the view that epiphenomenal qualia supervene upon brain function.

Possible avenues of further exploration include an assessment of Prinz’s latest work on attention and his defense of proxytype theory. I am certain that a study of Prinz, who recommends that: “We should seriously investigate the possibility that our cognitive resources are couched in codes that originated in the service of perception.” Will be vital to any further development of my thoughts on this matter. Also, recent studies of animal consciousness, such as those by Donald R Griffin, will aid the delineation of conscious and cognitive capacities, and hopefully point the way to a reduction to the capacity to pay attention.

Competing theories of perception will need to be given serious consideration as will the work of Chalmers, Michael Tye, Kim, Levine, Robinson, Strawson, Horgan and Tienson and others all of whom have something to say about the causal features of perceptual phenomena. Human medical examples that will aid the exploration include asognosias, attention deficits, and pathologies of perception particularly those resulting from stroke or other brain injury. I believe we learn most from brains that malfunction and new technologies such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) offer unprecedented insight into these pathologies.

My approach is both physicalist and empiricist. My scientific background in biochemistry makes me ideally placed to take advantage of any opportunities for cross-disciplinary investigation that may arise during my thesis.

*sigh* It's never, ever good enough.