Adam Pautz
Brown University
Adam Pautz has been Professor of Philosophy at Brown University since 2015, after Texas at Austin, and he works on what he calls the big questions about mind and nature using a mix of empirically-informed arguments and armchair arguments. His monograph Perception (2021) sets out his position on the contents and character of perceptual experience, and he co-edited Blockheads! with Daniel Stoljar in 2019, the essay collection on Ned Block’s philosophy of mind.
His 2026 contribution to the significance debate arrives in two forms. He co-edited The Importance of Being Conscious with Geoffrey Lee, the Oxford University Press volume on how conscious experience carries moral and epistemic significance, and he contributes the chapter “Mary on Black and White Earth: The Significance Argument against Identity Physicalism”. The chapter’s argument structure is in its title, that what experience contributes to a subject’s understanding gives a significance-based reason against identifying consciousness with brain states. Pautz does not carry a position label on this site beyond that anti-reductionist orientation, since the label list maps consciousness theories rather than philosophy-of-perception programmes, and his involvement in the AI-relevant part of the debate runs through the volume’s distribution question, whether animals, insects, or near-future AIs have consciousness, and what would follow if they did.
Known for. Empirically-informed philosophy of perception, the significance argument against identity physicalism, co-editor of The Importance of Being Conscious and Blockheads!
Coverage on this site
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- Geoffrey LeeNew York UniversityFoundational work on perception and consciousness, AI Consciousness Pluralism and Anthropocentrism, co-editor of The Importance of Being Conscious
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David ChalmersNew York University. Co-director, Center for Mind, Brain and ConsciousnessNaming the hard problem of consciousness, and the philosophical zombie argument
- David PapineauKing's College LondonMaterialist philosophy of mind, the cultural origins of religion and science, the 2026 chapter Consciousness is not the Key to Moral Standing
- Helen Yetter-ChappellUniversity of MiamiRealist idealism, The View From Everywhere, consciousness without a subject, idealist responses to the AI consciousness question
Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.