Max Velmans
Goldsmiths, University of London
Critic Current evidence and current methods do not support the claims being made
Max Velmans, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, developed reflexive monism, the position examined on his Goldsmiths page and stated at book length in Understanding Consciousness (2000, second edition 2009). The view holds that the experienced world and the brain’s representation of it are two aspects of one process. What a subject experiences as an external object is not a representation locked inside the skull but the perceptual projection of the whole perceiving system in interaction with the world. Consciousness and its neural correlates are dual aspects of one underlying entity, the way a wave and its water are one thing described twice.
The critical force of the position is aimed at both camps this site tracks. Against reductive materialism, Velmans argues that reducing experience to neural description loses the thing described. Against dualism, he refuses the ontological split. For the AI consciousness debate, reflexive monism implies that the question cannot be settled by matching functional descriptions alone, since the aspect relation between process and experience is exactly what a functional account leaves out.
His profile anchors the dual-aspect tradition on this site, standing beside the quantum monism of the Atmanspacher analysis as a critique the functionalist mainstream must answer.
Known for. Reflexive monism, the dual-aspect critique of reductionism, Understanding Consciousness, the the psychologist's View position
Coverage on this site
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Max Velmans is listed with the other critics and skeptics, who hold that current evidence and current methods do not support the claims being made. The positions themselves are set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.