You raise--in Sartrean terms--the excellent question of whether Sartre engages what contemporary philosophers call 'the problem of free will', the problem, that is, of how, if determinism, according to which every event is caused by some preceding event, is true, agents can be said to make free choices or determine themselves. Recent philosophical answers to this problem fall broadly into three classes: compatibilists believe that even if every event, including human choices, are determined by some preceding event, human beings are nevertheless free; incompatibilists believe that if every event is determined by some preceding event, then only if human choices are not determined by some preceding event can they be free: libertarian incompatibilists believe that human choices are not determined by preceding events, and therefore agents are free, while other incompatibilists believe that because human choices, like all other events, are caused by preceding events, human beings are not free.

In light of Sartre's admittedly sometimes hyperbolic claims about human freedom in Being and Nothingness, that his view of human freedom is akin to that of recent libertarian incompatibilists. Yet Sartre does not deny that the choices of free agents--beings-in-themselves--are shaped by their circumstances, histories, etc.--being-in-itself: indeed, in "Freedom and Facticity: The Situation," the second section of Part 4 of Being and Nothingness, he even says "that there is only freedom in a situation"--hence that being-for-itself is in some way conditioned by being-in-itself--although he immediately adds that "there is only a situation through freedom," which would seem to imply that being-for-itself somehow shapes being-in-itself. Sartre calls this "the paradox of freedom" and the claim might seem not only paradoxical, but contradictory. But I don't think it is. For Sartre, freedom is the ability of agents to confer meaning on their situations, hence the ability of being-for-itself to determine the value and/or significance of being-in-itself. So, for example, according to Sartre, a free agent must operate within the limits of her physical situation--a human being must confront the limits set by her body in determining what she will do, she must confront the physical situation in which she is acting in determining what she will do--but the situation, being-in-itself, does not and cannot determine how an agent will conceive of that situation. So a mountain climber, to take an example that Sartre himself gives, may conceive of a peak as an obstacle, or a challenge, but neither conception is fixed by the nature of the thing itself, one can only determine for oneself how one conceives of a situation, but one must, regardless, engage with the situation.

So Sartre does not mean, I think, to take a position on the 'problem of free will'--near the beginning of Part 4 of Being and Nothingness he suggests that the 'problem of free will' is ill-conceived--and I think that he seeks, instead, to transform the problem, by shifting it to another register.

I hope that these remarks prove helpful, and I wish you good luck in working through Sartre!!

The question of whether there are unconscious perceptions, and if so, their nature, has received considerable attention from philosophers and psychologists from the seventeenth century onwards. One's answer to this question will reveal a lot about one's conception of perception in particular and of the nature of the mind in general. Some care is needed in approaching the question. 'Perceive' is sometimes taken to mean 'be aware of', and if it is so taken, of course one cannot perceive anything unconciously, by definition. Such a definition doesn't, however, dispose of the question, for one can either stipulate that by 'perceive', one means to 'have a mental representation' (for now, let me just stipulate that a mental representation is an internal representation that enables one to have a sense-based perception: the nature and status of mental representations is a topic that deserves considerable attention in its own right): if one takes 'perceive' in this sense, then one can have both conscious and unconscious perceptions. On this picture, all perceptions are representations, some of which are conscious and some of which are not. (The question of why some perceptions make it to consciousness is another good one that merits further attention, but I bracket it here.) There are numerous examples of unconscious mental representations, I present just one. If one is driving along the road, thinking about the question of whether there are unconscious perceptions, one may not be consciously attending to the road, but, nevertheless, one continues to follow the road, and to adjust one's driving to the road, and even, if something appears suddenly on the road, one may respond to it, even though one's attention is not focused on the road. It seems to me that one plausible explanation of this phenomenon--not the only explanation, to be sure--is to posit unconscious representations of the road. This is the sort of everyday phenomenon that provides good reason, I think, to hold that it is possible to perceive something unconsciously.

I'd say it's an extraordinarily uncommon view among philosophers. Very few philosophers have believed it throughout the history of the discipline (Bishop Berkeley is the most obvious exception) and I can't think of any contemporary philosophers who do, though I'm sure there are some somewhere. Berkeley was an idealist (that's the usual name for such views) because he thought the conception of matter found in Locke, Newton and other thinkers of the time was incoherent. If you read his Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philnous, you may find some of his arguments more interesting that you would have thought.

We could add: orthodox theological views hold that not that our minds make matter, but that God creates the world. And accordng to that same orthodoxy, God isn't a material being. So the view that some mind may be the source of matter is actually not at all uncommon. And for various reasons, contemporary New Age and Magical thinkers often favor a view that puts mind first. If you want a sophisticated treatment of magical ways of viewing the world, I recommend Tanya Luhrmann's Persuasions of the Witch's Craft, still excellent 22 years after it was published.

There's a different sort of view that isn't quite as wild. It doesn't hold that minds make matter, but it does hold that mind brings something to the table. More particularly, the idea is that the world doesn't come pre-sliced into kinds of things; what gets grouped together with what depends on how we classify things. Traditionally, this sort of view was called "nominalism"; to varying degrees and in various ways it's still with us. You can find strains of it in Kantian philosophy, in post-modern thought, under the heading of "social construction," and in various so-called "conventionalist" views in philosophy. Within Anglo-American philosophy, Nelson Goodman was perhaps the staunchest defender of such a view; see his Ways of Worldmaking if you're interested.

So no: the view that mind makes matter is not common among philosophers. But the idea that knowledge has a "constructed" element and that in any case, the world doesn't simply sort itself by itself has a wide variety of defenders.

Lots of interesting questions here, and I won't try to do all the issues justice. But a handful of quick thoughts.

First, philosophy doesn't usually have a perspective on a question because the questions philosophy deals with tend to be inherently controversial. Philosophers have views, but there's almost always disagreement amongst philosophers on almost all philosophical topics. This one is no exception. That said if you were to take a poll these days, I'm pretty confident that at least among philosophers in the "analytic" tradition (very roughly: influenced by formal logic, science, careful attention to language and meaning...), you'd find that most don't think there can be consciousness without a body to embody it. This is largely because the more we learn about the workings of the mind, the more we see that it's intimately connected with the functioning of the brain.

Turning briefly to one of your examples: suppose a bit of information were taped to the top of a tall object in an operating room. And suppose it turns out that a patient who reports a near-death experience is able to give a detailed account of the information, even though from the operating table there was no "ordinary" way to see it. What would this show?

It's not at all clear. In particular, it's not clear that it would do much to support the idea that the mind is separate from the body. What we'd have is someone whose brain is functioning now and never actually died. Somehow, this person has some information that we wouldn't expect him to have. But what best explains how he came to have the information is hard to say - even if he reports an experience of floating above the operating table. Saying that the mind separated from the body and travelled up through the room to examine the information doesn't help much. How would that work? Does the bodiless mind have eyes? How did the interaction between whatever was up there on top of that tall object and the disembodied mind work? How did the information get stored? How did the mind reconnect with the patient's brain?

The point isn't that the mind must be embodied. The point is that a case like this would only amount to good evidence for minds separate from bodies if that idea gave us a good explanation for the case. As it stands, it's not clear that it gives us much of an explanation at all, let the best one.

That's why it's called the "hard problem".... :-)

And perhaps that's why some philosophers take an 'eliminationist' or materialist approach to the subject (eg Dan Dennett, Paul Churchland): the 'problem' itself is so ill-defined because there really is no such phenomena to be analyzed ... Words like "consciousness" are so vague and unclear that they cannot constitute a subject of scientific investigation, which will eventually dispense with them altogether ...

That's not very helpful, of course, but then there is no real answer to your question ....!

best, ap

Daniel Dennett discussed a fictional drug that he called an "amnestic" that allows you to feel pain, but paralyzes you so that you don't exhibit pain behavior, and leaves you with amnesia. Pleasant, no? For the details and his philosophical analysis, read:

Dennett, Daniel C. (1978), "Why You Can't Make a Computer that Feels Pain", Synthese 38(3) (July): 415-456; reprinted in his Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (Montgomery, VT: Bradford Books (now Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 1978): 190-229.

In my view, experienced pain still counts as pain, even if it is not later remembered. The key here is that the pain was actually at one time experienced.

Some kinds of anesthetics block pain experience altogether -- for example, when pregnant women have c-sections, they typically do not experience the pain while the procedure is going on and the anesthetic is in effect. (After the anesthetic wears off, well, that's another story altogether...)

In contrast, you describe a different kind of anesthetic, one that does not stop the pain from being experienced, but just stops it from being later remembered. And I would say that unremembered pain is still clearly pain. Here's one way to think about it. Suppose that right now, while fully conscious, you were offered a deal: If you agree right now to be tortured, you will get $10,000. You will be in extreme agony for an hour, but afterward, the torturer will give you a drug to make you forget the torture entirely (and you will get your $10K). Would you accept the deal? Insofar as we aren't inclined to go for it, it seems that we accept the claim that unremembered pain is still pain. (Test your intuitions further: Does it matter if the reward goes up to $1 million? Does it matter if the torture is extended to six hours? Or three weeks?)

That said, my understanding is that the anesthetics typically used during colonoscopies do not work entirely as you describe. Usually, I think, some Demerol (or other pain killer) is given, so there isn't experienced pain that is then forgotten but rather no real pain is experienced (perhaps there is some discomfort, but not pain).

if you have to have the procedure again, perhaps it would be smart to talk to your doctor to clarify the properties of the anesthetics being used. And in any case, I hope the results of your procedure were good ones.

Try this. Suppose everything that is explained is explained by facts about the physical world - that's physicalism. If zombies were possible and existed, we would be physically indistinguishable from them. But they would have no consciousness. So whatever explains our consciousness cannot be physical. If it were, it would also make consciousness for the zombies. That's the point of the physical indistinguishability between us and the zombies. There is a very good article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy called "Zombies", by Robert Kirk, by the way, which will clear everything up for you.

The question has been bugging a lot of people! I suggest that the case for some nonhuman animals (great apes, chimps, dolphins....) being conscious is pretty strong. Sometimes the evidence includes appeal to language or communication, memory, recognition, but also a wide set of behavior (apparent pain avoidance behavior), anatomy (brain and nervous system resembling ours), and evolution. You ask about consciousness and its relationship to language, memory, and the ability to understand that a subject has mental states. Off hand, doesn't it seem that rather than consciousness presupposing language, language-usage presupposes consciousness? After all, without consciousness (and without memory) it seems that language acquisition and development is going to be difficult. As for whether consciousness would have to involve or presuppose the ability to understand mental states, the terrain is not obvious. Some philosophers have argued that one can have different levels of awareness. On this view, my dog may know it is now the time of day that he usually gets food, but does he know that he knows it? Does he have a concept of himself as a substantial self enduring over time, understand the word "treat" (even if he has no syntax), recognize me over time, and so on? I am not sure, but some days he seems to be only too conscious and rather convinced that he deserves an extra treat.

But if you are looking for arguments on the other side, you might consult Peter Carruthers. Also, Donald Davidson thinks that without language, you do not have beliefs. R.G. Frey has also argued against animal consciousness. In all the best book might be Carruthers' Language, Thought, and Consciousness. Though you might compare such efforts to Bernard Rollin's The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness.

Iris Young's "Throwing Like a Girl" is a wonderful description of gendered experience. Our experiences of the world are influenced by many factors that have to do with our positions in the world, both our physical positions (biological sex, physical disabilities) and our political positions (race, gender, social class, power). "Experience" is defined broadly to encompass all we are conscious of (some call it phenomenological experience). I recommend Kay Toombs work on the phenomenology of disability as another rich description of perspective.