Is the location of consciousness in the objectively represented world intelligible? The paper examines the grounds for Nagel's negative answer, which can be presented as a response to the following paradox. (1) We are realists about consciousness. (2) Realism about a domain of reference requires commitment to the possibility of an objective, perspective-free conception of it. (3) The phenomenal character of an experience can only be captured by means of perspectival concepts. According to Nagel, we can have either realism about (...) consciousness or the link between realism and objectivity. He opts for the former, where this leads to the postulation of an essentially perspectivally reality inhabited by consciousness. I argue, contra Nagel, that questions about the intelligibility of locating consciousness in the objectively representable world should be asked relative the kinds of objectivity provided for by our spatial thought. Not only does this formally dissolve the paradox, as such thought allows for essential reliance on perspectival concepts; but it also shows how we do in fact make sense of the objective location of consciousness, in virtue of the link between spatial thought and something Strawson calls our ‘commonsense realism’ about physical objects, which ascribes ‘phenomenally-laden’ properties to such objects. (shrink)

What is the connection between the way we represent time and things in time, on the one hand, and our capacity to remember particular past events, on the other? This is the substantive question that has stood behind the project of putting together this volume. The methodological assumption that has informed this project is that any progress with the difficult and fascinating set of issues that are raised by this question must draw on the resources of various areas both in (...) philos- ophy and in psychology. (shrink)