There has recently been a resurgence of philosophical and scientific interest in the foundations of self-consciousness, with particular focus on its altered, anomalous forms. This paper looks at the altered forms of self-awareness in Depersonalization Disorder (DPD), a condition in which people feel detached from their self, their body and the world (Derealisation). Building upon the phenomenological distinction between reflective and pre-reflective self-consciousness, we argue that DPD may alter thetransparencyof basic embodied forms of pre-reflective self-consciousness, as well as the capacity (...) to flexibly modulate and switch between the reflective and pre-reflective facets of self-awareness. Empirical evidence will be invoked in support of the idea that impaired processing of bodily signals is characteristic of the condition. We provide first-hand subjective reports describing the experience of self-detachment or fracture between an observing and an observed self. This split is compared with similar self-detachment phenomena reported in certain Buddhist-derived meditative practices. We suggest that these alterations and changes may reveal the underlying and tacit transparency that characterises the embodied and basic pre-reflective forms of self-consciousness, in the same way that a crack in a transparent glass may indicate the presence of an unnoticed window. (shrink)

Contemporary phenomenal externalists are motivated to a large extent by the transparency of experience and by the related doctrine of representationalism. On their own, however, transparency and representationalism do not suffice to establish externalism. Hence we should hesitate to dismiss phenomenal internalism, a view shared by many generations of competent philosophers. Rather, we should keep both our options open, internalism and externalism. It is hard, however, to see how to keep open the internalist option, for although transparency and representationalism have (...) not yet definitively established externalism, they have indeed made it quite intuitive. Internalism, by comparison, comes across at first sight as antiquated and ridden with difficulties. This is why I propose the Stained Glass model of consciousness. I do so with the following two aims: first, to make internalism intuitive in the age of transparency, and second, to show how to resist the many recent anti-internalist arguments. In particular, I argue that phenomenal internalism need not be epistemically worrisome, that it is compatible at once with transparency, representationalism, and content externalism, and that although it requires an error theory, this error theory is a harmless one. (shrink)

For Reid perception, broadly speaking, was a complex of two very different mental states. Calling such views dual component theory, A. D. Smith questions whether any such theory, and whether Reid's version in particular, is a viable theory of perception. The aim of this paper is to defend Reidian Dual Component Theory from Smith's critique. Answering Smith's critique reveals the depth and resilience of Reid's approach to perception, highlighting specifically the continued interest of his thought about the relationship between sensation (...) and perception, the nature of illusion, the immediacy of perception, and the content of perceptual belief. (shrink)

Editorial: Objects and Sound Perception Content Type Journal Article Pages 5-17 DOI 10.1007/s13164-009-0006-3 Authors Nicolas J. Bullot, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales Centre de Recherches sur les Arts et le Langage (CRAL/CNRS) 96 Bd Raspail 75006 Paris France Paul Égré, Institut Jean-Nicod (ENS/EHESS/CNRS) Département d’Etudes Cognitives de l’ENS 29 rue d’Ulm 75005 Paris France Journal Review of Philosophy and Psychology Online ISSN 1878-5166 Print ISSN 1878-5158 Journal Volume Volume 1 Journal Issue Volume 1, Number 1.

Much of recent philosophy of perception is oriented towards accounting for the phenomenal character of perception—what it is like to perceive—in a non-mentalistic way—that is, without appealing to mental objects or mental qualities. In opposition to such views, I claim that the phenomenal character of perception of a red round object cannot be explained by or reduced to direct awareness of the object, its redness and roundness—or representation of such objects and qualities. Qualities of perception that are not captured by (...) what one is directly aware of or by representational content are instances of what Gilbert Harman has called “mental paint” (Block, 1990; Harman, 1990). The claim of this paper is that empirical facts about attention point in the direction of mental paint. The argument starts with the claim (later modified) that when one moves one's attention around a scene while keeping one's eyes fixed, the phenomenology of perception can change in ways that do not reflect which qualities of objects one is directly aware of or the way the world is represented to be. These changes in the phenomenology of perception cannot be accounted for in terms of awareness of or representation of the focus of attention because they manifest themselves in experience as differences in apparent contrast, apparent color saturation, apparent size, apparent speed, apparent time of occurrence and other appearances. There is a way of coping with these phenomena in terms of vague contents, but vague contents cannot save direct realism or representationism because the kind of vagueness required clashes wth the phenomenology itself. (shrink)

Representationalism holds that a perceptual experience's qualitative character is identical with certain of its representational properties. To date, most representationalists endorse atomistic theories of perceptual content, according to which an experience's content, and thus character, does not depend on its relations to other experiences. David Rosenthal, by contrast, proposes a view that is naturally construed as a version of representationalism on which experiences’ relations to one another determine their contents and characters. I offer here a new defense of this holistic (...) representationalism, arguing that some objections to atomistic views are best interpreted as supporting it. (shrink)

Seattle rain smelled different from New Orleans rain…. New Orleans rain smelled of sulfur and hibiscus, trumpet metal, thunder, and sweat. Seattle rain, the widespread rain of the Great Northwest, smelled of green ice and sumi ink, of geology and silence and minnow breath.— Tom Robbins, Jitterbug PerfumeMuch of the philosophical literature on perception has focused on vision. This is not surprising, given that vision holds for us a certain prestige. Our visual experience is incredibly rich, offering up a mosaic (...) of apparent three-dimensional objects. For this reason, it is commonplace to suppose that visual experience is world-directed, with the view taking its most popular form in the representational, or content, view. World-directed views contrast with what we might call subjectivist views — views according to which experiences are raw feels or mere sensations. (shrink)

I distinguish between two claims of transparency of experiences. One claim is weaker and supported by phenomenological evidence. This I call the transparency datum. Introspection of standard perceptual experiences as well as bodily sensations is consistent with, indeed supported by, the transparency datum. I formulate a stronger transparency thesis that is entailed by representationalism about experiential phenomenology. I point out some empirical consequences of strong transparency in the context of representationalism. I argue that pain experiences, as well as some other (...) similar experiences like itches, tickles, orgasms, hedonic valence, etc., are not transparent in this strong sense. Hence they constitute empirical counterexamples to representationalism. Given that representationalism is a general metaphysical doctrine about all experiential phenomenology for good reasons, I conclude that representationalism about phenomenal consciousness is false. Then, I outline a general framework about how the introspection of phenomenal qualities in perceptual experience works in light of the transparency datum, but consistent with the rejection of strong transparency. The result is a form of qualia realism that is naturalist and intentionalist, and has close affinities to the adverbialist views developed in the latter part of the last century. I then apply this framework to pain experiences and their bodily locations. (shrink)

I am aware of the red and orange autumn leaves. Am I aware of my awareness of the leaves? Not so according to many philosophers. By contrast, many meditative traditions report an experience of awareness itself. I argue that such a pure awareness experience must have a non-sensory phenomenal character. I use Douglas Harding’s first-person experiments for assisting in recognising pure awareness. In particular, I investigate the gap where one cannot see one’s head. This is not a mere gap because (...) I seem to be looking from here. Critically, I claim, the experience of looking from here has a non-sensory phenomenal character. I argue that this sense of being aware cannot be reduced to egocentric visual-spatial relations nor the viewpoint because it continues when I close my eyes. Neither is a multisensory origin sufficient to explain why I seem to be at this central point rather than elsewhere. Traditionally, claims of a pure awareness experience have been restricted to highly trained individuals in very restricted circumstances. The innovation of Harding’s approach is that it reliably isolates a candidate for pure awareness using methods which can be replicated at any time. (shrink)

I am aware of the tree and its leaves, but am I aware of my awareness of these things? When I try to introspect my awareness, I just find myself attending to objects and their properties. This observation is known as the ‘transparency of experience’. On the other hand, I seem to directly know that I am aware. Given the first observation, it is not clear how I know that I am aware. Fred Dretske thought that the problem was so (...) acute that he issued the challenge of answering ‘How do you know that you are not a zombie?’ I propose that a view found in the Advaita Vedanta, that awareness is self luminous, reconciles these two observations. I understand self-luminosity as the thesis that: (1) I am implicitly aware of my awareness and (2) I am phenomenally aware of a distinct phenomenal character of my awareness. In support of the first claim, that I apparently only attend to objects in the world when introspecting perceptual experience, suggests that I do not know my awareness explicitly, but rather that I must know it implicitly. In support of the second claim, I argue that the mere fact that I am perceptually conscious is not sufficient to allow me to know that I am perceptually conscious. In particular, the qualities I am perceptually aware of do not tell me that I aware of them, rather they just seem to be properties of objects. I also assess whether strategies for responding to Cartesian sceptical scenarios can be employed against Dretske’s consciousness scepticism. I argue that these strategies either fail to distinguish me from a zombie or they do not adequately describe my epistemic situation. By contrast to other accounts, if awareness has its own distinct phenomenal character, then it cannot be considered to be a prima facie property of the world, hence the self-luminosity of awareness provides a plausible account of how I know that I’m not a zombie. (shrink)

People seem to perceive and locate pains in bodily locations, but also seem to conceive of pains as mental states that can be introspected. However, pains cannot be both bodily and mental, at least according to most conceptions of these two categories: mental states are not the kind of entities that inhabit body parts. How are we to resolve this paradox of pain? In this paper, I put forward what I call the ‘Developmental Challenge’, tackling the second pillar of this (...) paradox, i.e. the introspectionist view of pain according to which genuine pain reports are introspective reports. This view forms an inconsistent triad with two other widely held positions: young children make genuine pain reports, and young children do not make introspective reports. After introducing the paradox and the introspectionist view of pain in part 1, I present the developmental challenge, and defend both and. I conclude that the inconsistent triad can only be resolved by reconsidering the introspectionist view of pain. In discussing three potential factors that lead to the puzzling intricacies of our concept of pain, I argue that the concept of pain might not be paradoxical after all. (shrink)

An original metaphysical proposal building on classical and contemporary sources. In Centering and Extending, Steven G. Smith retrieves and refashions some of the best ideas of classical and early modern metaphysics to support insight into the natures of mental and material beings and their relations. Avoiding what he critiques as distortive paths of idealism, materialism, repressive monism, and overly permissive pluralism, Smith builds his framework on centering and extending as universal principles of formation. Identifying the basic consistency of being with (...) these principles in symmetrical partnership enables a naturalist process view that, unlike Whitehead’s, does not overbalance toward the subjective and teleological and, unlike Deleuze and Guattari’s, does not overbalance toward the material and chaotic. This view supports useful conceptions of mind and matter, form and energy, reason and cause, and a layered world order without relying on a blind concept of supervenience or emergence. It also respects and reinforces a division of roles between metaphysical sense-making and spiritual determinations of meaningfulness. Steven G. Smith is Jennie Carlisle Golding Professor of Philosophy at Millsaps College. He is the author of several books, including Worth Doing, also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

This article reconstructs Henri Bergson’s argument at the beginning of the second chapter of his Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience for his view that every idea of number involves sp...

This paper discusses Husserl’s theory of intentionality and compares it to contemporary debates about intentionalism. I first show to what extent such a comparison could be meaningful. I then outline the structure of intentionality as found in Ideas I. My main claims are that – in contrast with intentionalism – intentionality for Husserl covers just a region of conscious contents; that it is essentially a relation between act-processes and presented content; and that the side of act-processes contains non-representational contents. In (...) the third part, I show that Husserl also offers resources against intentionalism’s exclusive concern with propositional content. (shrink)

Recent philosophy of mind has seen an increase of interest in theories of intentionality in offering a functional account of mental states. The standard intentionalist view holds that mental states can be exhaustively accounted for in terms of their representational contents. An alternative view proposed by Tim Crane, called impure intentionalism, specifies mental states in terms of intentional content, mode, and object. This view is also suggested to hold for states of sensory awareness. This paper primarily develops an alternative to (...) the impure intentionalist account of states of sensory awareness. On the basis of Husserl’s phenomenological work, I argue that a focus on intentionality at the level of sensory awareness is phenomenologically implausible. The final part offers an alternative functional account of sensory awareness based on what Husserl called ‘immanent association’. (shrink)

This paper sketches a phenomenological analysis of visual mental imagery and uses it to criticize representationalism and the internalist-versus-externalist framework for understanding consciousness. Contrary to internalist views of mental imagery imagery experience is not the experience of a phenomenal mental picture inspected by the mind’s eye, but rather the mental simulation of perceptual experience. Furthermore, there are experiential differences in perceiving and imagining that are not differences in the properties represented by these experiences. Therefore, externalist representationalism, which maintains that the (...) properties of experience are the external properties represented by experience, is an inadequate account of conscious experience. (shrink)

Existentialist accounts maintain that visual phenomenal content takes the logical form of an existentially quantified sentence. These accounts do not make phenomenal content specific enough. Singularist accounts posit a singular content in which the seen object is a constituent. These accounts make phenomenal content too specific. My account gets the specificity of visual phenomenal content just right. My account begins with John Searle's suggestion that visual experience represents an object as seen, moves this relation outside the scope of the existential (...) quantifier and then replaces it with the relation of objects being ‘present as accessible’, as described by Alva Noë. (shrink)

C. L. Hardin led a recent development in the philosophical literature on color in which research from visual science is used to argue that colors are not properties of physical objects, but rather are mental processes. I defend J. J. C. Smart's physicalism, which claims that colors are physical properties of objects, against this attack. Assuming that every object has a single veridical (that is, nonillusory) color, it seems that physicalism must give a specification of veridical color in terms natural (...) to physics, independently of our interests. Hardin argues that since physicalism doesn't give us any such specification of veridical color, this view is false. However, this argument assumes a mistaken account of veridical color. I show physicalism can appeal to an alternative account, according to which veridical color is characterized in terms of favored conditions of perceptual access, independently of any specification of the physical nature of color. (shrink)

Although they may differ on the reason why, many philosophers hold that it is a priori that an object is red if and only if it is such as to look red to normal observers in normal conditions.

This paper is a new defense of the view that visual hallucinations lack content. The claim is that visual hallucinations are illusory not because their content is nonveridical, but rather because they seem to represent when they fail to represent anything in the first place. What accounts for the phenomenal character of visual experiences is not the content itself, but rather the vehicle of content, that is, not the properties represented by visual experience, but rather the relational properties of experience (...) of representing singular contents, namely particular instantiations of properties. I argue that the Russellian particular-involving proposition is the only appropriate model for the representational content of visual experience and hence that visual hallucinations are just like failed demonstrations. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

The claim that perfect hallucination is introspectively indistinguishable from perception has been a centrepiece of philosophical theorizing about sense experience. The most common interpretation of the indistinguishability claim is modal: that it is impossible to distinguish perfect hallucination from perception through introspection alone. I run through various models of introspection and show that none of them can accommodate the modal interpretation. Rejecting the modal interpretation opens up two alternative interpretations of the indistinguishability claim. According to the generic interpretation, hallucination is (...) indistinguishable from perception despite the existence of possible exceptions, while according to the actuality interpretation, the indistinguishability of hallucination from perception consists in the actual failure to distinguish hallucination from perception. These alternative understandings of the indistinguishability claim have a number of significant implications for the problem of perception, including the rejection of perfect hallucination and illusion in favour of our ordinary, non-philosophical concepts of these states. (shrink)

It is very natural to suppose that conscious sensory experience is essentially representational. However this thought gives rise to any number of philosophical problems and confusions. I shall argue that it is quite mistaken. Conscious phenomena cannot be constructed out of representational materials.

Despite its admirable bottom-up methodology, Roy Sorensen's Seeing Dark Things (OUP, 2008) raises difficult theoretical questions concerning the metaphysics and perception of absences. Metaphysical difficulties include how to individuate, count, locate, and classify absences, and what determines their features. Perceptual difficulties include how to distinguish experiences of absences and presences, especially when nonveridical, and what subjects contribute to perceptual experience according to Sorensen's causal theory. In addition to articulating these difficulties, this paper also presents and explores, on Sorensen's terms, an (...) alternative account of silence. (shrink)

Philosophical Explorations, Volume 17, Issue 2, Page 172-187, June 2014.

In this article, I discuss several of the factors that jeopardize our understanding of the nature of qualitative experiences and the mind. I incorporate the view from neuroscience to clarify the na.

Our pains can be more or less intense, our mental imagery can be more or less vivid, our perceptual experiences can be more or less striking. These degrees of intensity of conscious experiences are all manifestations of a phenomenal property I call mental strength. In this article, I argue that mental strength is a domain-general phenomenal magnitude; in other words, it is a phenomenal quantity shared by all conscious experiences that explains their degree of felt intensity. Mental strength has been (...) largely overlooked in favor of mental states’ type, representational contents, domain-specific phenomenology, or processes such as attention. Considering mental strength in our reflections about the mind illuminates debates about the relation of representational contents and phenomenal character, and it also helps address questions about the structure and functions of consciousness. Mental strength provides a unifying construct to model what is shared in the phenomenology of different types of conscious experiences. (shrink)

Many philosophers have understood the representational dimension of affective states along the model of sense-perceptual experiences, even claiming the relevant affective experiences are perceptual experiences. This paper argues affective experiences involve a kind of personal level affective representation disanalogous from the representational character of perceptual experiences. The positive thesis is that affective representation is a non-transparent, non-sensory form of evaluative representation, whereby a felt valenced attitude represents the object of the experience as minimally good or bad, and one experiences that (...) evaluative standing as having the power to causally motivate the relevant attitude. I show this view can make sense of distinctive features of affective experiences, such as their valence and connection to value in a way which moves beyond current evaluativist views of affect. (shrink)

A representationalist analysis of strong first-person phenomena is developed (Baker 1998), and it is argued that conscious, cognitive self-reference can be naturalized under this representationalist analysis. According to this view, the phenomenal first-person perspective is a condition of possibility for the emergence of a cognitive first-person perspective. Cognitive self-reference always is reference to the phenomenal content of a transparent self-model. The concepts of phenomenal transparency and introspection are clarified. More generally, I suggest that the concepts of phenomenal opacity and phenomenal (...) transparency are interesting instruments for analyzing conscious, self-representational content, and that their relevance in understanding reflexive, i.e., cognitive subjectivity may have been overlooked in the past. (shrink)

The sensory colors that figure in visual perceptual experience are either properties of the object of consciousness (naïve realism, sense-data theory), or properties of the subject of consciousness (adverbialism) (Section 1). I consider an argument suggested by the work of A. D. Smith that the existence of certain kinds of perceptual constancies shows that adverbialism is correct, for only adverbialism can account for such constancies (Section 3). I respond on behalf of the naïve realist that naïve realism is compatible with (...) the existence of such constancies, so long as naïve realism adopts the view that sensory colors are relational properties of physical objects, not intrinsic properties (Section 4). In other words, the naïve realist should adopt the theory of appearing (Section 5). (shrink)

Of all the problems attending the sense-datum theory, arguably the deepest is that it draws a veil of appearances over the external world. Today, the sense-datum theory is widely regarded as an overreaction to the problem of hallucination. Instead of accounting for hallucination in terms of intentional relations to sense data, it is often thought that we should account for it in terms of intentional relations to properties. In this paper, however, I argue that in the versions that might address (...) the problem of hallucination, this newer account is guilty of a vice similar to sense-datum theory’s: it draws a veil of abtracta over the concrete world. (shrink)

To a first approximation, self-representationalism is the view that a mental state M is phenomenally conscious just in case M represents itself in the appropriate way. Proponents of self-representationalism seem to think that the phenomenology of ordinary conscious experience is on their side, but opponents seem to think the opposite. In this paper, I consider the phenomenological merits and demerits of self-representationalism. I argue that there is phenomenological evidence in favor of self-representationalism, and rather more confidently, that there is no (...) phenomenological evidence against self-representationalism. (shrink)

'Where am I?' This is something we might expect to hear from hapless explorers or academics with no sense of direction. If we can, we'll explain to our inquirer that he is east of East St. Louis and hope he can find his way from there. If he persists, insisting that he is not really lost, but only cannot find himself no matter how hard he looks, we might reasonably suspect that we are dealing with that peculiarly incorrigible academic explorer, (...) the philosopher. When we hesitantly point to his body, we hear him explain, exasperated, 'No, don't you get it? That's my body, but I'm looking for my self! And I cannot find it!' At this point it is tempting to slip away, convinced that our philosophical friend is .. (shrink)

It’s a familiar fact that there is something it is like to see red, eat chocolate or feel pain. More recently philosophers have insisted that in addition to this objectual phenomenology there is something it is like for me to eat chocolate, and this for-me-ness is no less there than the chocolatishness. Recognizing this subjective feature of consciousness helps shape certain theories of consciousness, introspection and the self. Though it does this heavy philosophical work, and it is supposed to be (...) relatively obvious to anyone who introspects, it is rather difficult to see just what this phenomenal me-ness is supposed to be; indeed, many philosophers deny it exists. In this paper we try to provide a clear sense of what phenomenal me-ness involves, and then then consider some arguments for the existence of phenomenal me-ness experience as well as some accounts of what gives rise to it. In the end, we argue that the plausible senses of me-ness are a good deal thinner than what often seems to be claimed. (shrink)

A popular defense of physicalist theories of consciousness against anti-physicalist arguments invokes the existence of ‘phenomenal concepts’. These are concepts that designate conscious experiences from a first person perspective, and hence differ from physicalistic concepts; but not in a way that precludes co-referentiality with them. On one version of this strategy phenomenal concepts are seen as (1) type demonstratives that have (2) no mode of presentation. However, 2 is possible without 1-call this the ‘bare recognitional concept’ view-and I will argue (...) that this avoids certain recent criticisms while retaining the virtue of finessing the ‘mode of presentation’ problem for phenomenal concepts. But construing phenomenal concepts this way seems to not do justice to the phenomenology of conscious experience. In this paper I examine whether or not this impression can be borne out by a good argument. As it turns out, it is harder to do so than one might think. It can be done, but it involves somewhat more convoluted reasoning than one might have supposed necessary. Having shown that, I will end with a few brief remarks on what my argument means for attempts to preserve a physicalist account of consciousness. (shrink)

According to the Matching Thesis (MT), the temporal structure of experience in time matches the apparent temporal structure of the objects and events represented in the content of perceptual experience. In this paper I critically address attempts to show the MT on the grounds that perceptual experience is transparent: that experiences themselves possess no introspectively discernible temporal structure apart from that of the apparent objects perceived. Pace such a Transparency Argument for the MT, I argue that considerations of perceptual transparency (...) can in fact ground no view about the relationship between the temporal structure of perceptual experiences and the apparent temporal structure of objects and events that experience represents. I defend this outcome against a line of objection having to do with self-knowledge. (shrink)

Intermodal representationalism is a popular theory of consciousness. This paper argues that intermodal representationalism is false, or at least likely so. The argument turns on two forms of exceptional episodic memory: hyperthymesia and prodigious visual memory in savant syndrome. Emerging from this argument is a broader lesson about the relationship between memory and perception; that it may be possible to entertain in memory the very same content as in a corresponding perceptual experience, and that the ‘overflow’ interpretation of the classic (...) Sperling paradigm experiments may not fully generalize. (shrink)

According to the thesis of powerism, our world is pervaded by causal powers which are metaphysically basic. The aim of this paper is to defend the existence of the self, defined as a substantial entity, and its mental powers. This claim, which may seem a bold one, should not be deemed as inconsistent with scientific evidence. In fact, this approach does not ignore empirical knowledge, but is not bound only to it in order to understand entities, properties, and the relationship (...) between them. Aristotelian powerism may show that the self, as the subject of one’s mental acts, is a substance that has an essential nature. Firstly, we shall analyze the immediate evidence we have in support of the existence of the self as a substantial entity. We will show that the self is a substance because it possesses an essential character, i.e. an individual essence. We will take into account the Aristotelian perspective of substance, trying to show how the presence of a necessary property that makes every subject identical to itself and the phenomenal features of one’s private experience point to the existence of a substantial entity that corresponds to the self. Secondly, we will try to justify the adoption of a metaphysical theory of causation based on powers, analyzing it in comparison with the main competing theories, namely hypotheticalism and nomism. Then, we shall proceed to show the causal properties of the substance in question, namely the mental powers. In fact, thirdly, we will embrace the thesis of powerism by defending the existence of a set of mental powers that should be attributed to the self. We will describe the main features of mental powers and we will show that they are conceivable as the pure intentional acts we perform by directing an intentional state towards an intentional object. In this way we show how a classic problem of philosophy of mind, relevant to science as well, can be addressed in an original way by a metaphysical approach involving powers. (shrink)

Many spiritual traditions employ certain mental techniques (meditation) which consist in inhibiting mental activity whilst nonetheless remaining fully conscious, which is supposed to lead to a realisation of one’s own true nature prior to habitual self-substantialisation. In this paper I propose that this practice can be understood as a special means of becoming aware of consciousness itself as such. To explain this claim I conduct some phenomenologically oriented considerations about the nature of consciousness qua presence and the problem of self-presence (...) of this presence. (shrink)

According to the transparency thesis, some conscious states are transparent or “diaphanous”. This thesis is often believed to be incompatible with an inner‐awareness account of phenomenal consciousness. In this article, I reject this incompatibility. Instead, I defend a compatibilist approach to transparency. To date, most attempts to do so require a rejection of strong transparency in favor of weak transparency. In this view, transparent states can be attended to by attending (in the right way) to the presented world: that is, (...) they are merely translucent. Here, I first argue that this understanding of transparency is too weak to qualify as a compatibilist view. Drawing on insights from Franz Brentano, I then describe a middle road between strong and weak transparency. The crucial idea is that, although transparent states cannot be attended to, they can be noticed (under suitable conditions). This view, I submit, allows supporters of inner awareness to commit themselves to a more interesting understanding of transparency—moderate transparency—that preserves the initial intuition underlying the transparency metaphor. (shrink)

Representationalist theories of the phenomenal character of conscious experience are attractive because they promise a simpler 'naturalization' of the mind. However, I argue that representationalists cannot endorse an otherwise attractive externalist theory of the representational contents of conscious experiences. The combination of representationalism and externalism conflicts with a true principle linking phenomenal character to perceptual indistinguishability.

This paper aims to offer a critical review of the recent nonconceptualist reading of the Kantian notion of sensible intuition. I raise two main objections. First, nonconceptualist readers fail to distinguish connected but different anti-intellectualist claims in the contemporary philosophy of mind and language. Second, I will argue that nonconceptual readings fail because Kan- tian intuitions do not possess a representational content of their own that can be veridical or falsidical in a similar way to how the content of propositional (...) attitudes is true or false. In this paper, I will support my own reading that sensible intuition is better seen as what Evans and McDowell have called a de re sense, whose main characteristic is object dependence. In this sense, Kantian sensible intuitions can be seen as a sensible mode of donation of objects. In my reading, the Kantian opposition between intuitions and concepts is best seen as the opposition between the objectual de re perception of something and the propositional de dicto apperception that something is the case rather than the opposition between nonconceptual and conceptual contents. However, if Kantian sensible intuition is not a mental state with nonconceptual content, it is certainly in the general anti-intellectualist neighborhood. (shrink)

This paper is a new defense of the view that visual hallucinations lack content. The claim is that visual hallucinations are illusory not because their content is nonveridical, but rather because they seem to represent when they fail to represent anything in the first place. What accounts for the phenomenal character of visual experiences is not the content itself (content-representationalism), but rather the vehicle of content (vehicle-representationalism), that is, not the properties represented by visual experience, but rather the relational properties (...) of experience (or of the brain) of representing singular contents, namely particular instantiations of properties. I argue that the Russellian particular-involving proposition is the only appropriate model for the representational content of visual experience and hence that visual hallucinations are just like failed demonstrations. (shrink)

How does one know the phenomenal character of one’s own experience? I aim to present and defend a new view of the epistemology of qualia that addresses this issue. My view results from a reworking of Dretske’s displaced perception model. The guiding line is the key Wittgensteinian insight of his Private Language Argument, namely the claim that no inner perception of qualia can justify our corresponding qualia-beliefs. My reworking of the original model starts with the rejection of Dretske’s representationalism, as (...) well as any other metaphysical views about the ultimate nature of qualia. The reworking of the displaced perception model I am proposing is supposed to be compatible with any available meta- physical view on qualia. The second step consists of rejecting the epistemological misgivings of the original model, namely the view that knowing qualia requires “connecting beliefs” along with “meta-representations.” Yet, Dretske’s crucial mistake has been to force knowledge of qualia into the “belief-box.” As a matter of fact, there is only one belief involved in intro- specting qualia, namely the qualia-belief itself. The third final step is this. Assuming the key Wittgensteinian insight, I argue that introspection of qualia is a process that is both epis- temically reliable and automatic. It is reliable because it dispenses with justification of any beliefs whatsoever. Moreover, it is automatic because it also dispenses with reflexive con- necting beliefs. For example, it takes nonconceptual awareness of the color blue as an input and automatically yields the belief that phenomenal blue is the conscious character of my experience of the sky as an output just by employing the concept BLUE. (shrink)

According to the perceptual theory of introspection, introspection is a kind of perception of our mental life. To evaluate the perceptual theory’s plausibility, we obviously need to know what entitles a mental phenomenon to the qualification “perceptual.” I start by arguing that this task is complicated by the fact that we really have two notions of the perceptual: a functional notion and a phenomenological notion. The heart of the chapter is an argument that even if we have no reason to (...) think that introspection is a kind of perception in the functional sense, we do have strong reasons to think it is a kind of perception in the phenomenological sense. In the phenomenological sense, I argue, two features are central to a phenomenon’s status as perceptual: its involving direct awareness of the perceived, and its taking a distinctively perceptual attitude toward it. The bulk of the chapter consists in (i) an argument from inference to the best explanation for the thesis that introspection involves direct awareness of the introspected, and (ii) a more direct argument that introspection involves an attitude almost identical to the attitude distinctive of sensory perception. The chapter then closes with responses to some of the standard objections to the perceptual theory. (shrink)

The idea of representation has been central in discussions of intentionality for many years. But only more recently has it begun playing a wider role in the philosophy of mind, particularly in theories of consciousness. Indeed, there are now multiple representational theories of consciousness, corresponding to different uses of the term "conscious," each attempting to explain the corresponding phenomenon in terms of representation. More cautiously, each theory attempts to explain its target phenomenon in terms of _intentionality_, and assumes that intentionality (...) is representation. (shrink)