According to the monitoring theory of consciousness, a mental state is conscious in virtue of being represented in the right way by a monitoring state. David Rosenthal, William Lycan, and Uriah Kriegel have developed three different influential versions of this theory. In order to explain colour experiences, each of these authors combines his version of the monitoring theory of consciousness with a specific account of colour representation. Even though Rosenthal, Lycan, and Kriegel disagree on the specifics, they all hold that (...) colours are represented by a single type of mental state. The main goal of this paper is to show that a more complex account of colour representation is needed for the monitoring theory of consciousness to do justice to the phenomenology of colour experiences. In particular, I will argue that the fine-grained character of colour experience—that is, the fact that perceivers can become conscious of small differences between colours—requires that colour representation be construed in terms of two different types of mental states, namely sensory states that represent appearance properties and colour representations that represent physical colours. (shrink)

David Rosenthal and Josh Weisberg have recently provided a counter argument to Ned Block’s argument that a Higher Order Thought theory of consciousness cannot accommodate the existence of hallucinatory conscious states . Their counter argument invokes the idea of mental appearances: a non-existent intentional object which is to aid in an account of subjective conscious awareness. I argue that if mental appearances are to do the work they are supposed to, we cannot draw a mental appearance/reality distinction. I provide an (...) alternative story that a HOT theorist can invoke to account for cases of conscious misrepresentation. Such a story will require denying the existence of hallucinatory conscious states while still accounting for conscious misrepresentation. This is a cost I believe the HOT theorist should be willing to pay. (shrink)

Higher Order theories of consciousness have their fair share of sympathisers, but the arguments mustered in their support are—to my mind—unduly persuasive. My aim in this paper is to show that Higher Order theories cannot accommodate the possibility of misrepresentation without either falling into contradiction, or collapsing into a First-Order theory. If this diagnosis is on the right track, then Higher Order theories—at least in the specific versions here considered—fail to give an account of what they set out to explain: (...) what is distinctive of ‘conscious’ phenomena. (shrink)

This is a fine and important collection of eleven recently published essays by Peter Carruthers, a leading figure in contemporary philosophy of mind. The book contains a very helpful introduction that provides a nice overview of Carruthers’ basic views and orients the reader to the key issues. The introduction also presents a brief summary of the eleven chapters that comprise the remainder of the book. Only three of the essays initially appeared prior to Carruthers’ important 2000 book Phenomenal Consciousness: A (...) Naturalistic Theory. One of these is significantly rewritten: an essay entitled “Natural Theories of Consciousness,” which will be familiar to readers of Psyche since it was the subject of a symposium in volumes 4-6. There is also one entirely new essay entitled “Dual-Content Theory: the Explanatory Advantages”. Thus, there is much to learn about Carruthers’ theory of consciousness even for those very familiar with his 2000 book. Indeed, one might think of this collection as elaborating upon Carruthers’ views as found in his earlier book. In the relatively short period of a few years, Carruthers has managed to publish an impressive number of quality essays, which comprise most of this anthology. It is very convenient to have these nicely written essays all in one place. For those unfamiliar with Phenomenal Consciousness, this book is still readable on its own and contains many helpful summaries of Carruthers’ earlier work. (shrink)

In my reply to Boyle, Rosenthal, and Tumulty, I revisit my view of avowals’ security as a matter of a special immunity to error, their character as intentional expressive acts that employ self-ascriptive vehicles (without being grounded in self-beliefs), Moore’s paradox, the idea of expressing as contrasting with reporting and its connection to showing one’s mental state, and the ‘performance equivalence’ between avowals and other expressive acts.

The article will attempt to show that Velasquez's Las Meninas can be viewed as an allegorical enactment of some of the current debates and controversies in the philosophy of cognition and self-representation. I will focus on two very different philosophical trajectories, to which the allegory of the painting can be linked. The first, analytic, trajectory relates Las Meninas to the notion of representation and self-representation in the work of philosophers David Rosenthal, Robert Van Gulick, Uriah Kriegel and Bruce Mangan, and (...) neurologists Bernie Baars and Rodolfo Llinas. The second, continental, trajectory begins by relating to the painting Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological 'embodied self-representation'. This trajectory, which can be further linked to John Ziman's 'second person view' of reality, proceeds to relate Las Meninas to Lacan's 'object gaze' and the 'unbearable fragility of representation', ending with Bataille's (non)concept of 'sovereignty' as essential yet non-representable losses in representation. I will conclude by suggesting that the evolution of the cognitive state experienced by an observer of Las Meninas can be viewed as an 'ontogenetic' recapitulation of the more 'phylogenic' progression of the philosophical history of representation and self-representation alluded to by the canvas. (shrink)