Klarheit in betreff dieser Sätze anstrebt, d. i. Einsicht in das Wesen der bei dem Vollzug und den ideal-möglichen Anwendungen solcher Sätze ins Spiel tretenden Erkenntnisweisen und der mit diesen sich wesensmäßig konstituierenden Sinngebungen und objektiven Gel- 1 11 S tungen • Sprachliche Erörterungen gehören r nun sicherlich zu den 1 r philosophisch I unerläßlichen Vorbereitungen für den Aufbau der [A 4] reinen Logik, weil nur durch ihre Mithilfe die eigentlichen Objekte der logischen Forschung und, in weiterer Folge, die wesentlichen (...) Arten und Unterschiede dieser Objekte zu unmißverständlicher 10 Klarheit herauszuarbeiten sind. Es handelt sich dabei aber nicht um 12 grammatische Erörterungen im r empirischen, auf irgendeine historisch gegebene Sprache bezogenen Sinn, sondern um Erörterun gen jener allgemeinsten Art, die zur weiteren Sphäre einer objekti ven Theorie der Erkenntnis und, was damit innigst zusammen- 13 15 hängt, einer rreinen Phänomenologie der Denk- und Erkenntniserlebnisse gehören. rDicse, wie die sie umspannende reine Phänomenologie der Erlebnisse überhaupt, hat es ausschließlich mit den in der Intuition erlaßbaren und analysierba ren Erlebnissen in reiner Wesensallgemeinheit zu tun, nicht aber mit 20 empirisch apperzipierten Erlebnissen als realen Fakten, als Erlebnis sen erlebender Menschen oder Tiere in der erscheinenden und als Erfahrungsfaktum gesetzten Welt. Die in der Wesensintuition direkt erfaßten Wesen und rein in den Wesen gründenden Zusammenhän ge bringt sie deskriptiv in Wesensbegriffen und gesetzlichen 25 Wesensaussagen zu reinem Ausdruck. Jede solche Aussage ist eine 1 14 apriorische im vorzüglichsten Sinne des Wortes. (shrink)

I hear the patter of little feet around the house, I expect Bruce. What I expect is a cat, a particular cat. If I heard such a patter in another house, I might expect a cat but no particular cat. What I expect then seems to be a Meinongian incomplete cat. I expect winter, expect stormy weather, expect to shovel snow, expect fatigue---a season, a phenomenon, an activity, a state. I expect that someday mankind will inhabit at least five planets. (...) This time what I expect is a state of affairs. If we let surface grammar be our guide, the objects of expectation seem quite a miscellany. The same goes for belief, since expectation is one kind of belief. The same goes for desire: I could want Bruce, want a cat but no particular cat, want winter, want stormy weather, want to shovel snow, want fatigue, or want that someday mankind will inhabit at least five planets. The same goes for other attitudes to the extent that they consist partly of beliefs or desires or lacks thereof. But the seeming diversity of objects might be an illusion. Perhaps the objects of attitudes are uniform in category, and it is our ways of speaking elliptically about these uniform objects that are diverse. That indeed is our consensus. We mostly think that the attitudes uniformly have propositions as their objects. That is why we speak habitually of "propositional attitudes.". (shrink)

Some mental events are conscious, some are unconscious. What is the difference between the two? Uriah Kriegel offers an answer. His aim is a comprehensive theory of the features that all and only conscious mental events have. The key idea is that consciousness arises when self-awareness and world-awareness are integrated in the right way. Conscious mental events differ from unconscious ones in that, whatever else they may represent, they always also represent themselves, and do so in a very specific way. (...) Subjective Consciousness is a fascinating new move forward towards a full understanding of the mind. (shrink)

are synthetic a priori judgements possible?" In both cases, i~thas usually been t'aken for granted in fife one case by Kant that synthetic a priori judgements were possible, and in the other case in contemporary,'d-". philosophical literature that contingent statements of identity are ppss. ible. I do not intend to deal with the Kantian question except to mention:ssj~".

... Let me start my investigation by taking a brief look at the way in which self-awareness is expressed linguistically, as in the sentences "I am tired" or ...

No mental phenomenon is more central than consciousness to an adequate understanding of the mind. Nor does any mental phenomenon seem more stubbornly to resist theoretical treatment. Consciousness is so basic to the way we think about the mind that it can be tempting to suppose that no mental states exist that are not conscious states. Indeed, it may even seem mysterious what sort of thing a mental state might be if it is not a conscious state. On this way (...) of looking at things, if any mental states do lack consciousness, they are exceptional cases that call for special explanation or qualification. Perhaps dispositional or cognitive states exist that are not conscious, but nonetheless count as mental states. (shrink)

Sydney Shoemaker is one of the most influential philosophers currently writing on philosophy of mind and metaphysics. The essays in this collection deal with the way in which we know our own minds, and with the nature of those mental states of which we have our most direct conscious awareness. Professor Shoemaker opposes the 'inner sense' conception of introspective self-knowledge. He defends the view that perceptual and sensory states have non-representational features - 'qualia' - that determine what it is like (...) to have them. Amongst the other topics covered are the unity of consciousness, and the idea that the 'first-person perspective' gives a privileged route to philosophical understanding of the nature of mind. This major collection is sure to prove invaluable to all advanced students of the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. (shrink)

A number of philosophers endorse, without argument, the view that there’s something it’s like consciously to think that p, which is distinct from what it’s like consciously to think that q. This thesis, if true, would have important consequences for philosophy of mind and cognitive science. In this paper I offer an argument for it, and attempt to induce examples of it in the reader. The argument claims it would be impossible introspectively to distinguish conscious thoughts with respect to their (...) content if there weren’t something it’s like to think them. This argument is defended against several objections. Then I use what I call “minimal pair” experiences—sentences read without and with understanding—to induce in the reader an experience of the kind I claim exists. Further objections are considered and rebutted. (shrink)

Consciousness is arguably the most important area within contemporary philosophy of mind and perhaps the most puzzling aspect of the world. Despite an explosion of research from philosophers, psychologists, and scientists, attempts to explain consciousness in neurophysiological, or even cognitive, terms are often met with great resistance. In The Consciousness Paradox, Rocco Gennaro aims to solve an underlying paradox, namely, how it is possible to hold a number of seemingly inconsistent views, including higher-order thought (HOT) theory, conceptualism, infant and animal (...) consciousness, concept acquisition, and what he calls the HOT-brain thesis. He defends and further develops a metapsychological reductive representational theory of consciousness and applies it to several importantly related problems. Gennaro proposes a version of the HOT theory of consciousness that he calls the "wide intrinsicality view" and shows why it is superior to various alternatives, such as self-representationalism and first-order representationalism. HOT theory says that what makes a mental state conscious is that a suitable higher-order thought is directed at that mental state. -/- Thus Gennaro argues for an overall philosophical theory of consciousness while applying it to other significant issues not usually addressed in the philosophical literature on consciousness. Most cognitive science and empirical works on such topics as concepts and animal consciousness do not address central philosophical theories of consciousness. Gennaro’s integration of empirical and philosophical concerns will make his argument of interest to both philosophers and nonphilosophers. (shrink)

an der Universität Göttingen gehaltenen Vcwlesung über Hauptstücke aus der Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis,l ist annähernd voll­ ständig erhalten; die Blätter des V cwlesungsmanuskripts zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins liegen verstreut in den Konvoluten F I 6 und 2 F I 8 des Husserl-Archivs zu Löwen. Allerdings fußt der Erste Teil des Erstdrucks, dessen Bezeichnung als Die Vorlesungen über das innere Zeit­ bewußtsein aus dem Jahre 1905 gleichwohl auch in vcwliegender Neuausgabe beibehalten wurde, nur zum Teil noch, und auch (...) in diesem Teil mit be­ trächtlichen Abweichungen, auf dem Text des ursprünglichen Vcwlesungs­ manuskripts des Jahres I905; und umgekehrt hat nur ein Teil des Textes des ursprünglichen Vcwlesungs-Manuskripts - mit den erwähnten Abwand­ lungen - Eingang in den Ersten Teil des Erstdrucks gefunden. Wo der Text dieses Ersten Teils des Erstdrucks dem des ursprünglichen Vcwlesungs­ manuskripts entspricht, wurde er er mit diesem verglichen, und ollensicht­ liche Irrtümer im Erstdruck wurden berichtigt; in den Textkritischen Anmer­ kungen ist dann mit dem Vermerk nach dem Ms. verbessert die Text­ fassung des Erstdrucks wiedergegeben. Ferner wurde in den Textkritischen Anmerkungen vcwliegender Neuausgabe überall der ursprüngliche und voll­ ständige· Text des Vorlesungsmanuskripts von I905 wiedergegeben, auf dessen Zusammenhang die entsprechenden Teile des Erstdrucks zurückgehen, wo dieser von ienem abweicht. Einige zum V cwlesungsmanuskript gehörige Blätter, deren Text sich iedoch nicht zusammenhängend dem übrigen einfügt, wurden im vcwliegenden Band unter B (S. 135-382) mit abgedruckt. Die 1 Vgl. oben die "Einleitung des Herausgebers", S. XIV-XVII. (shrink)

In Mind: An Introduction, for the first time John Searle offers a general introduction to the philosophy of the mind. Giving a broad survey of all the major issues under discussion in the field, including philosophical issues in cognitive science and neurobiology, Searle argues for his own distinctive point of view. He leads the reader through the variety of theories that reduce the mind to aspects that can be fully explained by physics, and then concludes with his own view that (...) such reductionist theories ignore or cannot adequately explain the most fundamental aspect of the mind - subjective consciousness. (shrink)

What is the self? Does it exist? If it does exist, what is it like? It's not clear that we even know what we're asking about when we ask these large, metaphysical questions. The idea of the self comes very naturally to us, and it seems rather important, but it's also extremely puzzling. As for the word "self"--it's been taken in so many different ways that it seems that you can mean more or less what you like by it and (...) come up with almost any answer. Galen Strawson proposes to approach the (seeming) problem of the self by starting from the thing that makes it seem there is a problem in the first place: our experience of the self, our experience of having or being a self, a hidden, inner mental presence or locus of consciousness. He argues that we should consider the phenomenology (experience) of the self before we attempt its metaphysics (its existence and nature). And when we have considered what it's like for human beings (assuming we can generalize about ourselves), we need to consider what it might be like for other possible creatures: what's the very least that might count as experience of oneself as a self? This, he proposes, will give us a good idea of what we ought to be looking for when we go on to ask whether there is such a thing-an idea worth following wherever it leads. It leads Strawson to conclude that selves, inner subjects of experience, do indeed exist. But they bear little resemblance to traditional conceptions of the self. (shrink)

The greatest chasm in the philosophy of mind--maybe even all of philosophy-- divides two perspectives on consciousness. The two perspectives differ on whether there is anything in the phenomenal character of conscious experience that goes beyond the intentional, the cognitive and the functional. A convenient terminological handle on the dispute is whether there are.

Den Plan, seine Untersuchungen zur Deskriptiven Psychologie in einem umfassenden Werk zur Darstellung zu bringen, hat Brentano nicht verwirklicht. Neben kleineren Schriften zu diesem Gedankenkreis sind aber die Kollegmanuskripte der 1887 bis 1891 unter wechselnden Titeln gehaltenen Wiener Vorlesungen zur Deskriptiven Psychologie erhalten.

Recommends an approach to the philosophical problem about the existence and nature of the self in which the author models the problem of the self rather than attempting to model the self. It is suggested that the sense of the self is the source in experience of the philosophical problem of the self. The first question to ask is the phenomenological question: What is the nature of the sense of the self? But this, in the first instance, is best taken (...) as a question explicitly about human beings: as the local phenomenological question What is the nature of the human sense of the self? Whatever the answer to is, it raises the general phenomenological question Are there other possibilities when it comes to a sense of the self? The answers to and raise the conditions question What are the grounds or preconditions of possession of a sense of the self? and this question raises a battery of subsidiary questions. If one can produce satisfactory answers to,, and, one will be in a good position to raise and answer the factual question, the fundamental and straightforward metaphysical question is there such a thing as the self? 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

It has often been thought that our knowledge of ourselves is _different_ from, perhaps in some sense _better_ than, our knowledge of things other than ourselves. Indeed, there is a thriving research area in epistemology dedicated to seeking an account of self-knowledge that would articulate and explain its difference from, and superiority over, other knowledge. Such an account would thus illuminate the descriptive and normative difference between self-knowledge and other knowledge.¹ At the same time, self- knowledge has also encountered its (...) share of skeptics – philosophers who refuse to accord it any descriptive, let alone normative, distinction. In this paper, we argue that there is at least one _species_ of self-knowledge that is different from, and better than, other knowledge. It is a specific kind of knowledge of one’s concurrent phenomenal experiences. Call knowledge of one’s own phenomenal experiences _phenomenal knowledge_. Our claim is that some (though not all) phenomenal knowledge is different from, and better than, non-phenomenal knowledge. In other. (shrink)

The first part of the paper focuses on the role played in thought and action by possession of the first‐person concept. It is argued that only one who possesses the I concept is in a position to fully articulate certain fundamental, a priori aspects of the concept of reason. A full understanding of the concept of reason requires being inclined to be affected or immediately motivated by reasons—to form, change or confirm beliefs or other attitudes in accordance with them—when those (...) reasons apply to one's own attitudes. The cases where rational evaluations of acts and attitudes rationally motivate immediate implementation of the evaluations to shape the acts and attitudes are distinguished from cases where they do not, by the use of the first‐person concept to mark those acts and attitudes as one's own. The second part of the paper examines asymmetries between self‐knowledge and knowledge of other minds. The usual view that self‐knowledge has an immediate and a priori warrant, whereas knowledge of others’ minds rests on observation and inference is disputed. A sketch is given of knowledge of other minds that can be non‐inferential and can rest on an intellectual, non‐perceptual entitlement. When one seemingly understands an utterance in interlocution, one is a priori prima facie entitled to suppose that it comes from a rational source, and because knowledge of other minds can be immediate and epistemically grounded in intellectual, non‐empirical entitlements, it is distinguished from self‐knowledge not by being necessarily inferential or by being necessarily grounded in perception, but by being in some known contrast with thought known as one's own. (shrink)

One of the promising approaches to the problem of consciousness has been the Higher-Order Monitoring Theory of Consciousness. According to the Higher-Order Monitoring Theory, a mental state M of a subject S is conscious iff S has another mental state, M*, such that M* is an appropriate representation of M. Recently, several philosophers have developed a Higher-Order Monitoring theory with a twist. The twist is that M and M* are construed as entertaining some kind of constitutive relation, rather than being (...) logically independent of each other. We may call this the Same-Order Monitoring Theory of Consciousness. In this paper, I discuss the nature of the Same-Order Monitoring Theory and argue for its superiority over the more traditional Higher-Order Monitoring Theory. (shrink)

Given the recent interest in the subjective or phenomenal dimension of consciousness it is no wonder that many authors have once more started to speak of the need for pheno- menological considerations. Often however the term ‘phenomenology’ is being used simply as a synonym for ‘folk psychology', and in our article we argue that it would be far more fruitful to turn to the argumentation to be found within the continental tradition inaugurated by Husserl. In order to exemplify this claim, (...) we criticize Rosenthal's higher-order thought theory as well as Strawson's recent contribution in this journal, and argue that a phenomenological analysis of the nature of self-awareness can provide us with a more sophisticated and accurate model for understanding both phenomenal consciousness and the notion of self. (shrink)

Identity, we're told, is the binary relation that every object bears to itself, and to itself only. But how can a relation be binary if it never relates two objects? This puzzled Russell and led Wittgenstein to declare that identity is not a relation between objects. The now standard view is that Wittgenstein's position is untenable, and that worries regarding the relational status of identity are the result of confusion. I argue that the rejection of identity as a binary relation (...) is perfectly tenable. To this end, I outline and defend a logical framework that is not committed to an objectual identity relation but is nevertheless expressively equivalent to first-order logic with identity. After it has thus been shown that there is no indispensability argument for objectual identity, I argue that we have good reasons for doubting the existence of such a relation, and rebut a number of attempts at discrediting these reasons. (shrink)

Fifty years ago, Dieter Henrich wrote an influential little text on ‘Fichte’s Origi­nal Insight’. Seldom so much food for thought has been put in a nutshell. The essay, bearing such an unremarkable title, delivers a diagnosis of why two hundred years of penetrating thought about the internal structure of subjectivity have ended up so fruitless. Henrich’s point was: Self-consciousness cannot be explained as the result of a higher-order act, bending back upon a first-order one, given that “what reflection finds, must (...) already have been there before” (Novalis). Whereas Henrich’s discovery had some influence in German speaking countries (and was dubbed the ‘Heidelberg School’), it remained nearly unnoticed in the anglophone (and now dominant) philosophical world. This is starting to change, now that a recent view on (self-) consciousness, called ‘self-representationalism’, is beginning to develop and to discover its Heidelbergian roots. (shrink)

The three classic regress problems (the Extensive Regress of states, the Intensive Regress of contents, and the Fichte-Henrich-Shoemaker Regress of de se beliefs) related to the Self-Awareness Thesis (that one’s conscious states are the ones that one is aware of being in) can all be elegantly resolved by a self-acquaintance postulate. This resolution, however, entails that consciousness has an irreducibly circular structure and that self-acquaintance should not be conceived of in terms of an independent entity bearing an external or mediated (...) relation to itself but rather in terms of a realized relation-instance relating to itself as well as to something other than itself. Consciousness, on this account, has a categorially curious status. It is like a relation-particular hybrid. This can be formalized in terms of the theory of hypersets, which in turn can be used to elucidate the problem of individuality, one source of the conceptual difficulty with adequately characterizing de se content. (shrink)

Monitoring approaches to consciousness claim that a mental state is conscious when it is suitably monitored. Higher-order monitoring theory makes the monitoring state and the monitored state logically independent. Same-order monitoring theory claims a constitutive, non-contingent connection between the monitoring state and the monitored state. In this paper, I articulate different versions of the same-order monitoring theory and argue for its supremacy over the higher-order monitoring theory.

Esbozo y concepci n ling stico-anal tica de la filosof a como disciplina fundamental formal. la tesis planteada en ella es que la idea tradicional de una disciplina como la ontolog a s lo puede realizarse en la idea de una sem ntica formal.

Auf den ersten Blick scheint Selbstbewusstsein zu dem zu gehören, was sich nahezu von selbst versteht. In anhaltendem Nachdenken stellt sich aber heraus, dass mit ihm der Philosophie eines ihrer schwierigsten und folgenreichsten Probleme aufgegeben ist. Vor über fünfzig Jahren erschien Dieter Henrichs Abhandlung Fichtes ursprüngliche Einsicht, welche dieses Problem ausarbeitete. Sie zeigte, dass es Fichte war, der als erster das Problem sicher erfasste und zum Leitthema seines Denkens werden liess. Dem unveränderten Abdruck dieses Textes folgt nun -- als um (...) ein Vielfaches umfangreicherer Haupttext -- eine neue Folge von Überlegungen. Sie betreffen Selbstbewusstsein im Zusammenhang einer philosophischen Grundlegung und die Probleme, die Fichtes Systembildung unter dem Leitgedanken seiner ursprünglichen Einsicht in eine Bewegung ohne definitive Lösung versetzten. Henrichs Buch lässt sich als eine Erneuerung von Kants Denkart betrachten - in der Beziehung auf ein Thema, dessen Bedeutung für die Philosophie kaum noch bestritten wird, in einer der Erfahrungsart der Gegenwart gemässen Perspektive und in der Folge von Klärungen, die zu gewinnen sind, wenn man der Dynamik in Fichtes Systembildungen nachdenkt."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)