Charles Siewert

I examine the prospects of using Hurlburt's DES method to justify his very 'thin'view of experience, on which visual experience is so infrequent as to be typically absent when reading and speaking. Such justification would seem to be based on the claim that, in DES 'beeper' samples, subjects often deny they just had any visual experi-ence. But if the question of 'visual experience' is properly construed, then it is doubtful they are deny-ing this. And even if they were, that would not generally warrant over-turning belief in the abundance of one's own visual experience. I defend use of non-DES introspective judgments in reaching this conclusion. These are no more dubious overall than the near-term ret-rospective judgments in response to open-ended prompts employed in DES. Moreover, DES itself needs to presuppose subjects enjoy an introspective competence not confined to their beeper reports. The true power of DES to revise introspection thus lies in its interview por-tion. This view is further supported by considering Hurlburt's and Schwitzgebel's discussion of detail in visual imagery. Introspectively based conceptions of experience should be improved and corrected, not by means of a supposedly privileged class of reports, but by questioning that clarifies distinctions and makes explicit the implications of what one says in making introspective judgments. My advocacy of this sort of 'Socratic introspection' leads me to broad agreement with many of Schwitzgebel's conclusions. But it also makes me regard myself as a 'proponent' of -- not a 'sceptic' about -- the use of introspection to study experience

</b>This commentary focuses on shape constancy in vision and its relation to sensorimotor knowledge. I contrast “Protean” and “Constancian” views about how to describe perspectival changes in the appearance of an object’s shape. For the Protean, these amount to changes in apparent shape; for Constance, things are not merely judged, but literally appear constant in shape. I give reasons in favor of the latter view, and argue that Noë’s attempt to combine aspects of both views in a “dual aspect” account does not manage to avoid an unacceptable attribution of contradictory content to visual appearance. I argue also that my position here actually fits better with Noë’s critique of a “snapshot” conception of visual appearance than his own interpretation of visual constancy, and better supports his claim that experiential content is constituted by the exercise of sensorimotor understanding

Woven into Dennett's account of consciousness is his belief that certain possibilities are not conceivable. This is manifested in his view that we are not conscious in any sense in which we can imagine that philosophers? ?zombies? might not be conscious, and also in his claims about ?Hindsight?, and what possibilities this can coherently suggest to us. If the possibilities Dennett denies none the less seem conceivable to us, then if he does not give us reason to think they are actually incoherent, we ought to reject his theory, since it denies the intelligibility of the very notion we should want a theory of consciousness to discuss. I argue that Dennett does not provide us with convincing reasons of the relevant sort, and I suggest that his difficulty with the concept of consciousness is rooted in questionable epistemological assumptions which he fails to justify

Levine suggests the following criticisms of my book. First, the absence of a positive account of first-person knowledge in it makes it vulnerable to eliminativist refutation. Second, it is a relative strength of the higher order representation accounts of consciousness I reject that they offer explanations of the subjectivity of conscious states and their special availability to first-person knowledge. Further, the close connection I draw between the phenomenal character of experience and intentionality is unwarranted in the case of both color perception and conceptual thought. In response to Levine's critique, I argue that the eliminativist can be rebutted and higher-order representation theories found wanting, even without offering a positive account of first-person knowledge. Also, I note that I actually have begun to offer an account of this based on my conception of phenomenal consciousness. Finally, it will be seen that Levine's concerns do not undermine my views on color experience, conscious thought, and intentionality, once their justification and character are made clear.

Both Ludwig and Thomasson question my claim that many phenomenal features are intentional features. Further, Ludwig raises numerous objections to my claim that higher order mental representation is not essential to phenomenal consciousness. While Thomasson does not share those objections, she wonders how my view permits me to make first-person knowledge of mind depend on phenomenal consciousness. I respond to these challenges, drawing together questions about the forms of mental representation, the phenomenal character of sensory experience, rational agency, and introspection.