•  1627
    Fact-Introspection, Thing-Introspection, and Inner Awareness
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 8 (1): 143-164. 2017.
    Phenomenal beliefs are beliefs about the phenomenal properties of one's concurrent conscious states. It is an article of common sense that such beliefs tend to be justified. Philosophers have been less convinced. It is sometimes claimed that phenomenal beliefs are not on the whole justified, on the grounds that they are typically based on introspection and introspection is often unreliable. Here we argue that such reasoning must guard against a potential conflation between two distinct introspec…Read more
  •  1169
    One of David Rosenthal’s many important contributions to the philosophy of mind was his clear and unshirking account of introspection. Here we argue that while there is a kind of introspection (we call it “reflective introspection”) that Rosenthal’s account may be structurally fit to accommodate, there is also a second kind (“primitive introspection”) that his account cannot recover. We introduce Rosenthal’s account of introspection in §1, present the case for the psychological reality of primit…Read more
  •  923
    Introspection without Judgment
    Erkenntnis 86 407-427. 2021.
    The focus of this paper is introspection of phenomenal states, i.e. the distinctively first-personal method through which one can form beliefs about the phenomenology of one’s current conscious mental states. I argue that two different kinds of phenomenal state introspection should be distinguished: one which involves recognizing and classifying the introspected phenomenal state as an instance of a certain experience type, and another which does not involve such classification. Whereas the forme…Read more
  •  700
    Introspective knowledge by acquaintance
    Synthese 200 (2): 1-23. 2022.
    Introspective knowledge by acquaintance is knowledge we have by being directly aware of our phenomenally conscious states. In this paper, I argue that introspective knowledge by acquaintance is a sui generis kind of knowledge: it is irreducible to any sort of propositional knowledge and is wholly constituted by a relationship of introspective acquaintance. My main argument is that this is the best explanation of some epistemic facts about phenomenal consciousness and introspection. In particular…Read more
  •  645
    Conscious Unity from the Top Down: A Brentanian Approach
    The Monist 100 (1): 16-37. 2017.
    The question of the unity of consciousness is often treated as the question of how different conscious experiences are related to each other in order to be unified. Many contemporary views on the unity of consciousness are based on this bottom-up approach. In this paper I explore an alternative, top-down approach, according to which (to a first approximation) a subject undergoes one single conscious experience at a time. From this perspective, the problem of unity of consciousness becomes rather…Read more
  •  638
    An Acquaintance alternative to Self-Representationalism
    Philosophical Studies 179 (12): 3831-3863. 2022.
    The primary goal of this paper is to provide substantial motivation for exploring an Acquaintance account of phenomenal consciousness, on which what fundamentally explains phenomenal consciousness is the relation of acquaintance. Its secondary goal is to take a few steps towards such an account. Roughly, my argument proceeds as follows. Motivated by prioritizing naturalization, the debate about the nature of phenomenal consciousness has been almost monopolized by representational theories. Among…Read more
  •  625
    Varieties of Self-Apprehension
    In Marc Borner, Manfred Frank & Kenneth Williford (eds.), Senses of Self: Approaches to Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness, . pp. 186-220. 2019.
    The Brentanian idea that every state of consciousness involves a consciousness or awareness of itself (Brentano 1874), which has been a central tenet of the phenomenological school, is a current topic in contemporary philosophical debates about consciousness and subjectivity, both in the continental and the analytic tradition. Typically, the self-awareness that accompanies every state of consciousness is characterized as pre-reflective. Most theorists of pre-reflective self-awareness seem to co…Read more
  •  583
    Introspective acquaintance: An integration account
    European Journal of Philosophy 31 (2): 380-397. 2021.
    In this paper, I develop a new version of the acquaintance view of the nature of introspection of phenomenal states. On the acquaintance view, when one introspects a current phenomenal state of one's, one bears to it the relation of introspective acquaintance. Extant versions of the acquaintance view neglect what I call the phenomenal modification problem. The problem, articulated by Franz Brentano in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, is that drawing introspective attention to one's c…Read more
  •  575
    Introspection of Emotions
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 103 (3): 551-580. 2021.
    In this paper, we argue that knowledge of emotions essentially depends on introspecting the phenomenology of emotional experiences, and that introspection of emotional experiences is a process by stages, where the most fundamental stage is a non-classificatory introspective state, i.e., one that does not depend on the subject’s classifying the introspected emotion as an instance of any experience type. We call such a non-classificatory kind of introspection primitive introspection. Our main goal…Read more
  •  448
    A Defense of Inner Awareness: The Memory Argument Revisited
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 13 (2): 341-363. 2022.
    The psychological reality of an inner awareness built into conscious experience has traditionally been a central element of philosophy of consciousness, from Aristotle, to Descartes, Brentano, the phenomenological tradition, and early and contemporary analytic philosophy. Its existence, however, has recently been called into question, especially by defenders of so-called transparency of experience and first-order representationalists about phenomenal consciousness. In this paper, I put forward a…Read more
  •  434
    One of the major divides in contemporary philosophy of consciousness is on whether phenomenal consciousness requires some form of self-consciousness. The disagreement revolves around the following principle (or something in the vicinity): : For any subject S and phenomenally conscious mental state C of S, C is phenomenally conscious only if S is aware of C. We may call the relevant awareness of one’s own mental states “inner awareness” and the principle “Inner Awareness Principle” (IA). In a pap…Read more
  •  221
    Inner Acquaintance Theories of Consciousness
    Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind 4. forthcoming.
    Most recent philosophical theories of consciousness account for it in terms of representation, the bulk of the debate revolving around whether (suitably) representing something is sufficient for consciousness (as per first-order representationalism) or some further (meta-)representation is needed (as per higher-order representationalism and self-representationalism). In this paper, I explore an alternative theory of consciousness, one that aims to explain consciousness not in terms of representa…Read more
  •  184
    Moods and the Salience of Subjectivity
    In Self and Affect, Palgrave Macmillan. forthcoming.
    The philosophical debate around the nature of moods has mostly focused on their apparent undirectedness: unlike mental states such as perceptual experiences, thoughts, and emotions, moods do not seem to be directed at any specific object, and indeed they do not seem to be directed at anything at all. In this paper, I want to draw attention to a different feature of moods, one that is as important and in need of explanation as their apparent undirectedness, but which has been overlooked by most p…Read more
  •  116
    Conscious intentional states are mental states that represent things as being a certain way and do so consciously: they involve a phenomenally conscious representation. For any phenomenally conscious state, there is something it is like for its subject to be in it. The way it is like for a subject to be in a certain phenomenal state is the state’s phenomenal character. According to some authors, phenomenal character has two components: qualitative character (i.e., the “what it is like” component…Read more
  •  16
    Correction to: An acquaintance alternative to self-representationalism
    Philosophical Studies 179 (12): 3865-3865. 2022.
  •  11
    Varieties of Self-Apprehension
    ProtoSociology 36 186-220. 2019.
    The Brentanian idea that every state of consciousness involves a consciousness or awareness of itself (Brentano 1874), which has been a central tenet of the phenomenological school, is a current topic in contemporary philosophical debates about consciousness and subjectivity, both in the continental and the analytic tradition. Typically, the self-awareness that accompanies every state of consciousness is char­acterized as pre-reflective. Most theorists of pre-reflective self-awareness seem to co…Read more
  • Consciousness and Inner Awareness (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. forthcoming.