Charles Siewert

This chapter gives consciousness a central role in value. It begins by showing how we can interpret and defend the idea that many common forms of consciousness are intrinsically beneficial to us—even if we don’t embrace subjectivism about well-being. It then shows how we can rationally accord these benefits such importance that we would find our own continued existence worthless without them. Neither objective list nor desire-satisfactionist views of well-being threaten this result. Moreover, regarding subjects’ desire-satisfaction: we can see that this bears on a non-instrumental concern for them only if they are capable of subjective experience: consciousness makes desires matter morally. Finally, the moral significance of consciousness is further deepened by seeing how our self-expressive experience entitles us to a respect that is due beings who make themselves accountable to norms—and how, since we are such beings, our lives have irreplaceable value.

There are general aspects of mental life it is reasonable to believe do not vary even when subjects vary in their first‐person judgments about them. Such lack of introspective agreement gives rise to “phenomenological disputes.” These include disputes over how to describe the perspectival character of perception, the phenomenal character of perceptual recognition and conceptual thought, and the relation between consciousness and self‐consciousness. Some suppose that when we encounter such disputes we have no choice but to abandon first‐person reflection in philosophy of mind in favor of a third‐person methodology. Such reaction is unwarranted. A reasoned assessment of phenomenological disputes that relies on first‐person reflection is explained, illustrated, and advocated.

To include conceptual understanding in the phenomenal character of experience is to say there's no sense in which what it's ordinarily like for you to understand what you read or hear could be held completely constant, while switching off all understanding, or switching out all actual differences in understanding for very different ones. Endorsing this sort of inclusion implies at least partial agreement with Pitt's thesis in The Quality of Thought that conceptual content is 'phenomenally determined'. Pitt's epistemological argument for that thesis could, I argue, use further support. I offer this by proposing two arguments of my own. The first is epistemological, similar in basic strategy to Pitt's. The second draws on a conception of consciousness as what is unconditionally suited for subjective understanding or curiosity. In closing, I propose an alternative to Pitt's diagnosis of why some philosophers would say cognitive experience eludes their introspection. What actually eludes them, I suggest, is a conception of phenomenal character that facilitates rather than inhibits their including in it cognitive activity of a kind that does not elude them at all.

My aim is to clarify a certain concept of consciousness, to describe its relation to intentionality, and to explain its importance. ;I begin by arguing that one has a knowledge of one's own mind distinct in kind from that one has of another's, and propose that we rely on this distinctively first-person knowledge in thinking about consciousness. Adopting this first-person approach, I discuss certain kinds of illustrative instances, both actual and possible, of consciousness and its absence. The actual cases are such as can be found in ordinary experience, and the possibilities are suggested by research on what has been called 'blindsight'. ;By reference to such examples, I draw attention to certain distinctions, the neglect of which reveals a neglect of consciousness. I argue that consciousness should not be identified with a capacity to respond discriminatively to stimuli, or with some form of self-representation or inner perception. And consciousness should be distinguished from the accessibility of information to certain cognitive capacities, and from certain kinds of functional role. ;I explain the relation between intentionality and consciousness via an account of phenomenal character. To say that experiences differ in phenomenal character is to say that they differ in ways that only what is conscious could, and to have experience with phenomenal character is to have phenomenal features. I argue that the phenomenal character of our perceptual experience, imagery, and non-imagistic thought is inseparable from our intentional features, for the phenomenal features we thus have are intentional ones. ;On this view, phenomenal features are heavily and pervasively involved in manifestations of human intelligence in perception and verbal thought. Thus theories of mind cannot afford to ignore consciousness or treat it as a peripheral topic. Finally, I contend that consciousness is important to us not just for what it contingently enables us to do; having phenomenal features is an essential part of what many of us want. And, I argue, the value we thus attach to consciousness is not trivial, but underlies basic ethical attitudes we have towards ourselves and one another

The engine of reason, the seat of the soul: a philosophical journey into the brain, Paul M. Churchland. Cambridge: Bradford Books, MIT Press, 1995 ISBN: 0–262–03244–4Cognition in the wild, Edwin Hutchins. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995. ISBN: 0–262–08231–4Dimensions of creativity, Margaret A. Boden, (Ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994 ISBN 0–262–02368–7Contemplating minds: a forum for Artificial Intelligence, William J. Clancey, Stephen W. Smoliar & Mark J. Stefik (Eds) Cambridge: Bradford Books, MIT Press, 1994 ISBN 0–262–53119–4Passion and reason: making sense of our emotions, Richard S. Lazarus & Bernice N. Lazarus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN 0–19–508757–7Mental reality, Galen Strawson. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994 ISBN 0–262–19352–3The body and the self, Jose Luis Bermudez, Anthony Marcel & Naomi Eilan (Eds) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995. ISBN 0–262–02386–5.

This article defends the thesis that in theorizing about the mind we need to accord first-person (“introspective” or “reflective”) judgments about experience a “selective provisional trust.” Such an approach can form part of a descriptive psychology. It is here so employed to evaluate some influential interpretations of research on attention to conclude that—despite what conventional wisdom suggests—an “introspection-positive” policy actually offers us a better critical perspective than its contrary. What supposedly teaches us the worthlessness of introspection actually shows us why we need to take it seriously.

I examine an argument proposed by Tye and Wright, inspired by Geach, which holds that a correct understanding of how conceptual thought occurs in time demands we expel it from experience. This would imply—pace William James— that the “stream of consciousness” is not, even in part, a “stream of thought.” I argue that if we closely examine what seems to support crucial premises of their argument, we will find this undermines its other assumptions, and points us to a way of placing thought in time that they neglect. Ultimately, attention to the phenomenology of language comprehension and production not only undercuts their “temporality argument” against including thought in experience; it prepares the ground for a case in favor of inclusion. In critiquing their argument I hope not just to disarm an objection to a view I espouse, nor even just to discover new support for it, but also to shed some light on the temporality of thought and its relation to self-expression.

There are general aspects of mental life it is reasonable to believe do not vary even when subjects vary in their first‐person judgments about them. Such lack of introspective agreement gives rise to “phenomenological disputes.” These include disputes over how to describe the perspectival character of perception, the phenomenal character of perceptual recognition and conceptual thought, and the relation between consciousness and self‐consciousness. Some suppose that when we encounter such disputes we have no choice but to abandon first‐person reflection in philosophy of mind in favor of a third‐person methodology. Such reaction is unwarranted. A reasoned assessment of phenomenological disputes that relies on first‐person reflection is explained, illustrated, and advocated.

In Chapter 7 I argue that we are assessable for accuracy in virtue of having phenomenal features. According to Gertler, my claim needs, but does not receive from me, a defence against the allegedly rival thesis that phenomenal features are explained by intentional ones. I maintain that this criticism involves a misunderstanding of my view’s implications. In my book I oppose the “rival” thesis only to this extent: where my conception of consciousness conflicts with broad ways of trying to explain the phenomenal by the intentional, I provide (in Chapters 4-6 and 8) arguments against those theories. My point is not that the phenomenal is explanatorily more basic than the intentional, but rather, that it is itself intentional without being explained by that fact.

Plain phenomenology explains theoretically salient mental or psychological distinctions with an appeal to their first-person applications. But it does not assume that warrant for such first-person judgment is derived from an explanatory theory constructed from the third-person perspective. Discussions in historical phenomenology can be treated as plain phenomenology. This is illustrated by a critical consideration of Brentano’s account of consciousness, drawing on some ideas in early Husserl. Dennett’s advocacy of heterophenomenology on the grounds of its supposed “neutrality” does not show it is preferable to plain phenomenology. In fact the latter is more neutral in ways we ought to want, and permits a desirable use of first-person reflection that finds no place in the former.

The aims of this book are: to explain the notion of phenomenal consciousness in a non-metaphorical way that minimizes controversial assumptions; to characterize the relationship between the phenomenal character and intentionality of visual experience, visual imagery and non-imagistic thought; and to clarify the way in which conscious experience is intrinsically valuable to us. It argues for the legitimacy of a first-person approach to these issues--one which relies on a distinctively first-person warrant for judgments about one's own experience. Thought experiments are employed in which one is asked to conceive of having various forms of blindsight, so as to make consciousness intellectually conspicuous by its absence in such hypothetical scenarios. It is argued that theories of mind that would commit us to denying either the conceptual or the metaphysical possibility of these scenarios neglect the occurrence of consciousness in this phenomenal sense

</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.