Graham Peebles

The problem of higher-order misrepresentation poses a dilemma for the higher-order theory of consciousness. The two ways of conceiving of the theory each run into a different difficulty raised by the problem of misrepresentation. If the theory is conceived relationally, i.e., conceived so as the higher-order state causes or makes a first-order state conscious, then the theory faces a problem raised by Block concerning the implausibility of non-existent conscious states. If conceived non-relationally, i.e., conceived in such a way as it is the higher-order state itself which is the conscious state, then consideration of Neander’s original misrepresentation problem, that this seems to make the first-order state a spinning wheel in the explanation of consciousness, raises the conceptual problem that this version of the higher-order theory seems not to offer a philosophical theory of consciousness that is distinct from the first-order theory.

The phenomenology of the unity of consciousness can be analyzed in terms of perceptual spatial and object unity. Subject unity—what we commonly understand by “the unity of consciousness”—has no attendant phenomenology. The further, non-phenomenological, effects of unity can be analyzed in terms of the functional notion of access unity. The unity of consciousness in general can therefore be analyzed in terms of access unity. As a consequence, we can avoid the theoretical introduction of problematic notions such as subsumptive or phenomenal unity.

The meta-problem of consciousness is to explain why we think that there is a hard problem of consciousness. On Chalmers' view of the meta-problem, our judgments about the hard problem of consciousness arise non-inferentially as a result of introspection. I raise two problems for such a non-inferentialist view of the metaproblem. It does not seem to match the psychological facts about how we come to the realization of the hard problem, and it is unclear how the view can bridge the gap between the content of introspection and the content involved in formulations of the hard problem. The inferentialist view of the meta-problem, on which the hard problem results from inference, explains both the psychology and content introduction. We should therefore prefer an inferentialist view of the meta-problem.

A core commitment of the reflexive theory of consciousness is that conscious states are themselves necessarily the contents of mental states. The strongest argument for this claim—the necessity of inner-content for consciousness—is the argument from unconscious perception. According to this argument, we find evidence for the necessity claim from cases of alleged unconscious perception, the most well-known and widely discussed of these being blindsight. However, the reflexive theory cannot partake in this argument and therefore, must rely on at least one of the other arguments for the necessity claim. These arguments are significantly less convincing than the argument from unconscious perception, and thus the reflexive theory is left in a dialectically weak position.

The well-known phenomenological argument draws metaphysical conclusions about time, specifically about change through time and the resulting passage or flow of time, from our temporal experience. The argument begins with the phenomenological premise that there is a class of properties which underlies our experience of time and change through time, and its conclusion is that these properties are not merely experienced but exemplified. I argue that the phenomenological argument is best served by the adoption of a representational theory of perception. I then present a representational theory of temporal experience.

Charles Travis influentially argued in “The Silence of the Senses” that the representational theory of perceptual experience is false. According to Travis, the way that things look cannot index the content of experience as the subject of the experience cannot read the content off from the way things look. This looks indexing is a central commitment of representationalism. The main thrust of Travis’ argument is that the way things look is fundamentally comparative, and this prevents the subject from reading a single content off from the way things look. If content were looks indexed, the subject would be able to do this. I argue that Travis’ argument rests on an illicit transition from an argument about the way objects look in themselves—i.e. an argument about the visible properties that they have—to a conclusion about the way that objects look to subjects in experience.

According to representationalism, phenomenal character supervenes on representational content. According to first-person reports, blindsighters have no phenomenal character in the scotoma, even though their abilities suggest that they have conscious visual representations in the scotoma. The traditional representationalist response is that the representations in the scotoma are either non-conscious or non-visual. Drawing on empirical work, I consider the interpretation that blindsighters are unable to represent—and thus lack the phenomenal character of—luminance in the scotoma. However, they maintain the capacity to represent other visible properties in the scotoma, and thus retain the luminance-lacking phenomenal character of these properties.