Valentina Martinis

This paper traces the evolution of G. E. Moore’s ideas regarding inner and outer awareness, transparency, and the doctrine of Erlebnis, as articulated in a series of papers published in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society and Mind between 1901 and 1915. I defend two theses. First, I argue that, during this period, Moore gradually moved from an observational view of consciousness in general, including self-consciousness, to a mixed view in which subjects are directly aware of the objects of consciousness, while they “live through” (erleben) their mental acts. Notably, this shift shows that a certain debate between objectifying and non-objectifying consciousness in the Phenomenological school of Brentano and Husserl was to some extent replicated in the early British analytic tradition. Second, I contend that this change in Moore’s thinking was motivated by an attempt to overcome the problem posed by the transparency of consciousness for the possibility of introspecting the act-object relation (an idea that he never abandoned). It is through this chief aim, I believe, that we can make sense of Moore’s shifting ideas concerning awareness.

I call the fact that there is an introspectable phenomenological difference between paradigmatic conscious perceptual states and paradigmatic conscious cognitive states, such that each ‘feel’ or ‘appear’ differently to the subject, the phenomenal datum. This dissertation addresses the datum in two parts. In the first part, I argue that the introspectable phenomenal difference between conscious states of perceiving and conscious cognitive states cannot be fully accounted for by differences in representational content, against so-called strong representationalism (see e.g., Dretske 1995; Tye 1995). Chapters 2 to 5 explore all the possible ways in which strong representationalism might explain the distinctive character of perception vis-à-vis thought. I will refer to these strategies as content or representational strategies. We can identify two kinds of content strategies: Object theories and Kinds-of-content theories (see Kriegel 2019a). Object theories (Chapters 2 and 3) claim that perceptual and cognitive states differ in terms of what they represent, i.e., in terms of the kinds of objects (broadly intended) they relate the subject to. Kinds-of content theories (Chapters 4 and 5) state that the crucial difference between perceptual and cognitive states is in terms of how they represent what they represent. I will argue that even in cases in which these theories identify features exclusively belong to perceptual or cognitive representational contents, these features eventually fail to account for the phenomenal datum. Given the failure of content strategies, in the second part of the dissertation I move to the attitude strategy. The attitude is the component of an intentional mental state that relates subject and content. The attitude strategy relies on the thesis that the attitude component makes a distinctive phenomenal contribution to the overall phenomenal character of the state. The strategy thus claims that the phenomenal datum can be accounted for in terms of attitudinal differences between typical perceptual and typical cognitive states. Depending on whether one regards attitude as a representational or a non-representational component of mental states, the attitude strategy may or may not be considered a kind of representational strategy. In Chapter 6 I will discuss the attitude strategy in detail and explain how it addresses the phenomenal datum. Finally, Chapter 7 will discuss two main obstacles to accepting the view.

This paper discusses what I call the problem of evaluability for objectualism, namely the thesis that not all intentionality is propositional. The problem arises against the background of the standard understanding of the notion of representation, according to which the content of a mental state is its truth conditions. The problem of evaluability is the problem of explaining whether and how objectual representation can do away with propositions as a means of evaluating mental attitudes. The objectualist has two ways to reply to the problem of evaluability: either to hold that objectual content just is non-evaluable content; or that objectual content is evaluable, but not truth evaluable. I call the first absolute objectualism and the latter evaluative objectualism. I identify different challenges for each version and offer some reasons to support evaluative objectualism

Some philosophers claim that perception immediately and prima facie justifies belief in virtue of its phenomenal character (Huemer, Skepticism and the veil of perception. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, 2001; Pryor, There is immediate justification. In: Steup M, Sosa E (eds) Contemporary debates in epistemology. Blackwell, London (2014), pp. 181–202, 2005). To explain this special justificatory power, some appeal to perception’s presentational character: the idea that perceptual experience presents its objects as existing here-and-now (Chudnoff, Intuition. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013; Berghofer, Husserl Stud 34(2):145–170, 2018). As some philosophers have noted, if perception justifies in virtue of its presentational character alone, the kind of content perception has should not matter for perceptual justification; more precisely, it should not matter whether perceptual content is propositional or not (e.g., Smithies, The epistemic role of consciousness. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019; Kriegel, Australas J Philos, 2021). However, most philosophers tend to resist this conclusion, holding that perception must be propositional in order to justify, on the ground that all our model of justification are propositional (e.g., Gauker, Philos Perspect 26(1):19–50, 2012). This paper challenges this claim. The paper consists of a negative and a positive part. In the negative part, I discuss and reject the master argument for the propositionality of perception; the conclusion is that propositional content is neither sufficient nor necessary to explain perception’s justificatory power. In the positive part, I take this conclusion seriously and outline an objectual model of perceptual justification. I define objectual attitudes as mental states whose content is not a full proposition, but a sub-propositional representational item, such as the representation of objects, properties, and kinds (Grzankowski and Montague, Non-propositional intentionality. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018), and show that it is plausible that some perceptions and some beliefs are attitudes of this kind. I then argue that objectual perceptual experiences have the right kind of phenomenal character and the right kind of structure to serve for immediate prima facie justification. I conclude by defending my objectual model from three objections.

In this paper, I defend a tripartite metaphysics of intentional mental states, according to which mental states are divided into subject, content, and attitude, against recent attempts at eliminating the attitude component (e.g., Montague, Oxford studies in philosophy of mind, 2022, 2, Oxford University Press). I suggest that a metaphysics composed of only subject and content cannot account for (a) multisensory perceptual experiences and (b) phenomenological differences between episodes of perception and imagination. Finally, I suggest that some of the motivations behind the rejection of the attitude component can be accommodated within the tripartite framework.