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Introspecting Phenomenal States
Author(s) -
GERTLER BRIE
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
philosophy and phenomenological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1933-1592
pISSN - 0031-8205
DOI - 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2001.tb00105.x
Subject(s) - introspection , demonstrative , metaphysics , epistemology , direct and indirect realism , construals , philosophy of mind , externalism , qualia , physicalism , perception , psychology , consciousness , philosophy , cognitive science , social psychology , construal level theory , linguistics
This paper defends a novel account of how we introspect phenomenal states, the Demonstrative Attention account (DA). First, I present a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for phenomenal state introspection which are not psychological, but purely metaphysical and semantic. Next, to explain how these conditions can be satisfied, I describe how demonstrative reference to a phenomenal content can be achieved through attention done . This sort of introspective demonstration differs from perceptual demonstration in being non‐causal. DA nicely explains key intuitions about phenomenal self‐knowledge, makes possible an appealing diagnosis of blindsight cases, and yields a highly plausible view as to the extent of our first‐person epistemic privilege. Because these virtues stem from construing phenomenal properties as non‐relational features of states, my defense of DA constitutes a challenge to relational construals of phenomenal properties, including functionalism and representationalism. And I provide reason to doubt that they can meet this challenge.