Description
Abstract: Higher-order theories of consciousness start from the thought that a conscious state is a state one is aware of being in. So they use the transitive notion "awareness of ..." in order to account for the intransitive idea of "being conscious" (which is glossed as "having conscious mental states"). I argue, however, that their explanatory notion, "awareness of", implies a form of ‘seeming’ that the higher-order approach requires, yet cannot account for. I show that (1) if the relevant kind of seeming is declared to be present in all representational states, the seeming in question is objectionably trivialized; that (2) using the higher-order strategy to capture the relevant kind of seeming together with intransitive consciousness in one fell swoop results in an infinite regress; and that (3) highlighting distinctive features of representations that explain why they display seeming amounts to abandoning the higher-order approach altogether. I end by considering the prospects of a higher-order theory of consciousness in the light of these considerations. They are dim.| Period | 21 Nov 2018 |
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| Held at | Tokyo Forum for Analytic Philosophy, Japan |
| Degree of Recognition | Regional |