Consciousness, Broadly Construed

Abstract

IntroductionIn this chapter, I argue for an extended account of states that are both conscious and intentional (i.e., experiences but not sensations).1 The argument turns on two claims: (a) the intentional directedness of experiences consists in a form of revealing or disclosing activity, and (b) disclosing activity typically straddles neural processes, bodily processes, and things we do in and to the world.The chapter has three parts.In the fi rst, I examine and undermine the widespread tendency to suppose that whatever else is true of conscious experience, it must be something exclusively constituted by what is going on inside the heads of subjects.The second part develops the idea of the intentional directedness of conscious experience as revealing or disclosing activity.The third part uses this account of intentional directedness to argue for an extended model of conscious experience. I Fregean Consciousness2 Two Senses of Sense I shall begin with what, I hope to show, is a constructive misreading of Frege's ruminations on the concept of sense.It is a misreading, because it attributes to Frege a concern with the psychological that he did not have, and so veers in the direction of a psychologism that he eschewed.It is constructive, because the primary concern of this chapter is the psychological: specifi cally, conscious experiences defi ned by there being something it is like to have them.The thesis I shall defend is that the advertised Fregean ruminations on sense translate almost exactly into contemporary discussions of consciousness.And this reveals an important way in which those discussions are incomplete.