Armstrong’s Just-so Story about Consciousness

Abstract

This chapter argues that there is a fascinating tension between Armstrong’s perceptual or self-scanning model of introspection, and his account of the function of consciousness. The account of the function of consciousness is roughly that consciousness is necessary for purposive thought: in order to think things through, we must keep track of and be aware of our various thoughts. Thus, Armstrong claims it’s necessary that, if we have purposive thought, we are conscious. But then it looks like it’s a kind of constraint on rationality that we are aware of our thoughts—that’s what it takes to have rational thought. The price, for Armstrong, of thinking this is that the idea that it is a constraint on rationality that we are in touch with our thoughts is precisely a leading contender for capturing the denial of the self-scanning view. The chapter identifies just such a problem in later discussions of introspection and concludes with a general worry about any attempt to give an account of consciousness in terms of being informationally sensitive to our own states—surely such sensitivity could be achieved at the sub-personal level.