CONSCIOUSNESS

1. Philosophy 81
potential to become conscious. My own sympathies are broadly functionalist. I argue that
the right sort of account of unconscious mental states needs to account for both the mentality
and the intentionality of the state. I propose a phenomenal-functionalist account that satisfies
these two adequacy conditions. On the phenomenal-functionalist account proposed, an
unconscious state of type T is an unconscious intentional mental state of a system just case: (i)
The system’s type T states are regularly semantically influenced by conscious mental states.
In order for an unconscious state to be semantically influenced by conscious mental states, it
must be semantically influenced by conscious top-down factors such as attention, intention,
expectations, goals, task representations, and perceptual recognition. (ii) The system’s type T
states normally reliably guide action or the production of other mental states. An unconscious
state of type T is a mental state if the first criterion is satisfied, and an unconscious state of type
T is an intentional state if the second criterion is satisfied. While my proposal is consistent
with various non-materialist approaches to mental states, it should also have special appeal
for those of functionalist disposition who have been wary of classical dispositionalist and
interpretivist approaches to mental states. C1
82 It’s All in Peirce! Modern Theories of Consciousness Were Prefigured in Peirce’s
Tripartite Logic Allan Combs (Transformative Inquiry,
California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), Santa Rosa, CA)
It has been said that the three pillars of William James’ thought, radical empiricism, noetic
pluralism, and pragmatism, were influenced by Charles Sanders Peirce’s notions of firstness,
secondness, and thirdness (Taylor, 2009). Interestingly, an analysis of Vimal’s (2009) exhaustive
review of contemporary meanings attributed to the word consciousness suggests that
virtually all of them can also be understood as variations on Peirce’s three basic themes. Thus,
they are mirrored in James’s three-part philosophy as well. For example, theories of consciousness
as experience - qualia, ‘what it is like..,’ phenomenological approaches, etc.’are instances
of firstness, i.e., initial pre-conceptualized or ‘raw’ experience. Peirce himself equated
phenomenology, or phaneroscopy as he called it (phaneron being a name for ‘all that is in the
mind’), to firstness. Externalism (e.g., Alva Noe), however, corresponds to Peirce’s secondness,
the pre-reflective confrontation of the world in its actuality, as does radial pluralism
(e.g., John Searle). Functional approaches tend to be conceptual, emphasizing relationships
within the physiological processes of the brain (e.g., Walter Freeman), or conceptually considered
processes such as computationalism (e.g., Jerry Fodor, Michael Arbib, Daniel Dennett).
A variation on functionalism that takes its cue from Francisco Varela’s concept of enaction
attempts to combine materialism and functionalism ‘secondness and thirdness’ in a pragmatically
grounded notion of consciousness. Theories of self, on the other hand, virtually all involve
self-reflective dynamics, or thirdness, of one ilk or another. P1
83 The View from Everywhere: Consciousness, Intentionality, and Naturalized
Phenomenology Christian Coseru (Philosophy, College of
Charleston, Charleston, SC)
Recent calls to naturalize phenomenology (Petitot et. al, 1999, Gallagher 2003, 2004,
Thompson 2007) are indicative of the constraints imposed by cognitive science on any tradition
of inquiry that seeks to contribute to its research programs and participate in its internal
disputes. Clearly, if phenomenology can contribute either novel approaches or supporting
evidence to current scientific theories of consciousness and cognition, then, its principles and
its hypotheses need to be aligned with the rest of the available models and methodologies
currently pursuing their candidacy. I argue that the project of naturalizing phenomenology,
while most promising in expanding and refining the embodied and enactive models of cognition,
must take seriously the phenomenologist’s reversal of priority claims (phenomenology
is, or is also (after Husserl), concerned with transcendental subjectivity). Following Zahavi
(2004, 2009) I claim that a mutual entailment strategy that expands our understanding of the
constitutive elements of experience can (and must) be both scientifically informed and phenomenologically
constraining. This mutual entailment strategy, in which first and third-person
perspectives (conceived as intersubjective, pragmatic, and public rather than private) emerge