CONSCIOUSNESS

82 1. Philosophy
from, rather than define, engagement with a world whose structures already contain references
to others, is what I call the “view from everywhere.” My proposal, which is conceived heuristically,
takes as paradigmatic the intentional structure of embodied self-awareness (Merleau-
Ponty’s intentional arc), leaving open the question of how phenomenological perspectives
can contributes to our understanding of the dynamic aspects of consciousness and cognition.
My operating premise is that descriptions of intentional objects, much like access to the intentional
acts that correlate with those objects, are neither static nor fixed, but characterized by
varying degrees of plasticity. As such the enactive model of cognition at work in phenomenological
approaches to intersubjectivity, while in need of constant revision to accommodate the
findings of cognitive science, must also expand (and occasionally alter) our understanding of
naturalism itself, so as to account for intentional and meta-cognitive states of awareness. The
project of naturalization, then, must take into account that our already public and pragmatically
embedded self-awareness marks an intentional relation to the world. C10
84 How to be Judgmental: On the Need for a Two-Dimensional Account of
Content Melissa Ebbers (Philosophy, University of
Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD)
David Chalmers employs epistemic two-dimensional semantics in the service of his modal
argument against materialism. Robert Stalnaker argues that we do not need both primary
and secondary intensions in order to give an account of the contents of judgments (including
instances of conceiving, which can reasonably be considered to be modal judgments). Of particular
interest are the judgments which, on an externalist account of content, would lead us to
attribute to the agent a judgment the content of which is a necessarily false proposition (such
as ‘Hesperus is not Phosphorus’). Instead of appealing to primary intensions (understood as
something like narrow content) to explain the content of these judgments, externalists instead
appeal to the diagonal proposition, which is parasitic on the standard externalist semantics and
allows us to give a pragmatic account of the content of the judgment. Of interest to us here is
the difference in the epistemic security of the judgments as understood on each account. Unlike
the externalist acount, on which an agent may be wrong about the content of her judgment
(e.g., she may think that she is conceiving of a case in which ‘Hesperus is not Phosphorus’
is true, though it is necessarily false), there is a much greater degree of epistemic security on
the two-dimensionalist’s account: the agent has access to the narrow content (primary intension)
of her judgment (as it is “all in the head” – setting aside, for the moment, worries about
transparency). This fact about the epistemic two-dimensionalist’s account, provided that the
link can be motivated between primary and secondary intensions (perhaps due to the semantic
stability of expressions), is thus a more plausible candidate for motivating a link between conceivability
and possibility. For this reason, defending epistemic-two dimensional accounts of
the content of judgments is desirable in motivating the modal argument against materialism. It
is crucial to note, in evaluating the relative strengths of the epistemic two-dimensionalist and
externalist accounts of content, that their assignments of content be such that the content can
explain the role in reasoning and behavior – these are the data to be explained. I argue that in
at least some cases, the externalist account attributes to the agent a judgment with content that
is significantly more fine-grained than is warranted by the data. Furthermore, these are cases
to which a notion of narrow content is particularly well-suited for the same task. This indicates
that, pace Stalnaker, we cannot adequately explain all judgments on the externalist’s account,
and that there is work for the primary intension to do in explaining such judgments. P7
85 Does Mary Know I Mean Plus Rather Than Quus? Philip Goff
(Department of Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield,
United Kingdom)
Kripke argues that conscious states cannot determine that I mean plus rather than quus by
‘+’. However, this argument is premised on: (i) a crude conception of phenomenal qualities
as ‘raw feels’, (ii) a crude conception of how conscious states might be supposed to ground
meaning, i.e. by standing in a relation of identity or one to one correlation to meanings. Once
we adopt a more nuanced conception of conscious states and their relationship to the content