In Inquiry 36: 96-112, March 1993.

Woven into Dennett's account of consciousness is his belief that certain possibilities are not conceivable. This is manifested in his view that we are not conscious in any sense in which we can imagine that philosophers’ ‘zombies’ might not be conscious, and also in his claims about ‘blindsight’, and what possibilities this can coherently suggest to us. If the possibilities Dennett denies none the less seem conceivable to us, then if he does not give us reason to think they are actually incoherent, we ought to reject his theory, since it denies the intelligibility of the very notion we should want a theory of consciousness to discuss. I argue that Dennett does not provide us with convincing reasons of the relevant sort, and I suggest that his difficulty with the concept of consciousness is rooted in questionable epistemological assumptions which he fails to justify.

In The Waning of Materialism: New Essays, edited by George Bealer and Robert Koons, Oxford University Press, 2010.

“Saving Appearances: a Dilemma for Physicalists,” in The Waning of Materialism: New Essays, edited by George Bealer and Robert Koons, Oxford University Press, 2010. 

Twenty-three philosophers examine the doctrine of materialism find it wanting. The case against materialism comprises arguments from conscious experience, from the unity and identity of the person, from intentionality, mental causation, and knowledge. The contributors include leaders in the fields of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, who respond ably to the most recent versions and defences of materialism. The modal arguments of Kripke and Chalmers, Jackson>'s knowledge argument, Kim>'s exclusion problem, and Burge>'s anti-individualism all play a part in the building of a powerful cumulative case against the materialist research program. Several papers address the implications of contemporary brain and cognitive research (the psychophysics of color perception, blindsight, and the effects of commissurotomies), adding a posteriori arguments to the classical a priori critique of reductionism. All of the current versions of materialism -- reductive and non-reductive, functionalist, eliminativist, and new wave materialism -- come under sustained and trenchant attack. In addition, a wide variety of alternatives to the materialist conception of the person receive new and illuminating attention, including anti-materialist versions of naturalism, property dualism, Aristotelian and Thomistic hylomorphism, and non-Cartesian accounts of substance dualism.

Forthcoming in Phenomenal Intentionality, edited by Uriah Kriegel, Oxford University Press.

From the Introduction:

Does consciousness essentially include self-consciousness? How you answer may determine your basic view of consciousness and its relation to intentionality. For example, if you say yes, you may think this paves the way to accounting for consciousness in terms of a self-directed, inward-pointing
intentionality: consciousness not only includes but is exhausted by a kind of selfconsciousness— that is, a way in which a mind refers to or represents itself. On the other hand, you may object that consciousness—at least in the phenomenal sense—either does not necessarily involve self-consciousness at all, or else not in a way that licenses us to absorb consciousness into self-representation; if anything, self-consciousness is to be understood as a form of phenomenal consciousness. These matters need more spelling out. But it’s fairly clear that how we deal with them will significantly shape our approach to the subject of this volume. Other broad issues are at stake as well, such as: how to conceive of the basis of self-knowledge; and in what sense, if any, one is conscious of or experiences one’s “self.”

In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward Zalta (http://plato.stanford.edu) June 2002 (revised December 2006).

Introduction

To say one has an experience that is conscious (in the phenomenal sense) is to say that one is in a state of its seeming to one some way. In another formulation, to say experience is conscious is to say that there is something it's like for one to have it. Feeling pain and sensing colors are common illustrations of phenomenally conscious states. Consciousness has also been taken to consist in the monitoring of one's own states of mind (e.g., by forming thoughts about them, or by somehow "sensing" them), or else in the accessability of information to one's capacities for rational control or self-report. Intentionality has to do with the directedness or aboutness of mental states — the fact that, for example, one's thinking is of or about something. Intentionality includes, and is sometimes taken to be equivalent to, what is called ‘mental representation.’

It can seem that consciousness and intentionality pervade mental life — perhaps one or both somehow constitute what it is to have a mind. But achieving an articulate general understanding of either consciousness or intentionality presents an enormous challenge, part of which lies in figuring out how the two are related. Is one in some sense derived from or dependent on the other? Or are they perhaps quite independent and separate aspects of mind?

Sections (1) and (2) offer introductory accounts of what is meant by ‘consciousness’ and ‘intentionality,’ with sensitivity to the difficulties raised by their varying interpretation. Then, influential perspectives on intentionality that have emerged in both phenomenological (Section 3) and analytic (Section 4) philosophical traditions are sketched, so as to highlight basic issues about the relationship of consciousness and intentionality, and provide some of the background against which they have been understood. Sections (5) through (8) survey some contemporary views about consciousness, considering their implications for the connection between consciousness and intentionality. Section (9) distinguishes four broad options for understanding their relationship, and closes with some observations about the philosophical consequences of choosing among them.

Psyche 10 (03), November 2004.

Psyche 10 (02), October 2004.

Psyche 10 (02), September 2004.

Psyche 9(06), February 2003.

Psyche 9(03) January 2003.

Psyche 8(09) October 2002.

Psyche, 7 (07) April 2001.

Psyche 7 (07) April 2001.

Psyche 12 (3) July 2006

In The Journal of Consciousness Studies, Special Issue: “Is the Visual World a Grand Illusion?”,  Vol. 9, No. 5-6, 2002.