Perception, Knowledge and Contemplation

Abstract

Why is consciousness so difficult to explore? Are we not all, non-philosophers included, experts in this matter? Yet we do not even seem to know whether consciousness is one or whether it is divided into several distinct kinds.

This paper was read at a symposium on consciousness in Washington on October 31, 1975, under the auspices of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. The two co-symposiasts were Professor Sellars who read a paper on “Some Reflections on Perceptual Consciousness” and Professor Mohanty who addressed himself directly to the paper of Professor Sellars.

I would like to thank the following persons for their help: Barrington Jones from Princeton sat with me through a night to discuss Sellars’ Aristotle interpretation which looms partly in the background of this paper though it is not openly discussed. James Stephens from Durham, New Hampshire gave me two of his days to straighten my interpretation of Sellars’ “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.” Thus the foundation of my own argument was laid. Richard Rorty from Princeton then listened to my argument and criticized it at points. David Luban from Kent State University and Douglas MacLean from Livingston College bore with me in the hectic days of assimilating Rorty’s criticism and preparing the finished product by virtually rewriting the whole article, mending the argument wherever it needed it and converting it into presentable form.