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What is it Like to Have an Unconscious Mental State?

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Abstract

HOST is the theory that to be conscious of a mental state is totarget it with a higher-order state (a `HOS'), either an innerperception or a higher-order thought. Some champions of HOSTmaintain that the phenomenological character of a sensory stateis induced in it by representing it with a HOS. I argue that thisthesis is vulnerable to overwhelming objections that flow largelyfrom HOST itself. In the process I answer two questions: `What isa plausible sufficient condition for a quale's belonging to aparticular mental state?' and `What is the propositional contentof HOSs that target sensory states?'

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Stone, J. What is it Like to Have an Unconscious Mental State?. Philosophical Studies 104, 197–202 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010323814223

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