Keeping it Real: Intentional Inexistents, Fineness‐of‐Grain, and the Dilemma for Extrinsic Higher‐Order Representational Theories

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (4):555-575 (2017)
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Abstract

According to the standard argument from targetless higher-order representations, the possibility of such representations presents a dilemma for higher-order theorists. In this article I argue that there are two theoretically well-motivated replies to the standard argument. Consequently, the standard argument against higher-order theories fails. I then go on to argue that while certain versions of higher-order theory can adequately respond to the standard argument, they both, nevertheless, fail to explain the fineness-of-grain that phenomenally conscious experience appears to have.

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Vincent Picciuto
University of Maryland, College Park

Citations of this work

On ambitious higher-order theories of consciousness.Joseph Gottlieb - 2020 - Philosophical Psychology 33 (3):421-441.
The Higher-Order Map Theory of Consciousness.Joseph Gottlieb - 2022 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (1):131-148.
Conceptualizing Consciousness.Jacob Berger & Richard Brown - 2021 - Philosophical Psychology 34 (5):637-659.
The persistent problem of targetless thought.Adrienne Prettyman - 2020 - Consciousness and Cognition 82 (C):102918.

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References found in this work

Mind and World.John McDowell - 1994 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
A Materialist Theory of the Mind.D. M. Armstrong - 1968 - New York: Routledge. Edited by Ted Honderich.
An essay concerning human understanding.John Locke - 1689 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Pauline Phemister.

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