Consciousness, explanatory inversion and cognitive science

Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (1):585-642 (1990)
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Abstract

Cognitive science typically postulates unconscious mental phenomena, computational or otherwise, to explain cognitive capacities. The mental phenomena in question are supposed to be inaccessible in principle to consciousness. I try to show that this is a mistake, because all unconscious intentionality must be accessible in principle to consciousness; we have no notion of intrinsic intentionality except in terms of its accessibility to consciousness. I call this claim the The argument for it proceeds in six steps. The essential point is that intrinsic intentionality has aspectual shape: Our mental representations represent the world under specific aspects, and these aspectual features are essential to a mental state's being the state that it is

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John R. Searle
University of California, Berkeley

Citations of this work

On a confusion about a function of consciousness.Ned Block - 1995 - Brain and Behavioral Sciences 18 (2):227-–247.
The representational character of experience.David J. Chalmers - 2004 - In Brian Leiter (ed.), The Future for Philosophy. Oxford University Press. pp. 153--181.
Perception and the fall from Eden.David J. Chalmers - 2006 - In Tamar Szabó Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oxford University Press. pp. 49--125.
Is human information processing conscious?Max Velmans - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (4):651-69.
Consciousness, explanatory inversion and cognitive science.John R. Searle - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (1):585-642.

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