Phenomenal consciousness and our mind-reading abilities

PÉREZ, DIANA

Palma de Mallorca- España

Workshop; XVII Interuniversitary workshop on philosophy and cognitive science; 2007

In this paper I consider recent discussions within the representationalist theories of phenomenal consciousness, in particular, the discussions between first order representationalism (FOR) and higher order representationalism (HOR). I aim to show that either there is only a terminological dispute between them or, if the discussion is not simply terminological, then HOR is based on a misunderstanding of the phenomena that a theory of phenomenal consciousness should explain. First, I argue that we can defend first order representationalism from Carruthers? attacks and ignore higher order thoughts in our account of phenomenal consciousness. Then I offer a diagnostic of Carruthers? misunderstanding. In the last section I consider further reasons to include mindreading abilities in an explanation of phenomenal consciousness. (Se adjunta la versión publicada en un número monográfico de la revista Análisis Filosófico)