Abstract

Direct awareness, or the immediate, on-the-spot, noninferential access that we have to some of our mental-occurrence instances, is a kind of "secondary consciousness." It often happens, in addition, that direct awareness itself is conscious, meaning that one is also directly aware of being so aware. This is "tertiary consciousness." Indeed, absent tertiary consciousness, one could not base actions on what is mentally occurring to one now. Although Armstrong held that "subliminal introspection" suffices for purposive mental activity, tertiary consciousness would seem to be necessary for carrying out such activity because purposive mental activity essentially involves choosing what mentally to do next on the basis of "introspective" feedback. One must be aware of whatever it may be that one is basing one’s actions on. Adopting, in place of "subliminal introspection," either one of two Jamesian hypotheses could save Armstrong from having to posit nonconscious purposive mental activities