Keith Lehrer distinguishes three kinds of questions about consciousness: scientific questions, metaphysical questions, and epistemological questions. He leaves the scientific questions to the scientists. He articulates and answers the peculiar epistemological questions posed by consciousness. And he boldly contends that no metaphysical questions about consciousness remain, once the epistemological questions have been answered. This is an astonishing claim. What happened to the metaphysical questions? Were they pseudo-questions? Were they epistemological questions masquerading as metaphysical ones? And isn't it possible that Lehrer's (...) epistemological account of consciousness raises metaphysical questions of its own? I will argue that Lehrer's account of consciousness does leave a metaphysical remainder. To deal with this remainder, Lehrer could try to expand his explanatory framework—but this would involve to a substantial revision of his current views. I end with a speculative proposal that might allow Lehrer acknowledge all the points raised in this paper, but without forcing him to revise his account of consciousness in a substantial way. (shrink)

Alexius Meinong's specific use of the term "self-presentation" had a significant influence on modern epistemology and philosophical psychology. To show that there are remarkable parallels between Meinong's account of the self-presentation of experiences and Lehrer's account of the exemplarization of experiences is one of this paper's main objectives. Another objective is to put forward some comments and critical remarks to Lehrer's approach. One of the main problems can be expressed by the following: The process of using a particular experience as (...) a sample, that is, an exemplar that we use to stand for and refer to a plurality of experiences, Lehrer calls "exemplarization". As concrete experiences are multifarious (red and round, for example), how can we single out a specific sort of experiences (the red ones) by the process of exemplarization when we use such a multifarious experience as a sample? (shrink)

In recent publications, Keith Lehrer developed the intriguing idea of a special mental process– exemplarization – and applied it in a sophisticated manner to different phenomena such as intentionality, representation of the self, the knowledge of ineffable content (of art works) and the problem of (phenomenal) consciousness. In this paper I am primarily concerned with the latter issue. The target of this paper is to analyze whether exemplarization, besides explaining epistemic phenomena such as immediate and ineffable knowledge of experiences, can (...) also solve the ontological problem of consciousness. In particular, Lehrer suggests that if we consider exemplarization, zombies cannot provide an argument for anti-physicalism. I argue that exemplarization offers neither a physicalist explanation of the conceivability of zombies nor a physicalist account of their impossibility. Therefore, exemplarization cannot offer a physicalist solution to the “hard problem” of consciousness. (shrink)

One of the promising approaches to the problem of consciousness has been the Higher-Order Monitoring Theory of Consciousness. According to the Higher-Order Monitoring Theory, a mental state M of a subject S is conscious iff S has another mental state, M*, such that M* is an appropriate representation of M. Recently, several philosophers have developed a Higher-Order Monitoring theory with a twist. The twist is that M and M* are construed as entertaining some kind of constitutive relation, rather than being (...) logically independent of each other. We may call this the Same-Order Monitoring Theory of Consciousness. In this paper, I discuss the nature of the Same-Order Monitoring Theory and argue for its superiority over the more traditional Higher-Order Monitoring Theory. (shrink)

Monitoring approaches to consciousness claim that a mental state is conscious when it is suitably monitored. Higher-order monitoring theory makes the monitoring state and the monitored state logically independent. Same-order monitoring theory claims a constitutive, non-contingent connection between the monitoring state and the monitored state. In this paper, I articulate different versions of the same-order monitoring theory and argue for its supremacy over the higher-order monitoring theory.

Harman famously argues that a particular class of antifunctionalist arguments from the intrinsic properties of mental states or events (in particular, visual experiences) can be defused by distinguishing “properties of the object of experience from properties of the experience of an object” and by realizing that the latter are not introspectively accessible (or are transparent). More specifically, Harman argues that we are or can be introspectively aware only of the properties of the object of an experience but not the properties (...) of the experience of an object and hence that the fact that functionalism leaves out the properties of the experience of an object does not show that it leaves out anything mentally relevant. In this paper, I argue that Harman’s attempt to defuse the anti-functionalist arguments in question is unsuccessful. After making a distinction between the thesis of experiencing-act transparency and the thesis of mental-paint transparency, (and casting some doubt on the former,) I mainly target the latter and argue that it is false. The thesis of mental-paint transparency is false, I claim, not because mental paint involves some introspectively accessible properties that are different from the properties of the objects of experiences but because what I call the identity thesis is true, viz. that mental paint is the same as (an array of) properties of the object of experience. The identification of mental paint with properties of the object of experience entails that the antifunctionalist arguments Harman criticizes cannot be rightly accused of committing the fallacy of confusing the two. (shrink)