Abstract

I argue that each function that is the topic of a main section of the present article cannot proceed without inner consciousness. The overt social action of your reporting to someone else that you now have a toothache is one such function, which cannot occur, I argue, unless you have inner consciousness of your having the toothache; your simply having a toothache does not suffice, notwithstanding its including first-order, pain-qualitative consciousness of your tooth or part of your mouth. And I argue that both your report of seeing X and your report, due to your seeing X, of X's presence in the environment must be based on your inner consciousness of seeing X; that is, in making such reports, you need to choose which sentence to utter depending on what you have inner consciousness of seeing; again, simply seeing X, though it includes a first-order, visual consciousness of X, does not suffice. Also, your controlling your active locomotor behavior on a visual basis necessarily involves your having inner consciousness of how, as you move, a part of the environment is transforming or changing in how you are visually experiencing it, that is, in how that part of the environment is visual-qualitatively appearing to you; simply seeing the environment and where you are in it, simply the first-order, visual consciousness involved in your seeing X, cannot suffice