Consciousness as valued procedural mode of apprehension
pp. 73-90
in: Denis Fisette (ed), Consciousness and intentionality, Berlin, Springer, 1999Abstract
Consciousness is very intimately related to other notions like intentionality and representation. Consciousness presupposes representation and intentionality. But we seem to be able to use representations without being conscious of them. For example, blindsighted people may have no conscious access to representations while actually using them. Consciousness is also inseparable from the notion of quale: the phenomenal qualitative look or flavor of a subjective experience. At first sight, we cannot have qualia without being conscious of them. Taking into account these two facts we have a tendency to consider intentionality as related to content (the reference to an object or state of affairs under some mode of presentation, giving the truth conditions of some proposition) and consciousness as related to some qualitative way of having access to content. On one hand we do not need a representation of the qualitative aspect of experience as such, a metarepresentation of some quale, to have a qualitative conscious experience. We just have to experience the things our experience is about. On the other hand consciousness of an experience seems to require that we have in mind some representation of the representational experience as such. And the qualitative aspect of our experience seems to be part of the mode of presentation of the objects or state of affairs we are referring to.