Are All Instances of Phenomenal Experience Conscious in the Sense of Their Being Objects of Inner (Second-Order) Consciousness?

Abstract

My purpose here is to explain four statements from Natsoulas (1992c; slightly modified). Baars (1992) found the first three very troubling; the fourth gave Carlson (1992) great difficulty.' 1. I take Marcel (1988, p. 129) to be saying that it is not a separate power, faculty, or process but phenomenal experience itself (including its underlying processes) that gives us direct awareness of our phenomenal experiences. 2. Marcel (1988) may come to agree with me that to see something in the environment requires visual phenomenal experience but does not require direct acquaintance with visual phenomenal experience. 3. I hold that seeing, which involves visual phenomenal experience, may (i.e., sometimes does) go on without awareness of it. 4. I hold that we have phenomenal experiences with which we are not directly acquainted; phenomenal experiences may (i.e., sometimes do) go on in us without our having any awareness of them.