Attention and internal monitoring: A Farewell to HOP

Abstract

Consciousness in its transitive use (i.e. consciousness-of) has two different kinds of target: external objects and one’s own mental states. We will call consciousness of external objects ‘external awareness’ and consciousness of mental states ‘internal awareness’. The focus of this article is on the latter case, in which a subject is conscious of one of her/his own mental states. Mental states of which a subject is conscious (or aware) have been called ‘conscious states’ by Armstrong (1968, 1981), Rosenthal (1986, 1990) and Lycan (1987, 1996). We will adopt this usage here, though nothing hangs on how you label cases where the subject is aware of a mental state.1 ‘Inner sense’ or ‘higher-order perception’ (HOP) theories in the philosophy of mind are offered as explanations of what it is that makes a mental state a conscious state in that sense. That is, they aim to at least determine the necessary conditions for one’s being conscious or aware of one’s own mental state. According to HOP, a mental state is conscious just in case it is itself represented in a quasi-perceptual way by an internal monitor, scanning device or attention mechanism. Many arguments have been given in favour of this view, and many objections made to it as well.2 Our purpose here is to start with one of the objections to HOP, review a seemingly innocuous concession to it and then show that the concession ends up undermining HOP.