In defense of self-representationalism: reply to critics

Abstract

There are very few similarities between constructing a philosophical theory and laminating a driver’s license. One similarity concerns their susceptibility to imperfection. When laminating a driver’s license, often a bubble of air forms seemingly spontaneously to ruin the lamination’s handsome sweep. One can press on the bubble in an attempt to flatten it, but the bubble reappears elsewhere on the surface. Pressed again, it reappears in a third location. Constructing a philosophical theory often involves a similar quixotic gambit. Of all the explicit and implicit desiderata we bring to the exercise, one or two are bound to frustrate one’s construction. One can typically make some moves to satisfy the recalcitrant desideratum, but then another desideratum is suddenly left unsatisfied. And the process can be repeated. I wish to start this response to my excellent—incisive, thoughtful, and creative— critics with a confession: my self-representational theory of consciousness, developed most fully in Subjective Consciousness (SC), has its own air bubble or two. Nonetheless, in responding to the critics I will conduct myself as though the theory is flawless and irreproachable; as though there are fully satisfactory responses to every objection they raise; as though all the theoretical sensibilities they bring to the table can be spoken to by the theory; as though my overall credence distribution was not updated, if barely perceptibly, after virtually every paragraph of their papers. My critics’ critical approaches are interestingly different. Brie Gertler develops a single sustained line of criticism against one central plank of the theory; Berit Brogaard offers a battery of quicker objections, counter-examples, and expressions of discomfort targeting a variety of aspects of the theory; Robert Van Gulick pursues a middle course of sorts. My response will go from the concentrated to the