Introspecting Phenomenal States

Abstract

This paper defends a novel account of how we introspect phenomenal states, the Demonstrative Attention account (DA). First, I present a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for phenomenal state introspection which are not psychological, but purely metaphysical and semantic. Next, to explain how these conditions can be satisfied, I describe how demonstrative reference to a phenomenal content can be achieved through attention done. This sort of introspective demonstration differs from perceptual demonstration in being non‐causal. DA nicely explains key intuitions about phenomenal self‐knowledge, makes possible an appealing diagnosis of blindsight cases, and yields a highly plausible view as to the extent of our first‐person epistemic privilege. Because these virtues stem from construing phenomenal properties as non‐relational features of states, my defense of DA constitutes a challenge to relational construals of phenomenal properties, including functionalism and representationalism. And I provide reason to doubt that they can meet this challenge.