1- https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009105262.012
Perceptual Intentionality, Attention and Consciousness
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A representative expression of current thinking on the ‘problem of consciousness’ runs as follows. There is one, impenetrably hard problem; and a host of soluble, and in this sense easy problems. The hard problem is: how could a physical system yield subjective states? How could there be something it is like to be a physical system? This problem corresponds to a concept of consciousness invariably labelled ‘phenomenal consciousness’. It is here, with respect to phenomenal consciousness, that we encounter an ‘explanatory gap’, where it is this gap that makes the problem so hard. Nothing we can say about the workings of a physical system could begin to explain the existence and nature of subjective, phenomenal feel.
- Book Chapter
- 10.4135/9781452257044.n215
- Jan 1, 2013
- Encyclopedia of the Mind
Perceptual Consciousness and Attention
- Research Article
- 10
- 10.2307/2108165
- Mar 1, 1990
- Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
According to Husserl, intentionality of perceptual consciousness is model for other nonperceptual intentional acts of mind, such as imagining. The purpose of this paper is to show that in Logical Investigations intentionality of perceptual consciousness is model for understanding imaginal acts. Husserl outlines two distinct situations in which one speaks of an image: (a) there is imaginal act in which one perceived physical object is an image of another perceivable object, and (b) there is imaginal act in which a mental content is an intermediate in intention of an object. In each case Husserl shows that the interpretation of anything as an image presupposes an object intentionally given to consciousness.' Of two imaginal acts, I argue that first is logically dependent on a perceptual intention, and that second is explicable in terms of a perceptual intention rather than in terms of a pictorial representation. I conclude that nonmental images cannot be a paradigm for understanding situation in which an image is a mental event, that images cannot be basis for perceptual acts, and that Husserl is not committed to a view that mental images are pictures in mind.
