NDLI: Affording introspection: an alternative model of inner awareness

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	McClelland, Tom
Copyright Year	2014
Abstract	The ubiquity of inner awareness thesis (UIA) states that all conscious states of normal adult humans are characterised by an inner awareness of that very state. UIA-Backers support this thesis while UIA-Skeptics reject it. At the heart of their dispute is a recalcitrant phenomenological disagreement. UIA-Backers claim that phenomenological investigation reveals ‘peripheral inner awareness’ (or ‘pre-reflective self-consciousness’) to be a constant presence in their non-introspective experiences. UIA-Skeptics deny that their non-introspective experiences are characterised by inner awareness, and maintain that inner awareness is only gained when they explicitly introspect. Each camp has put forward a range of arguments designed to resolve this dispute, but I argue that none of these arguments has genuine dialectical purchase. This leads me to develop a compromise position that trades on the contribution that affordances can make to our phenomenology. According to the Affordance Model of inner awareness, all conscious states of normal adult humans are characterised by an affordance of introspectability. In line with the UIA-Skeptic, non-introspective experiences are not characterised by inner awareness. But against the traditional UIASkeptic, non-introspective experiences are characterised by an awareness of the opportunity for introspection. On this view, our capacity to gain inner awareness of our current experience is a ubiquitous feature of our phenomenology. I show how the Affordance Model respects the driving phenomenological intuitions of both the UIA-Backers and the traditional UIA-Skeptics, and suggest that it is able to explain why neither camp achieves an accurate description of how inner awareness figures in their phenomenology.
Starting Page	2469
Ending Page	2492
Page Count	24
File Format	PDF
ISSN	00318116
Journal	Philosophical Studies
Volume Number	172
Issue Number	9
e-ISSN	15730883
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2014-12-20
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Consciousness Inner awareness Introspection Subjectivity Phenomenology Affordances Philosophy Epistemology Philosophy of Mind Ethics Metaphysics Philosophy of Language
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Philosophy

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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Affording introspection: an alternative model of inner awareness

Précis: Perplexities of Consciousness

Agentive awareness is not sensory awareness

Lehrer on consciousness

Materialism and the Subjectivity of Experience

On the unreliability of introspection

Introspection and inference

Moderate scepticism about introspection

A hesitant defense of introspection

Affording introspection: an alternative model of inner awareness

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Affording introspection: an alternative model of inner awareness

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A hesitant defense of introspection

Affording introspection: an alternative model of inner awareness