Ted Honderich
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780198714385
- eISBN:
- 9780191782794
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198714385.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
There is an ordinary division into consciousness in perceiving and consciousness of thinking and of wanting—perceptual, cognitive and affective consciousness. Each of us has a hold on our own ...
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There is an ordinary division into consciousness in perceiving and consciousness of thinking and of wanting—perceptual, cognitive and affective consciousness. Each of us has a hold on our own consciousness, misnamed introspection, and we have a common sense definition of consciousness. But there is pessimism, greater and lesser, about our coming to a theory or analysis of consciousness in the primary ordinary sense, an account of its nature. Has this been owed in part to the absence of an adequate initial clarification of the consciousness under discussion? To not answering the same question? Has it resulted in particular from a conflation of conscious and unconscious mentality in science in particular but also philosophy? Clearly there is a distinction between, say, dispositional and occurring belief, between knowing where the 43 bus goes when you are having no such thought, and believing it when you are doing so.Less
There is an ordinary division into consciousness in perceiving and consciousness of thinking and of wanting—perceptual, cognitive and affective consciousness. Each of us has a hold on our own consciousness, misnamed introspection, and we have a common sense definition of consciousness. But there is pessimism, greater and lesser, about our coming to a theory or analysis of consciousness in the primary ordinary sense, an account of its nature. Has this been owed in part to the absence of an adequate initial clarification of the consciousness under discussion? To not answering the same question? Has it resulted in particular from a conflation of conscious and unconscious mentality in science in particular but also philosophy? Clearly there is a distinction between, say, dispositional and occurring belief, between knowing where the 43 bus goes when you are having no such thought, and believing it when you are doing so.
