The Epistemic Role of Consciousness

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Declan Smithies (Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University)

The Epistemic Role of Consciousness

Declan Smithies (Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
21 November 2019

Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge; Philosophy of mind

Series: Philosophy of Mind Series

What is the role of consciousness in our mental lives? Declan Smithies argues here that consciousness is essential to explaining how we can acquire knowledge and justified belief about ourselves and the world around us. On this view, unconscious beings cannot form justified beliefs and so they cannot know anything at all. Consciousness is the ultimate basis of all knowledge and epistemic justification.

Smithies builds a sustained argument for the epistemic role of phenomenal consciousness which draws on a range of considerations in epistemology and the philosophy of mind. His position combines two key claims. The first is phenomenal mentalism, which says that epistemic justification is determined by the phenomenally individuated facts about your mental states. The second is accessibilism, which says that epistemic justification is luminously accessible in the sense that you're always in a position to know which beliefs you have epistemic justification to hold. Smithies integrates these two claims into a unified theory of epistemic justification, which he calls phenomenal accessibilism.

The book is divided into two parts, which converge on this theory of epistemic justification from opposite directions. Part 1 argues from the bottom up by drawing on considerations in the philosophy of mind about the role of consciousness in mental representation, perception, cognition, and introspection. Part 2 argues from the top down by arguing from general principles in epistemology about the nature of epistemic justification. These mutually reinforcing arguments form the basis for a unified theory of the epistemic role of phenomenal consciousness, one that bridges the gap between epistemology and philosophy of mind.

By: Declan Smithies (Professor of Philosophy Professor of Philosophy The Ohio State University)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 157mm, Width: 236mm, Spine: 43mm
Weight: 785g
ISBN: 9780199917662
ISBN 10: 0199917663
Series: Philosophy of Mind Series
Pages: 456
Publication Date: 21 November 2019
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

0.0: Introduction 0.1. What is Consciousness? 0.2: The Significance of Consciousness 0.3. The Hard Problem of Consciousness 0.4: Putting Consciousness First 0.5: An Overview of this Book 0.6: Chapter Summaries PART I 1: Representation 1.1: Representationalism 1.2: Unconscious Mental Representation 1.3. Grounding Representation in Consciousness 1.4: Grounding Thought in Consciousness 1.5: Grounding Epistemic Justification in Consciousness 2: Perception 2.1: Blindsight 2.2: Concepts of Consciousness 2.3: Presentational Force 2.4: Skeptical Scenarios 2.5. Duplication Scenarios 2.6: Conclusions 3: Cognition 3.1: The Epistemic Role of Belief 3.2. Beliefs and Subdoxastic States 3.3: Inferential Integration 3.4: Conscious Accessibility 3.5: The Cognitive Experience of Judgment 3.6: Conclusions 4: Introspection 4.1: The Simple Theory of Introspection 4.2: The Reliability Challenge 4.3: Rationality and Self-Knowledge 4.4: The Scope Question 4.5: The Role of Conscious Judgment 4.6: Conclusions 5: Mentalism 5.1: Evidentialism 5.2: Mentalism 5.3: Phenomenal Mentalism 5.4: The Phenomenal Conception of Evidence 5.5: The Explanatory Challenge PART II 6: Accessibilism 6.1: What is Accessibilism? 6.2: Explaining Accessibilism 6.3: Clairvoyance and Super-Blindsight 6.4: The New Evil Demon Problem 6.5: Answering the Explanatory Challenge 7: Reflection 7.1: Justification and Reflection 7.2: An Argument from Reflection 7.3: The Over-Intellectualization Problem 7.4: The Regress Problem 7.5: The Empirical Problem 7.6: The Value Problem 7.7: Conclusions 8: Epistemic Akrasia 8.1: What is Epistemic Akrasia? 8.2: An Argument from Epistemic Akrasia 8.3: Moore's Paradox 8.4: Knowledge as the Aim of Belief 8.5: Justification and Reflection 9: Higher-Order Evidence 9.1: A Puzzle About Epistemic Akrasia 9.2: Solving the Puzzle 9.3: The Certainty Argument 9.4: Ideally Rational Agents 9.5: Rational Dilemmas 9.6: Epistemic Idealization 10: Luminosity 10.1: Luminosity Defined 10.2: The Problem of the Speckled Hen 10.3: The Anti-Luminosity Argument 10.4: Epistemic Iteration Principles 10.5: The Puzzle of the Unmarked Clock 10.6: What's at Stake? 11: Conclusion 11.1: Phenomenal Conservatism 11.2: Seemings 11.3: Problems about Evidence 11.4: Problems about Evidential Support 11.5: Phenomenal Accessibilism 11.6: Conclusions

Declan Smithies is Professor of Philosophy at the Ohio State University. He works primarily on issues at the intersection between epistemology and the philosophy of mind. He is co-editor of Introspection and Consciousness (OUP, 2012) and Attention: Philosophical and Psychological Essays (OUP 2011).

Reviews for The Epistemic Role of Consciousness

Declan Smithies' book is an extraordinarily strong contribution to debates in philosophy of mind and epistemology. It is ambitious and expansive in scope while being extremely rigorously argued. It will be required reading for epistemologists, as well as for philosophers of mind interested in the value of consciousness for our lives as thinkers and knowers. -- Robert J. Howell, Southern Methodist University, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews