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Charles Siewert presents a distinctive approach to consciousness that emphasizes our first-person knowledge of experience and argues that we should grant consciousness, understood in this way, a central place in our conception of mind and intentionality. Written in an engaging manner that makes its recently controversial topic accessible to the thoughtful general reader, this book challenges theories that equate consciousness with a functional role or with the mere availability of sensory information to cognitive capacities. Siewert argues that the notion of phenomenal consciousness, slighted in some recent theories, can be made evident by noting our reliance on first-person knowledge and by considering, from the subject's point of view, the difference between having and lacking certain kinds of experience. This contrast is clarified by careful attention to cases, both actual and hypothetical, indicated by research on brain-damaged patients' ability to discriminate visually without conscious visual experience - what has become known as 'blindsight'. In addition, Siewert convincingly defends such approaches against objections that they make an illegitimate appeal to 'introspection'. Experiences that are conscious in Siewert's sense differ from each other in ways that only what is conscious can - in phenomenal character - and having this character gives them intentionality. In Siewert's view, consciousness is involved not only in the intentionality of sense experience and imagery, but in that of nonimagistic ways of thinking as well. Consciousness is pervasively bound up with intelligent perception and conceptual thought: it is not mere sensation or 'raw feel'. Having thus understood consciousness, we can better recognize how, for many of us, it possesses such deep intrinsic value that life without it would be little or no better than death.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
INTRODUCTION 3
The Project 3
A First-Person Approach 4
Guarding Against Peremptory Rejection 6
A Look Ahead 8
CHAPTER 1
First-Person Knowledge 10
1.1 Attitudes and Experience 10
1.2 Knowledge, Belief, and Warrant 12
1.3 Why I Am Not a Cartesian 16
1.4 The Shape of the Argument 21
1.5 Knowing What One Perceives 24
1.6 A Wittgensteinian Challenge 27
1.7 Solitary Self-Knowledge 33
1.8 But Do We Know Our Minds? 36
CHAPTER 2
Third-Person Doubts about First-Person Warrant 39
2.1 Third-Person Doubts 39
2.2 Experimental Assaults on “Privileged Access” 40
2.3 Why Third-Person Investigation Will Not Banish
First-Person Warrant 46
2.4 Self-Knowledge and the Eliminativist Prospect 49
2.5 Lingering Methodological Anxieties 61
CHAPTER 3
Phenomenal Consciousness 65
3.1 The Task of Clarification 65
3.2 Silent Speech 67
3.3 Consciousness: Not Just Talk 70
3.4 Making Consciousness Conspicuous by Its Absence 73
3.5 Prompted Blindsight 74
3.6 Spontaneous Blindsight 76
3.7 Amblyopic Blindsight 79
3.8 Is “Blindsight” Real Sight? 81
3.9 Reflective Blindsight 83
3.10 How Experiences Differ: Phenomenal Character 85
3.11 How to Deny Consciousness 93
3.12 Summary 99
CHAPTER 4
Varieties of Consciousness Neglect 101
4.1 A Test for Neglect 101
4.2 Seeming, Judging, and Discriminatory Talents 103
4.3 Learning Visual Judgment 108
4.4 Inner Discrimination, Sensory Qualities, and Higher-Order Thought 116
4.5 Consciously Seeing Is Not Just Thinking You Do 130
4.6 The Capacity to Use Visual Information 133
4.7 Evaluative Talents 137
4.8 Consciousness Neglect in Functionalism 140
4.9 Is Consciousness a Hidden Feature? 145
4.10 Summary 148
CHAPTER 5
Preventing Neglect 151
5.1 Seeking Rationales for Neglect 151
5.2 Does Neuroscience Say We Are Not Conscious? 151
5.3 Is Belinda a Metaphysical Mistake? 154
5.4 The Warrantability of Missing-Experience Reports 165
5.5 Fear of Skepticism 179
5.6 Summary 185
CHAPTER 6
Consciousness and Self-Reflection 187
6.1 Consciousness as Self-Directedness 187
6.2 Intentionality and Mentally Self-Directed Features 188
6.3 The “Conscious-of” Trap 194
6.4 Unreflected-on Experience 197
6.5 Unreflective Perceivers 202
6.6 The Absence of Inner Perception 208
6.7 Summary 214
CHAPTER 7
Visual Experience: Intentionality and Richness 217
7.1 Can We Take the Intentional Out of the Phenomenal? 217
7.2 Framing the Issue 219
7.3 Is the Phenomenal Holistic Enough to Be Intentional? 223
7.4 Sense-Data Inflated (and Exploded) 227
7.5 Sensory Intentionality Is Not Bestowed by Judgment 234
7.6 Might Essential Environmental and Behavioral Links Be Missing? 242
7.7 The Intentionality of Color Experience 245
7.8 Visual Experience: Untold Riches 247
7.9 Other Forms of Phenomenal Visual Wealth 255
7.10 Summary 259
CHAPTER 8
Conscious Thought 263
8.1 Conscious Thought—Iconic and Noniconic 263
8.2. Intentionality and Visualization 264
8.3 Conscious Thought: Not Just Imagery 274
8.4 The Relation of Phenomenal and Intentional Differences in Thought 283
8.5 Thought’s Seeming: Inseparable from Thought 292
8.6 Conclusion 305
CHAPTER 9
The Importance of Consciousness 307
9.1 Does Consciousness Matter? 307
9.2 Experience for Its Own Sake 310
9.3 The Importance of Being Conscious 326
9.4 Should We Care So Much about Consciousness? 331
9.5 But Must We Talk about It? 335
9.6 Conclusion 337
NOTES 341
REFERENCES 365
INDEX 369
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