Event Details
Consciousness and Speaking One's Mind
- Event Date: November 15, 2005
- Event Start Time: 1:00 PM
- Event End Time: 2:00 PM
- Event Location: The City University Graduate Center
- Event Type: Talks: RuCCS Colloquia
- Event Semester: Fall 2005
- Event Contact: Dr. David Rosenthal
- Event Extra info: <a href="http://web.gc.cuny.edu/Philosophy/rosenthal.htm">Dr. David Rosenthal</a>
Whenever we say something, the thought our speech act expressesis conscious. But when we express a thought nonverbally, bydoing something, that thought often fails to be conscious.Moreover, remarks like 'I think it's raining' arguably expressthe thought that one thinks it's raining; but such thoughts neednot be conscious when one expresses them verbally, by making suchremarks. I argue for the higher-order-thought theory of what itis for a mental state to be conscious, and deploy that theory toexplain both the generalization about verbal expressing andconsciousness and its exceptions. The explanation trades on theautomatic performance-conditional equivalence between saying thatp and saying that one thinks that p, which I argue is natural forcreatures with our descriptive abilities and folk-psychologicalconception of speech and thinking.