• 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.