Phenomenal Consciousness and the First- Person

Siewert's book revolves around three theses: that there is a distinctive style of epistemic warrant associated with the first-person point of view, that if we pay close attention to the deliverances of this first-person point of view, we will see that phenomenal consciousness is both real and yet neglected by many current theories that purport to explain consciousness, and that phenomenal consciousness is inherently intentional; one cannot divorce what phenomenal character presents to us from what it's like to have it. Among several points made on the relations among these three theses, it is argued that Siewert's argument for the distinctive status of first-person warrant does not provide him with the support necessary to employ that thesis in his defense of the significance of phenomenal consciousness. Siewert's book aims to establish, as the title announces, the "significance" of consciousness. He does this by arguing in great detail for three principal theses: First, that there is a distinctive style of epistemic warrant associated with the first-person point of view. Second, that if we pay close attention to the deliverances of this first-person point of view, we will see that phenomenal consciousness defined with respect to a particular set of thought experiments is both real and yet neglected by many current theories that purport to explain consciousness. Finally, again by reference to what can be known with this distinctive first-person warrant, he argues that phenomenal consciousness is inherently intentional; one cannot divorce what phenomenal character presents to us from what it's like to have it. The third point, of great interest in its own right, is then used to show that neglect of phenomenal consciousness involves a much more serious lack in a theory than one might have otherwise thought. The argument for the claim that there is a distinctive first-person type of warrant for beliefs about our own mental states is based on two considerations: that we are normally warranted in our beliefs about our own mental states without having made the sorts of observations of our behavior that others would have to make to be so warranted, and that we are often warranted in our self-directed beliefs even when no third-person accessible evidence at all is available. Given especially the second consideration, it seems to follow that first-person warrant is of a distinct type from thirdperson warrant. Depending of course on what one reads into the phrase "distinct type of warrant", I don't think many would doubt that we can come to have warranted belief, indeed knowledge, of our own mental states without recourse to the sorts of observations others would have to make to support identical mental attributions to us. We don't have to see how we behave, or listen to what we say. (Yes, there are those instances where we learn about our own mental states from observing our own behavior, or listening to what we've said. But this doesn't impugn the basic point.) But just how much weight is this notion of a distinct type of warrant supposed to bear, and is it up to it? In particular, consider the following way of understanding what is distinctive about firstperson warrant: it is distinctive in that it involves a mode of observation that is available only to the subject. The idea is that the mind is set up with internal monitors that directly access the presence of certain sorts of mental states (roughly, the conscious ones), and therefore, due to the reliability of such monitors, when one finds oneself thinking that one believes such-and-such, or perceives such-and-such, one is warranted in thinking it. Though it's pretty clear that Siewert doesn't agree with this way of understanding firstperson warrant, the question I want to pursue now is whether the use he makes of firstperson warrant would be compromised by understanding it in this way. Siewert asks us to consider a case of "spontaneous blindsight" as a way of specifying what he means by "phenomenal consciousness". Blindsight involves the ability of certain brain-damaged patients who report blindness in a certain region of their visual field nevertheless to detect various stimuli presented in that region when requested to guess what's there. By a "spontaneous blindsight" case Siewert imagines a case where the patient spontaneously makes these judgments about what's in that region of their visual field, without the instigating requests to guess. Though this doesn't in fact happen, it certainly could happen, argues Siewert. Now, consider what's missing from their visually induced state, that feature which distinguishes it from the states they occupy when presented with stimuli in the other areas of their visual field. There is a way it seems to the subject to see an "X", say, in their good side, that is missing from how it seems to them when blindsightedly detecting the presence of the "X" in the bad side (even when done spontaneously). This missing feature is the phenomenal character of the experience. Having phenomenal character of this sort is what constitutes having phenomenal