The First-Person Perspective and Other Essays

A collection dealing with the way in which we know our own minds and the nature of our mental states.

Sydney Shoemaker (Author)

9780521568715, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 September 1996

300 pages
21.5 x 14 x 2.3 cm, 0.46 kg

"This collection seems to me the plum among the many impressive recent philosophical treatments of consciousness and self-knowledge, and the most useful as a starting point for further work. Every turn is made brilliantly and plainly, with lucid, compelling argumentation...." Mark Crimmins, Dialogue

Sydney Shoemaker is one of the most influential philosophers currently writing on philosophy of mind and metaphysics. The essays in this collection deal with the way in which we know our own minds, and with the nature of those mental states of which we have our most direct conscious awareness. Professor Shoemaker opposes the 'inner sense' conception of introspective self-knowledge. He defends the view that perceptual and sensory states have non-representational features - 'qualia' - that determine what it is like to have them. Amongst the other topics covered are the unity of consciousness, and the idea that the 'first-person perspective' gives a privileged route to philosophical understanding of the nature of mind. This major collection is sure to prove invaluable to all advanced students of the philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

Part I. Self-Knowledge: 1. Introspection and the self
2. On knowing one's own mind
3. First-person access
4. Moore's paradox and self-knowledge
Part II. Qualia: 5. Qualities and qualia: what's in the mind?
6. Qualia and consciousness
7. Intrasubjective/intersubjective
Part III. Mental Unity and the Nature Of The Mind: 8. The first-person perspective
9. Unity of consciousness and consciousness of unity
Part IV. The Royce Lectures: Self-Knowledge and 'Inner Sense': 10. Lecture 1: the object perception model
11. Lecture 2: the broad perceptual model
12. Lecture 3: the phenomenal character of experience.

Subject Areas: Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology [HPJ]