The Significance of Consciousness
Charles Siewert

Cloth | 1998 | $77.00 / £53.00
392 pp. | 6 x 9

e-Book | 2001 | $77.00 | ISBN: 978-1-4008-2272-0

Shopping Cart | Endorsements | Table of Contents

LEARN MORE ABOUT PRINCETON'S SPECIAL SALE

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.

Endorsement:

"This is a marvelous book, full of subtle, thoughtful, and original argument.... The discussion is full of insight and a pleasure to read. Siewert's book advances the debate over consciousness on a number of fronts, and should become a standard in the field."--David Chalmers, University of California, Santa Cruz

Table of Contents

This book has been translated into:

• Portuguese

Subject Areas:

• Cognitive Science
• Philosophy

Shopping Cart:

Special online sale for customers in the U.S. & Canada only

For customers in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Asia, and Australia
Cloth: $77.00 ISBN13: 978-0-691-02724-1

For customers in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India
Cloth: £53.00 ISBN13: 978-0-691-02724-1

Our e-Book editions are available from these online vendors: Amazon Kindle Store Other e-Book Formats

Prices subject to change without notice

File created: 10/18/2009

Questions and comments to: webmaster@press.princeton.edu
Princeton University Press