# What is Inner Awareness ![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/media/reader/parsed_document_assets/217888758/XUIthPgLHi3zUf1Ul7KWSLbbfdIVFDNOwlxDPeNeS0U-cove_zbp1XNl.png) ## Metadata - Author: [[Uriah Kriegel]] - Full Title: What is Inner Awareness - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: Inner awareness is the ability to recognize our conscious experiences as happening now within ourselves. It combines two key aspects: the content of those experiences and the attitude of perceiving them as occurring in the present moment. In essence, inner awareness represents our individual conscious experiences as occurring right now in us. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/217888758 - Source File: What is Inner Awareness by Kriegel.pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > I argue (a) that conscious experiences constitute the characteristic content of inner awareness, and (b) that the characteristic attitude of inner awareness is that of representing-as-occurring-now-in-me this content. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8ex7m3rpr8f93jfecpa0s5d)) > And *how* does the belief represent this proposition? *As true*. It is in this respect that it differs from the *desire* that the morning star be nice. The desire represents the same proposition, but represents it “under the guise of the good” rather than “under the guise of the true.” It represents it in a different *way*, where the way does not affect the individuation of content. It is this notion of “how” that manages to denote something that remains external to the *content* of a mental state. It remains external in the following sense: even though the belief that the morning star is nice frames the proposition that the morning star is nice *as true*, the content of the belief is the first-order proposition that the morning star is nice, *not* the second-order proposition that *it is true* that the morning star is nice. No, the content of the belief that the morning star is nice is simply the proposition that the morning star is nice; it is just that in its nature as belief it *represents-as-true* this content. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8exqm74br5v0bv2gfwrv2gd)) > To identify the *attitude* characteristic of a mental state type, we point out the characteristic way, or manner, in which tokens of that type represent their contents. If beliefs represent their content “under the guise of the true,” and desires theirs “under the guise of the good,” how do other mental states represent their contents? Often it’s not easy to say. Under what guise did my auditory experiences of last night’s jazz concert represent what they did? What is the F such that my auditory experiences last night represented-as-F the relevant sounds (and/or instruments)? It’s far from clear what we should say here. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8exxsqfj7v78jv7e5mee9d3)) > The various authors who have delved into the notion of “time-consciousness,” or into William James’ “specious present,” may well have had in mind that although there is no sensible quality of an external-world present, there does exist an experiential present with a phenomenological reality. It may not be a *sensory* phenomenology of the sort visual experiences of red or bodily experiences of tickle exhibit, but a subtler, less “overwhelming” phenomenology of the sort we find in conscious thought or decision. Still, it is a phenomenologically real quality that inner awareness can glom onto and represent, but which lies in the first instance in the conscious experiences it is directed at. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8f2djwwfqhfygr7rxfd5g0g)) > This, then, is the phenomenon I have in mind – inner of awareness of conscious experience, whether focal or peripheral. The purpose of this paper is to offer a philosophical characterization of this phenomenon. What does it mean to “offer a characterization”? How does one “characterize” a phenomenon? One way to “characterize” a phenomenon is to list as many true propositions about it one can; the more exhaustive the list, the more complete the characterization. A different way to characterize a phenomenon is to list a selective subset of true propositions about it – those which capture that in virtue of which it is the phenomenon it is, distinguishing it from other, separate phenomena. We may call the former *empirical* characterization and the latter *philosophical* characterization. My aim here is to provide a *philosophical* characterization of inner awareness. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j87vmz7wxbbwp1q8jtj31vrg)) > It is possible to view content and attitude as two separate “elements” the coming together of which constitutes a mental phenomenon. But it is also possible, and perhaps more plausible, to think of content and attitude as two “dimensions” of a mental phenomenon, dimensions that we can abstract out *in thought*, but which cannot occur on their own *in reality*. A prima facie reason to prefer this second view is that if content and attitude were separate elements, there would be no explanation for why they never seem to occur one without the other, as a “free-standing” content or a “free-standing” attitude. More plausibly, then, the fundamental distinction between content and attitude is just a distinction between two dimensions along which mental states may resemble or differ. Consider the belief that *p*. Does it resemble more a desire that *p* or a belief that *q*? Well, in one respect it resembles more the desire that *p* but in another respect it resembles more the belief that *q*. “Content” is what we call the first respect, “attitude” the second. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j87vv4w6r5y36xjvv8g6ae83)) > I intend this construal of the attitude/content distinction to be entirely neutral on the ultimate accounts of the deep natures of attitude and content. Representing-as-true may ultimately amount to some kind of functional role, or to some primitive phenomenal property, or something else; what is represented-as-true may be something that stands in some broadly causal-historical or teleo-informational relation to the subject, or on the contrary may turn out to be some adverbial phenomenal property as on some phenomenal- intentionality views. All these *ultimate* accounts are consistent with drawing the content/attitude distinction in terms of the what and how of representation as understood here. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j87wartraa20w3czpw943bgd)) > If the here and now are determinative of perceptual experiences’ correctness, but are not part of the contents of these experiences, then they must be rather aspects of *how* that content is represented, that is to say, aspects of the *perceptual attitude*. That is the conclusion of the two-step argument. The general strategy here is to discover a mental state type’s characteristic attitude by identifying something which, on the one hand, is relevant to its correctness conditions, but, on the other hand, we have reason to think cannot be part of its representational content (what it represents). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j87wn2a2v14pvpy7vs72cm0d)) > Opponents of transparency will claim that non-content properties of conscious experiences also show up in inner awareness (see Kriegel 2023). Neither side here contests the idea that only conscious experiences show up in inner awareness. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8d29wc02bcz160mj1z9ams6)) > The alternative view is that the self is perhaps a more difficult but not quite impossible thing to observe when entering most intimately into what one calls oneself (cf. Chisholm 1969). > I find it very difficult to evaluate this matter on the basis of my personal experience. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8d2caz744bmsrt6ngjw7qsg)) > Suppose, for instance, that attending to my current state of mind, I have an introspective impression as of feeling frustrated, when in reality what I am feeling is *disappointed*. Then it is natural to describe my introspective impression as incorrect – it is not the right introspective impression for me to have in the circumstance. > It might be objected that inner awareness cannot be mistaken in this way: if an affective experience presents itself as frustration to inner awareness, then by that very fact it *is* an experience of frustration. Inner awareness is thus infallible: there is no appearance/reality gap for consciousness, because the way consciousness is *just is* the way consciousness appears to inner awareness. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8d2hn8683e467x8rgh03mx3)) > It is also possible to adopt a kind of naïve realist-view of inner awareness (Hellie 2007), whereby inner awareness consists in a non-representational relation to experience. In its pure form, naïve realism about perception involves the idea that perceptual states don’t have a content at all, and the analogous view here would be that inner awareness does not have a content at all. In such a framework, inner awareness would *not* have correctness conditions. But in such a framework there is anyway no hope for a philosophical characterization of inner awareness in terms content and attitude. Insofar as we’ve adopted a content-cum-attitude approach to the philosophical characterization of mental phenomena, then, we’ve closed the door on naïve realism about inner awareness. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8d2mktve60w7pdxftda70cy))