Distinguished Lecture Series: David Rosenthal (New York)
Nota bene:
There will be an opportunity for doctoral candidates to meet with David Rosenthal on Friday, 12 June, 10.00-11.00.
Venue: Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Luisenstraße 56, seminar room t.b.a., 10117 Berlin
It is plain that an individual's being conscious and an individual's being conscious of various things are both crucial for successful functioning. But it is far less clear how, if at all, it is also useful for an individual's psychological states to occur consciously, as against their occurring but without being conscious.
Restricting attention to cognitive and desiderative states, a number of suggestions are current about how the consciousness of those states may be useful. It has been thought that such consciousness enhances processes of rational thought and planning, intentional action, executive function, and the correction of complex reasoning.
I examine each of these proposals in the light of various empirical findings and theoretical considerations, and conclude that the consciousness of cognitive and desiderative states is unlikely to be useful in these or related ways. This undermines a reliance on evolutionary selection pressures in explaining why such states so often occur consciously in humans.
I briefly conclude with an alternative explanation, on which cognitive and desiderative states come to be conscious as a result of other highly useful psychological developments involving language use. But on this explanation the consciousness of these states adds no significant functionality to that of those other developments.
Dr David Rosenthal is Professor in Philosophy at the City University of New York.
