The First-Person Perspective and Other Essays

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.

• Major figure in the philosophy of mind, one of the hottest areas in current philosophy • Interdisciplinary interest in psychology and cognitive science • Shoemaker published a successful collection of papers with Cambridge University Press in 1984, Identity, Cause and Mind

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.