Wolff's Theory of Consciousness, Re-Examined

Abstract

In this article, I develop a new account of Wolff's theory of consciousness. In contrast to the received view, I argue that Wolff's texts can be better made sense of by reading ‘perception’ and ‘apperception’ as two radically different acts, each one accounting for radically different aspects of the consciousness of an object and both necessary for its possibility. ‘Perception’ accounts for the intentional component of our representations, that is, for their being about a certain object. Apperception accounts instead for the fact that there is something it is like for us to have a perception of the object in question, without turning the perception in question into one of the intentional objects of consciousness. I also analyse the role played by distinguishing all the other acts that Wolff declares to be necessary for consciousness (attention etc.) and show how they are all necessary for perception to fulfil its role of providing consciousness with its intentional object. On these grounds, I then analyse also Wolff's understanding of self-consciousness and show how this supports the here proposed reading. Lastly, by comparing their texts, I argue that Wolff's theory of consciousness in his German Metaphysics is fundamentally in line with the one from its Latin counterparts: although in the first the notion of apperception is completely lacking, this does not result into a contrast with the theory from the Latin psychologies, but only in an inferior degree of detail.