Reflexivity, Realism, and Consciousness

Abstract

The author raises a puzzle about the compatibility of the two features which, according to Ayers, jointly characterize paradigmatic cases of seeing, viz. ‘perspicuity’ and ‘immediacy’. In Section 1, the author explains why Ayers’s explanation of these two features suggests an inconsistent combination of reflexivity and realism about sense experience. Some of Ayers’s comments about our awareness of causation suggest a way of giving up on reflexivity. In Section 2, the author uses a thought-experiment to support the view that realism rather than reflexivity ought to be given up. In Section 3, the author gives a further reason for Ayers to take this option: it furnishes a response to a troublesome challenge concerning the epistemic significance of consciousness, a challenge which Ayers himself anticipates at the end of Chapter 2 of Knowing and Seeing but does not fully resolve.