What Kind of Awareness Is Awareness of Awareness?: Michelle Montague

grazer philosophische studien 94 (2017) 359-380
brill.com/gps
What Kind of Awareness is Awareness of

Awareness?
Michelle Montague
University of Texas at Austin
michellemontague@mac.com
Abstract
In this paper the author discusses and defends a theory of consciousness inspired by
Franz Brentano, according to which every conscious experience involves a certain kind
of immediate awareness of itself. All conscious experience is in a certain fundamental
sense ‘self-intimating’—it constitutively involves awareness of that very awareness.
The author calls this ‘the awareness of awareness thesis’, and she calls the phenom-
enon that it concerns ‘awareness of awareness’ (aoa for short). The author attempts to
give a substantive description of what aoa consists in in two ways, first, by listing some
of its positive features, and second, by comparing it and contrasting it with introspec-
tion. The idea is that there are many different ways we can be aware of our experiences,
introspection being one way, aoa being another, distinct way. By clarifying the distinc-
tion between aoa and introspection, we can get a better grasp of both phenomena.
Keywords
consciousness – awareness of awareness – introspection – phenomenological

phenomena
1 Introduction
Philosophers and theorists have used the term ‘consciousness’ to designate

many different kinds of phenomena. The central and most important use
of this term picks out phenomenological phenomena. In this paper I am
concerned only with phenomenological phenomena, and I take it that all
consciousexperience necessarily has phenomenology. Phenomenology can be
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/18756735-09403004
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360 Michelle Montague
characterized in a familiar way as the phenomenon of there being ‘something

it is like’, experientially, to be in a mental state, something it is like, experien-
tially, for the creature who is in the state.1 For example, there is something
it is like to taste warm coffee or to hear Beethoven’s 9th symphony, or to feel
slightly embarrassed or very hungry, or to finally understand Gödel’s second
incompleteness theorem. A subject’s stream of consciousness is typically rich
and complex, filled with a variety of thoughts, perceptions, emotions, bodily
sensations, and moods, but for simplifying purposes I will focus on conscious
perceptual experience and in particular on visual experience.
According to one influential theory of consciousness, every conscious expe-
rience involves a certain kind of immediate awareness of itself. All conscious
experience is in a certain fundamental sense ‘self-intimating’—it constitu-
tively involves awareness of that very awareness.2 I’ll call this ‘the awareness
of awareness thesis’, and I’ll call the phenomenon that it concerns ‘awareness
of awareness’. When I speak of ‘awareness of awareness’, I will always be con-
cerned with this kind of awareness (aoa for short), and not, for example, with
the fact that I can be aware of my past states of awareness, or of your awareness.
I have formulated the aoa thesis in such a way as to make it clear that it is a
‘same-order’ theory of consciousness, as opposed to ‘higher-order’ theory. Ac-
cording to a higher-order theory of consciousness, a perceptual experience (for
example) is conscious if, and only if, there is a distinct higher-order thought or
perception directed at it.3 According to a same-order view, by contrast, when
one has a perceptual experience, one’s awareness of the external object (if
there is one) and one’s awareness of the experience itself are so intimately and
intrinsically related that they constitute a single mental state.4
1 The term ‘phenomenology’ was originally used to designate a method of theorizing, most
famously carried out by phenomenologists such as Brentano 1874, Husserl 1900–01, Merleau-
Ponty 1945, and Sartre 1943, according to which one studies conscious mental phenomena
from the ‘first-person perspective’. Phenomenologists attempted to give accurate descrip-
tions of the way conscious experience seems to us from the first-person. One can easily see
the connection between the two uses of term: phenomenology (used in the original way) is
concerned principally with describing the phenomenology (used in the new way) of expe-
rience. I take phenomenological descriptions to be an ineliminable source of evidence for
theorizing about consciousness. For contemporary uses of the phenomenological method
see e.g. Smith 1989, Siewert 1998, Thomasson 2005, Zahavi 2006, Kriegel 2015.
2 I am using ‘conscious experience’ and ‘conscious awareness’ interchangeably.
3 There are many nuances to higher-order views that my brief description passes over. For de-
tailed accounts see e.g. Armstrong 1968, Rosenthal 1986, 2009, Gennaro 1996, Carruthers 2005.
4 On this view, one should not think of a single conscious state as constituted by elements that
can exist apart. It’s extremely plausible that the ‘self-intimating awareness’ can’t exist on its
own, and by my lights, the existence of unconscious mental states is controversial.
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What Kind of Awareness is Awareness of Awareness? 361
The same-order theory I favor is based on Brentano’s view of consciousness

and I will call it ‘the Brentanian theory of consciousness’, although it is not
offered as an exegesis of Brentano’s theory, and although it differs from his
original statement of his theory in one fundamental respect: it allows that we
can stand in intentional relations to actual physical objects in the world, and
not only to appearances of those objects.5 In what follows I propose to weave
together some of Brentano’s argumentation with my own in support of the
Brentanian theory.
One of the central difficulties for any same-order view is to give a substan-
tive description of what aoa consists in. The purpose of this paper is to ad-
dress this difficulty, and I tackle it in two ways, one direct, one indirect. First, I
list some of the positive features of aoa. Second, I argue that according to the
Brentanian theory, aoa has the following two central features.
(1) aoa cannot be transformed into introspective awareness of experience.

(2) aoa cannot itself be introspected.
Why consider aoa in relation to introspection? The idea is that there are many
different ways we can be aware of our experiences, introspection being one
way, aoa being another, distinct way. By clarifying the distinction between
aoa and introspection, we can get a better grasp of both phenomena.
Introspection is a complex phenomenon, and my aim here is not to give a
fully worked out theory of what it is. I’ll outline only those of its features that
are needed to distinguish it from aoa. In particular, I take it that introspection
is essentially an intentionally directed conceptual activity that involves mak-
ing experience the focus of attention. (Although I take these two features to be
necessary for introspection, I’ll argue in §4 that they are not sufficient.) With
this understanding of introspection in hand, I focus primarily on two ques-
tions about it. The first is whether introspection of an experience E is ‘direct’ in
the sense of requiring no intermediary, or is ‘indirect’ thus requiring some sort
of intermediary. The second is whether introspection of an experience E can
occur simultaneously with E.
For reasons that will become clear below, my central interest is in the ques-
tion whether direct, simultaneous introspective access of experience is pos-
sible, and (1) leaves open the question of whether there can be introspective
access of this kind, in addition to the aoa that is constitutive of experience.
This question creates a dilemma for the Brentanian theory. If a Brentanian says
Yes to this kind of direct, simultaneous introspection, a puzzle arises for how
5 Others who hold versions of a ‘Brentanian’ same-order view include Kriegel 2009, Williford
2006.
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she can accept (2). If a Brentanian says No, a puzzle arises for how we have ac-
cess to the phenomenon of aoa. Ultimately, I will argue that the Brentanian
should answer No, and that direct introspection consists of two distinct men-
tal states, one directed at the other, but not simultaneously. I then propose a
solution to the puzzle that arises with this negative answer that appeals to the
self-revelatory nature of aoa. However, I do also gesture at how a Brentanian
might answer Yes, while still accepting (2).
The rest of the paper proceeds as follows. In §2 I give a sketch of the
Brentanian theory. In §3 I summarize ‘direct’ vs. ‘indirect’ conceptions of in-
trospection and explain why my interest is in the former. Through a series of
steps which concern the nature of introspection, §4 offers a defense of claims
(1) and (2) and solutions to the two puzzles just mentioned.
2 A Sketch of the Brentanian Theory
The basic idea of the aoa thesis is that every perceptual experience essentially
involves an immediate awareness of itself. In having a veridical visual experi-
ence of a red ball, for example, in addition to being aware of features of the
ball, the subject is also aware of the experience itself. The awareness of the red
ball and the awareness of the experience itself constitute a single conscious
mental episode. In this section, I will outline four fundamental claims that
characterize aoa, according to the Brentanian theory. My aim here is not to
argue fully for the Brentanian theory, but to use these four claims to sketch a
general picture of the theory.
2.1 Representational and Relational

The self-intimating nature of consciousness is a fully representational and re-
lational phenomenon. This distinguishes the Brentanian view from Husserl-
inspired same-order views of consciousness, according to which the awareness
of awareness that is constitutive of experience is non-relational.6
I have a very thin notion of representation in mind, which is simply defined
as the phenomenon of something’s being about or of something. How this
thin notion relates to other accounts of representation, for example theories
according to which representation is explained in terms of accuracy or truth
conditions, is unimportant for my purposes here.
6 For examples of the non-relational view see e.g. Husserl 1900–01/2001, Sartre 1943/1956, Smith
1989 and Zahavi 2006.
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One issue that is pressing for my characterization of aoa as representation-

al and relational is that many philosophers take it that representation requires
a gap between the representation and what is represented such that the two
are wholly distinct. But this gap doesn’t exist in the case of aoa, and so it is
claimed that aoa can’t be understood in representational terms. I address this
issue in detail in 2016, and I’ll just say here that I think we have to admit that
the awareness relation as it occurs in aoa is a special kind of relation (one
which doesn’t require the aforementioned gap), but this is unsurprising given
the distinctiveness of consciousness.7
2.2 Nebenbei or ‘by the way’

aoa is non-thetic, in the Phenomenologists’ terms: it is not explicitly in the
focus of attention. In other words, when one is having a visual experience the
fact that one is visually aware of the world is not in the focus of one’s atten-
tion; what is typically in the focus of attention is an external, physical object.8
Indeed, with Brentano (and Aristotle) and in agreement with (1), I will argue
that one’s awareness of one’s awareness of a ball (say) is essentially ‘by the
way’, nebenbei, to use Brentano’s word, alongside and concurrent with one’s
awareness of the ball, and neither is nor can become itself any kind of focused,
directed attention.
2.3 Non-conceptual
Many agree that my veridical visual experience of a red ball is—and a fortiori
involves—experience of the ball and its shape and color, but many deny that it
is—or involves—experience of its own phenomenological character. Accord-
ing to the Brentanian theory, however, there is a fundamental sense in which
the visual quality of one’s seeing the ball is part of what one is aware of in
having the experience. The redness and shape of the ball is after all visually
presented to me. Its being presented to me visually is, accordingly, an essential
part of what has to be mentioned in specifying the overall content of the expe-
rience. Its specifically visual experiential character is part of what I am aware
of just in having it. The visual experience is itself, with all of its phenomenolog-
ical character, given to the subject, as is the external object of the visual experi-
ence. This givenness is an essential part what it is to have a visual experience.
7 See also Kriegel 2009 on this issue.

8 It is also true that one can be in a somewhat abstracted state where one is more aware of
the general colored character of one’s visual field than of any particular objects. That is, our
perceptual experiences are not always fiercely focused on physical objects.
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This awareness does not require the possession of the concepts «visual» or
«experience».9 Rather, it follows immediately from the fact that one’s aware-
ness of the world consists partly in one’s being visually aware of the world,
that one is, in having that experience, aware of the visual character of one’s ex-
perience. And the content of this awareness of specifically visual experiential
character can be specified only in terms of (by reference to) the sensory phe-
nomenology associated with visual experiences, i.e. what it’s like to see colors,
shapes, etc. The aoa thesis applies to any creature that is conscious, whether it
is a human being, a dog, or a cricket.
2.4 aoa and Phenomenology

To see how the aoa feature of experience and the phenomenological features
of experience are related, one has to consider the overall representational
and relational structure of experience. The phenomenological features of an
experience are those features in virtue of which an experience is what it is,
experientially, to or for the subject who has it, with the particular qualitative
character that it has. The instantiation of a phenomenological property im-
mediately reveals to one that one is having an experience (in a basic sense of
‘reveal that’ that applies even in the case of the most primitive experiencing
creature); so in having an experience one is immediately aware of having an
experience. And this awareness is a fully representational phenomenon.
It is only by a subject’s being aware of a phenomenological property that
a phenomenological property can be instantiated at all and be a property of
experience with a particular qualitative character. Thus, phenomenological
properties and aoa are mutually and fundamentally “co-constituting”. One
feature is not more basic or fundamental than the other; they are aspects of
the same thing. On this view, the aoa feature of an experience and the phe-
nomenological features of the experience cannot be prised apart in order to
ask if the aoa feature has its own distinctive phenomenology. It is already es-
sentially constitutive of a phenomenological feature itself.
One might worry that the immediate awareness alluded to will conflict with
aoa’s being a representational phenomenon. Again, my appeal to representa-
tion is very minimal and requires only an awareness of the phenomenological
features of experience in a way that makes them genuinely present in experi-
ence. The claim is that phenomenological properties are present in experience
in virtue of an immediate awareness of them.
9 I am using «…» for names of concepts.
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3 Direct vs. Indirect Introspection
In order to sharpen the focus on what is at stake in arguing for (1) and (2), it
is necessary to distinguish between the usual view of introspection, accord-
ing to which one can in introspection more or less directly inspect a mental
occurrence, and a view of introspection, associated with what is often called
the ‘transparency thesis’, according to which it can only be carried out in an
essentially indirect, two-step fashion.
The transparency thesis is a thesis about what a subject can be aware of in
having perceptual experience. In one standard version it states that in having
a visual experience of a red ball a subject is aware only of (external) features of
the object, i.e. color, shape of the surface and so on. There are various versions
of the transparency thesis, but in this paper I’m interested only in a strong ver-
sion of it, which Tye (2014: 40) sets out as follows:
1) We are not aware of features of our visual experience.

2) We are not aware of the visual experience itself.
3) We cannot attend to features of the visual experience.
4) The only features of which we are aware in visual experience and to
which we can attend are external features (colors and shapes of surfaces,
for example).
As far as awareness goes, the thesis is that when we try to introspect a

visual experience occurring in normal perception, we are not aware of
the experience or its features (intrinsic or not) period.
The transparency thesis is supported by claims about what we find when we

introspect our experiences. According to Tye (2009: 261), what does introspec-
tion reveal?
Peer as hard as you like via introspection, focus your attention in any way
you please, and you will only come across surfaces, volumes, films, and
their apparent qualities. Visual experiences thus are transparent to their
subjects. We are not introspectively aware of our visual experiences….
If we try to focus on our experiences, we ‘see’ right through them to the
world outside.
As a claim about introspection, the transparency thesis may seem obviously

false. In introspection I precisely focus on my experience, my experience
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considered specifically as such; my attention is by definition—it’s

introspection—directed inwards on the experience. Tye (ibid: 261), however,
rejects, this view of introspection:
Introspection, on the view presented, is importantly like displaced per-

ception or secondary seeing-that, as Fred Dretske (1995) has observed.
When I see that the petrol tank is nearly empty by seeing the petrol
gauge, or when I see that the door has been forced by seeing the marks on
the door, I do not see the petrol tank or the forcing of the door. My seeing-
that is secondary or displaced. I am not aware—I am not conscious—of
either the petrol tank or the forcing of the door. I am aware of something
else—the petrol gauge or the marks on the door—and by being aware
of this other thing I am aware that such and such is the case…. Similarly,
in the case of introspection of visual experience I am not aware or con-
scious of the experience itself. I am aware that I am having a certain sort
of experience by being aware of something other than the experience—
the surfaces apparently outside and their apparent qualities.
According to the transparency thesis, all we can be aware of when we intro-

spect our visual experiences are properties of external objects. We can never
be aware of features of visual experience, nor can we be aware of the visual
experience itself, via introspection or otherwise. So we can only be indirectly
aware of the visual experience: that is, we can only be aware that we are having
a visual experience by being aware of something other than that experience,
namely the external properties of some object or objects. It is by being aware
of the external properties of objects that we become aware that our experi-
ences have a certain phenomenology.
In contrast to this view of introspection, many philosophers claim that we
can be directly introspectively aware of our experiences—without this detour
into the external world. In this paper, my main concern is with introspection
understood as something that is direct and how aoa relates to it.
Why limit my discussion to direct introspection? Because I am here assum-
ing that the aoa thesis is true (in order to ask (1) whether aoa can be convert-
ed into introspection and (2) whether the phenomenon of aoa is something
that can itself be introspected), and Tye’s claims about what we can and can-
not be aware of in introspection are in direct conflict with the aoa thesis as
I understand it. For according to the aoa thesis, in having an experience, the
subject is—precisely—aware of the having of that very experience; the subject
is aware of the experience itself, in addition to whatever else she may be aware
of. It seems clear, in the light of this, if aoa could be transformed into intro-
spection at all, it could be transformed into direct introspection.
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It may be added that Tye’s claim that introspection can only be indirect in
the way he describes seems very implausible. What one needs to do, in order to
introspect one’s experiential state (suppose it is a visual perceptual state—one
is looking at a computer screen), is to grasp or figure it explicitly as an experi-
ential state—conceive it as, take it as, apprehend it as, think it as an experien-
tial state—in a way one doesn’t normally do, when engaged in the world.
4 aoa and Direct Introspection
In this section, I argue for an account of introspection according to which in-

trospection consists of two separate mental states, one directed at the other,
with the introspecting state standardly occurring shortly after the introspected
state.10 I reach this conclusion by rejecting two claims: first, that aoa can be
transformed into direct introspection; and second, that direct introspection of
an experience E can occur simultaneously with E. The account of introspec-
tion I favor does allow for direct introspection of conscious experience, but
rejects the idea that it can be simultaneous with what is being introspected.
With this view of introspection in place, it will become clear why there cannot
be direct introspection of aoa. If introspection of aoa is impossible, however,
the puzzle of how we have access to it becomes acute. At the end of this sec-
tion I offer a solution.
4.1 aoa Cannot Be Transformed into Direct Introspection

I’ll begin my defense of (1)—that aoa cannot be transformed into direct
introspective awareness of experience—with Brentano’s endorsement of it.
Brentano calls the phenomenon of aoa ‘inner consciousness’ or more nar-
rowly ‘inner perception’.11 He maintains that it is constitutive of conscious
experience and that it provides us with our fundamental access to our
conscious experience, but cautions that we must carefully distinguish inner
10 Perhaps we can also say that one can introspect a mental state retrieved in memory some
time later.
11 For Brentano inner perception is one aspect of inner consciousness. Originally, Brentano
included three elements in inner consciousness: a presentation of the experience as a
whole, an affirmation of the experience’s existence, and a feeling directed toward the ex-
perience. Inner perception is the affirmation of the experience’s existence and according
to Brentano is a non-propositional judgment. See his 1874, Book Two, Chapters 2 and 3.
For a helpful summary of Brentano’s account of inner perception see Textor 2012/2013.
In later work, Brentano questioned whether a feeling was a necessary element of inner
consciousness.
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erception or inner consciousness from introspection, or what he calls ‘inner

p
observation’ (Brentano, 1874/1995: 22–23):
Psychology … has its basis in perception and experience. Above all,

however, its source is to be found in inner perception of our own mental
phenomena … Note, however, that we said that inner perception [Wah-
rnehmung] and not introspection, i.e. inner observation [Beobachtung],
constitutes the primary and essential source of psychology. These two
concepts must be distinguished from one another. One of the charac-
teristics of inner perception is that it can never become inner observa-
tion. We can observe objects which, as they say, are perceived externally.
In o bservation, we direct our full attention to a phenomenon in order
to apprehend it accurately. But with objects of inner perception this is
absolutely impossible…. It is only while our attention is turned toward
a different object that we are able to perceive on the side or by the way
[nebenbei], the mental processes which are directed toward that object.
We can begin to unpack this quotation by considering a series of claims about

aoa and introspection.
Continuing with the example of having a veridical visual experience of a red
ball, ve for short, according to the Brentanian theory developed here,
(3) ve has the red ball as its focus and also involves an awareness of itself in
its entirety, although the awareness of itself is ‘by the way’.12
Introspection plays no role in the claim expressed by (3).

We can begin to characterize introspection as the phenomenon of attend-
ing to or paying attention to a mental state. I’ll also assume that introspection
is necessarily a conceptual activity involving the deployment of concepts, and
in particular the deployment of concepts of phenomenological properties.
(A question I’ll consider below is whether the deployment of a concept of a
phenomenological property in the having of an experience of that experience
or some part of it automatically entails that the subject is introspecting that
experience. I’ll argue not.)
Continuing with ve as an example, we can say that
12 (3) deviates from Brentano’s original view because according to it, it is a red ball appear-
ance rather than the red ball itself that is the focus of this visual experience.
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(4) either (a) introspection of ve takes place simultaneously with ve, or (b)
it takes place shortly after ve occurs, in which case ve is no longer con-
sciously occurring.
Consider (a). One suggestion about how introspection of ve can take place
simultaneously with the conscious occurrence of ve is that
(5) it is possible for aoa, which is constitutive of ve, to become introspec-

tion of ve.
The model is something like the following. When I read the English sentence
‘The moon is bright’, I am aware of both the sentence inscription and the
meaning of the sentence at the same time, but I typically attend to the mean-
ing of the sentence and not the sentence inscription.13 However, it is possible
to attend to the sentence inscription itself (while perhaps the awareness of the
meaning is somehow in the background.)
The idea behind (5) is that although in the typical case of having a veridi-
cal visual experience of a red ball at t1 I am focally aware of the red ball at t1
and am at that time only aoa-aware of my visual experience in its entirety
‘by the way’, aoa can be transformed into introspection in such a way that I
can become focally aware of the visual experience considered specifically as
such while actually having the visual experience.14 (It is unclear whether (5)
involves the supposition that I can be focally aware both of the red ball and
the visual experience itself, or whether the idea is that when I introspect I can
still be non-focally aware of the red ball.) It should be clear that if aoa were so
transformed, the direct introspection of experience would be occurring simul-
taneously with the experience.15
13 For this example, see Husserl 1913 and Byrne 2001.

14 There are other models of how introspection of a visual experience can occur simultane-
ously with the visual experience itself. According to Wu (forthcoming) introspection of
a visual experience is a form of visual attention, which is simply a visual experience that
exemplifies a certain functional role related to action. I won’t argue against this kind of
view here. I’ll just say that I don’t think introspection can be tied essentially to action in
the way this theory requires.
15 If aoa were transformed into introspection it would have to be transformed into a con-
ceptual activity, and one might worry that this conflicts with the characterization of aoa
offered in §2. This isn’t a problem, because it’s plausible that introspection is only possible
for concept-exercising creatures.
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Clearly (5) contradicts (1). Brentano’s reasons for rejecting (5) are compli-
cated and I don’t have the space to summarize them here.16 I’ll just mention
one briefly. According to Brentano, when we turn our attention to an experi-
ence in introspection, the character of that experience is necessarily altered.
His example is an experience of consuming anger. When one is consumed by
anger one can only be attentively aware of what one is angry at. If one has the
wherewithal to introspect on one’s anger one is no longer consumed by it, and
thus the proposed object of introspection, the consuming anger, has vanished.
While one may accept Brentano’s diagnosis of all-consuming anger, there
may be other (better) cases that support the claim that we can become aware
of our experiences as we are having them, which in turn could be accounted
for in terms of a transformation of aoa-awareness into direct introspective
awareness. I’ll consider two cases. The first I’ll call ‘pinkish table’, the second
‘spinning subject’.
Pinkish Table
Strawson (2015: 247) considers the familiar fact that when we see a white
table under a red light and know about the lighting conditions, we are
normally explicitly aware of the pink quality of our visual experience
even as we judge that the table is white—even if we naturally say that we
see the table as white. The pinkish quality of experience is conceived of
as a quality of experience in the very having of the experience of seeing
the white table.
Spinning Subject
Consider the experience of a normal human subject quickly spinning in
circles for thirty seconds and then suddenly stopping. The experience one
has upon stopping has a certain phenomenological character. It seems to
the subject that the world is spinning around her, but she knows that it
isn’t really doing so, and that the “swirliness” is really just a feature of her
experience, and she may in having this experience, and understanding it
in this way, be said to be directly aware of her experience and the particu-
lar “swirly” phenomenological features it instantiates.
Both of these examples attempt to show that certain phenomenological prop-

erties of an experience can become salient or become the focus of attention,
apprehended specifically as phenomenological properties, in the having of
that (very) experience. If these descriptions are correct, they show that there is
16 See Textor 2015 for a discussion of Brentano’s argument for this claim.
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a kind of non-aoa awareness of experience, which can take place simultane-

ously with the having of experience.
Two questions now arise. First, are these cases of direct introspective aware-
ness? Second, do these cases involve the transformation of aoa-awareness into
attentive, focused introspective awareness?17 I’ll argue that the answer is No to
both questions. I’ll consider the second question first, but before doing so it’s
worth pointing out that even if aoa could transform into direct introspective
awareness, it wouldn’t follow that aoa itself could be directly introspectible
in these cases; so that (2) could remain true even if this transformation were
possible.
Now, why think ‘pinkish table’ and ‘spinning subject’ do not involve a trans-
formation of aoa-awareness into direct introspective awareness? To clarify my
skeptical worry about the possibility of such a transformation it will be help-
ful to characterize the two examples explicitly in terms of the deployment of
concepts. In both cases, the subject of experience is deploying a concept of a
phenomenological property in the very having of the experience. The deploy-
ment of this kind of concept is what accounts for the subject being aware of
phenomenological properties as such. But to deploy such a concept in the very
having of an experience, the phenomenological property to which the concept
is applied must already exist—the phenomenological property must already
be instantiated. In other words, the phenomenological property must already
be given in experience in order for the concept to have “something to work on”.
And according to the Brentanian account, it is only by a subject’s being aoa-
aware of a phenomenological property that a phenomenological property can
be instantiated at all and be a property of experience with a particular qualita-
tive character. As previously stated, phenomenological properties and aoa are
mutually and fundamentally “co-constituting”. One feature is not more basic
or fundamental than the other; they are aspects of the same thing. Therefore,
the focal awareness a subject comes to have in ‘pinkish table’ and ‘spinning
subject’ must be something other than aoa, which is constitutively necessary
for the instantiation of any phenomenological property.
Could introspective awareness, rather than aoa, be constitutively involved
in the instantiation of phenomenological properties for certain experiences,
perhaps for the experiences described in ‘pinkish table’ and ‘spinning subject’?
This seems wholly implausible. For one thing, it’s simply ruled out by the con-
cept of introspection, since introspection needs something to be there already
17 A standard representationalist will no doubt give a different description of ‘pinkish table’

and ‘spinning subject’. That is not my concern here. I am concerned only with how these
cases, as described, relate to the aoa thesis.
0003183891.INDD 371 <UN> 7/25/2017 9:41:51 AM

in order to be available for possible examination in introspection. It’s also true

that the instantiation of the phenomenological property of ‘pinkish’, for ex-
ample, does not require the deployment of a concept. Animals, who presum-
ably lack concepts for phenomenological properties, can have experiences
involving a pinkish phenomenological character. It would therefore be very
odd if this low-level property sometimes required concept-awareness to be
instantiated.
4.2 Simultaneous, Direct Introspection and a Puzzle for the

Brentanian Theory
The discussion so far supports the conclusion that if the kind of awareness
of experience alleged in ‘pinkish table’ and ‘spinning subject’ is possible, it is
a different kind of awareness from aoa-awareness. So now we can ask, is this
non-aoa awareness direct introspective awareness of experience? If the an-
swer is Yes, it requires that the direct introspective awareness occurs simul-
taneously with the having of ve, which entails that it occurs simultaneously
with aoa, on the terms of the Brentanian theory.18 This then leads to the first
puzzle mentioned in the introduction. If direct introspection of an experience
can occur simultaneously with the having of an experience, why can’t a subject
be introspectively aware of the aoa feature of experience? In other words, if
according to the account under discussion, phenomenological properties and
aoa are aspects of the same thing, why can’t a subject be introspectively aware
of the aoa feature while she is introspectively aware of a phenomenological
property as such?
To see why aoa-awareness may still be unreachable by introspection consid-
er again the claim that introspecting an experience can occur s imultaneously
with the having of an experience only if a concept of a phenomenological
property is deployed. Deploying a concept of a phenomenological property
and having an experience which instantiates that phenomenological property
are distinct mental phenomena. It’s plausible that being aware of phenom-
enological pinkness as phenomenological pinkness, for example, necessarily in-
cludes some kind of mental gap between the instantiation of the property and
the conceptualization of the property. So, it’s possible that having a concept of
a phenomenological property that is deployed in direct introspection doesn’t
immediately entail that every aspect of the phenomenological property is
18 One may wish to argue that ‘pinkish table’ and ‘spinning subject’ are not cases of
introspection because they are not intentional actions and all cases of introspection are
intentional actions. I’ll put this point to the side.
0003183891.INDD 372 <UN> 7/25/2017 9:41:51 AM

available to be the focus of attention. The idea is that the proposed mental gap
is such that it might only allow for awareness of certain aspects of a phenom-
enological property. So it’s possible that although the ‘pinkish’ phenomeno-
logical character is available for introspection, the aoa feature is not.
Although appealing to a mental gap between a concept of a phenomenologi-
cal property and the instantiation of the phenomenological property raises the
formal possibility that not all of the features of the phenomenological prop-
erty will be available for introspection, no explanation has been given for why
some features are introspectible and why some features are not introspectible.
A satisfactory solution to the puzzle requires such an explanation. Rather than
attempting such an explanation, I will pursue a different strategy and argue
that ‘pinkish table’ and ‘spinning subject’ are not cases of direct introspection.
4.3 ‘Pinkish Table’ and ‘Spinning Subject’ aren’t Cases of

Direct Introspection
The core idea is that ‘pinkish table’ and ‘spinning subject’ are best understood
as analogous to perceiving-as cases rather than as cases of introspection. It is
controversial how to best account for perceiving-as cases, and my argument in
this section relies on one particular interpretation. So one may read the argu-
ment given here as conditional on the plausibility of this interpretation.
Compare two visual experiences: an experience where a subject consciously
sees a blackbird but cannot recognize it as such, and a visual experience where
a subject consciously sees a blackbird as a blackbird. If one holds everything
fixed between these two visual experiences except the noted conceptual dif-
ference, and focuses only on these two visual experiences, it seems intuitively
plausible that although the two experiences may be phenomenologically iden-
tical in many respects, there is also a clear phenomenological difference.
How do we account for this phenomenological difference? My favored ex-
planation requires appealing to cognitive phenomenology.19 I hope a short
definition of ‘cognitive phenomenology’ will suffice for our purposes here.20
Cognitive phenomenology is an irreducible non-sensory kind of phenomenol-
ogy associated essentially with conscious thought, but also with perception
and emotion. On this view, there is something it is like to consciously think that
winter is the best season in the northern hemisphere or to consciously think
that waking up too early always incurs a cost, something that is irreducible
19 I offer a full defense of this view in 2017.

20 For discussion of cognitive phenomenology see e.g. Strawson 1994, 2011, Pitt 2004, 2011,
Smith 2011, Chudnoff 2015, Montague 2016.
0003183891.INDD 373 <UN> 7/25/2017 9:41:51 AM

to any sensory phenomenology that may be associated with these thoughts.

(Even in the case of a thought about a sensory property such as redness, the
thought about redness will have a distinctive non-sensory cognitive phenom-
enology associated with it.)
Given that all thought constitutively involves the deployment of concepts,
we may take it that all conscious thought constitutively involves the conscious
deployment of concepts. And although it is a delicate matter to say exactly
what the conscious deployment of concepts amounts to, whether in con-
scious thought or in conscious perception of something as an instance of a
certain kind of thing, e.g. a blackbird, it will surely involve the instantiation
of certain cognitive-phenomenological properties that are connected in some
intimate way with the concepts one deploys. So, when one sees a blackbird
as a blackbird, one’s deployment of the concept «blackbird» will involve the
instantiation of some cognitive-phenomenological property, and it will be
the instantiation of this cognitive-phenomenological property that explains
why one’s perception of a blackbird as a blackbird is phenomenologically
different from one’s simply perceiving a blackbird without perceiving it as a
blackbird.
The phenomenon of perceiving-as is an apt model for understanding ‘pink-
ish table’ and ‘spinning subject’ because it seems more accurate to describe
these examples in terms of how the subject is experiencing something, rather
than in terms of a subject introspecting her experience. That is, in having an
experience of the table in the specified lighting conditions, the subject is not
introspecting her experience. Rather, she’s experiencing her experience and
its relation to the table in a certain way by deploying the concept of a pink-
ish phenomenological property. And in the case of the spinning subject, the
subject is not introspecting her experience; rather she’s having a certain kind
of experience partly in virtue of deploying a concept of a ‘general swirling phe-
nomenology’ in the very having of the experience. These descriptions are as
true for a child as they are for an adult.
We can go further and explicate how the subject is experiencing the table or
the spinning in terms of the cognitive phenomenology essentially associated
with the concepts the subject is deploying in the having of these experiences.
It is difficult to say exactly what is involved in having a concept of a phenom-
enological property, but presumably it will at the very least involve conceptual-
izing a distinction between experience and the external world, which perhaps
includes ideas of objectivity and spatiality.
At this stage, one might point out that ‘pinkish table’ and ‘spinning subject’
satisfy the two necessary requirements I placed on introspection in the intro-
duction, namely, the subject is conceiving of her experience as she is h aving
0003183891.INDD 374 <UN> 7/25/2017 9:41:51 AM

it (so she is having a rich cognitive-phenomenological experience which

includes her conceiving of an aspect of that very experience in a certain way),
and she is also attending to part of her experience. So one may then reasonably
ask: How can these not be cases of introspective awareness?
My answer to this question relies on the claim that in the cases of ‘pinkish
table’ and ‘spinning subject’ the deployment of the relevant concept directly
determines the phenomenological character of the overall experience in ques-
tion. (This is the way in which ‘pinkish table’ and ‘spinning subject’ are similar
to perceiving-as cases, where the cognitive phenomenology associated with
the relevant concept deployment positively determines the phenomenology
of the experience.) One reason to accept that there is this kind of determina-
tion is that a dog, for example, could not have the pinkish table experience and
the spinning subject experience, as I have described them. Dogs don’t have
concepts of phenomenological properties. Presumably, a dog would simply ex-
perience the table as pink and would experience the world as spinning around.
The idea then is that the kind of phenomenological determination present in
‘pinkish table’ and ‘spinning subject’ does not seem to be a feature of intro-
spection. That is, when a subject introspects an experience, the state that is
being introspected may necessarily undergo some sort of phenomenological
change, as Brentano thought, and the introspecting state may have its own
distinctive phenomenology, but the point is that the introspective state itself
doesn’t positively determine the phenomenology of the experience that is be-
ing introspected.
The description of ‘pinkish table’ and ‘spinning subject’ I have offered at-
tempts to drive a wedge between an experience’s deployment of a concept of
a phenomenological property with regard to an aspect of itself and introspec-
tion. That is, although all cases of introspection involve deploying a concept
of a phenomenological property, not all cases of deploying a concept of a phe-
nomenological property (in the relevant sense) are cases of introspection. In
other words, there are ways subjects can conceive of their experiences as they
are having them that do not count as introspection. The feature that ‘pinkish
table’ and ‘spinning subject’ share in common, which is absent in cases of true
introspection, is that the subject’s conception of her experience partly deter-
mines the phenomenology of the experience itself. This kind of phenomeno-
logical determination is not part of introspection.
4.4 Introspection Involves Two Distinct Mental States

If one accepts that aoa cannot be transformed into direct introspective aware-
ness and accepts that ‘pinkish table’ and ‘spinning subject’ are not cases of
direct introspection, then we arrive at a theory of introspection according to
0003183891.INDD 375 <UN> 7/25/2017 9:41:51 AM

which introspection requires two distinct mental states. Given a two-state

view as a starting point, it seems plausible that
(6) introspection cannot consist in two distinct but simultaneous conscious-

ly occurring experiences, M and N, such that N is one’s introspection
of M.
In support of (6), I begin with the idea that it is a conceptual or necessary truth
that every experience requires a subject of experience. It is also a necessary
truth that given a particular stream of consciousness, there can be only one
token subject of experience at a time, which is the subject of that stream. If
introspection consisted of two distinct but simultaneous consciously occurring
experiences, M and N, each with a subject of experience, there would have to
be two token subjects of experience at the same time.
One could object that on this line of reasoning it’s impossible for a sub-
ject to have a number of simultaneous perceptual experiences, for example,
simultaneously seeing the train go by and hearing the car on the street. For if
each of these experiences requires a subject of experience, they couldn’t occur
simultaneously if only one subject of experience is allowed. Clearly this is an
implausible result.
In response, the best description of simultaneously seeing the train go by
and hearing the car on the street is that there is one complex unified experi-
ence with one subject of experience. That is, one should not think that seeing
the train go by while simultaneously hearing the car on the street consists of
two entirely separate experiences, one visual, one auditory, each with a sub-
ject. There is one unified experience, which consists of representing different
sensory properties, e.g. sounds and colors, accompanied by the appropriate
sensory phenomenology. In contrast, introspecting a mental state requires
being directed at the entire mental state that is being introspected, which of
necessity includes a subject of experience. If introspection were simultaneous
in the sense under discussion, it would require an introspective state being
simultaneously directed at another mental state as it occurs in such a way that
the subject of experience would have to somehow ‘divide herself’ in a way that
disallows the unity present in the perceptual case. But how could a subject be
having an experience, and also be simultaneously introspectively directed at
the whole of that experience, which includes herself as subject? The foregoing
discussion leads to the conclusion that the most reasonable account of intro-
spection is that
(7) one introspects M by means of a separate experience N, which occurs

shortly after M.
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With (7), we can now justify (2), that aoa cannot itself be introspected. For
introspection of a conscious mental episode M can only occur after M ceases
to be a consciously occurrent episode. However, aoa only occurs in occurrent
conscious mental episodes. So we cannot introspect aoa, because when we
introspect our past mental states, they are no longer consciously occurring and
thus no longer manifesting aoa.21
One might object that since introspection is retrospective on this view, even
if experience E1 is in the past, the aoa feature of E1 should be as introspectible
as any other aspect of E1. Addressing this worry requires a detailed discussion
of what exactly our concept of «aoa» amounts to and how we acquire it. This
is a huge topic, and I can’t hope to address it adequately here. For now, I’ll just
give a sketch of the concept we have of «aoa», and in the next section I’ll indi-
cate the basis for how we acquire it.
The concept «aoa» is essentially incomplete and imperfect. This incom-
pleteness means that we can’t use this concept to introspect past experiences
in such a way that would count as introspection of aoa. Recall that aoa es-
sentially occurs ‘by the way’ in the having of an experience, and so our concept
of «aoa» is a concept of a ‘by the way process’. Although the deployment of
concepts typically allows us to focus on things, because of what the «aoa»
concept is a concept of, we can’t use this concept to focus on aoa. If it were
possible to introspect aoa, one would have to bring a ‘by the way’ phenom-
enon into the focus of attention. But this is impossible to do, because being ‘by
the way’ is by its very nature incompatible with being in the focus of attention.
4.5 Access to aoa? Another Puzzle for the Brentanian Theory

We now come to the second puzzle for the Brentanian theory. If aoa cannot
be introspected, how exactly do we have access to it? Brentano (1874: 99–100)
raises this very issue:
When we have a presentation of a sound or another physical phenom-

enon and are conscious of this presentation, are we also conscious of
this consciousness or not? [A]ny unbiased person will at least at first be
inclined to answer this question affirmatively. He may begin to hesitate
only when it is pointed out to him that in this case he would have to have
a threefold consciousness, like three boxes, one inside the other, and that
besides the first presentation and the presentation of the presentation
he must also have a presentation of the presentation of the presentation.
21 This result on its own secures the thesis that aoa cannot be transformed into introspec-
tion, because aoa is essentially simultaneous with experience, whereas introspection is
essentially retrospective.
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He believes that his same-order account avoids the threat of this regress in the
following way, and I quote (1874: 100):
These results show that the consciousness of the presentation of the

sound clearly occurs together with the consciousness of this conscious-
ness, for the consciousness which accompanies the presentation of the
sound is a consciousness not so much of this presentation as of the whole
mental act22 in which the sound is presented, and in which the con-
sciousness itself exists concomitantly. Apart from the fact that it presents
the physical phenomenon of sound, the mental act of hearing becomes
at the same time its own object and content, taken as a whole.
Brentano’s idea here, which I endorse, is that aoa is not only an awareness of
the awareness [presentation] of the sound, but of the entire conscious episode,
which includes aoa itself. This self-revelatory nature of consciousness allows
us to catch a glimpse of aoa, and it is this self-revelatory nature that blocks any
worries about a regress. One might say that we are relationally aware of aoa,
but we’re not notionally aware of it, i.e. not aware of it as such, not aware of it
specifically as aoa.
In conclusion, although the phenomenon of aoa is constitutive of conscious
experience, and thus an omnipresent feature of our conscious lives, it is at the
same time quite elusive. I have tried to explain this tension by articulating
and defending two central features of aoa: that it cannot be transformed into
direct introspective awareness and that it cannot be directly introspected.
A defense of these claims required defending a view of introspection, ac-
cording to which introspection involves two distinct mental states, one being
directed at the other, with the introspecting state occurring shortly after the
introspected state.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost I would like to thank David Smith for being a wonderful
colleague during my several years at uc Irvine. I would also like to thank the
audience at the Colombia/Rutgers/Barnard Mind Workshop in 2015 for many
helpful questions and suggestions on a version of this paper. Finally, I thank
an anonymous referee for his admirably attentive reading of an earlier draft of
this paper.
22 Brentano is using ‘act’ in ‘mental act’ to mean an occurrence or event rather than imply-
ing anything about intentional action.
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What Kind of Awareness Is Awareness of Awareness?: Michelle Montague

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grazer philosophische studien 94 (2017) 359-380