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This course will be concerned with what David Chalmers has called ‘the hard problem‘ of consciousness and will investigate ways of making that problem more tractable. One approach, popular in the last decade or so, is to divide the hard problem into two components. The first is the qualitative content of conscious experience, the second is the inner awareness of this content, or subjectivity. Once this division has been established, it is hoped that the two components might be explained in two different ways. We will be looking at different forms of the distinction between consciousness and awareness and we will be reflecting on the relation to other issues in contemporary philosophy of mind, such as the possibility of emergence or panpsychism, the nature of introspection, and the possibility of unconscious thought. This course will be primarily based on a range texts from the last decades, all in English, including articles by Uriah Kriegel and Dan Zahavi, Michelle Montague and David Rosenthal. We will, however, begin from a reading of Franz Brentano on the topic.
Last update: Hill James, prof., Ph.D. (16.02.2026)
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Bibliography Brentano, Franz (1874/2015). Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. London: Routledge. Chalmers, David (1995). ‘Facing up to the problem of consciousness’. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2(3): 200–19 Coleman, Sam (2019). Natural acquaintance. In T. Raleigh, and J. Knowles (Eds.), Acquaintance: New Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 49–74. Guillot, Marie. (2017) “I Me Mine: on a Confusion Concerning the Subjective Character of Experience”. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 8: 23-53. Kriegel, Uriah (2009). Subjective Consciousness. New York Oxford University Press. Lee, Andrew. (Forthcoming). ‘The Light and the Room’. Routledge Levine, Joseph. (2001). Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness. New York: Oxford University Press. Montague, Michelle (2016). The Given: Experience and its Content. OUP Nagel, Thomas (1974). ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ Philosophical Review 83: 435-50 Siewart, Charles (2013). 'Phenomenality and self-consciousness', in Kriegel (ed) Phenomenal Intentionality, OUP Woodruff Smith, David. (1986). ‘The Structure of (Self-) Consciousness’. In Topoi (5), 149-156. Zahavi, Dan and Kriegel, Uriah. (2016). ‘For-me-ness: What it is and what it is not’ Last update: Hill James, prof., Ph.D. (16.02.2026)
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The course requirements are (i) attendance during the semester (more than three absences will not be acceptable); and (ii) a timed written exam which will be made up of questions requiring very short answers. The examination will take place after the course is finished. The exact date of the examination and of additional sittings will be announced during the course. Last update: Hill James, prof., Ph.D. (05.02.2026)
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Last update: Hill James, prof., Ph.D. (16.02.2026)
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