Conscious Experience: A Logical Inquiry

Conscious Experience by Anil Gupta offers a novel account of experience and reason, developing our understanding of conscious experience and its relationship to thought. It proposes that the rational contribution of an experience yields a rule for revising views, granting theoretical freedom and empirical reason significant power to constrain. This reconciles the virtues of presentation, appearances, and ostensive definitions through novel treatments of these concepts. Gupta's arguments support reformed empiricism, which preserves empiricisms central insight that experience is the supreme epistemic authority in the resolution of factual disagreements.

Format: Hardback
Length: 440 pages
Publication date: 11 February 2019
Publisher: Harvard University Press

The significance of experience in cognition has been a central and enduring philosophical inquiry. Theorists seek to understand how our private experiences can inform us about an objective, mind-independent reality. Conscious Experience delves into various domains, including logic, philosophy of mind, and epistemology, to propose a novel response to this age-old question.

According to Anil Gupta, the contribution of conscious experience to rationality and content of empirical beliefs cannot be ascertained independently of an agent's conceptual framework and prior beliefs. However, it does not necessarily render it entirely mind-dependent. While the rational contribution of an experience does not provide direct knowledge of the world, it does authorize certain transitions from prior views to new ones. In essence, the rational contribution of an experience yields a rule for revising views.

Gupta demonstrates that this account grants theoretical freedom, enabling the observer to radically reinterpret the world in light of empirical findings. Simultaneously, it grants empirical reason significant power to constrain, imposing particular conceptions of self and world on the rational inquirer. These seemingly contradictory virtues are reconciled through innovative treatments of presentation, appearances, and ostensive definitions.

Collectively, Gupta's arguments support an original theory: reformed empiricism. He abandons the notion that experience is a source of knowledge and justification. He also rejects the idea that concepts are derived from experience. Nevertheless, reformed empiricism retains empiricism's central insight: that our experiences shape our understanding of the world.

In conclusion, Conscious Experience offers a groundbreaking exploration of the role of experience in cognition, challenging traditional perspectives and proposing a novel account of how conscious experience contributes to the rationality and content of empirical beliefs. Through innovative treatments of key concepts, Gupta's arguments support reformed empiricism, which preserves the importance of experience while rejecting the traditional view of experience as a source of knowledge and justification.

Weight: 820g
Dimension: 239 x 174 x 37 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780674987784