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What Makes Behavioral Measures of Consciousness Subjective and Direct?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2022

Jakub Jonkisz
Jakub Jonkisz*
Affiliation:
Consciousness Lab, Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland Email: kjonkisz@wp.pl
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Abstract

This article addresses two issues: the distinction between objective and subjective measures and the directness of such measures. It is argued that the distinction is unambiguous only when based on a methodological criterion (i.e., the threshold utilized by the measures) rather than a semantic one (i.e., their referring either to the world or to the participant’s inner states). Different senses of directness are discussed: metaphysical (which seems to rest on a category error), methodological (the only unambiguously defined one, though relating “directly” to performance rather than awareness), semantic (which appears gradable), and causal.

Type
Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 89 , Issue 4 , October 2022 , pp. 683 - 700
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science Association

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