Cognitive Phenomenology

The word 'phenomenology' as it occurs in the title of this book is a name for the subjective qualitative character of experience. It is widely agreed that there is such a thing as sensory phenomenology, and imagistic phenomenology. The central concern of the cognitive phenomenology debate is whether there is a distinctive 'cognitive phenomenology'-that is, a kind of phenomenology that has cognitive or conceptual character in some sense that needs to be precisely determined. Most of the authors in this collection of essays are concerned with whether conscious thought has cognitive phenomenology, but a number of papers also consider whether cognitive phenomenology is part of conscious perception and conscious emotion. Three broad themes run through the volume. First, some authors focus on the question of how the notion of cognitive phenomenology ought to be understood. How should the notion of cognitive phenomenology be defined? Are there different kinds of cognitive phenomenology? A second theme concerns the existence of cognitive phenomenology. Some contributors defend the existence of a distinctive cognitive phenomenology, whereas others deny it. The arguments for and against the existence of cognitive phenomenology raise questions concerning the nature of first-person knowledge of thought, the relationship between consciousness and intentionality, and the scope of the explanatory gap. A third theme concerns the implications of the cognitive phenomenology debate. What are the implications of the debate for accounts of our introspective access to conscious thought and for accounts of the very nature of conscious thought?