The case for intrinsic theory:: V.: Some arguments from James's Varieties

This and the planned next article of the present series mine the wealth of reports and astute discussions of states of consciousness contained in William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience. Thus, I bring out further arguments in favor of the kind of understanding of consciousness(4), or inner awareness, that, as it happens, James explicitly opposed in The Principles of Psychology. The alternative, appendage kind of account that James advanced there for consciousness, stands in marked contrast to intrinsic theory: by requiring that having inner awareness of any mental-occurrence instance must take the form of a separate mental-occurrence instance directed on the first. Intrinsic theory holds instead that every conscious, mental-occurrence instance possesses a phenomenological structure that includes reference to that very instance itself.