{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02510303484451105, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0003746721618583739, 'mean_word_length': 5.252927400468384, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Introspection, Phenomenality and the Availability of Intentional Content

I. I believe there's a phenomenology – a " what it's like " – of occurrent conscious thought. I believe this because I believe that any conscious state necessarily has phenomenal properties. Further, I believe that the phenomenology of occurrent conscious thought is proprietary: it's a sui generis sort of phenomenology, as unlike (say) auditory and visual phenomenology as they are unlike each other – a cognitive phenomenology. I believe this because I believe that the conscious occurrence of any of the more familiar sorts of phenomenal properties is neither necessary nor sufficient for the occurrence of conscious thought. I also believe that the phenomenal character of a conscious occurrent thought is individuative: that is, in virtue of its having the phenomenal properties it has, it's a thought (as opposed to some other kind of mental state) with a specific intentional content. I believe this because I believe that we're able to identify our occurrent conscious thoughts as the thoughts they are, consciously, introspectively and non-inferentially, and that phenomenal properties are the only properties of occurrent conscious states that are so identifiable. In fact, I believe that the cognitive phenomenal character of an occurrent conscious thought is its intentional content. I believe this because I can (fear of psychologism turns out to be irrational), and because it provides for a simpler account of content: the intentional content of a conscious thought is like the sensational content of a conscious pain – they are the states they are not because of their relational properties, but because of their intrinsic nature. Amen. 1 I'll call the view that there's a proprietary, individuative phenomenology of occurrent conscious thought the phenomenal intentionality of thought thesis (PITT, for short). Not many people believe PITT. But skepticism about it seems to me more often based on prior theoretical commitment, or overreaching confidence in the explanatory resources of contemporary Naturalism (what Charles Siewert calls " the tyrannizing anxieties and ambitions of mind-body metaphysics "), than on unbiased reflection upon our conscious mental lives, or careful evaluation of the arguments in its favor. In this paper I consider three more reasoned lines of resistance to PITT, the first advanced by Joe Levine (this volume), the second taking its cue from extrospectionist views of self-knowledge, and the third stemming from concerns about introspective availability of intentional content. I argue that none of these challenges poses a serious threat to …