From Agentive Phenomenology to Cognitive Phenomenology: A Guide for the Perplexed

The aim of this paper is to set forth some considerations that will bolster the case for cognitive phenomenology. The approach will be informed by two guiding ideas. First, a promising dialectical path leading to acknowledgement of cognitive phenomenology-or at least acknowledgement that denying it requires implausible bullet-biting-is a path that commences from introspective attention to one's agentive experience. (Hence my title.) Second, the strategy of describing certain kinds of mental-difference scenarios-ones involving agents who have normal sensory phenomenology and are functional duplicates of a normal human, but who nonetheless differ mentally from a normal human-is a useful way of guiding the perplexed along the path from agentive experience, with its recognizable and proprietary phenomenal aspects, to the recognition and acknowledgement of full-fledged cognitive phenomenology.