The First-Person Perspective and Other Essays (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)

The essays in this collection deal with the way in which we know our own minds. Professor Shoemaker opposes the "inner sense" conception of introspective self-knowledge. He defends the view that perceptual and sensory states have nonrepresentational features--"qualia"--that determine what it is like to have them. Among the other topics covered are the unity of consciousness, and the idea that the "first-person perspective" gives a privileged route to philosophical understanding of the nature of mind.