I’ve just sent my poster for the SPP meeting off to the printer. The topic is: “Does heterophenomenology concede too much? Experiments on the Folk Theory of Consciousness.” The poster is available below (click to enlarge); paper draft to follow next week. I argue that assumptions are often made about the folk theory of consciousness in the philosophical literature. I illustrate this by considering the work of Dan Dennett, focusing on his standard articulation of the debate about his heterophenomenological method. While Dennett is often accused of not going far enough (excluding qualia from the catalog of what needs to be explained by a science of consciousness), I argue that he goes too far in accepting that folk psychological utterances should be interpreted in terms of beliefs about qualia. I support this contention by calling on the results of six empirical studies testing Dennett’s theory of the folk theory of consciousness.
