Mental Representation and Consciousness

This work makes a direct contribution to the connection between phenomenology and cognitive science. Continuing Husserl's science of consciousness, the author shows that consciousness is structured in all sorts of ways and that it is very complicated, with one kind of consciousness being enclosed within other kinds. In particular, he provides a notation to reveal the structures of consciousness more vividly, thus fixing and isolating issues and allowing for rational, communicable analysis of conscious awareness. With this tool, clear-cut distinctions among different forms of mentally representing and thereby intentionally referring to something are elaborated. The notation might also be of assistance in present-day discussions about parallelism in computer architecture and programming. This work should be of interest to philosophers of mind, cognitive scientists and psychologists, phenomenologists, neuroscientists interested in consciousness.