An Objection to the Dispositional Conception of Unconscious Mental Phenomena

摘要

This paper attacks the dispositional theory of unconscious mental phenomena. First, I assess different aspects of consciousness as a property of mental states (section 2). After that, I discuss the description of phenomena in partially dispositional terms (section 3). The assessment of some real cases of our psychological functioning shows that there are at least some unconscious states which have an occurrent mental existence, not a dispositional one (section 4). So, the dispositional theory cannot save the Cartesian view (section 5).