Abstract
In this chapter I provide characterisation and explanation of what the “streamlikeness” of consciousness consists in. I distinguish two elements of streamlikeness—Phenomenal Flow, and Phenomenal Continuity. I then show how these elements of the phenomenology can be explained within an Extensionalist account of temporal experience. I also provide criticism of attempts to conceive of the streamlikeness of consciousness in terms of the absence of “gaps” in conscious experience. The “gapless” conception of streamlikeness generates a worry about the stream of consciousness potentially being illusory, as psychological research reveals the processes underlying consciousness to be gappy. The account of streamlikeness I provide generates no such worry, and thus provides a way to reconcile phenomenological and psychological research into the stream of consciousness.
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Notes
- 1.
Note that this is my interpretation of Strawson, which I have supplied as he is slightly unhelpful in making these notions precise: “The notions of a content break and a flow break are not sharp…” (Strawson 2009, 241).
- 2.
Whether such a situation could ever take place in the stream of consciousness is an interesting question. It may be that there is some principled reason to think that the contents of consciousness must exhibit continual change. If this is the case, then Dainton and O’Shaughnessy’s accounts could be reconciled with one another. My thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing out that finding actual cases where the stream of consciousness exhibits no change in its contents is not straightforward.
- 3.
I use the term “moment” here in order to leave it deliberately open whether experience allows us to pick out strictly instantaneous points in time, or only minimal intervals.
- 4.
While Dainton doesn’t frame his account in terms of explicit talk of “temporal limits,” they are certainly part of what his appeal to “co-consciousness” is intended to explain.
- 5.
This point of comparison is made in Soteriou (2013).
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Rashbrook-Cooper, O. (2016). The Stream of Consciousness: A Philosophical Account. In: Mölder, B., Arstila, V., Øhrstrøm, P. (eds) Philosophy and Psychology of Time. Studies in Brain and Mind, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22195-3_7
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