THE SCIOUSNESS HYPOTHESIS .2.

The Sciousness Hypothesis holds that how we know our mental-occurrence instances does not include our having immediate awareness of them. Ra ther, we take notice of our behaviors or bodily reactions and infer me ntal-occurrence instances chat would explain them. In The Principles, James left it an open question whether the Sciousness Hypothesis is tr ue, although he proceeded on the conviction that one's mental life con sists exclusively of mental-occurrence instances of which one has (or could have had) immediate awareness. Nevertheless, James was tempted b y the Sciousness Hypothesis; and he adopted the kind of account of inn er awareness favored among present-day psychologists of consciousness: to the effect that awareness of a mental-occurrence instance does nor take place from within its phenomenological structure, always from a certain distance, by means of a distinct mental-occurrence instance. T his means that the immediacy of inner awareness can only be a temporal and causal immediacy, not the kind we seem actually to have, whereby we consciously participate in the occurrence of a mental state. The pr esent article, which is published in two separate though continuous pa rts, clarifies and elaborates the Sciousness Hypothesis, and criticall y discusses it and the kind of account of inner awareness that seems t o be closest to it.