THE PRESENCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL OBJECTS TO PERCEPTUAL CONSCIOUSNESS - ADIFFERENCE IT MAKES FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL FUNCTIONING

Of the states that constitute William James's stream of consciousness, many are or include perceptual mental acts. These states present to c onsciousness one or more of their environmental objects themselves, as distinct from a mere internal representation of the latter. That is, a feature of the contents of such states is that their objects have ph enomenological perceptual presence. Furthermore, this presence plays a role in mental functioning, beyond simply its being instantiated by m any states of consciousness: We often base what we do next with respec t to an environmental object that we perceive on its phenomenological perceptual presence to us.