TERTIARY CONSCIOUSNESS

Direct (reflective) awareness, or the immediate, on the-spot, noninfer ential access that, we have to some of our menial-occurrence instances , is a kind of ''secondary consciousness.'' It often happens, in addit ion, that direct (reflective) awareness itself is conscious, meaning t hat one is also directly (reflectively) aware of being so aware. This is ''tertiary consciousness.'' Indeed, absent tertiary consciousness, one could not base actions on what is mentally occurring to one now. A lthough Armstrong held that ''subliminal introspection'' suffices for purposive mental activity, tertiary consciousness would seem to be nec essary for carrying out such activity because purposive mental activit y essentially involves choosing what mentally to do-next on the basis of ''introspective'' feedback. One must be aware of whatever it may be that one is basing one's actions on. Adopting, in place of ''sublimin al introspection,'' either one of two Jamesian hypotheses could save A rmstrong from having to posit nonconscious purposive mental activities .