Abstract

We are aware of truths (e.g. the truth that the shoes I'm now wearing are uncomfortably tight) and also of states of affairs (e.g. the uncomfortable tightness of said shoes). My awareness of the tightness of my shoes---not, be it emphasized, of the corresponding truth, but of the shoe-related mass-energy-distribution underlying that truth---is an instance, not of truth-awareness, but of fact-awareness or, as I prefer to put, object-awareness. The aforementioned truth-awareness corresponding to that object-awareness is the result of my conceptualizing that object-awareness. The distinction between truth-awareness, which is conceptual, and object-awareness, which is non-conceptual, is often overlooked. Because self-knowledge originally consists of object-awarenesses, only later taking the form of truth-awarenesses, a failure to distinguish between object- and truth-awareness has led many to advocate the false contention that self-conscious creatures, such as ourselves, can be categorically mistaken as to what it is that they are consciously experiencing. In this paper, it is argued that, once the distinction between object- and truth-awareness is taken into account, the mistaken judgments that people make as to their conscious conditions embody erroneous conceptualizations of veridical awarenesses of said conditions.