Suppose we know our own attitudes, e.g. judgments and
decisions, only by unconsciously interpreting ourselves. Would this
undermine the assumption that there are conscious attitudes?
Carruthers (2011) has argued that if the mentioned view of selfknowledge
is combined with either of the two most common
approaches to consciousness, i.e. the higher-order state account
(Rosenthal, 1997; 2005; Lycan, 1996; Carruthers, 2000) or the
global workspace theory (Baars, 1988; Dehaene and Naccache,
2001), then the conjunction of these theories implies that there are no
conscious attitudes. I shall show that Carruthers’ argument against
the existence of conscious attitudes doesn’t succeed, and mention
studies on autism and logical reasoning under cognitive load that
suggest that there are conscious attitudes.