ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the centrality of Friedrich Nietzsche's reflection on the nature and functioning of the mind within his overall philosophical project. It begins with some introductory remarks on Nietzsche's naturalistic approach to the investigation of human nature in general and then examines in some detail his view on conscious and unconscious mind. The chapter considers how, on his conception, conscious mental life might be taken to relate to the unconscious. Nietzsche talks about consciousness in a number of passages scattered throughout his work, both published and unpublished. It is important to note that the intended target of Falsification Claim (FC) is consciousness as a reliable tool for self-knowledge. Intuitively, we assume conscious episodes to reveal how things actually are with ourselves. To summarize, FC is actually a claim about the unreliability of self-consciousness as a source for genuine self-knowledge. According to P. Katsafanas, this characterization of perception shows that for Nietzsche sensory consciousness has full-blown propositional, language-dependent content.
