Abstract
I argue that there can be no such thing as a borderline case of the predicate ‘phenomenally conscious’: for any given creature at any given time, it cannot be vague whether that creature is phenomenally conscious at that time. I first defend the Positive Characterization Thesis, which says that for any borderline case of any predicate there is a positive characterization of that case that can show any sufficiently competent speaker what makes it a borderline case. I then appeal to the familiar claim that zombies are conceivable, and I argue that this claim entails that there can be no positive characterizations of borderline cases of ‘phenomenally conscious’. By the Positive Characterization Thesis, it follows that ‘phenomenally conscious’ can not have any borderline cases.
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Notes
For discussion of this locution see Nagel (1974), Block (2002). The predicate at issue should be read as implicitly time-stamped. I do not deny that it can be indeterminate whether someone counts as having been conscious for most of some interval. Also, I do not deny that other phenomenal terms, like ‘pain’ can be vague: it can be vague whether some experience is a pain or a tickle. But this presupposes an experience of some sort or other. For this reason, the so-called phenomenal sorites is no evidence of vagueness in ‘phenomenally conscious’. See Sebastian (2011) for discussion.
Others who make this analogy include McGinn (1996), Papineau (1993). As it happens the analogy is imperfect, because some will allege that indeterminacy arises at the quantum level (though this is a subtle matter). Note that with light it is natural to speak in terms of degree: we might say that a light is on, provided it is luminescent to some degree. I am prepared to allow that consciousness, like light, comes in degrees of intensity. What I deny is that attributions of consciousness therefore come in degrees of truth. Accordingly, I allow that ‘phenomenally conscious’ is a minimum standard absolute adjective, but I deny that it is a relative gradable adjective (Kennedy 2007). Another predicate behaving this way is ‘voluminous’.
My argument owes much to Antony’s. Like Antony, I argue that there is a necessary condition on vagueness which ‘phenomenally consciousness’ does not meet because of its peculiar semantics. But the devil is in the details. The necessary condition that Antony formulates, as he actually states it (his C1-C4), is too weak, requiring only that a vague concept includes some constraints common to instances, borderline cases, and non-instances—satisfied by the constraint that, e.g., the things in question exist. As he seems to intend it however the constraint is given by a dimension of variation, such that variation in this dimension explains whether something is an instance, a borderline case, or a non-instance. But this is quite strong. Brogaard (2010) argues that it is too strong, and would rule out that ‘bald’ is vague, and it would likely also rule out that Weatherson (2010)’s ‘tall-179’ is vague. In any event it calls for substantive defense. Another problem for Antony is that his specification of what is peculiar about the semantics of ‘phenomenally conscious’ involves a speculative empirical hypothesis about the mechanics of thought: that the complex mental file associated with the concept ‘phenomenally conscious’ does not contain any material ‘elements’. For Antony’s argument to succeed, this must amount to more than simply the claim that there are no a priori materialist analyses of consciousness. For example, you might think it to be conceptually necessary that conscious beings are functionally complex, even if you think that zombies are conceivable. But then a spectrum of functional complexity could allow ‘phenomenally conscious’ to satisfy Antony’s condition. See chapter one of my 2012 for a sustained critique of Antony’s argument.
Brogaard (2010), Tye (1996, 2000). Weatherson (2003) argues that ‘phenomenally conscious’ must be vague, since ‘David Chalmers’ is a vague name (think: problem of the many), but ‘David Chalmers is phenomenally conscious’ is determinately true. But there is no tension here: it suffices that all of the precisifications of ‘David Chalmers’ are phenomenally conscious. This needn’t entail that there are multiple conscious beings, any more than it entails that there are multiple David Chalmerses. For example it might be that there is some state common to each precisification which suffices for phenomenal consciousness. But see Unger (2004).
Consider for example the metasemantic challenge: what could privilege a single candidate referent as more eligible than all of the others? My argument shows that ‘phenomenally conscious’ is non-vague but without providing materialists with a recipe for selecting a most eligible candidate. As Papineau (2002) points out, materialists already encounter a metasemantic problem—one that Balog (ms) calls the Hardest Problem of Consciousness—even if we allow that ‘phenomenally conscious’ is vague. But if my argument here succeeds, this problem gets even harder.
Broadly speaking, I have in mind the objections to Chalmers and Jackson that target those thinkers’ modal rationalism: the view that there is a direct constitutive connection between the facts about what is a priori or conceivable on the one hand and what is necessary or possible on the other. The only constitutive connection in the challenge I envision is a connection between the facts about semantic competence on the one hand and facts about vagueness on the other. The rest of the work is done by independently motivated metaphysical premises. See my 2012 for further discussion.
Where possible, I will formulate the claims of this paper in terms of terms, predicates and descriptions rather than concepts and propositions. This allows me to retain neutrality about what concepts and propositions are (for example, whether they are vague, as in Lewis (1975)), and it makes certain formulations (e.g. about the role of context) more natural. But I take it that much of what I say will carry over. For example, I intend for my argument here to translate into an argument that the phenomenal concept PHENOMENALLY CONSCIOUS is not vague. Compare my disclaimer here to similar remarks in Boghossian (2003a), deRosset (2013).
Thus my claim is that if the logic comes first the logic gives rise to vagueness in virtue of giving rise to the norms.
What about Medium: for each competent speaker there is some parameter such that that speaker is disposed to accept the relevant claim about that speaker’s favored parameter? This may avoid the problem of disagreement, but at the cost of yielding false positives.
Antony’s proposal comes closer than Eklund’s to offering such an account: he speaks of borderline cases as individuals with respect to which a certain class of dispositions distinctive of borderline cases, v-dispositions, is manifested, when those cases are thought about under suitable ‘individual conceptions’. This is very much on the right track, but Antony falls short in spelling out what makes for a suitable individual conception, as I argue at length elsewhere (and sketch in note 6 above).
Schiffer (2003).
See Williamson (1994).
We might also look for norms of inappropriateness, obligation, impermissibility, and so on, that are characteristic of borderline cases. For reasons of economy I will take norms of appropriateness to be representative.
Should we only be talking about the case of those who are suitably guided by their belief that R(x) in adopting the \({\varPhi }(x,\)‘P’) attitudes? I mean to remain neutral. Do the standards at issue here admit of accidental compliance? I invite those who think not to think of a guidance (or non-deviant causation) condition as built into the specification of the norms I consider. Nothing I say below precludes one, but for those who are unmoved, nothing I say below requires one.
If the norms are proprietary then the explanation may be complete. Otherwise it will only be partial.
What of vagueness in very simple languages, as in Dorr (2003)’s two word language for declaring how much fruit is on a fruit tree, with a hoot meaning more fruit, a yelp meaning less fruit? Note that I do not require that one’s beliefs be couched in terms of the relevant predicates. A monkey does not have to believe that a fruit tree satisfies the predicate ‘65 pieces of fruit’ to be warranted in exhibiting the \({\varPhi }(x\),’Yelp’) attitudes. It suffices that the monkey believes that the fruit tree has 65 pieces of fruit.
Why doesn’t this undermine my claim that competency makes for sensitivity to whether a case is borderline? I take the primary measure of the sensitivity of competent speakers to be whether they comply with relevant norms, not whether they are in a position to know what those norms are. But as I will discuss below, we might think of a fully competent speaker as one who also knows the norms she complies with. In this case, knowing that the norms in question are proprietary of borderline cases (if they are) would put any fully competent speaker in a position to know which cases are borderline.
There is more to be said here. One worry comes from Williamson (2007): Peter the expert logician does not believe (and so does not know) that one ought not infer \(\exists xP(x)\) from \(\forall xP(x)\). Does he still use the same notions \(\exists\) and \(\forall\) that we use (Boghossian 2010)? If so the link between mastery and norms of usage must be attenuated, or Peter falls short of mastery, despite his expertise (deRosset 2013). Another worry: imagine the reluctant or capricious master, who knows precisely what ought to be done, but has no inclination to do it—an ideally coherent Caligula of grammar. James Joyce and e.e. cummings come to mind. If such a person truly counts as a master, we might do better to say that a norm of usage is a norm that a speaker must know to count as having mastery. This would have the additional benefit of honoring the insight that mastery requires reflective endorsement of one’s practice (as defended in Ginsborg (2012)). I stress again that I do not claim that usage norms explain the facts about meaning and content in general. I allow that in general the norms merely reflect semantic facts which are not essentially normative. I make an explanatory claim only in the special case of vagueness.
What of evaluative concepts, like ‘permissible’ or ‘beautiful’ or ‘funny’? Evaluative concepts are very special, and so I do not take a verdict about their vagueness to be incumbent on my defense of the Positive Characterization Thesis. I note if the norms for faultless disagreement were the same as the norms for borderline cases, then the \({\varPhi }\)-attitudes could not be proprietary of vagueness. But this is best saved for another day.
See Chalmers (2013) for exposition.
Where by ‘B follows a priori from A’ I mean that the material conditional ‘If A then B’ is knowable a priori. Cf. Chalmers (2013).
Here, the important claim will be that a positive characterization rules out that its instances are non-vaguely P (as opposed to determinately P). But this locution is awkward, and many agree that vagueness implies indeterminacy, so I focus here on whether we can rule out that instances are determinately P. I do not thereby mean to rule on whether vagueness is incompatible with classical logic.
That is, they follow from the PQTI truths: the physical, phenomenal, totality and indexical truths.
See also Neta 2014 and Schroeter 2014, and Chalmers 2014 for reply
Strictly, a specification of the usage norms could be infinitary, so we appeal to an infinitary conjunction elimination. Otherwise the tautology is classical
If the \({\varPhi }(x\),P) attitudes are not proprietary, this means that our account of the constitutive nature of borderline cases is at best only partial. But that is not inconsistent with the Positive Characterization Thesis, nor with the conclusions I will draw below. Note also that the conclusion of this section does not depend on the truth of the Positive Characterization Thesis, i.e. the thesis that every borderline case has a positive characterization. In this section I exploit my definition of a positive characterization, but do not rely on the claim that every borderline case has one.
Brogaard (2010).
Finally, note that this holds even if we believe it is a priori that a system of low enough functional complexity is not phenomenally conscious, since even then, a description of a system of whatever complexity level might still be a description of perfect zombies. Cf Antony (2006a, 2008) whose argument that PHENOMENALLY CONSCIOUS is not vague hinges on that concept containing “no material elements.”
The question is whether the identity is to be read as asserting ‘Phenomenally Conscious(x) \(\Leftrightarrow\) Roughly 40Hz Oscillation(x)’, or as asserting ‘\(\bigtriangleup\)Phenomenally Conscious(x) \(\Leftrightarrow\) \(\bigtriangleup\)Roughly 40Hz Oscillation(x)’. If the latter, then satisfying the description may not even entail that x is a borderline case of ‘phenomenally conscious’.
See Sebastian (2011).
Compare Antony (2006a, 2008)’s discussion of LIFE as deployed in 1750. In 1750, people were not disposed to recognize viruses as borderline cases, but now we are. Antony considers this a change of concept. But Antony does not adequately distinguish between the possibility that one day we will use the words ‘phenomenally conscious’ to express a concept with different usage norms which is vague, and on the other hand the possibility that we will one day notice a way in which the term we have been using all along has been vague, unbeknownst to us. The latter is my concern.
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Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments to audiences in Canberra, New York, Sydney, Toronto, Wagga Wagga, and Wollongong, and in particular to Eli Alshanetsky, Michael Antony, Ned Block, Paul Boghossian, David Chalmers, Kit Fine, Franz Huber, Geoffrey Lee, Dan Lopez de Sa, Colin Marshall, John Morrison, Diana Raffman, Michael Raven, Stephen Schiffer, Miguel Sebastian, Ted Sider, Nicholas J.J. Smith, Sharon Street, Peter Unger, Robbie Williams and Achille Varzi.
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Simon, J.A. Vagueness and zombies: why ‘phenomenally conscious’ has no borderline cases. Philos Stud 174, 2105–2123 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0790-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0790-4