Abstract
We can divide philosophical theories of consciousness into two main camps: First-Order theories and Higher-Order theories. Like all Higher-Order theories, many First-Order theories are mentalistic theories of consciousness: they attempt to reduce a mental state’s being consciousness using mental (but non-phenomenal) terms, such as being available to certain cognitive centers. I argue that mentalistic First-Order theories, once fully cashed out, collapse into some form of Higher-Order theory. I contend that not only are there general considerations in favor of this conclusion, but that the four most prominent mentalistic ‘First-Order’ theories are, in fact, Higher-Order theories in disguise. Given a strong assumption in favor of some form of mentalism, if this is right, what emerges is a powerful argument for the Higher-Order theory of consciousness.
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Notes
Except where it is needed to enhance clarity, going forward I will drop the’phenomenal’ qualifier. Hence it should be assumed, unless explicitly noted otherwise, that when I talk about a mental state being conscious, I am concerned with its being phenomenally conscious, where a mental state M of a subject S is phenomenally conscious if and only if there is something it is like for S to be in M. A theory of consciousness in the relevant sense, then, will be an account of the conditions under which there is something it is like for S to be in M.
HO theories can be individuated in terms of how they cash out the ‘in some way’ Transitivity—e.g. it in terms of a higher-order thought (Rosenthal 2005), higher-order perception (Lycan 1996), or higher-order acquaintance (Hellie 2007). Also, some HO theorists prefer a slightly differently formulation of Transitivity:
- Transitivity* :
-
Conscious mental states are mental states we are aware of ourselves as being in.
While I’ll stick with the more classic Transitivity here, nothing substantive turns on this choice. Some who favor Transitivity* (e.g. Berger 2014) seem to think that consciousness is actually a property of subjects, and not a property literally instantiated by mental states. But on such a view there are still ‘conscious states’ in another sense: a state M is conscious when there is something that it is like for S to be in M. It is S that instantiates the property of being concious, but the nature of that property amounts to S instantiating the right kind of higher-order mental state (cf. Brown 2015). In what follows I bracket this sort of HO theory.
There is good reason to think that a successful reductive theory of consciousness will be mentalistic. As Carruthers (2005: 6) points out, to attempt to reduce consciousness directly in physical terms is to “jump over too many explanatory levels at once.” See also footnote 3.
David Chalmers (2013: 348, fn. 4) also favors a view like this, with the proviso that it appeals specifically to a Russellian instance-acquaintance that is irreducibly phenomenal.
I do not mean to imply that this substitution is harmless, but it is one that FO and HO theorist make alike. I won’t try to render this substitution harmless here, but if we think of mental states as properties, and experiences as events, then something like Jaegwon Kim’s (1991) property-exemplification theory of events might be helpful. Cf. Bourget (2010).
‘Environment’ is to be construed broadly so as to include S’s body.
Since Freud, it is a common assumption that beliefs can occur unconsciously. And although there are some doubters (e.g. Phillips 2016), masked priming and blindsight are frequently taken to provide robust evidence of unconscious or subliminal perception. See, e.g. Kouider and Dehaene (2007) and Weiskrantz (2009). More on the perceptual cases momentarily.
Rosenthal (1997: 743) gives us a more mundane example of unconscious awareness with the ‘cocktail party effect,’ which “occurs when one screens out the sounds of conversation other than one’s own. Still, if one’s name is mentioned in a conversation one had screened out, one’s attention immediately shifts to that conversation, showing that one must have had an auditory consciousness of what was being said.” Rosenthal takes this to show that a subject S can be conscious of x without the state in virtue of which the S is conscious of x itself being conscious, and that unconscious awareness is rather ubiquitous.
Rosenthal concurs with this reading: “A perception is conscious, then, because it makes one aware of the stimulus. But, Dretske recognizes that this will not do as it stands; subliminally perceiving something makes one aware of it, just not consciously aware of it” (2012: 1425).
I recognize that the term ‘constitutive’ is imperfect here. But I trust that it is useful at least insofar as it provides a clear contrast with ‘extensional’.
The appeal to rationality and reasons should not be understood so as to require deep conceptual sophistication. As we will see shortly, in Dretske’s case what’s relevant is reasons why not reasons for. Also, the appeal to rational processes is not always so obvert amongst FO theorists. This is the case on Prinz’s (2012) ‘AIR’ theory, also to be discussed below. But Prinz does appeal to availability to working memory, which is the ‘storehouse’ for information used in such controlled cognitive processes. And that’s all that matters for our purposes.
Recall that the FO theorist rejects both the extensional and constitutive readings of Transitivity. So even if any reasonable account of M’s being F only entails Transitivity in the extensional sense, this will still be bad news for the FO theorist, since she will still inevitably need to appeal to HO machinery in her account of conscious states. But I will be discussing (3) as it pertains to the constitutive reading of Transitivity.
The FO theorist might deny that dispositions require categorical bases, but I presume that’s a road she will not want to pin the success of her theory to. In any event, I’ll assume that all dispositions have categorical bases, or at least (pace Shoemaker 1979) bottom out into some categorical base.
We sometimes use ‘available’ is an objective sense, as when my prescription is available for pick-up from the pharmacy even though I do not know this, and so it’s being available for me doesn’t entail that I am aware that it is. But we also use ‘available’ in a subjective sense, and it’s hard to see how that cannot be what’s intended in the present case; if I didn’t know that I saw the traffic, in what sense would my seeing the traffic be available for me to act appropriately? If I do not know that the prescription is ready, I likely won’t do anything.
Notice too that even if FO theorists have some neural property N in mind as the categorical basis of F, it still might be the case higher-order awareness is reducible or at least correlated with N. See Kriegel (2009: 39) for this point. Kriegel also advances an argument similar to what I am calling the ‘general argument’, but in the context of trying to vindicate certain practices in the scientific study of consciousness.
The theory has since been cashed out in neurobiological and computational terms (e.g. Dehaene et al 2006). However, so as to stick with our discussion of mentalistic theories, I am only interested in GWT in its psychological form.
Block (2007) construes GWT as a theory of cognitive access, not as a theory according to which cognitive accessibility is constitutive of phenomenal consciousness.
This argument, or something very much like it, has been pushed for years by Rosenthal. For a nice summary, from which the current presentation borrows, see Kriegel (2009: 305–306).
I am not claiming that HO theories necessarily require that conscious states are reportable. I am only claiming that if a mental state must be reportable to be conscious, some form of HO theory follows. For more, see Sect. 3.4.
Tye, like Dretske, is a representationalist, so (minimally) M will be a representational state, and if M and M* differ in phenomenal character, M and M* will differ in terms of representational content. While Tye’s views on the purely representationalist component of his theory has changed over the years (2009, 2014), his commitment to the property of being poised being the ‘difference maker’ between conscious and unconscious states has remained the same.
It is worth noting that Block, from whom Tye largely borrows this notion, also treats being poised as a property of M (1995: 231). So does Stoljar (forthcoming).
Stoljar is primarily concerned with Block’s account of access-consciousness, and his appeal to poise, but Stoljar’s discussion carries over cleanly to Tye.
Though it need not be conscious awareness. See below.
This feature of attention is important because of cases like Block’s (1995) super-blindsighter. The super-blindsighter is supposed to be a case of access-consciousness without phenomenal consciousness. But as Tye (1995: 143) points out, because the super-blindsighter needs to prompt himself to guess, his mental states are not actually poised for direct control of thought and action. A mental state cannot be poised for direct control of thought and action by an act of willing—or, in the present case, a deliberate act of attention. I won’t expound on the claim that attention is not always a matter of voluntary control here, but I don’t need to. As we will see, Tye thinks attention is necessary for (phenomenal) consciousness. If that’s right, it follows that attention is not always a matter of voluntary control, since it is not up to me whether I am conscious of x, for any x.
By ‘attend to the content of M’ I follow Stoljar: to attend to the content of M is just to attend to ‘what is seen’, ‘what is heard’ etc. This translates into our earlier expression ‘aware of x’ where x is just what is seen, heard, etc. So if M is a visual state (or a state of seeming to see), then for S to attend to the content of M is to attend to whatever x S sees (or seems to see) in virtue of being in M. Also, I have slightly altered the first definition from Stoljar’s original presentation to mesh better with the present discussion. Aside from some trivial schematic changes, the only difference is that Stoljar is actually defining access-consciousness in terms of poise. However, my treatment of poise (Poise#) is the same as his.
Critically, Tye (2010) rejects the converse entailment; he does not think that phenomenal awareness is necessary for attention. More on this momentarily.
It is worth noting that Block’s appeal to poise does not suffer from this problem. For Block (1995), a mental state’s being poised (or access-conscious) and it’s being phenomenally conscious doubly dissociate. So Block would not appeal to Poise#CA (or Poise#UA) in an account of what it is for a mental state to be phenomenally conscious.
The argument to follow has been inspired by a discussion between Pete Mandik and Richard Brown, found on the latter’s online blog. See https://onemorebrown.com/2007/06/21/is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-nurophilosophical-theory-of-consciousness/ and https://onemorebrown.com/2010/03/10/hot-damn/. Interestingly, according to Brown, Prinz is actually amenable to this argument, suggesting that he might see himself as a HO theorist, at least in some sense.
Although not part of the frontal lobe, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is occasionally lumped with the PFC. By ‘PFC’ I am excluding the ACC; my point is that (i) while some HO theorists say that the PFC proper is essential to consciousness, (ii) not all HO theorists say this.
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Acknowledgements
Many thanks to an anonymous referee, Jessica Gottlieb, Daniel Moss, Saja Parvizian, and David Rosenthal for helpful comments and discussion.
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Gottlieb, J. The collapse argument. Philos Stud 176, 1–20 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-1003-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-1003-5