Consciousness Unbound

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Consciousness Unbound

Mark Rowlands Department of Philosophy

University of Miami Coral Gables, FL 33124

U.S.A.

Keywords: Consciousness, disclosure, extended mind, intentionality, revealing activity

1. Introduction: Extended Cognition and Extended Consciousness

The expression, ‘extended mind’, is disingenuous. The thesis expressed is not,

fundamentally, a thesis about minds at all – at least, not if we take these to be things

distinct from mental states and processes: for example, as something to which such states

and processes attach. The thesis of the extended mind is entirely compatible with there

being no such things as minds in this sense. The expression, ‘extended cognition’, is

better, but still suffers from two drawbacks. To begin with, the term ‘extended’ suggests

that the focal issue is one concerning the location of mental items. It is not. From the

claim that mental processes are extended, it might be possible to deduce various claims

about where cognitive processes are not. But it is not, in general, possible to deduce, with

any useful level of precision, claims that specify where they are. One of the more sensible

deductions is that cognitive processes often do not have any clear location. This paper,

however, is more concerned with the other half of the expression: in particular, the

restriction of the thesis to cognition. Cognition can be understood both as a personal and

as a sub-personal phenomenon. In the latter sense, it consists, roughly but fundamentally,

in operations performed by vehicles of cognition: the sub-personal architecture of

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cognition. Understood personally, it consists in the sorts of mental acts performed by

mental subjects such as you and I: perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, and a

myriad of other processes we engage in on a daily basis, are examples of cognition in this

sense.

However, these sorts of processes also have other properties. Often, perhaps

typically, they are conscious, in the phenomenal sense: there is something that it is like to

undergo them. Indeed, some would endorse a stronger claim: not only is there something

that it is like to undergo processes of these sorts, this phenomenal character is essential

to, or individuates, them [Strawson 2011]. I shall not assume this stronger claim.

However, the fact that many personal-level cognitive processes are conscious raises an

obvious question: if cognition extends, then why not (phenomenal) consciousness too?

The idea that consciousness extends, however, has met with noticeable resistance

– even from defenders of extended cognition [e.g. Clark 2009]. The basis of this

resistance seems to consist in the following idea. When we have a process that is both

cognitive and conscious, what makes it cognitive is not what makes it conscious. There is

no universally agreed on criterion of cognition, or anything close to it, but most accept

that cognition involves information processing [Rowlands 1999, 2009]. Arguments for

extended cognition often focus on this: information processing operations, it is argued,

can be often take place outside the body, consisting in things a cognizing subject does in

and to the world. This, by itself, will not be enough to establish that cognition is

extended, but it does show that a central plank of cognition can be found outside the

body, and one can at least imagine how the rest of the story is going to go: add a few

conditions that a process must meet in order to count as on as cognitive, show that these

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are compatible with cognition being extended, etc. We do not know what makes a

process conscious either. However, it is assumed likely that what makes a process

conscious is quite different from what makes it cognitive, and there is no suggestion that

the former – whatever it is – will be found outside the head. This, it is thought, is the

central challenge that defenders of extended consciousness must meet.

In this paper, I am going to sidle up to the challenge rather than meet it head on.

The thesis for which I shall argue is this: many token conscious mental processes are

extended in that they are not constituted entirely by processes occurring inside the head

of a subject. Sometimes they are entirely constituted by neural processes, but sometimes

they incorporate wider processes. These wider processes can comprise non-cranial bodily

processes and also processes whereby a subject does things in and to his or her

environment. The reason for this has nothing to do with information processing or any of

the other factors that might make these processes cognitive. Indeed, I shall henceforth not

even mention cognition or information processing. Rather, the claim is that these

processes are extended because they are intentional. This is not to say that all intentional

items are extended. Rather, I shall argue that there is something about the essence of

intentionality that invites extension. The nature of intentionality, I shall argue, makes it

likely that many intentional mental processes straddle neural processes, non-cranial

bodily processes and things a mental subject does in and to its environment.

If the arguments I shall develop in this paper are correct, the extendedness of

many mental processes derives from their intentionality. Is this an argument for extended

consciousness? It depends, in part, on how one understands the relation between

consciousness and intentionality. If one is the sort of representationalist who thinks that

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consciousness reduces to intentionality [e.g. Tye 1995], then, clearly it is an argument for

extended consciousness. What makes a process conscious is the very same thing that

makes it extended. If you hold the less extreme view that intentionality is an important

part of the story about what makes a process conscious, then this will also be an argument

for extended consciousness: an important part of the story about what makes a process

conscious also makes it extended. Adjudicating between those possessing and those

bereft of representationalist sympathies of this sort is, clearly, beyond the scope of this of

this paper. The conclusion I shall defend should be restricted to the following: those who

think there is a significant connection between consciousness and intentionality should

also accept that consciousness extends. At least part of what makes a mental process

conscious is also what makes it liable to extend beyond the skin of the subject of that

process.

2. The Default View of Consciousness

My talk of mental processes as intentional might grate on the ears of some. It is common

to think of intentionality as attaching primarily to states: it is thoughts, beliefs, memories

and other states that are intentional, and not their process counterparts – thinking,

believing, and remembering. A process might be described as intentional, but only to the

extent that it culminates in or produces an intentional state. This, I shall argue, is our

fundamental mistake in thinking about: the mistake from which most others follow.

Intentionality fundamentally attaches to mental processes and only derivatively to mental

states. Getting to this claim will, however, take some time. The route begins with what I

am going to call the default view of consciousness.

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Consciousness, in the sense discussed in this paper, is phenomenal consciousness.

In common with standard practice, I shall take this, roughly, to be the way things seem or

feel to a person when he or she has or undergoes an experience: what it is like to have or

undergo that experience. Most recent discussions of consciousness assume – explicitly or

implicitly – that consciousness is or can be an intentional object: the sort of thing of

which one is, or can become, aware if one’s attention is suitably directed. Thus, it is

common to assume that I can turn my introspective gaze towards what it is like to have or

undergo an experience. I shall use the term ‘empirical’ to denote items such as these: an

item is empirical if and only if it is an actual or potential object of consciousness. If what

it is like to have or undergo an experience is, or can be, an intentional object of awareness

then it is an empirical item in my sense. The view that consciousness is empirical is

entirely orthodox, and this orthodoxy can take several different forms. Three, in

particular, have featured prominently in the literature.

First, there is the idea of consciousness as an object of introspection. It is common

to assume that phenomenal consciousness consists in what it is like to have or undergo an

experience. It is equally common to suppose that this what-it-is-like-ness can be an object

of introspection. Colin McGinn captures this idea (which he endorses) very nicely:

Our acquaintance with consciousness could hardly be more direct;

phenomenological description thus comes (relatively) easily. ‘Introspection’ is the

name of the faculty through which we catch consciousness in all its vivid

nakedness. By virtue of possessing this cognitive faculty we ascribe concepts of

consciousness to ourselves; we thus have “immediate access” to the properties of

consciousness [McGinn 1989: 349]

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Through introspection we become aware of what it is like to have a conscious experience.

What it is like to have this experience is, therefore, an empirical item in the sense

introduced above.

A variation on this general theme sees what it is like to have an experience as an

object of knowledge. This is a theme strongly associated with the work of Frank Jackson.

Mary, upon her escape from an entirely monochromatic environment, comes to know

something new:

It seems, however, that Mary does not know all there is to know. For when she is

let out of the black-and-white room, she will learn what it is like to see something

red, say. This is rightly described as learning – she will not say “ho, hum”. Hence

physicalism is false. [Jackson 1986: 292]

What it is like to have a color experience is, it is assumed, something Mary knows.

Accordingly, what it is like to have this experience is an object of her knowledge, and so

qualifies as empirical in the sense employed here.

Thomas Nagel supplies another variation: what it is like to have an experience as

an object of access. In his (1974) paper, ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ Nagel begins with a

certain common understanding of the idea of objectivity: An ‘objective fact par

excellence’ is ‘the kind that can be observed and understood from many points of view’

[1974: 172]. Objective facts are ones to which there exists many routes of epistemic

access. Taking this concept of objectivity as primary, Nagel then constructs a concept of

subjectivity based on the guiding metaphor of a route of access. Subjective phenomena

are ones to which our routes of access are reduced to one. Objective items are ones to

which our epistemic access is generalized. Subjective items are ones to which our

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epistemic access is idiosyncratic. To think of subjective phenomena in this way is to

think of them as part of a region of reality that, in itself, is just like any other. The only

difference lies in our mode of access to it. Classically objective items are like object on a

savannah, and can be approached from many different directions. Conscious phenomena

are locked up in a remote canyon whose only port of access is a narrow tunnel.

To see the significance of this way of understanding the subjective-objective

distinction, consider Nagel’s tendency to slide from claims such as:

Every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view

[1974: 167, emphasis mine]

To claims such as:

For if the facts of experience – facts about what it is like for the experiencing

organism – are accessible only from one point of view, then it is a mystery how

the true character of experiences could be revealed in the physical operation of

that organism [1974: 172]

The claim that a subjective phenomenon is one essentially connected with a single point

of view mutates into the claim that a subjective phenomenon is one that is essentially

accessible from only a single point of view. These two claims may seem equivalent, and

this seeming equivalence is, I think, a symptom of the pull of the idea that all reality is

intrinsically objective. In fact, the two claims are logically quite distinct. As I shall argue

shortly, there is a way of being connected to a single point of view that does not require,

or reduce to, being an object accessed from that point of view. Being connected to a

certain point of view is a broader concept than being accessed from a point of view.

Access always implies accessing. Accordingly, an item can be connected with a single

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point of view not because it is accessed from that point of view but because it consists in

an accessing of something (else) from that point of view.

I shall develop these ideas in the sections to follow. Consciousness, I shall argue

is not only empirical – in the sense of being an actual or potential object of awareness –

but also transcendental. I am going to employ the empirical/transcendental distinction in

a way reminiscent of, though not precisely equivalent to, the way employed by Kant. If

empirical items are actual or potential objects of consciousness, then something is

transcendental if and only if it is, in a sense to be made clear, a condition of possibility of

an empirical item. So, far this is, more or less, Kant’s view. However, where Kant tends

(as is now standard) to think of conditions of possibility in terms of necessary conditions

for the existence of a given phenomenon, my focus will be on sufficiency. (I realize that

this makes the expression of the idea of the transcendental in terms of the concept of a

condition of possibility both awkward and inaccurate. Henceforth, the idea of a condition

of possibility will no longer me mentioned.) The view I shall defend is this: necessarily,

consciousness is more than a collection of empirical items. Consciousness is also

transcendental in that it provides a (logically) sufficient condition for the existence of

itself as a collection of empirical items. This is the first premise in the argument I shall

develop for extended consciousness. It may sound mysterious but, I shall argue, is

actually quite mundane [For earlier developments of this idea, see Rowlands 2002,

2010a, 2010b].

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3. Consciousness as Transcendental: The Fregean Route

One way to understand the idea of consciousness as transcendental is by following a

relatively familiar route carved out by Frege [Rowlands 201a, 2010b]. You might think

of the following as a constructive misreading of Frege. It is a misreading because it

attributes to Frege a concern with the psychological that he (largely) did not have. It is

constructive because the primary concern of this paper is the psychological, and I shall

argue, Frege’s struggles to make sense of the notion of sense (Sinn) translate almost

exactly into contemporary discussions of consciousness, and this reveals that these

discussions omit something important.

As many commentators have noted, there is a pronounced tension in Frege’s

account of sense. Frege wants to attribute two distinct types of feature or function to

senses or thoughts (Gedanken). On the one hand, Frege claims that senses can be objects

of mental acts in a way akin – although not identical – to that in which physical objects

can be the objects of mental acts [Harnish 2000]. Physical objects can be perceived;

senses or thoughts (that is, the sense of a declarative sentence) can be apprehended.

Moreover, when a thought is apprehended, Frege [1918/1994] claims, ‘something in [the

thinker’s] consciousness must be aimed at the thought.’ In one of its guises, therefore, a

sense is an intentional object of an act of apprehension.

However, according to Frege senses also have the role of fixing reference.

Although senses can be objects of reference, that is not their only, or even typical, role. In

its second guise, the function of sense is to direct the speaker or hearer’s thinking not to

the sense itself but to the object picked out by that sense. In this case, senses do not figure

as intentional objects of mental acts, but as items in virtue of which a mental act can have

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an object. In their second, and perhaps (today) more customary, role senses are

determinants of reference: they are what fix reference rather than objects of reference.

There is a pronounced tension between these two ways of understanding sense. It

is not simply that these characterizations are distinct. More importantly, when sense is

playing the role described in the first characterization, it cannot also play the role

described in the second, and vice versa. This inability to play both roles simultaneously

shows itself in a certain non-eliminability that attaches to sense in its reference-

determining role. In its first guise, a sense is an object of apprehension: an intentional

object of a mental act. But the second characterization of sense tells us that whenever

there is an intentional object of a mental act, there is also a sense that fixes reference to

this object. If we combine these characterizations, therefore, it seems we must conclude

that whenever sense exists as an intentional object of a mental act of apprehension, there

must, in that act, be another sense that allows it to exist in this way. And if this latter

sense were also to exist as an intentional object of a mental act, there would have to be

yet another sense that allowed it to do so. Sense in its reference-determining guise,

therefore, has a non-eliminable status within any intentional act. In any intentional act,

there is always a sense that is not, and in that act cannot be, an intentional object.

We might frame the distinction in terms of a metaphor employed by Frege, in the

service of explaining the concept of apprehension:

The expression ‘apprehend’ is as metaphorical as ‘content of consciousness’ …

What I hold in my hand can certainly be regarded as the content of my hand but is

all the same the content of my hand in a quite different way from the bones and

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muscle of which it is made and their tensions, and is much more extraneous to it

than they are [1918/1994, p. 35]

Sense, as an empirical item, is akin to an object held in the hand. But as a transcendental

item, sense is that in virtue of which the object can be held in the hand – i.e. apprehended.

That is, understood transcendentally, sense is akin to the bones and muscles in virtue of

which an object can be held in the hand. It is the second way of thinking about sense,

sense as that which permits the grasping of senses, which underwrites the familiar idea

that Fregean sense is inexpressible: as something that can be shown but not said. As

Dummett puts it: ‘even when Frege is purporting to give the sense of a word or symbol,

what he actually states is what its reference is’ [1973: p. 227]. This inexpressibility is an

inevitable consequence of the non-eliminability of sense.

The same kind of dialectic can be found in the work of Husserl [1913/1982] and

other early phenomenologists. It is clearly evident in the Husserl’s development of the

distinction between noesis and noema. Matters are, however, complicated by the

existence of two competing interpretations of this distinction, divided along broadly

geographical lines. According to the ‘East Coast interpretation’, championed by

Sokolowski (1987) and Drummond (1990) among others, the distinction between noesis

and noema tracks the distinction between the transcendental and empirical interpretations

of sense. Noesis corresponds to sense understood transcendentally as a determinant of

reference; noema corresponds to sense understood empirically, as an object of reference.

Thus, when he introduces the distinction between noesis and noema, Husserl is recording

the systematic ambiguity of the notion of sense and effecting an appropriate

disambiguation.

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On the ‘West Coast interpretation’, defended by Føllesdal (1969) and McIntyre

(1987) among others, matters are more complicated. On this interpretation Husserl’s

distinction is motivated by his rejection of psychologism, and is a development of his

earlier distinction, in the Logical Investigations [1900/1973] between ‘real’ and ‘ideal’

content. The possibility of a transcendental interpretation of sense (auffasungsinn) raises

the specter of psychologism, for it suggests that is more closely connected to mental acts

than merely being an extrinsic objects grasped by them. To put the matter in terms of the

Fregean metaphor, the possibility of a transcendental interpretation of sense indicates that

sense, in its transcendental role, is more akin to the muscle, bones and tendons of a hand

than an object held by the hand. Husserl’s solution, according to the West Coast

interpretation, is to posit the experiential noema as an ideal reference-determining

content, whereas the noesis is the real, concrete, psychic counterpart to this ideal content.

In other words, on the West Coast interpretation, the distinction between noema and

noesis is the result of Husserl’s attempt to safeguard the objectivity of sense precisely in

the face of the problem posed by the fact that sense has a transcendental as well as an

empirical interpretation. While the two interpretations express the distinction in different

ways, both accept that sense has a transcendental character.

4. Intentionality: Transcendental and Empirical Modes of Presentation

The idea of sense as transcendental – as a non-eliminable determinant of reference –

echoes, in various ways, throughout the writings of the early phenomenologists. Rather

than focus on these, however, I shall instead use these considerations to motivate a

general picture of intentionality. To describe the view I am going to defend as an analysis

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of intentionality would be inaccurate. I do not offer necessary, sufficient, or necessary

and sufficient conditions for an item to count as intentional, or anything of that sort. What

I do offer is a picture of intentionality – a sketch of the sort of thing intentional

directedness is, one that highlights its more abstract and general features. I do not claim

that this sketch captures all cases of intentional directedness, merely that it captures some

of the more familiar sorts. The sketch begins with a certain model of intentionality that

has its roots both in the phenomenological and early analytic traditions and, despite some

lean years (c. 1970-2000) is, I think, still sufficiently widely accepted to be dubbed the

standard model – although nothing essential turns on whether this assessment is correct.

According to this, intentionality has a tripartite structure, comprising act, object, and

mode of presentation. The mode of presentation connects act and object. Typically, the

mode of presentation is understood in this way: the act has a content, perhaps (but not

necessarily) expressible in the form of a description, and the mode of presentation is that

in virtue of which the object, in whatever way is deemed appropriate, ‘fits’ the content

(for example, satisfies that description). Given the conclusion advertised in the previous

section, it is clear that I shall not, ultimately, endorse the standard model. Rather, the

model merely provides a starting point for the picture of intentionality I am going to

defend. When the picture is completed, the problems with – and, in particular, a certain

kind of ambiguity in – the standard model will become evident. The ambiguity centers on

the ambiguous status of the concept of a mode of presentation.

If an object satisfies or ‘fits’ the content of a mental act, this will be because the

object possesses certain aspects: ones picked out by that content. For example, on a

description-theoretic construal of content, the description applies to whatever object

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satisfies it, and the object will satisfy the description in virtue of possessing certain

aspects. Aspects are not to be identified with objective properties of objects. Aspects are

objects of awareness in an intentional rather than objective sense. Aspects are the way

objects are presented to subjects, and to any aspect there may or may not correspond an

objective property. An object may be presented as elliptical, for example, even if it is not.

Since its aspects are that in virtue of which an object satisfies a given act’s

content (e.g. fits the relevant description), and since the mode of presentation is that

which links act and object, this invites an almost irresistible identification: we identify the

mode of presentation of the object with that object’s aspects. This identification is,

however, problematic. It can be both true and false, depending on how we understand the

concept of a mode of presentation.

Aspects are intentional objects of awareness. I can attend not only to the tomato,

but also to its size, color and luster. Indeed, I typically attend to the former by attending

to the latter. Thus, if we (1) identify modes of presentation with aspects, and (2) adhere to

the stand model’s claim that the an intentional object is determined only via a mode of

presentation, it follows that (3) whenever there is a mode of presentation – an aspect –

there must be another mode of presentation that fixes reference to it. If a mode of

presentation is identified with an aspect, and an aspect is an intentional object, then the

standard model commits us to the existence of another mode of presentation in virtue of

which the original mode of presentation can be an intentional object. This latter mode of

presentation, necessarily, cannot be identical with an aspect. In short, intentional objects

require modes of presentation. If aspects of objects are themselves intentional objects,

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there must be another mode of presentation that allows them to be as such. Therefore, we

must distinguish two different ways of understanding a mode of presentation:

1. Empirical modes of presentation (aspects): Often, indeed typically, the notion of a

mode of presentation is understood as the way objects appear to subjects. If the tomato

appears red and shiny, then redness and shininess is the mode of presentation of the

tomato. In this sense, the mode of presentation is an intentional object – it is the sort of

thing of which I can become aware if my attention is suitably engaged. I can attend not

only to the tomato, but also to its redness and shininess. An empirical mode of

presentation is an intentional object. As such, it is identical with an aspect (or aspects) of

an object.

2. Transcendental modes of presentation: In any intentional act, there must be more than

an empirical mode of presentation. There must also be a transcendental mode of

presentation. The reason is that the mode of presentation is supposedly what determines

the intentional object of a mental act. So, if the object of an intentional act is an empirical

mode of presentation (for example, the redness and shininess of the tomato), there must

be another mode of presentation – a transcendental mode of presentation – in virtue of

which this empirical mode of presentation is an intentional object. The transcendental

mode of presentation is that component of the intentional act that permits the object to

appear under empirical modes of presentation (or aspects).

Suppose, now, that we are engaged in the project of understanding intentionality.

That is, we are attempting to understand what it is for an intentional act to be directed

towards an object. One thing is reasonably clear: in engaging in this project, we would

look in vain to intentional objects themselves (i.e. objects or empirical modes of

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presentation of those objects). We will not understand intentional directedness by looking

at the objects of this directedness. The directedness of an intentional act towards the

world consists in its transcendental mode of presentation. The transcendental mode of

presentation is the intentional core of an act. That is, the directedness of an intentional

act is that in virtue of which objects appear to a subject under aspects.

5. Intentionality as Disclosure

The general idea of an intentional act as that in virtue of which objects appear under

aspects can be captured under the rubric disclosure (or revelation – I shall use these terms

interchangeably). An intentional act is one that discloses an object (to a subject), where:

An act A, discloses an object O, to subject S ⇔ A is that in virtue of which O

falls under empirical mode of presentation E for S.

I understand the expression ‘in virtue of’ as expressing a sufficiency claim. However,

there are at least two relevant types of sufficiency, yielding two forms of disclosure. On

the one hand there is logical sufficiency, and this yields what I shall call constitutive

disclosure. What it is like to have an experience constitutively discloses an object in that

it provides a logically sufficient condition for the world (in some other guise) to appear in

a certain way. If I am Mary, escaped from my monochromatic prison, when I see a

postbox (judging by the example, my monochromatic prison was apparently in the UK), I

have an experience characterized by a certain what-it-is-like-ness. This particular what-it-

is-like-ness is logically sufficient for the world to appear in a certain way – a localized

bright red. If I have an experience characterized by this what-it-is-like-ness then (a

localized part of) the world cannot fail to appear bright red. It may be that my experience

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is illusory. If so, there is no postbox that appears bright red, but some other object does

so. Or it may be that I am hallucinating. If this case, there is no object that appears bright

red. However, it is still true that a certain region of the visual world appears bright red.

Constitutive disclosure takes the form of a logically sufficient condition for the

world to appear a certain way. Contrast this sort of disclosure with that implicated in

another account of vision – one cast at the level neural or computational processes. At the

neural level, we might describe various processes beginning in the retina and culminating

in the visual cortex. At the computational level, we might describe various information

processing operations that progressively convert a pattern of activation values distributed

over the retina into a 3D visual representation. If we were sympathetic to certain

intuitions located in the broad ‘explanatory gap’ genre, then we would deny that these

sorts of processes are logically sufficient for the experience of redness. But we would still

accept that these are physically or causally sufficient for this experience. Disclosure that

occurs by way of casual or physical sufficiency I shall call causal disclosure.

If we accept the explanatory gap intuitions, then we are committed to this general

rule. Constitutive disclosure is disclosure by way of content. Causal disclosure is

disclosure by way of vehicles of content. Nothing in my argument turns on acceptance of

these intuitions. My focus will be on the vehicles of content, since these are most

germane to the issue of extended consciousness (this, as the alternative appellation

‘vehicle externalism’ indicates, is a view about the vehicles of mentality). So, I shall

focus on causally sufficient conditions for disclosure of the world. I shall take no stand on

whether these conditions are more than merely causally sufficient.

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I have argued for the following claim: intentional directedness is that which

discloses objects – causally or constitutively depending on context – as falling under

aspects or empirical modes of presentation. Intentional directedness is, therefore, a form

of disclosing activity, broadly understood. This claim is the first premise in the argument

for extended conscious processes.

6. From Disclosure to Extendedness

The argument for extended conscious processes runs as follows:

1. Intentional directedness is disclosing activity.

2. Disclosing activity often – not always, certainly not necessarily – straddles neural

processes, bodily processes, and things that a subject does to and with its

environment.

3. Therefore, intentional processes often – not always, certainly not necessarily –

straddle neural processes, bodily processes, and things that a subject does to and

with its environment.

I have defended the first premise. In this section, the focus switches to premise 2.

The argument for premise 2 is perhaps best introduced through a well-known

example of Merleau-Ponty’s: a blind person’s cane. The cane can, of course, be an

(empirical) object of awareness. The blind person might concentrate on how it feels, its

weight, texture, and so on. But this, in ordinary contexts of use, would be rare. Rather, its

role is, typically, a transcendental one. Understood transcendentally, the cane is

something in virtue of which the world is disclosed to the blind person as falling under

certain aspects or empirical modes of presentation. Thus, in virtue of activity that

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involves the cane, an object may be disclosed to the blind person as being “in front” of

him or her, as “near”, “further away”, “to the left”, and so on. Merleau-Ponty is at pains

to emphasize the phenomenology of the resulting perception of the world. The blind

person does not experience aspects of the objects he encounters as occurring in the cane,

even though this is part of the material basis of his perception of these aspects. Still less

does experience the as occurring in the fingers that grip the cane, and less again as in the

sensory cortex that processes the information. He experiences these objects and their

aspects as being located in the world. Phenomenologically – in terms of what it is like to

have it – the consciousness of the blind person passes all the way through the cane out to

the world. The crucial question, however, is why should the phenomenology be like this?

The answer lies in the fact that when the blind person uses the cane in this way,

the cane is not an object of disclosure but a vehicle of disclosure. It is part of an activity

in virtue of which objects in the world are disclosed as falling under certain aspects or

empirical modes of presentation. Where does this disclosing activity take place? No

precise answer is available, but the activity straddles neural processes, extra-neural bodily

processes and things the blind person does in and to the world around him or her. Not

much disclosing of the world will get done without neural processes, to be sure. But in

this case at least, the disclosing activity encompasses things going on in the blind

person’s body and also things he or she does in the surrounding environment. Intentional

directedness is disclosing activity and so intentional directedness, in this case, straddles

all of these things.

Indeed, this revealing activity does not stop short of the world. In employing the

cane, the blind person ceases to experience the cane as such – ceases to experience it as

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an object of awareness. As revealing activity, his experience travels all the way through

the came to the object itself. That is why his experience can be a disclosing of the aspects

of those objects. The experience’s phenomenology passes all the way through the cane to

the word because the underlying disclosing activity – the activity that constitutes the

experience’s intentional directedness – does not stop short of the world.

Consider, next, the case of an unimpaired visual subject. Suppose I am asked, a la

Yarbus [1967], to look at a picture and identify certain information contained in it. For

example, suppose I am asked to determine the approximate age of the picture’s central

figure. To accomplish this task, my eyes engage in a certain saccadic scan path. When I

am asked a different question – for example, what were the people in the painting doing

prior to the arrival of the visitor standing in the door? – the scan path my eyes follow will

be very different. These scan paths are part of the causal disclosure of the world. The

world is disclosed as containing an object – a painted figure – that falls under a given

empirical mode of presentation: for example as being a depiction of someone roughly

forty years old, or as containing figures who had been talking together prior to the arrival

of the visitor. As such, the saccadic eye movements are disclosing activity: part of the

means by which an object in the world is revealed to me as falling under an empirical

mode of presentation. The saccadic eye movements are, therefore, among of the vehicles

of intentional directedness.

This is a case of embodied disclosing activity: the activity in virtue of which an

object is disclosed as falling under a given aspect or empirical mode of presentation

straddles both neural processes and bodily actions (in this case, eye movements).

However, visual causal disclosure can also be extended as well as embodied. Consider a

21      

case familiar from the work of Gibson [1966, 1979]. When a visual subject moves its

head or body, and thus manipulates the optic array, invariant information is obtained or

appropriated: information that can be identified only in the transformation from one optic

array to another. In virtue of this information, in part, an object may be subsumed under

one or another perceptual mode of presentation: for example, as being the same size as,

or as being a different height from, another object. Here, the disclosing activity cannot

simply be regarded as the movement of the subject’s head or body. Also crucial is the

effect of this movement on the optic array. The bodily movement, by itself, discloses

nothing. Disclosure of the world (as, for example, containing objects of the same or

different heights) takes the form of the dyad of bodily movement plus resulting alteration

in optic array.

The same model of extended disclosing activity also applies to the kind of

sensorimotor probing that has been have (rightly) emphasized by enactivists [Noë 2004,

O’Regan and Noë, 2001] is another example of revealing activity. Casting one’s attention

at will to any part of the visually presented world, or having one’s attention automatically

drawn to a visual transient are examples of probing or exploratory activity. They are

activities in virtue of which an object in the world can be presented as falling under one

or another perceptual mode of presentation. Suppose, for example, I am looking at a large

Andy Warhol collage of images of Marilyn Monroe [Dennett 1991]. Only a small portion

of the collage will fall within the range of foveal vision. Parafoveal vision, however, is

incapable of discriminating images of Marilyn from indeterminate shapes. The slack, on

the enactivist account, is taken up by my ability to direct my attention at will to any part

of the wall – and my anticipation that I will encounter more Marilyns when I do so. Thus,

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it is partly in virtue of such activity that a wall can be subsumed under the mode of

presentation “wall of Marilyns” rather than the alternative “wall of indeterminate

shapes”. [Rowlands 2010, pp. 205ff].

7. From Perception to Cognition

The cases described above are all perceptual, specifically visual, in character. However,

the same general model can be applied to non-perceptual cases. Suppose I am thinking

about an object – say, a tomato – and I am thinking about it’s being the unusually red and

shiny. Redness and shininess are empirical modes of presentation – aspects – of the

tomato. These are empirical items: I am thinking about them, therefore they qualify as

intentional objects of my thought. The transcendental modes of presentation of my

thought about the tomato, therefore, is that aspect of the act of thinking in virtue of which

the tomato is presented to me, in thought, as red and shiny. Cognition, no less than

perception, reveals objects as falling under empirical modes of presentation. Both these

objects and their empirical modes of presentation are objects of intentional directedness.

The intentionality of both perception and cognition is precisely that in virtue of which

one type of intentional object (an object simpliciter) is disclosed as possessing or falling

under another type of intentional object (an aspect or empirical mode of presentation).

The intentional directedness of both perception and cognition is this non-eliminable

activity in virtue of which this sort of disclosure takes place.

To give flesh to this rather abstract characterization, consider what is almost

certainly the most familiar thought experiment used to motivate the thesis of extended

cognition: the case of Otto [Clark and Chalmers 1998]. Otto is in the early stages of

23      

Alzheimer’s and writes down information that he think might prove useful in a notebook.

One day, reading in the newspaper that there is an exhibition on at the Museum of

Modern Art, he leafs through his book and finds a sentence: “The Museum of Modern

Art is on East 53rd Street.” This sentence combines with his desire to see the exhibition,

and the result is behavior: Otto makes his way to East 53rd Street.

According to a common interpretation of Clark and Chalmers’s argument, the

sentence, “The Museum of Modern Art is on East 53rd Street,” should be identified with a

belief of Otto. The sentences in his notebook are identical with a subset of his beliefs. I

do not endorse this claim. Such a view identifies a mental state with an external structure.

The view I prefer, in contrast, is formulated in terms of processes. Otto’s manipulation of

his notebook can form part – not all – of a mental process: the process of remembering.

This is because manipulation of the book – flipping through the pages, reading the

inscribed sentences – is a form of disclosing activity. The activity of manipulating the

book in this way is part of the means whereby, in the case of memory, Otto’s intentional

directedness toward the world is brought about. The manipulation of the book is, in part,

that in virtue of which a certain object in the world – a museum – is disclosed to Otto as

falling under a specific empirical mode of presentation: that of being located on 53rd

Street. Otto’s disclosure of the world, in this case, straddles processes occurring in his

brain (he must be able to read and recognize the sentences he sees on the pages), extra-

cranial bodily processes (the movements of his fingers, his eyes, and so on), and things he

does to the book (flipping though the pages, etc.). This is disclosing activity and, in this

case, it is activity that straddles all these things.

24      

8. Conclusion

If the foregoing arguments are correct, then intentionality invites, though does not

guarantee, extension. Not all intentional acts or processes are intentional. But if an act is

extended, then what makes it extended is the very same thing as makes it intentional.

Intentionality consists in disclosing activity. And disclosing activity is, in general,

indifferent to the location of its material realizations. Often – not always, not necessarily,

but often – it straddles activity that takes place in the brain, in the non-cranial body and in

the non-bodily environment. This is why many processes that are conscious are also

extended. They are extended because they are intentional, and their intentionality makes

them extended. Whether this entails that their consciousness makes them extended

depends on how one understands the relation between consciousness and intentionality.

Weighing in on that large, and tendentious, issue is beyond the scope of this paper. But

those of us with broadly representationalist sympathies – who think that intentionality is

at least part of the story about what makes an act or process conscious – can accept that

what makes an act conscious is at least part of the story of what makes it extended.

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