Mind, Language, and The First-Person Perspective

Phenomenology and Mind

22 | 2022Mind, Language, and The First-Person Perspective

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PHENOMENOLOGY MINDAN

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MIND, LANGUAGE, AND THE FIRST-PERSON PERSPECTIVE Edited by Elisabetta Sacchi, Marta Benenti, Laura Caponetto

n. 22 - 2022Registrazione del Tribunale di Pavia, n° 6 del 9/07/2012Direttore responsabile: Roberta De MonticelliISSN 2280-7853 (print) - ISSN 2239-4028 (on line)

Phenomenology and Mind practices double blind refereeing and publishes in English.

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEEEthics and Political Theory (CeSEP)Giampaolo Azzoni (Università di Pavia)Elvio Baccarini (University of Rijeka)Stefano Bacin (Università di Milano)Carla Bagnoli (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia)Antonella Besussi (Università di Milano)Alberto Bondolfi (University of Geneva)Patrizia Borsellino (Università di Milano-Bicocca)Vittorio Bufacchi (University College Cork)Ian Carter (Università di Pavia)Emanuela Ceva (University of Geneva)Antonio Da Re (Università di Padova)Mario De Caro (Università di Roma III)Corrado Del Bo (Università di Milano)Emilio D’Orazio (POLITEIA – Centro per la ricerca e la formazione in politica e etica)Adriano Fabris (Università di Pisa)Maurizio Ferrera (Università di Milano)Luca Fonnesu (Università di Pavia)Rainer Forst (Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt)Anna Elisabetta Galeotti (Università del Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli)Benedetta Giovanola (Università di Macerata)Barbara Herman (University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA))John Horton (Keele University)Andrea Lavazza (Centro Universitario Internazionale di Arezzo)Neil Levy (University of Melbourne)Beatrice Magni (Università di Milano)Filippo Magni (Università di Pavia)Susan Mendus (University of York)Glyn Morgan (Syracuse University in New York)Valeria Ottonelli (Università di Genova)Gianfranco Pellegrino (LUISS, Roma)Mario Ricciardi (Università di Milano)Adina Roskies (Dartmouth College)John Skorupski (University of St. Andrews)Jens Timmermann (University of St. Andrews)Nadia Urbinati (Columbia University)Corrado Viafora (Università di Padova)

Cognitive Neurosciences, Philosophy of Mind and Language, Logic (CRESA)Stefano Cappa (Institute for Advanced Study, IUSS, Pavia)Claudio de’ Sperati (Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele)Michele Di Francesco (Institute for Advanced Study, IUSS, Pavia)Francesco Guala (Università di Milano)Niccolò Guicciardini (Università di Bergamo)Mirja Hartimo (University of Helsinki)Chiara Lisciandra (University of Groningen)

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Diego Marconi (Università di Torino)Gianvito Martino (Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele)Cristina Meini (Università del Piemonte Orientale)Andrea Moro (Institute for Advanced Study, IUSS, Pavia)Elisa Paganini (Università di Milano)Alfredo Paternoster (Università di Bergamo)Marco Santambrogio (Università di Parma) Andrea Sereni (Institute for Advanced Study, IUSS Pavia)Vera Tripodi (Università di Milano)Achille Varzi (Columbia University)Alberto Voltolini (Università di Torino)

History of Ideas (CRISI)Claudia Baracchi (Università di Milano-Bicocca)Simonetta Bassi (Università di Pisa)Andrea Bellantone (Institut Catholique de Toulouse)Giovanni Bonacina (Università di Urbino)Enrico Cerasi (Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele)Francesca Crasta (Università di Cagliari)Stefano Cristante (Università di Lecce)Amina Crisma (Università Alma Mater di Bologna)Giulio D’Onofrio (Università di Salerno)Catherine Douzou (Université François Rabelais de Tours)Nicola Gardini (University of Oxford)Sebastano Ghisu (Università di Sassari)Simona Langella (Università di Genova)Anna Marmodoro (University of Oxford)Vesa Oittinen (University of Helsinki)Gaetano Rametta (Università di Padova)Vallori Rasini (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia)Francesca Rigotti (Università della Svizzera Italiana)Hans Bernard Schmid (Universität Basel)Homero Silveira Santiago (USP – Universidade de São Paulo)Leonel Ribeiro dos Santos (Universidade de Lisboa)Alexandre Guimarães Tadeu de Soares (Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, Brasil)Attilio Scuderi (Università di Catania)Emidio Spinelli (Università La Sapienza-Roma)Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer (Universität Leipzig)Cristina Terrile (Université François Rabelais de Tours)Italo Testa (Università di Parma)Frieder Otto Wolf (Freie Universität Berlin)Günter Zöller (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)

Phenomenology of gendered personal identity, Gender and Political Normativity, Language and Gender, Philosophy of gender medicine, Women Philosophers (GENDER)Saray Ayala (California State University, Sacramento)Maddalena Bonelli (Università di Bergamo)Antonio Calcagno (King’s University College)Chiara Cappelletto (Università di Milano)Cristina Colombo (Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele)Marilisa D’Amico (Università di Milano)Valentina Di Mattei (Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele)Luna Donezal (University of Exeter)Massimo Filippi (Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele)Sara Heinämaa (University of Jyväskylä)Dan López De Sa (Universitat de Barcelona)Anna Loretoni (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa)Marina Sbisà (Università di Trieste)Sara Cohen Shabot (University of Haifa)Alessandra Tanesini (Cardiff University)Ingrid Vendrell Ferran (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)Lea Ypi (London School of Economics)

European Culture and Politics (IRCECP)Petar Bojanic (Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Beograd University, Serbia and Center for Advanced Studies East South Europe, University of Rijeka, Croatia)Mario De Caro (Università Roma Tre, Tufts University)Helder de Schutter (Centre for Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy, Leuven)Ioannis Evrigenis (Tufts University, Boston)Maurizio Ferrera (Università di Milano)Rainer Forst, (Goethe Universität, Frankfurt a.M.)Benedetta Giovanola (Università di Macerata)Simon Glendinning (London School of Economics, London)Francesco Guala (Center for the Study of Social Action, Università di Milano) Rahel Jaeggi (Humboldt Universität, Berlin) Erin Kelly (Tufts University, Boston)José Luis Martì (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)Alberto Martinelli (Università di Milano)Lionel McPherson (Tufts University, Boston) Patricia Mindus (Uppsala University)Philip Pettit (Princeton University)Alberto Pirni (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa)Matthias Risse (Harvard University, Boston)Andrea Sangiovanni (King’s College, London)Thomas Shelby (Harvard University, Boston)Francesco Tava (University of the West of England) Antoon Vandevelde (Leuven University)

Phenomenology and Social Ontology (PERSONA)Tiziana Andina (Università di Torino)Lynne Baker († 2017) Stefano Besoli (Università di Bologna)Jocelyn Benoist (Université de Paris 1- Sorbonne)Anna Bortolan (Swansea University)Thiemo Breyer (Köln Universität)Daniele Bruzzone (Università Cattolica Sacro Cuore, Piacenza)Emanuele Caminada (KU Leuven)Giovanna Colombetti (University of Exeter)Amedeo G. Conte († 2018) Paolo Costa (Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento)Guido Cusinato (Università di Verona, Max Scheler Gesellschaft)Paolo Di Lucia (Università di Milano)Anna Donise (Università di Napoli Federico II)Maurizio Ferraris (Università di Torino)Elio Franzini (Università di Milano)Shaun Gallagher (University of Memphis)Vittorio Gallese (Università di Parma)Margaret Gilbert (University of California, Irvine)Vanna Iori (Università Cattolica Sacro Cuore, Piacenza)Roberta Lanfredini (Università di Firenze)Dieter Lohmar (Universität zu Köln)Giuseppe Lorini (Università di Cagliari)Anna Marmodoro (University of Oxford)Verena Mayer (Ludwig Maximilian Universität München)Gloria Origgi (EHESS, Paris)Lorenzo Passerini Glazel (Università di Milano-Bicocca)Jean-Luc Petit (Université de Strasbourg, Paris)Sonja Rinofner Kreidl (Graz Universität)Stefano Rodotà († 2017) Alessandro Salice (University College Cork)Corrado Sinigaglia (Università di Milano)Paolo Spinicci (Università di Milano)Massimiliano Tarozzi (Università di Trento)Dan Zahavi (Institut for Medier, Københavns Universitet)Wojciech Żełaniec (Uniwersytet Gdański)

CONTENTS

MIND, LANGUAGE, AND THE FIRST-PERSON PERSPECTIVE

Elisabetta Sacchi, Marta Benenti, Laura Caponetto

Introduction 12

Galen Strawson

Internal and External Content: A New Alignment 18

Sam Coleman

Intentionality, Qualia, and the Stream of Unconsciousness 42

Jakub Mihálik

Inner Awareness as a Mark of the Mental 54

Davide Zottoli

Intentionality and Inner Awareness 68

Andrea Tortoreto

Intentionality and Dualism: Does the Idea that Intentionality Is the MOM Necessarily Entail Dualism? 82

Brian Ball

Intentionality, Point of View, and the Role of the Interpreter 92

Federico Zilio A Ghost in the Shell or an Anatomically Constrained Phenomenon? Consciousness through the Spatiotemporal Body 104

Maik Niemeck

Two Problems with Shoemaker’s Regress and How to Deal with Them 116

Søren Overgaard

Amodal Completion and the Impurity of Perception 126

Giulia Martina

Phenomenally-grounded Intentionality for Naïve Realists 138

Daniel S. H. Kim

Naïve Realism and Minimal Self 150

Max Minden Ribeiro

Is Presence Perceptual? 160

Tim Crane, Alex Grzankowski

The Significance of the Many Property Problem 170

Simone Nota

Wittgenstein’s Transcendental Thought Experiment in Ethics 176

Nadja-Mira Yolcu Vindicating Avowal Expressivism: A Note on Rosenthal’s Performance-Conditional Equivalence Thesis 188

MIN

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Elisabetta Sacchi, Marta Benenti, Laura Caponetto Introduction

Galen Strawson Internal and External Content: A New Alignment

Sam Coleman Intentionality, Qualia, and the Stream of Unconsciousness

Jakub MihálikInner Awareness as a Mark of the Mental

Davide ZottoliIntentionality and Inner Awareness

Andrea TortoretoIntentionality and Dualism: Does the Idea that Intentionality Is the MOM Necessarily Entail Dualism?

Brian Ball Intentionality, Point of View, and the Role of the Interpreter

Federico Zilio A Ghost in the Shell or an Anatomically Constrained Phenomenon? Consciousness through the Spatiotemporal Body

Maik Niemeck Two Problems with Shoemaker’s Regress and How to Deal with Them

Søren OvergaardAmodal Completion and the Impurity of Perception

Giulia MartinaPhenomenally-grounded Intentionality for Naïve Realists

Daniel S. H. KimNaïve Realism and Minimal Self

Max Minden RibeiroIs Presence Perceptual?

Tim Crane, Alex GrzankowskiThe Significance of the Many Property Problem

Simone Nota Wittgenstein’s Transcendental Thought Experiment in Ethics

Nadja-Mira Yolcu Vindicating Avowal Expressivism: A Note on Rosenthal’s Performance-Conditional Equivalence Thesis

MIND, LANGUAGE, AND THE FIRST-PERSON PERSPECTIVE

Phenomenology and Mind, n. 22 - 2022, pp. 12-17

DOI: 10.17454/pam-2201

https://www.rosenbergesellier.it/eng/journals/phenomenology-and-mind

© The Author(s) 2022

CC BY 4.0 Rosenberg & Sellier

ISSN 2280-7853 (print) - ISSN 2239-4028 (on line)

ELISABETTA SACCHIUniversità Vita-Salute San [email protected]

LAURA CAPONETTOUniversity of [email protected]

INTRODUCTION

MARTA BENENTI Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale “Amedeo Avogadro”[email protected]

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INTRODUCTION

This volume collects the papers presented at the “Mind, Language, and the First-Person Perspective” International Conference and School of Philosophy held at the Faculty of Philosophy, San Raffaele University, from 28th to 30th September 2021. The Conference was organized by the San Raffaele PRIN Research Unit within the “Mark of the Mental” (MOM) Research Project, with the collaboration of the San Raffaele Research Centre in Experimental and Applied Epistemology and the San Raffaele Research Centre in Phenomenology and Sciences of the Person. MOM is an interdisciplinary research project funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, and focused on whether the mental is a homogeneous domain of phenomena unified under some properties that all and only mental entities (events, states, properties) possess. The quest for what is called the “mark of the mental” characterizes both metaphysical and conceptual approaches as well as more scientifically oriented strands of research, in an effort to circumscribe the “mental realm” by distinguishing what is genuinely mental from what is not. MOM’s core research questions – Do mental phenomena have an intrinsic nature? What makes it the case that mental events, states, and properties are mental? – have long been debated in philosophy. The phenomenological tradition, pioneered by Brentano and Husserl, has taken two different (albeit connected) properties of the mental to play the mark-role. For Brentano, such a role is played by intentionality, i.e. the property of being about something or having a content, which he notoriously characterized by using the label “intentionale Inexistenz”. By contrast, for Husserl (as for Descartes before him), the mark-role is played by consciousness, i.e. the property of having a phenomenal character. In contemporary analytic philosophy of mind, both theories have been revived. Scholars have moved either in an intentionalist direction, holding that all mental states – even those that are paradigmatically phenomenal such as moods or bodily feelings – are ultimately intentional, since their phenomenal character is either identical or supervenient on their intentionality. Or they have moved in the opposite, conscientialist direction, holding that consciousness (in particular phenomenal consciousness) takes pride of place, either by reducing intentionality itself to a conscious property – phenomenal intentionality – or by taking all mental states as qualified by phenomenology, be it sensory (affecting sensations, emotions, and moods) or cognitive (affecting beliefs, expectations, and desires). Notably, no shared consensus has yet been reached on what, if anything, plays the role of the mark of the mental. A comprehensive investigation of the pros and cons of both the

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intentionalist and conscientialist approaches, and of possible alternative options – as pursued by MOM – is thus worthwhile and potentially insightful.The San Raffaele 2021 School of Philosophy and International Conference contributed to the general goal of the project by fostering a reflection on the boundaries of the mental from within the analytic and the phenomenological traditions. Contributors have dealt with the main challenges posed by the most prominent contemporary accounts of consciousness and intentionality, the overt and covert links between the two, and the possible explanatory role that traditional theories keep playing in the ongoing debate. Particular emphasis was placed on the advantages and disadvantages of applying a first-person, qualitative methodology to the study of the mental, and on the question whether the adoption of a first-person perspective can do without the lived body or should rather be considered as necessarily embedded and embodied. Finally, the School has looked into evaluative and perspectival linguistic expressions, overall drawing a rich theoretical picture of the relations between language and the first person.

The volume gathers fifteen contributions, and opens with Galen Strawson’s on mental content. In “Internal and External Content: A New Alignment”, Strawson criticizes the way in which the debate on content has been traditionally framed, namely, in terms of a contraposition between externalism and internalism, and argues for a novel way of characterizing the notions of both internal and external content. By opposing the characterization of internal content as something that can be shared among different individuals, Strawson claims that internal mental content (“I-content”, in his terminology) just is phenomenological content considered as a concretely existing phenomenon, while everything else that experience can correctly be said to be of falls within the category of external content (“E-content”). In this perspective, E-content turns out to encompass I-content. Although this may seem problematic, Strawson maintains that this is not the case insofar as I-content and E-content can be distinguished on the basis of how the former is given. “I-content”, Strawson writes, “is immediately phenomenologically given content considered just as immediately phenomenologically given”, thus “the difference between the way in which I-content is I-content and the way in which it can be E-content is no more mysterious than the difference between being in pain and thinking of being in pain […]. I can think of being in pain when I’m not in pain” (pp. 34-35). Interestingly, even though Strawson’s proposal focuses on the content of occurrent conscious mental episodes, it might also be adapted to accommodate unconscious mental content.That mental content can occur either consciously or unconsciously is something that many philosophers of mind are willing to accept, notwithstanding the widespread disagreement on how best to account for their relationship. In contrast, not so numerous are those who make room for an analogous distinction at the level of qualia. Sam Coleman is one exception. In “Intentionality, Qualia, and the Stream of Unconsciousness”, Coleman argues in favour of qualia-of-content (or content-carrying qualia), which can occur either consciously or unconsciously. The notion of unconscious qualia has been severely criticised in the literature, and Coleman tackles the main objections against it by arguing that none is ultimately insuperable. The aim he pursues is to clear the road to what he labels a “Grand Unification” on the mark of the mental, according to which “the mental mark consists in a kind of mental content, or intentionality, carried – or constituted – by mental qualities [ …] that can be phenomenally conscious, or unconscious [ …]. Hence they can provide the basis of the Freudian unconscious-mental as much as of conscious mentality” (p. 44). The three contributions that follow address the topic of the mark of the mental from different angles. In “Inner Awareness as a Mark of the Mental”, Jakub Mihálik critically assesses the idea, which he ascribes to Brentano, that being an object of inner awareness is a mark of the mental. If Brentano is right, Mihálik says, inner awareness, qua mental, should be itself an object of

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INTRODUCTION

inner awareness, and thus be conscious. Such a claim, however, has been rejected by the advocates of the Higher-Order Thought theory of consciousness. After examining an objection raised by Levine and Kriegel against the “non-conscious-inner-awareness” view, Mihálik focuses on arguments by Chalmers and Montague in support of the phenomenal presence of inner awareness and suggests that they all fail to prove it. Accordingly, he claims that non-conscious inner awareness is an open possibility and that Brentano’s idea of inner awareness as a mark of the mental looks eventually unpromising.Inner awareness is a topic addressed also by Davide Zottoli within the framework of Higher-Order Intentionalism. In “Intentionality and Inner Awareness”, Zottoli deals with the major objections against the conception of subjective character as inner awareness promoted by higher-order intentionalism. In particular, he argues that these objections can be overcome by abandoning some core theses of the theory that are not indispensable to it. According to Zottoli, the project of accounting for the existence of phenomenal consciousness in terms of meta-intentionality is still worth pursuing and “higher-order intentionalism may still be conceived as a promising framework, even without conceiving of it as an illusion” (p. 79).Intentionalism, i.e. the thesis that intentionality is the mark of the mental, is also discussed by Andrea Tortoreto, whose article (“Intentionality and Dualism: Does the Idea that Intentionality Is the MOM Necessarily Entail Dualism?”) aims to explore whether Brentano’s criterion of intentionality as a necessary and sufficient condition for something to qualify as mental commits its adherents to dualism. After discussing several criticisms against Brentano’s criterion, Tortoreto focuses on the naturalization project – that is, the attempt to account for intentionality in naturalistically acceptable terms. Against intentional naturalists’ strong reductionism, he presents an alternative position that takes intentionality as a normative property while avoiding dualism. By elaborating on suggestions traceable to Wittgenstein and Sellars, Tortoreto concludes that normative intentionalism, taken as “a third way between a radical metaphysical dualism and an absolute naturalism” (p. 90), is a very promising position in the logical space of options available.Criticisms against reductionist approaches to intentionality are raised also by Brian Ball, whose paper (“Intentionality, Point of View, and the Role of the Interpreter”) revolves around the role that subjectivity plays in determining mental content. By adopting a grammatical point of view on intentionality, Ball considers two ways in which subjectivity might be thought to have a role – one first-personal, the other second-personal. Being his explicit aim to carve out “a distinctively second-personal role for subjectivity in the determination of intentional content” (p. 95), Ball defends a form of interpretationism that, he suggests, is immune to the risks of relativism. Refining his proposal further, he clarifies the kind of relation to truth and to interestedness of the interpreter, and concludes that his methodologically non-reductive outlook on intentionality does not commit his view to metaphysical anti-reductionism.The topic of intentionality, taken as the intrinsic aboutness or directedness that characterizes consciousness, is dealt with by Federico Zilio in “A Ghost in the Shell or an Anatomically Constrained Phenomenon? Consciousness through the Spatiotemporal Body”, in an attempt to disentangle the role that the body and the environment play in shaping our experiences. On the heels of Sartre, Zilio claims that the world-disclosing activity of consciousness crucially depends on the conditions of interaction between the body and the world. He emphasizes that consciousness does not merely require the “anatomical body”, but the “spatiotemporal body”. On the grounds of this thesis, he argues that cases of apparent disembodied/disconnected consciousness (e.g. dreams, out-of-body experiences) do not actually run against his view because they do not imply the existence of a consciousness that is fully deprived of spatiotemporal corporeality.Maik Niemeck’s paper (“Two Problems with Shoemaker’s Regress and How to Deal with Them”)

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adds a further tile to the debate by assessing the topic of self-awareness. It focuses specifically on Shoemaker’s regress argument for the claim that some cases of self-awareness cannot be based on identification. While agreeing with Shoemaker that self-awareness, at its most basic level, functions independently from the ascription of identifying properties, Niemeck disagrees with the claim that this is what distinguishes self-awareness from perception. The thesis he argues for is that self-awareness and perception do not differ in their relation to identification. The point is discussed by overviewing the vast literature on singular thoughts.The five papers that follow deal with perception and its various theoretical accounts. In “Amodal Completion and the Impurity of Perception”, Søren Overgaard defends a Husserlian view of perception. He labels such a view “Impure”, in opposition to (what he calls) the “Pure” view. If the latter claims that perception is pure presentation, in the sense that it has no commitments that exceed what is given or presented in the experience itself, the former denies it. Overgaard criticizes the Pure view by focusing on amodal completion, and argues that none of the strategies available to the Purists in order to explain away amodal completion (by accounting for it in terms of non-perceptual mental states) is promising. While allowing for cases of “pure presentation”, he claims that what amodal completion shows is that at least some cases of perception are impure presentations. The purist position is thus implausible and explanatorily defective.Both Giulia Martina’s and Daniel Kim’s contributions address the pure presentational view of perception that they discuss under the label “naïve realism”. In “Phenomenally-grounded Intentionality for Naïve Realists”, Martina focuses on naïve realism and intentionality as dealt with within the phenomenal intentionality theory. Martina argues that a version of the thesis that intentionality is phenomenally grounded fits well with a naïve realist view of perceptual experience. Yet, the problem arises of how to accommodate the fact that not only veridical, but also hallucinatory perceptual experiences are intentional – even though they are not relations of awareness with the mind-independent world. Martina recommends that naïve realists embrace a disjunctivist approach: an externalist view of phenomenally grounded intentionality

for genuine perceptual experiences, while holding that hallucinations have

intentionality dependently or derivatively, insofar as we attribute it to them on the basis of their indiscriminability from, or similarity with, perceptual experiences. By adopting this approach, Martina claims, naïve realists can concede that perceptions and hallucinations have a property in common – that of being intentionally directed at apparently mind-independent entities – whilst having wholly different metaphysical natures.In “Naïve Realism and Minimal Self”, Daniel Kim argues for the fruitfulness of a naïve realist theory of perception combined with a pre-reflective model of self-consciousness derived from the phenomenological tradition – i.e. the “minimal self” view. As he claims, such a hybridization is explanatorily virtuous in that it would enable the naïve realist to develop a more adequate account of the “subjective” dimension of perceptual phenomenology. The central idea of Kim’s proposal is that, given the ‘object-directed’ nature of their account, naïve realist theories of perception have paid inadequate attention to the “subject” side of the relation that is constitutive of perception, and this theoretical gap could be fruitfully filled by appealing to the notion of minimal self as developed within the recent phenomenological literature. The topic of perceptual experience is also addressed by Max Minden Ribeiro. In “Is Presence Perceptual?”, Minden Ribeiro considers the relations between perception and visual imagination. Both perception and imagination offer a first-person perspective on visible objects, but differ in that only the former, in Minden Ribeiro’s view, can exemplify the phenomenal property of “presence”. Presence, as characterized in the paper, is “the phenomenal property of perceptual experiences, by which a perceptual object is given as a constituent of mind-independent reality such that the experience seems, by the very kind of

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INTRODUCTION

experience it is, to reveal how things are” (p. 167). Minden Ribeiro argues against competing approaches that account for presence in non-perceptual terms by appealing to empirical research on derealisation disorders, virtual reality, and hallucination. The conclusion is that none of such approaches provides independent reasons to think that presence is not instantiated by perceptual experiences.Bringing to the fore another prominent approach to perceptual experience, in “The Significance of the Many Property Problem”, Tim Crane and Alex Grzankowski deal with the so-called “many property problem”, originally put forward by Jackson as a devastating objection to adverbialism about perceptual experience. Because of this objection, adverbialism is usually treated as being of purely historical significance. In contrast, the authors argue that, far from tipping the balance in favour of certain philosophical theories of perception, the many property problem arises for all the leading metaphysical theories of experience, none of which is able to adequately account for it. Their aim, they state, is not to defend adverbialism, but to draw attention to a general problem that all theories of experience have – namely, the ad hoc character of the explanations provided for how experienced properties are connected.Simone Nota’s paper (“Wittgenstein’s Transcendental Thought Experiment in Ethics”) shifts the focus to the perspectival nature of transcendental thought experiments – that is, of those imaginative procedures that make us realize that something is a necessary condition for the representation of the world. By contrasting them with transcendental argumentation, Nota argues that the inherent perspectival and experiential character of thought experiment puts one in the right position to cast new light on ethical problems in general, and on Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics in particular. The final goal of the contribution is to clarify the Tractarian treatment of ethics by showing that there being a world is the outcome of a transcendental thought experiment and a necessary condition for the possibility of representation.The volume closes with Nadja-Mira Yolcu’s contribution, titled “Vindicating Avowal Expressivism: A Note on Rosenthal’s Performance-Conditional Equivalence Thesis”. The paper addresses Rosenthal’s claim that saying “p” has the same conditions of use of – is performance-conditionally equivalent to – saying “I believe that p”. By way of counterexamples, Yolcu argues that the equivalence does not hold in this generality, and offers an expressivist way to distinguish cases in which “p” and “I believe that p” are performance-conditional equivalent from cases in which they are not. The conclusion is that, once narrowed in scope, the performance-conditional equivalence thesis provides an argument against Rosenthal’s preferred ‘avowal descriptivism’ and in favor of ‘avowal expressivism’, i.e. the thesis that utterances such as “I believe that p” are expressive of a first-order belief.

As this presentation has highlighted, this Special Issue of Phenomenology and Mind addresses the complex relations between mind, language, and the first-person perspective from a variety of angles. We anticipate that the contributions collected in this volume will further current debates and possibly open new research paths in philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and beyond. We are particularly grateful to all scholars who took part in the Conference and School, contributed their papers, and questioned their views in the light of heated discussions. Furthermore, this volume would not have been possible without the commitment of a great number of anonymous reviewers from all over the world who accepted to collaborate with us and to whom goes our heartfelt gratitude.1

1 This volume is funded by “The Mark of the Mental” (MOM) 2017 PRIN Project (No. 2017P9E9NF_003).


DOI: 10.17454/pam-2202





GALEN STRAWSON University of Texas at [email protected]

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CONTENT: A NEW ALIGNMENT1

abstract

The debate about mental content is not well framed as internalists versus externalists, because there is both internal and external mental content. There is also a question about how best to draw the line between them, and this paper argues that this line is not usually drawn in the right place. It proposes a new alignment: the expression ‘internal content’ is to be taken to denote actually occurring, concrete, immediately phenomenologically given content. Absolutely everything else that can be said to be the content of experience is to be classified as external content. It turns out, under this new alignment, that internal content can be external content; this is the case when I think about your pain, or indeed my own pain. But this is as it should be.

keywords

Mental content; Intentionality; Representation; Aboutness; Phenomenology

1 I’m grateful for comments made by members of David Rosenthal’s Interdisciplinary Concentration in Cognitive Science seminar at the City University of New York Graduate Center in March 2010, especially David Rosenthal, Ned Block and Elisabeth Pacherie. I returned to this paper eleven years later so that I could present it at the San Raffaele School of Philosophy “Mind, Language, and the First-Person Perspective” conference in September 2021. Thanks to Sam Coleman and Max Minden Ribeiro among others for comments on that occasion, and to Alfredo Tomasetta for some written comments.

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INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CONTENT: A NEW ALIGNMENT

There’s an old question:

Q1 What is the relation between mind and world?

It’s a bad question in so far as it suggests any opposition between mind and world, because minds are wholly part of the world. The same goes for the question

Q2 What is the relation between mind and reality?

– for the same reason. It’s hardly an improvement to ask

Q3 What is the relation between mind and that part of reality (‘the world’) which is other than mind?

for if one takes this as one’s principal question one may find it hard to take adequate account of the respects in which mind, a part of reality, can and does relate to itself in ways that are in crucial respects exactly the same as the ways in which it relates to other parts of reality. I can think about my current anxiety just as I can think about India.A slightly better question, perhaps, is

Q4 What is the relation between a particular individual mind – i.e. an individual locus of conscious experience – and that vast part of reality (which includes other minds) which is other than that particular mind?

but similar doubts arise even when we narrow things down in this way (after having assumed that we can satisfactorily individuate ‘minds’). This is because there are fundamental respects in which individual minds relate to themselves, or parts of themselves, very much as they relate to parts of reality other than themselves. When we ask how an individual mind or locus of conscious experience m relates to ‘the world’, we’re often principally interested in how m relates to things in general, but things in general certainly include m itself. So too, when we’re interested in the relations minds enter into, we’re nearly always principally interested in representational relations, or intentional relations, or content relations. But there’s no good reason to exclude m itself from among the things with which it can enter into such relations.

1. Introduction

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GALEN STRAWSON

We can narrow things further and ask:

Q5 What is the relation between a particular mental occurrence, a particular episode of experience e

1, and the vast part of reality which is other than e

1?

This is another small improvement, I think, if only because we may give unnecessary hostages to fortune if we start talking about minds (as in Q4) as if they were neatly individuable things. (I’m not saying we can give precise identity conditions for episodes of experience.) But the same sort of question arises about Q5 as about Q4. If one is principally interested in the general question of what sorts of relations with reality a particular experience e

1 can enter into, whether it’s a

conscious thought or a perception or a sensation or an emotion, why start out by excluding e1

itself from consideration? It may be said that an experience can’t be about itself, but this is not so. I can think this very thought is puzzling – a thought that I find to be true when I think it.1 We can narrow things further still, and ask

Q6 What is the relation between an experience considered at a given moment – call the portion of experience so considered e* – and the vast part of reality which is other than e*? (By ‘moment’ I mean a very short period of time.)

I think that it can be helpful – interesting and important – to ask this question in certain philosophical contexts, but the same question arises about Q6 as about Q5. If one’s principal interest is in the general question of what relations with reality a particular moment of experience e* can enter into, why exclude e* itself from consideration? Perhaps the better question is simply this:

Q7 What is the relation between e* and reality considered as a whole – the universe?

There are two immediate answers. e* obviously stands in the part–whole relation to reality considered as a whole. It also stands in the relation or pseudo-relation of identity to the part of reality it is itself. But these answers aren’t very interesting. When philosophers ask about relations between particular experiences and reality in general they are as already remarked usually interested in intentional relations, representational relations, content relations. They want an answer to the question

Q8 What is it for an experience to represent something? What is it for it to be an experience of something? What is it for it to be about something?2

In short

Q9 What is it, quite generally speaking, for an experience to have content? And what is it for it to have the particular content it does?

In what follows I’m going to take Q9 to embrace all the questions that make up Q8.

1 Like many – from Aristotle to Brentano and on – I think that there’s a fundamental respect in which every experience is about itself as well as whatever else it is about. I’ll put this aside until §17.2 ‘An experience about x’ sounds odd, but conscious thoughts, dreams, and so on are experiences, and are naturally said to be about something.

2. Mental Content

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What sorts of mental content are there? There’s a familiar distinction between internal and external content. I want to try to adjust it. It’s certainly not satisfactory to take ‘external content’ in the way that many do – to cover all things that exist in what is conventionally known as ‘the external world’. Nor is it enough to add on things like numbers and concepts. I think there’s a natural way of understanding the notion of internal content according to which all the kinds of mental content that are usually divided into internal and external are most properly classified as external, while the term ‘internal content’ is reserved for phenomenological content considered as a concretely existing phenomenon.I’ll mark off this new notion of internal content by giving it a capital letter – ‘Internal content’ – and shortening this to ‘I-content’.

[1] The I-content of e1 is its phenomenological content considered as a concretely existing

phenomenon

and therefore not considered as a potentially shareable or repeatable type of content. Absolutely everything else that can be legitimately counted as the content of e

1 is external.

I’ll give this new notion of external content a capital letter – ’External content’ – and shorten this to ‘E-content’. Two things can be said straight away. First, that all shareable content is E-content, second, that the E-content of any given experience can exist without that experience existing.3 Objection. ‘You can do this if you want, but what’s the point? Your distinction is very different from the standard distinction, and philosophers are so used to the standard distinction that they will have difficulty understanding what you say.’Reply. I think, and am going to argue, that the current line between external and internal is superficial, and that its superficiality is preventing us from getting a suitably general account of what ultimately most concerns us in this debate. Suppose I arrive with a bucket and you ask me what it contains – what its content is. I tell you: potatoes. Relative to this specification of content, my bucket has the same content as many other buckets – shareable content. Now I show you the potatoes and say ‘these potatoes’ – which no other bucket contains. This is concretely existing content. Occurrent mental content is concretely existing content in the same sense. It is of course, and necessarily, content of a certain qualitative type, and is therefore potentially reduplicable, but that is no surprise. Every concretely existing entity is necessarily of some qualitative type, and hence potentially reduplicable.You’re right that the conception of internal mental content specified in [1] – I-content – is quite different from the conception of internal content that is standard in analytic philosophy, according to which internal content is essentially shareable. So what follows may not be of much interest to most analytic philosophers. But I think it’s worth a look.Let e

1 be an ordinary, vivid, veridical human perceptual experience of a river flowing under

a bridge. The first thing to say is that like any ordinary human perceptual experience (rather than a putative merely sensory experience), e

1 is a richly cognisensory episode.4 It’s as much a

matter of cognitive experience, or cognitive phenomenology, or most generally non-sense-feeling

3 This kind of externality is central to what G. E. Moore was getting at in his 1903 paper ‘The Refutation of Idealism’.4 For this useful word, see Albahari (2019, p. 7). I’m accepting for purposes of discussion an old distinction between sensation and perception according to which sensation considered just as such is non-cognitive and all perception is essentially cognitive as well as sensory – hence ‘cognisensory’. ‘Perception is in effect an implicit proposition: it is as if we said, There is an existent whose character is so and so’ (Strong, 1930, p. 17).

3. Internal Content Is Concretely

Existing Content

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GALEN STRAWSON

phenomenology, as it is of sense-feeling phenomenology.5 I like to think that almost all of us might be able to agree about this.What is e

1’s I-content? It’s the totality of e

1’s concretely occurrent, irreducibly cognisensory

phenomenological content – the totality of e1’s concretely occurrent, irreducibly cognisensory

phenomenological being. I’ll call it ‘c’. It’s a token of a certain extremely specific content-type C. c is everything about e

1 in virtue of which e

1 can be completely phenomenologically

(contentfully) identical to a numerically distinct experience e2. But it is itself trivially

(‘logically’) unshareable. One pea can’t be another qualitatively identical pea. So too c, the I-content of e

1 can’t be the I-content of e

2. I-content is an essentially private matter.

I think this is exactly what one would have supposed ‘internal mental content’ to be on first encountering the term, if one hadn’t been exposed to the debate about internal and external content in recent analytic philosophy of mind. What is e

1’s E-content? It’s not just the river and the bridge, with whatever other features of

the surrounding environment are experientially apprehended. This is because C, the complex, cognisensorily rich content-type of which e

1 is a token concrete instance, is also part of its

external content.6 C is certainly not any sort of concretely existing entity of a sort that could be a concrete part of e

1 (e

1 is itself a wholly concrete entity). It is, if you like, a (repeatable)

‘universal’. It’s what Santayana calls an ‘essence’. It’s a phenomenological essence.7

If you blink, when looking at the scene, and are transported, during your blink, to the exactly corresponding position on Perfect Twin Earth (where water is H

2O), then your post-blink

experience e2 not only has different E-content from pre-blink experience e

1 (river and bridge).

It also has different I-content; even when e1 and e

2 are phenomenologically identical. If, more

mundanely, you blink here on Earth, in such a way that your pre- and post-blink experiences are phenomenologically identical, your two experiences have the same E-content but different I-content. On this view, all traditional internal content (all ‘Twin-shareable content’) classifies as external – as E-content. It isn’t E-content because it’s a physical object out there in what is standardly called ‘the external world’, the world of tables and chairs. Nor is it E-content because it’s a concretely existing entity that is ontologically distinct from the concretely existing entity that is your current experience even though it’s not out there in ‘the external world’ as ordinarily understood (as when you think about your current pain). C, the shareable content of e

1, is neither of these things. It’s external simply because it’s not part of the actual

concrete stuff or being of e1; because it’s a type of experience, not a concrete instance or

token of experience. The mere fact that traditional internal content is shareable is sufficient to show that it’s external, as remarked. However it’s best classified ontologically, C is not an inseparable part of e

1. This is so even though it’s essential to e

1’s being the experience it is, with

the I-content (i.e. c) that it actually has, that it has precisely the traditional internal content (i.e. C) it has.

5 For discussion see Strawson (2011), where I introduce the notion of non-sense-feeling or ‘NSF’ phenomenology to secure a conveniently exclusive and exhaustive distinction between two fundamental types of phenomenology. 6 We can take e

1 to be s’s total experiential field at t, so that its content, c, includes all somatosensory content, mood

content, and so on.7 Santayana’s notion of essence varies over time (see Sprigge, 1995), and is very different from the current notion, but it is as I understand it extremely useful. The fundamental contrast Santayana has in mind is the traditional one between essence and existence, not the distinction between what is essential and what is contingent. The essence of a thing x is everything there is to (the intrinsic being of) x, considered at any given time, other than its actual existence. It’s everything about it, including everything we would normally classify as contingent, that is repeatable. It’s well defined by C.A. Strong and W.P. Montague as ‘the entire what of a thing, without its existence’ (Strong, 1918, p. 38), everything about a thing that ‘can be conceived as duplicable’ (Montague, 1938, p. 576).

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I’ll vary the point by considering Moore’s 1903 example of an experience of blue. By ‘blue’ I mean, like Moore, blue conceived of in the ordinary way as a directly visually apprehensible qualitative character. I’ll mark this meaning/use with a capital letter: Blue, and consider a specific shade of it, Blue57. Certainly, then, Blue57 is not out there in the external world of tables and chairs (Science 101). It is for all that a matter of external content relative to my current Blue57 experience. How so? Because my Blue57 current experience is a concrete token instance of a type of experiential content whose existence doesn’t depend in any way on the existence of my experience or indeed anyone else’s experience. I believe this is why Moore thought that the example of the experience of Blue was sufficient to refute idealism. It refutes idealism even if Blue is concretely exemplifiable (able to exist in the universe) only in experience, i.e. only as a determinate mode of the general determinable experience; as is I believe the case. I think that the current philosophical discussion of mental content is way off course, and that the misdirection has come to be built in to reflex ways of taking certain key words. So I’m not optimistic about being understood. So I may as well declare my hand further (this may give you a sufficient reason to stop reading, whether because you’re dismayed, or relieved that you don’t have to take me seriously): I take it to be true as a matter of fact that Blue57 concretely exists when and only when certain experiential episodes occur, experiential episodes that have a certain experiential-qualitative character. It then exists as a (‘fully objective’) property of these episodes, in such a way that it’s perfectly acceptable – straightforwardly true – to say two things that we have been told we should never say on pain of preposterousness. The first is that the experiential episodes are themselves – quite literally – Blue57. The second is that the Blue57 exists – concretely exists – in the brain. It’s certainly not ‘out there’ in the world (Science 101 again). The neurophysiologist will obviously not have Blue57 experience when examining the relevant part of the brain of someone having Blue57 experience, but no one should expect that. The type Blue57 – the thing with respect to which your and my experience can be qualitatively identical – does not (of course) concretely exist at all. And it is in itself – Moore’s point again – something wholly non-mental. It’s wholly non-mental even though (again) Blue57 can only ever concretely exist in the universe as the (I-)content of something mental: a conscious experience.

Philosophers freely attribute content to many things that invite classification under the heading mental phenomenon, including so-called dispositional mental states like beliefs and preferences. I believe one needs to be very careful about this, if only because there’s an important way of thinking about the mental according to which dispositional phenomena don’t qualify as contentful mental phenomena at all (only conscious occurrences do). I’m not going to consider this here, however.8 I’m simply going to continue to restrict attention to experiences, using the plural-accepting count noun ‘experience’ to cover all mental phenomena that are both occurrent and conscious and (therefore)9 phenomenologically contentful. I’ll use the plural-lacking mass term ‘experience’ as a general term for the phenomenological content or experiential-qualitative character or experiential ‘what-it’s-like’ of experiences.10 I’ll also assume that materialism or physicalism is true, i.e. that every concrete existent is wholly physical.11

8 See e.g. Strawson (1994, §6.6), Gertler (2007); also Loar (1987; 2003); also Schlick (1925). 9 Whatever ‘pure consciousness experience’ is, it can’t be entirely contentless and also experience.10 I am in other words going to use it to mean what many mean by ‘consciousness’. Note that the plural-accepting count noun ‘experience’ denotes episodes that may be supposed to have non-experiential qualities in addition to experiential qualities. (I use ‘quality’ in a traditional way as a perfectly general term for any sort of intrinsic property.)11 I follow Lewis (1994, p. 293) in treating ‘materialism’ and ‘physicalism’ as synonymous, although there’s more to physical being than matter. I take it that materialism has nothing to do with any sort of doubt about or denial of the

4. Moore and Blue

5. Restriction to Experience

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GALEN STRAWSON

Question. How can one hope to get a satisfactory general account of mental content if one restricts attention to occurrent mental phenomena, and indeed to conscious occurrent mental phenomena?Five replies. First, it’s often a good idea to try to give an account of a limited class of instances of a phenomenon and then see if it generalizes to other instances. Second, and as remarked, there’s an important case to be made for the view that only conscious mental phenomena – experiences – can really or strictly speaking be said to have mental content.The third reply develops the second: even if one allows that there are occurrent mental phenomena that can be rightly said to be genuinely mentally contentful in spite of the fact that they’re not conscious, there’s an extremely serious difficulty (a straightforwardly metaphysical difficulty) in the idea that non-conscious dispositional mental phenomena can literally be said to have mental content.12

The fourth reply arises from taking the second and third seriously. It may be a mistake to assume in advance that the correct account of mental content will apply to both conscious and non-conscious mental phenomena in a unified fashion. This assumption may force one into a series of Procrustean manoeuvres whose Procrustean nature may remain invisible to one because one hasn’t sufficiently examined one’s commitment to the assumption. More generally, one shouldn’t assume in advance that one knows the extension of the class of things to which a notion has proper application. One may go wrong because one is wrong about that extension. This is one reason why it can be better to start with a class of cases one is certain about and then see if one’s proposal can be extended to other cases.The fifth and balancing reply is that in some cases, and on some conceptions of what mental content is, generalization from occurrent cases to non-occurrent cases is easy and evident.

Having restricted the discussion to experiences and assumed the truth of physicalism, I should say that I’m an outright realist about experience. I’m a real realist about experience. I say this because some self-styled physicalists who claim to be realists about experience are really no such thing. Real realists about experience don’t try to avoid the issue of experience in the way some self-styled physicalists do, by doubting or overtly or covertly denying or otherwise discounting the reality of the most certainly known general natural fact about reality: the fact of (conscious) experience. Real realists about experience hold exactly the same basic general view about the nature of pain, taste experience, colour experience, and so on, as almost all other human beings, and (rightly) see no tension between this view and outright physicalism.13 It’s true that common sense is dramatically wrong about experiences in various ways.14 It is for all that entirely correct in its fundamental realism about experience – about the experiential-qualitative or qualial character of experiences. “There is but one indefectibly certain truth, and that is

existence of consciousness or experience. See e.g. Strawson (2021a). (To say that every concrete existent is physical is certainly not to say, obviously falsely, that physics can fully capture or convey the nature or essence of every concrete existent. Physics gives only a highly abstract description of reality, and plainly cannot convey the nature or essence of experience. See e.g. Russell, 1927; Eddington, 1928.)12 There are well known difficulties with Searle’s (1992) proposed solution. I make a proposal about the best one can do in Strawson (2008, §6).13 All sensible versions of physicalism explicitly deny that physics can say everything there is to say about the physical. This point is central to the doctrine of physicalism as originally introduced by members of the Vienna Circle, all of whom were real realists about consciousness.14 It isn’t aware of the ‘filling-in’ phenomena, for example (see e.g. Pessoa & de Weerd, 2003), and often thinks that colour is out there in the world just as we experience it, existing quite independently of minds.

6. Realism about Experience

25


the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, – the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists”.15

Having restricted attention to experiences, conscious occurrent mental phenomena, it’s important not to forget that conscious thoughts are experiential episodes. As such they necessarily have phenomenological content. In particular, they have cognitive-phenomenological content. They may also be said to have non-cognitive phenomenological content, i.e. sense-feeling content of some sort (they can certainly be intimately accompanied by sense-feeling content).16 But they can’t possibly qualify as conscious thoughts, rather than conscious something-elses, if they don’t have specifically cognitive-phenomenological content – where this, like all phenomenology, is wholly a matter of having a certain qualitative/experiential/phenomenological character.17

I’ll take this point for granted here. To deny the existence of cognitive phenomenology – of specifically cognitive-phenomenological experiential content – is to hold that the total lifelong character of our lived experience – everything that life is to us experientially – consists entirely of bare or pure sensation of one kind or another. In this case it must be false (to take one example) to say that one’s anguish at Lucy’s death includes conscious comprehending believing entertaining of the proposition that she is dead. I think this is enough to refute the view that there’s no such thing as cognitive phenomenology. What is most striking and painful for ordinary (real) people in such unhappy cases is the way the conscious comprehending believing entertaining of the proposition strikes again and again. It occurs in experience.18

Another way to put the point is to say that to deny the existence of cognitive phenomenology is to endorse a version of the ‘myth of the given’. It is in effect to commit oneself to the view that what is truly phenomenologically given, in human life, is merely sensory. It’s never anything like: a cow under a tree in a field. In fact, of course, almost all if not all adult human experience is cognisensory, as already remarked; it’s both cognitive and sensory, undisentanglably so.19 The undisentanglability of the cognitive and the sense-feeling elements is of course wholly compatible with the fact that the distinction between them is entirely proper and theoretically indispensable in a viable general theory of perception. It’s a philosophical mistake to think that any empirical result could ever put this point in question.

There is, then, cognitive-phenomenological content or cognitive-experiential content. It’s a wholly phenomenological matter, as its name declares, so it’s not at all the same thing as cognitive content. It’s important to be clear about the distinction between cognitive-experiential content and cognitive content – the distinction between (for example)

15 James (1896, pp. 466-467). James most certainly doesn’t deny the existence of consciousness in his 1904 paper ‘Does Consciousness Exist?’. He rejects a certain conception of what it is, in response to Moore’s 1903 paper ‘The Refutation of Idealism’.16 I take sense-feeling content to include all interoceptive and exteroceptive sensation and feeling, emotional and mood tone, and so on.17 See Montague (2015) for a decisive argument for this conclusion. It’s remarkable that many present-day philosophy of mind have theoretical commitments that – they believe – require them to deny the existence of cognitive phenomenology.18 This is not to say that the causation is as it seems in such a case. It feels as if it is (a) the constantly returning conscious comprehending believing entertaining of the proposition that Lucy is dead that produces (b) the repeated physical-emotional shock, but the causation may be different. It may be that (c) the sub-experiential, non-conscious representation of the fact of death produces (b) the physical-emotional shock, which triggers (a) the conscious comprehending entertaining of the fact; or it may be that (c) gives rise to (a) and (b) concurrently. What is not in question is the reality of (a).19 I take ‘sensory’ in a wide sense to including all feeling, including all emotional feeling.

7. Cognitive Experience (Cognitive

Phenomenology)

8. Cognitive-phenomenological

Content and Cognitive Content

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GALEN STRAWSON

[2] the proposition that nobody could possibly have had different parents (cognitive content)

and

[3] the what it’s like of comprehendingly thinking or grasping that nobody could possibly have had different parents (cognitive-experiential content)

– if one is to get clear on the distinction between I-content and E-content. For [2] and [3] are obviously very different things. I’ll come back to this.

What is mental content, i.e. (given the restriction adopted in §5) experiential content? I think that one very good answer is this:

[4] the content of an experience is what it is an experience of – everything that it’s an experience of.

I take this to be equivalent to

[5] the content of an experience is absolutely everything that is experienced in the having of the experience, everything that is experientially registered or given in any way.20

This obviously (trivially) includes all the experience’s phenomenological features, as well as anything else that can be said to be registered – a cow, for example, a tree, a field, π …. The phenomenological features are (necessarily, trivially) part of what is given in the having of the experience, and they are a large part of what will now principally concern me. Plainly the content of an experience – its being a hope or a fear, for example – is more than what the experience is about given the usual understanding of ‘aboutness’.21

This being so, it’s probably worth saying (I feel it shouldn’t be necessary, but it may be advisable given the current philosophical climate) that reference to the experiential givenness of the experience’s phenomenological features is entirely compatible with the fact that ‘the myth of the given’ is a myth.22 On this point it’s enough to repeat something that has already been said – that the phenomenological given is cognisensory through and through. That already consigns the basic ‘myth of the given’ to the realm of myth.23

20 See Montague (2009, p. 497; 2016); also Brentano (1874), at least in part (I don’t agree with his original account of what is accessible to consciousness, since he excludes genuinely external objects). I’m putting aside a number of issues about non-phenomenological content. For example: if I see Lucy, I have experience of Lucy, and may be said to have experience of Lucy full stop – Lucy considered as a whole. But there’s also a clear sense in which I don’t have experience of the side of Lucy that is hidden from me; nor of the electrons that are partly constitutive of Lucy. And so on.21 There’s an interesting line of thought that treats all the content of experience as just defined – all the of-ness of experience – as ultimately a matter of intentionality. On this view, which many will find counterintuitive, a hope that it will rain is correctly said to be intentional with respect to hope as well as rain, simply because it is indeed an experience of hope.22 On the fact that the myth is a myth see e.g. Locke (1689, 2.9.8), Strong (1923), Sellars (1932), Strawson (2021b). 23 Much more can be said. Rejecting the myth doesn’t for example involve denying that colour considered as a purely phenomenological feature is experientially given when one sees a buttercup. (It had better not, for if colour weren’t so given, one wouldn’t see the yellowness of the buttercup.) The point out is simply that the yellowness isn’t given/experienced as being a purely phenomenological feature.

9. Of-ness and Intentionality

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I’ve redefined internal content as I-content. Some may say that I’m simply changing the subject. I think it’s worth seeing what happens. It can be difficult to follow what someone is saying when they start using a standard phrase with a non-standard meaning. I hope it helps that I’ve introduced ‘I-content’ to denote the content that I think can truly be said to be internal. Whether it helps or not, it allows me to go on using the traditional term ‘internal content’ in the traditional way – to denote phenomenological-content types that can be multiply instantiated or ‘tokened’ by different subjects (and that are on my view a matter of E-content). I’ll call the traditional scheme of distinction the Int/Ext scheme, and the new scheme the I/E scheme. One could simply say that the terms ‘internal’ and ‘external’ as standardly used in the Int/Ext scheme are clumsy terms (like ‘broad’ and ‘narrow’), but that it doesn’t matter because we know what we mean by them. That’s one option. I’m trying something else. (I started this paper when I couldn’t get clear about where to draw the line between internal and external content as traditionally conceived.) Some have tried to draw the distinction by saying that external content is content whose nature can’t be specified independently of reference to the so-called external environment, while internal content is content whose nature can in principle be so specified.24 The trouble is that it’s not clear what counts as the external environment. It seems that it can’t just mean the concrete external environment, given that we think about things like (the concept of) justice or non-existence or the number 2, which are E-content when thought about.25 But the problem remains even when we put justice and 2 aside, and restrict attention to the concrete external environment. For then we face the question: external to what? External to

(a) the concrete reality of the experiencing subject considered as a whole organism?

Obviously not: when I think about my hand, my hand is external content. External then to

(b) the concrete reality of the subject of experience considered specifically in its mental aspects, as a persisting entity that is something less than a whole organism, e.g. a brain or part of a brain?

No: whenever anyone thinks about (b), (b) is external content. External then to

(c) the subject of experience’s experiences considered just as phenomenologically qualified episodes?

No. When I think about the pain I experienced yesterday, it’s E-content. It is itself concrete phenomenological content, but it’s a part of reality that is wholly other than the concrete phenomenological content of my current experience (a thought-experience). Suppose that I think about my pain today, the pain, P, I’m experiencing right now. We can

24 The ‘in principle’ is heavy, given that traditional internal content, which is by definition shareable between philosophical Twins (my Perfect Twin on Perfect Twin Earth, my Classical Twin on XYZ Earth, my Instant Twin who has just popped into existence), is undisentanglably cognisensory – as much a matter of cognitive-phenomenological or non-sense-feeling qualitative character as sense-feeling character. When I and my Twins have qualitatively identical experience of or as of seeing a cow under a tree in a field, it will be extraordinarily hard to produce an adequate purely qualitative description of the respects in which our experiences are qualitatively identical.25 Here our thoughts have external content that is fully shared by our philosophical Twins: Twin-shareability is not sufficient for internality.

10. Where Is the Line (between External and

Internal)?

28

GALEN STRAWSON

ask first how P classifies on the Int/Ext scheme (the traditional scheme). It is, intuitively, a paradigmatically internal episode, but it’s external content relative to my thought about it even on the Int/Ext scheme, just as it is relative to your thought about it. All concrete particulars are external content on the Int/Ext scheme, as already remarked; on that scheme internal content is always and only a matter of types of content.How does P classify on the current I/E scheme? It seems that it gets into the E-content of my current thought just as the Eiffel Tower does – in exactly the same way. It’s a concrete particular that is being thought about by me. Is it part of my ‘external environment’? Well, it’s something in reality that’s available to be thought about, to be taken up by my thought, and in that sense it’s ‘out there’. You can think about it too, right now, as you sympathize with me, although my Twins can’t.It may be said that my current experience is best thought of (or must be thought of) as a unified whole in such a way that both my current pain and my current thought about my current pain are part of it. In that case it seems we have to say that my pain is part of the I-content of my total current experience in occurring as it does, and also part of the E-content of my current experience in being thought about as it is being thought about. Is this a problem? Not at all. I-content becomes E-content every time anyone thinks about any actual experience, whether it’s their own or anyone else’s. On the unified-whole view of co-occurrent experience, my current pain is part of the E-content of my current overall experience, and also part of its I-content.The proposal, in sum, is this: in the case of any experience e, the best use of the term ‘internal content’ is to refer to

[6] the actual concrete being of all the actually occurring phenomenological goings on that the existence of e involves.

This has been called ‘I-content’ to distinguish it from the traditional use of ‘internal content’, but I will now take back the terms ‘internal content’ and ‘external content’ for my own use, alongside ‘I-content’ and ‘E-content’. External content is

[7] absolutely everything else (everything other than [6]) that can correctly be said to be part of the content of e.

I want now to go through a series of cases that show the proposal in action without adding any new ideas.26

My sister and I are looking at or thinking about the River Cherwell, which I’ll call ‘r1’, flowing

under the Humpback Bridge, which I’ll call ‘b1’, in the University Parks in Oxford. I’ll call my

token experience e1, and I’ll call her token experience e

2. I’ll put all names of mental contents in

square brackets, whether they’re I-content or E-content.27 e

1, my experience of the river and the bridge, has a particular overall experiential-qualitative

character. e2, my sister’s overall experience of river and bridge, is almost certainly

phenomenologically different in some respects, even if we’re both just thinking about the

26 One certainly shouldn’t exclude the ‘attitudinal’ aspects of an experience – e.g. the fact that it is a hope or a fear – from its mental content, even if one is more interested in other aspects of its content. I fear that many now hear the phrase ‘mental content’ in such a way that this obvious point doesn’t seem obvious. Plainly my fear is part of the overall mental content – the phenomenological content, the being – of my fear.27 Some of this material appears in Strawson (2011).

11. The River and the Bridge

29


bridge, and not actually looking at it (conscious thought is as much a matter of experience as conscious perception, as remarked in §7). I’m experiencing ‘Cherwell-River-flowing-under-Humpback-Bridge X-ishly’, my sister is experiencing ‘Cherwell-River-flowing-under-Humpback-Bridge Y-ishly’. More generally, and eliminating reference to particular rivers and bridges: she’s experiencing F-ish-river-flowing-under-G-ish-bridge in a Y-ish way, and I’m experiencing F-ish-river-flowing-under-G-ish-bridge in an X-ish way. Let me try to set this out more fully. I’ll use capital letters to indicate phenomenological content. I’ll put names of actual concrete occurrences (tokens) of phenomenological content in italic capitals to distinguish them from names of types of phenomenological content, which I’ll put in bold capitals, and I’ll number names of occurrences (tokens) of phenomenological content to indicate that they’re numerically distinct. We can then say that my experience e

1 has token phenomenological content [RBX1].

It is (therefore) a token occurrence of phenomenological content of type [RBX]. My sister’s experience e

2 has token phenomenological content [RBY1] and is (therefore) of

phenomenological content type [RBY].Our experiences e

1 and e

2 are probably pretty similar in certain respects, phenomenological-

contentwise. But they’re probably also different. This is pretty obvious if we’re both looking at the river and the bridge, and sensory phenomenological content is involved. It may seem a lot less obvious if only cognitive-experiential content is involved: if we’re both simply thinking of the river and the bridge, or both thinking that the River Cherwell flows under the Humpback Bridge. I’ll say something about this in due course.Our experiences are obviously identical in one respect, contentwise. They’re both of the River Cherwell and the Humpback Bridge, which is made of concrete and iron and is also sometimes known as the Rainbow Bridge. They have traditional E-content in common, which we can call [r1,b1]. But they’re different in respect of phenomenological-content type. Mine is of phenomenological content type [RBX], as remarked, and my sister’s is of phenomenological content type [RBY].We can diagram this as follows:

I E e

1 [RBX1] [r

1,b

1]

e2

[RBY1] [r1,b

1]

Where should we put the phenomenological-content types in the diagram? Plainly they’re E-content, so we extend the E-content column as follows:

I E e

1 [RBX1] [r

1,b

1]

[RBX] e

2 [RBY1] [r

1,b

1]

[RBY]

All concretely existing phenomenological content, hence all actual I-content, is of course occurrent content. [RBX] and [RBY] are types of I-content, but they’re not themselves I-content. They can’t be, because they’re not occurrent, clockable concrete phenomenological goings-on. Relative to our actual, occurrent experiences, they’re E, ‘out there’.Someone might want to list them on the I side, thus,

30

GALEN STRAWSON

I E e

1 [RBX1] [r

1,b

1]

[RBX]

e2

[RBY1] [r1,b

1]

[RBY]

on the ground that they are indeed types of I-content. But anyone who feels even in the slightest bit ‘ontological’ about them should classify them as E-content. I don’t feel particularly ontological about them myself, but even so they can’t go on the I side, in the present scheme, because they’re not actual occurrent I-content at all. They’re E, ‘out there’, given my definition of I-content as occurrent phenomenological content.

I’ll come back to this. First, though, consider one of my philosophical ‘Twins’, my newly born, hallucinating ‘Instant Twin’, say, as I have experience with I-content [RBX1] – which is of course experience of type [RBX]. My Instant Twin’s experience isn’t of any actual river or bridge, so there’s a blank in the E-content slot where I have r1 and b1. And obviously his experience isn’t numerically identical to mine. I have experience e1 and he has experience e

3:

the I-content of his experience isn’t numerically identical to mine, considered as the concrete occurrent phenomenon it is. I have an experience with I-content [RBX1] and he has an experience with I-content [RBX2]. But his experience is of course phenomenologically identical to mine: his and my experiences are both of type [RBX]. They have exactly the same content in that very clear and straightforward sense; his content may be said numerically identical to mine considered as a type of content ([RBX]).

I E e

1 [RBX1] [r

1,b

1] (me)

[RBX] e

2 [RBY1] [r

1,b

1] (my sister)

[RBY] e

3 [RBX2] [––––] (my Instant Twin)

[RBX]

What about my Twin on Perfect Twin Earth (PTE)? How does my PTE Twin’s experience, e4, classify

contentwise relative to e1–e

3, given that my Perfect Twin is looking at or thinking about a real river

and a real bridge qualitatively identical to the River Cherwell and the Humpback Bridge here on earth, a river and a bridge which we may call [r

2] and [b

2] respectively? The answer is plain:

I E e

1 [RBX1] [r

1,b

1] (me)

[RBX] e

2 [RBY1] [r

1,b

1] (my sister)

[RBY] e


[RBX] e

4 [RBX3] [r

2,b

2] (my PTE Twin)

[RBX]

12. Twins

31


And now we may as well bring in my Classical Twin Earth Twin, and add a slot to the diagram to represent the fact that my sister and I and my PTE Twin are having experience of iron (Fe) and water (H

2O). Call my Classical Twin Earth Twin’s river-bridge experience e

5, and suppose

that just as the stuff they call ‘water’ on Classical Twin Earth is xyz, so the stuff they call ‘iron’ on Classical Twin Earth is klm. The diagram is then as follows:

I E e

1 [RBX1] [r

1,b

1] (me)

[Fe, H2O]

[RBX] e

2 [RBY1] [r

1,b

1] (my sister)

[Fe, H2O]

[RBY] e


[––––] [RBX] e

4 [RBX3] [r

2,b

2] (my PTE Twin)

[Fe, H2O]

[RBX] e

5 [RBX4] [r

3,b

3] (my CTE Twin)

[klm, xyz] [RBX] All this is routine, given my starting point: the definition of I-content as concretely occurring, clockable phenomenological content.28 Plainly nothing more is going to be added on the I-content side in this diagram, given the way I’ve defined I-content; whatever else is added on the E-content side.

So far, perhaps, the I/E borderline is clear enough. On one side, there’s the I-content of the experience, the concretely occurring phenomenological content of the experience. On the other side, there’s everything else that the experience can correctly be said to be of, including numbers, phenomenological-content types, and so on.29 ‘C’est très joli’, you may say, ‘but you haven’t told me how you’re going to specify cognitive-phenomenological I-content in detail. How are you going to specify the respects in which your cognitive-phenomenological I-content is the same as your Twins’ and different from your sister’s?’I address this issue in another paper.30 Here I’m going to put it aside, because I’m concerned with something else: difficulties with the distinction – the border – between I-content and E-content. I’m approaching the difficulty in a rather oblique way, and I hope the point of doing so will become clear.

28 All externalists take content to be something that can concretely exist, in so far as they take it that rivers and bridges, trees and people can be the E-content of mental states.29 I take it that my consciously thinking about the number 2 is a real, concrete, spatiotemporally located occurrence, an experience that is correctly described as involving my being in relation to a certain content which we may call ‘the number 2’, whatever we suppose the number 2 to be.30 Strawson (2011). I think there are severe limits on what can be said about this matter, but that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t put the reality of cognitive experience (sive cognitive phenomenology) in question in any way.

13. Two Questions

32

GALEN STRAWSON

Back to the I/E border. In my scheme, it lies where I’ve made it lie by definition. The I-content of an experience is its occurrent phenomenological content. Its E-content is: every other sort of mental content it can correctly be said to have, including everything that has traditionally been called ‘internal content’: the kind of mental content that I fully share with my Twins. Plainly the I-content of one experience can be the E-content of another, as when I think about my pain, or yours. E-content picks up on ‘the world’, the surrounding environment, and my experiences (and yours) are part of the world, as are my amygdala and my pineal gland (and yours). Now suppose I consciously and understandingly think this very thought is puzzling. What happens to the I/E distinction? My thought-experience, call it e

6, has cognitive-experiential

content, like any conscious thought. It also has cognitive content, like any thought, and it seems natural to think that a thought-experience’s cognitive content is always E-content.But this appears to throw the standard internal/external content distinction into disarray. It also sounds problematic for the I/E distinction. For if a conscious thought can be about itself, then, given that its I-phenomenological content is at least part of what it itself is, it seems that its I-content is at least part of its E-content. (In saying ‘at least part of’ I’m taking e

6 to be

something more than its I-content, but one could cancel this supposition.) This doesn’t sound so good.How is it represented in a diagram of the sort I introduced earlier? If we call the cognitive-experiential content of my thought this very thought is puzzling [PUZZ/X1], we may diagram my situation with regard to mental content as follows:

I E e

6 [PUZZ/X1] [this very thought = e

6] (me)

[[PUZZ/X1]] [PUZZ/X]

Strikingly, the I-content [PUZZ/X1] features twice. It features both as actually occurring I-content and – qua object of thought – as E-content, cognitive content.31 Evidently it has to exist as actually occurring I-content in order to be available to be thought about in such a way as to be E-content.I’ve named the (cognitive-phenomenological) I-content of e

6 ‘PUZZ/X1’, rather than just

‘PUZZ1’, because I want to allow for the possibility that my sister’s cognitive-phenomenological content-type is different, even if it’s also very similar, when she thinks this very thought is puzzling:

I E e

7 [PUZZ/Y1] [this very thought = e7] (my sister)

[[PUZZ/Y1]] [PUZZ/Y]

Let me add some more detail. When I think this very thought is puzzling I know what I’m thinking, and my thinking what I’m thinking involves the conscious deployment of the concepts thought and puzzlingness. These are therefore part of its E-content, as is the proposition this very thought is puzzling.

31 There is redundancy in the list of E-contents, because the component denoted by ‘[[PUZZ/X1]]’ is literally part of the component denoted by ‘[this very thought = e

6]’.

14. This Very Thought Is Puzzling (I)

33


I E e


6]

[[PUZZ/X1]] (part of e6)

[PUZZ/X] [puzzlingness] [thought] [this very thought is puzzling]

My Instant Twin – who I take it can have thoughts (pace Davidson’s Swampman), and who isn’t debarred from thinking about puzzlingness by his instantaneity any more than he’s debarred from thinking about algebraic topology – diagrams like this:

I E e


8] (my Instant Twin)

[[PUZZ/X2]] [PUZZ/X] [puzzlingness] [thought] [this very thought is puzzling]

The same goes for my Perfect Twin Earth (e9) and my Classical Twin Earth Twin (e10

), mutatis mutandis.

We don’t have to consider immediately self-referential thoughts like this very thought is puzzling to make the point. We can consider a thought about the universe, e.g. the concretely occurring thought everything is what it is (and not another thing), which is equally about itself, as well as everything else – since any thought about everything is about itself.Suppose I consciously think that everything is F. Let [EVERYTHING FX/1] represent the cognitive-experiential content of my conscious thinking that everything is F.32 Then e

11

diagrams as follows:

I E e

11 [EVERYTHING F/X1] [everything]

[this very thought = e11

] (part of everything) [[EVERYTHING F/X1]] (part of e

11 & of everything)

[EVERYTHING F/X] [F-ness, everythingness] [everything is F]33

Am I bothered, in the words of the alarming British comedienne Catherine Tate? Am I bothered by this apparent complication? No. Once again, there’s no difficulty in the idea that I-content can be E-content. Everything that exists can be thought about in such a way as to be

32 As before the point of the ‘X’ variable is to permit representation of the possibility that the cognitive-phenomenological content of my sister’s thinking that everything is F (‘EVERYTHING F/Y1’ where X ≠ Y) is different even though it latches on to the same cognitive content.33 Again there is redundancy in the specification of the E-content of e

11 because [everything] is already everything,

but I think it’s worth naming certain other particular elements.

15. Everything Is F

34

GALEN STRAWSON

the E-content of a mental episode (in such a way as to be content according to any externalist conception of content), and I-content as defined (concretely occurring phenomenological content) is obviously one of the things that exist.34 I can think about your experience of pain now, or my experience of pain yesterday, or my experience of pain right now. In each case the I-content of my thought-experience, on the present account, is simply: what it’s like for me to have that thought, phenomenologically, and neither your pain now nor my pain yesterday nor my pain now is itself part of what it’s like to think that thought. So your pain now, and my pain yesterday and today is part of the E-content of my thought, whatever else it is or isn’t.35

There does nevertheless seem to be a problem about how exactly we should put things, given that I-content can be E-content. One possible conclusion to draw is that the internal-external content distinction isn’t a very good one, either in my I/E version or in the standard Int/Ext version. External content, we used to say, is a matter of the subject’s environment. But we soon see that we have to add the subject itself to its environment, in so far as the subject itself is a concrete item that can feature in its own experience, and indeed in what we naturally classify as the external content of its experience. And now it seems that the subject’s subjective experience, another concrete item, has to be added to the subject’s environment, in what has now become a rather theoretical sense of ‘environment’, in so far as it too is something that can possibly feature in its experience, and so be part of what we seem to be required to classify as the external/E content of its experience. This is so whether it’s thinking about its present pain, or about its experience, yesterday, of remembering something that happened a year ago. And now it seems that even the occurrent phenomenological content of the subject’s present experience needs to be added to the subject’s ‘environment’ in cases where it features as part of the E-content of the experience of which it is the I-content (e.g. in this-very-thought-is-puzzling cases).We can perhaps improve things slightly, along the lines of questions Q5 and Q6 in §1, by moving from the notion of the subject’s environment to the notion of the experience’s environment, when seeking to characterize externality in terms of surrounding environment. But this won’t help when it comes to the fact that the experience itself – including of course its I-content – is part of the E-content of the experience, given that the experience is the thought that everything is F and that it is itself part of everything.But this is not to say that there is really no such thing as I-content. Even if I-content can be E-content, we can still characterize it in a way that distinguishes it from everything else that can be E-content. It may help to say this:

I-content, i.e. concretely occurring phenomenological content, is something that is by its nature immediately phenomenologically given, in a way that nothing can possibly be

34 I obviously can’t think about things that don’t exist – they can’t possibly be part of the E-content of any thought or experience I have – but I can of course have a genuine thought with genuine E-content when I purport to think about the golden mountain (a well known example of something that doesn’t exist). For in this case my thought has wholly respectable E-content: the E-content is a concept, the complex concept uniquely instantiated golden mountain. So too, the conscious thought-experience or apparent thought-experience that I have, when I purport to think about the golden mountain which I believe to exist, has I-content in having the cognitive-experiential content it has, and so ipso facto has further E-content, i.e. the I-content type of which it is a token in having the cognitive-experiential character it has. Even if I can’t take a particular individual object outside my light cone as a particular object of thought (but why not? I can individuate something as the largest thing that exists outside my light cone if indeed there is such any such thing), I can think about it in so far as I can think generally about the universe and all the things in it.35 It may be said that a shadowy sense/feeling representation of pain is part of what it’s like to think about pain, and it may even be supposed that such a representation is itself in some way a matter of pain. But even if this were so, that pain would not itself be the pain that the thought is about.

35


given when it’s given in the sense that it is the E-content of an experiential episode (a conscious thought, say). I-content is immediately phenomenologically given content considered just as immediately phenomenologically given! In this sense it’s not just immediately phenomenologically given content. It is, to repeat, immediately phenomenologically given content as immediately phenomenologically given.36

It seems that one has to say something like this because, again, one can think consciously about immediately phenomenologically given content. One can not only think about it in general terms (as you and I are doing now in thinking about it philosophically). It seems that one can also think about one’s own currently occurring immediately phenomenologically given content. Suppose one is in pain: one has currently occurring immediately phenomenologically given pain content – call it P. Suppose one is thinking about it as one has it.37 Call this thought T. P is of course part of the content of one’s conscious thought about it, simply because it’s what T is about. But P is part of the E-content of T (which has of course its own immediately given cognitive-experiential I-content). And although P is indeed, in itself, immediately phenomenologically given content, it is not part of the content of T considered just as immediately phenomenologically given content.I’ve put the point badly so that I can make the following objection. ‘Yes it is. It’s part of the content of T as it is in itself, and it is itself, as you say, currently occurring immediately phenomenologically given content. In becoming the object of T, it doesn’t change its nature.’True. The fact remains that the occurrence of T is not the occurrence of P, although the occurrence of P is part of the content of T. It’s in this sense that P is not part of the content of T as immediately phenomenologically given content.38

This sounds rather ‘French’ (someone old-fashioned might say), but there’s nothing obscure about it. If it’s French, that just shows that we need the French, and that we sometimes need them to be very ‘French’. There is, again, no problem in the fact that I can think about your I-content, or my own, in such a way that it is then correctly said to be the E-content of the thought that I then have. This is because, when I think about it in this way, I’m not in so doing having it (I’m not having it in doing precisely and only this, sc. thinking about it). I’m not apprehending it – experiencing it or having it – immediately, or ‘from the inside’, in the way which is on the present terms (definitionally) constitutive of something’s being I-content.I submit that the I-content/E-content distinction is clear in spite of the complications introduced by experiences like thinking about everything. The difference between the way in which I-content is I-content and the way in which it can be E-content is no more mysterious than the difference between being in pain and thinking of being in pain. In fact the latter difference is a case of the former. Plainly being in pain and thinking of being in pain are different, because I can think of being in pain when I’m not in pain. I can also, of course, think about being in pain when I am in pain, and I can think about being in the very pain I am then in. In that case the pain features in my overall current experience both as I-content, simply in

36 Some like to say that the Humpback Bridge can be immediately phenomenologically given. I don’t need to reject what they have in mind when they say this, or even this way of saying it, because the Humpback Bridge certainly isn’t immediately phenomenologically given in the present sense. Only a purely experiential phenomenon can be said to be immediately phenomenologically given in the present sense, and the Humpback Bridge isn’t a purely experiential phenomenon. 37 I’ll assume here that this is possible. It may be doubted on the ground that human experience is in the final analysis strictly ‘one-track’, in such a way that one can’t simultaneously think about one’s pain and also experience it; one can only flick rapidly between the two different experiential contents.38 One can equally well, as a philosopher, think a thought about immediately phenomenologically given content as immediately phenomenologically given content. But the point just made holds good.

36

GALEN STRAWSON

being had or felt, and also as E-content, in being thought about. And in that case it is available to be thought about – to be taken as E-content – in what is essentially exactly the same way as the way in which a physical thing like a chair is available to be thought about when it is perceptually present. It can, for example, be thought about demonstratively.39 You can think about it too; you may wonder what it’s like. Although it is a ‘private’ experience of mine, it is one of the things that exists in your environment, a few yards away from you, and you know it’s there.

Let me briefly return to e6, the conscious thought this very thought is puzzling. The I-content of e

6

is also part of the E-content of e6, but the I-content of e

6 is not immediately phenomenologically

given in so far as it’s given in being part of the E-content of e6. E-content can include I-content,

as observed, but everything’s in order, because the following remains true and immutable: the phenomenon of an experience’s having E-content is never the phenomenon of an experience’s having I-content – even when part of its E-content is (as in the present case) its I-content.So to repeat: when I have a thought-experience that consists in thinking this very thought is puzzling, the I-content of the experience (sc its cognitive-phenomenological content, not its cognitive content) features twice in the full specification of its content, once as I-content and once as E-content. It features first as I-content because the thought-experience consists concretely in the cognitive experience of thinking this very thought is puzzling being immediately phenomenologically given. This phenomenon – the concretely occurring cognitive experience e

6 of thinking this very thought is puzzling being immediately

phenomenologically given – is then given again as E-content, because the experience is about itself considered as a whole, and is therefore a fortiori about one of its features, to wit, its I-content (phenomenological content). e

6 is also, of course, about the brain processes that

constitute or are it. It’s about the brain processes that constitute or are it even if their being is also in some way additional to the being of e

6’s phenomenological content (which may be

doubted); and even if one isn’t thinking about e6 considered specifically as it is characterized in

neurophysiological terms. But we needn’t consider this sort of point now.40

This description of what is going on may seem complicated, even horribly complicated, but I don’t think that it’s more complicated than the phenomenon it aims to describe. Things are rich. Thought is rich, experience is rich.

I’ve argued that there’s a key sense in which you can’t stop E-content going all the way in. It can go everywhere. It can reach everything that exists, whatever your preferred ontology. Everything that exists can be E-content. But there’s also something it can’t do. Even when it’s gone all the way in, it can’t get at the all-the-way-in phenomenon ‘from the inside’ – as it were. I-content is (again) occurrent phenomenological content experienced from the inside, occurrent phenomenological content as immediately experienced; all other mental content is E-content.I’ve put it badly again. It seems at first that we can express the relevant point simply by saying that although I-content can be E-content, I-content as immediately experienced can’t be E-content. But although the idea may seem clear enough, expressed in this way, it’s possible to take the phrase ‘as immediately experienced’ in a way in which it’s not intended, and say that it is indeed and precisely occurrent phenomenological content as immediately experienced

39 I could replace ‘a physical thing like a chair is available to be thought about when it is perceptually present’ with ‘other physical things, like chairs, are available to be thought about when perceptually present’, for according to physicalism all experiential goings-on are physical things.40 In entertaining the E-content this very thought is puzzling one is in fact thinking about the neurophysiology considered specifically as such, even though one isn’t thinking about it in the terms of neurophysiology.

16. This Very Thought Is Puzzling (II)

17. Summary

37


that can be E-content. Suppose I’m thinking about your conscious thinking. I’m taking your occurrent phenomenological content as the object of my thought, and there’s a clear sense in which I’m taking your occurrent phenomenological content just as it is, hence as it is immediately experienced (by you), as the object of my thought. The object of my thought is the occurrent phenomenological content of your thought as immediately experienced by you.I’ve suggested that we can deal with this by saying that the I-content of a given experience – say e

12 – is the phenomenological content of that very experience e

12 as immediately

given in that very experience. This allows that the I-content of e12

can be part of the E-content of some other experience, say e

13, and so allows – trivially – that the I-content of e

12 as immediately

experienced can be part of the E-content of some other experience e13

. What the I-content of e12

can’t be, of course, is part of the I-content of some other experience.We face again the case of e

6, the experience of consciously thinking that this very thought is

puzzling, where part of the E-content of the experience is its own I-content. There’s nothing problematic about this, however. For

(i) the phenomenon of [PUZZ/X1]’s being the I-content of e6

consists in

(ii) [PUZZ/X1]’s being the phenomenological content immediately given in e6,

and

(iii) the phenomenon of [PUZZ/X1]’s being part of the E-content of e6

does not consist in (ii). This is so even though it is [PUZZ/X1] considered as a whole that is part of the E-content of e

6 and although the existence of [PUZZ/X1] considered as a whole

consists wholly in its being the phenomenological content immediately given in e6. Reality is

complicated.

A further – final – question arises. It seems that it’s not just highly recondite, cognitively complex experiences, like consciously thinking this very thought is puzzling, that are experiences of themselves. There appears to be a fundamental sense in which every experience, even the most primitive sensory experience, is of itself – whatever else it may or may not be of. There appears to be a fundamental sense in which all awareness comports awareness of that very awareness, i.e. awareness of itself, AOI for short – where by ‘comports’ I mean ‘carries along in itself’, ‘contains within itself’.This time-honoured view is sometimes expressed by talking of the ‘self-intimating’ or ‘phosphorescent’ character or ‘self-luminosity’ of experience.41 I’ll call it the ‘self-intimation thesis’ – ‘Self-Intimation’ for short. Arnauld puts it by saying that “thought or perception is essentially reflective on itself, or, as it is said more aptly in Latin, est sui conscia” i.e. is conscious of itself.42 Grove uses ‘thought’ in the same general way when he writes that ‘thought is an operation that involves in it a consciousness of itself’ (1718, p. 187). It’s endorsed by many other philosophers including Descartes, La Forge, Locke, Reid, almost all Phenomenologists (including Sartre, Husserl and Heidegger), Aristotle, and many Indian

41 Ryle uses these terms (with disparaging intent) in The Concept of Mind (see e.g. pp. 158-159).42 Arnauld (1683, p. 71); he uses ‘thought or perception’ to cover all conscious mental goings on.

18. Awareness of Awareness

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philosophers.43 In the version I (and I think most of its proponents) favour, self-intimation or AOI is held to be necessary for an experience’s having any experiential character at all, i.e. any I-content (as currently defined) at all.44 All agree that this immediate awareness of awareness is an essentially ‘same-order’ matter: it’s nothing to do with any sort of explicit reflective (introspective) inspection of one’s experiences, inspection that essentially involves a (higher-order) mental state taking another (lower-order) mental state as its object.Is Self-Intimation true? I think it is, but this is a question for another time (see e.g. Dreyfus 2011, Strawson 2015). My present aim is simply to argue that it’s compatible with the present account of the distinction between I and E mental content. This may be doubted, for, on the terms of the present account, Self-Intimation amounts to the claim that all I-content, all concretely occurring phenomenological content, necessarily comports experience of itself, and so presumably has itself as content. And if of-ness of content entails externality – E-ity – of content, then if Self-Intimation is true it appears that I-content exists essentially partly because it is part of its own E-content! This not only sounds extremely puzzling; it also directly challenges the present distinction between I- and E-content. For the distinction depends on the idea that E-content doesn’t and can’t go ‘all the way in’; and E-content now seems to be threatening to do precisely this.The difficulty – seeming difficulty – arises from the supposition that of-ness entails E-ity, and it is this that I would question. Some who endorse Self-Intimation allow that of-ness entails E-ity, but deny that AOI or self-intimation is really a matter of of-ness. Sartre expresses this idea by putting parentheses round the word ‘of’. He holds that the ‘of’ is grammatically required but metaphysically quite misleading. On this view, the claim that of-ness entails E-ity is correct, but the immediate sui generis reflexivity of experience isn’t really a matter of of-ness at all. More generally, proponents of this view argue that the self-intimation of experience is not only ‘pre-reflective’, ‘immediate’, ‘immanent’, ‘implicit’, ‘non-positional’, ‘non-objectifying’, but also ‘irrelational’: fundamentally metaphysically irrelational.45

I think that this is one possible way to put things. I think it’s hard to avoid if one accepts that all experience involves AOI and allows that of-ness entails E-ity. But I see no reason to take ‘of’ in this way. I think it’s correct to say that all experience – all I-content – comports awareness of itself, in the full sense of ‘of’, and equally that it is (therefore) genuinely relational with respect to itself, and (therefore) genuinely intentional with respect to itself, and has itself as its own content. I don’t think this creates any pressure on us to say that it is part of its own E-content.Let ‘c’ stand as before for the I-content of an experience, as in §3. I distinguished earlier between

(a) c considered as immediately phenomenologically given ‘from the inside’ in the having of the experience

and

(b) c considered as something that can be part of the E-content of experiences, along with bridges and rivers.46

43 Hume also very probably held this view; see e.g. Strawson (2013, p. 151fn.). Some deny that Descartes and Locke hold it.44 I’m inclined to say that this necessity is a constitutive matter, but there appear to be certain difficulties in this idea, and some think that AOI is essential to the existence of experience without actually being constitutive of it.45 See e.g. Zahavi (1999, p. 33).46 Either other experiences, or – in the case of conscious thoughts like this very thought is puzzling or everything is F – itself.

39


To consider c in way (a) is simply to consider it as it is in and of itself – to consider it in its essential being. To consider it in way (b) is to consider it as something that is, in the current sense of ‘immediately given’, not immediately given in the experience of whose E-content it is part, although what it is in and of itself – metaphysically or ontologically – is, as just remarked, something that is immediately phenomenologically given ‘from the inside’ in the having of experience.I hope this is clear enough: the (a) phenomenon can’t exist at all, in such a way that the (b)-phenomenon can possibly exist – where the (b)-phenomenon is the phenomenon of I-content being E-content – unless AOI or self-intimation is already in place, since AOI or self-intimation is a necessary condition of the existence of any phenomenological character or content at all. And although it’s perfectly acceptable to say that the I-content of the experience has itself as content – I think this is a powerful way of expressing the sui generis self-intimating nature of consciousness – the constitutive immediacy of this relation gives us no reason to say that it involves I-content being (part of) its own E-content. Consider e

14, a two-second Red23-

experience that occurs spontaneously in the brain with no external cause. (One can think of it as a hallucination, although it needn’t be thought to be anything other than a subjective red-experience that is not an experience of something in the external environment.) As I understand it, e

14 diagrams as follows:

I E e

14 [Red23] [––––]47

[Red23]

It has no concrete E-content in being a kind of hallucination, and it is of course experience of type Red23, so [Red23] duly appears as part of its E-content.What about the fact that it’s looped on itself in the AOI way that is (i) necessary to the very existence of experience, and (ii) makes it correct to say that it is experience of itself? The present claim is simply that AOI doesn’t require us to place [Red23] in the E-content list of e

14

(even though there are cases – e.g. e6 and e

8 – in which an experience’s I-content does appear

in its E-content list). Perhaps the simplest way to represent AOI in a diagram of this sort is to draw a looping arrow from [Red23] to [Red23] on the I-content side.On this view, then, we allow that use of the word ‘of’ is appropriate in the way that it clearly seems to be, when we try to characterize the AOI that is a necessary part of any phenomenology at all; but we deny that this of-ness entails E-ity.

REFERENCESAlbahari, M. (2019). Perennial Idealism: A Mystical Solution to the Mind-Body Problem, Philosophers’ Imprint 19/44: 1-37.Arnauld, A. (1683/1990). On True and False Ideas. Trans. with an introduction by S. Gaukroger. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Brentano, F. (1874/1995). Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Introduction by Peter Simons, Trans. A.C. Rancurello, D.B. Terrell, & L. McAlister. London: Routledge.Dreyfus, G. (2010). Self and Subjectivity: A Middle Way Approach. In M. Siderits, E. Thompson,

47 In the case of e15

, an experience qualitatively identical to e14

caused in the normal way by light reflected off the surface of an object, one can fill the blank slot in accordance with one’s preferred theory of how colour is to be understood when it is conceived of as something that exists independently of colour-experience. It won’t matter that different people have qualitatively different colour experiences when they have visual experience of this surface in this light (I discuss some difficulties with this idea in Strawson, 1989).

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& D. Zahavi (eds.), Self, No Self?: Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 114-156.Gertler, B. (2007). Overextending the Mind? In B. Gertler & L. Shapiro (eds.), Arguing about the Mind. London: Routledge, 192-206.Grove, H. (1718/1748). An Essay Towards a Demonstration of the Soul’s Immateriality. In Id., Works, vol. 3, London: Waugh, 171-238.James, W. (1896/1992). The Will to Believe. In Id., Writings 1878-1899: Psychology, Briefer Course / The Will to Believe / Talks to Teachers and Students / Essays. New York: Library of America.James, W. (1904). Does Consciousness Exist? Journal of Philosophy, 1: 477–491.Lewis, D. (1994/1999). Reduction of Mind. In Id., Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 291-324.Loar, B. (1987). Subjective Intentionality, Philosophical Topics, 15: 89-124.Loar, B. (2003). Phenomenal Intentionality as the Basis of Mental Content. In M. Hahn & B. Ramberg (eds.), Reflections and Replies: Essays on the Philosophy of Tyler Burge, Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Montague, M. (2009). The Content of Perceptual Experience. In B.P. McLaughlin et al. (eds.), Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 494-511.Montague, M. (2015). The Life of the Mind. In P. Coates & S. Coleman (eds.), Phenomenal Qualities: Sense, Perception, and Consciousness, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 322-346.Montague, W.P. (1938). Mr. C. A. Strong’s Creed for Sceptics. The Journal of Philosophy, 35: 572-580.Moore, G.E. (1903). The Refutation of Idealism. Mind, 12: 433-453.Pessoa, L., De Weerd. P. (2003). Filling-In: from Perceptual Completion to Cortical Reorganization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Russell, B. (1927b). An Outline of Philosophy. London: George Allen and Unwin.Ryle, G. (1949). The Concept of Mind. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Sartre, J.-P. (1943/1969). L’Être et le néant (Being and Nothingness). Trans. H. Barnes. London: Methuen.Schlick, M. (1918–25/1974). General Theory of Knowledge, second edition. Trans. A.E. Blumberg with an Introduction by A. E. Blumberg and H. Feigl. New York: Springer-Verlag.Searle, J. (1992). The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Sellars, R.W. (1932). The Philosophy of Physical Realism. London: Macmillan.Sprigge, T.L.S. (1995). Santayana. London: Routledge.Strawson, G. (1989). Red and ‘Red’. Synthese 78/2: 193-232.Strawson, G. (1994). Mental Reality. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Strawson, G. (2008). Real Intentionality 3: Why Intentionality Entails Consciousness. In Id., Real Materialism and Other Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 281-306.Strawson, G. (2011). Cognitive Phenomenology: Real Life. In T. Bayne & M. Montague (eds.), Cognitive Phenomenology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 285-325.Strawson, G. (2013/2017). Self-intimation. In Id., The Subject of Experience, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 136-164.Strawson, G. (2021a). Oh You Materialist! Journal of Consciousness Studies, 28/9-10: 229-249.Strawson, G. (2021b).The Mechanism – the Secret – of the Given, Synthese, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03273-7Strong, C.A. (1918). The Origin of Consciousness: an Attempt to Conceive the Mind as a Product of Evolution. London: Macmillan.Strong, C.A. (1923). A Theory of Knowledge. London: Constable.Strong, C.A. (1930). Essays on the Natural Origin of Mind. London: Macmillan.Zahavi, D. (1999). Self-Awareness and Alterity: A Phenomenological Investigation. Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press.


DOI: 10.17454/pam-2203





INTENTIONALITY, QUALIA, AND THE STREAM OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS1

abstract

According to Brentano, mentality is essentially intentional in nature. Other philosophers have emphasized the phenomenal-qualitative aspect of conscious experiences as core to the mind. A recent philosophical wave – the ‘phenomenal intentionality programme’ – seeks to unite these conceptions in the idea that mental content is grounded in phenomenal qualities. However, a philosophical and scientific current, which includes Freud and contemporary cognitive science, makes widespread use of the posit of unconscious mentality/mental content. I aim to reconcile these disparate, influential strands of thought concerning mentality’s essence, by defending a conception of the mark of the mental as consisting in content-carrying qualitative character (or mental qualities) – but understood as properties that can exist both in conscious (i.e. phenomenal) form and unconsciously. I describe this conception, deal with major historical objections to the notions of unconscious qualitative character and mentality, and explain the virtues of construing the mark of the mental in this way.

keywords

Intententionality; Mental content; Consciousness; Qualia; Mental qualities; Unconscious mental content; Phenomenal intentionality; Freud; Brentano

1 Thanks to anonymous reviewers for this journal, the audience at the 2021 San Raffaele School of Philosophy, and, especially, to Jakub Mihalik for comments and discussion which aided me in this work.

SAM COLEMAN University of [email protected]

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INTENTIONALITY, QUALIA, AND THE STREAM OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS

Brentano claims that intentionality is mentality’s mark. Other philosophers say mind’s ‘essence’ lies instead in phenomenal-qualitative character, or qualia.1 Elsewhere, proponents of ‘phenomenal intentionality theory’ (PIT) promise to reconcile these conceptions by arguing that intentionality is grounded in phenomenal-qualitative character. PIT proponents claim that positing such ‘phenomenal intentionality’ solves longstanding difficulties afflicting accounts of mental content (Strawson, 1994; Mendelovici, 2018; Kriegel, 2011). Setting this consideration aside, what PIT evidently has in its favour regarding the quest for the mark of the mental is its capacity to do justice to the Brentanians as well as the friends of phenomenal-qualitative-character-qua-essentially-mental. Unification is a powerful theoretical driver.But then along comes Freud, and in his wake the leviathan of modern cognitive science, with the powerful denial that mentality is exclusively conscious. According to Freud and the scientific program he inspired, much mental-contentful activity in fact occurs below the threshold of consciousness. To explain action, Freud urges, we need more than the incomplete chains of mental-contentful processes which consciousness reveals: unconscious mental-contentful processes are posited to complete the story.If one agreed with Brentano about intentionality as mentality’s essence, and with PIT that intentionality is based in phenomenal-qualitative character or qualia,2 acknowledging Freud’s insight might naturally lead one to infer that phenomenal qualities, the mental content bearers, must also be capable of unconscious existence, and indeed that much of mental life consists of processes involving such unconscious mental qualities or ‘unconscious qualia’, as we could, courting paradox, call them.In effect, one would be swayed by this argument:

1 This conception of mind arguably has its roots in Descartes. Qualitative character, or qualia, are often taken as grounding phenomenal character, hence these notions are, arguably, strictly non-equivalent. However, sometimes ‘phenomenal character’ is used in such a way as to refer to qualitative character. I will ultimately advance a view on which the phenomenal, i.e. phenomenally conscious, and the qualitative aspect of a phenomenal state can come apart, hence my use of the term ‘phenomenal-qualitative character’. Many philosophers further see phenomenal states as involving a subjective or ‘for-me’ aspect (e.g. Kriegel, 2009). I bracket this aspect for present purposes, focusing specifically on qualitative character. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer here. 2 To simplify, I subsume in PIT philosophers who stress phenomenal-qualitative character as quintessentially mental. Naturally, these views can diverge, e.g. if one construes certain sensory qualities as non-intentional.

0. Introduction

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SAM COLEMAN

P1. Mentality is essentially intentional. (Brentano’s thesis)P2. Intentionality is essentially based in phenomenal qualities. (PIT)P3. Some mentality is unconscious. (Freud’s Thesis)So: The essence of mentality is mental qualities-of-content, which can exist in phenomenally conscious form, but also unconsciously.

Thus, a Grand Unification (GU) over mentality’s nature would seem to be within reach. Acknowledging the insights of these three camps, we might propose that the mental mark consists in a kind of mental content, or intentionality, carried – or constituted3 – by mental qualities, but mental qualities that can be phenomenally conscious,4 or unconscious. Hence they can provide the basis of the Freudian unconscious-mental as much as of conscious mentality.GU faces just one main obstacle: All the concerned parties deny that any such properties are possible. Brentano claims that all intentionality, hence mentality, is conscious. PIT proponents deny that qualitative character, hence mental content – hence, effectively, mentality – can exist unconsciously in any more than a dispositional, i.e. potential, sense.5 Even Freud, despite acknowledging unconscious mental processes, denies that they resemble the phenomenally conscious processes we recognise as mental quality-involving. As a result, he embraces mysterianism about the unconscious, and a displeasing parallelism regarding the relation of unconscious to conscious mental processes (Wakefield, 2018).My aim is to clear the road to GU, the thesis that mentality’s essence consists in mental qualities-of-content that can exist consciously or unconsciously. To this end, I will examine and rebut the major philosophical arguments against unconscious mental qualities. These arguments flow from different directions, including from Brentano himself, PIT proponents, and others. §1 clarifies the operative notion of unconscious mental qualities. §2 tackles objections to unconscious mental qualities. With this resistance overcome, §3 elaborates the merits of GU.

So far I have used terms like ‘phenomenal qualities’, ‘mental qualities’, and ‘qualia’ without clear distinction, as if they were more or less interchangeable. Of course they are not. It is pretty clear that phenomenal qualities, given the sense of ‘phenomenal’, are conscious, and so this is not a useful term with which to conduct an investigation into whether any such properties could be unconscious. ‘Qualia’, though it does not have consciousness as it were ostensibly built-in, is standardly used to refer to consciously experienced mental qualities. And, indeed, many writers do define qualia thus. Do such definitions rule out unconscious qualia as an incoherent notion from the start? It would seem not. For one thing, the terminology of qualia is disputed, or disputable: C. I. Lewis introduced qualia as properties of sense-data, and on some views sense-data could exist unconsciously (e.g. Broad, 1919, p. 128). But even if ‘qualia’ is inseparable from connotations of consciousness, that still leaves the substantive issue open, viz.: whether awareness, or experience, is essential to the distinctive qualitative properties that we, admittedly, know most directly from consciousness. I have reservations about conceding the term ‘qualia’ to those who claim that qualia are conscious by definition: I do not number this among the harmless stipulations in the world. But, since it is only a term,

3 Pitt (2004) holds that thought content consists in phenomenal qualities. Other theorists might say content is fixed or determined by, or supervenes on, phenomenal qualities. I bracket this issue.4 Whenever I use the unqualified term ‘consciousness’ I mean phenomenal consciousness.5 This is signaled by their tendency to refer to mental qualities as phenomenal qualities, connoting ineliminable consciousness: I discuss this policy, and related terminological issues, at the start of §1. Some PIT-ers who take this line to its logical extreme explicitly eliminate unconscious mentality (Strawson, 1994; Mendelovici, 2018).

1. Unconscious Mental Qualities?

45


I will talk hereon about mental qualities, in a way that leaves open prima facie whether these properties can be conscious and unconscious. What we are interested in, as philosophers, is putative arguments that mental qualities, or qualitative character, must be conscious. Whether or not it is legitimate for theorists to coin a term denoting mental qualities that are exclusively conscious, that does not address the deeper issue we wish to confront here.Nevertheless, given the standard usage of terms like ‘qualia’ and ‘phenomenal qualities’, especially by PIT proponents, it is fair to request clarification about unconscious mental qualities. Just what is the relevant understanding that leaves open whether mental qualities are conscious or not? Answering this request will also help the reader to judge what is at stake, and to assess the efficacy of my responses, regarding the arguments against unconscious mental qualities to be surveyed below.What are unconscious mental qualities? Let us start from conscious mental qualities. Some identify these with ‘intrinsic’ qualitative properties knowable through introspection or ‘acquaintance’. Others identify mental qualities by their functional roles, especially in subjects’ perception/perception-based activities.6 I will not adjudicate between these approaches. Indeed, I am inclined to combine them, and say that mental qualities are individuated by functional role, while still only fully knowable in a first-person way, via consciousness of them. But in this paper I will be ecumenical, taking either of the aforementioned aspects as criterial for mental qualities. The thesis of unconscious mental qualities is then that either the ‘intrinsic’ qualitative properties we know from consciousness and introspection can exist when we are consciously unaware of them, i.e. phenomenally unconsciously, or there are unconscious properties with the distinctive functional profiles of conscious mental qualities.7

Two images may assist the reader in grasping unconscious mental qualities in more intuitive fashion:First, naïve realists often take it that colours (which, they say, inhere in external-world surfaces/volumes) can exist just as colourfully when unperceived, e.g. when we close our eyes on a sunset. Mental qualities are naturally taken as internal mental properties, but the analogy with naïve realism otherwise sheds light. One might view internal mental colour qualities as capable of surviving, in full colourful form, the lapse of the subject’s awareness – the closing of the ‘inner-eye’. And what goes for these mental qualities is said by purveyors of unconscious mental qualities to go for others too, such as pains, qualities of thought, if such there be, etc.8

Second, Leopold Stubenberg (1998) has distinguished ‘silver-screen’ and ‘celluloid’ conceptions of qualia. Advocates of the former say that mental qualities exclusively appear on the ‘big-screen’ of consciousness. But purveyors of the latter conception imagine mental qualities somewhat like the colours of old-fashioned cinema reel, which are just as colourful when the projector (consciousness) is not illuminating them.Two specific roles of mental qualities are also worth focusing on. If we can make sense of these being played by unconscious properties that will help us grasp the notion of unconscious mental qualities. First, mental qualities are the primary properties in virtue of which experiences resemble and differ.9 If there can be such resemblances among unconscious states,

6 See, notably, Rosenthal (2005). 7 Bracketing, that is, any functionality due merely to their being conscious. For example, perhaps conscious mental qualities are cognitively accessible to the subject more easily, or in special ways, as compared with unconscious mental qualities. 8 See Lockwood’s (1989) ‘inner direct realism’ – his view being that consciousness only serves to ‘disclose’ mental qualities that are, or can be, present in the subject’s mind anyway.9 As contrasted with extrinsic resemblances, e.g. time/date. Some cite intentional content as another resemblance respect for mental qualities: but given PIT this collapses into qualitative character-based resemblance.

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of which we are by hypothesis unaware, we can say there are unconscious mental qualities. Second, when an experience features mental qualities, they are properties that fix what the experience is like, or what it’s like to be aware of the mental state given that we are aware of it. This understanding leaves open the possibility of unconscious mental qualities. It is just not obvious that the role of fixing what mental states are like when we are aware of them requires mental qualities to be eternally conscious, like lightbulbs that are never switched off.10

We can encapsulate the thesis of unconscious mental qualities by appealing to Kripkean ideas about natural kinds. Kripke’s influential thought is that many of a kind’s most striking properties may be only contingently possessed by a salient sample, and used to fix the reference of our terms to a deeper essence which is shared by the salient sample with other samples of the kind. So, although we standardly think of water as transparent, potable, etc., water lacking these properties will still count provided that it shares the essence of the salient sample – being H

2O (Kripke, 1980). In these terms, the claim about mental qualities, or

qualitative character, is that consciousness/awareness may turn out to be a reference-fixing property contingently possessed by the salient sample – those mental qualities we directly experience. With this clarification out of the way, we can turn to consider arguments against unconscious mental qualities.

Opposition to unconscious mental qualities is longstanding.11 An indicator of its current default status is that the rejection of unconscious mental qualities often features only as an implicit premise within wider chains of reasoning.12

Two further things are striking about this opposition. First, few theorists argue that mental qualities cannot be unconscious. Most stipulate, or pronounce, qualitative characters to be exclusively conscious (e.g. Kriegel, 2011, p. 86; Mendelovici, 2018; Foster, 1982, p. 101). I ignore such stipulations and pronouncements. Second, the arguments against unconscious mental qualities are surprisingly weak. I survey them below, and show that they are unpersuasive. This survey is intended, but is unlikely, to be exhaustive. I will likely have omitted an argument against unconscious mental qualities worth considering. I hope, however, that the range of responses available to purveyors of unconscious mental qualities suggests how further such arguments might be resisted, and evinces the (perhaps surprising) robustness of the posit of unconscious mental qualities.

1. Galen Strawson (2008) argues that mental qualities (‘experiential what-it-is-like-ness’, in his terms) can no more exist without consciousness than a branch-bending can exist without a branch. But this argument assumes that mental qualities are modifications of consciousness, as a branch-bending modifies a branch, and the believer in unconscious mental qualities might well deny this. Indeed, if the operative claim in Strawson’s argument is that mental

10 Nagelian ‘what-it-is-like-ness’ is another perilous term in this domain (Nagel, 1974). Sometimes it is used to pick out the qualitative character of experiences, a property I am claiming could exist unconsciously. At other times it is clearly intended to entail or involve phenomenal consciousness. One way of reading the thesis of unconscious mental qualities is as the claim that there is unconscious what-it-is-like-ness – that is, that an unconscious state can nonetheless be qualitatively ‘like something’ (cf. Snowdon, 2010; Rosenthal, 2005). In these terms, one might want to distinguish what-it-is-like-ness, or strict qualitative character, from what we could call ‘what-it-is-like-for-me-ness’, qualitative character of which the subject is also phenomenally conscious. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for flagging this issue. 11 But see Leibniz (1714), Rosenthal (2005), Lockwood (1989), Feigl (1975).12 E.g. Byrne (2013) and Tye & Wright (2011) infer that propositional attitudes, since they are (as supposed by these authors) unconscious, lack mental qualities (‘phenomenology’), without explicitly rejecting unconscious mental qualities.

2. Arguments against Unconscious Mental Qualities

47


qualities are exclusively modifications of consciousness, then this is exactly what his opponent will deny. That would make Strawson’s argument question-begging. And it does appear that no weaker thesis would serve Strawson’s purposes. For even if we grant that mental qualities are modifications of conscious mentality, it does not follow that they cannot also be modifications of unconscious mentality – just as many non-branches can bend. Strawson’s argument therefore requires the stronger, and question-begging, thesis that mental qualities are exclusively modifications of consciousness.13

2. John Searle (1992) claims that positing unconscious mental qualities entails dualism. But that conclusion, if it is unwelcome, follows only given Searle’s stated assumption that the unconscious brain exclusively features neurophysiological processes, plus the thesis, which he does not defend, that unconscious mental qualities cannot be realised by any such processes. It is unclear why Searle believes that unconscious mental qualities cannot be realised by neurophysiological process. Granted, there is a sense of ‘neurophysiological processes’ which one can hear as excluding such properties as mental qualities. But this would guarantee the dualistic result, and the focus would switch to Searle’s entitlement to that sense of ‘neurophysiological processes’ in his argument. Given the variety of reductive accounts of mental qualities in ultimately neurophysiological terms, we require reasons why unconscious mental qualities, specifically, cannot be neurophysiologically realised.It might be thought that what is really operative here is Searle’s independent argument that conscious mental qualities are irreducible to any conventional neurophysiological processes. Searle might judge unconscious mental qualities to be irreducible for the same reason, the thought would go. But we can see this reasoning is incorrect, from the fact that Searle does not believe his argument shows that conscious mental qualities entail dualism: Searle considers consciousness a distinctive (‘higher-level’) neurophysiological process. Therefore, Searle must have special reasons for holding that unconscious mental qualities in particular are neurophysiologically irreducible, so as to entail dualism. But nowhere does he say what these reasons are, nor, hence, why we should accept his argument.

3. John Foster (1982) distinguishes consciousness of a mental quality from ‘conceiving’ it. In consciousness, or sensation, he says, a mental quality – say of navy blue – is present (‘realized’), whereas in recollection or imagination it is only ‘represented’. This, he suggests, explains the phenomenological difference between sensation and recollection. Foster then assumes, for reductio, that the navy-blue mental quality can exist unexperienced, and asks in virtue of what it is that the quality can then be present-as-experienced, or instantiated, in an episode of sensation. The answer the friend of unconscious mental qualities must give, Foster claims, is that the mental quality is sensed by being the object of the subject’s awareness.14 But Foster rejects as incoherent the proposal that such an act of awareness could actually constitute the mental quality’s instantiation. The alternative, he argues, is to frame matters conversely: it is a quality’s sheer presence that provides awareness of itself – mental qualities are ‘self-revealing’, hence essentially conscious.This ingenious argument ultimately seems guilty of begging the question. The key move is that

13 This ‘argument’ might perhaps be fairly numbered among the stipulations about mental qualities. And Strawson is concerned to stress in the relevant passage something I would not wish to deny: that experiences, i.e. conscious mental qualities, require an experiencing subject (thanks to Strawson for stressing this point to me, in personal communication). Still, if this is not Strawson’s argument it could easily enough be Strawson*’s, and has sufficient prima facie force to merit inclusion in our survey. 14 This is indeed the sort of answer proponents of unconscious mental qualities often give – e.g. Rosenthal (2005).

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awareness cannot constitute the presence, or instantiation, of a mental quality in experience. Foster does not explain why he finds this proposal incoherent. But we need not dwell on that, because it just isn’t what proponents of unconscious mental qualities say. In fact, it directly contradicts their doctrine. The purveyor of unconscious mental qualities claims that mental qualities can be present/instantiated, whether or not they are objects of awareness: that is their core doctrine. So they are far from holding that awareness itself ever constitutes a mental quality’s instantiation. What they say is that awareness – to state the obvious – makes us aware of, or discloses,15 mental qualities that are (or can be) present anyway. The purveyor of unconscious mental qualities certainly owes an account of awareness, to complete their picture. And perhaps all existing models of this sort fail (Shani, 2020; Mihalik, 2019). But that is no objection to unconscious mental qualities as such,16 nor is it the line Foster takes.Behind Foster’s argument there seems to be an assumption that mental qualities have no genuine existence except as sensed. If one thought that, one might well want to ask how awareness conjures a mental quality into being, and to dismiss the suggestion that it could. But that assumption flatly contradicts the doctrine of unconscious mental qualities. This makes Foster’s argument, ultimately, question-begging.17

4. Charles Siewert identifies the issue over unconscious mental qualities as being whether unconscious states could resemble and differ in the qualitative ways that conscious states do. Could a blindsighter’s discrimination of yellow and blue conceivably involve states that differ as our visual experiences of yellow and blue do? He argues (1998, p. 88):

These experiences differ as nothing could differ without being an episode of consciousness. The differences in question are these: the way it seems to you for it to look as if something is yellow differs from the way it seems to you for it to look as if something is blue.

Siewert stresses that mental qualities are properties bound up in experiential appearances to us. Plausibly, a blindsighter’s states present no appearance to her: specifically, they do not differ regarding how things look to her. So there is a way the subject’s experiences of yellow and blue differ that cannot carry over to the blindsighter. Nonetheless, the believer in unconscious mental qualities will likely view these ‘how-things-look-colourwise’ properties as conjunctions of a mental colour quality and the subject’s awareness of this quality. In which case the bases of conscious differences, the properties in virtue of which yellow and blue differ looks-wise when the subject is aware of them, namely a certain constellation of qualitative

15 Lockwood’s (1989) term. Note that an ‘extrinsic’ account of the consciousness of mental qualities (as per Lockwood, Rosenthal 2005, Lycan 1996, and other 'higher-order' theories) is not compulsory for the advocate of unconscious mental qualities, even if it would seem a natural companion thesis. One might think that consciousness of mental qualities requires some intrinsic modification in them, such as a sprinkle of ‘consciousness dust’ or acquiring an ‘inner-glow’. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for prompting me to make this clarification.16 Notably, Shani (2020) and Chalmers (2013) – both of whom are unsympathetic with theories that posit unconscious qualities plus an appended awareness mechanism – discuss unconscious mental qualities and related models of awareness separately. 17 Another reading of Foster’s argument might make more of his distinction between sensing and conceiving: perhaps Foster holds that theories of awareness such as Rosenthal’s higher-order thought theory (2005) can only capture thinking about (conceiving) mental qualities and not consciously experiencing (sensing) them. But such an argument, however viable (or not), would require further development, which Foster does not supply. Moreover, higher-order perceptual theories of awareness, such as Lycan’s (1996), would seem on the face of it to be obviously immune, as well as, arguably, some non-standard higher-order thought theories, such as that of Coleman (2015), which invokes a mechanism of ‘mental quotation’ of unconscious mental qualities to capture experiential awareness.

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features, might well be taken to exist unconsciously. And these might be taken to resemble and differ in just the right qualitative ways to ground the relevant resemblances among the conscious appearings. If Siewert now claims that these qualitative differences can obtain only when things look or seem some way to the subject, i.e. consciously, he would seem to beg the question. In sum, though Siewert may be right in isolating a difference between conscious qualitative states that cannot be present among unconscious states (exemplified by the ‘how-things-look-colourwise’ property), this does not show that mental qualities cannot exist unconsciously. I think at root Siewert may be expressing the intuition that a colour quality cannot be present without something’s looking some way to someone (i.e. consciously). But in the context that is only an intuition, and it clearly loads the dice against the advocate of unconscious mental qualities. It requires far more in the way of support than Siewert provides, to be the basis of a persuasive argument against unconscious mental qualities.

5. Brentano (1870) claims that every mental phenomenon presents something – this is his thesis of intentionality as mentality’s mark. He additionally claims that every mental phenomenon is also the object of a presentation. Further, every presentation of an intentional object has an ‘intensity’, or strength, he affirms. For example, the hearing of a sound presents the sound with a certain intensity. The intensity of the object must be matched by its presentation, he says; since inner-perception – Brentano’s construal of consciousness – is infallible, it cannot present a strong sound as a weak one, say. It follows that the presentation of a presentation of an object must share intensity with the first-order presentation – the latter is now the object, and its representation must share its intensity. Thus, when I hear a sound with a certain intensity, the presentation of the hearing, which must accompany it since all mental phenomena are by hypothesis presented, shares its intensity – i.e. represents the hearing of the sound with the same intensity as the hearing presents the sound itself.Brentano can now infer that every mental phenomenon is presented with non-zero intensity – after all, objects or presentations of objects with zero intensity will presumably not constitute intentional states. And he concludes that every mental phenomenon is therefore conscious, by virtue of being represented with positive intensity by another mental phenomenon.In reply, one might doubt that a mental phenomenon’s being mentally represented entails consciousness (Wakefield, 2018). But if one posits unconscious mentality, one is likely to hold that consciousness consists in being suitably mentally represented.18 Given this dialectic, if Brentano can show that every mental phenomenon is represented with non-zero strength, it plausibly follows that all mental phenomena are conscious. After all, the fiercest objection he considers to his thesis of the pervasive consciousness of mental phenomena is that consciousness-as-mental-representation, plus the pervasive consciousness thesis, provokes an infinite regress of states. Brentano blocks this regress by positing unitary, self-referential, mental acts. But the thesis that mental representation enables consciousness is assumed by his objector, whose argument is that the train of mental representation must end in an unconscious state. So Brentano’s opponent arguably accepts that mental representation enables consciousness.But there are other places to attack Brentano’s argument. Even granting that all mental phenomena are intentional, it is unclear why all must also be intentional objects. This does follow from Brentano’s thesis that intentionality involves self-representational states. But

18 See e.g. Rosenthal (2005), Lycan (1996). But see Coleman (2015; 2018), Lockwood (1989).

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opponents need not accept that thesis.19 Vulnerable, too, is Brentano’s claim that the intensity of presentations of intentional objects must match their object’s intensity, and the claim he thinks entails this, that inner-perception (aka consciousness) is infallible. That all mental phenomena are represented themselves, and that consciousness is infallible, seem just the sorts of claims that advocates of unconscious mentality would reject (Rosenthal 2005, Freud 1953). I tend to grant consciousness’s accuracy, for my part. But this still leaves Brentano’s claim that all mental phenomena are not only intentional but are intentional objects. Given the proximity of the theses that a mental phenomenon is mentally represented, and that consciousness consists in mental representation of a mental phenomenon, this is not a claim I am disposed to accept. And Brentano supplies no good reason to accept it. So his argument against unconscious mentality fails.The surveyed arguments are unpersuasive. We cannot decisively rule out the existence, or future production, of a sound argument against unconscious mental qualities. But for now we are free to pursue the Grand Unification concerning the mark of the mental.

At issue is mentality’s boundaries: which phenomena to include, and which to reject, as belonging to the mind. Accordingly, we seek a characteristic – a mark – borne by those phenomena that are most plausibly considered mental, and lacked by those that are not. Furthermore, if a mark unifies phenomena that i) garner widespread support regarding their mental status, while ii) being prima facie, or often considered, distinct, that speaks powerfully in its favour. This section argues that the posit of unconscious mental qualities possesses this virtue of unifying ostensibly disparate, nonetheless plausibly mental, phenomena, providing a strikingly coherent overall conception of mind.First, there is the obvious point that if one takes seriously Brentano, PIT, and Freud on the mind’s nature, then positing unconscious mental qualities seems to be the route forward. This is the have-your-cake-and-eat-it motivation. This move is not congenial to those theoretical camps, but we have examined the arguments of Brentano, PIT proponents, and others, against unconscious mental qualities, and found them wanting.Regarding Freud things are more interesting. He does not explicitly argue for his thesis that, though there is unconscious mentality, it does not resemble conscious qualitative goings-on. Like Brentano, he construes consciousness as inner perception. Unlike Brentano, he deems the neurophysiological processes underlying consciousness to be genuinely mental, with conscious mental qualities constituting in effect inner perceptions of these processes (Wakefield, 2018). This stance involves Freud in various difficulties. For instance, he sometimes claims that the unconscious is just like conscious mentality only with consciousness removed. But that cannot be literally true unless the unconscious involves unconscious mental qualities, given that the stream of consciousness undoubtedly features mental qualities. Further, he posits unconscious mental processes because of the ‘incompleteness’ of ‘conscious sequences’, especially those leading to action. Given this incompleteness, Freud infers, consciousness is ‘dependent on something else’, and he holds that the real mental processes productive of action, etc., are unconscious, hence neurophysiological. This move excludes conscious mentality, including mental qualities, from behaviour-generating mental sequences – hence epiphenomenalism about such properties as pain, feelings of anger, conscious thoughts, etc., threatens. This is a distinctly unwelcome result for Freud’s project of a realistic empirical

19 Brentano presents it as following from the infinite regress objection, but it is only one solution, the other being unconscious representations. As an anonymous reviewer further notes, both Brentano’s identification of intentionality with presentation and his claim that presentation entails self-presentation might seem dubious.

3. The Mark of the Mental and the Stream of Unconsciousness

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psychology. That conscious mental qualities contribute to our activities is surely a premise about as certain as any in psychology. Such difficulties can be dismissed by ruling that unconscious mentality and conscious mentality are of one kind – mental quality-involving. Then Freud can cleave to his dictum that the unconscious is like consciousness only with awareness removed. And the puzzle concerning the role of feelings in action is solved: mental qualities can be said to contribute to action whether conscious or unconscious. The mind is of a single unified nature, only we are unaware of all the mental qualities our minds contain. Thus the ‘incomplete’ chains Freud observes at the conscious level are filled in by unconscious mental-qualitative processes, instead of being made redundant by wholly unconscious, mental quality-free, parallel processes. Freud should posit unconscious mental qualities.20

The lesson for Freud generalises. Those PIT proponents who acknowledge unconscious mentality must say strange things about it and its interactions with consciousness, on account of their rejection of unconscious mental qualities. For instance they say that unconscious mentality has intentionality only potentially, or, more bizarrely, that unconscious states do themselves possess content, in some sense, by virtue of being disposed to produce bona-fide conscious, mental quality-based, content.21 This is analogous to claiming that a bomb with its fuse intact is exploding right now, in a sense, thanks to its disposition to explode if lit. What the relevant sense is, nobody has explained, and it seems unintelligible. It appears to require equating dispositional property p with occurrent property p – an equivalence of which no PIT proponent has provided a single other example or precedent.22 Nor is it really intelligible how unconscious mentality, if it lacks mental qualities, hence – for PIT – genuine content, interacts with conscious mentality in chains of thought, to yield actions and inferences. This is another reincarnation of Descartes’ interaction problem, which has long plagued the philosophy of mind, and which led Freud and his contemporaries to their inelegant parallelism. All this perplexity disappears if we say that unconscious mentality has the same nature as conscious mentality – mental qualities-of-content.23

The outcome is this. As Freud noted, the stream of consciousness is incomplete, in failing wholly to account for the outputs of reasoning, and action. These chains, I say, are completed by unconscious content-qualities. When we reason, converse, think, act, this is due to mental

20 For further development of this argument, in specific connection with the issue of conscious and unconscious beliefs, see Coleman (2021).21 The locus classicus of this view is Searle (1992), but he has been largely followed by those contemporary PIT proponents who profess realism about unconscious mentality – e.g. (at least in some moods) Kriegel (2011).22 One might seem to be able to reply that mental content simply comes in two radically different kinds, qua conscious and unconscious. Yet the picture remains extremely puzzling. A disposition to produce p is said to constitute a kind (albeit another kind) of occurrent p – still no analogies or precedents seem available to make sense of this view. We must ask why the unconscious dispositional property, though a disposition to produce content, itself merits the label ‘content’. I suspect at this point that PIT proponents become more interested in what might account for our ascriptions of unconscious content, rather than in realism about unconscious content (cf. Strawson, 1994)—a suspicion that is supported by the tendency of PIT advocates to retreat, under pressure, to overt elimination of unconscious content (see e.g. Kriegel, 2011). Pitt (2016) shows commendable candour about what, so it seems to me, follows from the dispositional treatment of unconscious content – elimination.23 Does this thesis commit one to any view about the physicality/reducibility of mental qualities, or phenomenal qualities? I believe these issues are orthogonal. Rosenthal has long argued that mental qualities can be unconscious, and has faced stiff resistance despite advancing a physicalism-friendly account of such properties, and of consciousness itself. Searle, as we noted in section 2, unconvincingly claimed that unconscious mental qualities entail dualism. Relatedly, Kriegel (2011) toys with two accounts of phenomenal-intentional properties, one on which they are physical and the other on which they are irreducible, and does not come clearly down on either side. For present purposes I simply remain neutral over this issue: unconscious mental qualities are quite controversial enough, aside from one’s views about their reducibility, or not, to the physical. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for prompting me to make this clarification.

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sequences partly spanning the conscious and the unconscious mind, and which are all the while mental quality-involving. So, since the stream of consciousness is incomplete, we must posit also a stream of unconsciousness – of unconscious-but-mental-quality-involving contentful processes of essentially the same kind as their conscious counterparts. Indeed, given the intimate interplay of conscious with unconscious mental processes in human activity, we must ultimately posit a single mental content-quality stream, partly conscious and partly not. This is the mind’s true nature.

REFERENCESBrentano, F. (1874). Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. London: Routledge.Broad, C.D. (1919). Is There “Knowledge by Acquaintance”? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, 2: 206-220.Byrne, A. (2013). Review of Uriah Kriegel (ed.), Phenomenal Intentionality (Oxford University Press, 2013). Retrieved from https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/phenomenal-intentionality/.Chalmers, David J. (2013). Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism. 8th Amherst Lecture. Retrieved from http://www.amherstlecture.org/chalmers2013/chalmers2013_ALP.pdf.Coleman, S. (2015). Quotational Higher-Order Thought Theory. Philosophical Studies, 172, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0441-1.Coleman, S. (2018). The Merits of Higher-Order Thought Theories. Transformação: Revista de Filosofia. https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-3173.2018.v41esp.04.p31.Coleman, S. (2021). The Ins and Outs of Conscious Belief. Philosophical Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01669-2.Feigl, H. (1975) Russell and Schlick: A Remarkable Agreement on a Monistic Solution of the Mind-Body Problem. Erkenntnis, 9(1): 11-34.Foster, J. (1982). The Case for Idealism. London: Routledge.Freud, S. (1953). Complete Psychological Works: Standard Edition, J. Strachey (ed., trans.), London: Hogarth Press.Kriegel, U. (2011). The Sources of Intentionality. New York: Oxford University Press.Kriegel, U. (2009). Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.Kripke, S. (1980). Naming and Necessity. Harvard: Harvard University Press.Leibniz, G. W. (1714). Monadology.Lockwood, M. (1989). Mind, Brain and the Quantum. Oxford: Blackwell.Lycan, W. (1996). Consciousness and Experience. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Mendelovici, A. (2018). The Phenomenal Basis of Intentionality. New York: Oxford University Press.Mihalik, J. (2020). Panqualityism, Awareness, and the Explanatory Gap. Erkenntnis, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10670-020-00256-x.Nagel, T. (1974). What is It Like to Be a Bat? Philosophical Review, 83: 435-450;Pitt, D. (2016). Conscious Belief. Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia, 7(1): 121-126.Pitt, D. (2004). The Phenomenology of Cognition; Or What is It Like to think that P? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 69(1): 1-36.Rosenthal D., (2005). Consciousness and Mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Searle, J. (1992). The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Shani, I. (2021). Eden Benumbed: A Critique of Panqualityism and the Disclosure View of Consciousness. Philosophia, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00377-9.Siewert, C. (1998). The Significance of Consciousness. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Snowdon, P. (2010). On the What-It-Is-Like-Ness of Experience. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 48(1): 8-27.Strawson, G. (2008). What is the Relation Between an Experience, the Subject of the

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Experience, and the Content of the Experience? Real Materialism and Other Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Strawson, G. (1994). Mental Reality. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Stubenberg, L. (1998). Consciousness and Qualia. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Tye, M. & Wright, B. (2011). Is There a Phenomenology of Thought? In T. Bayne and M. Montague (Eds.), Cognitive Phenomenology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Wakefield, J. (2018). Freud and Philosophy of Mind, Volume 1. London: Palgrave Macmillan.


DOI: 10.17454/pam-2204





INNER AWARENESS AS A MARK OF THE MENTAL1

abstract

While for Brentano it is a mark of the mental that any mental state is an object of inner awareness, this suggestion is notably rejected by the Higher-Order Thought Theory (HOTT) of consciousness that posits non-conscious inner awareness, which isn’t an object of inner awareness, and yet is mental. I examine an objection against the HOTT, according to which inner awareness is phenomenally present in ordinary consciousness. To assess the objection, I investigate arguments of Chalmers and Montague in favor of this phenomenal presence. I argue that while these arguments may show that experience is not transparent, they crucially fail to demonstrate that ‘inner transparency’ must be false too, i.e. that inner awareness is phenomenally present. I conclude that non-conscious inner awareness is an open possibility and Brentano’s posit of inner awareness as a mark of the mental thus looks unpromising.

keywords

Mark of the mental; Inner awareness; Phenomenal consciousness; Higher-order-thought theory; Transparency

1 This paper is an outcome of The Consciousness & Matter Project funded by the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports from the European Structural and Investment Funds. I am grateful to audiences at the San Raffaele School of Philosophy 2021 and the Phenomenality and (Inner) Awareness workshop at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague where I presented versions of the paper, as well as to David Chalmers, James Hill, Michelle Montague, Michelle Liu, Joerg Fingerhut, two anonymous reviewers of this journal and especially Sam Coleman for written or spoken comments.

JAKUB MIHÁLIK The Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Philosophy University of [email protected]

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INNER AWARENESS AS A MARK OF THE MENTAL

Franz Brentano (1874) famously viewed intentionality as a mark of the mental, i.e. a feature that distinguishes mental phenomena from non-mental ones. It is less known that he thought that it is another mark of the mental that any mental state is a state we are aware of,1 where this ‘inner awareness’ (often called inner perception by Brentano) renders the state conscious (Brentano, 1874, p. 132).2 This notably applies to inner awareness itself: as a mental phenomenon, it is itself an object of inner awareness, hence it is conscious.3 Brentano’s suggestion that being an object of inner awareness is a mark of the mental, then, means that he viewed all mental phenomena as conscious (see Brentano, 1874, p. 143; Kriegel, 2013, p. 23). In contrast, many endorse the non-conscious-inner-awareness view, according to which we are ordinarily unaware of inner awareness, construed as non-conscious yet mental. If this view, embraced e.g. by proponents of the Higher-Order Thought Theory (HOTT) of consciousness, is correct, being an object of inner awareness cannot – pace Brentano – be a mark of the mental. I shall examine an objection against the non-conscious-inner-awareness view, raised

1 “Another characteristic which all mental phenomena have in common is the fact that they are only perceived in inner consciousness, while in the case of physical phenomena only external perception is possible” (Brentano, 1874, p. 95). Brentano attributes this idea to Hamilton, who held that consciousness is an essential element of mental phenomena (see Hamilton, 1859, p. 126).2 Brentano (1874) does not comment on whether the two marks necessitate one another. According to Kriegel (2013), he, nevertheless, saw a sort of necessitation relation between the intentional nature of mental states and their being objects of inner awareness. Kriegel (2013, p. 25) explicates what he views as Brentano’s insight by arguing that a token state is representational, hence intentional, just in case it betokens a representational type, the core tokens of which self-represent, hence are objects of inner awareness. This would mean that the intentionality mark entails that at least some token mental states must be objects of inner awareness. Dewalque (2020) agrees with Kriegel in holding that Brentano distinguished (at least) the two mentioned marks of the mental but rejects the self-representationalist reading of Brentano. He views the inner-awareness mark as self-sufficient and additional to the intentionality mark, arguing that Brentano aimed to capture several converging marks of the mental and thus arrive at a natural classification of phenomena (Dewalque, 2020, p. 28). Crucially, this issue does not affect the question of whether our phenomenology speaks against unconscious inner awareness which is my main concern in this article, and I thus remain neutral between these two interpretations.3 I use ‘inner awareness’ broadly, to denote the ubiquitous, non-introspective awareness of a mental state that renders it conscious. In characterizing this awareness as non-introspective, I am suggesting that it is not reserved for occasions of introspection, when one attends to the nature of one’s mental states. Instead I view it as necessary for even ordinary, non-introspective experience. This understanding of inner awareness is meant to remain neutral on the issue of whether this awareness itself contributes a specific phenomenology to our overall experience and is meant to allow for the view that it is not phenomenally manifest at all.

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by Joseph Levine (2018), Uriah Kriegel (2003) and others. According to this phenomenological objection, we are ordinarily aware of the awareness of our mental states, and not only of these states themselves, hence inner awareness is phenomenologically present. I shall assess the phenomenological objection in light of arguments of David Chalmers (2013) and Michelle Montague (2016) for the phenomenal presence of inner awareness. While for Chalmers the phenomenal presence of awareness that qualifies as inner awareness, as I understand it (see footnote 4), is suggested by cases of blurred vision, Montague argues that denying that inner awareness is conscious (and thus phenomenally manifest) would render mysterious the fact that we naturally distinguish between the objects we perceive, and our perceivings thereof. I will explain that while these arguments may cast doubt on the so-called ‘transparency of experience’, they fail to demonstrate that inner awareness is phenomenally present.After outlining two conceptions of inner awareness in section 1, the phenomenological objection in 2, and phenomenological testimonies that dispute it in 3, I evaluate Chalmers’s argument for conscious inner awareness in 4. I discuss Montague’s suggestion that conscious inner awareness best explains ‘Strawson’s datum’ in 5, sketching an alternative explanation consistent with the unconscious-inner-awareness view in 6. In 7, I conclude that the phenomenological objection lacks support, hence Brentano’s posit of inner awareness as a mark of the mental looks unpromising.

Since, for Brentano (1874, p. 95), any mental phenomenon is an object of inner awareness and inner awareness is itself a mental phenomenon, his account may seem to face an infinite regress: being in a mental state may seem to entail being in an infinity of mental states, which looks implausible. Brentano attempts to avert this regress by suggesting that a mental state, e.g. one of seeing a tree, isn’t conscious in virtue of being an object of another mental state that would constitute the inner awareness of the former state. Instead, the former state – apart from presenting a tree – presents itself too, thus constituting inner awareness of itself, that is of the whole state, in which both presentations are fused in a union. Brentano (1874, pp. 134-135) writes:

[…] the consciousness of the presentation of the sound clearly occurs together with the consciousness of this consciousness, for the consciousness which accompanies the presentation of the sound is a consciousness not so much of this presentation as of the whole mental act in which the sound is presented, and in which the consciousness itself exists concomitantly.

This means that Brentano would endorse the following conscious-inner-awareness thesis:

(1) The inner awareness that makes us aware of a mental state, thus making it conscious, is itself always an object of inner awareness, hence it is always conscious.

I take it that Brentano would also accept that (1) entails the following phenomenal-inner-awareness thesis:

(2) Inner awareness itself always occurs in our phenomenology, notably including ordinary, non-introspective phenomenology.

Here the idea is that one’s phenomenology, i.e. what it is like for one to be in a conscious state (Nagel 1974), involves a ubiquitous phenomenal appearance of inner awareness.(1) and (2) are rejected by proponents of the non-conscious-inner-awareness view. According to a

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popular version of this view, the HOTT, a mental state is conscious iff one has a suitable HOT that one is in that state (Rosenthal, 2002). Phenomenally conscious states, i.e. those which there is something it is like for one to undergo are thus construed as mental states we’re aware of being in.4 Crucially, HOTs are – leaving introspection aside – construed as non-conscious, which means that HOT theorists endorse the following non-conscious inner-awareness thesis:

(3) We are ordinarily unaware of our inner awareness of mental states, hence this awareness is ordinarily (i.e. in non-introspective experiences) non-conscious.

(3) is integral to the HOTT as usually formulated5 and implies the no-inner-awareness-phenomenology thesis:

(4) Inner awareness is ordinarily (i.e. in non-introspective experiences) phenomenologically absent from experience.

(4) follows from (3) since non-conscious awareness could not be phenomenally present, so there could not be inner-awareness-phenomenology associated with it. If it were phenomenally present – i.e. if it felt like something –, it would be conscious.(3) and (4) define the non-conscious-inner-awareness view. Apart from the HOT theorists, this view is endorsed, e.g., by Michael Lockwood (1989), who models awareness as an unconscious process disclosing qualitative states to us (see section 3 for discussion). The non-conscious-inner-awareness view challenges Brentano’s claim that being targeted by inner awareness is a mark of the mental since its proponents deny that inner awareness itself is ordinarily so targeted despite its being a mental act.

Levine has written the following against the HOTT’s take on an experience of a tomato:

On this theory the higher-order state is not itself conscious. But this seems phenomenologically bizarre. The consciousness of the experience of seeing the ripe tomato seems as much a matter of which we are conscious as the ripe tomato itself. How can we say that the consciousness itself is not something we are aware of from within the first-person point of view? (Levine, 2018, p. 119)

According to Levine, then, the HOTT distorts ordinary phenomenology that – apart from elements corresponding to the tomato – includes elements associated with our awareness of the tomato. Levine thus challenges (3) and (4) on phenomenological grounds, suggesting that ordinary phenomenology includes elements associated with the HOT-constituted inner awareness, hence this awareness isn’t ordinarily unconscious.When discussing peripheral elements of one’s stream of consciousness (such as sounds from the street when one is reading), Kriegel writes:

4 According to Rosenthal (e.g. 2002), this only applies to sensory states as he thinks that only those have a qualitative nature, but this restriction is non-essential to the HOTT. See footnote 17 for discussion. 5 HOT theorists endorse (3) as it is a way to block the following infinite regress: if the HOT-constituted inner awareness were construed as rendering its target mental states conscious and at the same time itself conscious, this would lead to the question of accounting for the conscious nature of inner awareness. Here inner awareness of a third order would arguably need to be invoked, but since that awareness is also conscious, we get an infinite regress. The HOTT proposal that inner awareness is non-conscious unless targeted by inner awareness of a yet higher-level (see Rosenthal, 2002) blocks the regress without invoking the controversial notion of self-representation (Kriegel, 2009).

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[…] another constant element in the fringe of consciousness is awareness of one’s concurrent experience. A full list of the peripheral elements in the […] rainbow experience would have to include awareness of that very experience. This would be peripheral inner awareness in the normal go of things […]. […] peripheral inner awareness is virtually ubiquitous, in that it “hums” in the background of our stream of consciousness with nearly absolute constancy and is absent only when replaced by focal inner awareness (Kriegel, 2009, p. 49).

According to Kriegel, then, inner awareness appears in phenomenology as a ubiquitous ‘background hum’, ruling out (3) and (4). Kriegel (2003) emphasizes that the HOTT is unable to account for this special phenomenology, with his self-representationalist alternative being more phenomenologically attractive.According to the phenomenological objection, then, inner awareness is ordinarily conscious, hence it ordinarily phenomenally appears to us, thus supporting (1) and (2) while ruling out (3) and (4) (see Chalmers [2017], Montague [2016, 2017a] for other versions of the objection). If this objection is plausible, the non-conscious-inner-awareness view cannot be correct, which supports Brentano’s conception of the marks of the mental.

Not everyone agrees that phenomenology speaks clearly for the phenomenological objection. Rosenthal (2002) denies that inner awareness is ordinarily phenomenally present arguing that it is unclear what it could feel like, qualitatively.6 Awareness-phenomenology is also rejected by Sam Coleman who defends an unorthodox form of the HOTT.7 Coleman writes:

In being aware of red, I just don’t know what my alleged awareness of my awareness of red is meant to feel like; I find only the redness. When you ask me to attend to the relational property of my being aware of the redness, still all I find is the redness (Coleman, 2017, p. 271).

Outside the HOTT camp, the phenomenological presence of inner awareness was rejected on phenomenological grounds by Russell (1921), Lockwood (1989) and others. According to Lockwood’s (1989, p. 163) so-called disclosure view, inner awareness is best described using the metaphor of a searchlight that discloses qualitative contents to us but is itself invisible to us. He writes, for example:

[…] it seems to me that we cannot be said to have a transparent conception of awareness. (Can one see the eye with which one sees?). To return to the searchlight analogy, what we see are the objects that the searchlight illuminates for us. We do not see the searchlight. Nor do we see the light: merely what the light reveals (Lockwood, 1989, p. 169).

Similarly, Russell suggests that acts of awareness, which he calls ‘sensations’ (Russell, 2021, p. 141), do not appear in phenomenology. He tells us that “the sensation that we have when we see a patch of colour simply is that patch of colour” (Russell, 1921, p. 142; see also Stubenberg, 2015).

6 In fact, I think Rosenthal would deny that HOT-constituted inner awareness is ever phenomenally present, given HOTs’ non-sensory nature (see footnote 17 for discussion).7 See also section 4.

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Since these testimonies support theses (3) and (4), it seems that appeals to phenomenology are, on their own, highly unlikely to adequately support the phenomenological objection, according to which inner awareness is ordinarily phenomenally present.8 In the absence of further arguments, we are, then, dealing with a deadlock concerning awareness-phenomenology, hence the objection cannot help the proponents of the Brentanian conception. I shall therefore now examine two arguments that can be invoked in support of the objection.

Chalmers (2013) in effect argues for a thesis closely related to the phenomenal-inner-awareness thesis (2) by invoking our ability to notice changes in visual experience that do not correspond to changes concerning the perceived external properties. When one’s vision becomes blurry because of squinting, one notices a change but nothing about the perceived objects has changed, hence the change plausibly concerns one’s experience, or a manner of one’s awareness of these objects, reasons Chalmers (2013, p. 347). This suggests, according to Chalmers, that we can notice and attend to our awareness of apparent external properties (and not just to these properties) (Chalmers, 2013, pp. 347-348).Chalmers originally used this case to argue against Benj Hellie’s (2013) transparency thesis, according to which we cannot attend to phenomenal features of experience, but rather only to sensible properties of external things. Insofar as Chalmers’s case shows that we can attend to a change in experience that doesn’t correspond to a change in the perceived properties, Hellie’s thesis cannot be true.Importantly, however, Chalmers also invokes this case when critiquing Coleman’s (2017) version of the HOTT. According to Coleman, HOTs make us aware of irreducible qualitative mental properties he calls ‘unconscious qualia’ (Coleman, 2021). While normally unconscious, these qualitative properties become conscious when they are targeted by suitable HOTs. Crucially, the awareness-constituting HOTs are always unconscious, for Coleman, hence they cannot appear in experience, ordinary or introspective.9 Against this, Chalmers (2017, p. 202) suggests that we are aware of our awareness of qualities, which means that awareness of qualities10 must appear in phenomenology, hence Coleman’s account does not do justice to phenomenology.11 In support, Chalmers invokes the case of blurred vision, although he doesn’t explain its relevance in much detail.Perhaps Chalmers’s suggestion is that while Coleman’s HOTT theory might account for the elements of phenomenology corresponding to the sensible properties of worldly things, it fails to account for the phenomenology corresponding to our being aware of these things in a certain way – first our visual awareness is clear, then it gets blurred, etc. Chalmers, then, allows that the phenomenology associated with the external properties can be accounted for in terms of the qualities our HOTs make us, according to Coleman, aware of. As our ability to notice a phenomenal change that doesn’t correspond to a change in the worldly properties indicates, however, we are at least sometimes aware of our awareness of these external

8 This is not to suggest that debates about phenomenology could not move us towards a resolution of the issue. See e.g. Zahavi & Kriegel (2015) for a suggestion that the opponents of the phenomenology of inner awareness fail to identify this phenomenology due to their misconception of its nature.9 Coleman (2017, p. 280, fn. 87) thus rejects Rosenthal’s claim that HOTs – while ordinarily unconscious – become conscious in introspection in virtue of being targeted by thoughts of a yet higher order.10 I’m leaving it open here whether the awareness of qualities Chalmers invokes counts as inner awareness and will return to this question later.11 Chalmers (2017, p. 202) writes: “It seems introspectively obvious that we are aware of qualities (indeed, I think we are aware of our awareness of qualities […]).”.

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properties too. This change arguably concerns the way we are aware of these properties: clear awareness gets blurred, for example. Since, however, we notice this change concerning our awareness of qualities, the reasoning goes, we must be aware of this awareness, hence what I call ‘inner awareness’ must sometimes be phenomenally present.12 If Chalmers’s argument is plausible, then, inner awareness at least sometimes shows up in phenomenology and since blurry vision cases, as I’ll explain, needn’t be introspective, this conclusion would rule out thesis (4), integral to the HOTT.13

While Chalmers’s argument clearly challenges Coleman’s HOTT, which denies that inner awareness is ever conscious and phenomenally manifest (Coleman, 2017, p. 280, fn. 87), it could be objected that the conclusion of the argument is compatible with the mainstream, e.g. Rosenthal’s, HOTT. According to this objection, the argument shows at most that we can become aware of inner awareness in introspection, i.e. when we attend to our mental states themselves, and not in ordinary consciousness. In reply, it’s implausible that we can only notice that our vision is (or has become) blurred when we introspect: plausibly, one can become aware of one’s vision being blurry even when one is focused on external objects. One can, for example, squint and notice the resulting blurriness while remaining fully focused on a computer screen, and thus arguably not introspecting. While looking at a beautiful Paris scenery, I may, to take another example, suddenly notice that my vision is somewhat blurrier than usual, perhaps due to fatigue (as I spent the day working on my laptop). While this observation may result in me turning attention away from the scenery to my visual states themselves, i.e. in introspecting, this turn of attention arguably need not happen (I may just continue looking at the scenery). More importantly, I wouldn’t have had a reason to start introspecting if I hadn’t become aware of my worsened eyesight while still focused on the scenery, i.e. while not introspecting. I conclude, then, that the sort of awareness of one’s awareness Chalmers invokes is far from limited to introspection and can easily occur in ordinary awareness. Chalmers’s argument, then, if successful, establishes that we are occasionally aware of inner awareness in ordinary experience, hence inner awareness is occasionally phenomenally manifest in ordinary experience. This would rule out theses (3) and (4), endorsed by the HOTT, and thus challenge the mainstream HOTT, in addition to clearly challenging Coleman’s HOTT.14

In my view, however, Chalmers’s critique, when applied to the HOTT, can be resisted. Note that in the shift from clear to blurred vision we plausibly notice a change in the manner or quality of visual awareness. Can this be the inner awareness that, according to the HOTT, makes us aware of sensory states and is normally unconscious? Here one may suggest – and this is important – that HOT theorists can account for the phenomenology of visual awareness that shifts from clear to blurred in terms of the first-order states, perhaps in combination

12 In a Facebook comment, Chalmers has pointed out to me that he wouldn’t put things this way as he doesn’t view the sensory awareness that can get blurred as inner awareness. He thinks, however, that this sensory awareness must be accounted for in terms of HOTs by Coleman’s version of the HOTT, which would mean that it is the non-introspective awareness due to which our qualitative mental states become conscious. Insofar as the awareness in question is understood in this way, it qualifies as inner awareness, as characterized in this paper (see e.g. footnote 4).13 While Chalmers’s critical target is only Coleman’s HOTT, the blurry vision case could also be raised against the mainstream HOTT which is why I’ll examine Chalmers’s argument in relation to the mainstream HOTT too.14 Even if we granted that the awareness of blurred visual awareness only occurs in introspection, the mainstream HOTT would have a hard time addressing it by invoking its account of introspection. Recall that when our awareness gets blurred, the phenomenological change is broadly sensory. The mainstream HOTT, however, construes introspection as awareness of HOTs, which, as Rosenthal (e.g. 2002) emphasizes, precisely do not have a sensory nature. It is unclear, therefore, that the mainstream HOTT’s construal of introspection can plausibly accommodate blurriness cases, even if they only occur in introspection. Still, as I shall explain, there is a natural, non-introspective, account of the blurriness case the theory can provide.

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with the way they are represented to us, and that this account is compatible with the inner-awareness-constituting HOTs not being ordinarily phenomenally present to us. It is the sensory state, after all, that, according to the HOTT, makes us aware of external properties. Instantiating this sensory state can then be characterized as being in a state of outer awareness (Kriegel 2009), awareness of worldly or bodily properties. Since the first-order state is sensory, it represents these properties qualitatively (Rosenthal, 2005, p. 119) and one would expect that this qualitative aspect should reflect a degree of clarity and blurriness. If the degree of clarity and blurriness is ‘built into’ the first-order sensory state, the shift from clear to blurred vision is a change from a clarity-involving sensory state to a blurriness-involving sensory state: Their difference, after all, clearly is qualitative. The HOT theorists, moreover, predict that we can become aware of this change if the sensory states are conscious while this inner awareness of the change is itself unconscious. Its non-conscious nature is, however, compatible with outer awareness – shifting from clear to blurred – being conscious, and appearing in phenomenology, hence accounting for our awareness of our vision becoming blurred.This response fits well with Coleman’s (2015) HOTT, according to which HOTs play no role in determining our phenomenology apart from selecting the first-order qualities that appear in consciousness. According to Rosenthal, on the other hand, the concepts employed in one’s HOTs impact one’s phenomenology: a wine connoisseur will – thanks to her richer conceptual repertoire – have a richer phenomenology than a first-time drinker, despite instantiating the same types of sensory states (Rosenthal, 2002). Rosenthal may, then, argue that our visual awareness is blurred because it is represented by HOTs as representing the world blurrily, or with poor resolution. Here HOTs play a more significant role in determining phenomenology than according to Coleman’s approach. Still, this role of inner-awareness-constituting HOTs is compatible with their not appearing in phenomenology since what determines phenomenology, according to this approach, is the sensory states that HOTs represent one to be in. What phenomenologically appears to us, then, is the content of the HOTs, i.e. what they are intentionally about, not the HOTs themselves, considered as vehicles.I believe, then, that Chalmers’s critique doesn’t succeed, as HOT theorists can hold that in the blurred vision cases, it is a change concerning outer awareness, or concerning what outer awareness is represented to be like, that accounts for the phenomenal change we’re aware of. Crucially, HOT theorists can accept that we’re aware of outer awareness, denying merely that we’re ordinarily aware of inner awareness, as captured by theses (3) and (4).

Another argument for the phenomenal-inner-awareness thesis (2) has been suggested by Michelle Montague. Montague (2016) defends a neo-Brentanian conception, according to which inner awareness – called ‘awareness of awareness’ or simply ‘AOA’ by Montague – is conscious and phenomenally present for us nebenbei, or ‘by the way’. She writes:

Brentano’s idea here, which I endorse, is that AOA is not only an awareness of the awareness [presentation] of the sound, but of the entire conscious episode, which includes AOA itself. This self-revelatory nature of consciousness allows us to catch a glimpse of AOA (Montague, 2017a, p. 378).

Here inner awareness is portrayed as phenomenally present in non-introspective experience, as (2) requires, hence we can ‘catch a glimpse’ of it. Its phenomenal presence is for Montague captured by the idea that conscious experience is self-revelatory, revealing its nature to us.Crucially, according to Montague (2016), the existence of conscious inner awareness is the best explanation of a feature of experience she calls P.F. Strawson’s datum. Strawson (1979/2002, p. 98) describes this feature as follows:

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[I]t seems to me as certain as anything can be that […] we distinguish, naturally and unreflectively, between our seeings and hearings and feelings – our perceivings – of objects and the objects we see and hear and feel […].

Our distinguishing between perceivings, and perceived objects is thus not a matter of reflection, but rather a part of mature visual experience for Strawson. This datum is, Montague suggests, best accommodated if we posit conscious inner awareness. In particular, the datum is naturally explained, according to Montague, by the fact that in experience, apart from being aware of worldly features, we are also aware of the experience itself and that we are aware of experience as what it is, due to its self-revelatory nature (Montague, 2017b, p. 2). It is thanks to conscious inner awareness, then, that we are aware of experience as what it is and thus as distinct from the objects we experience, which allows us to make the natural distinction between our perceivings and the perceived objects, required by Strawson (Montague, 2016, p. 77).To demonstrate the significance of conscious inner awareness, Montague contrasts her view with the strong transparency thesis (Kind, 2003), which, she explains, conflicts with the existence of conscious inner awareness (Montague, 2016, p. 72). This thesis states that

(5) it is impossible to become aware of our perceptual experience or its (intrinsic) features.

Here experience is construed as a transparent medium that makes us aware of external features, but never of itself. Montague correctly observes, I believe, that if (5) is true, it’s unclear how we could (unreflectively) make the distinction between our perceivings and the objects perceived, required by Strawson’s datum, since it is unclear how we could then be aware of our perceivings as perceivings. Transparency, Montague (2016, p. 77) argues, should then be rejected. Conscious inner awareness, on the other hand, looks like a prime candidate to account for Strawson’s datum, she concludes.Here someone could object that non-conscious inner awareness could make us aware of experience and help us account for Strawson’s datum equally well. In reply, Montague seems to hold that only if inner awareness is conscious, experience is truly self-revealing: since inner awareness is what (partially) constitutes experience, if inner awareness were unconscious, then experience wouldn’t be self-revealing. Only if inner awareness is conscious, can we be aware, according to Montague, of experience as what it is, i.e. as experience, which then allows us to make, naturally and unreflectively, the distinction required by Strawson. Only conscious inner awareness can, then, play the required explanatory role with respect to Strawson’s datum. If, on the other hand, inner awareness is ordinarily unconscious, as according to the HOTT, then it only makes us aware of its qualitative contents, but not of itself. This arguably means that, if inner awareness is unconscious, we are not aware of experience as what it is, i.e. as awareness of mental contents. Insofar as the explanation of Strawson’s datum requires that we are aware of experience as experience, Montague, I think, rightly invokes conscious inner awareness.Montague’s argument can be summarized as follows:

a) We naturally and unreflectively distinguish between our perceivings, and the things we perceive (Strawson’s datum).

b) This fact is best explained by the fact that we are constitutively aware of our experience as what it is.

c) We are constitutively aware of experience as what it is (conscious inner awareness).

Can proponents of the non-conscious-inner-awareness view resist this abductive argument? Since Strawson’s datum, expressed in (a), looks plausible and since conscious inner awareness,

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expressed in (c), is incompatible with the non-conscious-inner-awareness view, the most promising line of resistance is to question step (b). I shall now examine this line of resistance.Recall first why Strawson’s datum challenges the strong transparency thesis (5). If (5) is true, all we seem to be aware of in visual experience are external properties; our experience, or perceivings, don’t enter phenomenology. As a result, it becomes mysterious how the datum could be accommodated (Montague, 2016, pp. 77–84). It is, however, unclear that HOT theorists are committed to strong transparency (henceforth only ‘transparency’). To see this, recall that while the case of blurred vision (Chalmers, 2013) plausibly rules out transparency (see Smith 2008), it can be accommodated, as explained in section 4, by the HOTT. The moral there was that the case can be accounted for in terms of unconscious inner awareness of our states of outer awareness, which means that HOT theorists can allow that phenomenology – in addition to apparent external properties – also reflects how we are sensorily aware of these properties: for example, the fact that this awareness is clear or blurred. This can be expressed as the following phenomenal-outer-awareness thesis:

(6) Our outer (e.g. visual) awareness phenomenally contributes to ordinary phenomenology.

(6) rules out the view that the only properties we are aware of in consciousness are external properties, which is associated with the transparency thesis. Instead, if (6) is plausible, outer awareness is not (always) transparent.The suggestion that HOT theorists can allow that outer awareness isn’t transparent, which I argued for in section 4, is consistent with their view that we are ordinarily unaware of the inner awareness that makes us aware of outer awareness, as expressed in the non-conscious-inner-awareness thesis (3). Allowing that outer awareness itself, and not only its objects, contributes to phenomenology is, then, consistent with inner awareness not appearing in phenomenology, as expressed in the no-inner-awareness-phenomenology thesis (4). The HOT theorists can then allow that outer awareness isn’t transparent while consistently endorsing the following inner-transparency thesis:

(7) Inner awareness isn’t ordinarily phenomenally present, hence it’s ordinarily transparent.

These considerations indicate that proponents of the non-conscious-inner-awareness view may be able to explain Strawson’s datum after all. If, as (6) suggests, the way we perceive worldly objects – and not only sensible properties of these objects – is at least sometimes present in phenomenology and we are thus aware of it, then we are presumably also at least sometimes aware of the distinction between the perceivings and the perceived objects. The blurred vision case helps here: when our perceiving becomes blurred because of squinting, we don’t normally think the perceived object has changed. This suggests that experiences like these, in which the phenomenological contribution of (outer) perceivings (as opposed to the contributions associated with the objects perceived) becomes salient, enable us to make the distinction between perceivings and perceived objects. To be clear, I don’t believe we make this distinction on the mere basis of experiences of blurred vision. When we blink, our visual experience changes (or perhaps is disrupted) while we do not normally think that the objects changed, or that their existence was disrupted too (unless we enter a pseudo-Berkeleyan mode of thinking). Similarly, if one moves their head while looking at a computer screen, their visual perceivings will change, while they normally think that the screen, i.e. the object perceived, remained unchanged.

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It seems to me that in having experiences like these we, naturally and unreflectively, make the distinction between our perceivings and the objects perceived, since such experiences (likely together with other perceptual experiences) taught us, during early-childhood practical encounters with the world, that perceivings can change (e.g. become blurred) without the objects perceived changing and, more generally, that perceivings are distinct from their objects. Crucially, since – as I explained in section 4 – HOT theorists can endorse the phenomenal-outer-awareness thesis (6), they are able to account for such experiences. Their theory, after all, allows them to make sense of both the phenomenal features associated with the external objects presented by outer (sensory) awareness, and the phenomenal flavorings contributed by outer awareness itself: depending on the version of the HOTT, they will account for these either in terms of the first-order qualitative states (Coleman), or in terms of the first-order states in combination with the HOTs that represent them (Rosenthal). This means that they can argue that, in being conscious, we are aware of outer awareness in addition to being aware of various external properties, and in early practical encounters with the world we learn to distinguish between the two, so that distinguishing between them becomes natural and unreflective for us, mature subjects. If this suggestion is plausible, then, awareness of experience ‘as what it is’ is – pace Montague – not needed to account for Strawson’s datum, since awareness of outer awareness, which the HOT theorists can make sense of, can be invoked to account for the datum too.

I conclude that proponents of the non-conscious-inner-awareness view can reject premise (b) of Montague’s argument as they can provide an account of Strawson’s datum that looks at least equally plausible as the one that appeals to conscious inner awareness.15 If my reasoning is plausible, then, Montague’s and Chalmers’s arguments fall short of establishing that inner awareness of sensory states is phenomenally present for one, which means that proponents of the non-conscious-inner-awareness view can reject the phenomenological objection.16 This

15 Montague (2016) also provides another argument for conscious inner awareness, according to which this posit best explains our attributions of properties in visual experiences. The idea here is that in virtue of our being consciously aware of various properties of our experience, e.g. phenomenal colours, we attribute corresponding objective properties, e.g. colours as seen, (that resemble these due to having the same intrinsic nature) to external objects. In reply, a closely related way of attributing sensory properties to external objects seems to be also available to the proponents of the HOTT, who hold that we are (unconsciously) aware of qualitative contents of experience (even though we are not strictly aware of experience) and who could allow that in virtue of this awareness we attribute corresponding sensory properties to external objects. Proponents of the HOTT thus arguably can explain such property attributions equally well as proponents of conscious inner awareness. Proper discussion of this nuanced argument will have to wait for another occasion.16 It could be suggested that there is another way for the HOT theorist to resist the objection. Recall that Rosenthal (e.g. 2002) holds that HOTs make one aware of one’s being in mental states. One could think that this renders one’s self, i.e. the subject of the conscious state, constantly phenomenally present for one, in addition to the sensory state’s being phenomenally present. One could then resist the phenomenological objection by suggesting that its proponents simply misdescribe this phenomenology of the self as the phenomenology of inner awareness. This proposal, if successful, would support my main claim that the phenomenological objection is unpersuasive. I don’t think this proposal withstands scrutiny, however. While Rosenthal thinks HOTs make one aware of the self, he would reject, I believe, the suggestion that we have any phenomenology associated with the self when we’re aware of it (as opposed to the phenomenology associated with the sensory states themselves). To see this, recall that Rosenthal holds that only conscious sensory states involve “what-it’s-likeness” (see Rosenthal, 2002, p. 412). His reasoning seems to be that only sensory (and not, e.g., purely intentional) states instantiate qualitative properties, which is why when these states are targeted by HOTs the resulting consciousness involves what-it’s-likeness. Non-sensory mental entities, such as thoughts, or, crucially, the self, conceived as a ‘raw bearer’ of mental states (see Rosenthal, 2005, p. 342), arguably lack any qualitative properties, since these are always associated with a distinct sensory modality (Rosenthal, 2004, p. 163). Being non-qualitative, they do not appear in our overall phenomenology, or what-it’s-likeness, Rosenthal would arguably say. This line or resistance to the phenomenological objection thus looks unpromising. Even if it could

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removes a crucial obstacle for their claim that inner awareness need not be an object of inner awareness and can thus exist unconsciously, which means that at least some mental states need not be objects of inner awareness. Brentano’s suggestion that being an object of inner awareness is a mark of the mental then looks unpromising in the end.

REFERENCESBrentano, F. (1874/2015). Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. London: Routledge;Chalmers, D. (2013). The Contents of Consciousness. Analysis, 73(2): 345-368;Chalmers, D. (2017). The Combination Problem for Panpsychism. In G. Brüntrup & L. Jaskolla (eds.), Panpsychism. Contemporary Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press, 179-214;Coleman, S. (2015). Quotational Higher-Order Thought Theory. Philosophical Studies, 172(10): 2705-2733;Coleman, S. (2017). Panpsychism and Neutral Monism: How to Make Up One’s Mind. In G. Brüntrup & L. Jaskolla (eds.), Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives, New York: Oxford University Press, 518-596;Coleman, S. (2021). The Ins and Outs of Conscious Belief. Philosophical Studies. DOI:10.1007/s11098-021-01669-2;Dewalque, A. (2020). The Phenomenology of Mentality. In D. Fisette, G. Fréchette, & H. Janoušek (eds.), Franz Brentano’s Philosophy After One Hundred Years. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 23-40;Hamilton, W. B. (1859). Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic. Vol. 1. Boston: Gould & Lincoln;Hellie, B. (2013). Against Egalitarianism. Analysis, 73: 304-320;Kind, A. (2003). What’s so Transparent about Transparency? Philosophical Studies, 115(3): 225-244;Kriegel, U. (2003). Consciousness, Higher-Order Content and the Individuation of Vehicles. Synthese, 134: 477-504;Kriegel, U. (2009). Subjective Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Kriegel, U. (2013). Brentano’s Most Striking Thesis: No Representation without Self-representation. In D. Fisette, & G. Frechette (eds.), Themes from Brentano. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 23-40;Levine, J. (2018). Conscious Awareness and (Self-)Representation. In J. Levine, Quality and Content. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 105-125;Lockwood, M. (1989). Mind, Brain and the Quantum. Oxford: Blackwell;Montague, M. (2016). The Given. Experience and its Content. New York: Oxford University Press;Montague, M. (2017a). What Kind of Awareness is Awareness of Awareness? Grazer Philosophische Studien, 94: 359-380;Montague, M. (2017b). A Response to Martina and Wimmer’s Review of The Given. Philosophical Psychology 30(7): 1-5;Nagel, T. (1974). What Is It Like to Be a Bat? Philosophical Review, 83(4): 435-450;Rosenthal, D. (2002). Explaining Consciousness. In D. Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of mind. Classical and contemporary readings. New York: Oxford University Press, 406-421;Rosenthal, D. (2004). Being Conscious of Ourselves. The Monist 87(2): 159-181;Rosenthal, D. (2005). Consciousness and Mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press;Russell, B. (1921). The Analysis of Mind. London: George Allen and Unwin;Smith, A.D. (2008). Translucent Experiences. Philosophical Studies, 140: 197-212;

be made to work, it is crucially unavailable to Coleman who denies that the HOTs, construed as quotational frames, involve any reference to the self (see e.g. Coleman, 2015).

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Strawson, P. F. (1979/2002). Perception and Its Objects. In A. Noe & E. Thompon (eds.), Vision and Mind, Cambridge: MIT Press, 91-110;Stubenberg, L. (2015). Russell, Russellian Monism, and Panpsychism. In T. Alter & Y. Nagasawa (eds.), Consciousness in the Physical World, New York: Oxford University Press, 58-90.Zahavi, D., Kriegel U. (2015). For–me–ness. What It Is and What It Is Not. In D. Dahlstrom, A. Elpidorou, & W. Hopp (Eds.), Philosophy of Mind and Phenomenology. Conceptual and Empirical Approaches. New York: Routledge, 36-53.


DOI: 10.17454/pam-2205





DAVIDE ZOTTOLIUniversità Vita-Salute San [email protected]

INTENTIONALITY AND INNER AWARENESS

abstract

The contemporary discussion on the subjective character of conscious experience is characterized by a stark contrast between higher-order intentionalism, according to which any state of awareness depends on the instantiation of intentional properties by mental states, and anti-intentionalism, according to which the inner awareness constitutive of subjective experience is fundamentally different from ordinary instances of external or introspective awareness, in that one’s experience is not given to the subject as an ordinary intentional object. The purpose of this paper is to outline the most fundamental dimensions of variation among the different kinds of higher-order theories and to show, by providing a comprehensive analysis of the logical space available, that these seemingly incompatible views can be reconciled within an intentionalist framework.

keywords

Intentionalism; Inner awareness; Higher-order theories of consciousness; Illusionism

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Whenever there is something it is like to be in a mental state, certain phenomenal properties are instantiated by that state. Those properties constitute the state’s phenomenal character, which consists of a qualitative character (what it is like for a subject to be in that state) and a subjective character (the state’s for-me-ness). Since conscious states differ with respect to their qualities but share the same subjective character, accounts of qualitative character determine the identity conditions of phenomenal character, whereas theories of subjective character, by abstracting from determinate qualitative properties, explain why only certain mental states get a phenomenal character in the first place (Kriegel, 2009, p. 75).Higher-order intentionalism accounts for the existence of subjective character in terms of inner awareness of one’s mental states, which is in turn explained by means of meta-intentionality. That is, on higher-order theories, conscious states are conceived as “mental states we are conscious of being in” (Rosenthal, 1986, p. 26), and inner awareness is taken to be constituted by the instantiation of higher-order intentional properties directed at the first-order states made thereby conscious.In what follows, I will assess the major objections raised against the conception of subjective character as inner awareness proposed by higher-order theorists. After introducing the main challenges to the standard versions of the higher-order theory present in the relevant literature, I will argue that those objections raise genuine and substantial problems (section 2). Then I will introduce the self-representationalist formulation of higher-order intentionalism and argue that it is much better equipped to address those concerns than standard higher-order theories (section 3). Finally, I will argue that self-representationalism, despite its appeal, shares with standard higher-order theories a further, deeper problem: because of their reliance on the notion of representation, neither theory can genuinely explain how our first-order mental states become conscious (section 4). Thus, I will conclude by suggesting that higher-order intentionalism may still be conceived as a promising framework for understanding the nature of phenomenal consciousness only by questioning its representationalist commitments (section 5).

Higher-order theorists have traditionally debated over the nature of the psychological mode characteristic of inner awareness. According to the higher-order perception theory, the higher-order states responsible for the existence of inner awareness have a quasi-perceptual nature (Armstrong, 1980; Lycan, 1987), whereas on the higher-order thought theory the relevant higher-order states are taken to be thought-like (Rosenthal, 1986). However, despite their differences, these higher-order theories share the following distinctive theses:

1. Introduction: Consciousness and

Intentionality

2. Standard Higher-Order

Intentionalism

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– Distinctness. The higher-order properties responsible for the constitution of inner awareness are instantiated by mental states numerically distinct from the states made conscious.

– Extrinsicness. The property of having a phenomenal character is an extrinsic property of conscious states, holding in virtue of their relationship with the relevant higher-order state.

– Representationalism. Inner awareness is constituted by ordinary representations of the first-order states made conscious.

All three theses contribute to the instability of higher-order intentionalism, since their implications force the higher-order theorist to make questionable assumptions in order to preserve the consistency of the theory (in the case of distinctness), or its explanatory power (in the case of extrinsicness and representationalism). The present section will focus on the drawbacks of the distinctness and the extrinsicness theses, which only concern the standard versions of higher-order intentionalism.Because of the distinctness thesis, the higher-order theorist is forced to characterize the relevant higher-order states as unconscious. Otherwise, a vicious infinite regress of conscious states would follow: if the relevant higher-order states are conscious then, according to higher-order theories, there needs to be a further level of conscious representation in virtue of which it is so, and so on ad infinitum. But once the threat of the regress is stopped by assuming that the relevant higher-order states are unconscious, the higher-order theorist is left with the insidious challenge of explaining how we can be conscious of a state’s content without being conscious of the state itself. As Mark Rowlands puts it, “how can my thinking that I am in pain make me conscious of my pain if I have no idea that I am thinking that I am in pain?” (2001, p. 301). That is, since an intentional state’s being conscious consists (at least in part) in its subject being aware of its content, it seems plausible that, conversely, an intentional state’s being unconscious consists (at least in part) in its subject not being aware of its intentional content (Kriegel, 2009, p. 30).Clearly, the higher-order theorist can acknowledge that there is “a way of understanding the concept of awareness such that a person only counts as aware of something if the mental state in virtue of which they are aware of that thing is itself a conscious one”, but at the same time hold that this is not “the relevant sense of ‘awareness’ which is put to work” by higher-order intentionalism (Carruthers & Gennaro, 2020, §7.1). However, the task of characterizing this ‘unconscious awareness’ without thereby emptying the notion of awareness of its significance is likely to be complicated. In this respect, the higher-order perception theorists may be in a better position to provide a satisfying answer: just like ordinary cases of unconscious perception could be interpreted as making us aware, non-consciously, of what they are about, unconscious higher-order perceptual states could make us aware of the first-order states they represent. Indeed, when considering examples such as absent-minded driving or cases of subliminal perception, it may seem plausible that we can be made aware of our surroundings by entertaining unconscious mental states. Yet, in the case of unconscious perception, it is doubtful that a subject can be considered conscious of a certain intentional content only because that content is (unconsciously) being used to guide action. That is, even granting that unconscious perceptual states can make us somehow aware of their contents (because we make use of them to guide our actions), those contents are still by definition not conscious. Similarly, even if we may be somehow aware of our first-order states in virtue of entertaining unconscious higher-order representations, it is unlikely that such an unconscious awareness could make those first-order states conscious. Perhaps, as suggested by Carruthers and Gennaro (2020, §7.1), the criteria for awareness could be dissociated from consciousness,

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because we may be aware of the intentional contents of our mental states without those states being conscious. But then the claim that being aware of our first-order states is sufficient to make those states conscious would lose its intuitive plausibility. Since the natural appeal of explaining consciousness in terms of intentionality resides precisely in the apparent essential connection between consciousness and awareness, once that connection is severed, the appeal of higher-order theories fades considerably. However, because of the distinctness thesis, the infinite regress of conscious states threatens the consistency of the theory and thus the higher-order theorist has no other choice but to appeal to unconscious awareness. Therefore, despite not giving rise to definitive objections against higher-order theories, the distinctness thesis should be rejected at least by some higher-order theorist – those assuming the reality of the essential connection between consciousness and awareness.Because of the extrinsicness thesis, various philosophers questioned the sufficiency of the higher-order analysis by appealing to the so-called “generality problem” (Kriegel, 2009, p. 143). On the one hand, higher-order theorists assume that, for any mental state, having a phenomenal character just is being an object of awareness. But, on the other hand, being an object of awareness does not in general make conscious the object one is aware of. Thus, if being the object of a certain intentional state is what makes mental states conscious, then why is it the case that only mental states are conscious? (Dretske, 1995, p. 97; Byrne, 1997, p. 110).1 Perhaps it is an analytic truth that only mental states can be conscious (Byrne, 1997, p. 111), but the generality problem cannot be solved by simply appealing to the ordinary usage of the word ‘conscious’, for what is required is precisely an account of the difference between mental and non-mental states able to illuminate the ordinary usage of that word (Van Gulick, 2004, p. 72).A plausible answer to this problem may go as follows. Since conscious states are those mental states that one is conscious of being in, things like chairs cannot be made conscious just by being the object of an intentional state because, being non-mental entities, they are not states that one can be conscious of oneself as being in. After all, higher-order theorists do not hold the general claim that being the object of an intentional state is sufficient for being conscious, but only claim that consciousness is a matter of how one represents one’s own mental life. That is, according to higher-order theorists, the reason why only mental states can be conscious has nothing to do with the meaning of the word ‘conscious’, but rather it is due to the fact that only mental states are such that we can be aware of being in them (in the relevant sense) – in representing a chair, I am not representing my own mental life, and thus there is no reason to expect higher-order intentionalism to apply to chairs.2

Yet, if being the object of a certain intentional state is sufficient to make mental states conscious, but analogous representational activities cannot make non-mental entities conscious, it seems that there must be something special about representing one’s own mental life that is still left unexplained. And, due to the extrinsicness thesis, higher-order theorists are ill-equipped to spell out what that something special is. If it is true that, for

1 Rosenthal (1997, pp. 738-739) holds that this objection begs the question against the higher-order view, by presupposing a conception of phenomenal character as an intrinsic property of conscious states. Yet, the only assumption required to raise the generality problem is that non-mental entities can be the objects of intentional mental states without being conscious. Then, if being the object of a certain intentional state is what makes mental states conscious, why is it the case that only mental states are conscious? It seems that one can ask that question without assuming that consciousness must be an intrinsic property: the generality problem does not rely on the assumption that consciousness is not an extrinsic property of mental states but, rather, points at the implausible consequences of the assumption that it is (cf. Byrne, 1997).2 Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this point.

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any mental state, having a phenomenal character is a purely extrinsic matter (i.e. being the intentional object of a higher-order representation), then the intrinsic properties of mental states should not play any role in the constitution of consciousness. Thus, on standard higher-order theories, the reason why only mental states can be conscious cannot be found in their intrinsic properties (which non-mental entities may lack), because having those properties is not supposed to be a necessary condition in order for them to become conscious. In Kriegel’s words, it is only if the higher-order representation “gave rise to consciousness by modifying M” (the mental state made conscious) that “it would make a difference what characteristics M has” (2009, p. 143). Indeed, by assuming the sufficiency of the higher-order analysis, it follows that higher-order theories can even allow for the possibility that we are conscious of uninstantiated first-order states, i.e., that targetless higher-order representations could give rise to states of consciousness subjectively indistinguishable from cases in which the intentional objects of the higher-order representations are existing states. But then, if we do not need to entertain a mental state to be conscious of it, it should not matter whether or not a mental state has certain intrinsic properties, because those properties play no role in the constitution of phenomenal character.3 And if no intrinsic property of mental states can explain why only mental states can be conscious, then the higher-order theorist is left with no explanation as to why only representing one’s own mental life can give rise to consciousness. Therefore, unless the higher-order theorist is ready to give up the thesis that the existence of consciousness can be wholly explained by means of meta-intentionality alone, either she gives up the extrinsicness thesis, or she is left with no answer to face the generality problem.

The higher-order theorist has a straightforward way out of these problems: to reject both the distinctness and the extrinsicness thesis, while still maintaining that the existence of consciousness can be explained in terms of meta-intentionality. This strategy is pursued by the proponents of self-representationalism, who hold that a mental state is conscious if and only if it represents itself (Carruthers, 2000; Caston, 2002; Kriegel, 2009).4 On this view, conscious states are conceived as complex states, whose first-order and higher-order aspects are jointly necessary and sufficient for the constitution of conscious experience. Self-representationalism drops the distinctness thesis because the relevant higher-order representations are taken to be instantiated by the same mental state whose content becomes conscious and, for the same reason, the transformation of an unconscious state into a conscious one is no longer conceived as a purely extrinsic matter, but rather it is taken to involve changes in the state’s intrinsic properties (i.e., the addition of higher-order properties). Thus, by adopting self-representationalism, the problems associated with the distinctness and the extrinsicness theses no longer threaten the viability of higher-order intentionalism.5

3 In fact, in a footnote, Rosenthal acknowledges that he is forced “to retreat on the claim that a state’s being conscious is strictly speaking relational” (2005, p. 179). 4 Carruthers (2000) is not usually known as a self-representationalist, since he presents his theory as a dispositional variation of the higher-order thought theory. According to Carruthers, the existence of conscious experience depends on the (dispositional) availability of first-order states to higher-order thought systems. However, Carruthers defends his theory by appealing to consumer semantics (i.e. the view that a state’s content depends at least in part on how the state can be used by various cognitive systems) and argues that availability to higher-order thought can enrich the content of first-order states, providing them with self-representational content: “the very same perceptual states which represent the world to us (or the conditions of our own bodies) can at the same time represent the fact that those aspects of the world (or of our bodies) are being perceived” (Carruthers, 2000, p. 242). Thus, self-representationalism seems to be the natural outcome of Carruthers’ view.5 It may be suggested that self-representationalism is a kind of “same-order” rather than “higher-order” intentionalism, since no higher-order states are involved. However, self-representationalism captures the

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Since higher-order representations are conceived as aspects of conscious states, it becomes possible to consider those representations as conscious without thereby committing to the possibility of an infinite regress of higher-order states, because no further level of representation needs to be introduced: higher-order representations become conscious qua part of conscious states.However, the threat of the infinite regress does not wholly vanish – it is just a different kind of infinite regress, concerning conscious representational properties instead of conscious states. For the higher-order representation can be considered as genuinely conscious, rather than as an unconscious aspect of a conscious state, only if the conscious state represents all of its representational properties (higher-order ones included). And if the conscious state consciously represents itself as representing itself (i.e. if its higher-order properties are conscious), then there needs to be a further level of self-representation in virtue of which it is so, and so on ad infinitum (Nida-Rümelin, 2014, p. 278).Yet, since the higher-order representation is an integral part of the conscious state, the self-representationalist can stop the regress by appealing to the notion of indirect representation, i.e., the idea that a whole can be indirectly represented by means of the representation of a part of it. For example, a painting can indirectly represent an entire house by directly representing only its front. Clearly, the fact that something is part of a larger whole does not obviously imply that a representation of the former counts as an indirect representation of the latter – a table is part of the world, but no representation of a table could be conceived as an indirect representation of the whole world. Plausibly, in order for some representation to count as an indirect representation of something else it is required that the represented part amounts to a significant portion of the whole, and that it is well integrated into it. And although both conditions may be subject to some degree of vagueness, if conscious states are conceived as complex states whose first-order and higher-order aspects are jointly necessary and sufficient for the constitution of conscious experience, it is reasonable to suppose that both conditions are met. That is, it seems that first-order contents are indeed well integrated into the whole of which they are part (i.e. the conscious state) and that they amount to a significant portion of it, since they are necessary for its existence and they constitute most of its content. Thus, it seems plausible that a higher-order representation can indirectly represent the whole state of which it is part – thereby indirectly representing itself – by directly representing only a significant part of it, i.e. the first-order one (Kriegel, 2009, p. 225-227). Therefore, the self-representationalist, by rejecting the distinctness thesis, can conceive the higher-order representations responsible for the existence of inner awareness as conscious – qua indirectly represented by the conscious states of which they are part – and thus assume the reality of the essential connection between consciousness and awareness mentioned earlier without falling prey to any kind of infinite regress.Similarly, if conscious states are conceived as complex states constituted by first-order as well as higher-order aspects, then the generality problem can be easily avoided. Because of the extrinsicness thesis, the higher-order theorist cannot appeal to intrinsic properties of mental states in order to explain why only mental states can be conscious, and thus has no explanation as to why only representing one’s own mental life can give rise to consciousness. But, according to the self-representationalist, a mental state’s becoming conscious involves

fundamental principles of higher-order intentionalism: it conceives as subjective character in terms of inner awareness, and it explains inner awareness by appealing to the instantiation of higher-order representational properties. Thus, it seems reasonable to consider self-representationalism as a variation of standard higher-order theories rather than as a radically different representationalist account of consciousness.

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intrinsic changes to the state itself (the addition of higher-order properties) which do not take place when non-mental entities become objects of awareness. Thus, on self-representationalism, being the object of an intentional mental state can only make mental states conscious, because only mental states can instantiate the internal representational relation required for consciousness (i.e. the relation between first-order contents and higher-order representations of them, together with the indirect representation of the latter).Clearly, this solution to the generality problem, as well as the appeal to the notion of indirect representation necessary to stop the infinite regress, relies on the assumption that the difference between self-representationalism and traditional higher-order theories is not purely verbal. But, as Kriegel points out, once we introduce “a represented and a representor, it is not clear that there is a substantive difference between treating them as separate states and treating them as separate parts of a single state” (2009, p. 221). Thus, in order to show that the integration of higher-order contents with the first-order states they represent is not a simple stipulation, self-representationalists need to provide some criteria for determining whether or not two intentional contents are part of one and the same state. To this purpose, Kriegel (2009, p. 221) appeals to the distinction between mereological sums, whose parts are only contingently tied to each other, and complexes, whose parts are essentially interconnected. While a mereological sum can go out of existence only if one of its parts is removed, in a mereological complex breaking the connection between the parts is enough to destroy the whole, even if nothing happens to any of those parts. Thus, were conscious states shown to be mereological complexes, rather than just arbitrary mereological sums, self-representationalism would be safe from the threats of the infinite regress and the generality problem.6 And, indeed, especially (but not exclusively) on the assumption that the subjective character of conscious states is a fundamental aspect of their phenomenal character, first-order states and the inner awareness of those states appear as essentially rather than contingently interconnected within conscious experience. For example, it seems plausible that given “a perceptual experience of the blue sky, the perception of blue and the awareness of that perception are unified by some psychologically real relation whose dissolution would entail the destruction of the experience” (Kriegel, 2009, p. 222). This psychologically real relation may be characterized in phenomenological terms, by appealing to the phenomenally manifest synchronic unity of conscious experience, as well as in sub-personal terms, by appealing to cognitive processes of informational integration. However, independently of one’s preferred account of this psychologically real relation between first-order states and inner awareness, it seems clear that self-representationalists do have a sensible reason to believe that their proposal is substantially different from traditional higher-order theories, and thus that they have at their disposal the right theoretical tools to deal with the threats of the infinite regress and the generality problem.

Self-representationalism shares with standard higher-order theories a further difficulty, stemming from its commitment to the representationalist thesis. According to any higher-order intentionalist view considered so far, first-order states become conscious in virtue of being the intentional objects of ordinary, explicit representations. But the connection between subject and experience established by inner awareness appears to be more intimate

6 For similar reasons, the possibility of targetless higher-order representation would be precluded. That is, if the first-order and the higher-order aspects of a mental state are related in such a way that, were that relation broken, consciousness would vanish, then “it is incoherent to suppose that a mental state may represent itself to exist when in reality it does not exist” (Kriegel, 2009, p. 136). For the opposite claim, cf. Coleman (2015).

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than the one ordinarily relating a representing subject with a represented content (Levine, 2001; Kriegel, 2009). For, while the very notion of representation involves the possibility of misrepresentation, the kind of acquaintance with our conscious states provided by inner awareness seems to have an epistemically privileged status, such that it does not admit the possibility of an appearance-reality distinction. That is, plausibly, the phenomenal character of an experience is necessarily fixed by the way in which that experience subjectively appears to be: “in the case of mental phenomena there is no ‘appearance’ beyond the mental phenomenon itself” (Kripke, 1980, p. 154). While we may perform various introspective tasks incorrectly, we cannot be wrong when it comes to knowing what it is like for us to have a certain experience, because the identity of our conscious states coincides with their subjective appearance. In a slogan, “phenomenal appearance collapses onto phenomenal reality” (Sacchi & Voltolini, 2017, p. 30). But on higher-order intentionalism, since it is “perfectly coherent to suppose that a mental state may represent itself [or another state] to be a certain way when in reality it is not that way” (Kriegel, 2009, p. 136), the qualitative properties consciously experienced as belonging to a mental state may differ from the ones that state actually instantiates. Thus, it may seem natural to conclude that, as suggested by various philosophers belonging to the phenomenological tradition, the inner awareness constitutive of phenomenal consciousness should be conceived as fundamentally different from ordinary, representational instances of awareness. According to this tradition, the intimacy of inner awareness depends on the fact that one’s experience is not presented to the subject as an ordinary intentional object, but rather it is “simply lived through” (Zahavi, 2006, p. 279). As Martine Nida-Rümelin puts it, although there is an ‘object of awareness’ in the case of inner awareness as well, “that ‘object’ is not given as any content in the stream of consciousness.” (2014, p. 279). For, otherwise, it could be misrepresented, thereby giving rise to an appearance-reality distinction incompatible with the fundamental features of inner awareness.However, the intimacy of the connection between subjects and experiences may be captured within the framework of higher-order intentionalism, by construing the notion of inner awareness in terms of constituting representation. That is, it is possible that the instantiation of higher-order representations does not only determine the existence conditions of phenomenal character (by endowing subjects with inner awareness) but also fixes its identity conditions (by constituting the qualitative character of conscious states). Then, if “qualitative properties are constituted by the inner awareness representation of the conscious state” (Kriegel, 2009, p. 109), it is how first-order states are represented that determines the way in which the subject will experience them. And if “the first-order state can contribute nothing to phenomenology apart from the way we’re conscious of it” (Rosenthal, 2004, p. 32), then no subject could ever notice, within phenomenology, that her mental states have properties different from the ones that her experience ascribes to them. Hence, it would subjectively seem that, indeed, the inner awareness of one’s conscious states does not admit the possibility of an appearance-reality distinction – despite the possibility of misrepresentation (and perhaps even targetlessness).Yet, although the appeal to the notion of constituting representation allows the higher-order theorist to provide a plausible explanation as to why inner awareness only seems to have such an epistemically privileged status, and thus to hold that it is just another ordinary instance of representational awareness, it comes at a high cost. For, if first-order states have no role in determining the qualitative character of experience, then it seems that no subject is ever really conscious of her mental states. That is, if the higher-order representations fix the identity conditions of phenomenal character, then we may at best “consciously experience veridical echoes of sensory states; but of the sensory states we are not conscious” (Coleman, 2015, p. 2710) because, on the ‘constituting representation’ view, the properties of first-order states

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“are not part of the experience’s phenomenal character, indeed are not phenomenologically manifest in any way” (Kriegel, 2009, p. 110). Thus, rather than providing an explanation of what makes our mental states conscious, higher-order theories can only account for the source of the impression that some of our mental states are conscious. Since the properties of a first-order state do not matter at all for the constitution of its phenomenal character, it follows that “what counts for somebody’s being in a conscious state is just the occurrence in one’s stream of consciousness of the relevant subjective appearance, the appearance of being in the state in question” (Rosenthal, 2011, p. 432). That is, what we are conscious of is never our actual mental life, but a mere reproduction of it.Clearly, the higher-order theorist may object that this is just the traditional problem of illusion concerning perceptual experience adapted to the special case of mental states, and that there is no reason to worry too much.7 Just as we do not believe that we are not ever really conscious of external objects simply because we could radically misrepresent them, we should not believe that we are not really conscious of our mental states simply because they may appear in consciousness as different from how they really are. However, the problem of illusion under consideration does not concern our representational relation with the world, but rather, our relationship with our mental states as they appear in consciousness. In the case of perception, we cannot be sure that we really know how the world is, but we have at least good pragmatic reasons to assume that our perceptual experiences provide us somewhat accurate reports. For example, we can often put to test the accuracy of our representations, e.g. by comparing the information from different sensory modalities, or constructing devices that make up for some of our biases. Differently, in the case of consciousness, we have no independent access to the contents of experience except for inner awareness. And if inner awareness is such that we only experience representations of our first-order states, we have no reason to suppose that those states really have the phenomenal qualities they seem to have within phenomenology. After all, since the properties of first-order states never make it to consciousness, none of our mental states could have any quality at all and yet indistinguishable conscious experiences could still arise.In turn, this feature of higher-order intentionalism opens the door to a form of anti-realism, or illusionism, about consciousness, i.e., the view that although experiences are real, phenomenal consciousness is an illusion (Frankish, 2017). Illusionism can be conceived as an intermediate position between radical eliminativist positions and realism about consciousness. Differently from the eliminativist, the illusionist does not reject the notion of phenomenal consciousness nor its characterization in terms of ‘what it is like’. However, differently from the realist, the illusionist denies the existence of phenomenal character and claims that the notion of ‘what it is like’ should be conceived in terms of conscious states seeming to have phenomenal character. That is, according to illusionists, once we have explained why it seems to us that we have conscious states, we have explained all there is to explain about consciousness: we can dissolve the ‘hard problem’ by solving the meta-problem, i.e. by explaining why it seems that there is a hard problem of consciousness to begin with, or why our conscious states seem to have peculiar qualitative properties.

7 The traditional problem of illusion can be summarized as follows. Since one and the same theory of perception must apply to both veridical and illusory experiences, given that in having illusory experiences we are not directly presented with ordinary external objects, it follows that we are never directly presented with ordinary external objects. However, although many philosophers do worry about this problem, none of them believe that it should lead us to suppose that we are never really conscious of external objects – i.e. that although perceptual experiences are real, perception is an illusion – but only that we are simply indirectly presented with those objects. Similarly, we may never be directly presented with our mental states and yet we could be conscious of them nonetheless.Thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting this reply.

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The higher-order theorist, wanting to defend the compatibility of the theory with realism, may point out that if phenomenal consciousness is the impression that a mental state has certain qualities, then for that state to have a certain phenomenal character is simply to be subjectively presented as having those qualities. Thus the reality of that phenomenal character does not depend on whether the mental state has the qualities that inner awareness attributes to it independently of that attribution. If the impression is real, the higher-order theorist may argue, although its content may happen to be inaccurate, then phenomenal consciousness is still conceived as real. Therefore, it may seem that higher-order intentionalism does not require phenomenal consciousness to be an illusion but rather, more weakly, simply that consciousness is only a matter of how things appear to a subject – but that makes it no less real. That is, while illusionists deny that experiences have phenomenal character and “focus on explaining why they seem to have them” (Frankish, 2017, 17), higher-order theorists can still claim that phenomenal character exists (albeit fixed exclusively by higher-order representations) by taking the impression of there being phenomenal character to be sufficient for the instantiation of said phenomenal character, i.e. by conceiving a mental state’s having phenomenal character in terms of that state’s seeming to have one.Yet, the difference between these two readings of the conception of consciousness as a subjective impression (i.e. the illusionist one and the intentionalist one) is less significant than it may appear at first glance. In fact, to say that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion is not the same as saying that conscious experiences are not real, but only that their true nature, being illusory, is not as it appears within phenomenology (Frankish, 2017, p. 24), And that’s exactly what higher-order intentionalists hold. For, on higher-order theories, phenomenology misleads us, in that it appears as presenting us with our first-order states and their qualities but it cannot, since those qualities are exclusively fixed by higher-order representations, and the contents of those states are never phenomenologically manifest. Thus, higher-order intentionalists clearly share with illusionists the view that “cognitive scientists should treat phenomenological reports as fictions – albeit ones that provide clues as to what is actually occurring in the brain” (Frankish, 2017, p. 26). The only apparent difference between higher-order intentionalists and illusionists is that, while “illusionists deny that experiences have phenomenal properties and focus on explaining why they seem to have them” (Frankish, 2017, p. 17), most higher-order intentionalists do not explicitly deny the reality of phenomenal properties. But that is only because higher-order theorists define a state’s having phenomenal properties in terms of a state’s seeming to have them. That is, higher-order intentionalists hide their eliminativist stance towards phenomenal properties by holding that the phenomenal nature of those properties does not depend on their being actually instantiated by the first-order states they are attributed to. But if all that is required for a mental state to have a phenomenal character is subjectively appearing as having one, then there is no theoretical need to admit into our ontology something like phenomenal properties, i.e., the properties of first-order states constituting their phenomenal character, in virtue of which there is something it is like to be in those states. Once it is assumed that the instantiation of phenomenal properties by first-order states simply amounts to the subjective appearance that those properties are instantiated, their existence becomes irrelevant for the constitution of conscious experience. Hence, when it comes to establishing what phenomenal consciousness really is, it does seem that higher-order intentionalism shares the illusionist view that “our sense that it is like something to undergo conscious experiences is due to the fact that we systematically misrepresent them (or, on some versions, their objects) as having phenomenal properties” (Frankish, 2017, p. 13).8 That is, for the

8 It may be objected that, according to higher-order intentionalism, we do not misrepresent first-order states as

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higher-order theorist as well as the illusionist, the intimacy of our relation with our conscious states, i.e. the fact that phenomenal appearance collapses onto phenomenal reality, is just due to the fact that appearances determine phenomenal reality. On both views, it is not the case that the phenomenal qualities of the mental states we are conscious of determine what it is like to be in those states; instead, any state’s phenomenal character is exclusively determined by the way in which that state is represented to be. Ultimately, the only good reason to assume the reality of phenomenal properties is the thesis that this reality determines phenomenal appearances; if conscious experiences are conceived as subjectively presented collections of qualities fundamentally disconnected from the mental states to which we ordinarily ascribe them, as higher-order intentionalists suggest, then the assumption of an illusionist conception of phenomenal consciousness seems inevitable.

We are left with a stark contrast between two different conceptions of consciousness. By assuming a realist perspective, our mental states and properties are supposed to play a role in the constitution of their phenomenal characters, whereas higher-order intentionalism seems to imply that inner awareness alone constitutes what we are conscious of. Clearly, the higher-order theorist may simply embrace illusionism, whose legitimacy has been defended by various philosophers (Dennett, 1991; Frankish, 2017; Graziano, 2019). However, it may be possible to reconcile higher-order intentionalism with a realist conception of consciousness by following the path opened by self-representationalists.In section 2, I have argued that traditional higher-order theories of consciousness must face a number of objections because of the implications of some of their core theses (i.e. distinctness and extrinsicness). In section 3, I pointed out that self-representationalists, by dropping those theses, can easily avoid those objections and thereby put forward a much more promising version of higher-order intentionalism. In section 4, I have argued that the one thesis self-representationalists inherited from traditional higher-order theories (i.e. representationalism) turns out to have problematic implications as well (at least for those philosophers who embrace a realist perspective on phenomenal properties). Thus, perhaps the most promising higher-order theory can only be articulated once that last assumption will be dropped as well. After all, just like the distinctness and the extrinsicness theses, it seems that the representationalist thesis is not essential to defend the fundamental principles of the higher-order intentionalist framework – namely, the idea that the existence of phenomenal character depends on inner awareness, together with the thesis that inner awareness is constituted by the instantiation of higher-order intentional properties directed at the first-order states made thereby conscious. While the existence of any representation requires the instantiation of intentional properties, since all representations are about what is represented, the instantiation of intentional properties (i.e. the presence of ‘aboutness’) does not obviously entail the instantiation of an ordinary, explicit representation. Thus, it seems clear that the existence of consciousness could be explained in terms of meta-intentionality and yet, at the same time, deny that inner awareness is an ordinary representation of one’s mental states. For example, consider the following display sentences: “the sign ‘Keep Off’ on a road; ‘Shake well’ on a bottle; the date written at the head of a letter; ‘New, Improved’ on a cereal box; ‘$100’ on a dress, etc.” (Zemach, 1985, p. 195). In all these sentences, the subject matter is not

having phenomenal character but, rather, those states get to have a phenomenal character because we represent ourselves as being in those states – so that no representation of phenomenal properties of states is required. Yet, on the ‘constitutive representation’ view, higher-order representations must ascribe phenomenal qualities to first-order states, otherwise they could not fix the identity conditions of their phenomenal character.

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represented but rather, being within reach, it is simply presented – embedded in the discourse without using a symbol that stands for it. Analogously, occurrent first-order states, being already instantiated, could be simply presented – embedded into, rather than represented by, higher-order states. That is, higher-order states could work as quotational frames, allowing first-order states to be directly employed in consciousness, rather than merely represented (Coleman, 2015, p. 2716).9 Clearly, the development of such a view is no easy task, and it goes beyond the scope of this paper. However, the mere possibility that the existence of phenomenal consciousness could be explained in terms of meta-intentionality without being reduced to a matter of (intentional) appearances is, on its own, very good news: higher-order intentionalism may still be conceived as a promising framework for understanding the nature of phenomenal consciousness, even without conceiving of it as an illusion.

REFERENCESArmstrong, D.M. (1980). What is Consciousness? In D.M. Armstrong, The Nature of Mind, Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 55-67.Byrne, A. (1997). Some Like It Hot: Consciousness and Higher-Order Thoughts. Philosophical Studies, 86: 103-129.Carruthers, P. (2000). Phenomenal Consciousness: A Naturalistic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Carruthers, P., Gennaro, R.J. (2020). Higher Order Theories of Consciousness. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/consciousness-higher/.Caston, V. (2002). Aristotle on Consciousness. Mind, 111: 751-815.Coleman, S. (2015). Quotational Higher-Order Thought Theory. Philosophical Studies, 172: 2705–2733.Dennett, D. (1991). Consciousness Explained. Boston (MA): Little, Brown & Co.Dretske, F. (1995). Naturalizing the Mind. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Frankish, K. (2017). Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness. In K. Frankish, Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, Exeter: Imprint Academic, 13-48.Graziano, M. (2019). Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience. New York: WW. Norton & Co.Kriegel, U. (2009). Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Kripke, S. (1980). Naming and Necessity. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Levine, J. (2001). Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Lycan, W. (1987). Consciousness. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Nida-Rümelin, M. (2014). Basic Intentionality, Primitive Awareness, and Awareness of Oneself.

9 According to Coleman’s Quotational Higher Order Thought theory (2015), inner awareness is constituted by higher-order thoughts able to “‘quote’ a sensory state, forming a larger composite structure wherein the sensory state is displayed” (2015, p. 2717). On this view, inner awareness is still explained in terms of meta-intentionality, but it is non-representational in nature, since any token first-order state is made conscious by directly embedding it within the demonstrating frame of a quotational higher-order thought.Considerations leading to a similar outcome are put forward by Van Gulick’s Higher Order Global State theory (2000; 2004), who argues that first-order states become conscious when they acquire a higher-order dimension in virtue of being recruited by a “globally integrated state that is the momentary realization of the agent’s shifting transient conscious awareness” (2004, p. 74). On this view, inner awareness is still explained in terms of meta-intentionality, but instead of being constituted by “a separate explicit meta-representation” it is conceived as “an implicit aspect of the structure of the globally integrated state into which the lower-order state is recruited” (2004, p. 80).

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In A. Reboul (ed.). Mind, Values, and Metaphysics: Philosophical Essays in Honor of Kevin Mulligan, Vol. 2, London: Routledge, 249-260.Rosenthal, D.M. (1986). Two Concepts of Consciousness. Philosophical Studies, 49: 329-359. Reprinted in D.M. Rosenthal, Consciousness and Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005, 21-45.Rosenthal, D.M. (2004). Varieties of Higher-Order Theory. In R.J. Gennaro (ed.), Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness: An Anthology, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 17-45.Rosenthal, D.M. (2005). Consciousness and Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Rosenthal, D.M. (2011). Exaggerated Reports: Reply to Block. Analysis, 71: 431-437.Rowlands, M. (2001). Consciousness and Higher-Order Thoughts. Mind & Language, 16: 290-310.Sacchi, E. & Voltolini, A. (2017). Against Phenomenal Externalism. Crítica, 49: 25-48.Van Gulick, R. (2000). Inward and Upward – Reflection, Introspection, and Self-Awareness. Philosophical Topics, 28: 275-305.Van Gulick, R. (2004). Higher-Order Global States (HOGS). In R.J. Gennaro (ed.), Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness: An Anthology, Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing, 67-92.Zahavi, D. (2006). Thinking about (Self-)Consciousness: Phenomenological Perspectives. In U. Kriegel & K. Williford (eds.), Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness, Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 273-296.Zemach, E. M. (1985). De Se and Descartes: A New Semantics for Indexicals. Noûs, 19: 181-204.


DOI: 10.17454/pam-2206





INTENTIONALITY AND DUALISM: DOES THE IDEA THAT INTENTIONALITY IS THE MOM NECESSARILY ENTAIL DUALISM?

abstract

It is well known that Franz Brentano was the first to suggest intentionality, the property of being about something, as a criterion for demarcating the domain of the mental. He suggested that intentionality is a necessary and sufficient condition for something to qualify as a mental event. It is important, for the purposes of this paper, to pay attention to the fact that Brentano’s theory came from within a broader philosophical outlook that was thoroughly dualistic. He sought a total separation of the mental from the physical, and his appeal to intentionality as a defining criterion for the mental is in the service of producing such a separation. In Brentano’s view, only mental events have intentionality, and it is in virtue of this feature that they differ from the events of the physical world. The aim of this paper is to explore whether Brentano’s intentionality criterion for defining the domain of the mental is committed to the broader dualism from which it originated.

keywords

Intentionality; Dualism; Naturalization project; Normativity; Mental state

ANDREA TORTORETOUniversity of [email protected]

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Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in ancient questions concerning the grounding and criteria for mental events, properties and states as specifically mental phenomena. This resurgence is largely due to the considerable overlap between such questions and multiple other fields of philosophy. Conclusions about the nature of mental states have wide ranging impacts on issues such as animal rights and artificial intelligence. Contemporary analytic philosophy generally seeks to solve these questions with reference to one of two different mental properties: intentionality or consciousness.It is well known that Franz Brentano was the first to answer such questions by suggesting intentionality, the property of being about something, to be directed toward, to focus on something or to have a semantically evaluable content, as a criterion for demarcating the domain of the mental. He suggested that intentionality is a necessary and sufficient condition for something to qualify as a mental event. It is crucial, for the aims of this paper, to pay attention to the fact that Brentano’s theory came from within a dualistic philosophical outlook. He was firmly convinced that there is a radical separation of the mental from the physical, and his appeal to intentionality as a defining criterion for the mental is in the service of reinforcing such a separation. In Brentano’s view, only mental events have intentionality, and it is in virtue of this feature that they differ from the events of the physical world.

The essence of Brentano’s thesis is that mental events are differentiated from physical events by the fact that all mental phenomena exhibit intentionality as a form of directedness, a property which no physical phenomenon exhibits (Brentano, 1874/1995, pp. 88-89). Brentano’s criterion has been subject to various kinds of criticisms. A particularly well-known example of such criticism came from Crane (actually remarking a suggestion formulated by Dennett before) who objected that intentionality is not sufficient for mentality. Crane therefore proposed to ‘weaken’ Brentano’s criterion, suggesting that while all mental states are intentional, some things can be intentional without thereby being mental states (Crane, 2001). Thus, Crane saw intentionality as a necessary, but not sufficient, condition on something’s qualifying as a mental state. Crane’s objection is supported by the observation that many things, such as technological devices, seem to have some kind of intentionality, even if they are eminently nonmental. Crane’s approach to the problem of demarcating the mental domain is connected to a specific metaphysical conception of intentionality, namely, the idea that intentionality is a naturalized property (Dretske, 1981; Millikan, 1984; Fodor 1987; 1990). This is a metaphysical conception that treats intentionality as a property which can be studied by the natural sciences.

1. Naturalizing Intentionality

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Fodor gives a clear explication of this position:

I suppose that sooner or later the physicists will complete the catalogue they’ve been compiling of the ultimate and irreducible properties of things. When they do, the likes of spin, charm, and charge, will perhaps appear upon their list. But aboutness surely won’t; intentionality simply doesn’t go that deep. It’s hard to see, in face of this consideration, how one can be a Realist about intentionality without also being, to some extent or other, a Reductionist. If the semantic and the intentional are real properties of things, it must be in virtue of their identity with (or maybe of their supervenience on?) properties that are themselves neither intentional nor semantic. If aboutness is real, it must really be something else (Fodor, 1987, p. 97).

Such a materialistic theory of intentionality must be able to explain how a brain state can represent some content. One promising explanatory strategy comes through what is sometimes called the co-variational theory of mental representation. This theory considers intentionality a tracking relation with the external world. This might thus make sense of the possibility of brain states representing things in the world. The best-known version of the co-variational approach is Fodor’s account of “asymmetric dependence” (Fodor, 1990).Fodor has two conditions for a mental state M to represent some content:

1) It is a law that Xs cause the tokening of Ms (information condition).2) If it is a law that any Ys (that are not Xs) cause Ms, then that law is dependent on the

law that Xs cause Ms, but not the other way around (asymmetric dependence condition) (Fodor, 1990, pp. 97-121).

This asymmetric dependence theory is a causal theory intended to deepen a primitive version of the causal theory, the crude causal theory, whose basic idea is that a representation represents whatever reliably causes it.1

A different account in the same direction is Dretske’s informational semantic theory (Dretske, 1981). This theory gives two criteria for genuine representation. M represents X iff either

1) M is nomically determined by X

or

2) The natural laws are such that M is not tokened unless X is instantiated.2

Both theories broadly consider intentionality as a co-variation relationship, one that is justifiable on a naturalistic basis. It is worth noting two features of these two competing attempts to naturalize intentionality. Both accounts involve a traditional relational conception of intentionality. That is, they both seek to explain intentionality on the basis of the causal relationship between the representational content of a mental state and the object to which it refers.3

Another attempt to naturalize intentionality can be found in what is often called ‘biosemantics’ or ‘teleosemantics’. This is a theory of mental content that relies on a

1 To be precise, this theory provides Fodor’s solution to the disjunction problem. Specifically, the two conditions implement Fodor’s basic notion that of all the properties that are nomically related to (the property of causing occurrences of) a symbol, the symbol’s reference is the property that figures in the nomic relation on which all the other nomic relations depend. For a critical review of Fodor’s theory see Loewer & Rey (1991).2 For this definition see Kriegel (2014, p. 166).3 See Voltolini & Calabi (2009, pp. 240-249).

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teleological notion of biological function (Millikan, 1993; Papineau, 1993). Such theories aim to identify the content-fixing circumstances responsible for a mental state’s representational content. Thus, biosemantics agrees with the idea that an appeal to function is necessary for a naturalistic account of representational contents. According to Millikan, “proper functions” are determined by the histories of the items possessing them: paradigm cases are functions that were “selected for” and preserved by natural selection. For instance, perhaps fingers were originally selected because of their capability to hold tree branches, but they may have acquired new functions later, such as the function of handling very small things, in which case these new roles will become part of their function.Millikan suggests that intentional systems can be conceptually divided into two parts: one aspect produces representations, while the other uses these representations. Suppose we have some element in a system which generates natural information in Dretske’s sense. That information will be useless unless it is understood by the system. But, presuming that the beliefs of the bearers are systematically related to the structures of the signs taken to carry some specific piece of information, we can obtain a set of rules defining the meanings of each of those signs. According to Millikan, the representation and the represented must be paired, so it is a normal condition for proper functioning of the “user” aspect as it reacts to the representation. Then, represented conditions are conditions that vary, depending on the form of the representation, in accordance with specifiable correspondence rules that give the semantics for the relevant system of representation.This view shares with the biosemantics theory, Dretske’s account and Brentano’s thesis, the idea of distinguishing the intentionality of our mental states from other kinds of directedness by the fact that our mental states can misrepresent things. As Millikan points out, the same sort of representational state may represent different things in different systems. To a frog, a black dot in the retina may represent food, but to a bug that same black point may signify a potential partner. Likewise, many different things may represent the same thing for a single system.This theory therefore understands that a given representation means a certain thing, and the corresponding intentional state has a specific propositional content, because that representation occurs when the thing appears, and this occurrence is the ground of the evolution of the bearer of the intentional state.All the theories here examined consider intentionality as a naturalistic and not conscious property and they all have a strategy to address the problems arising from the possibility of the non-existence of intentional objects. Certainly, the possibility of the non-existence of the intentional object raises the most pressing issue for intentionality theory, but there is another aspect of intentionality in need of consideration: its modality. A range of problems result from the fact that intentionality is related to beliefs and desires and not only to perceptions. Naturalistic theories of intentionality tend to respond to the problem of modality by considering the modality of a mental state as coinciding with that state’s general functional role. However, this answer amounts to the claim that modality is not a contingent property of a mental state. This claim threatens to raise a contradiction. It is hard to understand how modality could be non-contingent with respect to a mental state, as opposed to intentionality which is contingent, if both modality and intentionality are naturalized properties.4

Such naturalization projects finally collide with a certain kind of dilemma, one that is best understood through the conception of intentionality developed by Searle (1983; 1992). Searle suggests that intentionality is something like a biological property, while at the same time

4 See Voltolini & Calabi (2009, p. 260).

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denying that it is a property which supervenes on materialistic states. In order to reconcile these two strands of his thought, Searle appeals to the complex notion of emergence, which ultimately takes him away from naturalism in the strict sense.We must therefore turn to the question of whether the entire project of naturalizing intentionality ought to be abandoned. In fact, there are a multitude of other important objections to the naturalization of intentionality. I’ll try to quickly recall the main ones, considering that most of them are well-known and probably the main objection has to do with the notorious disjunction problem that gives most clearly rise to the so-called crude causal theory.The crude causal theory, as I partially said, declares that a representation represents whatever reliably causes it. Suppose that horses reliably cause the representation we normally apply when we think about horses, HORSE, but so do cows on a dark night too. Then, agreeing to the crude causal theory, HORSE represents either a horse or a cow on a dark night, since this is what reliably causes it5. But this is not the correct answer; HORSE represents the non-disjunctive content horse. This “inability to distinguish cases of misrepresentation from the representation of genuinely disjunctive contents is the disjunction problem” (Mendelovici & Bourget, 2014, p. 327). The problem is not merely that the crude causal theory ascribes contents that are disjunctive. Some representations might actually be disjunctive; for instance, someone might have a concept with the content “mouse or rat”. The problem, instead, is that the theory ascribes disjunctive contents when it should not. Based on our pre-theoretic understanding of intentionality, we know that the concept we use when we think about horses does not just represent a horse or cow on a dark night. Any theory that asserts otherwise obviously gets things wrong.But that is not all. Another critical point is highlighted by the swamp-person thought experiment. The possible case of swamp-people is a powerful counterexample to teleological tracking theories, theories on which evolutionarily-determined biological functions play a role in securing content like for instance in Dretske or Millikan theories. It seems possible, in theory, that a molecule-for-molecule duplicate of you could emerge from a swamp due to perhaps a random quantum event. On Millikan and Dretske’s views, this swamp-person would not have any representational states since it would not have an evolutionary history (Brown, 1993; Baker, 2007). A variant of the quantum-person argument could be expanded also to non-teleological tracking theories. Suppose that a single duplicate of your brain spontaneously appears in something like a Putnam’s vat in space. This brain in a box has no possibility to interact with the world outside. Naturally, this brain seems to initially have many of the same mental states as you, though your mental histories will instantly diverge, since it receives no input from the outside whilst you do. The problem, here, is that this brain in a vat does not reasonably track anything, so tracking theories guess that it does not represent at all, not even a possible virtual world in case it were connected to a mysterious software6.

It seems then that the only plausible alternative to Brentano’s dualism is strong reductionism. However, both of the naturalistic theories described, show many complications and have faced objections and developed more or less convincing answers. Thus, I would like to suggest that the project of attempting to naturalize intentionality ultimately seems untenable (Lycan, 2009).In what follows, I seek to show that there is a strong alternative to naturalism, one which in some sense returns to Wittgenstein’s linguistic normativism and to a Sellarsian version of inferentialism. Propositions, or, strictly speaking, semantic contents, can be about their

5 This example is taken from Mendelovici & Bourget (2014).6 For these kinds of objections see Horgan, Tienson, & Graham (2003).

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own objects without being mental states. This entails that intentionality cannot always be considered a strictly natural property. Hence, this observation opens up an opportunity to consider intentionality as a normative property (Brandom, 2000). To understand this idea, it would be helpful to recall Wittgenstein’s considerations about expectations .In the Philosophische Untersuchungen (§444), Wittgenstein describes an actual situation in which we might talk of expecting something:

But it might now be asked: what’s it like for him to come? – The door opens, someone walks in, and so on. – What’s it like for me to expect him to come? – I walk up and down the room, look at the clock now and then, and so on. – But the one set of events has not the smallest similarity to the other! So how can one use the same words in describing them? – But perhaps I say as I walk up and down: “I expect he’ll come in” – Now there is a similarity somewhere. But of what kind?! (Wittgenstein, 1953/1955, §444).

Wittgenstein’s account of the intentionality of expectations denies the need to invoke any kind of relationship between expectation and some extra-linguistic reality. The link between expectation and satisfaction is in the fact that we use the same words to express what we expect and to describe what satisfies our expectation. Our puzzlement over the nature of expectation can be resolved by looking at the grammar we use to express expectations.The agreement or similarity between an expectation and the state which satisfies it cannot be understood as some strange relationship between a mental state and some external entity; nor can it be understood as an internal relation between the proposition describing the expectation and the event that fulfills it. This agreement simply consists in the fact that we use the same sentence, P, in the description of the expectation that P as we do in the description of what is expected: P.Wittgenstein’s way to consider intentionality generalizes from such examples of expectation, thereby denying any metaphysical relationship between thoughts and the world. This account ultimately sees intentionality as an internal, grammatical relation within the intentional state.This linguistic account of intentionality grounds a normative view. This line of thought is developed by Sellars, whose view I shall briefly discuss. Sellars claims that concepts pertaining to the intentionality of language do not refer to relations between language and reality. Instead, these concepts are used to classify linguistic manifestations with reference to one’s background language. It follows that the notion of meaning is not a relational notion. For Sellars, statements are endowed with meaning not through a relation with the world, but rather through something that functions like a copula. Therefore, when we assign a meaning to a linguistic expression, we merely assign that expression a functional role within the rules of language (Sellars, 1980).Sellars uses the formalism of “dot-quotes” to draw out the functional role of linguistic expressions. Dot-quotes are a device of logical notation by which he indicates a sortal predicate. A sortal predicate is a predicate that, in a distributive way, refers to all expressions of all possible languages which bear the same specific functional role within their respective languages. Sellars illustrates dot-quotes with the example:

“und” (in German) means andThis expression, written with dot quotes, becomes

“und”s (in German) are •and•sThe regimented version replaces “means” with the copula and uses dot-quotes to convert and into a sortal expression. This idea clarifies that, on Sellars’ view, meaning cannot be understood relationally. This is because “means” is structured as a specialized form of the copula and, as Sellars puts it, “the copula is not a relation word.”

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The linguistic expression and is revealed, through its dot-quotes formalization, to be an item which functions in any language in a way that is relevantly similar to the ways in which it functions in English. With this precise theory of meaning in mind, Sellars establishes a functional relationship between the role of an expression within any language, and the role of an internal state in a system of representations. Consequently, he believes that one may come to know the contents of internal states by inferring them from the functional roles played by expressions describing verbal behavior. This inference is possible because when we learn the rules of a language, we acquire proximate propensities to verbal behaviors grounded in these internal states. Thus, for Sellars, the meaning of intentionalist vocabulary can be clarified to the extent that the functional role of verbal behavior is clear. Sellars summarizes:

our meaning statement gives the meaning of “und” (in German) by presenting us with an exemplar in our background language and telling us that if we understand how “und”s function in German we should rehearse in imagination the cluster of functions characteristic of “and”. (Sellars, 2007, p. 286)

Thus, attributing to a person a thought that p (or any other mental state with an analogous mental content) is ultimately revealed to be a rather complex ascription. In the first instance, such an attribution locates the person in the logical space of reasons. That is, we first situate the intentional state of the subject within a vast network of possible intentional states related to each other by normative relations. This network is a system of dispositions and rules of inference governing the verbal behavior of all the participants in the space of reasons. The core of Sellars’ analysis rests upon the notion of a community of speakers with a shared heritage of behaviors, participating in the use of expressions governed by inferential linguistic rules. Indeed, from an inferentialist point of view, it is a mistake to understand beliefs, desires and other kinds of intentional states merely as explanatory posits. They are also thoughts possessing propositional content which coincides with their inferential, and therefore public, roles. Consequently, the propositional content of a thought always has a normative dimension, a dimension possessed in virtue of the possible socially recognized good inferences which may derive from that content.Sellars, in a strategy later revived by Brandom (1994), develops an idea originated by Carnap, according to which the language of modalities is interpreted as a transposed language of norms. That is, a formal metalinguistic perspective on discussion per se is transposed onto a material mode in which we directly talk. The basic idea behind this theory of transposition is that when we approve the claim ‘A necessitates B’ we are really approving the propriety of the inference from A to B. Naturally, the claim ‘A necessitates B’ is not the claim that an inference from A to B is good. Rather, the point is that understanding the former claim requires an awareness of the different kinds of inferences to which it commits its adherents.Such inferential normative consequences are, in some sense, implicit in the concept of necessary consequence. Making them explicit (in the Brandomian sense of the transposition from the material to the formal mode) requires concepts pertaining to the use of expressions that are not made explicit by that use, concepts such as expression, inference, and (most importantly for our purposes) normative concepts like propriety, commitment and entitlement, obligation and permission. Hence,

Mastering the use of ordinary empirical descriptive predicates, which is in practice understanding their content or the meaning they express, requires being able to distinguish some uses and inferences as correct, and others as incorrect.

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In other words,

it requires knowing (in the practical sense of being able to distinguish, a kind of know-how) at least something about what one is committing oneself to by applying the concept, and what would entitle one to do that. (Brandom, 2001, p. 604)

Treating one descriptive predicate as appropriate in a particular case requires one to consider the range of predicates to which it is inferentially related, treating some as valid and normatively precluding others. Brandom summarizes:

Since this essential dimension of the use of even ordinary, descriptive, nonnormative concepts (in belief and judgment no less than in linguistic assertion) is what is made explicit by normative vocabulary, it cannot be that ordinary empirical descriptive concepts are coherent and intelligible in principle, but normative concepts are incoherent and unintelligible in principle. (Brandom, 2001, p. 605)

The distinctions that are made explicit by normative vocabulary are already implicit in our ability to use and understand non-normative vocabulary.This picture understands the propositional content of a thought as given by its inferential role. Since this role is constituted by the range of good inferences derivable from that content, intentionality is an intrinsically normative property.This position is a direct derivation of the Wittgensteinian principle (Wittgenstein, 1953/1955, p. 244), adopted by Sellars, that mental states are the reasons for and not the causes of external behavior. This raises an alternate conception of dualism. That is, it grounds a kind of epistemic dualism, as opposed to the familiar Cartesian and Brentanian ontological substance dualism.

From this point of view, Sellars’ position is particularly interesting because it does not derive from an a-priori anti-naturalistic choice. Sellars just thinks that, in order to avoid the problems of naturalism, and in absence of clear evidence in favor of a naturalistic account, it is better to turn to a behaviorist strategy, at least from a purely methodological point of view.Sellars, in fact, believes that behaviourism is a useful methodological strategy that can provide an analysis of the concepts of intentional states. This does not entail that behaviourism is free from errors, or that it is ontologically flawless. Sellars is committed to the existence of internal states, but he also believes it is possible to think of mentalistic concepts in an analogous way, with respect to the concepts pertaining to verbal behaviour. From this perspective, verbal behaviourism can be used to examine and reconstruct concepts relating to intentional states. In essence, he believes it is possible to clarify the nature of internal states through the idea that they are dependent on the most primitive intersubjective discourse, hence on manifest behaviours. Like all mentalistic concepts, the concept of intentionality derives from the logic that underpins the primitive public verbal events. It is thus a theory that transposes into the dimension of interiority the archaic speaking-out-loud, as is clearly shown in the famous Myth of Jones thought experiment, the central part of Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (1997, §§ 12-16).The philosophical fable hypothesizes a community of «Rylean ancestors» who possess a complex language for describing objects and events in the world, but lack any conception of mental states. This community possesses semantic instruments to explain manifest human behavior as well as metalinguistic abilities. However, such instruments are limited to a set of dispositional terms and do not include the conceptual resources for more complex explanations, which would appeal to internal states. It is at this stage that Sellars introduces

3. Sellarsian Internal States

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Jones, a theoretical genius who postulates the existence of internal speech-like episodes that he calls thoughts. These new episodes are closely modeled on publicly discernable declaratory utterances and play an internal role similar to the argumentative role performed by overt speech. In this way, Sellars claims that the Rylean community can sensibly increase its explanatory resources by positing unobservable mental states that regulate people’s reactions to the world.The Myth of Jones is clearly a critique of the traditional mentalistic framework. The same critique that Sellars develops in Behaviorism, Language and Meaning (1980b). According to Sellars, the classical theory of mental activity highlights analogies between properties of conceptual states and properties of the linguistic utterances which express them. This means that both have subjects and predicates, logical form and quantificational structure. Accordingly, classical mentalism regards the syntax and semantics of conceptual episodes as primary, as compared to linguistic episodes, which is tantamount to saying that thinking is equivalent to being in direct relation to the intersubjective domain of thinkables. This relation of utterances to thinkables is the logical product, on the one hand of a relation between utterances and thoughts, and, on the other, of the relation between thoughts and thinkables. From this point of view, according to classic mentalism, thought is inherently non-linguistic and, accordingly, a linguistic expression has aboutness only in a derivative way, since it is only the thought expressed by it that has direct aboutness in relation to a thinkable.This reconstruction allows Sellars to show that, in the mentalist perspective, the only way to formulate an adequate theory of linguistic expressions is to primarily refer to the intentionality of thought. This is precisely the point that is criticized with the methodological adherence to behaviorism that means not the way of conceiving mental acts, but rather the epistemological primacy of thought conceived as something intentionally directed towards thinkables. In other words, according to Sellars, instead of using an intentionalist vocabulary to analyze the aboutness of verbal behaviour as an expression of thoughts intentionally directed to the intersubjective universe of thinkables, it is necessary to look at verbal behaviour directly in terms of thinking itself.Thought episodes are, in the first instance, candid linguistic utterances made by a speaker who possesses knowledge of the language in question. As shown in the Myth of Jones philosophical experiment, Sellars calls that kind of linguistic utterances thinkings-out-loud. In this analysis, thinking-out-loud is the primary concept pertaining to conceptual activity, and consequently intentionality is a notion that, in the first instance, concerns not thought but language. The idea that the relationship between thought and language should be reversed relative to the position found in classical mentalism implies also a more specific, and well-founded, characterization of what classical mentalists call the domain of thinkables. In fact, in Sellars’ understanding, this becomes the intersubjective domain of linguistic behaviour that is publicly and communally accessible.Sellarsian treatment of intentionality, opposite to classical mentalism, is useful to show that there is no need to commit directly to a naturalist position. For this reason, I believe that this path is still fruitful and needs to be followed and further developed. The naturalization of intentionality, as an alternative to ontological dualism, is not strictly convincing. Ultimately, I tried to show that if one believes in the naturalization of intentionality, then she is forced to admit, like Crane, that being intentional is not a sufficient condition for being mental. But, perhaps, there is no need to choose between all the issues that this idea entails and dualism: propositions, or semantic contents, can focus on their objects without being directly conceived as mental states, so it is plausible to find a third way between a radical metaphysical dualism and an absolute naturalism.

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The suggestion that mental states are reasons for behavior amounts to the position that desires and beliefs are useful concepts in rationally explaining human actions. This, however, is equivalent to the claim that human behavior properly belongs to a logical space rather than to a causal space. That is, behavioral phenomena ought to be analyzed in terms of reasons for action, logic and normativity, rather than empirical phenomena through the scientific approach of causation.

REFERENCESBaker, L.R. (2007). Naturalism and the First-person Perspective. How Successful is Naturalism? Publications of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 203-226.Brandom, R. (1994). Making it Explicit. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Brandom, R. (2001). Modality, Normativity, and Intentionality. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, (63)3: 587-609.Brentano, F. (1874/1995). Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. London: Routledge.Brown, D.J. (1993). Swampman of La Mancha, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 23(3): 327 -348.Crane, T. (1995). The Mechanical Mind, Harmondsworth: Penguin.Crane, T. (2001). Elements of Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Dretske, F.I. (1981). Knowledge and the Flow of Information, Oxford: Clarendon Press.Fodor, J. (1987). Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Fodor, J. (1990). A Theory of Content and Other Essays, Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Horgan, T.E., Tienson, J.L. and Graham, G. (2003). The Phenomenology of First-person Agency. In S. Walter, & H.-D. Heckmann (eds.), Physicalism and Mental Causation, London: Imprint Academic, 323-341.Loewer, B., Rey, G. (1991) (eds). Meaning in Mind: Fodor and His Critics, Cambridge: Blackwell.Kriegel, U. (2014) (Ed.). Current Controversies in Philosophy of Mind, New York: Routledge.Mendelovici, A., Bourget D. (2014). Naturalizing Intentionality: Tracking Theories Versus Phenomenal Intentionality Theories, Philosophy Compass, 9 (5): 325-337.Millikan, R.G. (1984). Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories, Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Millikan, R.G. (1993). White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice, Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Papineau, D. (1993). Philosophical Naturalism, Oxford: Blackwell.Searle, J.R. (1983). Intentionality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Searle, J.R. (1992). The Rediscovery of the Mind, Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Sellars, W. (1980). Naturalism and Ontology, Astacadero (CA): Ridgeview Publishing Co.Sellars, W. (1980b). Behaviorism, Language and Meaning, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 61: 3-30.Sellars, W. (1997). Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Sellars, W. (2007). Language as Thought and as Communication. In K. Sharp & R. Brandom (eds.), In the Space of Reasons. Selected Essays of Wilfrid Sellars, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Voltolini, A.; Calabi, C. (2009). I problemi dell’intenzionalità, Torino: Einaudi.Wittgenstein, L. (1953/1955). Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell.


DOI: 10.17454/pam-2207





INTENTIONALITY, POINT OF VIEW, AND THE ROLE OF THE INTERPRETER

abstract

The three main approaches to the metaphysics of intentionality can arguably be subjected to analysis in terms of grammatical point of view: the approach of the (internalist) phenomenal intentionality programme (plus productivism about linguistic content) may be regarded as first-personal; interpretationism, perhaps, as second-personal; and (reductive externalist) causal information theories (including teleosemantics) as third-personal. After making this plausible, the current paper focusses on the role of the interpreter (if any) in interpretationism. It argues that, despite some considerations from the publicity of meaning potentially suggesting the contrary, radical interpretation is not subject to epistemic constraint; nor should the interpretationist appeal to the idiosyncratic interests of actual interpreters, thereby rendering the approach irremediably relativistic. Instead, an appeal to the pure form of interestedness is all that is involved; this supports a methodologically non-reductive outlook on intentionality.

keywords

Interpretation; Second-Person; Interest-Relativity; Reductionism; Methodology

BRIAN BALL New College of the [email protected]

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What role does subjectivity play in determining intentional content? Some will say none: intentionality, on their view, can be characterized from a thoroughly objective, third-person perspective. Nevertheless, in what follows, I will distinguish two ways in which subjectivity might be thought to have a role – one first-personal, the other second-personal. I will then focus on the (arguably less explored) second-personal approach, considering further refinements of the role of the subject. The upshot will be that, on the best version of this approach, subjectivity is methodologically, but not metaphysically, involved in content determination.

There are broadly three perspectives on intentionality in the philosophy of mind, namely (cf. Pautz, forthcoming) those of: the (internalist) phenomenal intentionality programme; interpretationism; and (reductive externalist) causal-information theories. Can they be subjected to an analysis in terms of differences in grammatical point of view – first, second, and third personal respectively?The phenomenal intentionality programme builds on Nagel’s (1974) work suggesting that experience has a subjective character – there is something it is like for the subject to undergo a conscious mental episode. It then develops this observation into a theoretical account that grounds intentionality, not just for sense perception, but also for moods and the emotions, and even (through an exploration of ‘cognitive phenomenology’) for thought (cf. Montague, 2010). In particular, the suggestion is that through phenomenological investigation – a paradigmatically first-personal method – the qualitative characters of various subjective experiences (i.e. what it is like for a subject to undergo them) can be discerned; that these will be found to involve, or supply, accuracy conditions – i.e. a certain sort of intentional content; and that this applies even in the case of ‘cognitive experiences’ (Pautz, forthcoming). While some theorists (e.g. Tye, 1995) embrace intentionalism about phenomenal consciousness, taking the (independently fixed) representational character of an experience to determine its qualitative character (due to its own transparency), advocates of phenomenal intentionality (e.g. Horgan & Tienson, 2002) see the connection here running in the opposite direction, with (subject) internally determined experiential qualities fixing a kind of narrow content, which can then be supplemented with appropriate causal connections to fix wide content. In this way, all intentional mental content is metaphysically grounded in (internally determined) phenomenal intentionality.According to interpretationism, by contrast, a subject’s intentional mental states are

1. Introduction

2. Intentionality and Grammatical

Point of View

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metaphysically determined as those attributed in a correct interpretation (Williams, 2020). Such an approach – dubbed ‘best systems theory’ by Pautz (forthcoming) – is characterized by its reliance on the global, or holistic constraints of rationality (Davidson, 1970): the correct attributions of attitudes are charitable, rationalizing the subject’s actions in light of the circumstances in which they find themselves (cf. Lewis, 1974). On at least some formulations of the view, however, (correct) attributions of attitudes are (those) made by idealized interpreters – characters who might be thought to introduce a second-person perspective into the picture (see below).Finally, causal-informational approaches attempt to reduce mental intentionality to certain sorts of (non-accidental, lawlike, or counterfactual supporting) correlations between (internal) states of the subject and those of her (external) environment. Such approaches may be thought to embody the ‘third-person world view’ (Kemp, 2012, p. 2) of natural science – Nagel’s (1989) utterly objective ‘view from nowhere’.What about the intentionality of language? Simchen (2017) distinguishes two approaches to metasemantics – that is, “the metaphysics of semantic endowment” (2017, p. 75): productivism, on which (referential and truth-conditional) content is fixed by “conditions surrounding the production” (2017, p. 175) of linguistic utterances; and interpretationism, on which what is relevant are “conditions surrounding the interpretive consumption or reception of such items (e.g. facilitation of good explanations of speakers’ verbal behavior)” (2017, p. 175). Arguably, the speaker’s, or producer’s perspective can be considered that of the first person, and the hearer’s, or consumer’s that of the second person. Finally, while Simchen does not consider such views, teleosemantic approaches to linguistic intentionality (such as that of Millikan, 1984) emphasize the roles of both producers and consumers in fixing content and may therefore suggest a third-person perspective, that of a (scientific) bystander observing and objectively characterizing interactions between two other parties (speaker and hearer).These various approaches to linguistic intentionality might well be supplemented with corresponding approaches to intentional mental content. For instance, though Simchen does not explicitly discuss this, Grice’s (1989) intentionalist approach to the metaphysics of meaning is productivist in character – and so on the present suggestion (speaker-oriented and) first-personal; and it might be grafted onto the theoretical outlook of the phenomenal intentionality programme to yield a thorough-going first-personal perspective on the metaphysics of intentionality, both mental and linguistic. This grafting need not be entirely artificial either: for it might be thought that a speaker’s communicative intentions are accessible to her, from her own perspective; and their contents might be taken to be determined by, or at least grounded in, their qualitative characters. Indeed, this was arguably Locke’s view in the (1690/1975) Essay, on which a speaker is able to (intentionally) “use these [articulate] sounds” – i.e. words – and “make them stand as marks for the ideas within his own mind” (III.i.2). “Words, in their primary or immediate signification”, Locke therefore wrote, “stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him who uses them”. And of course, by ‘idea’ Locke meant “whatsoever is the [immediate] object of the understanding when a man thinks” – so something to which one has first-personal access. Finally, what an idea is about (and so any associated word’s secondary signification) is determined by a relation – either resemblance (for ideas of primary qualities) or causation (in the case of ideas of secondary qualities) – that it stands in thanks to its intrinsic, qualitative features, just as advocates of the phenomenal intentionality programme maintain.1

1 Humpty Dumpty also embraces intentionalism about meaning – though a notoriously extreme version of it. “When I use a word”, he says, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less”. “The question”, as Alice rightly

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Something similar might be said in relation to the second and third-personal approaches. For instance, a unified interpretationist approach might be expected, securing both mental and linguistic intentionality (cf. Davidson, 1973). And as Lepore and Ludwig note (in discussing Davidson): “[t]he project of radical interpretation” – which lies at the basis of interpretationism – “is the project of interpreting another speaker from evidence that does not presuppose any knowledge of the meanings of his terms or any detailed knowledge of his propositional attitudes” (2005, p. 151, my emphasis). This suggests a central role for a second-person perspective lying at the heart of such an interpretationist approach – indeed, one which, on Kemp’s estimation, requires the interpreter ultimately to (subjectively) “judge outright what a person refers to or means” (2012, p. 2). Finally, and perhaps most obviously, third-personal, causal-informational theories have been applied not only to the case of thought, but also to that of language – indeed, teleosemantic theories are of precisely this character.2

I will not seek to determine, in this paper, whether this grammatically-based taxonomy of views is ultimately correct, or defensible. For instance, it might be objected that Gricean intentionalism is utterly third-personal, and productivism more generally objective/scientific in outlook.3 Or that it can be incorporated into an interpretationist perspective.4 Or again that the subjective contribution of the (radical) interpreter is ultimately first rather than second-personal.5 I will not explore these possibilities further here. Nor will I consider each of the views outlined above in detail to determine which is to be embraced.6 Rather, my principal aim in what follows will be to explore the interpretationist perspective, in an attempt to characterize the role of the interpreter in radical (content fixing) interpretation. In this way, I hope to provide some evidence that there is, at least potentially, a distinctively second-personal role for subjectivity in the determination of intentional content.

Davidson (1973) introduced the problem of radical interpretation, asking what an observer of linguistic activity could know that would enable her to interpret a speaker’s utterances – in short, what evidence would suffice to enable her to interpret him. The interpretive task in question was assumed to be undertaken under the radical circumstances in which the interpreter could draw on no prior knowledge of the speaker’s language or attitudes. As Williams (2020) stresses, Davidson’s problem has its origins in Quine’s work (e.g. Quine, 1960): but Quine focussed on translation undertaken in the radical circumstances imagined above – the activity of producing a mapping from the expressions of one language to those of another (intuitively – though not on Quine’s account - those that are synonymous with them);

notes in response, “is… whether you can make words mean so many different things” (Carroll, 2005, p. 128, italics original). Gricean productivism might be thought to be a more constrained version of Humpty Dumpty’s, or at least Locke’s, view – one on which what one can reasonably intend to mean depends in part on what one knows about what others will reasonably expect.2 Millikan (1984) stresses that it is a virtue of her approach that it is equally applicable in both areas, without regarding either mental or linguistic intentionality as derivative on the other.3 This will arguably be so if external aspects of the speech context, rather than introspectively accessible features of speaker’s intentions, are given a prominent role.4 See Ball (forthcoming) for discussion.5 Perhaps this is what Kemp ultimately thinks: “[t]he bottom line is that the intuition or semantical judgement of the interpreter cannot be removed from the loop, and thus the theory fails to measure up to the standards of impersonal science” (Kemp, 2012, p. 10).6 I do not have much sympathy for the phenomenal intentionality programme – and in particular, for its internalist commitments – but I will not here seek to justify my distaste. (I note, however, that I am more sympathetic to the representationalist account of the connection between phenomenology and intentionality mooted above. This may give some indication of the direction such a justification might take.)

3. Radical Interpretation and Epistemic

Constraint

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Davidson, by contrast, considered interpretation, a process that targets a single language (though it may be undertaken in another), aiming to render its expressions and speakers intelligible.On Davidson’s articulation the problem has an epistemological bent – it is concerned with the evidence an interpreter can rely on in radical circumstances. Moreover, it is, on the face of it, concerned only with the interpretation of speakers of a language. (It turns out that those are the only agents with attitudes on Davidson’s view.) But Lewis (1974) reformulated the problem, generalizing it in such a way as to apply to non-linguistic agents, and making clear that it is ultimately metaphysical in character: how do the physical facts determine the intentional facts about meanings (if any) and attitudes? He also offered a different solution to the problem – though one that continued to emphasize the importance of principles requiring charity in interpretation, and an attempt to regard agents as rational. (Indeed, these commonalities between the two theorists might be regarded as definitive of interpretationist approaches to intentionality more generally – together they amount to the need to regard the fixation of intentional content as subject to the global constraints of rationality, broadly construed, as in Davidson 1970.)We can ignore some of the differences between Davidson and Lewis (e.g. over the applicability of interpretationism to non-linguistic agents).7 The question we are interested in here is, are there any reasons why an answer to the metaphysical question (posed by Lewis) must advert to epistemological considerations (as on Davidson’s formulation)? Gluer (2018) argues that, for Davidson, there is: roughly, meaning is communicated, hence publicly knowable; and so the evidence required to know what is meant must be available to the ordinary (not omniscient) interpreter. As exegesis, this may well be right: but Williamson (2007) criticizes Davidson for embracing both verificationism (in the form of the idea that a subject cannot have attitudes unless we, as interpreters, can have evidence that she does), and constructivism (here the idea is that a subject cannot be attributed attitudes unless specific ones can be attributed); like Lewis (and Williams), he sees no (subjective) role for the interpreter in (his own) interpretationism.To my mind, the proposal that (radical) interpretation is subject to significant epistemic constraints is problematically at odds with confirmation holism. The line between what can be known by direct observation vs more theoretical reflection is vague, and perhaps subject-relative – but once we allow that background knowledge might play a role in helping the interpreter to determine meaning (which we should), it seems there is no principled limit to which facts are relevant. For instance, we would not want to fail to interpret bees – or, if science fiction is allowed, creatures as much like us as possible, but with visual systems like those of bees – as having perceptions and beliefs whose contents is specified in terms of ultraviolet colours, simply because we are unable to detect ultraviolet light with our unaided eyes! But once we allow our (theoretical, not ‘ordinary’) knowledge of optics into the interpretive base, it seems we should admit that no possible evidence is out of bounds.8

7 Another question that is of interest concerns the relative influence of Sellars (1956) on these theorists (and Dennett, to be discussed below). According to De Vries (2020, section 5.1), Sellars held that attributing a thought to someone “locates the relevant state of the person ‘in the logical space of reasons’”, but also that it “effectively attributes to that person as well a behavioral control system that is so structured that something analogous to theoretical and practical inference goes on within it” – in other words, it is true of them only if they have a certain functional organization. And as Weatherson (2016) points out, Lewis was a (reductive) functionalist – including about the attitudes. Davidson (1970) was not.8 This might still leave some truths out of bounds – e.g. the truth that no one knows that p (cf. Williamson, 2000). But such truths aren’t physical in character.

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There is no role for epistemic constraint in interpretationist approaches to the metaphysics of intentionality – or so I have argued. Might there nonetheless be some other form of subjectivity involved in the attribution of attitudes and meanings? Arguably Dennett (1978) sees a pragmatic role for the interpreter: attributing attitudes (upon adopting the intentional stance) is useful to those with particular interests (as well as limited knowledge).9 Discussing Dennett’s views, Williams says:

Read as a piece of metaphysics, an appeal to an interpreter’s projects and beliefs would be bizarre. Truths about each individual’s beliefs would obtain only relative to another’s perspective, and those perspectives would be constituted in part by the others’ attitudes, generating a morass of circularities (2020, p. xix).

In short, Williams’ worry is that Dennett’s account of attitude ascriptions is premised on relativism and leads to circularity – when understood as constitutive of what it is to have those attitudes. Williams takes this as a reason to read Dennett as merely concerned with the practice of attributing attitudes, and not with the metaphysics of the attitudes themselves. This reading of Dennett strikes me as mistaken – though I will not pursue this exegetical matter here.10 Instead, let us ask, how serious is the relativism worry? (We will return to the circularity worry below.)To address this issue, it may be worth noting what problems the appeal to an interpreter and her interests might be thought to alleviate. Lewis (1983), recall, appeals to a distinction between (relatively) natural properties and others (that are less natural), with the perfectly natural properties being those discovered by physics; and he suggests (in Lewis, 1984) that naturalness constrains interpretation, determining which worldly features are eligible to act as intentional contents of mental states and linguistic items. But the contents of our thoughts and meanings of our expressions are rarely physically natural, so this constraint does too little to fix appropriate interpretations (Williams, 2007; Hawthorne, 2007). Indeed, this is part of Chomsky’s objection to the discipline of semantics – it cannot be scientific because meanings are scientifically heterogenous. We may say that water is H2O, but the stuff in the sea has plenty of other chemicals in it – far more so than the stuff in our teacup, which we refuse to call ‘water’. According to Chomsky, “whether something is water depends on special human interests and concerns” (1995, p. 22). And yet, ‘water’ means water and ‘tea’ means tea.11

Arguably, then, if we can interpret the words of others, it is because we share interests with them. Detecting tea, for instance, may have more to do with caring about (or being interested in) it than anything else (such as our epistemic capacities). And yet according to Wittgenstein (1953), “if a lion could speak, we could not understand him”. Why not? Primarily, I take it, because lions have different interests than we do. We cannot be (fully and appropriately) sensitive to what lions are up to (with their radically different form of life). Lions’ interests diverge from our own. And yet, if there is a divergence of interests between subject and interpreter, surely the correct interpretation is one that is sensitive to the (feline) subject’s

9 Thus, there is a pragmatic (rather than epistemic) role for the interpreter if conditions and states such as needs, desires, and interests, which have the world-to-mind direction of fit (Anscombe, 2000) – as opposed to doxastic and epistemic states (with the opposite direction of fit) – are regarded as central to the interpretive process.10 Cf. Dennett (1981), where it is stressed, in effect, that useful attributions of belief are true, and Dennett (1991), where the patterns recognized by these attributions are taken to be real. Some aspects of Zawidski’s interesting (2015) engagement with Dennett’s work that may be pertinent are also discussed below.11 Another potential illustration of the issue comes from the BBC Comedy sketch, “What makes soup soup?”. Arguably the answer is something about our interests. Certainly soup is not a natural kind.

4. A Pragmatic Role for the

Interpreter?

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interests, not the (human) interpreter’s! This suggests that relativism may indeed be a worry in explicating the metaphysics of intentionality in terms of a process of interpretation that takes into account the idiosyncratic interests of the interpreter.Interestingly, Hawthorne (2007) suggests a quite different role for the interpreter’s interests – one that does not appear to fall prey to this concern. He notes that agents in general have interests. Suppose, then, that (for some proposition p) a given (arbitrary) agent is interested in whether p. As Hawthorne notes, by minimal logical reasoning, it follows that they are interested in whether it is true that p. Thus, all agents have an interest in the truth. Hawthorne suggests that this fact can help to secure a role for the notion of truth, which is central to the (radical) interpretation that determines the contents of a given subject’s attitudes. Thus, it is not insofar as interpreters are epistemically constrained subjects, but rather because they are interested agents, that they have a key role to play in interpretation – and yet, this is not a reason in itself to expect any subject or interest relativity in correct interpretation.As I read him, Hawthorne is suggesting that a certain pragmatism lies at the heart of interpretationism. But it is (as a Kantian might say) the pure form of agency as such that determines a role for the (idealized, omniscient) interpreter on Hawthorne’s understanding of interpretationism. And this in turn suggests an anti-reductionist outlook: the (omniscient) interpreter needs to come at the task of interpretation in a way that is sensitive to high-level features like truth, and truth-conditional content, not just the low-level properties that are discerned by the natural sciences. In short, then, pragmatism need not yield relativism; but it does point away from reductionism – in effect, embracing the ‘circularity’ Williams regards as problematic.

It will be worth considering objections to the foregoing reasoning, as the replies may help to clarify the position being described.A first objection construes the above line of thought (attributed to Hawthorne) as involving the following key steps: first, we note that interpreters are agents, and so have interests; second, we conclude that they therefore have an interest in the truth; third, we infer that they wield the concept of truth; fourth, we acknowledge that this concept plays a key role in interpretation; and finally, fifth, we conclude that interpreters therefore have a role to play in content fixing, radical interpretation. The objection is then pressed that the move from the second to third steps is unsupported – that agents have an interest in the truth does not guarantee that they are in a position to deploy the concept of truth.12

It will not do to respond by reconstruing the original argument along the following, simpler lines: agents have an interest in the truth; so it is appropriate to interpret them using the concept of truth (rather than lower level physical notions). The problem is that, even if it is successful, this route to the conclusion that truth has a role to play in interpretation passes via the interests of the interpreted, not those of the interpreter – and it therefore fails to secure a role for the latter in radical interpretation.A consideration of Zawidski’s (2015) elaboration of Dennett’s interpretationism may help us to see a way forward. According to Zawidski, natural selection helps to secure the legitimacy of the interpretation of systems in intentional terms, on Dennett’s approach, in two steps. First, it favours systems that reproduce efficiently, and so can be regarded as pursuing goals by effective means – or, in other words, as intentional systems; and thus, it helps to secure the existence of many such systems. Second, it ensures that systems that engage in interpretation

12 Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pressing this concern so clearly.

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in this way are tracking real (rather than spurious) patterns – for otherwise it would not be advantageous for them to do so! (One might add that, in certain sorts of situations – e.g. those in which a fight or flight reaction seems appropriate – such ordinary, naturally occurring interpreters may be inclined to make their attributions of attitudes second-personal, seeking to answer the question, what are you doing/going to do?)Does this line of thought provide a reason to think interpreters will, after all, wield the concept of truth, given their interest in doing so (so that the transition from the second to the third step above is vindicated)? Better, I think, to reconstrue the (original) argument as ensuring the appropriateness of interpretation that attributes attitudes (and speech acts) with truth-conditional contents (where this involves both an element of accuracy and an element of utility – or, as Hawthorne says, significance). In other words, we move directly from the thought that interpreters have an interest in the truth, to the thought that it is therefore appropriate for them to employ truth-conditional contents in interpretation (whether or not they have the concept of truth). This then allows us to draw the further conclusion that there is a pragmatic role for the interpreter in radical interpretation.This raises a further question. Does the response given here conflict with what was said previously about relativism and/or the divergence of interests between us and lions? This would be ironic, as Zawidski develops the above line of thought as a way of furthering Dennett’s response to the relativism charge. Nevertheless, we can ask, to what extent does interpretation serve a kind of coordination function (between interpreter and interpreted)? Is it key that the contents attributed are in some sense shared between interpreter and interpreted, thereby reintroducing idiosyncrasy in the interpreter’s perspective? A consideration of some remarks of Tollefsen’s will, I believe, prove illuminating on this point – and at the same time bolster the case that the role of the subject in interpretation is genuinely second-personal. The short answer, though, is that it does not: all that must be shared between interpreter and interpreted is sensitivity to the truth.Tollefsen (2015) suggests that when, as interpreters, we adopt Dennett’s intentional stance, we endeavour to discern reasons the agent has which both explain and justify her actions. Accordingly, not just any reasons will do – they must be ones that make her action intelligible from her own point of view and not just ours. She writes: “an action (including an utterance) will be intelligible to us – in the relevant sense – only if it makes sense to us that it made sense to the agent that she did what she did. This reflective constraint guides us in our interpretive endeavours” (p. 100, emphasis original).This articulation of the reflective constraint certainly sounds as though two parties are essentially involved in interpretation on Tollefsen’s view: the reasons attributed to the agent must justify the action, both to the interpreter and for the interpreted. As Tollefsen herself puts it, “we must assume that the agent shares our norms of rationality” (p. 100); and “our practice of interpretation involves the positing of an alternative point of view” (p. 100, my emphasis). In other words, it takes two to tango… and to interpret. The interpreter, it appears, must adopt a second-personal point of view on this account.It is therefore somewhat surprising to see Tollefsen say:

I am introducing here what others have called a first-person point of view…. [W]e need not associate this point of view with consciousness…. A rational point of view… is a perspective and one that can be adopted by other agents. When we make sense of others, we often project ourselves into their rational point of view in order to be able to better provide reasons that are intelligible in the way that the reflective constraint requires (p. 100, emphasis original).

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The point here about the nature of a point of view (involving rationality, or sapience, rather than, say, sentience) is well-taken; what is a little surprising is to see it described as first-personal.It is worth remarking, however, that Tollefsen herself does not describe the perspective in this way in the passage cited: she says that others have so described it; this of course leaves open that she herself would not. But regardless of whether she would, it remains the case that the reflective constraint, as articulated, makes it clear that interpretation involves two distinct perspectives (not one or three). Not only that, there is perhaps a case to be made that in assuming shared norms of rationality, interpretation becomes inherently interactional – the interpreter opens themselves up to the possibility that they will need to revise their standards of rationality (e.g. their logic) in light of evidence that the interpreted’s standards are preferable. This is not something that occurs in straightforward, third-personal observation and theory building.Be all of this as it may, the key point here as regards the objection that idiosyncrasy, and with it relativism, has been reintroduced is that it is not contents per se that are assumed to be shared, but a kind of sensitivity to truth. This is not relative – if it were, it could not induce the interpreter to adjust their standards!If relativism is not a concern, what about circularity? Zawidski thinks that this (third) worry can be addressed roughly as follows. Intentional systems are those that exhibit a certain kind of behavioural pattern. Which kind? The one that is discerned by a certain naturally occurring sort of system recognized in developmental psychology. When the pattern in one system is discerned by another (of the kind developmental psychologists study), the second system is itself engaged in an intentional act. This appears to introduce the threat of circularity: we are saying which systems are intentional systems by appeal to the notion of an intentional system! But ultimately, the fact that interpretation (of the kind recognized by developmental psychologists) is appealed to when saying which sort of behavioural pattern is at issue simply means that the behaviour of the interpreting system itself also exhibits a pattern that can be discerned by systems that engage in interpretation (so understood). “In other words”, says Zawidski, “the intentional stance is recursively applicable” (2015, p. 603). This precludes discerning the patterns in question at a lower level of analysis – but “ontologically, there are just behavioral patterns and dispositions” (2015, p. 603). In this sense, interpretationism suggests a methodological anti-reductionism, but does not require any metaphysical additions to a naturalistic ontology.Finally, a fourth objection is simply that the argument given above against epistemic constraint in interpretation was too quick. In response, let me say the following by way of clarification. It may be the case that the explanandum of radical interpretation is subject to epistemic constraint: roughly speaking, what is to be explained is (high-level) observable behaviour (characterized non-intentionally). What is not subject to epistemic constraint, in my view, is the explanans: any facts whatsoever can be drawn on in constructing and confirming hypotheses about which attitudes and meanings serve to explain the observable behavior. (Of course, in order to receive an explanation in terms of attitudes and behavior, the behavior itself may need to be redescribed in intentional terms.) This gives us a clear sense in which interpreters are, by their very nature, epistemically limited, interested agents, without imposing any epistemic constraint on radical interpretation itself.

I have suggested (following Hawthorne) that there may well be a pragmatic role for the interpreter in interpretationism – and that this in turn precludes a full-blown reduction of intentionality (to physics). It is worth stressing, however, that the issue of reductionism is ultimately a methodological one. What is being claimed here is that (radical) interpretation is

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(perhaps unsurprisingly) a hermeneutic, or meaning-seeking endeavour (not an investigation into features of the causal order as such). This leaves an (ideologically) irreducible role for (arguably second-personal13) subjectivity in its practice. It is not being claimed, however, that the metaphysics of intentionality requires any fundamental addition to the furniture of the physical universe – supervenience or grounding claims relating the physical to the intentional may well be true!14 And of course, I have not embraced interpretationism here – I have only sought to clarify it, finding a role for the interpreter’s perspective.

REFERENCESAnscombe, E. (2000). Intention. 2nd edition, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Avramides, A. (2020). Other Minds. In E. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020 Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/other-minds/.Ball, B. (forthcoming). Thought and Talk About Iterated Attitudes. In M. Hinton & P. Stalmaszczyk (eds.), Philosophical Approaches to Meaning and Communication. Bern: Peter Lang.Carroll, L. (2005). Alice through the Looking Glass. London: Walker Books.Chomsky, N. (1995). Language and Nature. Mind, 104 (413): 1-61.Davidson, D. (1970). Mental Events. In L. Foster & J.W. Swanson (eds.), Experience and Theory, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 79-101; reprinted in D. Davidson (2001), Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Davidson, D. (1973). Radical Interpretation. Dialectica, 3-4: 313-328.Dennett, D. (1978). Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology. Montgomery (VT): Bradford Books.Dennett, D. (1981). True Believers: The Intentional Strategy and Why It Works. In A.F. Heath (ed.), Scientific Explanation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 150-167.Dennett, D. (1991). Real Patterns. The Journal of Philosophy, 88(1): 27-51.Glüer, K. (2018). Interpretation and the Interpreter: On the Role of the Interpreter in Davidsonian Foundational Semantics. In D. Ball & B. Rabern (eds.), The Science of Meaning: Essays on the Metatheory of Natural Language Semantics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 226-252.Grice, P. (1989). Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Hawthorne, J. (2007). Craziness and Metasemantics. The Philosophical Review, 116 (3): 427-440.Horgan, T., Tienson, J. (2002). The Intentionality of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Intentionality. In D. Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 520-33.Kearns, S., Magidor, O. (2012). Semantic Sovereignty. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 85(2): 322-350.Kemp, G. (2012). Quine versus Davidson: Truth, Reference, and Meaning, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Lepore, E., Ludwig, K. (2005). Donald Davidson: Meaning, Truth, Language, and Reality, Oxford: Clarendon Press.Lewis, D. (1974). Radical Interpretation. Synthese, 27(3/4): 331-344.

13 As indicated above, it is somewhat unclear whether this characterization can ultimately be upheld. For instance, Avramides (2020) helpfully discusses (descriptive) approaches to the problem of other minds, distinguishing the third personal theory theory, not only from the first personal simulation theory, but also from approaches that emphasize second-personal interaction. Yet, for all that has been said here, the interpreter need not engage in any interactions with the subject of interpretation.14 In other words, Kearns and Magidor’s (2012) thesis of ‘semantic sovereignty’ (according to which the intentional facts are metaphysically independent of the physical facts) need not hold just because reductionism fails.

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Lewis, D. (1983). New Work for a Theory of Universals. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 61(4): 343-377.Lewis, D. (1984). Putnam’s Paradox, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 62(3): 221-236.Locke, J. (1975). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. by P. Nidditch, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Original work published in 1690).Millikan, R. (1984). Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories New Foundations for Realism. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Montague, M. (2010). Recent Work on Intentionality. Analysis, 70(4): 765-782.Nagel, T. (1974). What is it Like to Be a Bat? The Philosophical Review, 83(4): 435-450.Nagel, T. (1989). The View from Nowhere. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Pautz, A. (forthcoming). Consciousness Meets Lewisian Interpretation Theory. In U. Kriegel (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind, vol. 1.Quine, W.V.O. (1960). Word and Object. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Sellars, W. (1956). Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 1: 253-329.Simchen, O. (2017). Metasemantics and Singular Reference. Nous, 51(1): 175-195.Tollefsen, D.P. (2015). Groups as Agents, Cambridge: Polity Press.Tye, M. (1995). Ten Problems of Consciousness. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Williams, J.R.G. (2007). Eligibility and Inscrutability. The Philosophical Review, 116(3): 361-399.Williams, J.R.G. (2020). The Metaphysics of Representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Williamson, T. (2000). Knowledge and Its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Williamson, T. (2007). The Philosophy of Philosophy. Hoboken (NJ): Wiley-Blackwell.Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Hoboken (NJ): Wiley-Blackwell.Zawidski, T.W. (2015). Dennett’s Strategy for Naturalizing Intentionality: An Innovative Play at Second Base. Philosophia, 43(3): 593-609.


DOI: 10.17454/pam-2208





A GHOST IN THE SHELL OR AN ANATOMICALLY CONSTRAINED PHENOMENON? CONSCIOUSNESS THROUGH THE SPATIOTEMPORAL BODY

abstract

Intuitively, we can conceive of the existence of a conscious state as a pure activity that does not necessarily require a body (or even a brain). This idea has found new support in certain recent theories that present the possibility of a totally disconnected and disembodied consciousness. Against this hypothesis, I argue that human experience is intrinsically embodied and embedded, though in a specific way. Using Sartre’s phenomenology of the body, I first analyze the concept of consciousness as intentionality and a world-disclosing activity, thus explaining how conscious activity can only be expressed through a body that is spatiotemporally related to the world. Then, I argue that bodily consciousness does not necessarily imply the actual presence of an anatomical body but, rather, a process of spatialization and temporalization (hodological space and temporal synthesis) through the “spatiotemporal body”. Finally, I test my thesis by critiquing some cases of apparent disembodied/disconnected consciousness, i.e., dreams, out-of-body experiences, and the brain-in-a-vat scenario.

keywords

Consciousness; Embodiment; Spatiotemporality; Sartre; Dreams; Brain-in-a-vat scenario

FEDERICO ZILIO University of [email protected]

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The notion of consciousness prima facie refers to the familiar sensation of being awake and aware of ourselves and the surrounding world. However, we can theoretically conceive a state of consciousness that is progressively deprived of references to the surrounding environment and the body, eventually imagining a pure state of consciousness that is disembodied and disconnected from the world. This idea is not new. In the history of philosophy, we can find some theoretical attempts to conceive the existence of the mind as being detached from the body and the world. For example, to prove the ontological difference between the soul and the body, Avicenna created the thought experiment of the “floating man”, i.e., a man who is suspended in the air, created at a stroke, perfectly developed and incapable of perceiving his body (his limbs are separated and insensible) or external objects (Avicenna, 1959). Despite this speculative and odd situation, the man would be able to think of himself without any reference to his body or environment, therefore exhibiting signs of self-consciousness. Of course, Descartes’ meditations are another example of a theoretical investigation that questions the validity of an intrinsic connection between thought, the body, and the world (Descartes, 1641/2003).1 Similarly, Anscombe (1981) introduced the thought experiment of the sensory-deprivation tank to argue that – even in the absence of both exteroception and interoception – consciousness would remain intact as the presence of a thinking Cartesian ego without any reference to the body.Nowadays, the concept of consciousness seems unavoidably intertwined with the concept of the brain, which is conceived as the center of our mental activity; indeed, the brain–consciousness relation (however it may be defined) seems to be rooted in our common way of thinking, as it seems self-evident – at least, apparently – that our experience strongly depends on our brain but not on the rest of the body (the so-called “brainhood condition”; Vidal, 2009). The intuitive power of thought experiments such as the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis (Putnam, 1981) or the brain transplant (Shoemaker, 1963) confirms this belief. According to these intuitions, our consciousness would inhabit a body, but it would not be intrinsically corporeal; rather, consciousness, in principle, could exist in just a small part of the body, i.e., the brain.

1 It is important to note that the traditional interpretation of Descartes often overemphasizes the separation of mind and body; however, a clear-cut separation between body and mind is called into question by Descartes himself, who is aware of the strong link between the two ontological dimensions; see, for example, the metaphor of the ship and the pilot in Meditation VI (Descartes, 2003, p. 114). For a unified view of body and mind in Descartes, see Marion (2018).

1. Introduction: Disembodied and

Disconnected Consciousness

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Interestingly, certain recent theories claim that experience can be generated without any reference to our body, which includes the brain. For instance, one of the most relevant neuroscientific theories, the Integrated Information Theory, argues that the brain is a sufficient but unnecessary condition for consciousness; according to the theory, experience is the capacity of a system to integrate information, i.e., to discriminate between a set of possible states (Tononi, 2017a). In other words, consciousness is identical to integrated information as a measure of the cause-effect power of a physical system (Oizumi et al., 2014); thus, the conscious system can be determined by a physical substrate that is different from the brain, e.g., robots, computers, etc., as long as the same causal structure is maintained (Tononi, 2017b). This means that experience would not require the involvement of the body and world, language, introspection, reflection, attention, or memory and that it would be possible for us to exist without spatial frames of reference or a sense of the body and self (Laureys & Tononi, 2009; Tononi, 2017b).The conceptual background underlying these hypotheses is the idea that experience can be “purified” of all unnecessary components, including corporeality, until we reach an essential form of consciousness, such as a pure phenomenal experience with a “centerless” point of view. Against these assumptions – although there could be cases of consciousness with a reduced or altered level of corporeality (e.g., due to some physiological conditions or specific states of mind) – I will argue that the idea that the core of consciousness is deprived of every reference to the body and the outside world is wrong. I will discuss how and to what degree the body is involved in consciousness, and, using Sartre’s phenomenological investigation, I will argue that our consciousness is not only embodied but also intrinsically embedded in the world in a pre-reflective way. The body, understood as the “spatiotemporal body”, is the center of reference and orientation that enables interactions with the environment (temporal “original synthesis” and “hodological space”), making our consciousness a constant process of entrainment through our bodily potentialities towards the world. In this sense, my bodily consciousness is not conceived as the constant availability of bodily information or as the mere physical medium for our access to the world but as the spatiotemporal modality of our “embodied-being-in-the-world” (Moran, 2011).

In our daily lives, we do not deal with an abstract concept of consciousness but with a full-fledged and lived experience of the world. First, there is never “consciousness as such”, since consciousness is always and intrinsically “consciousness of something” – i.e., if I am aware, I must be aware of something, and this something can take different epistemic forms, e.g., an object of perception or imagination, a pure sensation or an abstract thought, etc. This intrinsic aboutness or directedness towards an object that characterizes consciousness is called “intentionality”. Thus, when we perceive, believe, think, imagine, etc., we are perceiving, believing, thinking, imagining “something”, and the world is manifesting for us through this process. Our conscious states are characterized from time to time by different objects experienced within a context; hence, we can reasonably say that our consciousness, in a broad sense, consists of a variety of “consciousnesses of something”. If we want to use a metaphor – instead of imagining intentionality as a grasping-and-absorbing activity that the subject performs towards objects – intentionality is more like an explosion bursting towards the world, towards the objects, as Jean-Paul Sartre described it (Sartre, 1939).There is nothing inside consciousness because intentionality, as “being conscious of something”, is not a process of cataloging objects inside the mind but the openness to and the encounters with the world. This idea of consciousness being devoid of objects, as an activity of pure directedness towards the world, is captured by Rowlands’ (2013; 2018) Intentionality Thesis, i.e., all consciousness is intentional, and No Content Thesis, i.e., any object of

2. Bodily Consciousness2.1. Intentionality as a Disclosing Activity towards the World

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consciousness is necessarily outside the consciousness, which is structured by conscious acts, such as thinking, imagining, remembering, perceiving, etc. Thus, phenomenologically speaking, experience is a revealing or disclosing activity in the sense that the world is revealed to us by way of appearance through the body. Simply put, when I see a red tomato, a portion of the world is revealed or disclosed to me as a red tomato (which is not me, nor is it the yellow lemon next to it). This revelation is realized through the senses of my body – in this case, the action of seeing – and other bodily functions that contribute to being – and not merely having – a body, such as proprioception, vestibular sensation, interoception, kinesthesia, exteroception, and so on. Thus, if intentionality is a revealing act that positions the human being in relation to the world, this relationship must manifest itself through the body.

Now, we must clarify the meaning of the relation between consciousness/intentionality and the body because one could easily misunderstand it as a relation between the conscious subject and the body-machine. The intrinsic body–consciousness relation does not mean that every single conscious act is actively focused on a body part; indeed, according to Sartre, the lived body, introduced by classical phenomenology (le corps-existé, in the words of Sartre), is not something of which I am constantly aware; rather, it is “surpassed towards the world” as the pre-reflective consciousness of the revealing intentionality of the world (Sartre, 1956, p. 309).2 This means that, usually, the body is the unperceived condition of the possibility of being-in-the-world – i.e., it is the orientation, the point of view and the permanent structure of the conscious being within the world (Sartre, 1956, p. 328) in such a way that everything I perceive or even imagine does not exist somewhere without any reference to me. The world is not in front of me like an external and detached set of things; I am within it, with a body that gives me the coordinates for the things of the world, so that, “[f]or me this glass is to the left of the decanter and a little behind it; for Pierre, it is to the right and a little in front” (Sartre, 1956, p. 306).This being-in-the-world condition does not entail that consciousness is “engulfed” in a body that is, in turn, “engulfed” in the world (Sartre, 1981) like separate elements inserted one into the other; rather, the body is the concrete manifestation of consciousness. The body provides the “situation” for my experience, i.e., my possibilities, orientation, and point of view. Therefore, we are not merely embodied; we are also embedded – in the sense that our embodied being expresses itself through and within environmental interactions such that the body, as a point of view, is “surpassed”, “transcended” and “passed by in silence” towards the world, and I cannot have a point of view upon it without creating an additional bodily point of view on my objectified body (Sartre, 1956, p. 329).3 In other words, when we are conscious of the red tomato, we can see it, touch it, taste it, weigh it in our hands, etc. During these conscious acts of intentionality, at no time is the body revealed; the only intentional object is the red tomato. We do not experience our eyes seeing, our fingers touching or our tongue tasting. When I weigh the tomato, I feel nothing but the tomato’s weight in the same way as, when I write, my hand vanishes behind the words I am writing.Of course, this does not mean that we cannot perceive our own body: while I am weighing the tomato, I can concentrate, at some point, on my hand holding the tomato, but this does not mean that I am perceiving my lived body. At that specific moment, my consciousness

2 Regarding the relation between consciousness, the body, and the world in Sartre, see also some previous papers of mine (Zilio, 2020b; Zilio, 2021).3 See also Husserl’s (1982, p. 42) concept of the body as the zero-point (Nullpunkt) or “hereness”, i.e., the center of orientation of experience that is an absolute “here” in relation to a series of “theres” arrayed around it; the moment I try to transform my “here” into a “there”, I have to do it through a new bodily “here”.

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is positing my hand from the point of view of the other as a “psychic object” (Sartre, 1956, p. 347) – as a body part among others’ body parts or a tool among a world of tools.4 As Moran pointed out, “[f]or Sartre, I cannot see the sensitivity of the hand or even the ‘mineness’ of my hand” (Moran, 2011, p. 275) because the subjectivity of my body is pre-reflectively and non-positionally defined. For example, while weighing the tomato, I am not feeling the effort being exerted by my hand and arm (skin, bones, tendons, muscles, etc.) during that action; I am precisely feeling the weight of the tomato, i.e., the resistance of a thing against me. We always perceive the things in the world (their resistance, hardness, softness, etc.), not the lived body as such, which, instead, is invisible because it is integrated within the world (embeddedness) and can be experienced as an object only in specific situations, such as during reflection, i.e., when we posit ourselves as intentional content, or illness and other psychosomatic conditions, i.e., when the body appears as an obstacle that influences our being-in-the-world condition (Carel, 2016; Costa & Cesana, 2019; Leder, 1990) or when I am seen by the other and “I exist for myself as a body known by the Other” (Sartre, 1956, p. 351).

So far, I have discussed how the body is crucial for our experience in the sense that the body determines the way we experience the world. This means that the body is a relational structure, and its modification is conceived here not only as the cause of a change in the way we perceive our body but primarily as an alteration of our relationship with the world (Costa & Cesana, 2019). The world is an organized system of possibilities for me as a bodily consciousness, and the realization of these possibilities depends on the kind of relationship I have with the world. We are always in a situation, i.e., embodied and embedded in the world; we are not isolated heads/brains or isolated bodies facing the world. Therefore, any damage to the body must be understood as a modification of this situation.The next step will be to identify the matrix of these concrete forms of experience, i.e., to understand how the experience can be defined as a relationship with the world. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre describes how consciousness essentially unfolds in a temporal and spatial sense. Here, time and space do not entail anything close to the physical time and space that are considered the “building blocks” of nature, the homogeneous and pure extension of the Cartesian res extensa or the spatiotemporal coordinates within which the objects of the world are situated (e.g., “the house is located to the north of the square, 50 meters away”). A rock is “in-the-midst-of-the-world”, i.e., an inert presence as a passive object among other objects, while consciousness is “in-the-world”, which implies the involvement with a world that must be engaged, revealed, and differentiated. To avoid confusion, it would therefore be better to talk about “temporality” and “spatiality”. Our experience as a spatiality is rendered through the body in relation to the world – not as an abstract, centerless, independent space but as a hodological space, i.e., a lived situation as a field of forces of the experiencers – with its capabilities and needs – in accordance with the potentialities and resistances of the objects of the world.5 Similarly, consciousness does not simply exist in time like a thing but is the

4 “Thus to the extent that my body indicates my possibilities in the world, seeing my body or touching it is to transform these possibilities of mine into dead-possibilities. This metamorphosis must necessarily involve a complete thisness with regard to the body as a living possibility of running, of dancing, etc. Of course, the discovery of my body as an object is indeed a revelation of its being. But the being which is thus revealed to me is its being-for-others” (Sartre, 1956, pp. 304-305).5 “To come into existence, for me, is to unfold my distances from things and thereby to cause things ‘to be there.’ But consequently things are precisely ‘things-which-exist-at-a-distance-from-me.’ [...] The real space of the world is the space which Lewin calls ‘hodological.’ A pure knowledge in fact would be a knowledge without a point of view; [...] For human reality, to be is to-be-there; that is, ‘there in that chair,’ ‘there at that table,’ ‘there at the top of that mountain, with these dimensions, this orientation, etc.’ It is an ontological necessity” (Sartre, 1956, p. 308). See also Merleau-

3. The Spatiotemporal Body

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temporalization, i.e., the act of relating things to us through temporality. This temporality is not a universal, Newtonian container, nor an extrinsic law of nature; instead, it is how bodily consciousness relates to things in time, i.e., how embodied intentionality acts in a temporal way (Wehrle, 2019). In other words, before cognitively manipulating information and symbols, mentalizing the external stimuli in representation, or even bodily interacting with the environment through action-perception loops, the world is experienced through the temporalization and spatialization of the things that are in relation to us.Once we phenomenologically analyze the experience in this way, it is not possible to think about a conscious activity without temporality and spatiality. These are different from psychic temporality and spatiality, i.e., the products of impure reflection in which time and space are objectified in the form of duration and three-dimensional space such that they have nothing to do with our cognitive ability to think about things in the quantitative timeline and within a spatial context. The hodological space is a pre-reflective way of transcending ourselves towards the world (our Umwelt) relative to our center of reference and our needs (“the glass to-be-grabbed on my left”) (Sartre, 2015), while “original temporality” is the pre-reflective mode of intentionality in which we unify all different appearances of things – not into a series of “now” and “here” (psychic temporality and spatiality) but into an “organized structure” of an “original synthesis” of past, present and future (Sartre, 1956, p. 107). Through this original synthesis, in which the body plays the role of a necessary center of reference, the objects of experience are temporally and spatially extended and embedded into a wider spatiotemporal field. This synthesis is not a container of the past, present, and future contents of consciousness (see the aforementioned “No Content Thesis”) but, instead, a mode in which consciousness manifests itself and the world (“We are the temporalization”; Sartre, 1956, p. 159).Taken together, our embodied-being-in-the-world is defined according to spatial and temporal modes, as our embodied intentionality always “temporalizes” and “spatializes” the things we apprehend in the world. We can, that is, perceive ourselves as a Leib: as being a body, as being spatially engaged with the world and living “inside time” (Fuchs, 2005). Furthermore, we can perceive ourselves as being spatiotemporally situated in the world, that is, as a Körper: as having a body, as perceiving it in space and time.It is important to stress that the idea of bodily spatiality and temporality presented here is not identical with nor constrained to the biological and/or physical limits and conditions of the body per se. As I will show below with some examples, the embodied and embedded consciousness is far from being bounded anatomically; rather, what one might call the “spatiotemporal body” the spatial and temporal reference center that enables the embodied-being-in-the-world condition. Therefore, the question is not whether a body is necessary for consciousness at the biological/physical level but whether it is necessary for consciousness in the spatiotemporal sense, i.e., whether the body as a spatiotemporal structure in relation to the objects of the world is required for consciousness. In other words, the question focuses on whether and how consciousness necessarily acts in a spatiotemporal way: “Can there be thought about consciousness which does not involve thinking of it in bodily terms?”, where “body” refers to the organization of the experienced objects according to a situational spatiotemporal structure.

Ponty’s (2013, p. 102) idea of the body as “situational spatiality” rather than a mere “positional spatiality” (a mere thing located at a spatial point), i.e., the body, on the basis of the close relationship between sensation and action, gives form to spatiality, which is understood as a kinaesthetic interaction with the surrounding environment.

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As a final point, I would like to present certain questions regarding a possible counterargument to consciousness as an embodied-being-in-the-world. Someone could identify instances of experience that are disconnected from the environment and the body, i.e., dream states (Loorits, 2018), altered states such as out-of-body experiences (Blanke & Dieguez, 2009) and brain-in-a-vat scenarios (McKinsey, 2018).6 I will argue that even these cases do not imply the existence of a consciousness completely deprived of corporeality in a spatiotemporal sense.

When we are dreaming, we are somehow conscious of something even though it is not actually in front of us and our bed, and we can also experience our body in different ways than usual. Generally, the dream state is considered one of “disconnected consciousness” (Nir & Tononi, 2010; Tononi & Koch, 2008) in which the brain can still produce conscious experiences on its own (Tononi, 2009), undermining the idea of the necessity of the relation to the body and world. The case of out-of-body experiences is similar to the dream state, as it seems to be a genuine case of a disembodied point of view, as the subject perceives himself and the surrounding environment from a location outside their physical body, with an elevated visuospatial perspective (Blanke & Dieguez, 2009). From a phenomenological perspective, these states are particular cases of consciousness during which the relationship with the world is altered, as our embodied-being-in-the-world changes considerably; but this does not imply disembodied/disconnected consciousness. It is perhaps possible that during dreams or out-of-body experiences, the brain can produce consciousness in the absence of regular stimulation from the rest of the body and the environment;7 however, this does not mean that consciousness can be developed without an embodied and embedded phenomenological structure. Even in the foggiest of dreams or out-of-body experiences, the experience never ceases to be expressed through the hodological space and temporal synthesis of the experienced objects, which can acquire meaning only from a bodily point of view.In particular, out-of-body experiences are characterized by a loss of geometrical self-location, where the subject might feel detached from their physical body; nevertheless, they still perceive it from an “autoscopic body”, i.e., a projected perspective that resembles the phenomenological structure of the actual body. Fingelkurts et al. (2021) have recently collected and classified reports of altered states of selfhood (ASoS) during mental exercises, many of which were characterized by an alteration of bodily awareness.8 The study suggests that many components of the phenomenal structure of experience can be modified in a specific altered state of consciousness: for example, body image, body perception, and body orientation can change with

6 Interestingly, one could criticize the concept of embodiment and embeddedness without evoking odd experiences and bizarre mental experiments, by proposing simple examples of cognitive activity that seems to be independent of the body, for example, mathematical calculation. Although mathematical calculation is an abstract mental process, this does not mean that it is independent of a bodily spatiotemporality; indeed, mental calculation (e.g., an equation to be solved mentally) is an imaginative process in which mathematical elements are shifted and modified in a spatiotemporal way from a point of view (I need to imagine the equation in front of me to solve it). In any case, my aim here is not to analyze such abstract cognitive processes, but whether experience as such can be completely disembodied.7 As I have discussed in Zilio (2020a, pp. 319-321), it should be noted that not all stimulus–interaction is suppressed during sleep and dreaming, and the brain is not completely disconnected from the environment (see the concept of the “vigilant sleeper” in Andrillon and Kouider 2020). Also, the rest–stimulus interaction within the body is still present, suggesting that interoception plays the role of exteroception when dreaming. See also Northoff (2011).8 “I observed my body from outside”; “Different parts of my body disappeared completely”; “My boundaries expanded into a whole room and street”; “I was both in my body and outside it”; “I raised and felt the space around”; “The experience of my life history disappeared”; “My thoughts stopped”; “Bodilessness with no location or time”. Regarding the latter report, the authors say, “[d]espite the fact that the participant reported an absence of ‘Location’ and ‘Time’, the slight increase in the functional integrity of the Self-module signifies that some phenomenological self-location was still present in this ASoS” (Fingelkurts et al., 2021, p. 12).

4. Cases of Disembodied/Disconnected Consciousness

4.1 Dreams and Out-of-body Experiences

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respect to the size and position of the physical body; the phenomenal center, the first-person perspective, the epistemic certitude, and the witnessing observer can move and expand beyond the physical body towards the environmental context. In other words, our spatiotemporal perspective spreads and the body – rather than “disappearing” – becomes the new environment and, thus, the embedment itself in both temporal and spatial terms.As argued before, these excellent examples of altered states of (dis)embodied consciousness suggest that consciousness can go beyond the boundaries of the anatomical body while maintaining a minimum level of “dynamic proprioception”, “phenomenological center of gravity”, and “phenomenological self-location”. This is completely consistent with the concept of the spatiotemporal body as a hodological space and original synthesis, which is characterized by the range of bodily possibilities defined by the spatial and temporal context of the environment. Following Sartre’s phenomenological analysis, consciousness transcends into the world not only through the body but also through objects such that bodily consciousness always represents a world–body connection.9 Surely, the aforementioned states are different in their phenomenological structure than the normal perception of the world because the usual body and environment that offer a stable spatiotemporal background for our experience do not exist. For example, when we are dreaming, we usually recognize places, things, and people from individual details and not from a rich environmental context that we reconstruct through reflection after waking up instead (“I remember I was in my bedroom, at least I remember that I was in front of my bed and my desk”). Similarly, temporal synthesis is modified, and we experience greater or shorter times and durations than we would expect in the real world (e.g., during a dream it might take us “hours” to leave a room, then, the sky might go from day to night in a second). Furthermore, during specific states such as OBEs and ASoS, there is a disruption of the normal environment–body and world-self coupling that, on a phenomenological level, implies a change in the structure of our spatiotemporal body and, consequently, of our embodied-being-in-the-world. Nevertheless, the phenomenal reality created during dreams or altered experiences is still structured through a hodological, embodied and embedded perspective that constitutes the experience as such. Altogether, the spatiality and temporality of consciousness necessarily depend on the fact that the experience is intrinsically corporeal, which implies that every experienced object is manifested through bodily temporalization and spatialization regardless of whether it is physical or mental. In other words, dreams and altered experiences differ from the usual perception precisely because the body changes its spatiotemporal relations with the world.

Perhaps the most radical attempt to conceive of a disembodied consciousness is the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment. As is well known, it involves imagining a brain, without the rest of the body, that is inserted into a vat of nutrients, whose nerves are connected to a supercomputer that sends electrical impulses to stimulate it in the same way as brains are normally stimulated by the perception of external objects; the result is that the brain’s conscious experiences are qualitatively indistinguishable from those of a normal human

9 “My body is everywhere: the bomb which destroys my house also damages my body in so far as the house was already an indication of my body. This is why my body always extends across the tool which it utilizes: it is at the end of the cane on which I lean and against the earth; it is at the end of the telescope which shows me the stars; it is on the chair, in the whole house; for it is my adaptation to these tools.” (Sartre, 1956, p. 325). See also Mirvish (2010, p. 74): “[W]hen considered as an intentional agent, embodied consciousness, far from being bounded anatomically, must instead be understood as extending as far as the scope of its field of force. This view of active, goal-seeking, embodied consciousness is what Sartre terms a Leib or ‘lived body’”.

4.2 Brain-in-a-vat Thought Experiment

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being (McKinsey, 2018).10 The thought experiment has been discussed, proposed and criticized by many authors (for example, Putnam, 1981). Here, we are not discussing the logical or semantic validity of the experiment but its phenomenological consistency. In this regard, it seems that the brain-in-a-vat is an instance of completely disembodied and disembedded consciousness. However, interestingly, Thompson and Cosmelli (2010; 2011) argue that the brain-in-a-vat scenario provides no evidence for the possibility of such consciousness; rather, it shows that the experience is intrinsically embodied and embedded even in the case of a surrogate body such as that virtually produced by the supercomputer and sustained by the vat system that mimics the vital functions of a biological body. Indeed, if the brain-in-a-vat needs a synthetic body (the vat and the supercomputer) that provides it with a virtual body and world (simulated by the supercomputer) to produce consciousness, then the thought experiment shows that it is not possible to conceive of an experience other than the one as the embodied-being-in-the-world condition. Hence, although it is possible to conceive of an experience as being biologically produced by only a brain or a disembodied system, it does not seem possible to conceive the phenomenological structure of experience as being deprived of a spatiotemporal corporeality in relation to a (virtual or actual) world.Finally, we can try to make the thought experiment even more extreme. Suppose we hack the supercomputer and change the simulation parameters so that the brain is devoid of its virtual body entirely, without even body schema, body orientation, self-location, a bodily center of gravity, etc. – i.e., without the hodological body related to the world. How would it experience the virtual world? According to what has been claimed so far, it would experience the virtual world as long as the process of spatialization and temporalization occurs. Without the hodological body, it would lack the spatiotemporal coordinates within which to locate itself in the world and the situational structure that would allow the “vatted” brain to direct itself towards things in the virtual world. Therefore, it would be devoid of consciousness as it has been described so far. On the other hand, if it were able to experience any object (even if only imagined), then the brain would not been completely deprived of a bodily space–time relationship, since any object of experience must be located in a system of coordinates that are linked to a point of view. This would, therefore, confirm the phenomenological necessity of the spatiotemporal body even in extreme cases.

In this article, an attempt has been made to examine the phenomenological possibility of a completely disembodied and disembedded consciousness. Consciousness is the activity of disclosing the world through the body. Thus, it constantly depends on the conditions of interaction between the body and the world such that being embodied and embedded

10 One might propose the sensory deprivation tank as a concrete example – not a thought experiment – of a consciousness deprived of the body and the world. Phillips argues that the sensory deprivation tank does not eliminate consciousness (this is a fact) but reveals it as pure time in the Bergsonian sense. Darkness and suspension of the body would produce a consciousness devoid of spatiality, like a state of pure time (Phillips, 2021) (this raises the question of whether the process of spatialization can be reduced to temporalization, which could be understood as quantified time through action-perception loops). Leaving aside the fact that the subject in the sensory deprivation tank still has interoception and can still produce imaginative acts and hypnagogic states with eyes closed, probably induced by phosphenes, glows, and muffled sounds of the water, this experience is characterized by an extension of one’s spatiality and temporality and by an accentuated self-expansion that replaces the external world, rather than an elimination of space in favor of a pure temporal experience. Indeed, the spatiotemporal bodily structure dissociates from the anatomical body, loosens up and mixes with the darkness and the water of the tank (if my foot touches the side of the pool, I am again thrown back inside my anatomical body). In no case (also for Phillips) does my consciousness completely lose its temporality and spatiality in the sensory deprivation tank; nevertheless, it is a fascinating instance of altered spatiotemporality and self-transcendence.

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means being in a spatiotemporal orientation and perspective in relation to the objects being experienced. However, consciousness does not seem to require an anatomical body per se but its spatiotemporal structure; even in cases where there may be experience without the anatomical body, there should be something in the subject’s way of experiencing that plays a role analogous to the role that the spatiotemporal body – not just the anatomical body – performs for normal experience. This does not mean that the way the world is disclosed to consciousness cannot change, even radically, as the structure of the spatiotemporal body changes. This spatiotemporal body is indeed what provides the reference center and the interactions that enable the embodied-being-in-the-world condition of our experience.

REFERENCESAndrillon, T., Kouider, S. (2020). The Vigilant Sleeper: Neural Mechanisms of Sensory (De)Coupling during Sleep. Current Opinion in Physiology, 15: 47-59.Anscombe, G.E.M. (1981). The First Person. In Id., The Collected Philosophical Papers of G.E.M. Anscombe (Vol. 2: Metaphysics). Oxford: Blackwell, 21-36.Avicenna. (1959). On the Soul. In F. Rahman (ed.), Avicenna’s De Anima. Being the Psychological Part of Kitāb al-Shifā‘. London: Oxford University Press.Blanke, O., Dieguez, S. (2009). Leaving Body and Life Behind: Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experience. In S. Laureys & G. Tononi (eds.), The Neurology of Consciousness. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 303-325.Carel, H. (2016). Phenomenology of Illness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Cosmelli, D., Thompson, E. (2010). Embodiment or Envatment?: Reflections on the Bodily Basis of Consciousness. In J. Stewart, O. Gapenne, & E.A. Di Paolo (eds.), Enaction: Towards a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 361-386.Costa, V., Cesana, L. (2019). Fenomenologia della cura medica. Corpo, malattia, riabilitazione. Brescia: Scholé.Descartes, R. (2003). Discourse on Method and Meditations. (E.S. Haldane & G.R.T. Ross, Eds.). Mineola (NY): Dover Publications.Fingelkurts, A.A., Fingelkurts, A.A., Kallio-Tamminen, T. (2021). Self, Me and I in the Repertoire of Spontaneously Occurring Altered States of Selfhood: Eight Neurophenomenological Case Study Reports. Cognitive Neurodynamics, 16: 255-282.Fuchs, T. (2005). Implicit and Explicit Temporality. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, 12(3): 195-198.Husserl, E. (1982). Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. (F. Kersten, Ed.). Berlin: Springer.Laureys, S., Tononi, G. (2009). The Neurology of Consciousness: An Overview. In S. Laureys & G. Tononi (eds.), The Neurology of Consciousness: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropathology (1st ed.). Amsterdam: Elsevier, 375-412.Leder, D. (1990). The Absent Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Loorits, K. (2018). The Location and Boundaries of Consciousness: a Structural Realist Approach. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 9(3): 523-537.Marion, J.-L. (2018). On Descartes’ Passive Thought, The Myth of Cartesian Dualism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.McKinsey, M. (2018). Skepticism and Content Externalism. In E.N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/skepticism-content-externalism/.Merleau-Ponty, M. (2013). Phenomenology of Perception. (D.A. Landes, Ed.). London: Routledge.Mirvish, A. (2010). Negation, Self-awareness, and Hodological Space. In K.J. Morris (ed.), Sartre on the Body. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 67-83.

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Moran, D. (2011). Revisiting Sartre’s Ontology of Embodiment in Being and Nothingness. In V. Petrov (ed.), Ontological Landscapes: Recent Thought on Conceptual Interfaces Between Science and Philosophy. Heusenstamm: Ontos Verlag, 263-294.Nir, Y., Tononi, G. (2010). Dreaming and the Brain: From Phenomenology to Neurophysiology. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(2): 88-100.Northoff, G. (2011). Neuropsychoanalysis in Practice: Brain, Self, and Objects. New York: Oxford University Press.Oizumi, M., Albantakis, L., Tononi, G. (2014). From the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated Information Theory 3.0. PLOS Computational Biology, 10(5): 1-25.Phillips, M.T. (2021). The Sensory Deprivation Tank – A Time Machine. Anthropology of Consciousness, 33(1): 63-78.Putnam, H. (1981). Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Rowlands, M. (2013). Sartre, Consciousness, and Intentionality. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 12(3): 521-536.Rowlands, M. (2018). Disclosing the World: Intentionality and 4E Cognition. In A. Newen, L. De Bruin, & S. Gallagher (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition. Oxford University Press, 334-352.Sartre, J.-P. (1939). Une Idée Fondamentale de la Phénoménologie de Husserl: l’Intentionalité. La Nouvelle Revue Française, 304: 129-131.Sartre, J.-P. (1956). Being and Nothingness. (H.E. Barnes, Ed.). New York: Philosophical Library.Sartre, J.-P. (1981). An Interview with Jean-Paul Sartre: Interview by M. Rybalka, O. Pucciani, and S. Gruenheck (Paris, May 12 and 19, 1975). In P.A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. LaSalle (IL): Open Court, 3-51.Sartre, J.-P. (2015). Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (Vol. 13). London: Routledge.Shoemaker, S. (1963). Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity (Vol. 15). Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press.Thompson, E., Cosmelli, D. (2011). Brain in a Vat or Body in a World? Brainbound versus Enactive Views of Experience. Philosophical Topics, 39(1): 163-180.Tononi, G. (2009). Sleep and Dreaming. In S. Laureys & G. Tononi (eds.), The Neurology of Conciousness: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropathology (1st ed.). Amsterdam: Elsevier, 89-107.Tononi, G. (2017a). Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness. In S. Schneider & M. Velmans (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. Hoboken (NJ): John Wiley & Sons, 621-633.Tononi, G. (2017b). The Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness: An Outline. . Schneider & M. Velmans (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. Hoboken (NJ): John Wiley & Sons, 243-256.Tononi, G., Koch, C. (2008). The Neural Correlates of Consciousness: An Update. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1124: 239-261.Vidal, F. (2009). Brainhood, Anthropological Figure of Modernity. History of the Human Sciences, 22(1): 5-36.Wehrle, M. (2019). Being a Body and Having a Body. The Twofold temporality of Embodied Intentionality. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 19(3): 499-521.Zilio, F. (2020a). Consciousness and World. A Neurophilosophical and Neuroethical Account. Pisa: Edizioni ETS.Zilio, F. (2020b). The Body Surpassed Towards the World and Perception Surpassed Towards Action: A Comparison between Enactivism and Sartre’s Phenomenology. Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, 28(1): 73-99.Zilio, F. (2021). The Paradoxical Body. The Tensegrity of Corporeality in Sartre’s Phenomenology. Teoria, 41(1): 169-187.


DOI: 10.17454/pam-2209





TWO PROBLEMS WITH SHOEMAKER’S REGRESS AND HOW TO DEAL WITH THEM

abstract

With his now famous regress argument, Sydney Shoemaker (1968) aimed to provide justification for the assumption that at least some cases of self-awareness cannot be based on identification. The overall goal of this paper is to discuss two possible worries one may have about Shoemaker’s argument. I will show that these problems have far-reaching consequences that may diminish the argument’s importance for an adequate theory of self-awareness and that another conclusion Shoemaker and other philosophers draw may be unwarranted.

keywords

First-Person Thought; Identification; Perception; Self-Awareness; Shoemaker; Singular Thought

MAIK NIEMECK Philipps-Universität [email protected]

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With his now famous regress argument,1 Sydney Shoemaker (1968) aimed to provide justification for the assumption that at least some cases of self-awareness cannot be based on identification. The overall goal of this paper is to outline Shoemaker’s regress argument and discuss two possible worries one may have with it. Even though the argument has some appeal, it has far-reaching consequences that may diminish the argument’s importance for an adequate theory of self-awareness and first-person thought.2 Moreover, I will show that Shoemaker places excessive demands on the notion of identification and that another conclusion he and other philosophers (such as Musholt, 2015; 2019; Frank, 2011; Zahavi, 1999; 2004; 2005) draw may be unwarranted. They think Shoemaker’s regress reveals a crucial difference between self-awareness and perception (and the distinct thought types based on them). They seem to assume that the identification involved in perception requires descriptive representations while in some cases of self-awareness this is not even possible. However, there is empirical evidence that identification in perception at the most basic level as well does not depend on any descriptive representations. Hence, perception and self-awareness are not so different in this specific respect.In what follows, in the first instance I will reconstruct Shoemaker’s regress argument and roughly sketch how philosophers have tried to account for its conclusion. Then, I will present the two aforementioned issues facing Shoemaker’s reasoning which need to be addressed if one wants to accept the argument’s relevance for a theory of self-awareness. I will discuss each of these problems and how they might affect the relevance of Shoemaker’s regress. This task has yet to be done to date, but it is not a trivial one.

Sydney Shoemaker (1968) once famously wrote:

It is clear, to begin with, that not every self-ascription could be grounded on an identification of a presented object as oneself. Identifying something as oneself would have to involve either

1 See, for instance, Bermúdez (1998), Musholt (2015), Williford (2006) or Zahavi (1999; 2004) on how Shoemaker’s central ideas are most commonly portrayed in the more recent literature.2 Shoemaker seems to want to make claims about self-awareness more generally rather than just about its conceptual instantiations at the level of thought. However, if we are able to show that not all first-person thoughts can be based on identification, then it follows that not all cases of self-awareness can be based on identification since first-person thought is a peculiar type of self-awareness.

1. Introduction

2. Shoemaker on Self-Identification

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(a) finding something to be true of it that one independently knows to be true of oneself, i.e., something that identifies it as oneself, or (b) finding that it stands to oneself in some relationship (e.g., being in the same place as) in which only oneself could stand to one. In either case it would involve possessing self-knowledge – the knowledge that one has a certain identifying feature, or the knowledge that one stands in a certain relationship to the presented object – which could not itself be grounded on the identification in question. This self-knowledge might in some cases be grounded on some other identification, but the supposition that every item of self-knowledge rests on an identification leads to a vicious infinite regress. (Shoemaker, 1968, p. 561, emphasis added)

Shoemaker argues that if all cases of first-person thought (or “self-ascriptions” to use his term) were based on an identification, then they would presuppose infinitely many further beliefs about oneself. This is easy to see given the conception of identification he proposes. According to Shoemaker, identifying an object as myself requires me to already have some descriptive beliefs about relational or non-relational properties of myself that allow me to infer that I am identical with the object that I am in a different way aware of (e.g. through perception or a description given in discourse). Accordingly, in order to identify an object o as oneself i one needs to have descriptive beliefs3 with a content of the form a is F (where a is an object and F is a relational or non-relational property) about o and i that help to resolve the question of whether o really is i (o=i). We might call Shoemaker’s account of identification on which his regress is based the descriptivist view of identification, since it defines identification as requiring descriptive beliefs about its relata.4 Shoemaker apparently has situations like the following in mind when writing about self-identification. Let’s say that I see this person in a mirror who has a face that looks very similar to mine and conclude that it must be me whom I am seeing. In this case I already need to have some prior beliefs about what my face looks like, which lead me to believe that I am identical with the person I see in the mirror. The question is how I came to know what my face looks like. I probably observed my face at some previous point in my life, which enabled me to recognize it on different occasions from that moment on. Still, the question remains: How did I know in that first moment that it was me and my face

3 I believe that the notion of descriptive belief is adequate to capture what Shoemaker had in mind here. According to Shoemaker, to identify something as something else, we apparently need some beliefs which represent actual properties of the objects of an identification. This notion excludes, for example, mere existential or modal beliefs about these objects.4 One might wonder if Shoemaker’s (1968) argument really rests on a general conception of identification or whether it just needs a concept of self-identification (i.e. those cases of identification where oneself is involved). One might say that Shoemaker’s argument is merely based on a descriptivist view of self-identification. I think there are major exegetical reasons that speak against interpreting Shoemaker (1968) in this way. Shoemaker (and this is also how interpreters tend to understand him) aims to justify the claims that some cases of self-awareness cannot be based on identification at all and that this reveals a crucial difference between these cases of self-awareness and cases of perception (or to use different terminology “object awareness”). He and others (e.g. Musholt, 2015; 2019; Frank, 2011; Zahavi, 1999; 2004; 2005) do not argue that the types of identification involved in different types of thinking are distinct types, but that the thought types are distinct due to their modal relation to the same sort of identification. And to show that some cases of self-awareness cannot depend on any sort of identification seems to require a general conception of identification. Finally, and more importantly, I do not think that there is any positive textual evidence for the claim that Shoemaker thought that self-identification is a sui generis form of identification. In my view, this strongly suggests that Shoemaker really has a generalist conception of identification in mind which underlies his reasoning. However, for systematic rather than exegetical reasons, one could still try to provide a related argument which does not rely on a general view of identification. Yet, I am not sure what the motivations for this kind of argumentative move would be, given the lack of textual evidence that Shoemaker held such a position. And to say that cases of identification substantially differ depending on their objects (oneself or others) seems to require more justification than the default view that identification works the same in both cases. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for posing these interesting questions, which I cannot satisfactorily discuss here.

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I was seeing? How was I able to recognize any property as mine or an object as me in the first place? I could not have acquired all of these beliefs about myself through identification (as defined above), since each belief would have required more beliefs about myself, which in turn would have been in need of further beliefs for which we can pose the same question again. To break down the argument a little more, we might summarize it in the following way:

1) Identifying something as oneself (henceforth “self-identification”) requires beliefs about relational or non-relational properties of oneself (which may pick out oneself uniquely).

2) If all beliefs about oneself were gained through self-identification, then all beliefs about oneself would be based on an infinite number of further beliefs about oneself.

3) As a finite being, one can have only a finite number of beliefs about oneself. Not all beliefs about oneself can be gained through self-identification.

Hence, the central question is: How was I able to identify an object as me in the first place, if self-identification requires some descriptive beliefs about oneself prior to any self-identification? How do we receive that information about ourselves? Do we have innate beliefs about ourselves? Or is there something in experience that directly marks particular properties – such as perceptions, pains or beliefs – as belonging to us? Many researchers believe that there must be something in experience that has these regress-stopping qualities. I am not aware of anyone who has taken a nativist route and maintained that there are innate self-beliefs enabling self-identification. Quite a few philosophers (among others Frank, 2011; Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008; Kriegel & Horgan, 2007; Kriegel & Zahavi, 2015; Williford, 2014; 2006; Zahavi, 2004; 1999), especially those who endorse Shoemaker’s argument, argue that conscious proprioception, pains, perceptions or beliefs must already convey the immediate information that these states belong to oneself.5 Note how, for instance, Kenneth Williford (2006) summarizes Shoemaker’s regress argument and concludes that there must be some kind of immediate self-acquaintance:

I could not, for all properties P, know that I have P by inference from a known identification of myself with an object O that is P. In order to know that I=O, I need to know that O has a property – by hypothesis distinct from P – only I have. [… I]f all such knowledge of my properties depends on knowledge of such identifications, in knowing myself to have even one property, I must already know myself to have infinitely many. So there must be a regress-stopping property we non-inferentially know ourselves to have. […] The relation I have in mind is what Russell called acquaintance. It is not a straightforward representation relation. (Williford, 2006, pp. 3-4)

I agree that the most plausible way to deal with Shoemaker’s regress is to rely on something given in experience. However, granting that the sketched regress argument has some plausibility, there might be at least two worries attached to it. The first issue – which I call the scope problem – addresses the argument’s far-reaching consequences. The second – let’s call it the implausible constraints problem – is concerned with the truth of one of its premises. After

5 Arguably there are other theoretical possibilities to conceptualize these non-identificatory ways of becoming aware of those properties that belong to oneself. We might say, for example, that self-awareness is in its essence a social phenomenon and its most basic (non-identificatory) forms are grounded in intersubjective relations. Or we could argue that unconscious emotions provide us with a sense of self. However, the paper is not intended to (and cannot) discuss all these options since its central purpose is to assess whether such solutions to Shoemaker’s regress argument need to be addressed in a theory of self-awareness in the first place.

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quickly presenting each worry, I will discuss whether they should be regarded as a threat to Shoemaker’s proposal.

With regards to the first problem, if we accept – as Shoemaker apparently did – that identification requires some descriptive beliefs about the objects identified, then this has consequences for theories of first-person thought as well as theories of singular thought in general. In order to avoid a regress of beliefs, I need to have non-identificatory awareness not just of some properties of myself, but also of anything that can be a constituent of an identification. Given the definition in Section 2, to identify, for instance, a perceived object p as another object o that I am already familiar with, I need to have at least two descriptive beliefs: one about p and another about o. However, these cannot be based on other identifications, since this would require even more descriptive beliefs, and so on. In addition, we can construe very similar non-first-personal cases to the one presented in Section 2: Let’s suppose that I am seeing this person in a mirror who has a face that looks very similar to Peter’s face and conclude that it must be Peter whom I am seeing. In that case I already need to have some prior beliefs about what Peter’s face looks like that lead me to believe that Peter is identical with the person I am seeing in the mirror. The question is how I came to know what Peter’s face looks like in the first instance. I could not have acquired all of these beliefs about Peter through identification (as defined above), as each belief would have required more beliefs about Peter, which in turn would have been in need of further beliefs for which we can pose the same question again. Hence, it is easy to construe Shoemaker-esque regress arguments for all those things which can be part of an identification. Here is just one example of how we might offer a similar argument to that presented in the previous section:

1) Identifying something as Peter (henceforth “Peter-identification”) requires beliefs about relational or non-relational properties of Peter (which may pick out Peter uniquely).

2) If all beliefs about Peter were gained through Peter-identification, then all beliefs about Peter would be based on an infinite number of further beliefs about Peter.

3) As a finite being, one can have only a finite number of beliefs about Peter. Not all beliefs about Peter can be gained through Peter-identification.

Thus, Shoemaker’s regress argument turns out to imply very general conclusions about singular thought, rather than stating a specific problem for theories of self-awareness and first-person thought. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it provides much more space for criticism. There are quite a few contemporary philosophers – such as Bach (1987, p. 12), Burge (1977), and Recanati (2010) – who believe, following Bertrand Russell (1910), that genuine singular thought is based on some immediate epistemic access to the objects thought of (see also Jeshion 2010). However, this need not concern us here. The important point seems to be that if Shoemaker’s regress argument has these general implications for singular thought, then it apparently also requires a solution on a more general level. If there are good reasons to believe that all genuine singular thoughts are in need of some sort of non-identificatory acquaintance, then this is no longer unique to first-person thought. Thus, we may be inclined to think that what Shoemaker was able to point out is nothing that specifically needs to be addressed when speaking about self-awareness and first-person thought, but rather is something for which a more general theory of singular thought has to account.

It is debatable whether the scope problem should be regarded as a real threat to Shoemaker’s argument for non-identificatory self-awareness. After all, his argument is not supposed to vindicate the assumption that only first-person thought depends on some non-identificatory

3. The Scope Problem3.1. The Problem

3.2. Discussion of the Problem

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awareness. Hence, it is not a problem for his argument per se. However, it is still relevant to the general importance of the argument and the question of who should be concerned about it. Thus, the central question is if the demand for this non-identificatory awareness is not tied to first-person thought, why should it be specifically addressed in a theory of first-person thought?One way to end this discussion could be to hint at the general work on singular thought and by relying on a division of labor in philosophy and science. This would be a relatively common and uncontroversial step to take. When a biologist is investigating a specific type of mammal, say dogs, his peers do not assume that he is obliged to say much about mammals in general except that there is something specific to dogs that distinguishes them from most other things that fall under the category mammal. I think similar normative presuppositions underlie philosophical discourse, and for good reasons. No one is expected to offer a theory of everything; one is allowed to exclude things that are not specific to the field studied. Thus, I suppose that one could prima facie think that the scope problem justifies the view that a theory of first-person thought need not address Shoemaker’s regress.However, I tend to think that there are other reasons to accept that Shoemaker’s argument is still relevant for someone concerned with self-awareness. This is so because of the elusive and immediate nature of the “object” at which self-awareness is directed. It has been rightly stressed that it is hard to find ourselves in experience (Hume, 1896) or that we cannot observe ourselves from different perspectives or even focus our attention on ourselves. At the same time, however, we seem to have some immediate awareness as to which conscious states belong to us and which ones do not. Objects of perception are quite different in this regard. And if we assume – as we should – that the nature of objects plays an essential role in our ways of being aware of them, then we might conclude that a theory of first-person thought has to deal with the regress outlined above in a quite different manner from, say, a theory of singular thought based on visual perception. Thus, even when we accept that all singular thoughts need to be based on some non-identificatory access to the objects thought of, the kind of access obviously has to be different relative to the nature of the objects.6 Whereas the concept of acquaintance, for instance, might be a good candidate to explain how some singular thoughts are, roughly speaking, immediately connected to things in the visual field, one might still think that this will not work for our singular thoughts about abstract entities and how we can have direct access to them.7 Similarly, it appears that the phenomenological features of selves – e.g. their elusiveness and simultaneous familiarity – require a quite different solution for Shoemaker’s regress problem. Thus, the scope problem may not pose a serious threat to the relevance of the issues raised by Shoemaker since they demand quite different solutions that vary with the nature of the things under investigation. Shoemaker’s regress might pose a challenge for theories of all kinds of singular thought, but this alone does not suffice to justify the assumption that there must be a uniform solution to it.8

Another, more fundamental problem with Shoemaker’s argument might be that arguably there are forms of identification that are not in need of any descriptive beliefs. If this is so, then self-awareness might be based on those forms of identification without involving an infinite number of further beliefs. In this respect, we might even argue – pace

6 Thanks to Bill Brewer for pointing out that this might be a viable option.7 See Giaquinto (2001) for an opposing view. He claims that we can be acquainted with cardinal numbers. Even so, I think the example is appropriate to see what I am getting at here.8 In this section I have only highlighted phenomenological and metaphysical peculiarities of self-awareness, but we might also appeal to epistemic (e.g. restricted forms of infallibility) or normative (e.g. first-person authority) peculiarities of self-awareness. I thank an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to this idea.

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Problem4.1. The Problem

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Shoemaker – that all cases of self-awareness ultimately rest on identification. Thus, the question is whether Shoemaker places implausible (overly demanding) constraints on the concepts of self-identification and identification.There certainly is some form of identification involved in tracking objects over time. Yet, this ability might not be grounded in the capacity to entertain descriptive beliefs as there are many creatures which are able to track objects over time but which do not have the conceptual tools to entertain the right sort of beliefs. When a cat observes and subsequently chases a mouse, she does not need and possibly is not able to think this mouse under the concept of a mouse or as this grayish thing in front of me. Recanati (2012, p. 87) proposes, albeit for different reasons, that something like this is quite common among human beings as well. He calls those cognitive performances “immediate recognition” and contrasts them with what he labels “slow recognition”.This distinction is not just supported by philosophical armchair reasoning. An empirically informed account of visual perception, which might prompt some reservations about Shoemaker’s claims, is Pylyshyn’s Visual Indexing Theory (2003; 2011). According to this theory, the recognition of an object’s identity in visual perception is foremostly independent from the ability to ascribe relational or non-relational properties to these objects. Pylyshyn believes that basic visual reference over time is in this sense directly demonstrative rather than satisfactionally descriptive. Pylyshyn conducted a series of experiments that putatively support the existence of what he calls Visual Indexes or FINSTs (Fingers of INSTantiation). The so-called Multiple Object Tracking (MOT) experiments are intended to demonstrate that humans’ early vision uses indexes which function in accordance with demonstratives familiar from linguistic communication. These indexes contain no descriptive content and ultimately acquire their reference through causal relations to external objects.During the MOT experiments, test subjects are confronted with a small number of target objects (usually four) which are briefly distinguished from a couple of visually identical non-target objects by short blinking. Subsequently, both sets of objects arbitrarily move around and the test subjects are asked to track the target objects during their period of moving. The result is that the subjects are quite successful in performing this task. Pylyshyn concludes that this is best explained by his theory of visual indexes since the seen objects look exactly alike (e.g. in color, size, and shape) and therefore have no distinguishing properties. Moreover, Pylyshyn undertook some variations of these initial experiments that further support this conclusion. If the representation of properties were to play a particular role in visual tracking, then one would expect the presence of more salient properties to enhance the performance of object tracking (e.g. being faster or more accurate). However, a variety of MOT experiments have shown that this does not happen. Furthermore, when the target objects change some of their non-relational properties, the test subjects very often do not notice this change but still manage to identify the objects afterwards.Nevertheless, one might still assume that the observers represent and use the location of each target object to determine serially where the objects have moved. After the recording was made at the beginning, they just see which object is closest to the initial location they have documented and do so for the remainder of the test. This is a possibility which cannot be ruled out experimentally. Yet, Pylyshyn tried to exclude this theoretical option by simulating this way of keeping track of the identity of objects. The issue with this way of tracking is that the simulations have shown that even under almost perfect conditions, this method would be much more prone to errors compared to the average of humans who actually performed the MOT experiments. Hence, it is quite reasonable to conclude that humans do not necessarily track perceived objects in virtue of representing properties (Pylyshyn 2011, pp. 36-37).

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Of course, the results may be contested for a variety of reasons.9 Notwithstanding these difficulties, if one accepts the picture presented by Pylyshyn – which is not the most unreasonable thing to do – we might have to worry about Shoemaker’s claim that perceptual identification requires descriptive representations. So, what are we to make of these considerations?

I think that the arguments provided in Section 4.1 are quite persuasive and suggest that there are forms of identification which do not require any descriptive representations about their relata, as Shoemaker apparently thought. It is not entirely clear whether Shoemaker merely wanted to make claims about identification involved in first-person thinking or rather had something stronger in mind and intended to pose a regress for all kinds of self-awareness (including non-conceptual ones). In the passage mentioned at the beginning of this article, he is just speaking about self-knowledge, yet the title “Self-Reference and Self-Awareness” and later passages in his paper suggest that the regress was set up for broader purposes.Nevertheless, one possible way of defending Shoemaker’s proposal against the accusation of placing implausible constraints on the notion of identification could be to argue that the alleged counterexamples are actually not instances of identification but something else (we might categorize them as instances of some sort of non-descriptive identity recognition). It could be argued that the concept of identification requires one to think its relata as having particular properties. Even though this seems rather absurd – since the term “identification” is arbitrarily used for a cluster of different things outside and inside of philosophy – one could maintain that for conceptual reasons the ability to perform genuine identification is dependent on the ability to think things as having this or that property. If this were true, then Recanati’s idea of an immediate recognition or Pylyshyn’s concept of visual indexes could be understood as not referring to counterexamples to Shoemaker’s definition of identification, but instead as viable solutions to his regress problem. If creatures had the ability to individuate objects and recognize their identity over time before being able to predicate something of them, then this ability could be regarded as a regress stopper, since descriptive identification could then be based on this pre-descriptive ability to visually trace identity without presupposing infinitely many further descriptive representations. This immediate self-recognition could work very similarly to regular perception if we suppose that both forms of identity recognition involved are able to track things in these non-descriptive ways – even though they possibly differ in many other aspects.

Yet, Shoemaker – and others (e.g. Musholt, 2015; 2019; Frank, 2011; Zahavi, 1999; 2004; 2005) – probably would not agree that a basic kind of self-awareness could be based on the same mechanisms as visual perception. Shoemaker (1968, pp. 563ff) argues at length that self-awareness is fundamentally different from perception or even object cognition in general. More recently, Kristina Musholt (2015) has also argued that Shoemaker’s regress argument was precisely introduced to highlight a substantial difference between self-awareness and perception. She maintains that if all instances of self-awareness were a form of perception – her term is “self-perception” – then they would require identification and already presuppose some descriptive beliefs about oneself. Since not all cases of self-awareness can be based on identification, understood in this way, there must be cases of self-awareness which are substantially different from perception, so Musholt claims:

9 For a critical discussion of the Visual Indexing Theory, see the reviews of Abell (2005), Hill (2008), and Shapiro (2009).

4.2. Discussion of the Problem

5. Some Consequences

for the Relation between Self-

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Shoemaker argues that self-consciousness cannot ultimately rely on self-perception, or in fact on any kind of subject-object relation, for to perceive myself as myself, I must already possess a first-personal knowledge of myself that can help me to identify a certain property as my own. (Musholt, 2015, p. 4)

As said before, I think there is something to this assumption. However, I believe that Shoemaker’s argument itself is not able to establish a substantial difference between perception and self-awareness. Self-awareness could have the same underlying mechanisms as visual perception, which apparently, at the most basic level, works completely independent from the ability to represent any properties. If this is Shoemaker’s – and his followers’ – main reason for the assumption that self-awareness is fundamentally different from perception, then it might not be a very good one.Therefore, the overall conclusion which might be conveyed is that Shoemaker was right in arguing that self-awareness at the most basic level works independently from the ascription of any identifying properties. But he and others were wrong in assuming that this is the quintessential feature which distinguishes self-awareness from perception. There are clearly no beliefs (or other forms of representation) about unique features of conscious episodes needed to enable us to track ourselves and our own mental life. Yet, the very same is true for ordinary things of perception. Apparently, humans are able to identify objects without having any descriptive beliefs about these objects. However, as argued in Section 3.2, these observations should not prevent researchers working on self-awareness from finding a way to deal with Shoemaker’s regress. Even if all kinds of theories of singular thought are prone to this problem, and self-awareness and perception do not differ in their relation to identification, it seems that the objects of the states in question are (phenomenologically and perhaps also metaphysically) different enough to warrant distinct theoretical approaches to the same problem.10

REFERENCESAbell, C. (2005). Review of “Seeing and Visualizing: It’s Not What You Think” by Zenon Pylyshyn (2003). PSYCHE, 11(1): 1-6.Bach, K. (1987). Thought and Reference. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Bermúdez, J.L. (1998). The Paradox of Self-Consciousness. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Burge, T. (1977). Belief De Re. The Journal of Philosophy, 74(6): 338-362.Frank, M. (2011). Ansichten der Subjektivität. Berlin: Suhrkamp.Gallagher, S., Zahavi, D. (2008). The Phenomenological Mind. New York: Routledge.Giaquinto, M. (2001). Knowing Numbers. The Journal of Philosophy, 98(1): 5-18.Hill, C. (2008). Review of “Things and Places: How the Mind Connects with the World” by Zenon Pylyshyn (2007). Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/things-and-places-how-the-mind-connects-with-the-world/.Hume, D. (1896) (reprint from 1739). Treatise of Human Nature. L.A. Selby-Bigge (ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.Jeshion, R. (2010). Introduction to New Essays on Singular Thought. In R. Jeshion (ed.), New Essays on Singular Thought, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 105-140.Kriegel, U., Horgan, T. (2007). Phenomenal Epistemology: What is Consciousness That We May Know It So Well? Philosophical Issues, 17(1): 123-144.

10 Part of the research leading to these results has been conducted during a research stay at King’s College London and has received funding from the Baden-Württemberg Stiftung and University College Freiburg.

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Kriegel, U., Zahavi, D. (2015). For-me-ness: What It Is and What It Is Not. In D. Dahlstrom et al. (eds.), Philosophy of Mind and Phenomenology: Conceptual and Empirical Approaches, London: Routledge, 36-53.Musholt, K. (2015). Thinking about Oneself: From Nonconceptual Content to the Concept of a Self. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Musholt, K. (2019). From Non-Self-Representationalism to the Social Structure of Pre-Reflective Self-Consciousness. ProtoSociology, (36): 243-263.Pylyshyn, Z. (2003). Seeing and Visualizing: It’s Not What You Think. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Pylyshyn, Z. (2011). Things and Places: How the Mind Connects with the World. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Recanati, F. (2010). Singular Thought: In Defense of Acquaintance. In R. Jeshion (ed.), New Essays on Singular Thought, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 141-189.Recanati, F. (2012). Mental Files. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Russell, B. (1910). Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 11(5): 108-128.Shapiro, L. (2009). Review of “Things and Places: How the Mind Connects with the World” by Zenon Pylyshyn (2007). Mind, 118(472): 1168-1174.Shoemaker, S. (1968). Self-Reference and Self-Awareness. Journal of Philosophy, 65: 555-567.Williford, K. (2006). Zahavi versus Brentano: A Rejoinder. PSYCHE, 12(2): 1-8.Williford, K. (2014). Representationalisms, Subjective Character, and Self-Acquaintance. In T. Metzinger & J. Windt (eds.), Open MIND, http://open-mind.net/papers/representationalisms-subjective-character-and selfacquaintance.Zahavi, D. (1999). Self-Awareness and Alterity: A Phenomenological Investigation. Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press.Zahavi, D. (2004). Back to Brentano? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 11(10-11): 66-88.Zahavi, D. (2005). Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.


DOI: 10.17454/pam-2210





SØREN OVERGAARDCenter for Subjectivity ResearchUniversity of [email protected]

AMODAL COMPLETION AND THE IMPURITY OF PERCEPTION1

abstract

Defenders of The Pure View – “Purists”, as I shall call them – maintain that perception is pure presentation. That is, a perceptual experience has no commitments that exceed what is given or presented in the experience. I argue The Pure View seems unable to offer a convincing account of amodal completion. I distinguish three Purist strategies for addressing amodal completion, and suggest that none is very promising.

keywords

Perception; Amodal completion; Perceptual filling-in; Naïve realism

1 Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 2021 Copenhagen Summer School in Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and at the 2021 San Raffaele School of Philosophy, entitled Mind, Language, and the First-Person Perspective, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Cesano Maderno, Italy. I am grateful to the participants at both events for helpful discussion.

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AMODAL COMPLETION AND THE IMPURITY OF PERCEPTION

Towards the end of his early book on Husserl, Speech and Phenomena, Derrida makes a baffling pronouncement: “There never was any ‘perception’” (Derrida, 1973, p. 103). What might he have meant by this? The next, and final, page of the book contains a clue: “[C]ontrary to what phenomenology – which is always phenomenology of perception – has tried to make us believe, … the thing itself always escapes” (Derrida, 1973, p. 104). Derrida’s point seems to be something like the following. First, perception is supposed to be the brute or pure presentation of an object to consciousness. Second, Husserl’s phenomenology unwittingly, and contrary to Husserl’s official announcements, shows that there is no such pure presentation – presentation is always impure, since it always encompasses the representation of something not presented, something absent (cf. Derrida, 1973, p. 103). Therefore, finally, Husserl’s phenomenology teaches us – unbeknownst to Husserl himself – that perception is a fiction.Interpreting Derrida is a tricky business, and I don’t want to pretend that this thumbnail sketch does his text justice. But whatever Derrida might have meant, his pronouncement, and the context surrounding it, suggests a view some possible philosopher – call him Derrida* – might take. Derrida*’s view is one way of negotiating the following inconsistent triad:

(1) Perception occurs.(2) Perception is the pure presentation of objects, property instances, events (etc.) in the

world.(3) There is no pure presentation of objects, property instances, events (etc.) in the world.

Derrida*’s response to this triad – abandoning (1) – is singularly implausible. To see, hear, and smell is to perceive. Of course people see, hear, and so on. So of course perception occurs all the time. That leaves two other responses to the inconsistent triad. Husserl’s own view is that (2) has to be rejected. He is very explicit about this. In Analyses of Active and Passive Synthesis, for example Husserl insists that perception “is only possible in the form of an actually and genuinely original conscious-having of sides and a co-conscious-having of other sides that are precisely not originally there” (Husserl, 2001, p. 40). Husserl’s point is that a perceptual experience is never pure presentation: it always includes a “co-consciousness” of “sides” or aspects of objects, which are not given or presented, strictly speaking.The remaining option is to reject (3) and maintain that perception really is pure presentation. Such a view has, perhaps, been defended by Frege and Austin (Travis, 2004; 2013). At any rate,

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it is defended by contemporary philosophers like Charles Travis, Bill Brewer, and others. Call theirs “The Pure View”,1 and Husserl’s “The Impure View”.2

I don’t think The Pure View is very plausible. As I shall suggest in this paper, The Pure View seems unable to offer a convincing account of the sorts of phenomena that led Husserl to reject (2): putative cases in which perceptual experience goes beyond what is presented, anticipating something that is not there in the stimulus. Specifically, I will focus on cases of what the Belgian vision scientist (and phenomenologist) Albert Michotte dubbed “amodal completion”.Defenders of The Pure View – “Purists”, as I shall call them – must show that alleged examples of impure perception are merely apparent. They must argue that the impurity, if there is any such, is not due to perception, strictly speaking, but to some other mental state or episode. I will consider three Purist strategies for explaining away amodal completion in this fashion, and suggest that none is very promising.The structure of the paper is the following. In the next section, I introduce The Pure View. In section 3, I present three Purist strategies for handling potential counterexamples. Section 4 argues that none of those strategies yields a convincing account of amodal completion. Section 5 addresses an objection and summarizes the argument of the paper.

According to The Pure View, perceptual experiences never make any “claims”, or have any commitments about the environment that go beyond what is strictly presented or given in the experiences themselves. Indeed, some Purists insist that there are simply no commitments in perception to things being one way or another in the environment. In Charles Travis’ words, “perception, as such, simply places our surroundings in view; affords us awareness of them. There is no commitment to their being one way or another” (Travis, 2004, p. 65). Perceptual experiences, then, are in a sense “silent” or – in Austin’s phrase – “dumb”.But as I understand The Pure View here, it need not be committed to Travis’ “silence of the senses” view. In particular, a Purist can maintain that a perceptual experience can be committed to things “being one way or another” as long as their being that way is given or presented in the experience without remainder, so that there is no possibility of things not being that way.What no Purist can accept is the idea that perception has commitments that exceed what is given or presented. For if perception carried commitments to things being this or that way that exceeded what was presented in perception, the possibility would arise that those commitments were erroneous. And that possibility is anathema to Purists of any stripe. For Purists, there is no such thing as erroneous or non-veridical perception, strictly speaking. Thus, for Travis: “Perception cannot present things as other than they are. It cannot present some ways things are not as what is so” (Travis, 2004, p. 65). Bill Brewer concurs:

[I]n perceptual experience, a person is simply presented with the actual constituents of the physical world themselves. Any errors in her world-view which result are products of the subject’s responses to the experience, however automatic, natural or

1 Sense-datum theorists (e.g. Broad, 1927) were perceptual purists of sorts, but since they did not take perception to be the pure presentation of objects (etc.) in the world, they do not count as defenders of The Pure View as that view is understood here.2 If we think of intentionality as involving mentally “aiming” at something not given or presented (cf. Travis, 2013, p. 220), then the issue between The Pure View and its opponents concerns whether perception is intentional. Defenders of the former think not: “[S]eeing, at least seeing what is before you, remains non-intentional” (Travis, 2013, p. 221).

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understandable in retrospect these responses might be. Error, strictly speaking, given how the world actually is, is never an essential feature of experience itself. (Brewer, 2006, p. 169)

James Genone, another Purist, denies “that perceptual error is so much as possible” (Genone, 2014, p. 344).All these philosophers defend versions of a view currently known as “naïve realism” or “the relational view”. But Purist ideas have arisen within the “enactivist” movement, as well.3 For Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin, for example, “Perceiving is, in and of itself, contentless – it lacks inherent conditions of satisfaction” (2013, p. 134). Thus, perceptual experiences

do not have built-in conditions of satisfaction, nor do they possess veridical [sic!] content that is accurate or inaccurate, true or false. If basic perceptual experiences – even those of the phenomenally conscious sort – possess no content, then there is simply no question of their being true or false, veridical or unveridical. (Hutto & Myin 2013, p. 87; cf. p. 134)

In short, then, Purists claim perception is the pure presentation of bits of a perceiver’s environment. If perception is “committal” with respect to how things are in the environment – which not all Purists accept – the relevant commitments do not go beyond what is strictly given perceptually. Hence, perception can never present things as being different from the way they are.

Before I turn to the question of whether amodal completion could present a counterexample to The Pure View, I want to consider some ways in which Purists might attempt to handle other potential counterexamples in the vicinity of amodal completion. Amodal completion belongs to a family of phenomena that are sometimes collected under the heading of visual perceptual “filling-in” (Weil & Rees, 2011). Peter De Weerd offers the following general characterization of perceptual filling-in: “Visual perceptual filling-in refers to the interpolation of information across a region in the visual environment in the absence of any physical evidence for that information in that region” (De Weerd, 2006, p. 227). “Interpolation” means that the missing information is filled in on the basis of the information that is physically present in the surrounding area. So the basic idea is that the perceptual system adds information that is not present in the perceptual stimulus. This sounds like it might be precisely the sort of thing Purists deny is possible – viz. cases in which perception goes beyond what is strictly given or presented. However, Purists have various ways of responding, depending on the precise nature of the case.First, consider Troxler fading (Fig. 1). In Troxler fading – or Troxler’s effect – stimuli surrounding a fixated object slowly fade away. It seems Purists can easily handle this sort of case. For it is not clear there is any experiential filling-in going on. In Troxler fading, subjects fail to see something that is there. But that does not mean that something else – the background – is “filled in” to replace what is not seen. In general, failing to spot x is not tantamount to perceptually representing y (≠ x). If it were, then given that we overlook things all the time, virtually all our perceptual experiences would be grossly non-veridical.

3 For more detailed expositions and discussions of naïve realism, see Overgaard (2021a; 2021b). I discuss enactivist views in Overgaard (2017).

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Fig. 1. Troxler fading. Fixate the cross. After a while, the blob on the right disappears.

Other cases of filling-in must be handled differently, however. In “modal completion” (Michotte et al., 1991), for example, an observer has a visual impression of a figure or surface where none is present in the stimulus. The Kanisza square (Fig. 2) is a standard case of modal completion. It seems as though there is a bright white square in the foreground, partially occluding (blocking from view) four black discs. Yet the foregrounded square is illusory. The image only contains four “pac men”, suitably arranged. The illusory square seems to be added, experientially, to the image. And thus it can hardly be denied that filling-in is occurring.

Fig 2. Modal completion. Kanisza square.

What Purists can say, however, is that the relevant filling-in is not strictly perceptual. Three strategies suggest themselves: First, Purist can maintain that beliefs or judgements are doing the filling-in. Second, they can maintain that (partial) hallucinations are responsible. Finally, they can say that filling-in is accomplished by mental imagery.Consider the doxastic strategy first. The idea is that in Fig. 2, it is not your visual experience that fills in the missing contours of a square. Rather, there seems to be a white square in the sense that you believe or judge – or are at least inclined to believe or judge – that there is such a thing.The doxastic strategy might work for modal completion. A naïve subject, going by a real-life example of a Kanisza square, would surely be inclined to believe or judge that there was a square object present. Maybe we do not need to posit an underlying perceptual representation of such an object. Maybe the doxastic representation is all we need.If the doxastic strategy does not seem viable, the Purist can opt for the hallucination strategy instead. The basic idea here is to argue that a partial hallucination is responsible for the added contours in Fig. 2. Hallucinations, however, are not perceptions.4 And so, contrary to the way it is advertised, the “perceptual” filling-in in such a case is not strictly perceptual after all. It therefore poses no threat to the Pure View.Perhaps the hallucination strategy can yield a plausible account of modal completion. It vividly seems to you that as though a bright white square is there in the image; yet there is no

4 Strictly speaking, the Purist needs to maintain something stronger than this. Almost everyone agrees that hallucinations are not perceptions. The question is whether there must be an experiential difference between perception and hallucination. To keep things simple, I will assume for the sake of the argument that Purists have succeeded in explaining away a potential counterexample if they can make it plausible that a partial hallucination is responsible for the anti-Purist feature invoked.

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such thing. This seems a textbook case of visual hallucination – a “perception” or perceptual experience without an object.Should the hallucination strategy fail, a third strategy is available to the Purist: the imagery strategy. To opt for this strategy is to maintain that filling-in is achieved by way of mental imagery. Now, as a rule, imagery tends to be less compelling than perception. We rarely mistake our imaginations for reality. Thus, the less convincing or compelling the filling-in would be, the more plausible would be the suggestion that imagery is responsible. To the extent that the added contours in Fig. 2 are experienced as less than compelling, the imagery strategy might seem promising. Does it really look as though an actual square is present in the image? If not, perhaps that is because what is doing the filling-in here is visual imagery rather than a partial hallucination.Purists can also avail themselves of these strategies when trying to account for other cases of allegedly perceptual filling-in. Take filling-in at the blind spot, for example (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Filling in at the blind spot. Close your right eye and fixate the cross with your left. Move closer to the figure. When the distance is right, the gap in the bar seems to

be filled.

Here it clearly seems as if missing information is added. The broken bar is visually completed; a piece is “inserted” to fill the gap.5 Perhaps one is not tempted to believe that an obviously broken bar is suddenly complete when the gap falls on the blind spot, and so perhaps the doxastic strategy has little prima facie plausibility. But then it seems the Purist can invoke a partial hallucination (you have a vivid visual experience of something that is not there) or perhaps appeal to visual imagery (does it really seem as though the bar is complete, or does the fragility of the experience perhaps suggest that this is more like imagery?).The question I now want to consider is whether any of these strategies yields a plausible explanation of cases of amodal completion.

Cases of amodal completion are importantly different from the other kinds of perceptual filling-in that we have discussed so far. Consider how the Belgian vision scientist Albert Michotte – who coined the term “amodal completion” (or amodal “complements”: compléments amodaux; see van Lier & Gerbino, 2015 for discussion of the translation) – says about Fig. 4:

[T]here is a gap in the stimulation from the rectangle underneath, but this gap is somehow inoperative, since the subjects say that they perceive two complete rectangles. … There is no question of transparency, and the subjects themselves are emphatic that although they “see” two complete rectangles, it is quite clear that the one underneath is hidden at the crossing point. For this reason Michotte has proposed that completions that are “present” in this manner should be termed “amodal” […]. (Michotte et al., 1991, pp. 143-144)

Notice the scare quotes around “see” and “present”. The point is that although subjects have a vivid sense of being in perceptual contact with two complete rectangles, it does not seem to them as if they actually see both rectangles in their entirety. Part of one rectangle seems to be hidden behind the other, and thus out of view.

5 Ramachandran (1992) has examples that are even more striking.

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Fig. 4. Amodal completion. After Michotte et al. (1991).

Given that human beings live in environments that tend to be “cluttered”, as Gibson puts it (1986, p. 78), perceived objects are frequently, indeed mostly, partially covered by other objects. As a consequence, full information about an object is rarely available, and the ability to somehow fill in the missing information is therefore crucial. As Michotte and colleagues put it:

It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of these perceptual completions. To convince ourselves of this we need only cast a critical eye about us, at the furniture in a room, for example, or at the traffic in a street. It is astonishing how rare it is to find examples of objects where the side facing the observer is completely uncovered. Nearly all of them have parts hidden by other objects (screens), and despite this the shapes we see are neither interrupted nor breeched. Indeed it is clear that the world as it appears to us is not made up of fragments of objects but of things with a complete shape presented to us this way despite the partial and temporary concealment that happens to them. This is to a great extent due to the formation of amodal completions, which are thus seen to be an essential factor in the phenomenal permanence of things and consequently also in the adequate adaptation of the behaviour of humans and animals to the environment in which they live. (Michotte et al., 1991, p. 165)

Stressing the crucial importance of amodal completion, however, is one thing, which presumably will find little opposition. It is quite another thing to suppose, as Michotte also seems to, that amodal completion is a perceptual phenomenon after all. The world “appears to us” as made up of “things with a complete shape”, say Michotte et al. Things are “presented to us in this way”; we “see” things in this way.However, that perceptual interpretation of amodal completion will be challenged by the Purist. For the commitment to some object continuing behind another object, perhaps in a determinate fashion, is clearly one that goes beyond what is given or presented experientially. Moreover, it is one that could be false. Indeed, as regards Michotte et al’s illustration (Fig. 4), it is false. There is nothing continuing behind the complete rectangle.Thus, the Purist must reject that amodal completion is a genuine feature of perceptual experience. The ubiquity and importance of the phenomenon makes the task all the more urgent, as this can hardly be considered an odd outlier to be contrasted with run-of-the-mill perceptual experience. If amodal completion is genuinely perceptual, it is a feature of run-of-the-mill perception.The question, then, is whether the Purist’s strategies work for amodal completion. First, let us consider the hallucinatory strategy. Can the Purist suggest that the amodally completed part of an object is simply hallucinated? The short answer, I think, is no.When you hallucinate, you seem to perceive things that aren’t there. It is a necessary condition on hallucinating x that it seems to you as though you perceive x. But it precisely does not seem to you as if you perceive amodally completed parts. Already Michotte et al

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(and their subjects) were very clear on that: those parts seem to be hidden from view. The hallucinatory strategy founders on this simple point.6

The doxastic strategy seems much more promising, however. Perhaps you don’t believe that there are two complete rectangles in Fig. 4, but you certainly feel the pull towards so believing. Indeed, it may only be your background knowledge that this is merely a two-dimensional drawing that is preventing you from giving in to that pull. In real-life cases, you might be hard pressed not to believe the completed portion is really there.The doxastic strategy can be challenged, however, by cases in which it seems we clearly do not believe what we amodally complete. Consider Fig. 5. You will not need to be persuaded that this is no ordinary triangle. Now cover the X section with a finger or pencil. The triangle is now amodally completed as though it were an ordinary triangle. Yet do you now believe that it is an ordinary triangle?

Fig. 5. Michotte’s “triangle”. Occlude the section where the lines cross with a finger or a pen, and the triangle seems perfectly normal. After Michotte et al. (1991).

The Purist might want to dig in her heels at this point. Perhaps you have background knowledge or beliefs about triangles, which, when the X bit is covered, leads you to infer that the triangle is an ordinary one. To be sure, this belief will not eradicate your original belief. Thus, the Purist now has to assume you hold an inconsistent set of beliefs. You firmly believe the triangle to be highly irregular – indeed not a triangle at all. And yet you also believe in some sense, or are inclined to believe, that it is a normal triangle.Philosophers are often keen to point out that it may not be all that strange or unusual for a person to hold inconsistent beliefs. So perhaps the Purist’s case is not implausible.However, let me make three points vis-à-vis this suggestion. First of all, notice how different our scenario is from a standard case of inconsistent beliefs. To take a Sartrean sort of example, I can believe firmly that I am courageous. Yet I can also know (hence believe) that I’ve run away from conflicts again and again. I may also believe that a courageous person is one who does not avoid conflict. The inconsistency can persist, however, because I somehow fail to connect the dots. It is a lot harder for blatantly inconsistent beliefs to co-exist. One tends to give way to the other.In the present case, however, we seem to adopt, out of the blue, a belief that blatantly contradicts a firm conviction of ours. It survives for a brief moment (as the X section is

6 I am not saying that hallucinatory experiences must seem to be pure presentations that have no “amodal” components. If that were the case, hallucinated objects would seem to be mere facades, with no unperceived rear sides etc. Then hallucinations would be too easily told apart from genuine perceptions. I accept that when one hallucinates a material object one may experience it as having sides that are not perceived, but rather represented in an “amodal” fashion. The point remains, however, that I do not hallucinate x unless it seems to me that I perceive x. The fact that, as a rule, it cannot seem to me as though I perceive x unless some parts of x are amodally represented does not threaten that point. (Thanks to Alberto Voltolini for raising this issue.)

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covered), and then evaporates as we remove the occluding pencil or finger. Weirder still, the Purist must maintain that as we cover the X bit, there that unruly belief is again. How it can get a second, third, indeed nth lease of life is utterly mysterious, given our firm conviction that this is no ordinary triangle.Secondly, we must not underestimate the degree of irrationality this saddles us with. To believe that Fig. 5 is a normal triangle is not merely to believe something you also believe happens to be false. It is to believe something you firmly believe is nomologically impossible. What was clearly not a triangle, printed on a sheet of perfectly normal paper, cannot all by itself a moment later turn into a normal triangle, then go back to the irregular figure it was and so on. It is impossible.Thirdly, Bence Nanay (2010, p. 244) gives an additional, powerful reason to reject the doxastic strategy. Consider how the doxastic strategy proposes to deal with a case like Michotte’s “triangle”: we tend to believe it is normal (when partly occluded), because what we now see interacts with some background beliefs in such a way as to make us infer its normality.But now consider Fig. 6. Here you amodally complete an irregular shape, with which you presumably have little prior experience. And you do so despite the fact that what the image as a whole seems to suggest is that the middle figure is a regular octagon like the others. Indeed, you experience the irregular shape even if your background beliefs include the knowledge – as mine do, since I have made the drawing myself – that the figure in the middle is just another regular octagon. As Nanay comments: “Even if a belief could at least sometimes be insensitive to some of our other beliefs, it certainly cannot be insensitive to those of our beliefs it is supposed to be inferred from” (Nanay, 2010, p. 244).

Fig. 6. Non-rational amodal completion of an irregular shape. After Kanisza (1985).

Thus, the doxastic strategy fails to convince.7 That leaves the option Nanay himself favours: the amodally completed bits are represented by visual imagery. Although Nanay does not offer this account in an attempt to defend The Pure View of perception, there is no reason why a Purist should not put the account to work for their own purposes, in particular if the other strategies seem unlikely to succeed.

7 There are variants of the doxastic strategy that these critical remarks do not directly affect. For example, one might appeal to doxastic states other than fully-fledged beliefs – perhaps what Tamar Gendler calls “aliefs”, or what Steven Stich had dubbed “subdoxastic states”. Purists could also invoke phenomenal beliefs – beliefs about how things seem or look (Brewer, 2011, pp. 136-137; Fish, 2009, p. 175; see also Glüer, 2009). Even if you are firmly convinced that Fig. 6 contains three identical regular octagons, you also believe that it looks as though the middle octagon is an irregular figure. It would take me too far afield to consider these and other mutations of the doxastic strategy. But see Overgaard (2021a) for some critical remarks on the appeal to phenomenal beliefs.

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However, I think there is a serious problem with the imagery account, and it parallels our decisive objection to the hallucinatory strategy.8 For imagery is best understood as quasi-perceptual. To visualize a sunset is to imagine seeing a sunset, to call forth an “experience” of beautiful red and yellow colors, and so on. Nanay himself insists on this (2010, p. 252). Indeed, he emphasizes that it follows from the quasi-perceptual character of imagery that amodal completion is itself, in some sense, quasi-perceptual. As he says,

if what it is like to have visual imagery is similar to what it is like to perceive, and being aware of occluded parts is having visual imagery, then, putting these two claims together, we get that what it is like to be aware of the occluded parts of perceived objects is similar to what it is like to perceive those parts that are not occluded. (Nanay, 2010, p. 252)

The argument is logically impeccable:

(1) Visual imagery is similar to perceiving non-occluded (parts of) things.(2) Being aware of occluded parts is having visual imagery.(3) Therefore, being aware of occluded parts is similar to perceiving non-occluded (parts

of) things.

However, the conclusion is false. Being aware of occluded parts is precisely not like seeing non-occluded parts. It does not seem at all to you as though the hidden bits of the middle figure in Fig. 6 are given or presented to you in anything remotely like the way in which you see the non-occluded bits of the figure. The occluded bits seem to be hidden; they precisely do not seem to be seen. Since I agree with Nanay that (1) is indisputable, it is obviously (2) that has to go. Thus, the imagery strategy fails.I conclude that none of the three strategies yields a plausible account of amodal completion. And that suggests that amodal completion is genuinely perceptual.9

I want to end by briefly considering an objection to the argument I have presented. It may seem puzzling how I can say that amodal completion is genuinely perceptual, given the objections I have raised against the hallucinatory and imagery strategies. For in arguing against these, I emphasized that amodal completion was not like perceiving. But then how can I maintain that amodal completion is perceptual?This only looks like an inconsistency to the extent that we are still in the grips of The Pure View. For Purists, visual perceptual experience is precisely pure seeing, pure presentation, pure givenness. To abandon The Pure View is to maintain that (some) perceptual experiences have commitments that go beyond what is given or presented – that go beyond what is seen. And there really is no tension between thinking that it is perceptual experience itself that “goes beyond” the given, and maintaining that the “beyond” in question neither is, nor in any way

8 Briscoe (2011) forcefully presses this objection against the imagery account. 9 There are some recent empirical studies on amodal completion of an object’s volume that point in the same direction. In Ekroll et al. (2013), a semi-spherical shell lying flat on a table looked exactly like that – like half a sphere. However, when lifted or tilted, the semi-spherical object would look like an intact sphere. In an interesting subsequent experiment, Ekroll et al. (2016) had subjects balance the hollow shell on the tip of their finger. This resulted in the shell (again) looking like a complete sphere. Moreover, apparently in order to “make room” for the complete sphere, subjects additionally experienced their fingers as shortened. For Ekroll and colleagues, these experimental data testify to the perceptual nature of amodal completion. (Consider the bizarre set of contradictory beliefs subjects in the 2016 study must have, if the data are to be explained doxastically. People believe both (i) that the semi-sphere is a semi-sphere, and (ii) that it is a complete sphere. In addition, they believe that (iii) their finger retains its normal size and (iv) that it is shorter than normal.)

5. Concluding Remarks

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seems to be, seen. Rather, to affirm both of those things is simply to affirm the impurity of at least some perceptual experiences.Go back to the inconsistent triad with which I began:

(1) Perception occurs.(2) Perception is the pure presentation of objects, property instances, events (etc.) in the

world.(3) There is no pure presentation of objects, property instances, events (etc.) in the world.

Since (1) is indisputable – pace Derrida, or Derrida* – the question is whether to abandon (2) or (3). Husserl embraces (3) and rejects (2). For Husserl, perception is impure across the board. But nothing I have said supports (3), at least not directly. For all I have said, there could be cases of ‘pure presentation’. I take no stand on this matter. In lieu of (3), I submit:

(4) Some cases of perception – cases involving amodal completion – are impure presentations of objects (etc.) in the world.

REFERENCESBrewer, B. (2006). Perception and Content. European Journal of Philosophy, 14: 165-181.Brewer, B. (2011). Perception and Its Objects. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Briscoe, R. (2011). Mental Imagery and the Varieties of Amodal Perception. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 92: 153-173.Broad, C.D. (1927). Scientific Thought. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.Derrida, J. (1973). Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Trans. D.B. Allison. Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press.De Weerd, P. (2006). Perceptual Filling-in: More than the Eye Can See. Progress in Brain Research, 154: 227-245.Ekroll, V., Sayim, B., Wagemans, J. (2011). Against Better Knowledge: The Magical Force of Amodal Volume Completion. i-Perception, 4: 511-515.Ekroll, V., Sayim, B., Van Der Hallen, R., Wagemans, J. (2016). Illusory Visual Completion of an Object’s Invisible Backside Can Make Your Finger Feel Shorter. Current Biology, 26: 1029-1033.Fish, W. (2009). Perception, Hallucination, and Illusion. New York: Oxford University Press.Gendler, T. S. (2008). Alief and Belief. Journal of Philosophy, 105: 634-663.Genone, J. (2014). Appearance and Illusion. Mind, 123: 339-376.Gibson, J. J. (1986). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Hillsdale (NJ): Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Glüer, K. (2009). In Defence of a Doxastic Account of Experience. Mind and Language, 24: 297-327.Husserl, E. (2001). Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis. Trans. A.J. Steinbock. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Hutto, D., Myin, E. (2013). Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds without Content. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Kanisza, G. (1985). Seeing and Thinking. Acta Psychologica, 59: 23-33.Michotte, A., Thinès, G., Crabbé, G. (1991). Amodal Completion of Perceptual Structures. In G. Thinès, A. Costall, & G. Butterworth (eds.), Albert Michotte’s Experimental Phenomenology of Perception. Hillsdale (NJ): Erlbaum, 140-167.Nanay, B. (2010). Perception and Imagination: Amodal Perception as Mental Imagery. Philosophical Studies, 150: 239-254.Overgaard, S. (2017). Enactivism and the Perception of Others’ Emotions. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 41: 105-129.

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Overgaard, S. (2021a). Naïve Realism and the Problem of Illusion. Analytic Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1111/phib.12230Overgaard, S. (2021b). The Vertical-Horizontal Illusion. Erkenntnis. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-020-00361-xRamachandran, V.S. (1992). Filling in Gaps in Perception: Part I. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 1: 199-205.Stich, S. (1978). Beliefs and Subdoxastic States. Philosophy of Science, 45: 499-518.Travis, C. (2004). The Silence of the Senses. Mind, 113: 57-94.Travis, C. (2013). Perception: Essays after Frege. Oxford: Oxford University Press.van Lier, R., Gerbino, W. (2015). Perceptual Completions. In J. Wagemans (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Perceptual Organization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 294-320.Weil, R.S., Rees, G. (2011). A New Taxonomy for Perceptual Filling-in. Brain Research Reviews, 67: 40-55.


DOI: 10.17454/pam-2211





PHENOMENALLY-GROUNDED INTENTIONALITY FOR NAÏVE REALISTS1

abstract

In this paper, I outline a disjunctivist proposal for understanding the intentionality of perceptions and hallucinations within a naïve realist framework. For the case of genuine perceptual experience, naïve realists can endorse a version of the view that their intentionality is phenomenally-grounded: perceptual experiences have intentionality in virtue of being relations of conscious acquaintance to aspects of the mind-independent environment. By contrast, hallucinations have intentionality dependently or derivatively, in virtue of their indiscriminability from, or similarity with respect to, perceptual experiences. Within this proposal, naïve realists can allow that perceptions and hallucinations have a property in common – that of being intentionally directed at apparently mind-independent entities – whilst having wholly different metaphysical natures.

keywords

Phenomenal intentionality; Naïve realism; Perceptual experience

1 Versions of this paper were presented at the San Raffaele School of Philosophy ‘Mind, Language, and the First-Person Perspective’ and at the IUSS workshop ‘Analytic Phenomenology, Intentionality and Consciousness’; I thank the participants for their useful questions. I am also grateful to Simon Wimmer and Alberto Voltolini for discussing with me the ideas presented in this paper, and to the referees for this journal for their comments and suggestions.

GIULIA MARTINAUniversity of [email protected]

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Perceptual experiences are taken by many philosophers to have both intentional and phenomenal aspects or properties: they are about, of, or directed towards objects, and they have a qualitative or phenomenal character. In the debate on the relation between these two supposed aspects of perceptual experience, a number of philosophers has recently argued for the following thesis:

Phenomenal Intentionality (PI): perceptual experiences have intentionality in virtue of their phenomenal character.1

In this paper, I explore a neglected question: whether someone who is a naïve realist about perceptual experience can take PI on board, and what they might gain from doing so.Naïve realism is a view concerning the nature of perceptual experiences, i.e. experiences involved in episodes of genuine perception – such as my seeing the green apple on the table before me. We can characterise naïve realism in terms of the following core thesis:

Relation (R): perceptual experiences are fundamentally relations of awareness or acquaintance between a perceiver and aspects of the mind-independent environment, such as external objects and their properties or property-instances.2

According to R, for instance, the visual experience I have in seeing the apple before me fundamentally consists in my perceptual relation of awareness or acquaintance to the apple and its shape, texture, and colour. In addition to being a claim about the metaphysics of perceptual experiences, R is also relevant to explanations of their phenomenal or qualitative character. Naïve realists hold that perceptual experiences have the phenomenology they do in part in virtue of presenting the external objects and properties (or property instances) they do, where these presented entities are constituents of the experience (e.g. Martin, 2004; French & Gomes, 2019).

1 Versions of PI are defended by e.g. Loar (2003), Kriegel (2011), Farkas (2013), Mendelovici (2018).2 Versions of R are defended e.g. by Martin (2004; 2006), Campbell (2002), Fish (2009), Brewer (2011), French & Gomes (2019), French & Phillips (2020).

1. Naïve Realism and Intentionality

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Discussions of intentionality within the naïve realist framework usually focus on resisting or criticising an alternative view on which perceptual experiences are fundamentally representational – as opposed to relational, as per R. On this alternative conception, the most fundamental characterisation of a perceptual experience is as a state representing things as being a certain way, whether or not they are that way. For instance, my experience represents that a green apple is before me, and it is accurate or veridical insofar as things in my environment are as the content specifies.An interesting question, though, is whether perceptual experiences as conceived by the naïve realist, i.e. as fundamentally relations of awareness to the mind-independent world, also have intentionality. Logue (2013), for example, proposes that naïve realists could answer the question positively, holding that perceptual experiences have representational contents in virtue of being relations of awareness.3 However, various naïve realists argue that we should not attribute, or that we have no good reason to attribute, representational content and more generally accuracy conditions to perceptual experiences. For instance, Travis (2004) argues that perceptual experiences are mere presentations of worldly items and that they do not represent things as being a certain way.4 An option for these philosophers is to hold that perceptual experiences have no intentionality, and that intentionality comes in only at the level of post-perceptual judgements, which are plausibly endowed with representational content. The option I will consider is, instead, to focus on a more basic or minimal notion of intentionality that could potentially be accepted without committing one to the claim that experiences have accuracy conditions.The most basic conception of intentionality is in terms of directedness or aboutness: to have intentionality is to be of, about, or directed at some entity or entities (see, e.g., Crane, 2003; Farkas, 2013; Kriegel, 2013; Frey, 2013; Mendelovici, 2018). The basic notion is often enriched with the claims that an intentional state or event is about something other than itself, and that it always presents the entity it is about from a certain point of view or under a certain aspect. For the case of perceptual experiences, moreover, Farkas characterises their intentionality as their apparently presenting in a sensory mode objects and qualities that seem to exist independently of our experiences (2013, pp. 99-101). A perceptual experience can be intentional in this sense by being of, or directed at, a green apple, or this particular green apple, even if it does not represent that there is an apple, or that there is a green, round, and smooth thing before me. The intentional object of the experience, then, is not understood as what the accuracy of the experience turns on, but rather as what the experience apparently presents, enables attending to (at least apparently) and thinking of.5

On the face of it, naïve realists can allow that perceptual experiences have intentionality in the sense outlined. The experience I have in seeing the apple, relational as it is, is naturally characterised as being an experience of an apple, or of green-ness and roundness. One could even argue that, once we allow that experiences are relations to mind-independent objects – as per R –, their being intentionally directed at objects comes ‘for free’. Allen, for instance, observes that naïve realists would accept that perceptual experiences have intentionality understood as directedness: for the naïve realist, ‘our perceptual experiences are ‘about’ (‘of’, or ‘directed at’) those things in our environment that we are consciously

3 On Logue’s proposal, the representational content of perceptual experience, albeit explained by their relational nature, accounts for the phenomenal aspects of the experience; for this reason, her view is not compatible with PI, which is my focus in this paper.4 See also Brewer (2011; 2018), French (2019). For discussion of Travis’ arguments, see Raleigh (2013), Wilson (2018).5 The qualification ‘apparently’ is needed because experiences that are not genuine perceptual experiences, such as hallucinations, plausibly also have intentionality. I will discuss hallucinations in Section 2.

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acquainted with’ (Allen 2016, p. 9). Similarly, Bourget (2019) notes that both naïve realists and those proponents of PI who take intentionality to be a relation hold that at least some experiences have an ‘aboutness-underpinning relational structure’.6

Moreover, naïve realists can account for various properties of intentionality discussed in the literature. Perceptual experiences are not simply instances of awareness of something, but of awareness of something other than themselves, which, as Farkas’ characterisation highlights, seems to be independent of our experience: worldly objects and the perceivable properties they instantiate. Further, naïve realists emphasise that standing in a perceptual relation to the world as per R consists in having a partial perspective on the world. One is related to a scene from a certain point of view and in certain conditions of perception – potentially specific to different sense modalities – which constrain what is manifest to one as well as how that is perceptually manifest (e.g. Brewer, 2011; French & Phillips, 2020). This allows naïve realists to capture the notion of ‘aspectual shape’, i.e. the idea that the intentional object is always given under an aspect.Notably, many proponents of PI within the phenomenal intentionality research programme start precisely from the above notion of intentionality as directedness: the explanatorily basic, phenomenally grounded intentionality, which we are motivated to ascribe based simply on reflection on how our experiences seem to us (e.g. Farkas, 2013; Mendelovici, 2018). Since naïve realists can allow that perceptual experiences have intentionality in this sense, adopting PI is a natural option. As Allen’s observation above suggests, naïve realists can hold that perceptual experiences have intentionality in virtue of their fundamental metaphysical structure, i.e. in virtue of being relations of acquaintance or awareness.

PINR

: genuine perceptual experiences have intentionality in virtue of their being fundamentally relations of awareness or acquaintance between a perceiver and aspects of the mind-independent environment.

PINR

counts as a version of PI, the view that the intentionality of perceptual experiences is phenomenally grounded. First, the relation of awareness or acquaintance is an inherently phenomenally conscious property, as it characterises perceptual experience. Second, it is in virtue of one’s standing in that relation of awareness to certain aspects of the mind-independent environment that one’s experience has the phenomenology or qualitative character it has. For instance, according to PI

NR, the experience I have in seeing the green apple has intentionality in

virtue of being a relation of awareness to the apple, its colour, shape, and texture (among other things). My being in such a relation to those things, i.e. my being acquainted with them from a certain partial perspective, explains why the experience has the phenomenology it does.The resulting view differs in important respects from those standardly endorsed by proponents of PI. The most obvious difference is that proponents of PI typically hold that phenomenology, and thus the intentionality it grounds, is ‘narrow’, i.e. that it does not constitutively depend on the environment external to the perceiver (e.g. Kriegel, 2013). On naïve realism, by contrast, the phenomenal or qualitative aspects of perceptual experiences are partly explained by the mind-independent objects and properties that the experience is a relation to, where these are often understood as constituents of the experience. As Niikawa (2020) argues, this significant difference does not make naïve realism incompatible with PI

6 This is not to say that the relation of acquaintance characterised by R can be identified with intentionality, or vice-versa — even if intentionality is conceived as a relation. As we will see in Section 2, experiences to which R does not apply can also be intentional.

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per se.7 Rather, in endorsing PINR

, naïve realists would endorse an externalist view of the phenomenally-grounded intentionality of perceptual experience.

Suppose that PINR

is a natural way for naïve realists to understand how intentionality fits within their picture of perceptual experience. A substantive question is what reasons they may have to endorse PI

NR. The question arises because it is not obvious what aspects of perceptual

experience intentionality can explain which are not already explained in terms of the core naïve realist thesis R.Obviously, like standard defenders of PI, naïve realists do not appeal to intentionality in order to account for the phenomenal aspects of perceptual experience. On the face of it, supposing that our perceptual experiences are intentionally directed at certain objects would seem capable of explaining why our experiences put us in a position to form certain beliefs or make certain judgements. That my experience is directed at an apple and its green-ness, one might think, allows us to understand why the experience supports the judgements that there is a green apple and that the apple looks green. However, intentionality will not be what explains our beliefs and judgements concerning particular objects or our demonstrative reference to particular objects, because naïve realists can claim that these are explained by the fact that our perceptual experiences are relations of acquaintance to those particular objects (e.g. Campbell, 2002). Moreover, some naïve realists argue that the general aspects of our perceptual beliefs and judgments – e.g. their being about a green object, or about green-ness – can also be explained by the relational nature of perceptual experience, by appealing to the fact that our experiences relate us to properties or property instances in our environment. While a story will have to be given to explain how a subject can get from being visually acquainted with the green-ness of the apple to judgements about green things and green-ness, some such stories are being offered by naïve realists (e.g. Brewer, 2018; French, 2019). Because the fundamental relational nature of perceptual experiences allows naïve realists to account for so many phenomena, it may seem that attributing intentionality to those experiences, while possible, would be explanatorily idle, and thus that there would be little interest in adopting PI

NR.

To see what role intentionality could play within a naïve realist account, and what can be gained by adopting PI

NR, I suggest we consider experiences that are clearly not genuine

perceptual experiences: hallucinations. Suppose I have an experience where things look to me just like in the case of seeing the green apple, but where neither apples nor green-ness are there; indeed, there is nothing I perceive. Plausibly, my hallucinatory experience has intentionality: it is intentionally directed at an apple, or at a green, round, smooth object. This is not merely a natural description of my hallucination, motivated by how we would talk about it – for instance, by the fact that we can ask ‘what did you hallucinate?’. That hallucinations have intentionality is motivated when we consider the psychological impact of hallucinations, or their overall effects on our mental life. Recall the notion of intentionality presented in Sec. 1 for perceptual experiences: our experiences are apparently directed at objects and properties that seem to be independent of our experience, and which are presented from a certain partial perspective. As Farkas points out, this notion applies just as well to hallucinations: in hallucinating, I seem to be presented with a mind-independent green, round, and smooth object before me from a certain point of view (Farkas, 2013, p. 100). This is an aspect of how hallucinations strike us

7 Niikawa also defends a stronger claim: that defenders of PI should endorse naïve realism. I do not intend to defend this claim here.

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that can be present even in those hallucinations – the likely majority – that are not really indiscriminable from a genuine perception.8

In addition to these considerations about the way hallucinations can strike us, we have reasons to attribute intentionality to hallucinations because of their connection to our other mental states, our reports, and behaviour. My hallucinatory experience puts me in a position to attend to what I am hallucinating, think about it, report on it, and remember it (see, e.g., Johnston, 2004). Moreover, it makes it rational for me to judge that there is an apple or a green and round object before me in the absence of evidence to the contrary. A straightforward explanation of why my hallucinatory experience has this impact on other aspects of my mental life and behaviour, where this impact is similar in many respects to the one that my perception of the apple has, is that my hallucinatory experience has intentionality, and in particular that it is intentionally directed at an apple or a round and green object.These considerations make it difficult to deny that hallucinations have intentionality, and that they have intentionality in the very same sense as perceptions do. I suggest that naïve realists do not need to deny this, and can thus allow that perceptions and hallucinations have a common property, compatibly with their commitments and without adopting especially controversial views of hallucination. Moreover, adopting PI

NR for the case of genuine

perceptual experiences can help them do so.Here is why one might think that naïve realists cannot accept the very plausible claim that hallucinations have intentionality. Those familiar with the literature of naïve realism will know that admitting common properties between a perception and an indiscriminable hallucination threatens the claim that the phenomenal character of genuine perceptual experiences is explained by their being fundamentally relations of awareness or acquaintance to the mind-independent environment.9 If there are properties of the hallucinatory experience that are sufficient to explain the way things seem to the subject of the experience, and these properties are also present in the perception case, the worry is that these common properties would screen off the perceptual relation from explaining the phenomenal aspects of the experience in the perception case. The assumption in the background is that hallucinations, unlike perceptions, are not fundamentally relations of awareness, and so the core naïve realist thesis R does not apply to them; if so, whatever holds in common between a perception and hallucination is something that can be present independently of the subject’s perceptual relation to the mind-independent environment.10 To avoid the screening-off worry, it has been argued that naïve realists should refrain from attributing any ‘positive mental characteristics’ to hallucinatory experiences (Martin, 2004; 2006). On this negative epistemic account, hallucinations are characterised purely in terms of their being subjectively indiscriminable from genuine perceptual experiences.11 My hallucination, then, can only be characterised as an experience that I cannot tell apart by introspection from the perceptual experience I have in seeing a green apple before me.Whether or not the screening-off argument is ultimately convincing, intentionality is a positive characteristic that can be shared by perceptual and hallucinatory experiences without giving rise to screening-off worries. Suppose that perceptual experiences have intentionality in virtue of being relations of awareness to aspects of the mind-independent world, as per

8 See, e.g., Dorsch (2010) for a discussion of the phenomenology of hallucinations.9 The worry applies to causally matching hallucinations. See Martin (2004, 2006), Nudds (2013), and Moran (2019) for discussion.10 Not all naïve realists are disjunctivists and will accept this claim, see, e.g., Raleigh (2014), Masrour (2020).11 See, e.g., Niikawa (2017) for a critical discussion of the options available to naïve realists who aim at giving a positive account of hallucination.

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PINR

(Section 1). Intentionality, then, does not play any role in accounting for the phenomenal or qualitative aspects of the perception; on the contrary, intentionality is grounded in the relation of conscious acquaintance, which explains the phenomenology of the perceptual experience. On this proposal then, intentionality is not the kind of mental characteristic that could screen off the relational nature of perceptual experiences from explaining their phenomenal aspects.Moreover, naïve realists who adopt PI

NR can give an account of how hallucinations come to

have intentionality on which perceptual experiences enjoy an explanatory priority. It is plausible that hallucinations, however exactly construed, are such that the core naïve realist thesis R does not apply to them: they are not relations of awareness or acquaintance to aspects of the mind-independent environment, and quite possibly they are not relations of awareness or acquaintance at all. Given this, if hallucinations have intentionality, they cannot have it in virtue of being fundamentally relations of awareness: the intentionality of hallucinations is not phenomenally grounded, and in particular it is not grounded in accordance to PI

NR. So

while hallucinations and perceptions may have the same property of intentionality, they will have this property in virtue of different things.A natural strategy for a naïve realist is to hold that hallucinations have their intentionality dependently or derivatively, in virtue of a relation they stand in with respect to genuine perceptions, which in turn have intentionality in virtue of being relations of acquaintance to mind-independent aspects of the environment. Suppose that hallucinatory experiences stand in the negative epistemic relation of indiscriminability with respect to perceptual experiences, or that they are relevantly similar to perceptual experiences in how they strike us. On these grounds, they become endowed with intentionality: we take hallucinatory experiences to have objective purport, and to be intentionally directed at things just like perceptual experiences are.This strategy bears some similarities to interpretivist accounts given by some proponents of PI for the intentionality of states or events that are not phenomenally conscious: these states or events have intentionality derivatively because an ideal interpreter is disposed to ascribe a certain intentional object or content to them (e.g. Kriegel, 2011). In the present application of this idea to the case of hallucination, the suggestion is that our basis for interpreting hallucinations as intentionally directed at certain things is their indiscriminability from, or similarity with respect to, genuine perceptions. Metaphysically, hallucinations may be ‘inner events’ (e.g. Martin, 2004, p. 59) or mere modifications of our consciousness, with no intrinsic connection with objects and properties in the mind-independent world. It is in virtue of their relation to perceptual experiences that they come to have intentionality, in keeping with the explanatory priority of perceptual experiences with respect to the psychological impact of hallucinations.The proposal outlined allows naïve realists to give a positive characterisation of an aspect of the psychological impact that hallucinatory experiences have on us, without any potentially worrisome consequences for their view of genuine perceptual experience. As we have seen, there are various reasons to think that hallucinations exhibit intentionality: they seem to present us with mind-independent entities (e.g. a green apple or a green, round and smooth object), and thus put us in a position to apparently attend to some entities, think about them and make judgements about them.The negative epistemic account of hallucination has an explanation of the fact that hallucinatory experiences have a similar psychological impact as perceptual experiences. As Dorsch (2010) points out, hallucinations can have the same motivational and rational impact on our mental lives as perceptions because they are subjectively indiscriminable from perceptions (see also Fish, 2009). However, indiscriminability is a negative epistemic

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feature, and for this reason this view has been deemed unsatisfactory.12 For one, one may find it plausible that hallucinatory experiences have a phenomenal or qualitative character (e.g. Logue, 2012; Niikawa, 2017). Whether naïve realists can allow this, and whether they can allow that there is a sense in which a perception and an indiscriminable hallucination can be phenomenally similar without threatening the claim that the phenomenal character of genuine perceptions constitutively depends on the mind-independent environment, is a complex question. Whatever the answer to that question is, my suggestion is that naïve realists can allow that hallucinations have a positive feature – intentionality – and that doing so increases the explanatory power of a purely negative account at a very low cost. On the proposal outlined, we can vindicate the idea that my hallucination is not just indiscriminable from a perception of a green apple: it is similar to that perception in a certain respect, namely in apparently presenting an apple or being directed at an apple – or at least at a round, green, smooth object. Because it is intentionally directed in this way, my hallucinatory experience has the connections it has with respect to my beliefs, judgements, and dispositions to behave. Even if my experience was metaphysically nothing like my perception, it could still have this positive feature, which characterises its impact on me.

I have outlined a disjunctivist approach that naïve realists could pursue to explain how both perceptual experiences and hallucinations have intentionality, thus accounting for some common aspects of their psychological impact in terms of a common feature. The approach leaves open various issues concerning the kind of intentional objects that these experiences can have.Suppose we wanted to allow that a perception and a hallucination can be about the very same entity. An option would be to hold that neither genuine perceptions nor hallucinations have particular intentional objects, and are instead about property complexes (e.g. roundness, green-ness, and smoothness).13 As Johnston (2004) argues, this is plausible for hallucinations. If I hallucinate a spider, a creaky sound, or a burnt smell, what is the reason to think that my hallucination is about a particular spider, creaky sound, or burnt smell rather than another, identically-seeming one? In the case of genuine perceptual experiences, naïve realists could hold that the intentional object is the property complex in fact instantiated by the particulars that the experience is a relation of awareness to. Perceptual experiences play explanatory roles that would motivate attributing a particular intentional object to them (e.g. Soteriou, 2000), but these could be accounted for by appealing to the core naïve realist thesis that these experiences are relations of awareness to particulars.A more natural option for naïve realists, however, is that the intentional objects of genuine perceptual experiences are the very same particular objects that they are relations of acquaintance to (Allen, 2016, p. 9; Niikawa, 2020). If so, the experience I have in seeing the apple before me will have as its intentional object that particular apple and its visible properties. Given this answer, a perception and an indiscriminable hallucination could not really share their intentional object, and would only share some general aspects of their intentionality. For example, as Johnston proposes, the perception could be about a particular instantiating a property complex (the particular green, round, smooth apple I see) and the hallucination about that property complex.14

12 See, e.g., Nudds (2009) for an overview.13 For discussion of this kind of view, see, e.g., Bourget (2019).14 Johnston (2004) defends a version of this approach. However, Johnston offers this as an account of what perceptions and hallucinations are: an awareness of particulars and an awareness of sensory profiles, respectively. The suggestion presented here merely concerns the intentionality of these experiences, which on a naïve realist account far from exhausts the nature of the experiences.

3. Open Questions: Which Objects?

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A further issue is how the intentional objects of perceptual experiences and hallucinations are determined. In the case of perception, we have an independent way of fixing what the intentional object is – it is the particular that the perceiver is related to, or, on the first option above, the property complex this particular instantiates. In the case of hallucinations, the proposal I sketched does not per se give us an answer. On that proposal, hallucinations have intentionality in virtue of their indiscriminability from, or relevant similarity with respect to, perceptual experiences. Indiscriminability and similarity on their own do not seem to determine the intentional object of a hallucination, even when this is understood as a non-particular intentional object, such as a property complex. The thought is that in being indiscriminable from – or relevantly similar to – a perceptual experience of something green, round, and smooth, my hallucination is also indiscriminable from a perceptual experience of something white and round seen under a green light or through a green translucent screen, from a perceptual experience of a compelling hologram, and many more. This suggests that a full account of the intentionality of hallucinations within the proposal outlined in this paper will appeal to other factors which contribute to determining the intentional object of a hallucination. Relevant potential factors may be the context, the subject’s prior perceptual experiences, memories, background knowledge, and expectations, and the environment the subject is normally in.15

Finally, the proposal outlined in this paper leaves it open whether, in addition to having intentionality understood in the basic sense of directedness, perceptual experiences also have representational contents specifying accuracy conditions.16

I have argued that a version of the thesis that the intentionality of perceptual experience is phenomenally grounded fits well within a naïve realist view of perceptual experience. On the one hand, the basic notion of intentionality as directedness – often central to discussions of phenomenal intentionality – can naturally be accounted for by appealing to the core naïve realist thesis that perceptual experiences are fundamentally relations of awareness giving us a partial perspective onto the mind-independent world. On the other hand, intentionality is a property that experiences which do not have this fundamental nature, such as hallucinations, also have.The approach I recommended is a disjunctivist one: naïve realists can endorse PI

NR for genuine

perceptual experiences, while holding that hallucinations have intentionality dependently or derivatively, insofar as we attribute it to them on the basis of their indiscriminability from, or similarity with respect to, perceptual experiences. We can thus allow that, while being metaphysically completely different, both perceptions and hallucinations can share the property of being intentionally directed at something that is apparently independent of the experience. This would allow us to account for an aspect of the psychological impact of hallucinations by appealing to a positive feature of these experiences, and compatibly with naïve realist commitments.

15 In this paper, I have not discussed illusions, i.e. experiences where one is perceptually related to an object in one’s environment, but this seems other than it is. For a discussion of how the intentional object of illusions may be determined within a naïve realist framework, see Niikawa (2020).16 While I mentioned in Sec. 1 that naïve realists have given arguments against the view that perceptual experiences have representational contents, these arguments do not obviously rule out some weak versions of the view, e.g. proposals on which such contents are disjunctive or on which the contents do not play some of the explanatory roles typically assigned to them by critics of naïve realism (see Raleigh, 2013; Wilson, 2018 for discussion). For instance, it may be that in virtue of being intentionally directed at certain objects and property instances, a perceptual experience has a disjunctive representational content involving many different possible ways for the world to be in accordance with how things seem to the subject, where the content is further determined post-perceptually depending on how the subjects takes things to be in judgements or on other contextual factors.

4. Conclusion

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REFERENCESAllen, K. (2019). Merleau-Ponty and Naïve Realism. Philosopher’s Imprint, 19(2): 1-25.Bourget, D. (2019). Relational vs Adverbial Conceptions of Phenomenal Intentionality. In A. Sullivan (ed.), Sensations, Thoughts, Language, London: Routledge.Brewer, B. (2011). Perception and its Objects. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Brewer, B. (2018). Perceptual Experience and Empirical Reason. Analytic Philosophy, 59(1): 1-18.Campbell, J. (2002). Reference and Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Crane, T. (2003). The Intentional Structure of Consciousness. In A. Jokic & Q. Smith (eds.), Consciousness: New Philosophical Perspectives, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 33-56.Dorsch, F. (2010). The Unity of Hallucinations. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9(2): 171-191.Farkas, K. (2013). Constructing a World for the Senses. In U. Kriegel (ed.), Phenomenal Intentionality, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 99-115.Fish, W. (2009). Perception, Hallucination, and Illusion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.French, C. (2019). Epistemological Disjunctivism and Its Representational Commitments. In J. Milburn, C. Doyle, & D. Pritchard (eds.), New Issues in Epistemological Disjunctivism, London: Routledge.French, C., Gomes, A. (2019). How Naïve Realism can Explain Both the Particularity and the Generality of Experience. Philosophical Quarterly, 69: 41-63.French, C., Phillips, I. (2020). Austerity and Illusion. Philosopher’s Imprint, 20(15): 1-19.Frey, C. (2013). Phenomenal Presence. In U. Kriegel (ed.), Phenomenal Intentionality, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 71-92.Kriegel, U. (2011). The Sources of Intentionality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Kriegel, U. (2013). The Phenomenal Intentionality Research Program. In U. Kriegel (ed.), Phenomenal Intentionality, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Loar, B. (2003). Phenomenal Intentionality as the Basis of Mental Content. In M. Hahn & B. Ramberg (eds.), Essays on the Philosophy of Tyler Burge, Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 229-258.Logue, H. (2012). What Should the Naïve Realist Say about Total Hallucinations? Philosophical Perspectives, 26(1): 173-199.Logue, H. (2013). Good News for the Disjunctivist about (One of) the Bad Cases. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 86(1): 105-133.Johnston, M. (2004). The Obscure Object of Hallucination. Philosophical Studies, 120: 113-183.Martin, M.G.F. (2004). The Limits of Self-Awareness. Philosophical Studies, 120: 37-89.Martin, M.G.F. (2006). On Being Alienated. In T. Gendler & J. Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 354-410.Masrour, F. (2020). On the Possibility of Hallucinations. Mind, 129(515): 737-768.Mendelovici, A. (2018). The Phenomenal Basis of Intentionality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Moran, A. (2019). Naïve Realism, Hallucination, and Causation: A New Response to the Screening off Problem. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 97(2): 368-382.Niikawa, T. (2017). Naïve Realism and the Conception of Hallucination as Non-Sensory Phenomena. Disputatio, IX(46): 353-381.Niikawa, T. (2020). Naïve Realism and Phenomenal Intentionality. Philosophia, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00273-8Nudds. M. (2009). Recent Work in Perception: Naïve Realism and Its Opponents. Analysis, 69(2): 334-346.Nudds, M. (2013). Naïve Realism and Hallucinations. In F. Macpherson & D. Platchias (eds.), Hallucination, Cambridge (MA), MIT Press, 149-174.Raleigh, T. (2013). Phenomenology without Representation. European Journal of Philosophy, 21(3): 1209-1237.

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Raleigh, T. (2014). A New Approach to ‘Perfect’ Hallucinations. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 21(11-12): 81-110.Soteriou, M. (2000). The Particularity of Visual Experience. European Journal of Philosophy, 8: 173-189.Travis, C. (2004). The Silence of the Senses. Mind, 113: 57-94.Tye, M. (2007). Intentionalism and the Argument from no Common Content. Philosophical Perspectives, 21: 589-613. Wilson, K. (2018). Are the Senses Silent? Travis’s Argument from Looks. In J. Collins & T. Dobler (eds.), The Philosophy of Charles Travis: Language, Thought, and Perception, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 199-221.


DOI: 10.17454/pam-2212





DANIEL S. H. KIMUniversity of [email protected]

NAÏVE REALISM AND MINIMAL SELF

abstract

This paper defends the idea that phenomenological approaches to self-consciousness can enrich the current analytic philosophy of perception, by showing how phenomenological discussions of minimal self-consciousness can enhance our understanding of the phenomenology of conscious perceptual experiences. As a case study, I investigate the nature of the relationship between naïve realism, a contemporary Anglophone theory of perception, and experiential minimalism (or, the ‘minimal self’ view), a pre-reflective model of self-consciousness originated in the Phenomenological tradition. I argue that naïve realism is not only compatible with, but can be supplemented with experiential minimalism in a novel way. The suggestion is that there are reasons to combine naïve realism and experiential minimalism. My focus here will be on drawing a connection between the notion of minimal self and two core theoretical commitments of naïve realism, relationalism and transparency.

keywords

Naïve realism; Minimal self; Self-consciousness; Subjectivity; Phenomenology

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Despite much recent interest in the phenomenological approaches to self-consciousness, the notion of minimal self(-consciousness) has not yet found its way to the analytic philosophy of perception in a substantive way. This paper draws a connection between the notion of minimal self and the naïve realist theory of perception. On the face of it, it might seem surprising to combine naïve realism, a prominent contemporary Anglophone theory of perception, and experiential minimalism (or, the ‘minimal self’ view), a pre-reflective model of self-consciousness that originated in the Phenomenological tradition. However, I will argue that combining naïve realism and experiential minimalism is explanatorily virtuous in that this enables the naïve realist to develop a more adequate account of the ‘subjective’ dimension of perceptual phenomenology. The central idea is that, given the ‘object-directed’ nature of their account, naïve realist theories of perception have paid inadequate attention to the ‘subject’ side of the relation that is constitutive of perception, and that this theoretical gap in naïve realism (that is, an account of the contribution made by the subject relatum to the overall phenomenology) can be fruitfully filled by appeal to the notion of minimal self drawn from recent phenomenological analysis.In what follows, I first clarify what naïve realism amounts to and specify two core theoretical commitments of naïve realism, relationalism (Section 1) and transparency (Section 2). I then go on to characterize minimal self as a ‘structural’ feature of phenomenal consciousness (Section 3), and demonstrate that the minimal self can supplement the philosophical framework of naïve realism in a novel, substantive way – by giving weight to the naïve realist’s account of perceptual acquaintance and transparency (Section 4). The suggestion is that, when explaining the nature of phenomenal consciousness, naïve realism and minimal self are natural allies.

Naïve realism is the view that veridical perception involves a subject’s direct sensory awareness of some external-worldly entities. When explaining the ‘phenomenal’ (what it’s like) character of experience, naïve realists highlight the constitutive role of an ‘acquaintance’ relation which obtains between the subject and some mind-independent entities. The phenomenal character of my visual experience of the apple on my desk is (at least in part) constitutively dependent on and thus determined by the direct presentation of that red apple and its properties (e.g., redness, round-shapedness) that I am acquainted with.There is a broad consensus among most mainstream advocates of naïve realism that naïve

0. Introduction

1. Naïve Realism and Relationalism

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realism entails relationalism.1,2 Relationalism is the view that perceptual experiences are ‘relational’ in the sense that the obtaining of a perceptually conscious state requires the obtaining of a relation of acquaintance between subjects and some mind-independent entities which cannot be specified independently of that relation. Naïve realists who are relationalists (henceforth naïve realists) are committed to three core claims about the relation of ‘perceptual acquaintance’: First, it is constitutive of the phenomenology of every veridical perceptual experience. This is a metaphysical thesis about the contribution made to the overall phenomenology of experience by the acquaintance relation. Second, it is essentially non-representational and thus cannot be explained in terms of contents of representational or intentional states. This gives naïve realists reason to resist strong reductive representationalism (Dretske, 2003; Tye 1995; 2003). Third, it obtains between subjects and some mind-independent entities. This expresses the naïve realist’s externalist tendency in that the relevant acquaintance relation obtains between a subject and her external-worldly surroundings – not some mind-dependent sense data, for example. This also indicates that the relevant acquaintance relation only obtains in veridical cases and not in non-veridical experiences such as total hallucinations. Naïve realists hold that this non-representational relation of direct awareness to worldly aspects is what is fundamental to every (veridical) perceptual experience and its phenomenology.There are some important implications of the naïve realist’s commitment to relationalism. Firstly, the distinctive explanatory role assigned to the acquaintance relation and the mind-independent entities makes clear how naïve realism contrasts with sense-datum theories, the views that experiences involve a relation of acquaintance with some mind-dependent sense-data. It also gives rise to the tension between naïve realism and the mainstream accounts of phenomenal consciousness that are associated with reductive representationalism. Such representationalists stress a tight connection between phenomenal character and representational content, and therein neglect the explanatory role assigned to the ‘non-representational’, acquaintance relation. Naïve realists, by contrast, hold that the phenomenal character of experience is inexplicable in terms of the content of representational states or mind-dependent sense-data alone. For it must be explained ‘at least in part’ in terms of the obtaining of a unique, sui generis relation of acquaintance between the subject and her mind-independent surroundings.The key motivation behind my suggestion to draw a connection between phenomenological discussions of minimal self-consciousness and naïve realism is the fact that naïve realism, as it currently stands, seems to lack resources to fully explain the role of subjectivity in characterization of perceptual phenomenology. The difficulty is that, given their emphasis on the constitutive and explanatory role assigned to the mind-independent entities, naïve realists tend to overlook the contribution made by the subject relatum to the overall phenomenology. Strong reductive representationalists who are largely driven by the naturalistic externalist tendency face a similar problem.3 This will become more apparent as we consider the

1 Proponents of the consensus include Brewer (2006), Campbell (2002), Martin (2002; 2004), and Soteriou (2013).2 Some might reject the consensus and argue otherwise. Steenhagen (2019), for example, offers a non-relationalist interpretation of naïve realism. He views that standard perceptions can belong to the same fundamental kind as mere appearances that do not involve a relation between a subject of experience and an object of experience. However, this way of characterizing naïve realism without a commitment to relationalism overlooks what seems to be a key component of perceptual experience, namely the contribution made by the presence of a perceiving subject in characterization of perceptual phenomenology. 3 In response, representationalists often take ‘modes of presentation’ as a built-in feature of representational content of experience (in a quasi-Fregean sense) (Crane, 2009), meaning that the subject’s experiences can have different contents when they represent their objects in different ways or manners.

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second core theoretical commitment of naïve realism concerning the phenomenology of transparency.

Naïve realists are committed to explaining the so-called transparency intuition. It is the idea that perceptual experiences are ‘transparent’ or ‘diaphanous’ in the sense that, when having a perceptual experience of some external objects, we normally ‘see right through’ the experience and do not notice that we are having a perceptual experience. That is to say, the properties we are aware of in perception are attributed to the objects perceived only and not to the perceptual experience itself. When I see the red apple on my desk and try attending to the intrinsic features of my own visual experience of that apple, the only features I end up finding are features of the presented apple (e.g., its redness, round-shapedness, etc.).According to the standard ‘strong’ interpretation of transparency, when one tries to reflectively attend to the nature of one’s own experiences through introspection, one does not become aware of anything other than the external objects and the properties of those objects. The strong transparency thesis undermines the very possibility of becoming aware of any properties of the experiences themselves, other than the properties of the objects. Contemporary advocates of the strong interpretation, including strong representationalists like Tye (1993; 2003) and Dretske (2003), contend that in veridical perception, the only properties we become aware of are properties that are attributed to the perceived objects, and in this sense, experience has no other properties (like qualia) that pose problems for materialism.4 For naïve realists, there is reason to resist the strong transparency thesis as it suggests that introspection only reveals one of the relata, namely some mind-independent objects and properties. Specifically, strong transparency commits them to endorse an austere form of phenomenal externalism, the view that perceptual phenomenology is entirely determined by the worldly entities in the environment.The strong transparency thesis is not the only option available for naïve realists, however. They can instead endorse a ‘weaker’ interpretation of transparency, according to which introspection can reveal the properties of the experience itself ‘when attending to the objects and properties of the world’. It is arguable that this is much closer to the original view of G.E. Moore who introduced the idea of the transparency of experience (Martin, 2002). As he wrote,when we try to introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue: the other element is as if it were diaphanous […] Yet it can be distinguished if we look attentively enough, and if we know that there is something to look for (Moore, 1993, p. 41).After all, Moore himself was sympathetic to the idea that we can become aware of some properties of our own experiences with ‘effort and attention’. According to the weak interpretation, the transparency claim is simply that when one reflects on one’s own experience, one’s attention invariably points to the objects and properties that are experienced. In this way, one can be neutral on the possibility of being aware of some ‘non-diaphanous’ properties of experience that are possessed by one’s own experience, not by the objects of experience.Consider the phenomenology of blurry vision, for example. When I remove my glasses, things appear very different, blurred and hazy. Seeing things blurrily is not the same as seeing things as fuzzy (e.g., seeing a low-resolution screen). I can see the fuzzy screen in a perfectly sharp, non-blurry way – say, with my glasses on. Neither is it the same as seeing things to be blurry

4 Dretske (2003) endorses a radical version of transparency, the view that we cannot introspect anything about a perceptual experience, if “introspect” has its usual meaning of internally ‘attending’ to the experience.

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in that the latter expresses how things really are or how one takes the world to be, rather than saying how things look or are in experience. In this sense, blurriness seems to be a phenomenological feature of the visual experience itself, and not a feature of what my visual experience is an experience of, and so not something that is entirely determined by what my experience presents to be the case.5

The spatial limitation of visual field is another example of an aspect of the phenomenal character of an ordinary visual experience that is not entirely determined by some worldly entities but amounts to “the way in which one’s visual awareness of those objects and events seems to be structured” (Soteriou, 2013, p. 117). When having a visual experience, there is a sense that what I see is only a subregion (part) of a larger space (whole) and a sense that there is more to see if my spatial viewpoint is altered. As Richardson puts it, “in vision having this feature [i.e., the boundaries of visuo-spatial field], it seems to me as if I, am limited, sensorily” (2010, p. 239). Such a ‘limitation’ aspect of a visual experience is not an aspect of some thing one is sensing like the frame of painting. Rather, it accounts for one’s own sensory limitations that one becomes aware of in having the visual experience. The idea is that the phenomenal character of an ordinary visual experience is not solely determined by the spatially organized aspects of the world that one becomes aware of, but also determined, in part, by the way my awareness is spatially structured and viewpointed (and thus limited). The point here is that there’s more to experience (and its phenomenology) than what simply derives from the objects of experience, and that such non-diaphanous aspects of experience (e.g., blurriness, spatial limitation of visual field) are worthy of attention and explanation.One of the main advantages of the weak transparency thesis is that it leaves room for the possibility of phenomenal variations without variations in the presented object as it is neutral on the possibility of becoming aware of such ‘non-diaphanous’ aspects of experience that do not simply derive from the external-worldly object. This makes room for the possibility that both features of the perceived object and features of the perceiving subject play a role in determining phenomenal character (Logue, 2012).When accounting for the ‘non-diaphanous’ aspects of experience and the idea of ‘a phenomenal difference without a difference in the presented object’, naïve realists typically appeal either to (a) variations in the subject relatum to explain variations in perceptual phenomenology without variations in the object (Logue, 2012), or to (b) some third relatum which embodies various conditions of possibility for the occurrence of perceptual experiences, such as sensory modalities (Soteriou, 2013), or a ‘viewpoint’ (Martin, 1998). They often speak of some ‘structural’ features of experience (French, 2014; Martin, 1992; Richardson, 2010; Soteriou, 2013). These are features of the phenomenal character of experience that are a matter not of the worldly entities one is aware of when having a perceptual experience (i.e., the ‘what’ of experience), but, rather, of the way or manner in which one is acquainted with those things in the environment (i.e., the ‘how’ of experience). The visuo-spatial field, for example, is a structural feature of ordinary visual experience in the sense that it accounts for the common manner in which I am visually aware of the scenes before me (e.g., seeing a red apple in front of me with my left eye closed, and seeing a yellow banana in the kitchen with my right eye closed). This means that whatever differences there are between these experiences, the phenomenal difference between them is not entirely constituted by the differences in the objects and scenes before me, but needs to be accounted for, in part, in terms of the difference in the sensory limitations of my visuo-spatial field.My upshot in the following is to demonstrate how the naïve realist’s account of the ‘subjective’

5 For discussion of blurriness as a subjective contribution (within the naïve realist framework), see French (2014).

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and ‘non-diaphanous’ aspects of perceptual phenomenology can be fruitfully informed by drawing from resources outside analytic philosophy of perception, namely phenomenological discussions of minimal self-consciousness. I will argue that the notion of minimal self, construed as a ‘structural’ feature of phenomenal consciousness (Section 3), refers to a subjective, non-diaphanous element of experience that is previously undiscussed by naïve realists. The aim is to show that phenomenological discussions of minimal self-consciousness can supplement the naïve realist framework in a novel way – by giving substance to the naïve realist’s account of perceptual acquaintance and weak transparency (Section 4).

The issue of reflexivity or pre-reflective self-awareness is a recurring theme in the classical phenomenological tradition (Husserl, 1959; Merleau-Ponty, 2012; Sartre, 1967) as well as in the mainstream literature on phenomenological psychopathology e.g., the ipseity-disturbance model of schizophrenia (Sass & Parnas, 2006). Experiential minimalism is the view that there exists a ‘pre-reflective’ or ‘reflexive’ dimension of selfhood that pervades our human mental life. The notion of minimal self refers to the very first-personal character or perspectivalness of our experiential life, accommodating the phenomenological fact that every conscious experience is given to me as my experience or for me. The minimalist claims that this most basic, experiential dimension of selfhood or ‘for-me-ness’ (Zahavi, 2014) is still largely overlooked in current accounts of phenomenal consciousness.Experiential minimalism comprises of two core claims: that minimal self is a universal, ‘structural’ feature of consciousness that is inherent in all forms of conscious experience, and that it is partly constitutive of phenomenal consciousness. To rephrase, the claim is that phenomenal consciousness entails a minimal self in the sense that the phenomenology of every conscious experience is at least in part constitutively dependent on a minimal self-consciousness. Note that the minimal self does not refer to some worldly entities, but to the very first-personal givenness or subjective ‘mode’ of experience. When having a visual experience of a red apple, I become aware of not only some sensible features like redness, round-shapedness and so on, but also the fact that the relevant visual experience of the red apple is given to me as ‘mine’ and ‘for me’. As Zahavi puts it,[T]he for-me-ness or mineness in question [that is, minimal self] is not a quality like scarlet, sour, or soft. It doesn’t refer to a specific experiential ‘content’, to a specific what, nor does it refer to the diachronic or synchronic sum of such content, or to some other relation that might obtain between the contents in question. Rather, it refers to the distinct givenness or how of experience (Zahavi, 2010, p. 59).The thought behind this mode-content distinction Zahavi puts in place is that there exists a formal, structural dimension of consciousness that is neither reducible to nor explainable in terms of some object or object-involving ‘content’ of experience, but is nevertheless constitutive of phenomenal consciousness as the subjective ‘mode’ of givenness. In other words, the phenomenal nature of consciousness is constitutively dependent not solely on some external-worldly entities that constitute the ever-changing ‘content’ of experience, but also on the way the subject’s experiences are pre-reflectively given to her as her own (i.e., the invariant, universal subjectiveness or the first-personal ‘mode’ of experience). Minimal self can be characterized as a necessary ‘structural’ feature of phenomenal consciousness in this sense. This is comparable to the ways in which naïve realists typically explain the specific manner in which we are perceptually acquainted with things in our environment in terms of some ‘structural’ properties of experience such as the visuo-spatial field (French, 2014; Martin, 1992; Richardson, 2010; Soteriou, 2013).I will now demonstrate how the minimal self can give weight to the naïve realist’s account of perceptual acquaintance and weak transparency.

3. Minimal Self and Phenomenal

Consciousness

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The notion of minimal self describes the way that a conscious experience is given to the subject whose experiential limitations shape the perspectivalness of the relevant experience. It accounts for the basic phenomenological fact that I enjoy a unique, privileged access to my own experiential life that is in principle unavailable to experiences of others and vice versa. In this sense, the minimal self can be characterized in ‘relational’ terms, as a unique, non-representational relation of ‘self-acquaintance’ that obtains between the conscious subject and her own experiential life.Recall that naïve realism is committed to three core claims about the relation of ‘perceptual acquaintance’:

(a) that it is constitutive of the phenomenology of conscious sensory experience,(b) that it is non-representational, and(c) that it obtains between the subject and some mind-independent entities.

In comparison, experiential minimalism can be formulated as comprising of the following three claims about the relation of minimal ‘self-acquaintance’:

(a) that it is constitutive of the phenomenology of every conscious experience,(b) that it is non-representational in that it is pre-reflectively given, and(c) that it obtains between the subject and her own conscious life (and her own experiential

states that fall within it).

Concerning the first pair of premises, neither of them has to be seen as presenting an exhaustive account of perceptual phenomenology, and thus they are compatible with each other. The combined claim would be that the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience is not only constitutively dependent on the obtaining of a relation of perceptual acquaintance but also on the obtaining of a relation of self-acquaintance. The second pair is also consistent in that their combination would simply amount to the view that both relations occupy the non-representational (pre-reflective) dimension of our conscious mental life. On the face of it, combining the third pair might seem problematic, partly because the ‘externalist’ tendency of naïve realism, expressed in its emphasis on the constitutive and explanatory role of the mind-independent entities to which the subject is perceptually acquainted, seems to be in tension with the apparent, ‘internalist’ characterization of the self-acquaintance relation that obtains between a conscious subject and her own experiential life. Note that, however, the relevant self-acquaintance relation should not be equated with the sort of acquaintance that may obtain between a conscious subject and some mind-dependent sense-data.To resolve the tension, consider the fact that both perceptual acquaintance and self-acquaintance are ‘psychological’ relations that constitute the condition for occurrence of (veridical) perceptual experiences. An important difference is that the former is a condition for the occurrence of perceptual experiences that is distinctive of veridical perceptions of the mind-independent world, whereas the latter is a condition for the occurrence of any conscious experience (e.g., veridical and non-veridical perceiving, as well as imagining, remembering, desiring, etc.). The key thought here is that: were we not subjects whose self-acquaintance is pervasive and universal, we would not be perceptually acquainted with things in the environment. This is not merely to say that we could not appropriate an experience as our own (as such), but rather to say that, in absence of self-acquaintance, there would not be any phenomenally conscious mental state at all. In other words, the relation of perceptual acquaintance is connected with the relation of self-acquaintance by the fact

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that, necessarily, if one is perceptually acquainted with some mind-independent entities in the environment (e.g., seeing a flying bird), this implies that one is also self-acquainted with one’s own experiential life (in the sense that one is in a position to be self-aware that it is one who is having this particular visual experience). The relation of perceptual acquaintance is dependent on the self-acquaintance relation in this crucial sense. To that extent, the tension between the naïve realist’s externalist tendency and the seemingly internalist characterization of the self-acquaintance relation can be resolved.One important implication of combining perceptual acquaintance and self-acquaintance is that the phenomenology of conscious perceptual experience is constitutively dependent not only on some external-worldly objects and properties in the surrounding and the way or manner in which the subject is perceptually acquainted with such mind-independent entities (e.g., different sense modalities, say, in seeing, hearing and touching, and environmental factors including lighting and geometrical standpoint), but also on the sui generis way or manner in which she is self-acquainted with her own conscious experiential life (e.g., in seeing, remembering, imagining, anticipating, etc.). In this way, experiential minimalism enriches the naïve realist framework by shedding light on the neglected role of the subject’s ‘self-acquaintance’ in characterization of perceptual phenomenology.6

This brings us back to the issue concerning how the naïve realist can account for the ‘weak’ transparency in the way that permits her to accommodate some ‘non-diaphanous’ aspects of perceptual phenomenology. The claim is that naïve realism, on its own, lacks resources to fully accommodate such ‘negative’ aspects of experience, and thus needs to be supplemented. As I see it, experiential minimalism can enrich the naïve realist’s weak reading of transparency, insofar as the minimal self is construed as one such ‘non-diaphanous’ feature of perceptual phenomenology. First, the minimal self can be construed as a ‘non-diaphanous’ feature of experience insofar as it does not simply derive from the perceived, external-worldly objects. It is ‘non-object-involving’. The minimalist holds that every conscious experience involves the most basic, primitive dimension of selfhood that is not grounded on or constituted by the objects of experience (i.e., some worldly entities) in the way that the qualitative or sensory aspects of perceptual phenomenology are. The minimal self does not refer to a feature of some mind-independent entities, but to a ‘structural’ feature of the experience itself which accounts for the way or manner in which the external-worldly objects are first-personally given to the subject.Second, the minimal self can be construed as a ‘non-diaphanous’ feature in that it occupies the ‘pre-reflective’ dimension of experience. It is non-diaphanous in the sense that it is beyond the scope of reflective self-awareness of experience as such. Experiential minimalism is a pre-reflective model of self-consciousness, according to which self-consciousness obtains not only when we explicitly and deliberately attend to our own experiential states through reflection, but whenever we implicitly and pre-reflectively, live-through an experience as a subject. This pre-reflective form of self-awareness amounts to a primordial form of self-directedness

6 One might worry that the inclusion of a ‘self-acquaintance’ condition makes perceptual experience more demanding in the sense that it requires perceivers to also have self-awareness, and that this runs the risk of excluding creatures with limited cognitive skills, such as human infants and non-human animals. A typical minimalist response would be that minimal self is so fundamental and basic (and thus undemanding) that it can be attributed to all creatures who possess phenomenal consciousness, including human infants and various non-human animals. Alternatively, one can dispute the idea that infants have a self at all (Kagan, 1998, p. 138). Part of the issue here concerns the question of whether the for-me-ness or pre-reflective self-awareness of human adults is qualitatively different from the for-me-ness or pre-reflective self-awareness of infants and non-human animals. A developmental story needs to be told with regards to the ontogenetic nature of selfhood and the relation between the emergence of pre-linguistic self and the acquisition of higher-order representational capacities. This would be a topic for another occasion. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for prompting me to clarify this point.

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upon which other more advanced, reflective forms of self-awareness (which may require further conceptual, linguistic capacities) are grounded. Acknowledging such a pre-reflective dimension of experience gives us a more phenomenologically-sensitive picture of perception which respects the role of the subject in characterization of perceptual phenomenology. For naïve realists, this also gives reason to resist strong phenomenal externalism as it simply overlooks this pre-reflective dimension of phenomenal consciousness. To this extent, experiential minimalism can supplement the naïve realist’s weak reading of transparency, by giving substance to her account of the ‘non-diaphanous’ properties of experience as (i) non-object-involving and (ii) pre-reflectively given.The objective has been to legitimize the claim that the notion of minimal self can enrich the philosophical framework of naïve realism by drawing a connection between minimal self and two core theoretical commitments of naïve realism. As shown, the minimal self is not only compatible with, but can substantiate the naïve realist’s account of perceptual acquaintance and weak transparency in a novel way. In this sense, there are reasons to combine naïve realism, a theory of ‘outer’ sensory awareness of the world, and experiential minimalism, a theory of ‘inner’ reflexive self-awareness of one’s own experiential life.

***

Let me conclude with some remarks on the potential benefits of combining naïve realism and experiential minimalism: First, it resolves the tension between the naïve realist’s emphasis on the role assigned to external-worldly entities and the fact that many naïve realist theories tend to resist austere phenomenal externalism. Amalgamating naïve realism and experiential minimalism illuminates the fact that there is a subjective (‘for-me’) dimension of phenomenal consciousness, while simultaneously accommodating the fact that the subject is perceptually acquainted with some mind-independent entities.Second, supplementing naïve realism with the minimal self accommodates the sense in which veridical perceptions and hallucinations can be both similar and different, phenomenologically speaking. They can be phenomenally similar in the sense that a subject of perception and a subject of hallucination can share the same phenomenological fact that they enjoy a unique, sui generis relation of self-acquaintance with their own experiential life that is unavailable to experiences of the other, while not sharing any qualitative aspects of perceptual phenomenology.

REFERENCESBrewer, B. (2006). Perception and Content. The European Journal of Philosophy, 14, 165-81.Campbell, J. (2002). Reference and Consciousness. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Crane, T. (2009). Is Perception a Propositional Attitude? The Philosophical Quarterly, 59(236): 452-469.Dretske, F. (2003). How Do You Know You Are Not a Zombie. In B. Gertler (ed.), Privileged Access and First Person Authority, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 1-14.French, C. (2014). Naive Realist Perspectives on Seeing Blurrily. Ratio, 27(4): 393-413.Husserl, E. (1959). Este Philosophie (1923/4). Zweiter Teil: Theorie der phanomenologischen Reduktion. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.Kagan, J. (1998). Is There a Self in Infancy? In M. Ferrari, & R. J. Sternberg, Self-Awareness: Its Nature and Development, New York: Guildford Press, 137-147.Logue, H. (2012). Why Naive Realism? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 112(2): 211-237.Martin, M. (1992). Sight and Touch. In T. Crane (ed.), The Contents of Experience, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 196-215.

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Martin, M. (1998). Setting Things before the Mind. In A. O’Hear (ed.), Contemporary Issues in the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 157-180.Martin, M. (2002). The Transparency of Experience. Mind and Language, 17: 376-425.Martin, M. (2004). The Limits of Self-Awareness. Philosophical Studies, 120: 37-89.Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of Perception. (D.A. Landes, Trans.) London: Routledge.Moore, G.E. (1993). The Refutation of Idealism. In T. Baldwin (ed.), Selected Writings, Oxford: Routledge, 23-44.Richardson, L. (2010). Seeing Empty Space. European Journal of Philosophy, 18(2): 227-243.Sartre, J.-P. (1967). Consciousness of Self and Knowledge of Self. In N. Lawrence & D. O’Connor (eds.), Readings in Existential Phenomenology, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 113-142.Sass, L.A., Parnas, J. (2006). Explaining Schizophrenia: The Relevance of Phenomenology. In M.C. Chung, B. Fulford, & G. Graham (eds.), Reconceiving Schizophrenia, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 63-95.Soteriou, M. (2013). The Mind’s Construction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Steenhagen, M. (2019). Must Naive Realists Be Relationalists? European Journal of Philosophy, 27(4): 1002-1015.Tye, M. (1995). Ten Problems of Consciousness. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Tye, M. (2003). Consciousness and Persons: Unity and Identity. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Zahavi, D. (2010). The Experiential Self: Objections and Clarifications. In M. Siderits, E. Thompson, & D. Zahavi (eds.), Self, No Self?: Perspectives From Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 56-78.Zahavi, D. (2014). Self and Other: Exploring Subjectivity, Empathy, and Shame. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


DOI: 10.17454/pam-2213





MAX MINDEN RIBEIROLund [email protected]

IS PRESENCE PERCEPTUAL?1

abstract

Perceptual experience and visual imagination both offer a first-person perspective on visible objects. But these perspectives are strikingly different. For it is distinctive of ordinary perceptual intentionality that objects seem to be present to the perceiver. I term this phenomenal property of experience ‘presence’. This paper introduces a positive definition of presence. Dokic and Martin (2017) argue that presence is not a genuine property of perceptual experience, appealing to empirical research on derealisation disorders, Parkinson’s disease, virtual reality and hallucination. I demonstrate that their arguments fall short of establishing that presence is not perceptual.

keywords

Perceptual presence; Sense of reality; Perceptual experience; Phenomenology; Intentionality

1 Many thanks to Ingar Brinck, Martin Jönsson, Jiwon Kim, Asger Kirkeby-Hinrup, Søren Overgaard and all of the organisers and participants at the San Raffaele School of Philosophy “Mind, Language, and the First-Person Perspective” conference in September 2021.

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IS PRESENCE PERCEPTUAL?

Perceptual experience and visual imagination both offer a first-person perspective on visible objects and their sensible properties. But these perspectives are strikingly different. For it is distinctive of ordinary perceptual experience that objects seem to be present to the perceiver. Take a visual perceptual experience of a yellow iris. When you have such an experience, the iris seems to be there; a material object occupying mind-independent reality, which your experience grants access to. Compare this to an experience in which you visually imagine the iris. In this case, the curve of the petals, their distinctive yellowness, the position of the plant relative to your own viewpoint might all be brought to mind, perhaps in all of the detail of the original perceptual experience. But there is no accompanying sense that the actual object and its properties are being revealed to you. I term this phenomenal property that is distinctive of ordinary visual perceptual experience presence.1

This paper has two objectives, one corresponding to each of the two main sections. The first is to introduce a substantive definition of presence. I propose that this phenomenal property can only be adequately theorised by describing both the way an object is experienced and the experience of that object, when the property is instantiated. This consideration leads to a two-part definition. For presence to be instantiated, (1) the object must be presented as a constituent of mind-independent reality such that (2) the experience seems, by the very kind of experience it is, to reveal how things are. My second objective is to argue that presence is a genuine property of perceptual experience. This is not to claim that every perceptual experience instantiates presence, but rather that if presence is instantiated, it is instantiated by a perceptual experience. The view that presence is not strictly perceptual is defended by Dokic and Martin (2017). They appeal to empirical research on derealisation disorders, Parkinson’s disease, hallucination and virtual reality to motivate the view that presence is ‘two-way independent’ (Dokic & Martin 2017, p. 299) of both perceptual content and attitude. Rather, they propose that presence is a metacognitive feeling, a state distinct from (though usually correlated with) perceptual states. Presence [in their terms the sense of reality] ‘is

1 Crane (2005) also uses the term ‘presence’. Similarly, O’Conaill (2017) and Riccardi (2019) term it ‘perceptual presence’, while Dokic and Martin (2017) employ ‘the sense of presence’ and Matthen (2005; 2010) writes of ‘the feeling of presence’. Sturgeon (2000) terms this characteristic ‘scene immediacy’, Millar (2014) terms it ‘phenomenological directness’ and Husserl (1998) dubs this feature of perceptual experience leibhaftigkeit [givenness ‘in person’ or ‘in the flesh’]. In this paper, I refrain from using the term ‘perceptual presence’ as it is precisely whether presence is perceptual that I set out to address.

Introduction

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extrinsic to perceptual experience’ (2017, p. 303). In Section 2, I demonstrate that Dokic and Martin’s arguments fail to show against the basic claim that presence is instantiated by perceptual states or experiences. For this reason, their own positive metacognitive account of presence is insufficiently motivated, while there is little reason to think that the phenomenal property so distinctive of perceptual experience is not indeed a perceptual property.

It is important to be precise from the start about what I mean by presence. It is a phenomenal property of experience – a property that contributes to what an experience is like for the consciously perceiving subject. I suggest that to describe this property adequately, we must approach it from two vantage points, namely in terms of the object of experience and the experience of the object. Beginning with the object of experience, I suggest that when presence is instantiated the object seems real. It is presented as part of mind-independent reality. Now of course, one might complain that in visual imagination objects can also be experienced as real. It is a real, mind-independent yellow iris you are visualising, after all. To qualify this point, we must introduce our second vantage point: the experience of the object. My proposal is that in an experience that instantiates presence, the experience itself seems to reveal how things are. In looking at the iris, how things are in current reality seems to be disclosed to you. Things are such that there exists an iris with just that colour and that shape.2 By contrast, when you close your eyes and picture the iris, even in the knowledge that the plant is still in front of you, your imaginative experience does not seem to disclose this state of affairs. In visual imagination, objects are experienced in a manner that would be perfectly consistent with ‘how things are’ being another way entirely.3

Note that these two emphases helpfully delimit one another. For it is exactly by giving an object as a part of mind-independent reality, that the experience seems to reveal how things are. Conversely, what it means to ‘seem to reveal’ is exactly that the experience appears to grant access to mind-independent reality. The two vantage points are intimately connected and together offer a fuller description of the phenomenal property under discussion. So, we have two mutually dependent, jointly necessary and sufficient conditions for the instantiation of presence.Presence is instantiated when:

(1) The object is presented as a constituent of mind-independent reality such that(2) the experience seems, by the very kind of experience it is, to reveal how things are.

Both the object- and experience-conditions are required to pick out presence and so rule out certain counterexamples. We have seen that visual imagination might be said to satisfy (1) but not (2). The key point here is that each of the two conditions is stated quite generally, so that taken alone, numerous kinds of experience might be said to satisfy one of them. In this case, both perceptual experience and visual imagination present their objects as constituents of

2 Of course, experiences that instantiate presence can be non-veridical. Things needn’t be the way they seem.3 There are alternative senses in which visual imagination can be said to disclose how things are. In visual imagination, the colour and shape of the iris will become phenomenally available in imagination in a way that they would not in imageless thought. Indeed, for the gifted imaginer (a painter for instance) these phenomenal properties might even be represented in near-perfect analogue to the way that they appear in perceptual experience. My claim is that even if this were the case, the visual imagination would not seem to open onto how things are right now. It is part of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience that it seems to track reality at the moment of the experience, where this is not distinctive of visual imagination. It is not my aim to say anything substantive about the phenomenology of visual imagination, except that it doesn’t instantiate presence.

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mind-independent reality. So (2) is required to specify what kind of presentation is involved, namely presentation whereby the experience seems, by the very kind of experience it is, to reveal how things are. There is a gulf between the generality of the language used to formulate the conditions and the specific phenomenology they try to capture. To begin to bridge the gulf, the same phenomenal feature must be articulated in terms of the way both the object and the experience are characterised when it is instantiated. It is not that each condition identifies a separate phenomenal feature that is conjoined with the other to instantiate presence. Rather there is a single phenomenal feature, presence, which can only be specified by appeal to two mutually delimiting conditions. A single phenomenal feature described first in terms of the object of experience and second in terms of the experience of the object.The experience of speaking to a colleague on a videocall offers another example that might be said to meet (1) but not when it has been delimited by (2). I have no experience of presence in seeing my colleague’s face on the screen. Nonetheless, my colleague is presented as a constituent of mind-independent reality (1). Now, the videocall experience also seems to reveal how things are, but it is not ‘by the very kind of experience it is’ that it does so. For I could just as well be seeing something on a screen which is not taken to reflect how things are. I propose that screen experiences are fundamentally pictorial experiences, and while pictures can reveal how things are (videocalls, photographs, live television), they need not. It is no part of the phenomenology of pictorial experience per se that it is revelatory, so the videocall does not meet condition (2).An example of an experience that ostensibly satisfies (2) but not (1) is that of intuitions or insight experiences (Bonjour, 2014, pp. 178-179; Chudnoff, 2013; Laukkonen, 2018). These are experiences of ‘the penny dropping’, i.e., when one realises that something is the case. The experience of realising the answer to a mathematical problem (or realising that you are late for a meeting) seems, by the very kind of experience it is, to reveal how things are. (1) is needed to specify that the relevant notion of reveal involves seemingly having mind-independent objects appear before the experiencer. Insight experiences are not presentational in this literal sense.From the foregoing discussion it should be clear that (1) and (2) have interchangeable positions around the ‘such that’ clause. If (1) such that (2), (2) such that (1). They are equivalent ways to pick out the property of presence. Note also that (1) and (2) are non-committal as to which kinds of experience instantiate presence. Though I have used the contrast between perceptual and imaginary experience to motivate this definition, it may turn out that other kinds of experience or state also meet these conditions, or that on closer inspection some or all of our perceptual experiences do not. In a companion paper (Minden Ribeiro, ms) I assume that presence is a property of perceptual states, and this allows me to say more about how presence characterises experience, as well as how well metaphysical theories of perceptual experience fare in explaining (1) and (2). In defence of that assumption, I owe a response to Dokic and Martin’s (2017) paper, which denies that presence is instantiated by perceptual states.

In their paper, Dokic and Martin advance a number of empirical considerations to motivate their view that presence is neither “essential to [n]or constitutive of” (2017, p. 300) perceptual experience. They propose instead that the phenomenology of presence is a metacognitive feeling arising from certain reality monitoring and source monitoring processes. This feeling is typically associated with perceptual states only because the metacognitive monitoring process registers that these states’ content is externally generated (and so not produced by the subject). On the authors’ view then, the phenomenology of presence is not properly speaking the phenomenology of the perceptual state itself. Presence is not instantiated by perceptual experience, but by an extrinsic metacognitive feeling. In this section, I don’t assess this positive

2. Is Presence Perceptual?

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proposal. Rather I argue that if they are to demonstrate that presence is not perceptual (as they must in order to motivate their view) they must argue against a significantly weaker claim than that which they explicitly attack. Dokic and Martin’s arguments are deployed against the strong claim that perceptual experience always instantiates presence.4 The weaker claim is simply that presence (in their terms ‘the sense of reality’) is a genuine property of perceptual experiences or states. That is, when presence is instantiated, it is instantiated by a perceptual experience. I find that their empirical arguments do not touch this weaker claim.Dokic and Martin begin by distinguishing two senses of presence. The sense of reality is a subject’s “sense that the perceptual object is real, i.e., belongs to the actual world” (2017, p. 300). By contrast, the sense of acquaintance is the “sense that we are acquainted with the object itself rather than a surrogate or representation of them… [it] involves the sense that our experiential access is unmediated” (2012, p. 2). Note that these two senses roughly correspond with (1) and (2), the core features of presence as I outline it in Section 1. Dokic and Martin don’t offer an extensive argument that the two are distinct senses. They simply claim as their focus the sense of reality and whether it is essentially or constitutively perceptual. In any case, I take it that their ‘sense of reality’ picks out the same phenomenon I have been terming presence. Still, for ease of exposition, I will adopt their ‘sense of reality’ terminology for the remainder of this section.The first empirical case Dokic and Martin consider is that of derealisation disorders. Patients with derealisation disorders experience an affective distance from or flattening of their surroundings (Gerrans, 2019; Medford, 2012). It is often described as the experience that the perceptual world is lacking reality. Dokic and Martin cite a patient’s testimony from Shorvon et al.’s (1946) study: “[…] the people and things around you seem as unreal to you as if you were only dreaming about them”. The authors begin from the assumption that what is lacking in derealised experiences is the same sense of reality associated with ordinary perceptual experience. One might be doubtful of this claim and the authors offer no arguments in its favour. But assuming that derealised patients’ experiences lack the sense of reality, the central question is whether this provides reason to think that the sense of reality is not properly perceptual.The first thing to say is that nothing in Dokic and Martin’s description suggests that the sense of reality is lacking entirely in derealised experiences. An alternative proposal is that it is largely suppressed or subdued – a hypothesis which fits better with the gradual manner in which patients often develop or recover from derealisation disorders.5 On this alternative, it would be a mistake to assume that patients with derealisation disorders undergo perceptual experiences without any sense of reality. Rather, it is instantiated in a minimal, depleted or distorted form. The authors offer no reason to favour their interpretation over this one. On top of this, one should bear in mind that derealised experiences are manifestations of mental disorders – a disruption of normal functioning. The perceptual state is not operating as it should. But the malfunction of an aspect of perceptual experience is not in itself a reason to think that such an aspect is not properly perceptual. After all, it is plausible that in derealised experiences the sense of reality is absent (or suppressed) while when such a state is functioning normally, that phenomenology is a property of the perceptual experience itself.Dokic and Martin might respond that this description does indeed disprove the claim they take to be their main target: that the sense of reality is “essential to, or constitutive of” perceptual

4 Dokic and Martin are alive to the fact that this claim could be realised in one of two ways. Either presence could be an essential feature of perceptual content, or it could be an essential feature of the perceptual attitude, in their terms the ‘psychological mode’ of perception. The authors reject both of these possibilities (2017, p. 303). My aim is to argue that when presence is instantiated, it is indeed instantiated by perceptual experience, without thereby committing myself to which of these options is correct. The latter would take me beyond the scope of this paper.5 For example, when associated with severe depression (cf. Baker et al., 2003).

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experience (2017, p. 300). For if the sense of reality is absent when perceptual experience malfunctions, it cannot be essential to perceptual experience. This ‘essential to/constitutive of’ claim is very strong, holding that no perceptual experience can occur without the sense of reality. I am happy to concede that derealisation experiences provide some reason to reject it.6 But it is important to note that Dokic and Martin need to disprove a significantly weaker claim in order to motivate their metacognitive proposal. The weaker claim is simply:

(WC) The sense of reality is a property of perceptual experiences or states.

If this claim stands, then their metacognitive feeling view cannot. So, it is this weaker claim that their empirical considerations ought to speak against.The difference between the strong and weak claims is well illustrated by derealisation experiences, which – on the assumption that the sense of reality is what is lacking in these kinds of experience and the assumption that the sense of reality is entirely absent, as opposed to subdued or distorted – offer a counterexample to the strong claim without imperilling the weaker one. For the weak claim is consistent with the proposal that when the sense of reality is instantiated, it is instantiated by a perceptual state. One way to refute the weaker claim would be to show that the feeling of reality occurs without any perceptual experience. It is to this end that Dokic and Martin introduce their next empirical example.Their second empirical consideration is the experience of the “false senses of presence” associated with Parkinson’s disease (Dokic & Martin 2017, p. 302). The authors cite Fenelon’s (2008, p. 19) description of the phenomenon:

a vivid sensation that somebody is present nearby, when in fact there is no one there. In most cases, the sensation is precisely located, behind or to the side, or occasionally in another room. The perceived presence is that of a person, who is either identified (a living or, less frequently, a deceased relative or spouse) or unidentified.

This is then a sense of presence that does not characterise anything given in the perceptual experience. It is outside or peripheral to the visual field and so not bound up with the presentation of any sensory object. Dokic and Martin appeal to these experiences to demonstrate that the sense of reality can be instantiated independently of perceptual content; that it is intrinsically non-perceptual in contradiction of my weak claim above.Are these senses of presence experienced by some patients with Parkinson’s disease the same sense of reality characteristic of ordinary perceptual experience? There is little reason to think so. After all, the sense of reality we are familiar with in perceptual experience characterises the way that objects are given. Things show up for us as actual, mind-independent and directly revealed. In these experiences associated with Parkinson’s however, the objects don’t ‘show up’ at all. They remain out of view. Moreover, these false senses of presence are “not bound to sensory objects in normal perception” (Dokic & Martin 2017, p. 302). The authors might suppose it question begging to assume that the sense of reality has to be perceptual – this after all is what they are setting out to disprove. Yet regardless of whether metaphysically the sense of reality properly pertains to a perceptual state or an extrinsic metacognitive feeling, it certainly seems as though it characterises the sensory givenness of objects. So while it would

6 Dokic and Martin ascribe it to “Husserl, Matthen, and many others” (2017, p. 300). While Husserl’s investigations of the essential features of mental acts makes him vulnerable to this kind of criticism, I don’t think this stronger claim is a very widespread position and I haven’t found it explicitly endorsed in Matthen’s work.

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indeed be question begging to make a metaphysical claim against their proposal based purely on the phenomenology, it is quite right that we appeal to the phenomenology to specify what it is that we are talking about. After all, the sense of reality is a phenomenological datum. And phenomenologically speaking, it characterises the givenness of sensory objects. I suggest that if we renounce this insight – as Dokic and Martin’s example encourages us to – we lose our grip on what the sense of reality is.At this point one might object that the false senses of presence also count as a givenness. After all, they are experiences of something being there; something being present to one. They are not a sensory givenness, but perhaps they are a kind of cognitive givenness – an immediate judgment that a certain person is just out of view, where that judgment has become imbued by the sense of reality. Couldn’t the lesson of the phenomenology of perceptual experience be simply that objects are given – and not that objects are sensorily given – when presence is instantiated?But even if this is right, I think Dokic and Martin exploit a linguistic ambiguity in the notion of presence. For while the sense of reality involves an experience of material presence, the false senses of presence seem to constitute a primarily social presence. They are typically a presentiment of being in somebody’s presence or company. As Fenelon (2008, p. 19) puts it in the passage quoted above, “the perceived presence is that of a person”. There is an important phenomenal difference between experiencing an object as present to one and feeling oneself to be in the presence of another experiencer.Might there be an explanation as to why Dokic and Martin are led to equivocate between these readings of presence? I suggest there is. Recall that the authors distinguish two senses of presence: the sense of reality and the sense of acquaintance. It might seem odd to call them separate senses. After all these two aspects seem to come together: we are acquainted with how things are in the actual (i.e. real) world. Indeed, as I propose in Section 1, when examining perceptual experience, the concepts of acquaintance (or ‘seeming to reveal’) and reality helpfully delimit each other. What do we mean by reality? Simply that which perceptual experience acquaints us with. What do we mean by acquaintance? The kind of ostensibly direct access we have to the actual, mind-independent world. This is why in Section 1 I proposed that the two characteristics of presence (1) and (2) were really just differences of emphasis. Dokic and Martin don’t consider the senses of reality and acquaintance different aspects of the same awareness but different awarenesses entirely. One consequence of this is that their notion of ‘reality’ is not limited to that which is given in an experience. Instead, the term is used so loosely that even a non-perceptual, social sense of presence qualifies. In sum, Dokic and Martin have provided no reason to think that these experiences associated with Parkinson’s disease bear the same sense of reality that characterises ordinary perceptual experience.The authors’ third and fourth empirical examples concern virtual reality and hallucinations. Both are appealed to as cases where “spatio-sensory realism has no impact on experienced reality” (Dokic & Martin, 2017, p. 303). The argument goes that if (spatio-sensory) perceptual content can be very unrealistic without affecting the sense of reality, then it is not perceptual content that determines the sense of reality. This suggests that the sense of reality is not itself perceptual, in contradiction to the weaker claim I outline above. Focusing on the hallucination case,7 the authors note that among the hallucinations that do generate a sense of reality, the

7 Dokic and Martin’s discussion of virtual reality faces similar difficulties to their discussion of the false senses of presence associated with Parkinson’s disease, namely they do not provide reason for identifying the “strong sense of presence” (2017, p. 302) provoked by computer generated environments with the phenomenology that characterises ordinary perceptual experience.

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hallucinated object need not be especially realistic. One could “hallucinate a quite unrealistic entity, such as a horrible but two-dimensional creature, while having a strong sense that the entity is real” (2017, p. 303; the authors cite Shanon 2002). It follows for Dokic and Martin that “realistic spatio-sensory contents are not what determines the sense of reality” (2017, p. 303).One line of response is to note how narrow this argument’s purview is. If the authors are correct and spatio-sensory content is not what determines the sense of reality, it by no means follows that the sense of reality is not perceptual at all. If perceptual content is more extensive than spatio-sensory content, there may be other non-sensory aspects of perceptual content that are responsible for the sense of reality. As I read him, Millar maintains this kind of view (2014). Alternatively, it may be the perceptual attitude rather than the perceptual content that is responsible for the sense of reality. Matthen holds this kind of position (2005; 2010). Once we admit of these possible accounts of presence, the argument that realistic spatio-sensory content does not determine the sense of reality does not touch my weaker claim that when there is a sense of reality, it is a genuine property of perceptual experiences.Dokic and Martin draw from the apparently converging evidence of derealisation disorders, false senses of presence, virtual reality and empirical hallucinations that “there is a double dissociation between having a genuine perceptual experience and having a sense of reality with respect to what is experienced” (2017, p. 303). I have argued that a number of questionable assumptions must be in place if derealisation experiences are to be taken to be perceptual experiences without a sense of reality. But even if they are, dissociation in this direction does not show that the sense of reality is not perceptual, nor motivate Dokic and Martin’s positive proposal. It would take a sense of reality that was shown to be both associated with a perceptual experience but not strictly a property of that experience to contradict the weaker claim. I have argued that neither the false senses of presence associated with Parkinson’s disease or unrealistic hallucinations show this. The former are not the same sense of reality that characterise normal perceptual experience, while the authors’ appeal to hallucination is too narrow in scope to challenge the weaker claim. I conclude then that there is no reason to think that the sense of reality is not instantiated by perceptual experiences themselves. Indeed, we should feel secure in our natural assumption that they are.

In the previous section I argued against Dokic and Martin’s claim that presence is not instantiated by perceptual experiences themselves. Given the shortcomings of their empirical appeals, and that there is little independent reason to think that the characteristic phenomenology of perceptual experiences does not pertain to those very experiences, I propose that presence is indeed perceptual. More specifically, it is the phenomenal property of perceptual experiences, by which a perceptual object is given as a constituent of mind-independent reality such that the experience seems, by the very kind of experience it is, to reveal how things are.

REFERENCESBaker, D. et al. (2003). Depersonalisation Disorder: Clinical Features of 204 Cases. British Journal of Psychiatry. 182: 428-433.Crane, T. (2005). The Problem of Perception. In E.N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem.Dokic, J. & Martin, J-R. (2017). Felt Reality and the Opacity of Perception, Topoi, 36: 299-309.Fénelon G. (2008). Psychosis in Parkinson’s Disease: Phenomenology, Frequency, Risk Factors, and Current Understanding of Pathophysiologic Mechanisms. CNS Spectr., 13(3 Suppl 4): 18-25.Gerrans, P. (2019). Depersonalization Disorder, Affective Processing and Predictive Coding. Review of Philosophy and Psychology. 10: 401-418.

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Husserl, E. (1998). Thing and Space: Lectures of 1907. R. Rojcewicz (Trans.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Matthen, M. (2005). Seeing, Doing, and Knowing: A Philosophical Theory of Sense Perception. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Matthen, M. (2010). Two Visual Systems and the Feeling of Presence. In N. Gangopadhyay, M. Madary, & F. Spicer (Eds.), Perception, Action, and Consciousness: Sensorimotor Dynamics and Two Visual Systems, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 107-124.Medford, N. (2012). Emotion and the Unreal Self: Depersonalization Disorder and De-Affectualization. Emotion Review, 4(2): 139-144.Millar, B. (2014). The Phenomenological Directness of Perceptual Experience. Philosophical Studies. 170: 235-253.Minden Ribeiro, M. (ms). Perceptual Presence and the Limit of Metaphysical Explanation.O’Conaill, D. (2017). Perceptual Presence. Niin & Näin. 3(17): 145-151.Riccardi, M. (2019). Perceptual Presence: An Attentional Account. Synthese. 196: 2907-2926.Shanon, B. (2002). The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Shorvon, H.J. et al. (1946). The Depersonalization Syndrome. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 39(12): 779–792.Sturgeon, S. (2000). Matters of Mind. London: Routledge.


DOI: 10.17454/pam-2214





THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MANY PROPERTY PROBLEM1

abstract

One of the most influential traditional objections to Adverbialism about perceptual experience is that posed by Frank Jackson’s ‘many property problem’. Perhaps largely because of this objection, few philosophers now defend Adverbialism. We argue, however, that the essence of the many property problem arises for all of the leading metaphysical theories of experience: all leading theories must simply take for granted certain facts about experience, and no theory looks well positioned to explain the facts in a straightforward way. Because of this, the many property problem isn’t on its own a good reason for rejecting Adverbialism; and nor is it a puzzle that will decide amongst the other leading theories.

keywords

Perception; Intentionality; Adverbialism; Intentionalism; Naive realism; Propositional attitudes; Content, Physicalism.

1 Thank you to the audience at the 2021 San Raffaele School of Philosophy “Mind, Language, and the First-Person Perspective” conference and two anonymous referees for comments that helped clarify the paper. Thank you also to the “Lockdown Adverbialism Group” – Justin D’Ambrosio, Laura Gow, Kati Farkas, and David Papineau – for comments on an earlier draft and to Frances Egan for feedback and encouragement. Finally, thank you to Jeff Speaks and Michael Tye for helpful conversations in the early stages.

TIM CRANE ALEX GRZANKOWSKICentral European University University of London, Birkbeck [email protected] [email protected]

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According to the Adverbialist theory of perception, perceptual experience isn’t a relation. Traditionally, the view was advanced as a thesis about how to analyze the language of perceptual reports. On the face of it, ‘Frank is perceptually experiencing a red object’ seems to ascribe a relation between Frank and some red object. But in the light of familiar concerns raised by experientially indistinguishable illusions and hallucinations, the object to which Frank is related must not be an ordinary object. Rather, it must be a red sense-datum, a Meinongian object, or something else that could be present in ‘bad cases’ (hallucination, illusion) as well as ‘good cases’ (genuine perception). Adverbialists aim to avoid commitment to such things while providing a uniform account of experiences, and so they deny that the ascription reports a real relation. ‘Frank is perceptually experiencing a red object’ should then be ‘analyzed’ or understood as equivalent to ‘Frank is perceptually experiencing redly’. The latter sentence describes Frank’s experience in terms of a way of experiencing rather than in terms of an experiential relation to an object.These days, Adverbialism is usually treated as being of purely historical significance. One reason for this is the view that Frank Jackson’s ‘many property problem’ poses an unanswerable objection to the theory. We argue here that the essence of this problem applies to all theories of perceptual experience, and so is not a problem specifically for Adverbialism. Our aim in pointing this out is not to defend Adverbialism, but rather to draw attention to a general problem for all theories of experience.

Although it was formulated (by Chisholm, 1957 and others) as a linguistic thesis, Adverbialism is perhaps best understood as a metaphysical thesis about perceptual experience: experiences are non-relational modifications of the mind (see Kriegel, 2011).1 If they are right, Adverbialists are well positioned to give a uniform account of veridical, illusory, and hallucinatory experiences without appealing to non-ordinary objects.Frank Jackson (1977) raised a powerful objection to Adverbialism, which has become known as the ‘many property problem’. Jackson argued that Adverbialists face a dilemma: either they fail to distinguish clearly distinct experiences, or they fail to respect obvious entailments. Consider the following:

1 Additional discussions of Adverbialism can be found in Ducasse (1940), Hare (1969), Kriegel (2007; 2008) Mendelovici (2018), Papineau (2014), and Sellars (1969).

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2. Adverbialism

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(1) Frank is experiencing a red square and a green circle.(2) Frank is experiencing a red circle and a green square.

On the face of it, Adverbialists must say that the conditions under which (1) is true are the same as the conditions under which (2) is true. In linguistic terms, both are regimented as ‘Frank is experiencing red-ly and square-ly and green-ly and circle-ly’. Since conjunction is commutative, the charge is that Adverbialists fail to distinguish these two cases.One solution is to ‘fuse’ the properties that cluster together (the colors and shapes in this case) so that the needed distinction between (1) and (2) can be drawn. So, in the case just described, the Adverbialist might appeal to the fused properties of experiencing red-square-ly and experiencing red-circle-ly respectively. But as Jackson points out, we now find ourselves hooked on the other horn of the dilemma. From the fact that one is experiencing a red square, it follows that one is experiencing red; and from the fact that one is experiencing a green circle, it follows that one is experiencing green. But these entailments fail on the fusion view. Because the ‘fused’ adverbs are syntactically simple (which is supposed to reflect the existence of wholly distinct properties or distinct ways a mind can be modified), there seems to be no way to recover the property of experiencing-red-ly from the property of experiencing red-square-ly. So, the Adverbialist either fails to differentiate distinct experiences, or fails to capture obvious entailments about experience.The Adverbialist can respond as follows. When faced with (1) and (2), Adverbialists should ‘fuse’ the properties, but when faced with the obvious entailments, they should say it is simply a metaphysical fact that experiencing red-round-ly entails experiencing red-ly. This fact does not admit of a further explanation: it is simply a brute fact about the way perceptual experience works. Although this is perhaps the best response for the Adverbialist, it is hard not see it as an unsatisfyingly ad hoc stipulation. This is a powerful reason to reject Adverbialism. Adverbialism undergenerates distinctions or undergenerates correct inferences and with nowhere else to turn, Adverbialsts look forced to simply take for granted certain facts about experience without explanation. For many philosophers (though not Jackson, 1977), intentionalism about experience presents itself as an attractive alternative.2

According to Intentionalism, perceptual experiences are intentional or representational states. On the usual versions of this view (Byrne, 2001; Tye, 1995), Frank’s experiencing something red consists in Frank standing in a relation to a propositional content. Frank is visually representing (e.g.) that there is something red and is therefore related to the content that something is red.Contents themselves stand in entailment relations and it may seem that this fact makes Intentionalism invulnerable to the many-property problem. First, with respect to the difference between (1) and (2), Intentionalists offer the following:

(1) Frank is experiencing a red square and a green circle.(1’) Frank is visually representing that there is something red and square and something

green and circular.(2) Frank is experiencing a red circle and a green square.(2’) Frank is visually representing that there is something red and circular and something

green and square.

2 For further responses see D’Ambrosio (2019), Kriegel (2011), and Tye (1989). For further complications see Dinges (2015), Grzankowski (2018), and Woodling (2016).

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This approach treats the contents of experience as ‘general’ contents; the usual approach employs distinct bound variables that will ‘hold’ the properties together in the right ways to distinguish (1) and (2). (It is also possible to treat the contents of experience as singular; nothing we say below turns on this decision.)Intentionalists also seem to have a simple way to explain the entailment from experiencing something red and round to experiencing something red. On the face of it, the fact that the content that there is something red and round entails the content that there is something red provides our explanation.But despite the obvious appeal of this move, things cannot be this simple. To see why, consider the relation an experiencer bears to a content according to Intentionalists, variously labelled in the literature – Alex Byrne (2009) calls it the relation of ‘ex-ing’ and Adam Pautz (2010) calls it ‘sensorily entertaining’. Now suppose that it is entailments among contents that explain the relationships between experiences. The problem is that there are many other entailments that contents themselves have, which have no bearing on the relevant experiences at all. For example, the content that there is something red entails that there is something red and 2+2=4. But it makes little sense to suppose that this entailment could be reflected in someone’s perceptual experience.Intentionalists now face a dilemma. In order to avail themselves of the relations among contents to capture the obvious relations between experiences, they must appeal to entailment. But in order to block irrelevant entailments, they must deny that sensorily entertaining is closed under entailment. But if sensorily entertaining is not closed under entailment, how can Intentionalists use the usual notion of entailment as an independent explanation of the relations between experiences?It is a familiar fact that not all intentional relations are closed under entailment. In other words, just because the content of one’s representational state entails some other content, it does not follow that one is thereby in a representational state with the entailed content. Consider some examples. The proposition that Henry and Craig join the party entails that Henry joins the party. But I might hope that Henry and Craig join the party even though I do not hope that Henry alone joins the party. I might like their joint company but prefer them not to come to the party at all if they aren’t coming together. Or here is another: the content that the ball is on the table entails the content that something is on the table. But someone who consciously judges that the ball is on the table needn’t thereby judge that there is something on the table. In light of the first judgement it would be rational to make the second judgement (and so perhaps one should make it), but they needn’t make it. They might be too lazy, too tired, pressed for time; or they might simply lack the ability to make a judgement with a quantified content.An Intentionalist can nonetheless insist that the relationships between experiencing something red and round and experiencing something red, for example, are explained by specific entailments between the specific experiential contents of the relevant perceptual states. But now they seem to be very much in the company of the Adverbialist who insists that there are brute metaphysical relations holding amongst non-relational experiences. Intentionalists, it should be noted, face a problem of overgeneration rather than undergeneration (as faced by the Adverbialism), but the essence of the problem is the same. Intentionalists look forced to simply take for granted certain facts about experience without explanation. Granted, the Intentionalist won’t need to posit a new metaphysically brute fact for each and every desired connection between states – their basic resource is just the familiar relation of entailment. But we still need an explanation of why we can appeal to entailment to explain some connections between experiences, while denying that entailment relations between contents are reflected in all such connections. The appeal to bruteness remains a

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problem.In other words, Intentionalists and Adverbialists both need an explanation of what we might call the ‘laws of appearance’: why some contents must hang together and others do not.3 But this was the heart of the original many properties problem: why is it that someone who experiences something red and round must also experience something red? If this is a problem, it seems to be a problem for Intentionalism just as it was for Adverbialism. We charged the Adverbialist with appealing to an unsatisfyingly ad hoc stipulation; now a similar charge can be laid against the Intentionalist.

On the face of it, relational (or ‘act-object’) theories may seem immune to this problem, since the facts about experienced properties are explained in terms of facts about the properties of objects experienced: someone who experiences something red and round must also experience something red, simply because the object which is red and round is also red.But matters are not so simple. For on a Naive Realist form of the relational theory, objects have in addition many unexperienced properties, and for this reason such a theory also owes an account of the laws of appearance. For example, a red and round object also has invisible microscopic properties which are not experienced. Perceivers do not stand in the relevant perceptual relation to all properties of the perceived object, only those which can perceptually appear in experience. So the same question arises: why do some experienced properties of the experienced object hang together in experience and some do not?By contrast, a Sense-Datum theorist holds that the objects of experience have exactly the properties they are experienced as having. It might seem that this theory does avoid the many properties problem, as we have formulated it. But in fact the problem trails not far behind. Ask yourself: which properties do the objects of sensing have? The obvious answer is: only those which are experienced as hanging together. The Sense-Datum theory, like the other theories, presupposes the laws of appearance – the facts about how experienced properties hang together.If this is right, then all the leading metaphysical theories of perception encounter the challenge that lies within the many property problem: in order to describe experience correctly, they all have to appeal to facts about how experienced properties are connected, and then find space in their theories to accommodate those facts. The classical Adverbialist approach is to appeal to brute metaphysical facts about ways experiences are modified; the Intentionalist has to restrict the entailment relations between contents in a way that captures only the relations between experienced properties; the Naive Realist has to rule out relations to the unexperienced properties of ordinary objects; and the Sense-Data theory constructs experienced objects with precisely those properties which are related in the way they are experienced.All these theories of perception take for granted facts about the ways in which experienced properties hang together; and all of them propose more-or-less ad hoc explanations of these facts. Looked at in this way, the many property problem will not, on its own, decide between philosophical theories of perception. Rather, it is something that exposes a quite general characteristic of these theories: their reliance on the laws of appearance.

REFERENCESByrne, A. (2001). Intentionalism defended. The Philosophical Review, 110(2): 199-240.

3 The term ‘laws of appearance’ is due to McGinn (1983). The problem has also been recently discussed by Pautz (n.d.; 2017) who also appreciates that the problem is faced by many theorists.

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Byrne, A. (2009). Experience and content. Philosophical Quarterly, 59(236): 429-451.Chisholm, R. (1957). Perceiving: A Philosophical Study. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press.D’Ambrosio, J. (2019). A New Perceptual Adverbialism. Journal of Philosophy, 116(8): 413-446.Dinges, A. (2015). The Many-Relations Problem for Adverbialism. Analysis, 75(2): 231-237.Ducasse, C. J. (1940). Propositions, Opinions, Sentences, and Facts. Journal of Philosophy, 37(26): 701-711.Grzankowski, A. (2018). The Determinable–Determinate Relation Can’t Save Adverbialism. Analysis, 78(1): 45-52.Jackson, F. (1977). Perception: A Representative Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Hare, P. (1969). Propositions and Adverbial Metaphysics. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 7(3): 267-271.Kriegel, U. (2007). Intentional Inexistence and Phenomenal Intentionality. Philosophical Perspectives, 21(1): 307-340.Kriegel, U. (2008). The Dispensability of (Merely) Intentional Objects. Philosophical Studies, 141: 79-95.Kriegel, U. (2011). The Sources of Intentionality. New York: Oxford University Press.McGinn, C. (1983). The Subjective View: Secondary Qualities and Indexical Thoughts. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Mendelovici, A. (2018). The Phenomenal Basis of Intentionality. New York: Oxford University Press.Papineau, D. (2014). The Presidential Address: Sensory Experience and Representational Properties. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 114(1pt1): 1-33.Pautz, A. (2010). Why Explain Visual Experience in Terms of Content. In B. Nanay (ed.), Perceiving the World, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 254-309.Pautz, A. (2017). Experiences are Representations: An Empirical Argument. In B. Nanay (ed.), Current Controversies in the Philosophy of Perception. Oxford: Routledge.Pautz, A. (n.d.). Can Intentionalism Explain The Laws of Appearance? Retrieved from: http://d284f45nftegze.cloudfront.net/apautz/laws(1).pdf.Sellars, W. (1969). Metaphysics and the concept of a person. In K. Lambert (ed.), The Logical Way of Doing Things, New Haven: Yale University Press.Tye, M. (1989). The Metaphysics of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Tye, M. (1995). Ten Problems of Consciousness: A Representational Theory of the Phenomenal Mind. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Woodling, C. (2016). The Limits of Adverbialism about Intentionality. Inquiry, 59(5): 488-512.


DOI: 10.17454/pam-2215





WITTGENSTEIN’S TRANSCENDENTAL THOUGHT EXPERIMENT IN ETHICS1

abstract

In this essay, I argue that Wittgenstein attempted to clarify ethics through a procedure that, by analogy with “transcendental arguments”, I call “transcendental thought experiment”. Specifically, after offering a brief perspectival account of both transcendental arguments and transcendental thought experiments, I focus on a thought experiment proposed by Wittgenstein in his 1929 Lecture on Ethics, arguing that it deserves the title of “transcendental”.

keywords

Wittgenstein; Transcendental; Thought Experiment; Ethics; Perspective

1 I am grateful to James Levine and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this essay.

SIMONE NOTA Trinity College [email protected]

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In this essay, I argue that Wittgenstein attempted to clarify ethics through a procedure that, by analogy with “transcendental arguments”, I call “transcendental thought experiment”. The paper is divided into three sections. First (§1), I give a brief perspectival characterization of transcendental arguments inspired by Mark Sacks’ work, suggesting that they are argumentative procedures that require us to entertain a representation in the first-person perspective, in order to recognize necessary conditions of the possibility of representation of the world. Then (§2), I introduce the notion of transcendental thought experiments, arguing that they are imaginative perspectival procedures aimed at recognizing necessary conditions of the possibility of representation of the world, which, as such, need not necessarily take the form of an argument. Finally (§3), I argue that in his Lecture on Ethics Wittgenstein employed a transcendental thought experiment to clarify ethics and (what we may cautiously call) ethical expressions. The result will be a clearer view of Wittgenstein’s own ethical outlook, in the light of his claim in the Tractatus that “Ethics is transcendental” (T, 6.421).

It is agreed on virtually all hands that Transcendental Philosophy is concerned with necessary conditions of the possibility of cognition.1 Whatever else cognition is, it surely must involve, if not be equivalent with, representation of the world (which latter may then take the name “experience”, “thought”, language”, etc.).2 If so, Transcendental Philosophy must be concerned with necessary conditions of the possibility of representation of the world. Yet exactly insofar as this could be said to be the fundamental concern of Transcendental Philosophy, the problem immediately arises as to how one is to recognize such necessary conditions in the first place.According to one rather influential view, in order to recognize and establish the validity of necessary conditions of representation of the world, we need specific argumentative procedures, known as transcendental arguments. The idea of transcendental argumentation goes back at least to Kant (who preferred to talk of “transcendental proof”3), and has fascinated philosophers on and off ever since, becoming the subject of a heated controversy in the

1 See Smith and Sullivan (2011, p. 7) and Gardner (2015, p. 2).2 Kant defines cognition as a “the determinate relation of given representations to an object” (B137). Though it is much debated what the term “cognition” amounts to in Kant’s philosophy (see for example Tolley, 2020 and Gomes & Stephenson, 2016), it is at least safe to assume that, even for Kant, to cognize an object one must represent it. 3 E.g. A786/B814.

Introduction

1. Transcendental Arguments

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second half of the 20th Century, in the light of the work of Peter Strawson, who disentangled transcendental argumentation from transcendental idealism (e.g. 1959 and 1966).Nowadays, it is customary to say that transcendental arguments are deductive argumentative devices that have anti-skeptical import, or that anyways aim at establishing the legitimacy of a cognitive claim, by combining the rigour of well-known rules of inference – notably, the modus ponens – with an appeal to the idea of “necessary conditions of possibility” (see Gava, 2019). In other words, transcendental arguments are often taken to be arguments of the following form:

pIf p [the conditioned], then q [its necessary condition]Therefore, q4

where p is a premise concerning (subjective or objective) representation and/or the cognitive capacities involved in it (e.g. the capacity for experience, thought or language). However, if understood in certain specific ways, this schema of transcendental arguments may easily come under fire.One recent critique concerns the talk of “necessary conditions”. In the analytic tradition, this has often been taken as talk of merely analytic necessary conditions – that is, conditions that are to be reached just by logical analysis of propositions (cf. Franks, 1999, pp. 117-8), and whose necessity depends upon the logical structure of our concepts alone (cf. Gava, 2019, p. 454). However, this makes it rather hard to see what is so special about transcendental arguments. Consider for example the following modus ponens:

(I represent that) Tim is a whale. If Tim is (represented as) a whale, then it is also (represented as) a mammal.Therefore, (I represent that) Tim is a mammal.

One could surely say that being a mammal is a necessary condition of Tim’s “whaleness”, or for that matter that representing Tim as a mammal is a necessary condition for representing Tim as a whale,5 and that we can know such things out of logical analysis alone. But I doubt most people would want to call this, or at any rate anything even remotely like this, a transcendental argument.6 Not by chance, if Kant was categorical on one thing about transcendental argumentation, it is that transcendental proofs can never be understood in merely conceptual terms, for they essentially contain an appeal to possible experience (A782-3/B810-1).7

Among the Kantian critics of a merely conceptual construal of transcendental argumentation, Mark Sacks (2005) stands out. According to Sacks, as long as we take transcendental arguments

4 See Franks (1999).5 By this, of course, I do not mean that one needs to have a picture of a mammal (mental or otherwise) every time one represents a whale. Rather, the point is that applying the concept ‘whale’ rationally commits us to applying the concept ‘mammal’ (cf. MacFarlane, 2000, p. 89). Indeed, nothing could count as a representation of a whale, if it did not count as a representation of a mammal too.6 My example is intentionally provocative, but it shows, I think, that it cannot be right to reduce without further qualification transcendental arguments to merely analytic procedures.7 It may be objected that the appeal to “possible experience” is an appeal to Kant’s transcendental idealism, and that this is a metaphysical price that not everyone would be prepared to countenance. However, it is not necessary that, in appealing to possible experience, one should also maintain that the experienced object is formally rendered possible by the mind, as Kant maintained.

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as merely deductive procedures, what is distinctly “transcendental” about them gets lost.8 To be clear, Sacks is not against the view that transcendental arguments could take the form of a modus ponens. However, he believes that attention to more than the deductive structure of their presentation is required to follow them (see Gardner, 2015, p. 14). Indeed, according to Sacks, only if we recur to a perspectival schematization of the thoughts or propositions involved in transcendental arguments, then we can see or experience for ourselves that something counts as a necessary condition of the possibility of representation.9

To appreciate the strength of Sacks’ point, take for example Kant’s “argument for substance” in his First Analogy of Experience, which is one of Sacks’ own examples of a transcendental argument (see Sacks, 2005; 2006). According to Sacks, there is no analytic route leading us from the concept of a ‘change’ employed there by Kant to the concept of a ‘substance’ – the concept, that is, of an abiding something underlying change as a necessary condition of its representation. And indeed, one may analyse her notion of ‘change’ all she likes, but she surely won’t find in there the idea that there must be substance (let alone establish that there must be substance in reality10). If, however, we imagine ourselves as experiencing a certain change, say the change occurring when a lighting hits a tree and reduces it to ashes and smoke, then according to Sacks we can come to see from our own perspective that there must be a persisting substance underlying that change, in order for that entire imaginative procedure to be carried through in the first place. For how could we even imagine experiencing the change at stake, without thereby imagining a thing that was changing all along?Sacks calls similar perspectival imaginings “situated thoughts” and he claims that they are needed to work our way through the key step of a transcendental argument – the one leading us from the conditioned (e.g. the representation of change) to its necessary condition (e.g. there being a persistent substance). However, the label “situated thought” almost makes it seem as if these thoughts can only be entertained from some specific spatiotemporal location. I will talk more generally of perspectival thoughts – that is, thoughts that are entertained as a result of a self-conscious activation of our cognitive capacities, or in the first-person perspective.11 In any case, similarly to Sacks, I too suspect that perspectival thoughts are needed to work our way through the key step of at least some transcendental arguments.

8 For a critique of the tendency to understand the word “argument” in the phrase “transcendental argument” as synonymous with “deductive argument”, see also Franks (1999), Bell (1999) and Gardner (2015). Significantly, Bell writes: “[F]or whatever reason, scant acknowledgement has been made in recent writings about transcendental arguments of alternative ways [other than the deductive way] of securing probative force. In particular, there is little or no discussion of […] the possibility that [transcendental arguments] may comprise or incorporate such procedures as plausibility arguments, thought experiments, inferences to the best explanation, arguments by analogy, arguments which appeal to simplicity, symmetry or elegance [etc.]” (Bell 1999, p. 193, my emphasis).9 The perspectival or first-personal character of transcendental arguments had earlier been acknowledged by Franks (1999), who notes that transcendental arguments begin (explicitly or implicitly) with a “first-personal possessive”, seeking as they do to investigate the necessary conditions for the possibility of my or our experiences, thought, language, etc.10 Indeed, this is the conclusion that Kant aims at establishing in his First Analogy, though not about a reality of “things in themselves” (whatever those may be), but rather about an empirical reality of appearances.11 Differently from Sacks, I do not believe that perspectival thoughts need to be strongly opposed to “bare” or “absolute” thoughts, granting that there are any (cf. A.W. Moore, 1997). Rather, in my view, whenever we entertain a thought and attend to it with a sufficient degree of self-consciousness, we are already thinking perspectivally. It may well be that all thoughts are perspectival to some degree, or at any rate possibly perspectival (“the I think must be able to accompany all my representations”, Kant famously said). If so, talk of “perspectival thoughts” might seem redundant. However, if we grant that consciousness, and thereby self-consciousness, come in degrees, calling some thoughts “perspectival” – in order to indicate that they are entertained with a high degree of self-consciousness, or at any rate with a higher degree of self-consciousness than that of other thoughts – might still be perfectly acceptable.

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Here, however, I shall not argue at length for this view. Indeed, for the purposes of this essay, I am not interested in the specifics of Sacks’ proposal, nor for that matter in transcendental argumentation per se. Rather, I have briefly introduced Sacks’ take on transcendental argumentation, and tweaked it a bit, since a perspectival interpretation of transcendental arguments can act as the guiding thread to the crucial notion of this essay, namely that of transcendental thought experiment.12

So far, we have concerned ourselves with (Sacksian) transcendental arguments. Specifically, we have seen how, in order to bring into view necessary conditions of world-directed representation, (Sacksian) transcendental arguments combine the rigour of well-known rules of inference (e.g. modus ponens) with imaginative perspectival representations (which Sacks calls “situated thoughts”, and which I call “perspectival thoughts”). I now wish to introduce, by analogy with the brief perspectival account of transcendental argumentation given above, the notion of transcendental thought experiment.According to Meynell, “[thought experiments] are narratives that are created to prompt their readers to imagine specific fictional worlds, as kinds of situational set-ups that, when you ‘run’, ‘perform’ or simply imagine them, lead to specific results” (Meynell, 2014, pp. 4161-4162, my emphasis). If so, we may define transcendental thought experiments as imaginative devices or procedures aimed at making us visualize a scenario, which, if properly worked out, is to lead us to realize that something is a necessary condition of the possibility of representation of the world, or at any rate that it is involved with such necessary conditions. Through this definition one may easily see that, like (Sacksian) transcendental arguments, transcendental thought experiments have an irreducible perspectival character, insofar as we are to imagine certain scenarios and see – in our imagination – how they play out. Put otherwise, it belongs to the essence of a transcendental thought experiment that it should be capable of prompting a perspectival thought (or: a host of internally related perspectival thoughts).Thus, transcendental thought experiments remind us of (Sacksian) transcendental arguments in many ways, and indeed, in the light of our discussion above, it would not be hazardous to say that what makes transcendental arguments unique is the fact that, nested within them, there might be transcendental thought experiments.13 There is however cause for keeping the two analytically distinguished, since not any transcendental thought experiment needs to be part of a transcendental argument. That is: as deeply imaginative procedures, transcendental thought experiments might stand on their own, without having to conform to the constraints imposed by this or that specific rule of inference (e.g. modus ponens), or more generally without being reducible to arguments at all.This stance is backed, I think, by the (recent) history of the philosophical debate on

12 As far as I can make out, there is no body of literature on the general notion I am about to introduce, and that is exactly why our discussion of transcendental arguments can act as a guiding thread for a tentative definition of the notion of “transcendental thought experiment”, and indeed for an understanding of it. (In his 2004's book, Westphal does use the phrase "transcendental thought experiment", but he doesn't really give a general definition of it, rather simply identifying transcendental thought experiments with "Kant’s thought experiments, carefully designed to highlight our basic cognitive capacities, by highlighting some of our basic cognitive incapacities" (p. 17). Notably, Kant himself never used the expression “transcendental thought experiment”, or for that matter “thought experiment”. For a discussion of “experiments of pure reason” in Kant, see however Buzzoni, 2018.)13 On this score, I find it significant that Putnam characterizes his famous argument – against regarding the representations had by “brains in a vat” as referring to the external world – as an instance of “transcendental investigation” (Putnam, 1981, p. 16). Of course, the argument relies upon the presentation of the brains in a vat scenario, which is itself a thought experiment. But given what Putnam says, the thought experiment at the heart of his argument should be a transcendental thought experiment (though I shall not argue for this conjecture here).

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thought experiments in general. According to one of the dominant views in the relevant literature, championed by Norton, thought experiments are simply arguments in disguise or “picturesque arguments” (Norton, 1996, pp. 334 and 339; cf. also Norton, 2004). That is because, according to Norton, thought experiments could be always “reconstructed” as arguments (ibid.). Recently, however, there have been expressions of growing dissatisfaction with respect to this view. Some such dissatisfaction may be brought back to the following critical observation: even if all thought experiments could be reconstructed as arguments (and that is a big “if”), that would not yet show that they are arguments. (To use an analogy: a pianist may easily “translate” music into musical notation, but that does not surely mean that the musical notation is the music itself).But by far the most important criticism levelled against the view that thought experiments are just arguments is that this view downplays the imaginative (perspectival) character of thought experiments, considering it as merely ornamental – and thereby inessential. In effect, if thought experiments were none other than arguments in disguise, we should expect philosophers to always prefer their regimented and clear “reconstruction” to their “picturesque” perspectival version. And yet philosophers have often aimed at leading us to insights through their thought experiments (cf. Meynell, 2014) – insights that seem hardly detachable from the stark presentation of the thought experiments themselves (cf. Camp, 2009, p. 124), which prompts us to vividly picture a certain scenario (or even: to vividly picture ourselves in a certain scenario). That is the case, for example, with Descartes’ evil demon scenario as well as with Putnam’s brains in a vat one, which are themselves the product of thought experiments.14 To quote Elisabeth Camp:

[B]y describing counterfactual situations in concrete detail, [thought experiments] can trigger a kind of experiential acquaintance that an abstract description misses. (ibid.)

It goes without saying that an abstract and dry argument will miss this sui generis experiential dimension too – unless it involves an irreducible perspectival element, as is the case with (Sacksian) transcendental arguments.The defender of the view of thought experiments as arguments might still object that there are, hidden behind any thought experiment, a host of background assumptions and beliefs, and that those must be suppressed premises, needed to set in motion the machinery of an argument (see Norton, 1996, p. 354). But we need not see things that way. It is true, behind thought experiments there are often background assumptions and beliefs, without which the thought experiment could not be “run” in the proper way. But instead of calling them “premises”, we might simply say that they are the principles that govern the correct generation and understanding of the relevant scenario, imagination of which the thought experiment intends to prompt. Following Walton (1990) and Meynell (2014), I will group such background assumptions and beliefs – as well as tacit rules and conventions, and even psychological tendencies and cognitive capacities – under the label of principles of generation. And I will note that while the principles of generation behind some thought experiments may perhaps be rendered as premises, it does not follow that they must be.All the observations above will be of the utmost importance for our investigation of Wittgenstein’s own transcendental thought experiment. Before turning to Wittgenstein,

14 Indeed, it is not a coincidence that Descartes’ Meditations are written in the first-person (Sorensen, 2016, p. 422), or that Putnam’s “brains in a vat” thought experiment begins as follows: “imagine that a human being (you can imagine this to be yourself) has been subjected to an operation by an evil scientist” (1981, p. 5, my emphasis).

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however, one last remark is in order. Thought experiments have been employed in a variety of philosophical contexts and with respect to a variety of philosophical problems (and not just, say, with respect to epistemology and the classic epistemological problem of skepticism addressed by Descartes and Putnam). Arguably, a most fascinating use of thought experiments is connected to ethics and ethical problems or quandaries. From Philippa Foot’s “trolley problem” to Bernard Williams’ case of Jim and the Indians, passing by Judith Jarvis Thomson’s case of the unconscious violinist – thought experiments have commanded attention and interest in ethics.15 And while it is debatable what role exactly thought experiments and “imaginary cases” should play in ethics (cf. Dancy, 1985), and what, if anything, they may establish (ibid.), it is nonetheless scarcely doubtable that they may clarify the ethical problems we grapple with. Indeed, we should expect this nice property of thought experiments in ethics to be preserved by transcendental thought experiments in ethics.

So far, our discussion has moved at a high level of generality. But we shall now put to the test the very idea of transcendental thought experiment briefly outlined above, by means of a case study. In this section, I will thus argue that Wittgenstein employed a transcendental thought experiment to clarify ethics and (what we may cautiously call) ethical expressions.16

The thought experiment of Wittgenstein’s that I wish to characterize as “transcendental” was presented during his 1929 Lecture on Ethics, which Wittgenstein delivered in Cambridge, and of which we possess the full text. Almost halfway through the lecture, Wittgenstein claims that no statement of fact can ever be a judgement of absolute value (e.g. an ethical judgement about the moral goodness or evilness of an action). To clarify the claim, he recurred to the following thought experiment:

[S]uppose one of you were an omniscient person and therefore knew all the movements of all the bodies in the world dead or alive and that he also knew all the states of mind of all human beings that ever lived. And suppose this man wrote all he knew in a big book. Then this book would contain the whole description of the world; and what I want to say is, that this book would contain nothing that we would call an ethical judgement. (LoE, p. 45)

Here, Wittgenstein asks us to imagine the contents of a book, i.e. to entertain a perspectival thought about a book. The author of the book should be imagined as an omniscient human being, pouring into the book all that he knows. Paying homage to a famous remark of Wittgenstein’s, we might call the book The World as an omniscient person would find it.17 This book, Wittgenstein says, would contain the whole description of the world. In other words, the sum-total of its sentences would describe, in the finest detail, all the facts there are, however many facts there are. Still, Wittgenstein adds, the book “would contain nothing that we would call an ethical judgement”.At this point, to further clarify what he is after, Wittgenstein asks us to imagine reading the

15 Cf. Foot (1967), Williams (1973), and Thomson (1971).16 I should stress once more that, in this essay, I consider just one case study in Wittgenstein’s “early” philosophy (though my considerations may easily be extended to others). For a more general treatment of the relationship between imagination and ethics in Wittgenstein’s early philosophy, cf. Diamond (2000). For a general classification of thought experiments in Wittgenstein’s philosophy, see Penco (2019).17 I allude here to remark 5.631 of the Tractatus, in which Wittgenstein imagines writing a book called The World as I found it. I suspect this too can be rendered as a transcendental thought experiment, though I cannot argue for this view within the confines of the present paper.

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description of a murder in the book (LoE, p. 45). This description would be extremely detailed, depicting all the physical movements of the murderer and his victim as well as all their mental states (ibid.). These, however, would be just facts in the world, and a fact, by itself, is neither good nor evil for Wittgenstein: it is just a fact. Tellingly, Wittgenstein goes as far as saying that “[t]he murder will be on exactly the same level as any other event, for instance the falling of a stone” (ibid.). Put otherwise, in the book The World as an omniscient person would find it, we could find the extremely detailed description of the murder right after that of a falling stone, without ever finding a judgement concerning the moral evilness of the murderous act, or of the person committing the act. For no absolute value – a value that should, in a sense, impose itself by logical necessity – could ever be expressed by propositions according to Wittgenstein, propositions always depicting contingent facts for him (including merely possible facts, which, if they obtained, would be contingent).18

We come here to the core background “assumption” behind Wittgenstein’s thought experiment, namely his so-called “picture theory” of the proposition, which Wittgenstein presented in his Tractatus. By 1929, the Tractatus was a sensation in Cambridge, and so we should expect that Wittgenstein’s audience was familiar with the “picture theory”, which thereby could lead us to the principle of generation of Wittgenstein’s thought experiment: our own cognitive ability to picture reality by means of language, which the Tractarian remarks usually grouped under the label “picture theory” are exactly meant to elucidate.According to the “picture theory”, all propositions work like pictures or models of facts. Facts, however, are for Wittgenstein contingent states in the world – states, that is, which may be other than they are. If so, necessity can never be pictured or expressed by a proposition according to Wittgenstein. Two interesting things follow from this. First, our cognitive ability to picture the world – which is clearly not a contingent fact in the world19 – cannot be expressed by propositions, and thereby the Tractarian remarks that make up the “picture theory” cannot ultimately act as premises of a genuine argument.20 Second, there is no such thing as “ethical propositions” (T, 6.42), i.e. propositions that should depict “necessary”, “absolute” or “non-accidental” values (cf. T, 6.41).And here is the crucial point. All we could ever attempt to say about ethics would melt into our hands for Wittgenstein. We would like to say something about “absolute value”, but all we manage to say, if anything at all, is something about contingent matters of fact. Nonetheless, even when we are (made) aware of this, there will be cases in which we will be tempted to use expressions such as “absolute value” or “absolute good” according to Wittgenstein. He himself, in the Lecture, recalls “cases in which I [viz. Wittgenstein] would certainly use these expressions” (LoE, p. 46; my emphasis). One particular case stands out among all others, as Wittgenstein’s “first and foremost example” (ibid.). As he says:

[Whenever] I want to fix my mind on what I mean by absolute or ethical value [...] it always happens that the idea of one particular experience presents itself to me which therefore is, in a sense, my experience par excellence [...] I will describe this experience

18 Cf. LoE, p. 46.19 If this were a contingent fact in the world, it should have to be possible for us to picture our own ability to picture. But clearly, we cannot picture our own ability to picture – that would be circular. For any picture necessarily presupposes our own ability to picture, which thereby is not at all a contingent object of picturing, but rather a necessary precondition of it.20 Indeed, given Wittgenstein’s famous pronouncements at the end of the Tractatus, the Tractarian remarks that present the so-called “picture theory”, and which attempt to put into words our own capacity for picturing, should ultimately be recognized as nonsense. But nonsense surely cannot act as the premise of a genuine argument!

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in order, if possible, to make you recall the same or similar experiences, so that we may have a common ground for our investigation. I believe the best way of describing it is to say that when I have it I wonder at the existence of the world. And I am then inclined to use such phrases as ‘How extraordinary that anything should exist’ or ‘How extraordinary that the world should exist’. (LoE, p. 47)

Here, Wittgenstein “describes” his own experience of wonder at the existence of the world so that each member of the audience could recall, in the first-person, the same or similar experiences. Put otherwise, once again Wittgenstein is aiming at prompting perspectival thoughts, which could act as a “common ground for [the] investigation”.Now, when one reflects upon them, the formulations “How extraordinary that anything should exist” and “How extraordinary that the world should exist”, which Wittgenstein employs at the end of the passage, attempt to put into words the experience of wondering at the existence of the world (that the audience is supposed to recall). They attempt to ascribe to this experience “absolute value”, i.e. a value that is independent of the contingent obtainment of this or that fact, insofar as wondering at the existence of the world is wondering at the world however it may be. It is wondering at its being, not at its being so-and-so.Exactly for this reason, however, the formulations above are nonsensical for Wittgenstein.21 On the one hand, through them we are trying to ascribe “absolute value” to a certain experience or mental state, namely the experience of wondering at the existence of the world. But every experience or mental state, for Wittgenstein, is a fact (something that has “taken place then and there [and] lasted a certain definite time”22). And all facts are contingencies, the complete description of which would be contained in The World as an omniscient person would find it. Thus, we are trying to ascribe “absolute value” to a contingent fact, that which inevitably misses the mark.On the other hand, when we employ formulations like “How extraordinary that the world should exist”, we are also trying to put into words something that we cannot hold to be contingent, namely there being a world. Wittgenstein points out that it makes sense to say we wonder at something that is thinkable as different from how, as a matter of fact, it is (e.g. saying we wonder at the sky’s being blue, rather than white). Yet it does not make sense to say that we wonder at something that, so to speak, has no thinkable alternatives – something the non-being of which we cannot possibly imagine, such as the world23 (as totality of existing

21 In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein famously distinguishes nonsensical pseudo-propositions from senseless sentences (e.g. tautologies), and sense-endowed pictures (propositions). It is true that in the Lecture on Ethics he claims that we are tempted to say that wondering at the existence of the world (however the world may then be) is wondering at a tautology (LoE, p. 48) But then, he adds, “it is just nonsense to say that one is wondering at a tautology”. Thus, “expressions” of wonder at the existence of the world are nonsensical pseudo-propositions for Wittgenstein.22 LoE, p. 49. 23 There is a wide literature on Wittgenstein’s remarks on the inconceivability of putative “alternatives” to our conceptual scheme. Most of this literature concerns “logical aliens”, i.e. beings that allegedly proceed by logical rules different from our own and whose “alternative” ways of thinking or behaving are allegedly incomprehensible for us (see Stroud, 1965; cf. Conant, 1991). Some authors, like Bernard Williams (1974) and Jonathan Lear (1984), link these remarks of Wittgenstein’s to a form of transcendental idealism. Here, however, in writing that we cannot possibly imagine the non-being of the world, I am not concerned with the inconceivability of logical rules different from “our own”, but with something more basic than that. The being of the world is not a logical rule, but the condition upon which even logic and its rules depend. For if there were no world, how could there be a(ny) logic at all? Furthermore, I have made no claim with respect to Wittgenstein’s alleged transcendental idealism (an interpretation of Wittgenstein to which I am ultimately opposed). Just like there can be transcendental arguments which are not thereby transcendentally idealist arguments (see again Strawson, 1959, 1966; and Putnam, 1981), so too there can be transcendental thought experiments that do not automatically commit us to transcendental idealism in any

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and non-existing states of affairs)24. That is because there being a world is a necessary condition of the possibility of saying anything at all, and thereby of saying we wonder at something in the first place. If, per absurdum, there were no world, there would be nothing to talk about, not even experiences of wonder. Indeed, there would not even be those who are supposed to talk, namely ourselves!As a result, anything we might want to say about the experience of marveling at the being of the world will inevitably arrive too late. As Wittgenstein writes in his Tractatus:

5.552 The ‘experience’ that we need in order to understand logic is not that something or other is the state of things, but that something is: that, however, is not an experience.Logic is prior to every experience – that something is so.It is prior to the question ‘How?’, not prior to the question ‘What?’

No proposition, not even those that are contained in The World as an omniscient person would find it, could ever express the “What” of the world, i.e. that there is a world. For that is not something we may ever hold to be contingent, but rather the necessary condition upon which even logic depends (WWK, p. 77).Here, however, we are interested in the ethical spirit of these considerations, which comes down to a paradox. Faced with the being of the world, we can experience wonder. And this wonder, as we have seen, is a contingent experience or mental state in the world. Yet, insofar as we wonder at the being of the world, and the being of the world cannot be taken to be contingent, then our wonder does not have the features of an experience. Every experience is about this or that contingent fact (e.g. I see the blue sky, I wonder at it, etc.). Talking of the “experience” that something is, the “experience” of something that we cannot hold to be contingent – that is a misuse of language. Paradoxically, we feel that our experience of wonder at the being of the world, to which we want to ascribe absolute or ethical value, cannot be called an “experience” at all. Yet “experience” is the only word we have here. That is why Wittgenstein said that ethics is running up against the limits of language or, as he also said quoting Kierkegaard, running up against paradox (WWK, pp. 68-69).Clearly, then, Wittgenstein’s own formulations must be recognized as nonsense: they would not make it into the contents of The World as an omniscient person would find it. And yet, they can reawaken in us the awareness, indeed the wonder, of there being a world, insofar as – by imaginatively reflecting upon them and the urges behind them – we can come to see that there being a world is a necessary condition of the possibility of our saying anything with sense in the first place, and even of our attempting to say something but failing to do so.Working our way through Wittgenstein’s thought experiment in ethics, we may thus realize that the being of the world is transcendental, and that each of the facts of the world – each of those facts that could be described in the finest detail in The World as an omniscient person would find it – can be deeply wonderful, not for its being so-and-so, which can be described, but rather insofar as it exemplifies the being of the world, for which we lack words, but which allows us to put into words all that we can put into words. In this sense, while being itself unspeakable for Wittgenstein, ethics pervades the world – all that could be thought or said (T, 6.421). And so, Wittgenstein writes, “Ethics is transcendental” (ibid.) – as is, we may now add, his thought experiment in ethics.

form. 24 Cf. T, 2.06.

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In this essay, I have argued that the thought experiment that Wittgenstein proposed in his 1929 Lecture on Ethics should be characterized as “transcendental”.First, I have discussed the notion of “transcendental argument” and presented a (Sacksian) construal of transcendental argumentation, based on the notion of “perspectival thought”: a thought entertained in the first-person perspective. Then, by analogy with this perspectival construal of transcendental argumentation, I have introduced the notion of “transcendental thought experiment”. I have argued that, notwithstanding some remarkable similarities (e.g. they may both prompt perspectival thoughts), a transcendental thought experiment is irreducible to a transcendental argument, just like thought experiments are irreducible to arguments. To substantiate this view, I have appealed to the notion of “principle of generation”, arguing that the principles of generation of a thought experiment are not necessarily to be cast as suppressed premises, but they may be, for example, cognitive abilities.In the last section of the essay, I have presented Wittgenstein’s thought experiment in ethics, in order to characterize it as “transcendental”. I have called attention multiple times to the imaginative perspectival character of Wittgenstein’s thought experiment (not least through the notion of “perspectival thought”). I have argued that its principle of generation is our cognitive ability to picture reality, that Wittgenstein elucidates in his so-called “picture theory” of the proposition. Finally, I have shown how Wittgenstein’s thought experiment in ethics may lead us to realize that there being a world is a necessary condition of the possibility of representation (so that any attempt to put into words the being of the world arrives too late, leading to nonsense in Wittgenstein’s view.) Thereby, I have concluded that Wittgenstein’s thought experiment in ethics is a transcendental thought experiment.

REFERENCESWorks by KantA/B Critique of Pure Reason. Edited by P. Guyer & A. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Works by WittgensteinLoE Lecture on Ethics. Edited by E. Zamuner, E.V. Di Lascio, & D.K. Lewy. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014.T Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. English translation by D.F. Pears & B.F. McGuinness. London and New York: Routledge, 1974.WWK Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle. Edited by Brian McGuinness. Conversations recorded by Friedrich Waismann. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979.

Secondary LiteratureBell, D. (1999). Transcendental Arguments and Non-Naturalistic Anti-Realism. In R. Stern (ed.), Transcendental Arguments: Problems and Prospects, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 189-210.Buzzoni, M. (2018). Kantian Accounts of Thought Experiments. In M.T. Stuart, Y. Fehige, & J.R. Brown (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments, London and New York: Routledge, 327-341.Camp, E. (2009). Two Varieties of Literary Imagination: Metaphor, Fiction, and Thought Experiments. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XXXIII: 107-130.Conant, J. (1991). The Search for Logically Alien Thought. Philosophical Topics, 20(1): 115-180.Dancy, J. (1985). The Role of Imaginary Cases in Ethics. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 66: 141-153.Descartes, R. (1996). Meditations on First Philosophy. Edited by John Cottingham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Diamond, C. (2000). Ethics, Imagination and the Method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. In A. Crary & R. Read (eds.), The New Wittgenstein, London and New York: Routledge, 149-173.Foot, P. (1967). The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect. Oxford Review, 5: 5-15.Franks, P. (1999). Transcendental Arguments, Reason, and Scepticism. In R. Stern (ed.), Transcendental Arguments: Problems and Prospects. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 111-145.Gardner, S. (2015). Introduction: The Transcendental Turn. In S. Gardner & M. Grist (eds.), The Transcendental Turn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1-19.Gava, G. (2019). Kant, the Third Antinomy and Transcendental Arguments. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 100: 453-481.Gomes, A., Stephenson, A. (2016). On the Relation of Intuition to Cognition. In D. Schulting (ed.), Kantian Nonconceptualism. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 53-79.Lear, J. (1984). The Disappearing ‘We’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, 58: 219-242.MacFarlane, J. (2000). What Does it Mean to Say That Logic is Formal? PhD Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.Meynell, L. (2014). Imagination and Insight: A New Account of the Content of Thought Experiments. Synthese, 191(17): 4149-4168.Moore, A.W. (1997). Points of View. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Norton, J.D. (1996). Are Thought Experiments Just What You Thought?. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 26(3): 333-366.Norton, J.D. (2004). On Thought Experiments: Is There More to the Argument?. Philosophy of Science, 71: 1139-1151.Penco, C. (2019). Wittgenstein’s Thought Experiments and Relativity Theory. In S. Wuppuluri & N. da Costa (eds.), Wittgensteinian, Switzerland: Springer, 341-362.Putnam, H. (1981). Reason, Truth and History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Sacks, M. (2005). The Nature of Transcendental Arguments. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 13(4): 439-460.Sacks, M. (2006). Kant’s First Analogy and the Refutation of Idealism. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 106: 115-132.Smith, J., Sullivan, P. (2011). Introduction: Transcendental Philosophy and Naturalism. In J. Smith & P. Sullivan (eds.), Transcendental Philosophy and Naturalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1-25.Sorensen, R. (2016). Thought Experiment and Imagination. In A. Kind (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, London and New York: Routledge, 420-436.Strawson, P. (1959). Individuals. London: Routledge.Strawson, P. (1966). The Bounds of Sense. London: Methuen.Stroud, B. (1965). Wittgenstein and Logical Necessity. The Philosophical Review, 74(4): 504-518.Thomson, J.J. (1971). A Defense of Abortion. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1(1): 47-66.Tolley, C. (2020). Kant on the Place of Cognition in the Progression of Our Representations. Synthese, 197(8): 3215-3244.Walton, K.L. (1990). Mimesis as Make-Believe. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Westphal, K. R. (2004). Kant’s Transcendental Proof of Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Williams, B. (1973). A Critique of Utilitarianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Williams, B. (1974). Wittgenstein and Idealism. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Vol. 7: Understanding Wittgenstein, 76-95.


DOI: 10.17454/pam-2216





VINDICATING AVOWAL EXPRESSIVISM: A NOTE ON ROSENTHAL’S PERFORMANCE-CONDITIONAL EQUIVALENCE THESIS1

abstract

The paper comments on David Rosenthal’s claim that saying “p” is performance-conditionally equivalent to saying “I believe that p”. It is argued, by way of counterexamples, that the proposed performance-conditional equivalence does not hold in this generality. The paper further proposes that avowal expressivism gives necessary conditions for the performance-conditional equivalence: it holds only if the speaker’s utterance of “p” is a non-explicit expressive act expressive of the belief that p and the utterance of “I believe that p” is an explicit expressive act expressive of the very same belief. If that is correct, the performance-conditional equivalence thesis provides an argument against Rosenthal’s preferred avowal descriptivism and in favor of avowal expressivism.

keywords

Avowals; Descriptivism; Expressivism; Performance-Conditional Equivalence; Rosenthal

1 I thank the members of the research colloquium of the Chair for Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Mannheim and the participants of the 2021 San Raffaele School of Philosophy for valuable feedback. My special thanks go to Wolfgang Freitag, Dorit Bar-On, Mitchell Green, Maximilian Philipps, Helge Rückert and two anonymous reviewers of this journal for very helpful comments on previous drafts. I am grateful to Christopher von Bülow for proofreading and editing and to the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung for financially supporting this research.

NADJA-MIRA YOLCUUniversity of [email protected]

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VINDICATING AVOWAL EXPRESSIVISM

We regularly avow being in mental states. Avowals are serious and competent utterances of present-tense self-ascriptions of mental states, like “I believe that it’s raining”, “I am annoyed” or “I like you”. The most straightforward analysis of avowals is descriptivism. According to avowal descriptivism, avowals of the form “I ψ ((that p)/(o))”, with the dominant verb ψ referring to a psychological state, p for a proposition and o for an object, function as assertions about the speaker’s mental state of ψ-ing and are expressive of the belief that the speaker is ψ-ing. Descriptivists further deny that avowals are expressive of the speaker’s (first-order) ψ-ing. That is, on a descriptivist view, serious and competent utterances of “I believe that it’s raining”, “I am annoyed” and “I like you” function as reports about the speaker’s mental states.1

There is a challenge to this position which motivates a different account of avowals. David Rosenthal – an avowal descriptivist – formulates it as follows:

[W]hen I say ‘I doubt it’ […] it seems natural to take me to be expressing my doubt, and not just reporting what mental state I am in. […] If you ask me whether it is raining and I say ‘I think so’, it would be bizarre to take me to be talking about my mental state, rather than the weather. (Rosenthal, 1993, p. 69)

Considerations such as these (paired with the idea that avowals exhibit some kind of first-person authority) have led some to propose avowal expressivism: the thesis that serious and competent utterances of the form “I ψ ((that p)/(o))” are typically expressive of the (speaker’s) first-order mental state of ψ-ing. On expressivist views, with a serious and competent utterance of “I believe that it’s raining”, “I am annoyed” or “I like you” the speaker typically expresses a first-order belief about the weather, annoyance or affection for the addressee, respectively.2

1 Proponents of avowal descriptivism are, e.g., Rosenthal (1986, p. 75; 1993, pp. 49–50; 1995; 2010), Kaplan (1999) and Green (2009).2 For expressivist proposals, see, e.g., Wittgenstein (1953), Finkelstein (2003), Bar-On (2004), Freitag (2018), Freitag and Yolcu (2021), Freitag and Kraus (2022). Some expressivists propose that an avowal typically both functions as an assertion that one is in the mental state named and is expressive of that very (first-order) mental state (and expressive of the belief that one is in that (first-order) mental state due to the avowal’s functioning as an assertion) (see, e.g., Finkelstein, 2003, pp. 95–97). Avowal expressivism, as specified here, is compatible with the claim that avowals have assertive force. While the arguments given below go against avowal descriptivism, they might not exclude such a dual-

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Rosenthal admits (as do other descriptivists) that we often use “I believe that p”3 instead of “p” – we use the two interchangeably. While the expressivist takes this to show that, in these cases, a speaker’s avowal “I believe that p” serves the same expressive function as her utterance of “p”, namely expressing the speaker’s belief that p, Rosenthal denies this thesis. He wants to uphold avowal descriptivism, yet concludes that utterances of “p” and “I believe that p” are performance-conditionally equivalent:

Let’s assume the commonsense view that the speech act ‘I think it’s raining’ reports, but does not also express, one’s thought that it’s raining, and that the remark, ‘It’s raining’, does express that thought. […] Nevertheless, the two remarks have, with a qualification that does not matter for our purposes, the same conditions of use, that is, the same conditions for the appropriate performance of speech acts that use those sentences. The speech acts are, we can say, performance conditionally equivalent. (Rosenthal, 2010, p. 28)4

He generalizes from this instance and claims that there is a performance-conditional equivalence “between saying that p and saying that one thinks that p” (Rosenthal, 2010, pp. 31-32). Thus, Rosenthal claims that assertions5 of sentences of the form

(1) “p”,

and

(2) “I believe that p”

are performance-conditionally equivalent. He bases this generalization on utterances of

(3) “It’s raining”,

and

(4) “I believe that it’s raining”.

While serious and competent utterances of (3) and (4) can be, and indeed often are, used interchangeably – they often serve the same function in a discourse – I will argue that assertions of forms (1) and (2) are not performance-conditionally equivalent. After briefly introducing Rosenthal’s performance-conditional equivalence thesis in Section 1, I present counterexamples to this generalization in Section 2. Based on Freitag’s theory of explicit expressives, Section 3 explains what goes wrong in the counterexamples and offers an

act analysis of avowals. If that were the case, (P*) would need to be revised accordingly. Here, I will only be concerned with “pure” avowal expressivism.3 Rosenthal uses “I think that p”. Since he seems to use thought in the sense of belief, I use “believe” here (compare also Williams (2013) for this reading of Rosenthal).4 According to Rosenthal, the relevant qualification is that “the sentence ‘I think it’s raining’ can be used, in contrast to the sentence ‘It’s raining’, to indicate the speaker’s hesitation” (Rosenthal, 2010, p. 28). Rosenthal also notes that there are contexts where utterances of sentences of form “I think that p” “can also indicate dispositive certainty” and claims that “degrees of confidence won’t be relevant here” (p. 28). 5 I assume that Rosenthal uses “saying” in the thick sense of the word, meaning “asserting” and not just “uttering” (compare also Rosenthal, 1995, p. 323).

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expressivist explanation of the specific performance-conditional equivalence of utterances of (3) and (4). The discussion strongly suggests a necessary condition for the performance-conditional equivalence of utterances of sentences of forms (1) and (2): the respective expressive acts need to have identical expressive content; that is, they need to be expressive of the same mental state. That avowal expressivism explains performance-conditional equivalence has also been noted by Dorit Bar-On (2010, pp. 54-55, 59). My expressivist account of performance-conditional equivalence is in the same spirit, and I aim to support this thesis by providing examples where the performance-conditional equivalence thesis and the assumption of avowal descriptivism lead one astray. I conclude that the performance-conditional equivalence thesis does not hold under a descriptivist analysis of avowals but rather requires avowal expressivism.

Let’s start with serious and competent utterances of (3) and (4). Usually, “I believe that it’s raining” functions to convey the same information as “It’s raining”: With both utterances the speaker conveys information about the weather – that it is raining – as well as about herself, namely that she believes that it’s raining. “I believe that it’s raining” and “It’s raining” can thus often be used interchangeably. We can similarly observe that “Ouch!” and “I am in pain” (or “It hurts”) can usually be used interchangeably, just as much as “Thank you!” and “I am grateful” (Rosenthal, 2010, p. 28; 1986, p. 74). Based on these observations, and with avowal descriptivism in the background, Rosenthal proposes the following principle of performance-conditional equivalence:

(P) (Typically,) speech acts and assertions of self-ascriptions of those mental states of which the respective speech act is expressive are (roughly) performance-conditionally equivalent.6

The performance-conditional equivalence described in (P) is qualified in two ways. First, there is a restriction to typical contexts. For instance, sometimes one might say “I believe that p” without being willing or able to say “p”. Consider the following case of psychotherapy: After several sessions, her psychotherapist has finally convinced Sally that she believes that her brother is angry with her (e.g., as a result of some quarrel back in their childhood). Sally now believes that she believes that her brother is angry with her. Thus, Sally would aptly report on her mental state by asserting “I believe that my brother is angry with me”, thereby expressing her higher-order belief that she believes that her brother is angry with her. She would, however, not assert “My brother is angry with me”, for the therapist has also convinced her that, although she has this deep-rooted belief, that belief is mistaken and her brother is in fact not (or no longer) angry with her (for a similar example, compare also Bar-On, 2010, p. 54). Rosenthal cannot explain this mismatch but just dismisses it by claiming that these contexts are quite rare and restricts performance-conditional equivalence to typical contexts (2010, p. 29).Second, according to (P), if the two acts are performance-conditionally equivalent, they are not fully but only roughly equivalent. This restriction is supposed to account for the phenomenon of hedging. For instance, if “I believe that p” is used to assert that p, which it can be but need not be, the assertion that p has only weakened assertive force – it is a hedged assertion.7

6 This is a slightly modified version of how Rosenthal puts it in 1995, p. 322. Compare Searle (1979, p. 54) and Freitag (2018) for similar principles. 7 For an overview of mitigation, compare Thaler (2012). For an overview of hedged assertion, compare Benton & van

1. The Performance-

Conditional Equivalence Thesis

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It’s not entirely clear how Rosenthal explains the performance-conditional equivalence specified in (P). Using a factive, causal notion of expression (1986, p. 78; 1993, p. 56; 1995, pp. 316, 324; 2010, p. 25), Rosenthal holds that sincere speech acts express those mental states by which they are (partly) caused. A speaker’s sincere “Thank you!” expresses gratitude, a speaker’s sincere promise “I’ll be there” expresses an intention to show up and a speaker’s sincere “Ouch!” expresses pain. In light of this correspondence between (sincere) illocutionary acts and expressions of mental states, Rosenthal assigns the corresponding self-ascriptions of mental states the same use conditions (Rosenthal, 2010, p. 32): Whenever one says “Thank you!”, one is “roughly equally disposed to say” (p. 29) “I am grateful”, and whenever one promises to be there, one might just as well have said “I intend to be there”.8 Nevertheless, according to Rosenthal, serious and competent utterances of self-ascriptions of mental states have assertive force and thus express the speaker’s belief that she herself is in the mental state named. So, while, for instance, “I am grateful” can be used instead of “Thank you!”, the former does not function as an expression of gratitude but is expressive of the speaker’s belief that she herself is grateful.With (P) and avowal descriptivism in the background, Rosenthal concludes that assertions of forms (1) and (2) are generally performance-conditionally equivalent:

[T]he speech acts of asserting that p and asserting that I think that p, though they differ in respect to their truth conditions, have roughly the same conditions of assertibility. Any circumstances in which I could say that p are circumstances in which I could say I think that p. (Rosenthal, 1995, p. 320)

This generalization is incorrect. In the next section, I provide examples of utterances of sentences of forms (1) and (2) for which (P) together with the assumption of avowal descriptivism predicts performance-conditional equivalence even though, in the most plausible contexts, the respective pairs are not performance-conditionally equivalent. (P) together with the assumption of avowal descriptivism predicts performance-conditional equivalence where there is none.

Far from denying the connection between certain illocutionary acts and the expression of corresponding mental states, I think it is precisely because of this connection that Rosenthal’s general thesis of the performance-conditional equivalence of assertions of sentences of forms (1) and (2) is incorrect. Utterances of sentences of forms (1) and (2) are performance-conditionally equivalent only if the utterance of an indicative sentence of form “p” is indeed used as an assertion, or at least as an expression of the belief that p, and the utterance of (2) serves to express that very same belief. Only if that’s the case, as it usually is for the pair of (3) and (4), can sentences of forms (1) and (2) be used interchangeably. However, it is not the case that all serious and competent utterances of an indicative sentence “p” are assertions, or even

Elswyk (2020).8 Let’s pause here. While (P) seems plausible for the pairs “Thank you!” and “I am grateful (to you)”, and “Ouch!” and “I am in pain”, it might be less plausible for “I’ll be there” and “I intend to be there”. After all, a serious and competent utterance of “I intend to be there” need not have commissive force. While it usually is a Moorean absurdity to affirm “I’ll be there but I don’t intend to be there”, it is perfectly fine to affirm “I intend to be there but I don’t promise to be there”. In seriously and competently uttering a self-ascription of intention, a speaker may make a promise but need not do so (and if she does, it’s probably weakened). The illocutionary act of promising to do something is more than merely expressing an intention to do something. That might be a difference between promising and thanking. (P), thus, seems doubtful for promises and avowals of the corresponding intention. Similar considerations hold for pairs of utterances of forms (1) and (2). Whether the qualification of “rough” equivalence can meet these worries, needs to be discussed.

2. Against the General Performance-Conditional Equivalence of (1) and (2)

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expressions of a belief that p. This is especially vivid in those cases where “p” is a present-tense mental state self-ascription. Consider the following pairs:

(5) “I like you.”(6) “I believe I like you.”

(7) “I am afraid.”(8) “I believe I am afraid.”

(9) “I hope that it’s raining.”(10) “I believe I hope that it’s raining.”

All three pairs have the syntactical form of pair (1) and (2). Thus, if Rosenthal’s avowal descriptivism is correct and if (P) holds for assertions of sentences of forms (1) and (2), then (P) also holds for the above pairs. That is, it should be possible to use the members of each pair of sentences interchangeably; their utterances should be performance-conditionally equivalent. But utterances of the members of these pairs are not performance-conditionally equivalent – at least not typically.9

Consider this for (5) and (6). A newly won friend wants to hear me say (5) “I like you” and is rather disappointed if I just tell her (6) “I believe I like you”. What she wants to be assured of is that I like her and not merely that I believe I like her. After all, I might be mistaken in my belief and not like her at all. Sensitive to this possibility, she will only take assurance of my affection for her from an utterance of (5) but not of (6) – even if (6) does not convey any hesitance on my part. And if I repeatedly use (6) instead of (5), showing no regard for the difference, she might become exceedingly cross with me (compare Williams, 2013, p. 1126, for similar examples). (Similar considerations hold for the other pairs.)If serious and competent utterances of (5) and (6) are not performance-conditionally equivalent and the pair has the form of pair (1) and (2), then assertions of sentences of forms (1) and (2) are not performance-conditionally equivalent – or utterances of self-ascriptions of mental states are not (always) assertions (without any first-order expressive content) after all. Thus, given the lack of performance-conditional equivalence for utterances of (5) and (6), (P) needs to be restricted or avowal descriptivism must be given up.Some might attempt to save avowal descriptivism by reference to hedging. They might argue that with (6) the speaker is weakly asserting that she likes the addressee. There are two ways to go from here: Either one insists that utterances of (5) and (6) are performance-conditionally equivalent after all – with (6) one just asserts shyly that one likes the addressee. Or one

9 Consider also the following example inspired by a remark of Wittgenstein’s. Wittgenstein notes that “[t]he sentence ‘I want some wine to drink’ has roughly the same sense as ‘Wine over here!’ ” (Wittgenstein, 1980, RPP I §469). At least on the utterance level, any proponent of (P) needs to agree: The request “Wine over here!” and the utterance of a self-ascription of the corresponding desire “I want some wine to drink” typically have roughly the same use conditions. And if avowal descriptivism is correct and (P) holds for assertions of sentences of forms (1) and (2), then serious and competent utterances of “I want some wine to drink” and “I believe I want some wine to drink” can typically be used interchangeably. If that’s the case and we assume transitivity for (rough) performance-conditional equivalence, then the request “Wine over here!” and the serious and competent utterance of “I believe I want some wine to drink” have the same use conditions too. But that is surely not the case. A serious and competent utterance of “I believe I want some wine to drink” is not expressive of the speaker’s desire for wine, nor does it function as a request for wine. If I am sitting in the living room with some friends and tell them that I believe I want some wine to drink, they would surely not understand this as a request to bring me some wine. In this case, (P) and avowal descriptivism lead one astray.

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agrees that utterances of (5) and (6) are usually not performance-conditionally equivalent but attributes this to the latter functioning as a hedged assertion that the speaker likes the addressee. (Corresponding considerations hold for (7) and (8), and (9) and (10).) Let’s assume that the avowal descriptivist grants that utterances of (5) and (6) are typically not performance-conditionally equivalent. While there is indeed some weakening of illocutionary force if (6) is used as an assertion that one likes the addressee, the same holds for assertions of (2) and (4). Anyone taking this route while agreeing that utterances of (5) and (6) are typically not performance-conditionally equivalent and upholding (a restricted version of) (P), would need to explain why hedging or hesitation precludes performance-conditional equivalence for utterances of (5) and (6) but not of (3) and (4).10

In light of counterexamples (5)–(10), I propose to give up avowal descriptivism, which also leads to a modification of (P). In the next section, I offer an expressivist explanation for why utterances of (5) and (6) are usually not performance-conditionally equivalent while utterances of (3) and (4) are. The problem with utterances of (5) and (6) is not that the speaker makes assertions with the same content, albeit of different assertive strengths (here I echo Rosenthal, 2010, p. 28, who claims that “degrees of confidence won’t be relevant”). Instead, utterances of (5) and (6), irrespective of the strength of their respective illocutionary force, if they function as illocutionary acts at all, usually have different expressive contents. That’s why they are typically not performance-conditionally equivalent.

The counterexamples strongly suggest that avowal descriptivism and, thus, also (P), as specified above, are incorrect. While there is, under certain circumstances, a performance-conditional equivalence between speech acts and serious and competent utterances of present-tense self-ascriptions of those mental states of which the respective speech acts are expressive, the lack of performance-conditional equivalence in pairs (5)–(10) points to the fact that, often, serious and competent utterances of self-ascriptions of mental states are simply not assertions about one’s mental states (or they are, at least, also expressive of the mental state named). Avowal descriptivism is incorrect and (P) needs to be modified.I propose to go expressivist. The central expressivist thesis with respect to avowals – going back at least to Wittgenstein – is that in uttering a present-tense self-ascription of a mental state, the speaker typically expresses the first-order mental state named (see, e.g., Bar-On, 2004, p. 330). As Wittgenstein holds, in affirming “I hope he’ll come” (1953, PI §585), a speaker expresses hope, with “I am in pain” (1953, PI §244) she expresses pain, and with “I am afraid” (1953, PI II ix) she expresses fear. I will now give a very rough sketch of Wolfgang Freitag’s theory of expressives, which I follow in this paper (for a more comprehensive introduction, see Freitag, 2018; Freitag and Yolcu, 2021; and Freitag and Kraus, 2022).11

10 One way to go might be to insist that sameness or difference in performance-conditions (also) rests on other factors than the information conveyed (e.g., what is at stake in a context, or certain commitments the speaker undertakes in making an utterance). I appreciate that this may very well be. Nevertheless, I offer an elegant expressivist way to distinguish between cases in which serious and competent utterances of sentences of forms (1) and (2) are performance-conditionally equivalent and cases in which they are not. If other factors are relevant, or a different (descriptivist) explanation is supposedly more suitable, it is up to the avowal descriptivist to argue for it. 11 In many respects, Freitag’s theory of explicit expressive acts shares the spirit of Bar-On’s neo-expressivism. For instance, both propose a distinction between sentence expression (s-expression in Bar-On’s terminology) and speaker expression (a-expression in Bar-On’s terminology) and maintain that present-tense self-ascriptions of mental states have a dual use. Nevertheless, there are differences. For instance, Freitag’s theory operates with a non-causal, non-factive notion of expression and puts emphasis on the connection between the illocutionary and the expressive dimensions of speech.

3. An Expressivist Explanation of Performance-Conditional Equivalence

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Given classical speech act theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969), linguistic acts generally have an illocutionary and an expressive dimension. A serious and competent utterance of “It is raining”, for instance, provides twofold information. The speaker describes the world – she asserts that it is raining. But she also gives information about herself – she expresses a belief that it is raining. A serious and competent utterance of “It is raining” thus also functions as a non-explicit expressive act (Freitag, 2018, p. 59). So far, that’s standard and fairly uncontroversial.12 The theory of expressives takes this part of expressivism as given.The central expressivist thesis is that there are also explicit expressive acts (Freitag, 2018, p. 59): utterances in which the mental state expressed is made explicit in the utterance. Let’s consider this for doxastic avowals. A serious and competent utterance of “I believe that it is raining” typically gives the same two-fold information as “It is raining”. With “I believe that it is raining” the speaker typically expresses a belief that it is raining as a direct, explicit expressive act and she might assert that it is raining as an indirect illocutionary act. With both utterances – “It is raining” and “I believe that it is raining” – the speaker expresses a belief that it is raining; by uttering “It is raining” she does so non-explicitly and by uttering “I believe that it is raining” she does so explicitly.Expressive acts have expressive contents: in performing an expressive act, the speaker expresses a mental state. Expressive contents C are made up of a psychological mode13 and a mental state content (at least for intentional mental states). For instance, with β for belief, p for that it is raining and S indicating the speaker, the non-explicit expressive act performed in seriously and competently uttering “It is raining” and the explicit expressive act performed with “I believe that it is raining” have the same expressive content, namely β

S(p).14 Similarly,

with γ representing gratitude, the non-explicit expressive act performed with “Thank you!” and the explicit expressive act performed with “I am grateful to you” both have γ

S(you) as

their expressive contents. And, with π representing pain, the non-explicit expressive “Ouch!” and the explicit expressive “I am in pain” have identical expressive contents, namely π

S.

Of course, Freitag’s theory of expressives does not deny that self-ascriptions of mental states can be used to report on one’s own mental states. Self-ascriptions of mental states of the form “I ψ ((that p)/(o))” have two uses: depending on context, they can be used as explicit expressive acts or as non-explicit expressive acts (Freitag, 2018, p. 66; compare Bar-On, 2004, p. 303). In the latter case, the relevant avowal is indeed expressive of the belief that the speaker is ψ-ing and functions as an assertion that she is ψ-ing.15

12 Some, however, hold that expression is factive and maintain that with an insincere illocutionary act the speaker only purports to express the corresponding mental state (see, e.g., Rosenthal, 1986, pp. 87-93; 2010, p. 25; Owens, 2006, p. 113; compare Green, 2007). I will not debate the relation of illocution and expression in this paper (for a recent overview of the relation of assertion and belief expression, see Siebel, 2020). Here I assume that classical speech act theory is correct: When performing an illocutionary act which has a sincerity condition, the speaker is also performing an expressive act, irrespective of whether or not she actually is in the corresponding mental state. A speaker who performs an illocutionary act with a sincerity condition presents herself as being in that mental state which is specified in the sincerity condition. I assume a non-factive notion of expression: One can express a mental state even if one is not in that mental state (compare Searle, 1969, p. 65; Davis, 2003; Eriksson, 2010). I shall say that an expressive act is expressively correct (Kaplan, 1999) if and only if the speaker is indeed in the mental state expressed. My general argument, however, does not depend on the non-factivity of expression.13 Compare Searle (1983, p. 6). 14 Since, on my view, expression is non-factive, the speaker might not be in the mental state expressed. Nevertheless, the mental state expressed is not someone else’s or just free-floating, rather it is the speaker herself who is supposedly in that mental state (as indicated by the subscript S). 15 Note that avowal expressivism, as presented here, is not a semantic thesis. The semantic content of the sentence “I believe that it is raining” is that the speaker believes that it is raining, and the sentence is true if and only if she does so (see Freitag and Yolcu, 2021, p. 5019).

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Armed with the theory of (explicit) expressive acts, let’s return to the (alleged) performance-conditional equivalence of serious and competent utterances of sentences of forms (1) and (2). What goes wrong for utterances of (5) and (6)? Typically, utterances of (5) and (6) cannot (adequately) be used interchangeably, for they have different expressive contents. With a serious and competent utterance of (5) “I like you” the speaker usually does not assert that she likes the addressee. Nor does she express a belief that she likes the addressee. Instead, “I like you” serves to express the speaker’s liking the addressee. An utterance of (6) “I believe I like you”, however, does not serve to express the speaker’s liking the addressee. Instead, in its explicit-expressive use it is expressive of the speaker’s belief that she likes the addressee, and in its non-explicit-expressive use it is expressive of the speaker’s second-order belief that she herself believes that she likes the addressee. That’s why serious and competent utterances of (5) and (6) are typically not performance-conditionally equivalent: they usually function as expressive acts with different expressive contents.Avowal expressivism does not only explain why utterances of (5) and (6) are usually not performance-conditionally equivalent. It can also account for cases where (5) and (6) can indeed be used interchangeably (these are admittedly very special contexts). Utterances of (5) and (6) are performance-conditionally equivalent only if (5) is used as a non-explicit expressive act expressive of the speaker’s belief that she likes the addressee and (6) is used as an explicit expressive act expressive of the very same belief. Only then do utterances of (5) and (6) serve to express the same expressive content. (A similar reasoning applies to (7) and (8), and (9) and (10).)This analysis carries over to utterances of (3) and (4). They are performance-conditionally equivalent only if (3) is used as a non-explicit expressive act expressive of the belief that it is raining and (4) is used as an explicit expressive act expressive of the belief that it is raining as well. If (4), however, is used as a non-explicit expressive act expressive of the speaker’s belief that she herself believes that it is raining, the expressive contents of utterances (3) and (4) diverge and the two utterances are not performance-conditionally equivalent.The expressivist proposal, thus, has more explanatory power than (P) and avowal descriptivism. It can explain when utterances of sentences of forms (1) and (2) are performance-conditionally equivalent and when they are not, as it is usually the case for utterances of (5) and (6). The discussion strongly suggests that utterances of sentences of forms (1) and (2) are performance-conditionally equivalent only if the utterance of a sentence of form (1) is an expression of the belief that p and the utterance of a sentence of form (2) functions to express that very same belief. That is, utterances of sentences of forms (1) and (2) are performance-conditionally equivalent only if (1) is used as a non-explicit expressive act, expressing the speaker’s belief that p, and (2) is used as an explicit expressive act, also expressing the speaker’s belief that p. Only if an utterance of (2) makes explicit what is implicit in an utterance of (1), namely that the speaker believes that p, can (1) and (2) be used interchangeably – their utterances then function to convey the same information: that the speaker believes that p.16

But if an utterance of a sentence of form (1) does not serve to express the speaker’s belief that p but a different mental state, as is usually the case for utterances of (5), (7) and (9), and that mental state differs from the one expressed when uttering a sentence of form (2), then the two

16 Here, I focus on the expressive dimension of speech. Performance-conditional equivalence might also require an equivalence in the illocutionary dimension. Sentences of forms (1) and (2) can both be used to assert that p. While (2) need not be uttered with illocutionary force at all, an utterance of (2) can function, via conversational implicature (Freitag, 2018), as a hedged assertion that p.

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utterances are not performance-conditionally equivalent. Accordingly, I propose to revise (P):

(P*) Speech acts and serious and competent utterances of self-ascriptions of those mental states of which the respective speech act is expressive are (roughly) performance-conditionally equivalent only if their expressive contents are identical.

Performance-conditional equivalence of speech acts of forms (1) and (2) requires identical expressive content. The expressive contents of serious and competent utterances of sentences of forms (1) and (2) are identical if and only if the former is a non-explicit and the latter an explicit expressive act. Hence, performance-conditional equivalence of speech acts of forms (1) and (2) requires avowal expressivism.17

I have presented counterexamples against the general performance-conditional equivalence of assertions of forms (1) and (2). In response, I have offered an expressivist way of distinguishing between utterances of sentences of forms (1) and (2) which are performance-conditionally equivalent and such which are not. Only if the expressive content of the expressive act performed with an utterance of a sentence of form (1) matches that of the expressive act performed with an utterance of a sentence of form (2) are the two utterances performance-conditionally equivalent.18 The phenomenon that utterances of (3) and (4) can often be used interchangeably, which Rosenthal correctly identifies, can thus be explained by reference to a theory of expressive acts: With a serious and competent utterance of (3) the speaker non-explicitly expresses the belief that it’s raining. And an utterance of (4) usually serves to express that very same belief explicitly. Only if we have this match of implicit and explicit expression of the very same belief are utterances of (3) and (4) performance-conditionally equivalent. Thus, avowal expressivism does not only explain the frequent interchangeability of speech acts of forms (1) and (2) and gives a necessary condition for their performance-conditional equivalence, but the thesis of performance-conditional equivalence even provides an argument in favor of avowals having first-order expressive content.

REFERENCESAustin, J.L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words (2nd ed.). Edited by J.O. Urmson & M. Sbisà. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Bar-On, D. (2004). Speaking My Mind: Expression and Self-knowledge. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Bar-On, D. (2010). Avowals: Expression, Security, and Knowledge: Reply to Matthew Boyle, David Rosenthal, and Maura Tumulty. Acta Analytica, 25: 47-63.Benton, M.A., van Elswyk, P. (2020). Hedged Assertion. In S. Goldberg (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Assertion. New York: Oxford University Press, 245-263.Davis, W.A. (2003). Meaning, Expressing and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Eriksson, J. (2010). Self-expression, Expressiveness, and Sincerity. Acta Analytica, 25: 71-79.

17 (P*) generalizes beyond the doxastic case. With the same structure, we can give a necessary condition for when, for instance, the speech act “Thank you!” and a serious and competent utterance of “I am grateful to you” are performance-conditionally equivalent. They are performance-conditionally equivalent only if the utterance of “Thank you!” functions as a non-explicit expressive act expressive of the speaker’s gratitude towards the addressee and the utterance of “I am grateful to you” functions as an explicit expressive act also expressive of the speaker’s gratitude towards the same addressee. 18 If the mark of performance-conditional equivalence is identical expressive content, we might not need to restrict performance-conditional equivalence to speech acts, as done in (P*). If non-verbal expressive acts have performance-conditions, it might be possible to extend the equivalence to non-verbal expressive acts (compare Bar-On, 2010, p. 59).

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Finkelstein, D.H. (2003). Expression and the inner. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Freitag, W. (2018). Wittgenstein on ‘I believe’. Grazer Philosophische Studien, 95(1): 54-69.Freitag, W., Yolcu, N.M. (2021). An Expressivist Solution to Moorean Paradoxes. Synthese, 199: 5001-5024.Freitag, W., Kraus, K.T. (2022). An Expressivist Interpretation of Kant’s ‘I think’. Noûs, 56(1): 110-132.Green, M.S. (2007). How Do Speech Acts Express Psychological States? In S.L. Tsohatzidis (ed.), John Searle’s Philosophy of Language: Force, Meaning and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 267-284.Green, M.S. (2009). Speech Acts, the Handicap Principle and the Expression of Psychological States. Mind & Language, 24(2): 139-163.Kaplan, D. (1999). The Meaning of ‘Ouch’ and ‘Oops’: Explorations in the Theory of Meaning as Use. 2004 version, University of California, Los Angeles (unpublished manuscript).Owens, D. (2006). Testimony and Assertion. Philosophical Studies, 130: 105-129.Rosenthal, D.M. (1986). Intentionality. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 10: 151-184. Reprinted in D.M. Rosenthal, Consciousness and Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 71-99.Rosenthal, D.M. (1993). Thinking That One Thinks. In M. Davies & G.W. Humphreys (eds.), Consciousness: Psychological and Philosophical Essays, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 197-223. Reprinted in D.M. Rosenthal, Consciousness and Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 46-70.Rosenthal, D.M. (1995). Moore’s Paradox and Consciousness. Philosophical Perspectives, 9: 313-333.Rosenthal, D.M. (2010). Expressing One’s Mind. Acta Analytica, 25: 21-34.Searle, J.R. (1969). Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Searle, J.R. (1979). Expression and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Searle, J.R. (1983). Intentionality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Siebel, M. (2020). The Belief View of Assertion. In S.C. Goldberg (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Assertion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 99-118.Thaler, V. (2012). Mitigation as Modification of Illocutionary Force. Journal of Pragmatics, 44: 907-919.Williams, J.N. (2013). Moore’s Paradox and the Priority of Belief Thesis. Philosophical Studies, 165: 1117-1138.Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.Wittgenstein, L. (1980). Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology (vol. I). Edited by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell.

Mind, Language, and The First-Person Perspective

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