Consciousness (Philosophical Issues Series No 1)

CONSCIOUSNESS

P/zilosophical Issues, 1, 1991

PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES Edited by Enrique Villanueva (Sociedad Filos6fica Ibero Americana/Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mdxico)

Forthcoming Volumes

Volume 2, Rationality in Epistemology Volume 3, Science and Knowledge

P/zilosophicalIssues, 1, 1991

CONSCIOUSNESS

edited by

Enrique Villanueva

Sociedad Filos6fica Ibero Americana

Ridgeview Publishing Company Atascadero, California

Copyright O 1991 by Enrique Villanueva All rights resewed. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electrical or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any informational storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.

Paper text: ISBN 0-924922-01-x Cloth (library edition): ISBN 0-924922-51-6

The typesetting was done by Jose Luis Olivares.

Published in the United States of America by Ridgeview Publishing Company Box 686 Atascadero, California 93423 Printed in the United States of America

Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Enrique Villanueva 1 The Independence of Consciousness and Sensory Quality

David M. Rosenthal 2 Lovely and Suspect Qualities Daniel C. Dennett 3 Consciousness, Unconsciousness and Intentionality

John R. Searle 4 Searle's Neo-Cartesian Theory of Consciousness

D. M. Armstrong 5 Sensations in a Language of Thought

Georges Rey 6 Consciousness and Subjectivity

J. I. Biro 7 The Anatomy of Consciousness

Brian O'Shaughnessy

vii

1

8 Between Internalism and Externalism

Ernest Sosa 9 What is Present t o the Mind?

Donald Davidson 10 Thoughts and its Objects

Akeel Bilgmmi

11 Belief, Self-Ascription, and Ontology James E. Tomberlin 12 Chisholm's Intentional Criterion of Property-Identity and De Se Belief Lynn Pasquarella

Contributors

Acknowledgments The present volume derives mostly from papers presented a t the Sociedad Filos6fica Ibero Americana, SOFIA'S second conference on Consciousness made in collaboration with the Sociedad Argentina de Anilisis Filos6fico SADAF, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 30-August 1, 1989. SOFIA expresses its gratitude t o Ernest Sosa for his kind coperation and overall support during preparation of the conference. Our gratitude for Eduardo Rabossi and Juan Rodriguez Larreta for their brave encouragement t o carry on with the conference at a time of great stress in Argentina. Lourdes Valdivia again excelled herself taking a main burden of the organization both from Mdxico (with the generous help from Silvia Carrillo) and while in Buenos Aires; her editorial virtues are present again in this volume. We also express our gratitude t o all the SADAF members who indefatigably help us before and during the Conference. The British Council again helped this time t o make possible Professor O'Shaughnessy's valuable participation. Finally thanks again t o our Mexican supporters the Secretaria de Educaci6n Pliblica, the Universidad de Guadalajara and the Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mkxico (through many of its departments) who continue t o provide unvaluable help even in those moments of great economic stress.

Enrique Villanueva Tepoztlin, Mkxico, January 1990

PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES, 1 Consciousness, 1991

Introduction Enrique Villanueva We should ask ourselves how much we have advanced in our theoretical mastery of the concept of consciousness since the days of the Cartesians who claimed that consciousness is a light involving self-knowledge and rationality. How much more do we know about that light and the actual working of that illumination in the mind's mechanisms? The ensuing papers handle in more than one way that crucial question about this most central of our mental, personal concepts. Consciousness continues to stand at the center of current discussions in the philosophy of mind and the metaphysics of persons, causing the most diverse theoretical reactions. These go from despair to ingenious proposals of ways to make room for consciousness in a naturalistic account of persons in the world. Let me introduce some of the content of the papers that make up this volume so as to sharpen the issues and find some common threads among them. I have distributed the papers into two groups: the first seven papers deal directly with some aspect of consciousness whereas the remaining papers deal with some more general issues concerning the Philosophy of Mind.

David Rosenthal sets up to open the Cartesian metaphysical oyster which fuses the consciousness and the sensory quality of a mental state. For Rosenthal consciousness and sensory quality should be kept apart if we are to explain sensory quality. In the first three sections he argues that consciousness is not intrinsic to a state's having sensory quality, then sketches an account of what it is for a mental state to have sensory quality on the basis of its independence and finally claims to explain and disarm the intuitive force of making consciousness an intrinsic property of mental states. In a fourth part he offers an account of the consciousness of sensory states which could be generalized as a general account of what it is for any mental state to be conscious. On Rosenthal's account to be conscious of a mental state is to have a higher-order thought about that mental state. This assumes that we could be in a sensory state without having consciousness of it. Once we have a higher-order thoughtl about the first sensory state we become conscious but this consciousness is not real for in order to be conscious that thoughtl would have to have another higher-order thought2 which makes conscious the thoughtl and thus the sensory state itself. The existence of this hierarchy on the one hand explains according to Rosenthal why we are generally unaware of such higher order thoughts as thoughtl and allows, on the other hand, a distinction between introspective and non-introspective consciousness of mental states: it is only when we have a thoughtz that we become conscious (in the ordinary sense, let us say) of thoughtl. The relevant higher-order thoughts have to be occurrent (in the personal or folk level), not dispositional, and need only relatively weak conceptual resources to refer to one's own sensory states. Rosenthal claims further, that a theory based on higher-order thoughts can save the phenomenological appareances at least as well as the Cartesian idea does for he argues that cases like intermittent pains or auditory sensations that we screen out are best explained if we introduce higher-order thoughts coming and going and allow the sensory state to persist. Cases of another kind are those which involve fine grained discriminations like wine tasting or musical appraisal and these differences among sensory qual-

ities Rosenthal explains in terms of how fine grained are the concepts that figure in the relevant higher order thoughts. But how central is consciousness to the mind in Rosenthal's theory? He grants that consciousness is necessary to fix the extensions of our terms for mental states and for the term 'mental' itself, and more importantly still, that consciousness provides the basis for granting personhood for it is a particular kind of reflective consciousness involving some measure of rational conectedness which makes for being a person. And this is claimed to be the case precisely on the basis of a separation of consciousness from mental states, specifically from sensory states. Daniel Dennett in Lovely and Suspect Qualities while largely in agreement with Rosenthal's paper, goes on to push his views further arguing that the Lockean strategy with secondary qualities should be applied to sensory qualities conceiving them as equivalence classes of complexes of primary qualities of those states so that they could exist as dispositions, independently of any observers, but otherwise granting that the selection of colors or pains is made on the basis of existing persons who are capable of color vision or conscious experience of pains. Dennett claims that we do not need to posit any additional intrinsically conscious qualitative properties (subjective, private, ineffable) in the dispositional properties of those internal discriminative states since we can explain all the behavioural effects and particular contents of our consciousness. These properties are partially independent of consciousness and Dennett divides them into lovely (which exist as dispositions till they exercise their power over an observer) and suspect ones (dispositions that have been actualized on at least one subject). The Cartesian tradition makes all lovely properties suspect ones out of the prejudice that in these cases existence and consciousness necessarily go together. But breaking the link between existence and consciousness allows Dennett to break another link, namely, that between consciousness and the immaterial. Against the Cartesian again, Dennett claims that sensory qualities are dispositional properties of brain states capable of producing further effects

on the very subjects that have those states, thus opening an overall account of consciousness. John Searle puts himself on the side of those who deplore the current externalistic naturalization of the concept of consciousness. He goes against those who neglect consciousness' subjective character and go on to postulate unconscious mental processes to do the tasks traditionally ascribed to consciousness and thus in one way or another try to eliminate it. Searle holds that all intentional states are either actually or potentially intentional conscious states. Intentionality he divides between intrinsic and as-if intentionality. Intrinsic intentionality has an aspectual shape which goes very closely with thought and experience for these last represent their conditions of satisfaction under aspects and these aspects matter to the agent for they are constitutive of the way the agent thinks about a given subject matter. But aspectual character resists characterization in terms of third person behavioural or neurophysiological predicates. Behavioural predicates leave the aspectual shape under indeterminacy and this result refutes linguistic behaviourism. Neurophysiological facts even if causally sufficient to fix the mental, cannot amount to a specification of the intentional; only by inference can they reach it. From all the above Searle arrives to three conclusions: namely, first, that the aspectual character of intentional states, conscious or unconscious, is irreducibly subjective; second, that unconscious intentional mental states are objective features of the brain (when unconscious), and third, that these objective features are capable of causing subjective conscious thoughts. With these theses we can go back to the case of intermittent pains found already in Rosenthal's paper. Searle thinks that we might say either of two things: namely, first, with the Cartesian, that the pains only exist when conscious, or second, that the pains exist throughout. Searle finds it more natural to say the latter. Moreover, what would be a pain existing unconsciously? Searle answers flatly: the underlying neurophysiological process that was capable of generating behaviour appropriate to someone who had that conscious

state. It is a bodily condition that comes and goes, sometimes reaching the conscious level and thus gaining aspectual shape, sometimes staying as an objective feature of the brain and thus losing that aspectual shape. Searle claims that his view has the useful consequence concerning the counting of unconscious beliefs for it is absurd to try to locate these beliefs as representations hidden in some part of the brain. For these beliefs when unconscious lose their appearance, their conscious shape, becoming only cerebral conditions. 'Representation' is playing tricks on some cognitive scientists who are looking for what is not there. In Searle's opinion those scientists are wrong t o stay tied t o a third person point of view in their research, while viciously smuggling the subjective character precisely in the wrong way, namely, in objective facts like some involving the brain. Against the eliminativists of all sorts Searle concludes that all genuine mental activity is either conscious or potentially SO. David Armstrong in Searle's Neo-Cartesian Theory of Consciousness charges Searle's paper with the sin of Neocartesianism. He argues that Searle makes unconsciousness neuro-physiological structures and makes them mental only by tying them to the conscious states they are apt to produce. Thus he privileges the conscious making it essential or necessary for the mental and the unconscious gets into the mental only through its capacity to produce conscious states. Armstrong challenges Searle and asks why it is that the unconscious states are not fully mental by themselves, and finds that the reason Searle has is that he conceives the unconscious states as lacking intrinsic intentionality, true aspectual shape as we said before. Thus Armstrong considers the case of deeply and repressed unconscious states that cannot have conscious effects because of brain or other damage. However, Searle could make sense under certain contary-tofact circumstances of these very states producing conscious states. But there is another case where a person has two beliefs which are not currently contents of the believer's consciousness. For Searle, those beliefs are only two neurophysiolog-

ical structures. But then each of those structures will have elements apt, well tuned to produce a corresponding conscious belief with full intentionality. But if that is so, asks Armstrong, what prevents Searle from granting full aspectual shape and intentionality t o both the conscious and the unconscious beliefs? What stops Searle from taking that step, says Armstrong, is his unargued Cartesian conviction that only consciousness enters into the essence of the mental. In Sensations in a Language of Thought Georges Rey aims to accommodate qualitative content into a functionalist view of the mind. In order to do it Rey departs from a Language of Thought (LOT) hypothesis which provides a sentential account of mental processes. Rey prefers to think of LOT as a hypothesis about the brain which he considers a particular kind of computer. this special computer works upon configurations that have certain syntactic and semantic properties such that those properties seem uniquely realized as sentences in a formal calculus. Armed with LOT Rey holds that sensations are sentences, species of propositional attitudes or judgments, in the brain (an inner code). As such those sentences are constituted by a kind of coding process with computational form, stuff being irrelevant. But there are a number of restrictions that are set on that computational form and which allow us to provide a functional explanation of a number of features of sensations such as the unanalyzability, ineffability, privacy and special epistemic privilege of sensory experience. Rey does not claim solving all the problems posed by those features of experience but to have dealt in a contex of explanation with the standard perplexities those experiences present. John Biro in his Consciousness and Subjectivity tries to overcome the skepticism that signals subjectivity as a philosophically intractable feature of consciousness and thus a feature that prevents a theory of mind. Biro tries to express the feature which makes subjectivity so intractable and deals successively with the singularity of point of view and types of point of view, a fixed and a portable reading of the perspec-

tival or aspectual mark of point of view, types of perceptual apparatus against tokens of those apparatus, ownership of conscious states only to confess his failure to get philosophically interesting feature or mark of that subjectivity. Biro then considers the objection that this elusive something that proves to be so reluctant to be brought into a positive, linguistic, theoretical description could be such that we both accept it exists in the other's experience but that we are, so far, unable to bring it into a linguistic description, thus remaining something ineffable. To this Biro replies that the objection assumes viciously a controversial claim, namely, that (one's understanding of) a complete description of a type of experience is such that the properties which figure in the description should be such that one (that is, the one who is to reach that understanding) has to have encountered them in his own experience. Biro ends conjecturing that it seems that the skeptical theoretician of subjectivity seems to pursue two untiable aims, namely, on the one hand to preserve the special singularity of point of view and, on the other, to tell us about it. But in fact that skeptic ends falling into paradox for he either does not preserve that cherished singularity or else has to remain necessarily silent about it. There seems no way, submits Biro, to articulate what singularity consists in thus overimposing his own skepticism on top of the skepticism of the theoretician of subjectivity. Brian O'Shaughnessy offers an overall view of consciousness at the personal level leaving room for a sub-personal, cerebral approach. He divides his account into three parts. In the first he discusses the type and status of consciousness, finding that the logical model of genus-species fails as does also the all-or-nothing model of life and death and that of the array of colours. The state of consciousness is not something contingent that could be stripped, thus revealing a natural kind. O'Shaughnessy departs from waking, and finds that consciousness instantiates a kind that is essential to being a person and is involved in central powers like experience, sense-perception, reason and thinking, and even reaches to manipulate the environment to fulfill the person's

needs. Consciousness is not any of those powers but it is there with them in a relationship that will become clearer. 0 'Shaughnessy rejects the theory that states of consciousness result from contingent addition of mental states; he rather claims that states of consciousness are constituted out of mental properties such as rationality in the self-conscious creation of a two way dependence between the state of consciousness thus constituted and the states that make up for the constitution. Then consciousness is no atom that reveals its character only through its causal properties but "a complex state wherein certain requisite state parts are both present and synthesised." Because consciousness involves working attention it is psychological in status. The generic sort-consciousness-embraces as special cases not only occurrent consciousness, but also sleep, and even unconsciousness, on O'Shaughnessy's view. Consciousness is central t o psychology for it enables the central mental powers t o arise and work together and in so doing it is the foundation of a person's normal mental life. It is a psychological phenomenal continuity of which each of us is immediately aware and functions as a necessary support of the central mental powers. In a second part, O'Shaughnessy examines both the negative and the positive properties that constitute the structure of consciousness. The negative properties include the lack of experiential character, the lack of direction and content and the lack of all sense or meaning. The positive ones include the entailment of present experience which involves some measure L'ofputative intuitional contact with the Physical World, whether of positive or null variety", a cognitive sensitivity of the right kind t o perceptual experience and a mode of belief-formation concerning present environmental realities that makes knowings out of those beliefs. From the point of view of cognition, consciousness on O'Shaughnessy's view "is a n empty canvas, ready t o receive the imprint of reality...expressly dedicated t o revelation." But from the point of view of life development consciousness requires necessarily a conditional availability of the bodily will which makes possible and generally operative all three "bodily act-desire, bodily willing, and the rational determination of bodily act-

desire a t the hands of that novel sector of the belief-system that derives from present perception." Animal consciousness is thus "a condition of practical involvement in ~ h y s i c a lnature." But consciousness also involves the mental will for in the mind it goes "actively governing the direction of movement of its own thinking and attentive processes." And in its inner world consciousness keeps intentionally active, going from the past into the future and thus providing a temporal framework that O'Shaughnessy claims is adequate for becoming aware of the contents of the physical world, and achieving something essential t o consciousness, namely, t o put persons in a position t o enlarge their present representation of reality. In sum, for O'Shaughnessy consciousness appears as the condition of a double revelation, namely, of revealing the nature of the subject through acts in the world and revealing the world through perception. But this consciousness does not work as an experience but as something that globally supports the whole circle of experience; it is a system that makes possible a mental scene and thus falling out of that scene and lacking all mental explanation (which thus goes on t o the cerebral). Consciousness is constitutively analysable but any analysis of it must recognize the mutual and total interdependence between consciousness and its constituents. Consciousness has an end which is served by its constituents, namely, t o enable its possesor to transact with contemporaneous physical reality. In this function the bodily will comes first and the mental will comes through the physical deeds introducing a new dimension of meaning when the ends internally brought t o light are realised. In the bodily action come united and integrated the constituent subsystems and the state of consciousness that make possible the existence of that bodily act. We might consider O'Shaughnessy contribution as providing the metaphysical foundations of consciousness (even if he deplores a missing account of self-consciousness required t o provide an overall satisfactory account). In a more general undertaking Ernest Sosa raises the complex issue of Internalism-Externalism aiming t o find a mid-

dle way between them. Sosa begins with a characterization of the internal-external dispute in terms of intrinsic versus extrinsic properties; thus taking a metaphysical approach. For Sosa the middle way lies in abstracting from the intrinsic and extrinsic statements and finding a place between those two claims by way of relativizing and indexing t o a context. Intrinsic and extrinsic are characterized ontologically as intrinsic properties and powers or environment properties and powers t o reach a functional x which is context relative and is what is between internalism and externalism for that x is determined or supervenes on intrinsic properties (whatever they are) but also involves the environment. Thus we involve the environement when we say what content x has. Sosa motivates his position from an examination of Putnam's and Davidson's externalistic positions. From Putnam's he collects the principle of content's context-dependence and gets a conclusion: as context varies so does content and becomes relative and indexical. Content is internally determined and supervenes from the intrinsic nature and character of the subject of behaviour and experience, but that internal determination has t o be put in a relation t o the external environment t o get a specification of the actual content. What lies in between external and internal constraints on content are abstract dispositions which come in contact with different contexts and each time the contact is achieved a different content is reached. Content is deeply relativized and indexed and becomes a dispositional function that gets a truth-value only when it comes in contact with a context. It is in this specific way that content, mental or otherwise, is determined by the intrinsic under certain external conditions and remains between internalism and externalism. In his paper Donald Davidson also raises a more general issue asking the question What is Present to the Mind? and answers: nothing. Nothing, that is, that could help the internalist t o explain why does he know his thoughts in a different way than the other knows them. Positing thoughts as intermediaries and introducing a special immediate epistemic relationship does not help at all for either the person

who has them cannot be wrong about them or if we were not to know them then it would follow that we did not know what we believed or thought. On either count the result is unacceptable. Then Davidson asks if rejecting objects of thought threatens the fact of first person authority as exhibited in selfknowledge and answers that it does not at all and only those externalists who introduce objects of thought fail to secure that authority of the first person. His positive account stresses that we have got to grant first person authority in order to interpret agents, in other words, interpretation necessitates that very authority of the first person. Secondly, Davidson asks if the rejection of objects of thought goes in the way to neglect a relational nature for 'believes'. He rejects an internal, psychological, relationship and affirms rather a relation to the utterance which have the same truth-conditions as the belief whose content is being identified. Akeel Bilgrami expresses his general agreement with Davidson on the two questions but goes on to dissent first on why some philosophers like Hilary Putnam are wrong on thinking that externalism about intentional content threatens self-knowledge, and second, on why philosophers like Jerry Fodor and John Searle think that the indeterminacy and the holism Davidson assumes threaten the reality and explanatory power of intentional states. On the first question Bilgrami offers a diagnosis of why philosophers like Putnam hold that we sometimes lack first person authority as a view that springs from a certain scientific essentialist view of natural kind terms and concepts and has nothing to do with these objects of thought. That is, Putnam restricts failure of self-knowledge to cases where there is failure to know nature's essences and thus his not a general failure of self-knowledge. In posing the incompatibility between externalism and selfknowledge in terms of 'objects of thought' Davidson not only cannot deal with specific versions of that externalistic incompatibilism but is driven to answer a quite different question from the one externalists are dealing with, namely, what ex-

plains that when we are interpreting agents it is a fact those agents have knowledge of their own intentional states? Bilgrami stresses that this question is not the one Davidson was interested in a t the beginning, namely, how is self-knowledge compatible with externalism, that is, with a doctrine that claims that the interpreter makes essential appeal t o items in the agent's external environment because those very items constitute the contents of his intentional states. Davidson fails t o explain this question and only re-describes first person authority in the context of interpretation, concludes Bilgrami. On the second of Davidson's questions, Bilgrami thinks again that Searle's and Fodor's worries have nothing t o do with 'objects of thought'. What Searle is worring about is if the third person's point of view that Quine, and Davidson following him, take on interpretation do not determine that the thoughts and meanings which are attributed t o the agent are those that interest the interpreter and not those that the agent has. In order t o assure the reality of those thoughts and meanings it is not enough t o call t o mind the case of the reality of temperature vis a vis the two different centigrade or farenheit scales. Fodor's worries arise out of the holism which demands that the content of a thought is the content it is because of its inferential relationships with other thoughts. If that is true, no two persons will share the same thought (nor even the same person at two instants) if the thought has different surrounding thoughts. Fodor holds, according t o Bilgrami, that on that holistic view there will not be generalizations about intentional contents and no explanatory weight and, as a consequence of all that, the reality of those intentional states will be undermined. Fodor's argument cannot be faulted on grounds of assuming 'objects of thought'; instead, Bilgrami offers t o Davidson another way out for his holism in terms of distinguishing the general level a t which intentional contents are called by a theory of meaning and the particular context of explaining in which an action is explained. James Tomberlin holds a complex view of Belief, Self-Ascription and Ontology and argues that Chisholm's account

of belief De Se fails on three counts. First, Chisholm defense of the irreducibility of 'he himself' in terms of an intentional account of property identity lacks the correct theoretical motivation. Second, Chisholm offers an intentional criterion for the identity of attributes denying it for individuals, and third, Chisholm technical notion of conceiving an attribute set as an undefined conceptual primitive is false for it always could be the case that someone could conceive one property without conceiving any other and if a person believes two properties are distinct, they are. Tomberlin argues further that Chisholm's denial of De Re attitudes towards the inexistent together with his intentional account of property identity saves him from difficulties only at the cost of enabling the three criticisms made before. Against Chisholm's current ontological views Tomberlin argues that he makes the problem of truth a question of exemplification for he has eliminated the traditional bearers of truth and falsity, namely, propositions. Second, Tomberlin claims that Chisholm holds the existence-entailing principle according to which if a structured object exists, so do its parts and as he holds singular propositions are contingent if any of its constituents are and wants to hold that both singular and general propositions are abstract objects which exist in every possible world, then he precludes singular propositions containing contingent object s. While Tomberlin agrees that singular propositions pose difficulties, he rejects the existenceentailing principle for structured entities. Third, Tomberlin holds that Chisholm's own tenets make him ontologically reify particularistic attributes which should bring him back to singular propositions and with them also back toward a propositional theory of the psychological attitudes. In her reply to Tomberlin's paper Lynn Pasquarella defends Chisholm's Intentional Criterion of Property-Identity and De Se Belief. Pasquarella holds that Tomberlin fails to show that Chisholm is mistaken in his account of property identity in terms of conceivability, for the counterexamples he handles do not amount to cases of believing one has or has not a property but to cases of believing or not that a word has the same meaning that another word, or cases in-

volving two properties and so on. That is, cases involving a misunderstanding of language and not a mistake in property identity. Pasquarella rejects also that Chisholm should extend his criterion of property identity t o individuals for individuals are not essentially conceivable things. On the ontological side, Pasquarella claims that there is a fundamental ontological issue that underlies Chisholm's disagreement with Tomberlin, namely, whether or not there are truths that can be construed only as predicating something of Meinongian objects that do not exist; there is no need of a free logic which allows the falsity of propositions that include nonexistent objects and begs the basic ontological question. Chisholm, in Pasquarella's words, claims that we should resist commitment t o nonexistent objects, through Russellian paraphrase. Finally, Pasquarella holds that Tomberlin has not shown that a theory of properties needs t o include individual essences or concrete particulars along with the singular propositions that imply them for 'John believes that he himself is identical with John' has no clear truth-value since the sense of being identical with John is unclear. Thus Chisholm's theory is not brought back t o a propositional theory of psychological attitudes.

PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES, 1 Consciousness, 1991

The Independence of Consciousness and Sensory Quality David M. Rosenthal It is often held that all sensory mental states are conscious states, and that sensory quality cannot occur in states that are not conscious. Indeed, it may seem mysterious what it could be for a state to have sensory quality if that state is not a conscious state. Consciousness, on this view, is something like a mental light, without which sensory qualities simply cannot exist. When it comes to the qualities of our sensory states, t o be is t o be conscious, esse is percipi. If sensory states are all conscious, it may seem likely that the property of being conscious will be intrinsic, and essential, to having sensory quality; how better to explain why sensory states are all conscious than by assuming that being conscious is intrinsic t o having sensory quality? On this picture, we can understand what it is for a state to have sensory quality only if we know what it is for that state to be conscious. And, if states with sensory quality are essentially conscious states, understanding what it is for sensory states to be conscious will presumably require knowing what sensory quality is.

Seeing the properties of being conscious and having sensory quality as thus wedded makes for unnecessary mysteries. What kind of property could it be that cannot occur except consciously? And what kind of property could the property of being conscious be if it is intrinsic t o sensory qualities? Indeed, it is arguable that all the traditional problems about sensory or phenomenal quality derive from the idea that being a conscious state is intrinsic to having sensory quality. What seems difficult or intractable about sensory quality is the face it presents to consciousness -what the sensation is like for somebody who has it. I shall argue that this picture is mistaken. The properties of being conscious and having sensory quality are independent of one another, and a satisfactory account of each property requires us t o investigate them separately. In section 1,I argue that, since sensory states are not all conscious states, being a conscious state cannot be intrinsic to that state's having sensory quality. Section 2, then, puts forth a sketch of a account of what it is for a mental state t o have sensory quality, an account on which having sensory quality does not imply being conscious. Moreover, as I show in section 3, this account helps explain, and thereby disarm, the intuitive force of the idea that being conscious is an intrinsic property of sensory states. In section 4 I conclude by arguing for a positive account of what it is for sensory states -and, indeed, for all mental states- to be conscious. On this account, a state's being conscious is its being accompanied by a roughly simultaneous higher-order thought that one is in the target mental state. So being conscious is an extrinsic property of those mental states which are conscious. If this account is correct, and if sensory states can occur without being conscious, we can conclude that the properties of being conscious and having sensory quality are independent of one another.

1 Are All Sensory States Conscious? Descartes notoriously held that "no thought can exist in us of which we are not conscious at the very moment it exists in

us."' It is often assumed that this Cartesian doctrine reflects our commonsense concept of mind, for sensory states as well as for thoughts. That is not so; commonsense plainly does allow room for mental states that are not conscious states. We sometimes see that somebody wants something or thinks that something is so while that person is wholly unaware of that desire or thought. Similarly with emotions; we occasionally recognize that we are sad or angry only after somebody else points it out to us. It is natural to interpret subliminal perception and peripheral vision as showing that perceptual sensations can occur without our being aware of them.2 It is arguable that even bodily sensations such as pains can at times go wholly unnoticed, and so can exist without being conscious. When one is intermittently distracted from a headache or pain, it is natural to speak of having had a single, persistent pain or ache during the entire period. It would be odd to say that one had had a sequence of brief, distinct, but qualitatively identical pains or aches. Similarly for itches and other bodily sensations. Pragmatic factors explain much of the intuitive pull towards thinking that sensory states are always conscious states. For one thing, our concern with the mental states of others is set in a social context that largely precludes remarking on mental states of which they are unaware. So in ordinary circumstances we tend not to pay explicit attention to such states. And of course we normally disregard whatever nonconscious sensory states we ourselves may be in. Moreover, the intuitive idea that mental states are invariably conscious is far stronger with some types of mental state 'Fourth Replies, Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Paris: J.Vrin, 1964-75) VII, 246. Also: "the word 'thought' applies to all that exists in us in such a way that we are immediately conscious of it" (Geometrical Exposition of the Second Replies, VII, 160). Descartes's reference to thoughts was meant to cover all mental states of whatever kind. 2We all typically screen out the sounds of conversations other than our own. But, on the so-called cocktail-party effect, if one's name is mentioned in a screened-out conversation, one's attention often shifts immediately to that conversation. It is natural to interpret this as showing that one must have had some auditory consciousness of what was being said.

than it is with others. And it turns out that the stronger this intuition is with a particular kind of mental state, the less interest we would have in nonconscious cases of that type of mental state. The idea that mental states must be conscious is strongest with bodily sensations such as pains and tickles, less compelling with perceptual sensations, presumably still less so with emotions, and very likely weakest with intentional states such as thoughts and desires. Correspondingly, we have the least interest in nonconscious bodily sensations, whether our own or anybody else's, and far the most in nonconscious beliefs and desires, because of their role in explaining behavior. This reinforces the diagnosis that we think mental states must be conscious largely because of our lack of interest in the nonconscious cases. Still, these considerations may not seem sufficient to disarm completely the intuition that sensory states must be conscious. This is especially so in the case of bodily sensations such as pain. For one thing, we speak roughly interchangeably of our feeling a pain or tickle or itch and of our having the relevant sensation. And when we feel a pain or tickle or itch, must not that sensation be automatically conscious? Such terms as 'feeling' do carry this implication of consciousness; a felt pain is perforce a conscious pain. This is true as well of something's hurting, and perhaps even of one's being in pain. But none of these things are the same as one's simply having a pain, or a pain's existing. If we are intermittently unaware of a pain by being distracted from it, we feel the pain only intermittently; similarly with its hurting and our being in pain. Still, one may well speak of having had a pain that lasted throughout the day. And if the question arises in a natural way, one may even say explicitly that one was not always aware of that pain. Common sense thus undeniably countenances the existence of nonconscious pains.3 3 0 n e could insist here that only a single, temporally discontinuous state of pain occurs, on the model of the temporally discontinuous bursts of sound as a single siren sound. (I owe this idea to Jaegwon Kim.) But all I a m arguing here is that common sense be open to nonconscious pains; plainly common sense does not insist on the discontinuous-pain interpretation.

We cannot of course know what it is like to have a nonconscious pain or tickle or itch? But that is not relevant here. The reason we cannot know what it is like t o have, for example, a nonconscious pain is simply that unless the pain is conscious there is no such thing as what it is like t o have it. What it is like t o have a pain, in the relevant sense of that idiom, is simply what it is like to be conscious of having that pain. So our not knowing what it is like t o have pains that are not conscious cannot show that all pains are. Nonetheless, reflection on what it is like t o have sensations does suggest an important source for the view that sensations are invariably conscious. When we classify sensory states and discriminate among their various tokens, we appeal t o what it is like for us to be in those states. This is equally so with bodily and perceptual sensations; we rely on such things as what it is like to be in pain, and what it is like to see red or hear a trumpet. And there is no such thing as what it is like t o have these sensations unless the sensation is conscious. If we do pick out sensory states by appeal to what it is like to be in those states, how can there be sensory states for which there is no such thing as what it is like to be in them? If the properties by reference to which we taxonomize and individuate sensory states occur only when those states are conscious, how can those states ever be nonconscious? Care is necessary here. We do classify and discriminate among sensory states by appeal t o the conscious cases. But this does not show that the properties by reference t o which we classify sensory states cannot occur nonconsciously. Compare the situation in perception. We pick out physical objects, and thus classify and discriminate among them, by reference t o how they appear to us. And there is no such thing as how a physical object appears to us if nobody perceives it. In the case of vision, for example, there is no such thing as the visual appearance of a physical object if nobody sees 'See Thomas Nagel's important article, "What Is It Like To Be a Bat?", The Philosophical Review LXXXIII, 4 (October 1974): 435450. See also Nagel's "Panpsychism", in Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 181-195, and The View From Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), chapters 1-4.

that object. Nonetheless, physical objects do have enduring properties in virtue of which they look to us as they do. One can say that the contribution physical objects make to how they look to us is their having certain colors or, more precisely, their having characteristic reflectance spectra. Physical objects have these properties whether or not anybody sees them. Parallel remarks hold for sensory states. We classify such states by reference to what it is like t o be in those states. What it is like t o have a certain sensation is how that sensation appears t o us. So, as with physical objects, we pick out sensory states and discriminate among them on the basis of how they appear to us. And the foregoing considerations give us no reason t o insist those states which appear to us as they do cannot occur except when they are conscious state^.^ We fix the extensions of terms for physical objects by relying on appearances that may or may not reflect the actual nature of those objects. Similarly, we fix the extensions of our terms for the various kinds of sensory state by way of the conscious cases, both our own and those of others, but this in no way shows that all sensory states are conscious state^.^

Just as we can say of unseen objects how they would look, we can equally well say what i t would be like to be in sensory states that are not currently conscious. 6 0 n the notion of fixing extensions, see Saul A. Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 549; "Identity and Necessity", in Identity and Individuation, ed. Milton K. Munitz (New York: New York University Press, 1971): 135-164, pp. 156-161; and Hilary Putnam "The Meaning of 'Meaning' " , in Putnam's Philosophical Papers, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975): 215-71, pp. 223-35. Both Kripke and Putnam maintain that, in general, what fixes the extension of a term need not coincide with what is essential or necessary to the things in that extension. Kripke's notorious denial of this for the case of mental states ("Identity and Necessity", 157-161; Naming and Necessity, 149-154) stems from his insistence that the way pains appear to us cannot diverge from how they really are: "For a sensation to b e felt as pain is for it to be pain" ("Identity and Necessity", p. 163, n. 18; emphasis original throughout) and, conversely, that "for [something] to exist without being felt as pain is for i t to exist without there being a n y pain" ( N a m i n g and Necessity p. 151). Thus "[ilf any phenomenon is picked out in exactly the same

Sensory qualities, on anybody's account, are properties that distinguish sensory states, both from one another and from everything else. All and only sensory states have sensory quality, and the various types of sensory state differ in respect of their sensory qualities. So if sensory states occur that are not conscious, being conscious cannot be intrinsic to having sensory quality. It is crucial to avoid a merely verbal issue. Some find it tempting to hold that the term 'sensory quality' can apply only t o those qualities by reference to which we say what it is like to have one or another conscious sensation. If so, nonconscious states plainly cannot have sensory quality. Similarly, sensory states might be held to be definitionally conscious states. These convictions in no way suggest, however, that nonconscious states do not exist corresponding t o sensory states. Indeed, it is natural to suppose that such nonconscious states do exist, since neural detection mechanisms must subserve conscious sensation, whatever the nature of sensation may be. Moreover, for neural states to subserve sensory states, it must be possible t o taxonomize these nonconscious states so that they resemble and differ from one another in ways isomorphic to the similarities and differences among conscious sensations. Call these nonconscious states s-states, and call the properties of belonging to the equivalence classes defined by this taxonomy s-properties. What reason could there be, then, other than arbitrary verbal fiat, to withhold the terms 'sensation' and 'sensory state' from these non-conscious s-states? And what nonverbal reason could there be for refusing to apply the term 'sensory quality' to nonconscious s-properties? Common sense often sees the important properties of things as being intrinsic to them. This tendency is especially pronounced when we know little or nothing about the nature way that we pick out pain, then that phenomenon is pain" ( N a m i n g and Necessity, p. 1 5 3 ) . But Kripke's contentions are correct only if it is necessary that pains affect us in the way they do, i.e., only if being conscious is intrinsic to something's being a pain. Kripke gives no independent argument for these claims.

of those properties. Thus common sense finds congenial the pre-Galilean view according t o which bodies move toward a natural resting place, and having a particular natural resting place is a n intrinsic property of each kind of body. It is inviting t o see bodies as intrinsically tending toward upwards or downwards movement .7 Still, we get far more accurate and powerful explanations of bodily motions if we see a body's tendency t o move in terms of its relations t o other bodies. Similarly, it is pretheoretically appealing t o see the property of being conscious as intrinsic t o sensations. But as I shall argue in section 4, it is likely that we can explain what being a conscious state consists in only if we regard being conscious as a relational property.

2 What Is Sensory Quality? T h e foregoing considerations will, however, remain inconclusive without at least the sketch of a suitable positive account of what it is for mental states t o have sensory quality. It must be possible, on such an account, for mental states t o have sensory qualities whether or not those states are conscious states. Sensory qualities will occur even when sensory states are not conscious. But when states with sensory qualities are conscious, there will be something it is like t o be in those states, and sensory qualities will be the properties in virtue of which that is so. The distinctive qualities by means of which we classify sensations form families of properties that pertain t o color, visual shape, sound, and so forth. The members of these families resemble and differ from one another in ways that parallel the similarities and differences among the corresponding perceptible properties of physical objects. For example, the red sensory quality of visual sensations resembles the orange 7Similarly, Michael McCloskey has elegantly and convincingly argued that ordinary commonsense predictions about bodily motions systematicallv err in wavs that reveal the tacit false a s s u m ~ t i o nthat those motions are due to an internal force imparted by the source of motion. ("Intuitive Physics", Scientific American 248, 4 [April 19831: 114-122.)

1. C O N S C I O U S N AND E ~ SENSORY ~ QUALITY

23

sensory quality of such sensations more than either resembles the sensory green or blue of such sensations. This is so whatever else is true about such sensory qualities. A host of other relations characterize both physical color properties and the corresponding mental color properties. There is no reason to think that individual color properties of visual sensations resemble intrinsically the color properties of physical objects. Rather, it is the whole family of mental color properties that corresponds, by virtue of the relations that hold among its members, to the family of physical color properties. And it is in terms of these relations of resemblance and difference within the corresponding families that we understand the nature of both mental and physical colors. Parallel remarks apply to the spatial properties that pertain t o vision. Here it is plain that the spatial properties of physical objects have nothing intrinsic in common with the corresponding properties of visual sensations. The property of being physically round, for example, does not resemble the corresponding property of visual sensations. Still, because color cannot occur without shape, visual sensations cannot have mental colors unless they have some property that counts as the mental counterpart of physical shape.' Just as with mental and physical color, mental roundness and triangularity resemble and differ from each other in ways homomorphic to the similarities and differences that hold between physical roundness and triangularity. Similar observations hold for other properties of shapeg and other sensory modalities.1° ' ~ n d since , mental shape is plainly a different sort of property from physical shape, the connection between color and shape shows that mental color is a different sort of property from physical color. 'These mental analogues of physical spatial properties may well enable us to assign mental location to our visual impressions, in virtue of which they unite to form a single visual field. "Various historical antecedents for these observations are available. Berkeley held that a t least some terms for sensible qualities fail to apply to things univocally. Thus 'plane' and 'solid' apply primarily, on his view, to the immediate objects of touch, and only derivatively to the objects of sight. Berkeley sometimes seems to claim that such terms are radically ambiguous, as when he writes that the visual and tactile

Such parallels hold also in the case of bodily sensations. Consider pains. The distinctive qualities of being dull, stabbing, burning, or sharp resemble and differ in ways that reflect the similarities and differences among the corresponding physical objects and processes. Moreover, piercing and stabbing pains are both species of sharp pains, and typically result from piercing and stabbing objects or processes. Similarly, throbbing and pounding pains are species of dull pains.11 It is important to emphasize that the parallels t o which I am drawing attention involve the perceptible properties of physical objects, as these are conceived by commonsense. We must take care not to import into our commonsense notion of these physical properties aspects that have only to do with how those properties appear to us. But subject to that qualification, the present theory takes commonsense perceptible objects to which we apply these terms are "of a nature intirly different". But he also insists that planes and solids are both "equally suggested by the immediate objects of sight, [and] accordingly are themselves denominated plains and solids" ( A New Theory of Vision, sec. 158, in The Works of George Berkeley, ed. A. A. Luce and T . E. Jessop [London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., 19481, vol. I). In Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (ed. Baruch A. Brody [Cambridge, MA: T h e M.I.T. Press, 19691, 11, xvi) Thomas Reid claims that, when I smell a rose, "the sensation I feel, and the quality in the rose which I perceive, are both called by the same name.. . ; so that this name has two meanings" (243). "All the names we have for smells, tastes, sounds, and for the various degrees of heat and cold, have a like ambiguity.. . . They signify both a sensation, and a quality [in physical objects] perceived by means of that sensation" (244). And in "A Reply to My Critics", G. E. Moore insists that all words for sensible qualities are "each used in two very different senses" to refer to perceptible properties of physical objects and to the qualities of sensory experiences ( T h e Philosophy of G . E. Moore, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp [LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1942: 535-677, p. 657; see pp. 655-8). l 1 For more detail on this kind of account, see my "Armstrong's Causal Theory of Mind," in Profiles: David Armstrong, ed. Radu J. Bogdan (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1984), pp. 79-120, $V: 100-108; my Review of Perception: A Representative Theory, by Frank Jackson, The Journal of Philosophy LXXXII, 1 (January 1985): 28-41; and "The Colors and Shapes of Visual Experiences", Report No. 28/1990, Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), Research Group on Mind and Brain, University of Bielefeld, esp. $11.

properties at face value. This is natural; the properties in terms of which we classify sensory states are themselves commonsense properties, and are part of our macroscopic way of cutting up reality. Moreover, such reliance on commonsense properties is legitimate in the present context, since we can hope to reconstruct these commonsense properties tolerably well in terms of scientific properties and processes. Thus we can capture the commonsense colors of physical objects in terms of the spectral reflectance of those objects multiplied by the absorption spectra of the three light-sensitive elements in the daylight visual system. An object's looking green, for example, will consist in its reflecting a distribution of wavelengths that results in a specifiable ratio of activation among those three types of cones. So an object's being green would consist in its reflecting such a distribution of wavelengths under standard conditions -say, in cloudless, midday sunlight .12 We must still adjust for variations due to individual differences and conditions of solar illumination. But such idealizations are common in the scientific reconstruction of commonsense, macroscopic categories. Does this mean that we can simply dispense with our commonsense conception of physical color when it comes to comparing those properties with the mental properties of visual states? Those comparisons rely on similarities and differences in the two families of properties; mental color properties resemble and differ from one another in ways homomorphic to the similarities and differences among physical color properties. Some of these parallels between the two families can be expressed in terms of ratios, rather than physical color conceived in commonsense terms. For example, when a first color is intuitively closer to a second than to a third, the corresponding ratio will very likely exhibit parallel relations. 12Because many different combinations of wavelengths can produce the same ratio, the specific reflective properties of objects that produce a particular ratio in particular conditions of illumination may vary widely. So objects that look the same in respect of color when illuminated by daytime sunlight, e.g., may well seem to differ in color in other conditions of illumination.

But it may well be that important relations among members of the commonsense color family cannot be captured in terms of how close one is to another. Perhaps a scientific taxonomy of these properties will not sustain all the relevant parallels between those properties and the corresponding mental qualities. If so, we may to this extent have to retain our commonsense conception of physical color. This is not a problem, however, for the present account. We still can hope to identify each such color that we can discriminate mathematically, in terms of the relevant ratio of activation among the three cone types. So there will be a scientific reconstruction that legitimates the normal range of commonsense physical color properties. These observations form the basis of a sketch of what it is t o have sensory quality. Sensory qualities are properties of states of organisms, families of which bear certain systematic relations t o families of properties of physical objects and processes to which the organism can respond. Moreover, they are properties of which we can be conscious, in the intuitively immediate way in which we are conscious of our own mental states. Nothing in this account implies that sensory qualities can occur only when the relevant sensory states are conscious states. Moreover, since consciousness does not figure in the account, being conscious is presumably not intrinsic to a state's having sensory quality. The overall thesis I am defending is that the properties of being conscious and having sensory quality are independent of each other. That thesis is independent of the particular account of sensory qualities I have just sketched. Any account will do on which sensory qualities are whatever properties are distinctive of the various types of sensation, properties of which we can, but need not, be conscious in a suitably immediate way. A question arises, however, about accounts that meet this condition. Can such an account do justice to the traditional notion of sensory quality, and the traditional problems attendant on that notion? Or have we simply changed the subject, by substituting a watered-down, unproblematic notion of sensory quality for the traditional concept, and thus defined the problems away?

1. C ~ N ~ C I ~AND U SENSORY ~ N E ~QUALITY ~ 27

One way to approach this question is to ask whether such an account would square with the idea that the properties under consideration are genuinely qualitative. Being qualitative is not a very clear notion, but presumably a property's being qualitative means in part that the property is essentially the way consciousness reveals it to be. In any case, there is another example of a family of properties that common sense regards as qualitative, namely, the color properties of physical objects. Here, too, being qualitative expresses the idea that the properties in question are exactly as consciousness -in this case perceptual consciousness- reveals them to be. Many have held that, whatever the appearances, we need not attribute genuinely qualitative colors to physical objects. We can, after all, relocate the apparent qualitative character of physical color inside, in the mind: We can say that the relevant properties of physical objects are not genuinely qualitative, but that they lead to visual sensations, whose distinctive properties are. It is often pointed out that we cannot repeat this move; there is no place to relocate the qualitative character that the distinctive properties of sensory states seem to exhibit. But that does not matter. We need not find some way to preserve the idea that color is qualitative. We are willing to deny qualitative color to physical objects because we accept that their qualitative character, however we interpret it, is merely apparent. It is a verdict of commonsense intuition on which we should not rely. We can say the same for the commonsense intuition that the distinctive properties of sensory states are qualitative. The inability to relocate the qualitative character of the mental properties of sensory states gives us no reason to insist that those mental properties really do have qualitative character. We need not preserve the "element of truth" in erroneous commonsense intuitions when we become convinced that these intuitions reflect only how things appear, rather than how they really are. In any case, common sense tells us little if anything about the sensory qualities of sensory states, except that they are those properties in virtue of which we distinguish among those sensations, and that we can be more or less immedi-

ately conscious of them. Our knowing about these properties in the first instance by way of the conscious cases does not show that they cannot occur nonconsciously, nor that there is anything problematic about them. Common sense does not sustain the idea that sensory quality is problematic. Nor is there reason t o hold that the similarities and differences on which that account relies cannot obtain except when the sensation in question is conscious. We can accurately and fully capture these similarities and differences on the basis of the relevant homomorphisms, independently of whether the sensory states in question are conscious. So we have no basis for denying that sensory qualities can occur nonconsciously. Nonconscious sensory states resemble and differ in just the ways that conscious sensory states do. They diverge only in that one group is conscious and the other not.

3 Why It Seems that Sensory Qualities Must Be Conscious It may be difficult t o dismiss the idea that sensory properties are qualitative unless we can explain the attraction that idea has for us. Being qualitative, as just noted, expresses the idea that a property is essentially the way consciousness reveals it t o be. And that suggests in turn that sensory qualities are invariably conscious. Why, after all, would consciousness reveal the essence of sensory states if such states need not be conscious? Consciousness seems t o reveal the essence of sensory qualities only because it is tempting t o suppose that consciousness is our only source of knowledge about the nature of those properties. Take color. I t is often held that the term 'red' applies in the first instance to a mental property of visual sensations and derivatively, if a t all, t o a perceptible property of physical objects.13 We understand what it is for a tomato t o 13John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 111, iv, 1 6 ; Roderick M. Chisholm, Perceiving: A Philosophical Study (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1957), chapter 4; Frank Jackson, Perception: A

be red solely by way of the tomato's having causal connections with red sensory states. Since our saying a tomato is red is then only a kind of shorthand for its having a certain tie to the mental red of sensory states, we cannot learn about that mental red from its connections to anything nonmental. We can learn about mental color only by distinctively mental means. The only available mental avenue to these properties is knowing what it is like t o be in the relevant sensory states, and this depends on the relevant states' being conscious. This line of reasoning suggests that consciousness alone can reveal the nature of mental qualities, so that only conscious states can have these qualities. The sketch of an account put forth in section 2 undermines this picture. On that account, the sensory qualities of sensations resemble and differ from one another in ways that parallel the similarities and differences that hold among the corresponding perceptible properties of physical objects. So knowing what it is like to be in a sensory state is not the only way to understand the nature and character of sensory qualities. We can, instead, learn about them by way of their characteristic similarities and differences, which are homomorphic to those which hold among the corresponding perceptible properties of physical objects. In particular, we can in this way know such things as that mental red resembles mental orange more than either resembles mental green or blue. Similarly for qualities special t o other perceptual modalities, and to bodily sensations. The resulting understanding of mental qualities is not restricted to the relational properties of those qualities. The similarities and differences that hold among the qualities of a particular sensory modality help characterize that modality. And within each modality, the similarity and difference relations characteristic of each mental quality help fix what is distinctive of that quality. These relations thus help us grasp the nature of the various individual qualities. Knowing the relations that define the various mental color properties, for example, will help fix what it is for a sensory state to be Representative Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), especially chapter 6.

mentally red. Although these relations cannot tell us what it is like t o experience a sensory quality, they can tell us much about what it is for a state t o have such qualities.

4

Explaining Consciousness

It might be thought that, if being conscious is intrinsic t o a state's having sensory quality, at least that helps us understand what it is for sensory states t o be conscious. In fact the opposite is the case. If being conscious were an intrinsic property of sensory states, it is unlikely that we could get any informative explanation of what their being conscious consists in. No useful explanation will be possible unless we can represent the property of being conscious as having some articulated structure. But it will be hard t o justify the idea that being conscious is an intrinsic property of conscious states if that property does have some informative structure. Once we assign some such structure t o the property of being conscious, it will be at least as plausible t o regard being conscious as an extrinsic property of mental states. So the only non-question-begging reason to see consciousness as an intrinsic property of mental states would be that it lacks such structure, and is thus simple and unanalyzable. And something's being simple effectively precludes our explaining it by appeal t o anything else; simple properties are those we take t o be primitive in our hierarchies of explanation.14 14Franz Brentano's idea that a mental state's being conscious is due to its being in part about itself is a rare attempt to assign informative structure to being conscious, conceived of as an intrinsic property. (Psychology from a n Empirical Standpoint, tr. Antos C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and Linda L. McAlister [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 19731, p. 129-130.) But he gives no reason for his insistence that this awareness of conscious mental states is intrinsic to those states; and if it is not, the resulting theory is virtually indistinguishable from that for which I argue below. Other, more decisive difficulties for Brentano's view are noted in my "A Theory of Consciousness" (Report No. 40/1990, Center for Interdisciplinary Research [ZiF], Research Group on Mind and Brain, University of Bielefeld), at the outset of SVII.

In any case, an account is possible of what it is for a sensory state t o be conscious on which being conscious and having sensory quality are independent properties. The account applies equally well t o all mental states, whether intentional or sensory, but I shall concentrate here on the sensory case. If a state is conscious, we are conscious of being in that state. The converse also holds, a t least if we are conscious of being in the mental state in a suitably unmediated way. Ruling out reliance on inference and observation will capture that intuitive immediacy.15 So it is reasonable t o hold that for a mental state t o be conscious is for one t o be conscious in a suitably immediate way of being in that state. There are two ways we can be conscious of things: By perceiving them, and by having thoughts about them. The perceptual model of being conscious of something cannot help here. Perceiving involves characteristic sensory qualities. So on a perceptual model, a state's being conscious will involve some characteristic quality; otherwise the comparison with perception would be idle. Since sensory states need not be conscious, their sensory qualities are independent of their being conscious. So the characteristic quality that, on the perceptual model, being conscious introduces must be distinct from the sensory qualities that sensations already have. But then it is a mystery what those new qualities could be.16 The only alternative is that a mental state's being conscious consists in one's having a thought that one is in that very mental state, a thought based on neither observation nor inference. (Henceforth I omit this qualification.) On this theory, the relevant higher-order thought will not itself be a conscious thought unless we have a yet higher-order thought. This explains why we are generally unaware of such higher-order thoughts. It also allows a ready distinction be''We need not rule out inference and observation of which we are unaware. This exception is not circular, since I explain a mental state's being conscious by reference to an independent notion of being conscious of something. "These concerns are reminiscent of Aristotle's question about whether or not the sense we use to see that we see is same as the sense of sight (de Anima I11 2, 425b13-4).

tween a mental state's being introspectively and nonintrospectively conscious. Mental states are introspectively conscious if the relevant higher-order thought is itself a conscious thought .17 The relevant higher-order thoughts must be assertoric, since intentional states with other mental attitudes can occur without our being conscious of anything.'' Nor does having a disposition t o have a thought normally result in one's being conscious of anything. So it is probable that only occurrent intentional states with assertoric force will do.19 Relatively weak conceptual resources will suffice for a higher-order thought t o refer to one's own sensory states. We refer in thought to physical objects by way of their position in our visual field. It is natural to suppose that thoughts can similarly refer t o sensory states by way of their position

1 7 ~ e i n cgonscious of something may appear to be factive. Since perceiving, unlike thinking, is arguably factive, perhaps the perceptual model is, after all, superior. But if the relevant consciousness really is factive, we can stipulate that our higher-order thoughts are as well. Moreover, there is reason to doubt that the way we actually are conscious of our conscious mental states guarantees truth; special views about privileged access notwithstanding, we can and do make mistakes about what conscious states we are in. 181f I doubt or wonder whether some physical object is red, I am conscious of the object; similarly if I expect, hope, or desire that it is. So perhaps if one doubts or wonders whether a mental state has some particular property, or hopes, desires, or expects that it does, one will thereby be conscious of the mental state. But it is not the doubt, wonder, hope, or desire that makes us conscious of the object. If I doubt whether that object is red, or desire or suspect that it is, I must a t least think assertorically that the object is there. Similarly with doubting, hoping or expecting that my mental state has some property; I must a t least have the assertoric thought that I am in that state. Having these nonassertoric attitudes will not make one conscious of being in that state except by leading to one's have an affirmative thought that one is in that state. ''A particular property may be described in both dispositional and nondispositional terms. Relative to the categories of folk psychology, we need nondispositional states to make mental states conscious; but at a subpersonal level we might describe those states in dispositional terms. I a m grateful to Daniel Dennett for arguing the virtues of a dispositional treatment, and for much useful conversation on these topics in general.

in the relevant sensory field. Something of this sort presumably explains how higher-order thoughts can be about sensory states even though conscious differentiation of sensory detail quickly outstrips our conceptual resources. Elsewhere I have argued that a theory based on higher-order thoughts can save the phenomenological appearances at least as well as one can with the Cartesian idea that being conscious is intrinsic to mental states generally, and to sensory states in particular.20 In closing I shall indicate two ways this is so in the case of sensory states. Some phenomenological data pertaining t o sensory states are very likely harder to explain if we assume that being conscious is intrinsic to sensory states. There are sensory states that are conscious only some of the time, largely through shifts in attention, for example, pains from which we are temporarily distracted or auditory sensations that we screen out. The idea that being conscious is intrinsic to sensory quality in effect rules out such shifts between a state's being conscious and its not being conscious, presumably requiring some reinterpretation of the data; we might say, for example, that such sensations do not literally persist. But it is probable that such gerrymandering will make a satisfactory explanation harder to come by.21 Other data seem even less amenable to reinterpretation on which being conscious is an intrinsic property of conscious 20 "A Theory of Consciousnessn; "Two Concepts of Consciousness", Philosophical Studies 49, 3 (May 1986), pp. 329-359; "Thinking that One Thinks", forthcoming in Approaches t o Consciousness, ed. Glyn Humphreys and Martin Davies (Oxford: Basil Blackwell); "Why Are Verbally Expressed Thoughts Conscious?", Report No. 3211990, Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF); and "Consciousness and HigherOrder Thought", Report, forthcoming/l990, Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF). , , "Another example relies on a surprising fact about vision. Our visual field seems replete with visual detail throughout. This is because eye movements provide foveal vision over a wide area, and we retain the visual information thus gained. Nonetheless, at any given moment we are aware of little visual detail outside the center of our visual field. It is natural to speculate that our seeming to see much of this detail may in effect be due to our confabulating detailed visual sensations. Such confabulation would b e far harder t o understand if being conscious were intrinsic to sensory states.

states. We are often aware of more fine-grained differences among sensory qualities when we have more fine-grained conceptual distinctions a t our disposal. Vivid examples come from wine tasting and musical experience, where conceptual sophistication seems actually t o generate experiences with more finely differentiated sensory qualities. The present theory predicts this. The degree t o which we are conscious of differences among sensory qualities depends on how fine grained the concepts are that figure in our higher-order thoughts. The relevant sensory states may well have been conscious before one acquired the more fine-grained concepts, but conscious only in virtue of less subtle qualities. It is unlikely that we can explain these observations except by a theory that appeals to higher-order thoughts. On the present theory, consciousness is not only not essential t o mentality; it is a n esoteric development of mental capacities. Still, the intuition may persist that consciousness is somehow central t o the way we think about the mind. Can we do justice t o that intuition, if not by saving it at least by explaining why we have i t ? As noted earlier, one way that consciousness is central t o our concept of mind is that we fix the extensions of our terms for mental states, and indeed of the term 'mental' itself, by way of the conscious cases of mental states. But consciousness figures in an even more important way. Though it does not demarcate the distinctively mental, it is arguable that it provides the basis for our intuitive mark of being a person. We are the only creatures we know of that we regard as persons, but we can easily imagine discovering others t h a t we would classify with ourselves in that way. It is not, of course, that only persons have conscious mental states; many nonhuman animals presumably do, as well. There is no reason t o deny t o animals without language the capacity to have suitable higher-order thoughts. The relevant higher-order thoughts do not require much richness of conceptual resources or syntactic structure.22 22Moreover, as Daniel C. Dennett has noted, the behavior of nonlinguistic animals sometimes indicates the presence of higher-order

1. C ~ N ~ C I ~AND U SENSORY ~ N E ~Q~UALITY

35

But we have no reason to suppose that animals other than persons are aware of whatever higher-order thoughts they may have. And if none of an animal's higher-order thoughts are conscious, it will lack the particular kind of reflective consciousness that involves some measure of rational connectedness in the way it is aware of its mental states. Being a person will, on this account, be a matter of degree, but that is as it should be. Our distant ancestors doubtless had the distinctive characteristics of people to some degree, though not as fully as we do, and the same may well be true of other creatures elsewhere.23 Though consciousness is not essential t o mentality, it is very likely crucial in this way to our concept of being a person. The foregoing considerations suggest that a theory based on higher-order thoughts will very likely be able to save the thoughts. ("Conditions of Personhood", in The Identities of Persons, ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976: 175-196, pp. 183-4.) Dennett's cases involve one animal's having a thought about another animal's thought, which in turn is about some distinct thought of the first animal. Direct evidence that an animal without language has a thought about another of its own thoughts, however, may seem difficult to come by. For methodological ideas about this kind of problem, see Lawrence Weiskrantz, "Some Contributions of Neurophysiology of Vision and Memory to the Problem of Consciousness", in Consciousness in Contemporary Science, ed. A. J. Marcel and E. Bisiach, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988: 183-199, pp. 194-197. 231t is worth comparing the present account of being a person t o that put forth by Harry G. Frankfurt ("Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person", The Journal of Philosophy LXVIII, 1 (January 14, 1971): 5-20. Frankfurt holds that what distinguishes persons is their ability t o have higher-order desires that some particular one of their firstorder desires be effective in leading to action (6-7, 11-2). He argues that forming such higher-order desires involves identifying oneself with one, rather than another, of one's first-order desires (13). Roughly, such identification is, he maintains, what is involved in the process of deciding (16), and being able t o identify oneself with one's desires in this way is also what is distinctive of being a person (16). But forming decisions is not the only way one identifies oneself in mental terms. Being a person is, rather, the more general ability to be conscious of one's thoughts that one is in a particular mental state. Consciously thinking that one is in a particular mental state is consciously identifying oneself as that being which has that mental state.

phenomenological appearances pertaining t o sensory quality. Moreover, on that account, a state's being conscious is an extrinsic property of that state. Our having good reason to explain a mental state's being conscious by appeal to accompanying higher-order thoughts thus helps sustain the view that a state's being conscious and its having sensory quality are independent properties.24

''I am grateful, for helpful conversation about a related paper, to the participants of the August 1989 Joint Conference of the Sociedad Filodfica Ibero Americana and the Sociedad Argentina de Anilisis Fil0~6fic0,in Buenos Aires. This paper was written while I was a fellow in 1989-90 at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), University of Bielefeld, Germany. I am indebted to the Center for generous support and exceptionally congenial and stimulating surroundings during that time. I am also indebted to Peter Bieri, Daniel C. Dennett, A. H. C. van der Heijden, Jaegwon Kim, Anthony J. Marcel, Jay Rosenberg, and Lawrence Weiskrantz for helpful reactions.

PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES, 1 Consciousness, 1991

Lovely and Suspect Qualities Daniel C. Dennett A family of compelling intuitions work to keep "the problem of consciousness" systematically insoluble, and David Rosenthal, in a series of papers including the one under discussion, has been resolutely driving these intuitions apart, exposing them individually to the light, and proposing alternatives. In this instance the intuition that has seemed sacrosanct, but falls to his analysis, is the intuition that "sensory quality" and consciousness are necessarily united: that, for instance, there could not be unconscious pains, or unconscious subjective shades of blue, or unconscious aromas of freshly roasted coffee beans. The particular airborne polymers that are the vehicles of freshly roasted coffee beans could exist, of course, in the absence of any observer, and hence of any consciousness, but the sensory quality of that aroma requires -according to well-entrenched intuition- not only an observer but a conscious observer. Such properties have no esse except as percipi. Rosenthal argues that this utterly familiar idea is just wrong; the connection between what he calls sensory quality and consciousness is only contingent. Moreover -and this

is the most important contribution of his paper- it is only by denying this traditional link that progress can be made. I have no substantive quarrels with Rosenthal's arguments, so instead of raising obstacles, I will try to push his claims a little further, and support them with further considerations. Hume pointed to what he thought was an important difference between our "internal impressions" and our sensations. The latter require (or at least invite) us to posit continuously existing bodies and properties in order to preserve the coherence and constancy of our discontinuous impressions of sensation. His example was the fire in his study fireplace, which gradually burns down, during the intervals between his different sensations of it (Treatise, I.iv.2). He thought it was otherwise with "internal impressions": "on no occasion is it necessary to suppose that they have existed and operated, when they were not perceived, in order to preserve the same dependence and connexion, of which we have had experience." But Hume's claim is by no means obvious, however well supported by tradition. Unfelt pains make a convenient entering wedge. As Rosenthal points out, it is natural, contrary to Hume's supposition, to speak of having had a single, persistent pain or ache during the longish stretch of time when one is intermittently distracted by -conscious of- a headache. If all the other psychological effects of pain are present -the lowered effectiveness, the inability to concentrate, the irritability- as well as the physiological effects that are responsible for them, such as the characteristic changes in neuromodulator balances, there is good reason to treat one's pain as persisting unobserved, just like the fire in the hearth. And if there can be unfelt pains, there can be unconscious sensations of red. Suppose, to make the idea vivid, that we train human subjects to respond to color-coded signals in a video game, and suppose they have accustomed themselves to expect some sort of disagreeable event in the aftermath of a flashing red spot; we then arrange to present them with a flashing red spot under conditions in which their attention is concentrated on other matters; we observe that they do not, and cannot, report the occurrence of the flashing red spot, but their galvanic skin response (as a measure of their anxiety,

their expectation of a disagreeable sequel) indicates that they have distinguished the redness of the spot. Experiments exhibiting similar effects are legion, and while I cannot think of any offhand that have exactly the effect described, I have no doubt that such effects could be produced. Suppose, in any case, that we did have evidence that the effects of "seeing red" (and seeing it as red, of course) could occur in the absence of consciousness of red (as revealed in the normal experimental way -by the subjects' reports). Would this not give us good reason to admit that sensory qualities can exist independently of consciousness? Why not? What arguments have been offered, by Hume or others, to oppose this idea? If it seems repugnant to reason, just why is this? Perhaps the most persuasive ground is the idea -so persuasive, apparently, that it need not be made into an explicit argument!- that once science has established that secondary properties are just powers in objects to produce certain ideas in observers, these ideas-in-observers must "intrinsically" involve consciousness. Rosenthal says: "It is often pointed out that we cannot repeat [the Lockean] move; there is no place to relocate the qualitative character that the distinctive properties of sensory states seem to exhibit." (p. 27) Rosenthal questions this claim, but I will go further. We can repeat the Lockean move, and in fact we must. The common wisdom is that modern science has removed the color from the physical world, replacing it with colorless electromagnetic radiation of various wavelengths, bouncing off surfaces that variably reflect and absorb that radiation. It may look as if the color is out there, but it isn't. It's in here. It seems to follow that what is "in here" is both necessarily conscious (otherwise it isn't all the way "in") and necessarily "qualitative" (otherwise color would be utterly missing in the world). This reasoning is confused. What science has actually shown us is just that the light-reflecting properties of objects cause creatures to go into various discriminative states, underlying a host of innate dispositions and learned habits of varying complexity. And what are their properties? Here we can indeed play Locke's card a second time: these discriminative states of observers' brains have various "primary" properties (their mechanistic properties due to their

connections, the excitation states of their elements, etc.), and in virtue of these primary properties, they have various secondary, merely dispositional properties. In human creatures with language, for instance, these discriminative states often eventually dispose the creatures to express verbal judgments alluding to the "color" of various things. The semantics of these statements makes it clear what colors supposedly are: reflective properties of the surfaces of objects, or of transparent volumes (the pink ice cube, the shaft of limelight). And that is just what colors are in fact -though saying just which reflective properties they are is tricky. Don't our internal discriminative states also have some special "intrinsic" properties, the subjective, private, ineffable, properties that constitute the way things look to us (sound to us, smell to us, etc.)? No. The dispositional properties of those discriminative states already suffice to explain all the effects: the effects on both peripheral behavior (saying "Red!", stepping the brake, etc.) and "internal" behavior (judging "Red!", seeing something as red, reacting with uneasiness or displeasure if, say, red things upset one). Any additional "qualitative" properties or qualia would thus have no positive role to play in any explanations, nor are they somehow vouchsafed to us "directly" in intuition. Qualitative properties that are intrinsically conscious are a myth, an artifact of misguided theorizing, not anything given pretheoretically. We do have a need, as Rosenthal shows, for properties of discriminative states that are in one sense independent of consciousness, and that can be for that very reason informatively cited in explanations of particular contents of our consciousness. These properties are partially, but not entirely, independent of consciousness. We may call such properties lovely properties as contrasted with suspect properties. Someone could be lovely who had never yet, as it happened, been observed by any observer of the sort who would find her lovely, but she could not -as a matter of logic- be a suspect until someone actually suspected her of something. Particular instances of lovely qualities (such as the quality of loveliness) can be said to exist as Lockean dispositions prior to the moment (if any) where they exercise

their power over an observer, producing the defining effect therein. Thus some unseen woman (self-raised on a desert island, I guess) could be genuinely lovely, having the dispositional power to affect normal observers of a certain class in a certain way, in spite of never having the opportunity to do so. But lovely qualities cannot be defined independently of the proclivities, susceptibilities, or dispositions of a class of observers. Actually, that is a bit too strong. Lovely qualities would not be defined -there would be no point in defining them, in contrast to all the other logically possible gerrymandered properties- independently of such a class of observers. So while it might be logically possible ("in retrospect" one might say) to gather color property instances together by something like brute force enumeration, the reasons for singling out such properties (for instance, in order to explain certain causal regularities in a set of curiously complicated objects) depend on the existence of the class of observers. Are sea elephants lovely? Not to us. It is hard to imagine an uglier creature. What makes a sea elephant lovely to another sea elephant is not what makes a woman lovely to another human being, and to call some as-yet-unobserved woman lovely who, as it happens, would mightily appeal to sea elephants would be to abuse both her and the term. It is only by reference to human tastes, which are contingent and indeed idiosyncratic features of the world, that the property of loveliness (to-a-human-being) can be identified. On the other hand, suspect qualities (such as the property of being a suspect) are understood in such a way as to presuppose that any instance of the property has already had its defining effect on at least one observer. You may be eminently worthy of suspicion -you may even be obviously guilty- but you can't be a suspect until someone actually suspects you. The tradition that Rosenthal is denying would have it that "sensory qualities" are suspect properties -their esse is in every instance percipi. Just as an unsuspected suspect is no suspect at all, so an unfelt pain is supposedly no pain at all. But, for the reasons Rosenthal adduces, this is exactly as unreasonable as the claim that an unseen object cannot be colored. He claims, in effect, that sensory qualities should rather be considered lovely properties -like

Lockean secondary qualities generally. Our intuition that the as-yet-unobserved emerald in the middle of the clump of ore is already green does not have to be denied, even though its being green is not a property it can be said to have "intrinsically." This is easier to accept for some secondary qualities than for others. That the sulphurous fumes spewed forth by primordial volcanos were yellow seems somehow more objective than that they stank, but so long as what we mean by "yellow" is what we mean by "yellow," the claims are parallel. For suppose some primordial earthquake cast up a cliff face exposing the stripes of hundreds of chemically different layers to the atmosphere. Were those stripes visible? We must ask to whom. Perhaps some of them would be visible t o us and others not. Perhaps some of the invisible stripes would be visible to pigeons (with their tetrachromat color vision), or to creatures who saw in the infra-red or ultraviolet part of the electromagnetic spectrum. For the same reason one cannot meaningfully ask whether the difference between emeralds and rubies is a visible difference without specifying the vision system in question. The same moral should be drawn about the sensory qualities Rosenthal attributes to mental (or cerebral) states. Like Lockean secondary qualities in general, they are equivalence classes of complexes of primary qualities of those states, and thus can exist independently of any observer, but since the equivalence classes of different complexes that compose the property are gathered by their characteristic effect on normal observers, it makes no sense to single them out as properties in the absence of the class of observers. There wouldn't be colors at all if there weren't observers with color vision, and there wouldn't be pains at all if there weren't subjects capable of conscious experience of pains, but that does not make either colors or pains into suspect properties. Rosenthal (in a personal communication) asks whether this is not too strong. Why should the existence of pains require subjects capable of conscious experience of pains, as opposed simply to subjects capable of having nonconscious pains? Fair question, and his implied point is a good one -except for what amounts, in the end, to a lexical quandary, which can be brought out by considering the parallel with color.

There is nothing except the specific effects on normal human beings that demarcates the boundaries of the "visible spectrum". Infra-red and ultra-violet radiation does not count as subserving color vision (at least according to a sort of purist definitional taste) even in creatures who respond to it in the ways we respond to the (humanly) visible spectrum. "Yes, it's like color vision, but it isn't color vision," someone might insist. "Color vision is vision whose proper objects are (only) red through violet." Now imagine that we confront a set of primary property complexes as candidates for the secondary property of pain, and suppose it is a somewhat enlarged set (it includes infra-pain and ultra- pain, in effect), including out-lying cases of which we human beings would never be conscious (but which have the sorts of effects on variant human beings that paradigmatic pains have on us, etc). Would those be pains? There would certainly be a property which was the property picked out by that set, but would it be pain? (Not a terribly interesting question.) I claim, then, that sensory qualities are nothing other than the dispositional properties of cerebral states to produce certain further effects in the very observers whose states they are.' It is no objection to declare that it just seems obvious that our mental states really do have intrinsic properties over and above their dispositional properties. (If this were a good argument, it would be a good argument against the original distinction, by Locke, Boyle and others, between primary and secondary qualities, for it certainly "seems obvious" that physical objects have their color properties "intrinsically" -just look at 'em!) It does indeed appear to us as if we somehow enjoy, in our minds, some sort of direct and intimate access to "intrinsic" properties of our conscious states, but as Rosenthal observes, "We need not preserve the 'element of truth' in erroneous commonsense intuitions when we become convinced that these intuitions reflect how things appear, rather than how they really are." (p. 27.) 'The claims advanced briefly here are drawn from a longer discussion and defense of them in my forthcoming book, Consciousness Explained, which has been much influenced by Rosenthal's articles, and from many discussions with him.

PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES, 1 Consciousness, 1991

Consciousness, Unconsciousness and Intentionality John R. Searle* One of the most amazing things about the past half century or so in analytic philosophy of mind is the scarcity of serious work on the nature of consciousness. Even works purportedly about consciousness have very little t o say about the general structure of consciousness or about its special features. Thus for example of three recent books containing "Consciousness"1 in their titles not one contains even an attempt to state a comprehensive account of the structure of conscious states, much less state a general theory that will account for subjectivity, the stream of consciousness, the qualitative character of conscious states, etc. In each case consciousness is regarded not as a primary subject matter in the philosophy of mind but as a "problem", a potential embarrassment t o the author's theory, which is, * @ John R. Searle. 'Churchland, Paul M. (1984), Jackendoff, Ray (1987) and Lycan, William G. (1987).

in each case, some version of "functionalism" or "materialism" or "computationalism". What goes for the philosophy of mind also goes for most -not all- mainstream philosophy of language. You can test this for yourself: Which of the many works on meaning by, say Carnap or Quine, has given you the greatest insight into the special features of the relationships between meaning and consciousness? I think there are many deep reasons for this fear of consciousness in contemporary analytic philosophy. One of the most important of these is that the presuppositions and methods of contemporary philosophy are ill equipped t o deal with the subjectivity of conscious states. A similar reluctance to accept the consequences of ontological subjectivity also afflicts psychology and cognitive science generally. In order to account for the mind without consciousness, one must postulate some other sorts of phenomena. The most obvious solution is to postulate unconscious mental processes t o do the jobs that traditional philosophy, psychology, and common sense ascribed t o conscious mental processes. This manoeuvre takes different forms, but the general tendency in cognitive science has been to drive a wedge between, on the one hand, conscious, subjective mental processes, which are not regarded as a proper subject of scientific investigation; and, on the other hand, those which are regarded as the genuine subject matter of cognitive science, and which, therefore, must be objective. The general theme is always that the unconscious mental processes are more significant than the conscious ones. Perhaps the earliest canonical statement is in Lashley's claim,2 "No activitity of mind is ever conscious" (Lashley's italics). Another extreme version of this approach is to be found in Jackendoff's claim3 that in fact there are two "notions of mind", the "computational mind" and the "phenomenological mind". I believe that it is a profound mistake 'Lashley, Karl (1956). I don't think Lashley means this literally. I think he means t h a t the processes by which the various features of conscious states are produced are never conscious. But even t h a t is an overstatement; and the fact t h a t he resorts t o this sort of hyperbole is revealing of the theme I am trying t o identify. Jackendoff, Ray (1987).

t o try t o describe and explain mental phenomena without reference to consciousness. In this article I will argue that any intentional state is either actually or potentially a conscious intentional state, and for that reason cognitive science cannot avoid studying consciousness. The attribution of any intentional phenomena to a system, whether "computational" or otherwise, is dependent on a prior acceptance of our ordinary notion of the mind, the conscious "phenomenological" mind. In order to substantiate this claim, I am also going to have to explore the notion of an unconscious mental state. The course of this exploration is rather more complex than I would like, and I need t o begin by reminding the reader of the distinctions between ontology, causation, and epistemology. For any phenomenon, but for biological phenomena especially, we need t o know: 1. What is its mode of existence? (ontology) 2. What does it do? (causation) 3. How do we find out about it ? (epistemology) So, for example, if we were examining the heart, the answer t o our three questions is: the heart is a large piece of muscle tissue located in the chest cavity (ontology); the heart functions to pump blood throughout the body (causation); and we find out about the heart indirectly through such methods as using stethoscopes, cardiograms and taking pulse, and directly by opening up the chest cavity and looking at the heart (epistemology). Now, these distinctions apply to both conscious and unconscious mental states. The history of the philosophy of mind in recent decades is in large part a series of confusions between these three questions. Thus, behaviorism confuses the epistemology of the ment a1 with the ontology (we find out about mental states by observing behavior, so mental states just consist in behavior and dispositions to behavior). And functionalism consists in confusing the causation with the ontology (mental states have causal relations to input stimuli, other mental states, and output behavior, so mental states just consist in having these causal relations). Our naive, pre-theoretical notion of an unconscious mental state is the idea of a conscious mental state minus the consciousness. But what exactly does that mean? How could

we subtract the consciousness from a mental state and still have a mental state left over? Since Freud, we have grown so used to talking about unconscious mental states that we have lost sight of the fact that the answer t o this question is by no means obvious. Yet it is clear that we do think of the unconscious on the model of the conscious. Our idea of an unconscious state is the idea of a mental state that just happens then and there to be unconscious; but we still understand it on the model of a conscious state in the sense that we think of it as being just like a conscious state and as one which in some sense could have been conscious. This is clearly true, for example, in Freud, whose notions of both what he calls "preconscious" and "unconscious" states are built on a rather simple model of conscious states? Perhaps at its most naive, our picture is something like this: unconscious mental states in the mind are like fish deep in the sea. The fish that we can't see underneath the surface have exactly the same shape they have when they surface. The fish don't lose their shapes by going under water. Another simile: unconscious mental states are like objects stored in the dark attic of the mind. These objects have their shapes all along, even when you can't see them. We are tempted to smile at these simple models, but I think something like these pictures underlies our conception of unconscious mental states; and it is important to try to see what is right and what wrong about that conception. In recent decades, the connection between consciousness and intentionality is being gradually lost in theoretical writings in linguistics, cognitive science, and philosophy. There has been an effort of varying degrees of explicitness to try to separate the issues concerning intentionality from those concerning consciousness. I think the underlying -and perhaps unconscious- motivation for this urge to separate intentionality from consciousness, even among people who do not share the ideology of the behaviorist-materialist tradition, is that we do not know how to explain consciousness, and we would like t o get a theory of intentionality which will not be 'Freud, S. (1949) pp. 19-25.

discredited by the fact that we do not have a theory of consciousness. The idea is to treat intentionality "objectively", to treat it as if the subjective features of consciousness did not really matter to it. For example, many functionalists will concede that functionalism can't "handle" consciousness (this is called the problem of qualia), but they think that this issue doesn't matter to their accounts of belief, desire, etc., since these intentional states have no quale, no special conscious qualities. They can be treated as if they were completely independent of consciousness. Similarly, both the idea of some linguists that there are rules of syntax that are psychologically real but totally inaccessible to consciousness and the idea of some psychologists that there are complex inferences in perception that are genuine psychological inferential processes but inaccessible to consciousness, try to separate intentionality from consciousness. The idea in both cases is not that there are mental phenomena which just happen to be unconscious, but somehow in some way they are in principle inaccessible to consciousness. They are not the sort of thing that could be or could ever have been conscious. I think these recent developments are mistaken. There are deep reasons having to do with the nature of mental phenomena whereby our notion of an unconscious mental state is parasitic on our notion of a conscious state. Of course, at any given moment, a person may be unconscious; he or she may be asleep, in a coma, etc.; and of course, many mental states are never brought to consciousness. And no doubt there are many which could not be brought t o consciousness for one reason or another -they may be too painful and hence too deeply repressed for us to think of them, for example. Nonetheless, not every state of an agent is a mental state and not even every state of the brain which functions essentially in the production of mental phenomena is itself a mental phenomenon. So what makes something mental when it is not conscious? For a state to be a mental state, and a fortiori for it to be an intentional mental state, certain conditions must be met: What are they? To explore these questions let us first consider cases which are clearly mental, though unconscious, and contrast them with cases which are "uncons~ious~~ because not mental at

all. Think of the difference, for example, between my belief (when I am not thinking about i t ) that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris, and the myelination of the axons in my central nervous system. There is a sense in which both are unconscious. But there is a big difference in that the structural states of my axons couldn't be themselves conscious states, because there isn't anything mental about them at all. I assume for the sake of this argument that myelination functions essentially in the production of my mental states, but even if myelinated axons were themselves objects of experiences, even if I could feel inwardly the state of the myelin sheathes, still the actual structures are not themselves mental states. Not every unconscious state in my brain which (like myelination) functions essentially in my mental life is itself a mental state. But the belief that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris is a genuine mental state. Even though it happens to be a mental state that most of the time is not present to consciousness. So here are two states in me, my belief and my axon myelination; both have something to do with my brain; and both are unconscious. But only one is mental, and we need to get clear about what makes it mental and the connection between that feature -whatever it is- and consciousness. There are at least two constraints on our conception of intentionality which any theory of the unconscious must be able to account for: It must be able to account for the distinction between phenomena which are genuinely intentional and those which in some respects behave as if they were but which are not in fact. This is the distinction I have discussed elsewhere between intrinsic and as-if forms of intentionality.' And second it must be able to account for the fact that intentional states represent their conditions of satisfaction only under certain aspects and those aspects must matter to the agent. My unconscious belief that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris satisfies both of these conditions. My having that belief is a matter of intrinsic intentionality, and not a matter of what anybody else chooses to say about me or how I behave or what sort of stance someone might adopt toward me. And 5Searle, John R. (1980), Searle, John R. (1984a) and especially Searle, John R. (1984b).

the belief that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris represents its conditions of satisfaction under certain aspects and not others. It is, for example, distinct from the belief that 'the tallest iron structure built in France before 1900 is located in the French capital', even assuming that the Eiffel Tower is identical with the tallest iron structure built in France before 1900, and Paris is identical with the French capital. We might say that every intentional state has a certain aspectual shape; and this aspectual shape is part of its identity, part of what makes it the state that it is.

These two features, the fact that an unconscious intentional state must nonetheless b e intrinsically mental and the fact that it must have a certain aspectual shape, have important consequences for our conception of the unconscious. Specifically, we understand the notion of an unconscious mental state only as a possible content of consciousness, only as the sort of thing which, though not conscious, and perhaps impossible t o bring t o consciousness for various reasons, is nonetheless the sort of thing that could be or could have been conscious. Someone might have mental states which are impossible t o bring t o consciousness -because of repression or brain lesions or what have you- but if they are genuine unconscious mental states, they can't be the sort of thing which in the nature of the case no one could ever have brought t o consciousness. To be mental at all, they must be at least possible candidates for consciousness. The argument for this thesis is a bit complex, but the central idea behind it can be given a simple formulation: the concept of an intrinsic intentional mental state is the concept of something that has a n aspectual shape. All representation is under aspects. You can see this, if it is not obvious on its face, by reminding yourself that mental contents are possible or actual contents of thoughts or experiences. What you can believe, you have t o be able to think; and what you can perceive, you have t o be able to experience perceptually. But the notions of thinking and experiencing are notions which

imply the presence of aspectual shapes and that in turn implies accessibility to consciousness. The link, then, between intentionality and consciousness lies in the notion of an aspectual shape. To be intentional, a state or process must be thinkable or experienceable; and t o be thinkable or experienceable, it must have an aspectual shape under which it is at least in principle, consciously thinkable or experienceable. It must be the sort of thing that could be the content of a conscious thought or experience. I will now spell out this argument in more detail. For the sake of clarity I will number the major steps in setting out the argument, though I do not mean to imply that the argument is a simple deduction from axioms. Sometimes, indeed, I will be approaching the same goal from more than one path. 1. The first step is simply to remind ourselves that there is a distinction between intrinsic intentionality and as-if intentionality; only intrinsic intentionality is genuinely mental. I have argued at some length for this rather obvious distinction in other writings (Searle 1980, Searle 1984a, and Searle, 1984b), and I will not repeat the arguments here. I believe the distinction is obviously correct, but the price of giving it up would be that everything then becomes mental, because relative t o some purpose or other anything can be treated as-if it were mental. E.g., water flowing downhill behaves as-if it had intentionality. It tries to get to the bottom of the hill by ingeneously seeking the line of the least resistance, it does information processing in order t o calculate the size of rocks, the angle of the slope, the pull of gravity, etc. But if water is mental then everything is mental. 2. The second step is t o point out that the distinction between the intrinsic and the as-if lies neither in the behavior of the system in question nor in the fact that there are underlying causal mechanisms which cause the behavior nor in the complexity of the system. These features are not sufficient t o account for the distinction, since they can be duplicated equally in both intrinsic and as-if systems. 3. The distinction does lie, a t least in part, in the fact that the idea of an intentional state is closely connected t o the ideas of thinking and experiencing. To be a possible belief something has t o be a possible thought content: It is a

conceptual truth that anything that can be believed can be thought. Similarly anything that can be a perception can be the content of a perceptual experience. Of course there are plently of unconscious thoughts but even if unconscious they still have t o be thoughts. 4. Thoughts and experiences and hence intrinsic intentional states generally, have a certain sort of aspectual shape. They represent their conditions of satisfaction under aspects. For example, the desire for water can be a different desire from the desire for HzO, even though there is no way t o satisfy the one without satisfying the other. (This aspectual shape of intentional states explains the referential opacity of ascriptions of intentional states. The ascriptions are opaque because the states themselves are a ~ p e c t u a l . ~ ) 5. This aspectual feature must matter t o the agent. It must exist from his/her point of view. It is, for example, from my point of view that there can be a difference for me between between my wanting water and my wanting H20, even though the external behavior that corresponds t o these desires may be identical in each case. In the case of conscious thoughts, the way that the aspectual shape matters is that it is constitutive of the way the agent thinks about a subject matter: I can think about my thirst for a drink of water without thinking a t all about its chemical composition. I can think of i t as water without thinking of it as H20. Its obvious how i t works for conscious thoughts and experiences, but how does it work for unconscious mental states? One way t o get a t the main question of this discussion is t o ask, "What fact about an unconscious intentional state gives it the particular aspectual shape that it has, i.e. what fact about it makes it the mental state that it is?" 6. The aspectual feature cannot be exhaustively or completely characterized solely in terms of third person, behavioral, or even neurophysiological predicates. None of these is sufflcient t o give an exhaustive account of em the way it seems t o the agent. 'See Searle, John R. (1983). Chapter 7, for an extended discussion of this issue.

Behavioral evidence concerning the existence of mental states, including even evidence concerning the causation of a person's behavior, no matter how complete, always leaves the aspectual character of intentional states underdetermined. There will always be an inferential gulf between the evidence for the presence of the aspect and the aspect itself. (This is one feature of the other minds problem.) It is less obvious that a similar condition holds for neurophysiological facts, but it does. Since the neurophysiological facts are always causally sufficient for any set of mental facts7 someone with perfect causal knowledge might be able t o make the inference from the neurophysiological to the intentional a t least in those few cases where there is a law-like connection between the facts specified in neural terms and the facts specified in intentional terms. But even in these cases, if there are any, there is still an inference. The specification of the neurophysiological in neurophysiological terms is not yet a specification of the intentional, even though the neurophysiological is causally sufficient to fix the mental. Any account that uses only a third person objective vocabulary will leave their aspectual character underdetermined; because no third person objective vocabulary, by itself, will be sufficient t o characterize all of the aspectual facts. Thus t o take an example of behavioral evidence, the fact that a person consumes H20 only if it is described to him as "water" and not if it is described as "H20" would reasonably lead us t o conclude that the person desires the substance under the aspect, "water" and does not desire it under the aspect "H207'. But this is still an inductive inference; the behavior still underdetermines the aspect in that it is still in principle possible for the person t o exhibit exactly that behavior and yet represent his own desires t o himself in ways that are not completely manifested t o us in his behavior. 7For these purposes I a m contrasting "neurophysiological" and "mental", b u t of course on my view of mind body relations, t h e mental simply is neurophysiological a t a higher level ( see Searle, (1984a)). I contrast mental and neurophysiological as one might contrast humans and animals without thereby implying t h a t the first class is not included in the second. There is no dualism implicit in my use of this contrast.

To take the more extreme case of neurophysiological evidence, imagine that we had a perfect science of the brain that enabled us to conclude with empirical certainty from the fact that a man was in state S that he wanted a substance under the aspect "water" and not under the aspect "HzO7). All the same the characterization "S" is still not yet a characterization of those aspects. S will both cause and realize the aspects but under that description it is still not constitutive of the aspects. This point is so important that it is worth digressing briefly to explain some of its implications. No amount of purely third person behavioral evidence is sufficient to entail all of the aspectual features of intentional states. Such third person evidence always leaves the aspectual features underdetermined. This is one of the weaknesses of behaviorism as a thesis in the philosophy of mind. Behaviorism in the philosophy of mind is now generally regarded as discredited, however, it survives vestigially in the philosophy of language. And you see it in an extreme form in Quine's writings. If you think, as he does, that all of the facts that there are about linguistic meaning are public third person facts, and if you think, as again he does (and as again I believe is mistaken), that the principle that language is public implies that all the facts that there are about meanings are third person facts, then you get not merely the underdetermination of aspectual facts by the behavioral facts but you get an indeterminacy of aspectual facts. Thus, Quine argues that within certain limits there simply is no fact of the matter about under what aspects a speaker represents a situation when he utters an expression that we are inclined to translate as "rabbit". I have argued elsewhere that this view is simply a reductio ad absurdum of linguistic behaviorism. Since it is obvious from my own case that there are determinate aspectual facts, if behaviorism leads to a denial of this point that can only show that behaviorism is false.* This is not the place to go into detail, but I believe similar remarks can be made about functionalist analyses of inten'Searle, John R. (1987).

tional states, a t least insofar as they try t o give a third person, objective, account of intentionality. Quine's inadvertent refutation of behaviorism can be applied mutatis mutandis t o functionalism. Quine's argument shows that any account of purely third person, objective phenomena given in functional terms will always leave the precise details of aspectual facts ~ n d e r d e t e r m i n e d . ~ Now, these six considerations lead t o our first significant conclusion: 7. There is a sense, then, in which intentional states, conscious or unconscious, are irreducibly subjective. The aspectual character is irreducibly subjective in the sense that no characterization in purely neutral third person terms will ever be sufficient t o express how the aspectual character seems t o the agent, but how it seems t o the agent is essential t o its identity. So far so good. We seem t o have labored heavily t o arrive at the common sense conclusion that there is something subjective about mental states even when they are unconscious. But this leads t o a very puzzling question: how could unconscious intentional states be subjective if there is no subjective feel t o them, no "qualia" , no what-it-feels-like-for-me to be in that state? Indeed how could the ontology of the unconscious be anything other than completely objective? To begin t o probe this question, let us ask what is the ontology of ordinary mental states, such as my belief that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris, when I am not thinking about such beliefs. And t o avoid muddying the waters, let's leave out halfconscious thoughts, peripheral consciousness, nagging but suppressed conscious states and other shadowy phenomena. What is going on, ontologically speaking, when I have a belief that is totally and completely unconscious but nonetheless there? If there are no conscious neurophysiological processes going on in my brain, then the only other processes would be unconscious neurophysiological processes, that is; the ontology

'For this reason functionalism, like the behaviorism that preceded i t , remains programmatic. To my knowledge, no functionalist has so far given anything like a plausible analysis of even one intentional state.

of the unconscious when unconscious is entirely neurophysiological. The difference, for example, between my unconscious belief about the Eiffel Tower and the unconscious myelinated condition of my axons is not that the one is a feature of my brain in some mental form and the other is purely neurophysiological; they are both purely neurophysiological. You can see this by imagining that the person is totally unconscious, e.g. in a sound dreamless sleep. Now lots of mental attributions are still true of that person, but the only mental ontology is neurophysiological. Indeed this point about unconscious states can be put in the form of a general principle: 8. The ontology of unconscious mental states, at the time they are unconscious, can only consist in the existence of purely neurophysiological phenomena. At the time the states are totally unconscious there simply is nothing else going on except neurophysiological processes. But now we seem to have a contradiction: the ontology of unconscious intentionality is entirely describable in third person, objective neurophysiological terms, but all the same the states are irreducibly subjective. How can this be? I believe there is only one solution to this puzzle. The apparent contradiction is resolved by pointing out that: 9. The notion of an unconscious intentional state is the notion of a state which is a possible conscious thought or experience. There are plenty of unconscious phenomena, but to the extent that they are genuinely mental they must in some sense preserve their aspectual shape even when unconscious, but the only sense that we can give to the notion that they preserve their aspectual shape when unconscious is that they are possible contents of consciousness. This is the main conclusion of this article. But this answer to our first question immediately gives rise to another question: What is meant by "possible" in the previous sentence? After all, I grant that it might be quite impossible for the state to occur consciously, because of brain lesion, repression, or other causes. So, in what sense exactly must it be a possible content of a thought or experience? This question leads to our next conclusion, which is really a further explanation of 9, and is implied by 8 and 9 together:

10. The ontology of the unconscious consists in objective features of the brain capable of causing subjective conscious thoughts. Hence when we describe something as an unconscious intentional state we are characterizing a n objective ontology in virtue of its causal capacity t o produce subjectivity. But the existence of these causal features is consistent with the fact that in any given case their causal powers may be blocked by some other interfering causes -such as psychological repression or brain damage. The possibility of interference by various forms of pathology does not alter the fact that any unconscious intentional state is the sort of thing that is in principle accessible t o consciousness. I t may be unconscious not only in the sense that it does not happen t o be conscious then and there, but also in the sense that for one reason or another the agent simply could not bring it t o consciousness, but it must be the sort of thing that can be brought t o consciousness because it must be the sort of thing that can be the content of a thought or experience. To summarize: So far I have tried t o establish that intentional states, conscious or unconscious, essentially have an aspectual character and this aspectual character is essentially subjective, in the sense that it cannot be exhaustively accounted for in third person "objective" terms. But since unconscious mental states consist in nothing but object,ive neurophysiological features of the brain how can they have an intrinsic subjective character? I have suggested that the only explanation for this fact is that unconscious intentional states while not conscious are at least potentionally so in the sense that they are the sort of things which could be conscious. When we characterize an unconscious intentional state in terms of its aspectual character, we are characterizing a present brain state in terms of its causal capacity t o produce a conscious thought or experience. Paradoxically, the naive mentalism of my view of the mind leads to a kind of dispositional analysis of unconscious mental phenomena; only it is not a disposition t o behavior, but a 'disposition' -if that is really the right word- t o conscious thoughts. So the overall picture that emerges is this. There is nothing going on in my brain but neurophysiological processes. Those

processes are capable of generating conscious states, (which are, of course, higher-level features of the neurophysiological systems and hence neurophysiological themselves). But of the unconscious neurophysiological features, some are mental and some are not. The difference is not in consciousness, for they are both, by hypothesis, unconscious. The difference is that the mental ones are candidates for consciousness. That's all. There isn't any aspectual shape at the level of neurons and synapses. In my skull, there is just the brain with all its intricacy. All my mental life is lodged in the brain. But what in my brain is my "mental life"? Just two things: conscious states (of course, caused by neurophysiological processes and realized in the structures of the brain) and those neurophysiological states and processes that -given the right attendant circumstances- are capable of generating conscious states. There isn't anything else to the ontology of the unconscious.

I want to illustrate these points further by imagining a case in which we would have a use for the notion of "unconscious pain". We don't normally think of unconscious pains, and many people, I believe, would accept the Cartesian notion that in order for something to be a genuine pain, it has to be conscious. But I think it is easy to invoke contrary intuitions. Consider the following: it is a very common occurence for people who suffer from chronic pains, say, chronic back pains, that sometimes the pain makes it difflcult for them to go to sleep. And indeed, once they have fallen asleep, there sometimes are occasions during the night when their condition causes them to wake up. NOW,how exactly shall we describe these cases? Shall we say that during sleep there really was no pain, but that the pain began when they woke up and that they were awakened by neurophysiological processes which normally would cause pain, but didn't cause pains because at the time they were asleep? Or shall we say, on the other hand, that the pain, i.e. the pain itself, continued both before, during and after their sleep, but that they were not

consciously aware of the pain while they were asleep? My intuitions find the second just as natural, indeed probably more natural, than the first. However, the important thing is t o see that there is no substantive issue involved. We are simply adopting an alternative vocabulary for describing the same sets of facts. But now consider the second vocabulary: on this vocabulary, we say that the pain was for a while conscious, then it was unconscious, then it was conscious again. Same pain; different states of consciousness of that one and the same pain. We might increase our urge t o speak this way if we found that the person, though completely unconscious, made bodily movements during sleep which served t o protect the painful portion of his body. Now what exactly is the ontology of the pain when it is unconscious? Well, the answer seems t o me quite obvious. What inclines us t o say that the pain continued t o exist even though unconscious is that there was an underlying neurophysiological process that was capable of generating a conscious state and capable of generating behavior appropriate t o someone who had that conscious state. And in the example as described, that is exactly what happened. But now if I am right about this then it is hard t o see how there could be any factual substance t o the old disputes about whether unconscious mental states really exist. If you grant my argument so far, then I am unable t o see how it could be other than a purely verbal terminological matter, different only in complexity from the issue about the existence of unconscious pains as I just described it. One side insisted that there really are unconscious mental states; the other insisted that if they were really mental, why then, they must be conscious. But what facts in the world are supposed t o correspond t o these two different claims? The evidence that the Freudians adduced involved causal histories, behavior, and conscious admissions by the agent -all of which seemed only interpretable on the assumption of an unconscious mental state, which was just like a conscious state except for being unconscious. Consider a typical sort of case. A man under hypnosis is given a posthypnotic suggestion t o the effect that he must crawl around on the floor after coming out of the hypnotic trance. Later, when

conscious, he gives some completely extraneous reason for his behavior. He says, e.g. "I think I may have lost my watch on this floor somewhere", whereupon he proceeds t o crawl around on the floor. Now we suppose, with good reason I believe, that he is unconsciously obeying the order, that he unconsciously intends to crawl around on the floor because he was told t o by the hypnotist; and that the reason he gives for his behavior is not the real reason at all. But assuming that he is totally unconscious of his real motives, what is the ontology of the unconscious, right then and there, supposed to be? To repeat our earlier question, what fact corresponds to the attribution of the unconscious mental state at the time the agent is acting for a reason of which he is totally unconscious? If the state really is totally unconscious, then the only facts are the existence of neurophysiological states capable of giving rise to conscious thoughts and to the sort of behavior appropriate for someone having those thoughts. Sometimes there may be several inferential steps between the latent unconscious mental state and the manifest conscious intentionality. Thus, we are told, the adolescent boy who revolts against the authority of the school is unconsciously motivated by hatred of his father. The school symbolizes the father. But again, as in the hypnosis case we have to ask, what is the ontology of the unconscious supposed to be when unconscious? And in this case, as in the hypnosis case, the identification of a specific aspectual shape to the unconscious must imply that there is in the neurophysiology a capacity to produce a conscious thought with that very aspectual shape. Once you see that the description of a mental state as "unconscious" is the description of a neurophysiological ontology in terms of its causal capacity t o produce conscious thoughts and behavior, then it seems there could not be any factual substance to the ontological question: Do unconscious mental states really exist? All that question can mean is: Are there unconscious neurophysiological states of the brain capable of giving rise t o conscious thoughts and to the sorts of behavior appropriate for someone having those thoughts? Of course neither side thought of the issue this way, but perhaps

part of the intensity of the dispute derived from the fact that what looked like a straight ontological issue -do unconscious states exist?- was really not an ontological issue at all. I am not sure I am right about this, but it does seem at least prima facie that the old Freudian arguments -involving all that evidence from hypnotism, neuroses, etc.- are not so much conclusive or inconclusive as they are factually empty. The issue is not less important for being conceptual or terminological, but it is important to understand that it is not a factual issue about the existence of mental entities which are neither physiological nor conscious.

This account of the unconscious has a useful consequence that I want to call attention to immediately. An old puzzle about intentional states has to do with the absence of any clear principle of individuation, and this problem is especially acute for unconscious beliefs. How many unconscious beliefs do I have? We don't know how to get started answering that question. Earlier, I said glibly that I had a belief that was unconscious most of the time to the effect that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris. But do I also believe the following? Station wagons are inedible. or Doctors wear underwear. If someone asked me whether doctors wear underwear or whether station wagons are inedible, I would have no difficulty in anwering; but it seems funny to think of them as unconscious beliefs that I have had all along. Whereas it doesn't seem quite as funny to think of the belief about the Eiffel tower as an unconscious belief. Why the difference? I can so confidently answer questions about doctors, station wagons and Paris because I have a set of capacities realized in my brain that enable me to generate conscious thoughts and hence generate answers t o questions in which I express my conscious thoughts. As long as my thoughts are unconscious they consist only in a neuroanatomy and a neurophysiology

that has capacities for generating conscious thoughts and behavior. The difference between the case of the Eiffel Tower and the other two cases is that I have already had the conscious thought that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris. I learned it at school, I have seen the Eiffel Tower, I climbed to the top, etc. But the other cases are simply manifestations of the capacity of my brain t o generate an indefinitely large number of different conscious thoughts. It is hard but not impossible to count speech acts and even to count one's own conscious thoughts insofar as one can individuate them by content. But when it comes to one's unconscious beliefs, the question of counting is of a different sort altogether: I can't count my unconscious beliefs because there isn't anything there t o count except in terms of what I have already consciously thought or in terms of what I could consciously think. But the latter class is indefinitely large and does not reflect a fixed preexisting set of mental representations in the brain. Our ordinary ways of thinking and talking incline us to think of memory as like a big filing cabinet in which we store a whole lot of information in some language or other -as if written on my brain were a whole lot of sentences in English (or in the "language of thought"). And certain researchers in cognitive science have encouraged this conception by postulating that in the brain there are a whole lot of unconscious "mental representations". But as an ontological claim (and how else are we supposed to take it?) that picture is obviously wrong. What we have instead are a whole lot of capacities in the brain for generating conscious thoughts.

Let us return to the question that I asked at the beginning of this article: Can we really think of unconscious states as being like submerged fish or like furniture in the dark attic of the mind? I think these pictures are inadequate in principle because they are based on the idea of a reality which appears and then disappears. But in the case of consciousness, the only reality is the appearance. The submerged belief, unlike the submerged fish, can't keep its conscious shape even when

unconscious; for the only reality of that shape is the shape of conscious thoughts. To repeat, the ontology of the unconscious is strictly the ontology of a neurophysiology capable of generating the conscious.

Now oddly enough, this connection between consciousness and intentionality is lost in discussions of the unconscious mental processes in contemporary linguistics, philosophy and cognitive science. Many of the phenomena which are cited as explanatory psychological features simply could not have any psychological reality because they are not the sort of things that could be mental states. This is a central feature of much contemporary cognitive science, and it is disguised from us by the vocabulary. Some of the key terms are, in effect, a set of puns: "information processing", "intelligent behavior", "rule following", and "cognition" are all used in two quite distinct senses, only one of which is genuinely mental. The reason for this is that the authors in question want a third-person objective science but they also want it t o be about a mental reality. It is literally impossible t o have both of these features, so they disguise their failure by using a vocabulary that looks mental (what could be more mental than engaging in 'intelligent behavior'?) but which has been stripped of any mental content. And they can get away with this because they can claim that the mental reality they claim t o be discussing is all "unconscious"; but that expression now becomes the biggest pun of all because there are two completely different sorts of phenomena called "unconscious", unconscious mental phenomena and unconscious phenomena which have no mental reality a t all.

But someone might object: "Well, why does it matter? Why don't we just scrap the old time folk psychological vocabulary

once and for all and get on with the genuine science of cognition? Why does it matter whether or not we use a mentalistic vocabulary to describe those brain processes which cause genuine mental phenomena or whether we confine ourselves to a purely neutral physiological vocabulary?" The short answer is that it is crucial to understanding the character of the processes involved that we have a clear distinction between those which are mental ( hence also physiological) and those which are only physiological. This can perhaps be illustrated by the example of the famous studies of what the frog's eye tells the frog's brain.'' The retina in the frog's eye filters out most of the stimulus before transmitting the rest of the signal to the frog's brain. The processes in the retina do not literally involve any rule following, nor cognition, nor intelligence. They are simply brute physiological processes. However, their effect is crucial for the frog's conscious intelligent behavior. By making it possible for the frog to have certain visual experiences and not others, they make it possible for the frog to eat and survive. I give the example of the frog, because here I take it the facts are obvious. But the same thing should be equally obvious about those neurophysiological processes in the human brain which enable us to have genuine intelligence, cognition, and rule following, but which are not themselves cases of intelligence, cognition, or rule following. Unless we are clear about this distinction, we have no hope of understanding how the neurophysiology produces its crucial mental consequences; and indeed, many of the disappointments of cognitive science derive from its failure to pose the question in the appropriate terms. We need, in short, to turn Lashley7s claim upside down: Roughly speaking, all genuinely mental activity is either conscious or potentially so. All of the other activities of the brain are simply non-mental, physiological processes, some of which produce conscious and unconscious mental processes.

" L e t t v i n , ~ . ~Maturana, .; H.R.; e t al. (1959).

Churchland, Paul, M. (1984). Matter and consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the philosophy of mind. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Freud, Sigmund (1949). Outline of Psycho-Analysis. Translated by James Strachey. The Hogarth Press: London. Jackendoff, Ray (1987). Consciousness and the Computational Mind. Cambridge: MIT Press, A Bradford Book. Lashley, K. (1956). "Cerebral Organization and Behavior." In H. Solomon, S. Cobb, and W . Penfield (eds.). The Brain and Human Behauiour, pp. 1-18, Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins. Lettvin, J.Y.; Maturana, H.R.; McCulloch, W.S.; and Pitts, W.H. (1959). "What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain", Proceedings of the I.R.E., 47: pp. 1940-51. Lycan, William, G. (1987). Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Searle, John R . (1980). "Intrinsic Intentionality". Reply to criticisms of "Minds, Brains and Programs," The Behavioral and Brains Sciences. Vol. 3, pp. 450456. Searle, J . R. (1983). Intentionality. An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. Searle, John R. (1984a). Minds, Brains and Science. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Searle, John R. (1984b). "Intentionality and its Place in Nature", Synthese, Vol. 61, D. Reidel Publishing Company. pp. 3-16. Searle, J.R. (1987). "Indeterminacy, Empiricism and the First Person". Journal of Philosophy. February.

PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES, 1 Consciousness, 1991

Searles's Neo-Cartesian Theory of Consciousness D.M. Armstrong The real subject of Searle's paper is unconsciousness, where that word is taken in a very wide sense, so that both a repressed belief of desire, and a perfectly ordinary belief or desire -the belief that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris or the desire to see Paris again- count as unconscious, provided only that the belief or desire is not a current content of consciousness. Searle tells us little about consciousness itself. He emphasizes its subjective and intentional character, although at the same time he asserts that is no more than a 'higher-order' neurophysiological feature. But for the purposes of his paper he treats consciousness more or less as a primitive. In fact, however, the word can be taken in a wider or narrower way. It can be taken to involve no more than mental functioning, the sort of thing that a totally unconscious person or animal lacks. It can also be taken, as Brian 07Shaugnessy takes it in his excellent paper in this volume, to involve a person or animal being awake. Or, finally, it can be taken to involve not only being awake but, in addition, being in some degree introspectively aware of one's current mental processes. Searle does not enter into these matters in his paper.

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His theory of unconscious mental states may be called neoCartesian. I am not referring t o Descarte's dualism, rejected by Searle, but rather to the Cartesian view that the essence of the mental is consciousness. As is well known, this got Descartes into a lot of trouble over the temporal continuity of minds. He found himself saying that we are always conscious, and for this was ridiculed by Locke. "Thus, methinks, each drowsy nod shakes their doctrine, who teach that the soul is always thinkingV.l Hume was Descartes' disciple in identifying the mental with consciousness, but, taking account of Locke's criticism, asserted that the mind has only an intermittent e ~ i s t e n c e .His ~ position is perhaps even less satisfactory than that of Descartes. Searle appears to improve on Descartes and Hume here. He allows that unconscious mental states (events, processes) exist. As a result he can say that the mind continues to exist while there is no conscious process going on in it. At the same time, he preserves the primacy of consciousness by holding that the mentality of an unconscious state is constituted by the fact that such a state has the power, in suitable circumstances, to bring about a certain conscious state, together, perhaps, with the power to bring about behavior appropriate to that conscious state. The unconscious state, then, barrows its mentality and its intentionality from the mentality and intentionality of the conscious state it is apt for producing. In considering this thesis, we should really know just what Searle means by 'consciousness', but we have already noted that he does not help us much on this point. All that can be said at present is that the more widely he takes the term the more plausible his thesis becomes, although, of course, it becomes simultaneously the less exciting. Nevertheless, I think that it is best to abandon altogether the Cartesian doctrine of the primacy of consciousness and allow instead that unconscious mental states are, in general at least, as fully mental as conscious states. That course was taken by Freud, with his iceberg model. (One can perfectly ' E s s a y , Bk. 11, Ch. 1, Sec. 13.

Treatise, Bk. I, P t . IV, Sec. VI.

well agree with Freud in accepting such a model, yet accept very little else in his theories.) However, Searle has an argument which he thinks forces us t o accept his eirenic version of the Cartesian position. He asks us t o consider the nature of conscious states. Such states have intrinsic intentionality, and this intentionality has a highly specific character. If a person is in a conscious state, then that state bears for that person, as Searle puts it, an aspectual shape. For instance, a man may desire water, desiring it simply as water. If he desires water, then he desires H 2 0 . But he may know nothing of chemistry. The aspectual shape of his conscious desire is water alone. But, Searle argues further, unconscious mental states in themselves lack any such fine-grained intentionality. They have their intentionality fixed by (1) the conscious states they are apt for producing; (2) the sort of behavior they are apt for producing. He then argues that (1) is irrelevant if our concern is with the intrinsic intentionality of unconscious states. (2), behavior, is not fine-grained enough. It must be taken as mere physical behavior of the body, but such behavior will not distinguish between e.g. taking in water and taking in H 2 0 . So unconscious mental states lack fullblooded intentionality. Passing to criticism, I will first mention a difficulty for Searle's position which, agreeing with him, does not seem to be serious. But then I will argue that his argument fails to establish his doctrine of the unconscious. The difficulty which does not seem to be too serious is this. On Searle's view unconscious mental states bear an essential relation to conscious states because the former are potential causes of the latter. Yet what of unconscious mental states that are deeply and effectively repressed, or states that cannot have conscious effects because of brain lesions or other damage? But in reply to this difficulty, we can surely make sense of the notion of a process, P, coexisting with a blockage, B, but such that if, contrary to fact, B did not exist, it, P, would bring about effect E, or would do so with the addition of particular circumstances, C. But now to consider the real difficulty for Searle's argument. Take the two distinct beliefs that (1) the Eiffel Tower

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is in Paris; (2) the tallest iron structure built in France before 1900 is located in the French capital. Suppose that somebody has explicitly considered and affirmed both propositions, and so holds both beliefs. But suppose that neither are currently contents of the believer's consciousness. For Searle, both beliefs will count as unconscious, and so will be no more than neurophysiological structures apt for the production, in suitable circumstances, of fully-blown conscious beliefs. Only the latter will have aspectual shape and intrinsic intentionality. But now consider the neurophysiological structures which constitute the unconscious beliefs. Each structure will have t o involve factors which are causally sensitive to, and apt for producing, just the precise aspectual shape and intrinsic intentionality of its corresponding conscious belief. For instance, the first unconscious belief must involve factors that are tuned t o produce manifestations of the concepts of the Eiflel Tower and Paris, while the other unconscious belief must be tuned t o produce manifestations of the concepts of the tallest iron structure built in France before 1900 and the capital of Fmnce. Whatever detail there is in the aspectual shape of a conscious belief there must be corresponding detail in the same belief when it is unconscious. Otherwise the power of the unconscious belief t o produce the conscious belief would be magic. But once this point has been seen, why sould we not attribute aspectual shape and intrinsic intentionality t o the unconscious belief as well as t o the conscious belief? It is, of course, possible for Searle to resist this and insist that the unconscious belief lacks true aspectual shape and true intentionality. But what principled argument has he for this resistance except his original conviction that consciousness enters into the essence of the mental? His argument which was meant t o establish this latter conclusion seems t o have evaporated. Against Searle then, I think we are at least free t o go back t o the 'classical' picture of the unconscious as involving states that are fully mental. I t is certainly a picture that I would like t o accept, one that I beliefe is theoretically fruitful in thinking about and investigating the mind.

I would not want to rule out the possibility that some inconscious mental states have a lesser for or forms of intentionality, for instance, one that allows for free or partially free substitution of co-referring descriptions of the intentional object. Searle, I suppose, would think of this as mere as-if intentionality. But Searle is not sympathetic, as I am sympathetic, to the idea of degrees of intentionality, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated. The most primitive I take to be possession of ordinary dispositional properties, where a piece of glass's brittleness 'points' towards a breaking, although a breaking need never occur. (The 'intentionality' involved in dispositions appears to have first been pointed out by Dr. John Burnheim, of Sydney University.) One can then pass from ordinary dispositions to mechanical and biological systems which 'direct' themselves upon some objective which, nevertheless, they may fail to bring about, and so upwards through a complexity where I do not see my way very clearly, finally reaching the full intentionality of the mental states of humans and higher animals. I would not mind restricting the term 'intentionality' to the top ot the scale, provided it is agreed, as I suppose Searle would not agree, that there are degrees of approach to intentionality. It does not feel like an all or nothing affair to me. I take it that the ascent of man, both in evolution from selfreplicating molecule to cell to rational animal, and in the development of the individual from fertilized ovum to developed creature, involves a steady approach to full-blooded intentionality. I suggest, furthermore, that the emergence of unconscious mental process in general precedes the emergence of conscious mental process. After all, the latter is normally more sophisticated. I would expect therefore that many unconscious mental process do not have the fullest degree of intentionality. Nevertheless, I think we should atribute full intentionality to some unconscious mental states, especially those which Searles instances, states that are unconscious only in the sense that they are not current contents of consciousness.

PHILOSOPHICAL

ISSUES, 1

Consciousness, 1991

Sensations in a Language of Thought Georges Rey

Introduction The focus of the present paper is a sentential theory of sensations and other qualitative states. It is intended as a piece of a sentential account of mental processes generally, whose independent interest provides my main motivation for treating sensations in this otherwise peculiar way. For those who are unacquainted with or perchance sceptical of this general approach, I provide a summary and some of the arguments for it in Sec. 1 below; others may skip on t o the actual discussion of sensations that begins with Sec. 2, referring back t o specific doctrines only as needed. Lest I be thought heartlessly scientistic,' I ought t o enter here a few disclaimers. Firstly, I construe my project as 'Friends have wondered how someone who likes music, good food, and a day at the beach as much as anyone could advance such a view; one philosopher has even stabbed me with a pencil in an effort to "refute" me.

one in the foundations of psychology, a subject which may have as little direct relation to the deliverances of introspection as theories of molecular biology may have to landscape painting. There is a relation; but it's remote, and a wide variety of different biologies might be compatible with the same painterly descriptions of the trees. Speaking for myself, a lot of my experiences seem to me entirely non-sentential musical, "imagistic," colorful, "somatic." I confess even to finding some of what I endorse introspectively repellent. But all this is entirely irrelevant to -since, so far as I can see, it's entirely compatible with- the view defended here. Secondly, the ultimate intent of the general account is to explore the scope and limits of the sentential theory of the mind by trying to push that theory as far as it might go. I am inclined to think that that's pretty far; that this theory is, as Fodor (1975) quoted Johnson, the "only president you've got" as a framework for explanatory psychology. Hence the present effort to show how it can account for qualitative experience. But, as I have argued elsewhere (Rey 1983, 1988a), I am nevertheless pessimistic about the prospects of its grounding moral psychology in ways that it has traditionally been expected to do. I think it will explain any non-question begging data a moral philosopher might cite against it; but I very much doubt it will do the work a moral philosopher might reasonably demand. In particular, I don't think it will provide a place for the beliefs about sensations and consciousness that play an ineliminable role in the moral framework that we apply to our fellow human beings (and/or anything that "resembles (behaves like)" one (cf. Wittgenstein 1953:§281). This discrepancy between explanatory and moral psychology seems to me to be unavoidable. It is, I suspect, the source of the traditional "mind/body problems" that have proved so intractable to centuries of good philosophers, as well as of the related, but more familiar quandries that arise with regard to free will and personal identity (cf. Derek Parfit (1984) and Galen Strawson (1986)). In a way, the main intent of my work might be said to consist in showing how, premature obituaries to the contrary notwithstanding, many of the mind/body problems are alive, well, and likely always to be with us. Human reason may simply have

the peculiar fate, that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to ans~er.~

1 Summary of Computational/Representation Theory of Thought A word about mentalism. I take the heart of mentalistic ascription to consist in a certain structure of explanation involving at least two kinds of attitude states: "informational" ones, such as belief, expectation, suspicion, which involve simply representing the world as being (with a certain probability one way or another; and "directional" ones, such as preference, desire, wish, want, hatred, which direct the agent towards or away from the world being one way or another. What seems to be essential to these states is they combine in certain systematic, "content" sensitive ways that are responsible for much behavior: stimuli cause informational states (perception), some of which get stored (memory), and combine both among themselves (thinking) and with directional states (practical reasoning) to produce action (I shall refer to this as strategy (EM), for "essential mentalism"). The central philosophical issue in the traditional "mindbody problem" has always been to explain how possibly a 21n this last remark I am indebted, of course, to Kant (17811 1929:A:vii), as I a m elsewhere t o Fodor (1975), Shoemaker (1984), Hardin (1988) and Dennett (1988). I'm also grateful to Jonathan Adler, Ned Block, Jennifer Church, Brian Loar, Joseph Levine, Bob Richardson, David Rosenthal for much good discussion and advice. I'm particularly indebted to Martin Davies for excellent editorial suggestions. Versions of the present work were delivered at the Washington D C Philosophy Club, the University of Cincinatti, SUNY Stony Brook, a t the conference on "Mind, Meaning, and Naturen a t Wesleyan University in April 1989, and at Rutgers University and the University of Chicago. A t the last, I was on a program with William Lycan, whose paper "What is the 'Subjectivity of the Mental"' independently advances a view very like the one advanced here.

material object ( a brain, a computer) could have these and other mental states. This question is to be distinguished from the more purely psychological question of how, once we have a variety of possible accounts, t o decide empirically between them. Until recently, there have not been any genuinely plausible possible accounts: facile "identity theories" that simply claimed that a mental state and a physical state were identical seemed as unilluminating as dualist ones that denied it. Ontological issues have been inappropriately permitted to take precedence over explanatory ones. In the last seventeen years, however, a promising theory of mentality has been advanced that promises to answer at least the philosophical question. This is the Language of Thought hypothesis advanced by a number of philosophers, notably Gilbert Harman (1970) and Jerry Fodor (1975,1981, 1987). In this paper, I want to explore ways in which that hypothesis provides a possible account not only of thought, but of sensations and qualia. To make (LOT) as specific as possible, I imagine the sentences to be part of a logical language such as David Kaplan's (1978) Logic of Demonstratives, complete with quantifiers, modal operators, essential indexicals, and demonstratives, and, in particular, a "dthat" operator that "rigidifies" definite descriptions (it is by means of this latter and a related "referential" operator of my own that I hope t o satisfy (M)). I imagine that these sentences are objects of fairly elaborate computations, akin to (but much more complex than) the sort of computations logic students learn t o perform when they learn the rules for the predicate calculus, except that I imagine these rules to be obeyed not by virtue of someone representing and following them, but as a result of the causal organization of the brain, much in the way a computer obeys them by virtue of the causal organization of its hardware. A very rough version of such a story in the case of human beings might proceed as follows: there are sensory processes that transduce ambient energy forms into electrical signals that in turn produce structured sentences as input to a central cognitive system. This central system selects certain sentences from a pre-established ("innate") set, tests their deductive consequences against this input for a "best fit,"

and produces as output those sentences that pass that test above threshold. These sentences in turn are the input to a decision-making system, in which, on the basis of that input, preestablished preferences, and preestablished utility functions, a course of action is determined (i.e. a basic actdescription is ~ e l e c t e d ) It . ~ is this theory that then affords a basis for functional charcterizations of different psychological states? Slightly more specifically, the LOT hypothesis is the claim that on the basis of the above theory we can define a given propositional attitude @ in terms of some computationally definable operation, Rq,, such that: (LOT) x @-sthat p iff (3 e ) (xR@a& ( a for x means [ p ] ) ) (where a ranges over sentences in a language of thought tokens of which are encoded in x's brain). Thus, Ann judges that snow is white is analyzed as the claim that Ann stands in a specific computational relation, R0 to a sentence in her language of thought that means [snow is white]. Her thinking, hoping, imagining, expecting, desiring, prefering that snow is white might involve her standing in different such relations to that same representation; and her judging that snow is black would involve her standing in the same relation to a sentence that means [snow is black]. In order to refer to the computational relation independently of the full attitude, separating the computational (and/or syntactic) from the semantic issues (i.e. the two parts of (LOT) above, to the latter of which I will return shortly), I will refer to the computational component of an attitude by prefixing a 'comp-' to the ordinary word. Thus, I will speak of "comp-thinking,"

3 ~ o t i c that e this formulation is sufficiently abstract to allow for a still wide variety of e.g. serial and parallel architectures. Thus, for example, connectionist networks might be involved at any number of stages of the processes described. 4Thus, pace Lewis (1972/1980:212), it is this sort of theory, and not just any "platitudes which are common knowledge among us," that on the present account is the basis for Ramsey/Lewis style definitions of mental terms.

"comp-hoping," "comp-imagining," etc. In general, comp+ing is a relation merely between an agent and a sentence in abstraction from its semantic properties. Three attitudes that will concern us here are those that underlie judgment, preference, and the disposition to verbal avowal. We first consider comp-judging ( " x J a n ) as the relation to output from the sensory and belief fixation system and the input to the decision making system; and cornppreferring ( " x P o V )as the relation to sentences in the decision system that combine decision-theoretically with judgments to determine basic act imperatives. For example, someone who decides to move her right leg might be someone for whom a certain sentence (e.g. 'There's a flower downhill, which I could get if I ran') was the output of her sensory/belief fixation system and the input to her decision system, wherein, as a result of a sentence ('I'd like that flower') stored there, a basic act imperative 'Move your right leg now') is produced, which in turn causes the corresponding basic act (the right leg moves). Given such functional characterizations of J and P , we may then define: x judges that p iff ( 3 a ) (x Ja & a for x means that [p]) x prefers that p iff ( 3 a) ( x P a & a for x means that [p]) Judgment and preference, on this view, correspond roughly to what other philosophers (e.g. Alston (1967), Goldman (1970)) have called "occurrent" beliefs and preferences (although they need not be available verbally or introspectively). Elsewhere (Rey 1988b) I have argued that, at least in the case of human beings, judgment and preference won't be sufficient for understanding standard human psychology. In particular, there are the phenomena of akrasia, self-deception, and, as e.g. Nisbett and Wilson (1977) have documented, plain self-ignorance and confabulation, all creating discrepancies between action and avowed thought: people act on preferences of which they are "unaware," have beliefs that they deny, and often say things that do not express attitudes

that otherwise enter into the production of their acts. Stich (1983:231) sees such facts as occasions for thinking that the notion of belief irreparably breaks down. I prefer to regard then; as occasions for distinguishing two sorts of judgment, central (defined above) and avowed, such that: x avowedly judges that p iff

(3 o) (x Ao & o means that [p]) where "xAo" is "x comp-avows a," which can be regarded as a computational relation to a specific subset of the output of the perceptual, cognitive and decision theoretic systems that is the input t o a system for making assertions and selfreports. To borrow an analogy from Dennett (1978:151-152), the avowals of a system stand to its central beliefs roughly as the claims of the White House Press Officer stand to the thoughts of the president. Avowals correspond to a familiar, weak notion of consciousness: reportability. Distinguishing them from judgments and preferences permits us t o separate issues of consciousness from the issues surrounding the role of judgments and preferences in standard cognitive explanations of behavior. 'o means that [p]', of course, covers of course a multitude of, as it were, sins, which, while they reasonably occupy almost every philosopher in the field, shall not concern me here. Suffice it to say that I view it as a condition of adequacy on any naturalistic account of this relation that the following will be true: (M) a for x means that [p] iff {if C then ( x J o iffcsl p) ceteris paribus) (where 'iffcsl' is a causal, counterfactual-supporting biconditional). C is supposed t o be some condition, specified by the semantic theory in non-question-begging terms, under which the "co-variation" law in the consequent is supposed to obtain. Various proposals have been made: for recent examples, C might be taken to be "under ideal conditions," (Stampe 1979, Fodor 1981/89), "under normal conditions" (Stalnaker 1984), or "under evolutionarily normal conditions" (cf. Millikan 1984, Papineau 1987, Dretske 1988). Alternatively, one might propose a naturalistic theory that has (M) with

an intentionally specified C as a consequence, as in Fodor's (1987, 1991) proposal that non-meaning-constitutive (i.e. not-p) causes of tokenings of u asymmetrically depend upon meaning-constitutive (i.e. p) caused ones.5 It has yet to be shown that some such account is impossible in which meanings could be made as naturalistically determinate as we have independent reason to believe them to be. A language of thought approach is attractive for a wide variety of reasons. Fodor (1975: chap 2) emphasized the degree to which such a model is presupposed by contemporary hypotheses in cognitive psychology, in particular in theories of decision making, concept learning, and perception. One philosophical strategy for establishing at least the possibility of the model is to consider what are arguably the essential features of mental states. Along the lines of the explanatory appeal I made earlier, these features can be identified with those aspects of mental states essential to their role in strategy (EM): i.e. those aspects essential to a state being a specific informational and directional state mediating stimulation and behavior. It is because we can construct a computer whose states would satisfy these essential features of mental states that it is plausible to take what is sometimes called the "computer metaphor" to be a genuine theory of the mind: our brains may well be such a computer, and any computer that satisfied these features would have a mind. Everything else is i n e ~ s e n t i a l . ~

'The approach I favor is one that restricts the application of (M) to a set of psychophysically defined observation sentences, and exploits logical constructions for the rest, along familiar lines made perhaps more plausible by inclusion of "referentialn and "rigidificationn operators in the spirit of Donnellan (1966) and Kaplan (1978). There still might be residual Quinian indeterminacies, but of a sort we may not have independent reason to believe are otherwise determinate. 'These last claims, modal in their appeal to what's "essential," are the philosophical claims that a computationalist needs to defend. Elsewhere I will try to present more of that defense than is possible here. Suffice i t t o say that i t is such claims that would allow us to distinguish a computer simulation of a hurricane from a computational theory of the mind: the essential features of mental states are that they involve the kinds of relations sketched in the explanatory strategy; by contrast,

Perhaps the best way to think of (LOT) is simply as a hypothesis about the structure of the brain, on a par with hypotheses of the structure of the heart or kidneys. Just as in the latter cases, we have explanatory reasons to believe that these systems are pumps or filters, so in the present case we have reason t o believe that the brain is a particular kind of computer, viz. one that computes upon configurations that have certain systematic syntactic and semantic properties, properties that seem uniquely realized by some things as sentences, particularly sentences in a formal calculus. In any case, it is useful to consider in a little detail the ease with which LOT can deal with the following specific phenomena that are associated with applications the (EM) ~trategy:~

( 1 ) the structure of attitudes: There is a difference between e.g. thinking that someone loves everyone and that everyone is loved by someone or other; (LOT) approaches capture these kinds of differences by relating the agent t o systematically different LOT structures; i t is (presumably) an essential feature of a hurricane that it involves high velocity motions of gas over a planetary surface, something that presumably does not occur in any computer anyone has yet constructed. In any case, i t is by attending to the essential properties of states that are required in the explanation of behavior that one may meet the objections raised by Searle (1980, 1990) against a realistic construal of artificial intelligence. 'since misunderstandings of (LOT) seem widespread, I hasten to point out that, a t least here and in the recent literature defending (LOT), a system of internal representation is intended entirely as part of an inference to the best explantion of, inter lia, the following ten empirical phenomena. It is not intended to b e establishable on the basis of a priori or linguistic reflection about the nature of attitudes or attitude ascriptions. T h e language being posited is very probably not a "natural" human language of interpersonal communication, nor dependent upon the agent's mastery of one. And i t is very probably not in the least introspectible: indeed, so far as I can see, it is compatible with practically any "phenomenology," e.g. imagistic or otherwise "non-sentential." After all, i t is part of an effort to explain psychological phenomena such as phenomenology, not merely to describe or coniey it. See Loewer and Rey (1991) for further discussions of such misunderstandings.

(2) the productivity and systematicity of attitudes: people seem t o be able t o think a potential infinitude of thoughts, and in ways that are systematically related: e.g. if someone can think that [Romeo loves Juliet], she can also think that [Juliet loves Romeo], that [Romeo loves Juliet and Juliet loves Romeo], that [if Romeo loves Juliet then Juliet loves Romeo], and so forth in a t least the usual patterns of logical construction. LOT captures this by postulating logically constructive abilities amongst the computational abilities of the brain.

(3) r ational relations among attitudes: many of peoples' attitudes seem related in rational ways: e.g. there's a deductive relation between a person's belief that there is an infinitude of primes and her belief in the steps of Euclid's proof; some kind of inductive relation between her belief that smoking causes cancer and her belief in various statistical studies and theories of cancer; some kind of "practical syllogism" involved in her belief that smoking causes cancer, her desire not t o die, and her deciding not t o smoke. LOT opens the possibility of capturing these relations by supplying suitable objects -sentencesin which rational relations can be expressed (the prime example being deductive logic; but also statistical confirmation and decision theory). (4) irrational relations among attitudes: ordinarily, people are biased towards positive instances in confirming hypotheses, ignore background frequencies in assessing probabilities, and are liable t o gambler fallacies. (LOT) opens the possibility of capturing these relations as well by supplying appropriate objects for expressing various sorts of fallacies: e.g. stereotypical representations; different forms of logically equivalent propositions; premises treating infinite on the model of finite cases; computing errors in dealing with repeated symbols and syntactically similar forms (e.g. nested negations, scope ambiguities).

(5) the fine-gminedness of attitudes: the phenomenon (revealed by such difficulties as "the paradox of analysis,"

"Mates' problem," and "Kripke's puzzle"s) in which apparently co-intensional expressions cannot be substituted salva veritate.

(6) t he causal efficacy of attitudes: the above rational, irrational, and fine-grained patterns of thought seem sometimes to involve causal relations among attitudes, not only "(ir)rationalizing" but also causally explaining their changes of state and behavior. (LOT) permits this possibility by supposing that tokens of sentences that are (partial) objects of attitudes are physically entokened in the nervous systems of the agents. ( 7 ) the causal promiscuity of attitudes: the fear that p can be allayed by reassuring evidence for not-p, and by drugs; relations t o tokens of sentence types are just the sort of thing that can play such dual, mind/body roles. ( 8 ) the multiple roles of attitudes: People often wish for the very same thing that they believe does not presently obtain; e.g. a drink of water, that Sam (but not Mark) might come t o dinner. (LOT) approaches capture this phenomenon by permitting different roles and access relations t o the same (LOT) structures.

( 9 ) the extent ofprivileged access to one's thoughts: people can know what they're thinking insofar as they have causal access to the internal sentential structures that express their thoughts and to the logical constructive abilities that produce them. They may not have any privileged access to the actual propositions they are thinking. Someone may have privileged access t o the narrow thought that equilateral triangles are equilateral without having similar access to the thought that equilateral triangles are equiangular, even where those thoughts involve the same proposition. (LOT) permits 'See e.g. Church (1946), Mates (1951), Burge (1978), Kripke (1979), Ackermann (1981) and Bealer (1982). Many of the problems raised by Schiffer (1987:ch 3) seem to me of a piece with these problems, and amenable to similar treatment.

this distinction (and other distinctions among modal attitudes) by distinguishing the sentential structures with which people express propositions in their thinking, from the propositions themselves.

( 1 0 ) an account of qualitative experience: as will be set out in the next section. Although many theories of mental states may be able t o account for some of these features individually, it seems t o me that (LOT) offers the best prospect for dealing with all of them in a completely unified f a ~ h i o n . ~ Phenomenon ( 5 ) ) the "fine-grainedness" of attitudes, bears particular emphasis for purposes of our discussion. What the substitution difficulties can be taken t o show are the inadequacies of any plausible version of (M) by itself t o fully capture all distinctions among meaning that a reasonable psychology will need t o draw. Intuitively speaking, there can be different ways of construing "the same proposition": the proposition that a circle is a locus of co-planar point equidistant points is arguably the same proposition as that a circle is a circle; but obviously an agent could think it by the latter means without thinking it by the former.'' By embedding (M) in (LOT) we gain a graceful and intuitive means of capturing such further distinctions: for the two clauses of (LOT) permit us t o distinguish the representations (e.g. ~ u s to t get some perspective on the plausibility of (LOT), it is worth comparing it in this regard to other traditional theories that have been proposed: e.g. Empiricist "associationn models; Freudian "hydraulic" models; Methodological Behaviorism; Gibson's "Ecological Realism"; and, most recently, "connectionistn models in AI. I t is extremely doubtful that any of these theories could account for these phenomena without becoming merely an implementation of (LOT). For relevant recent discussions see Chomsky's classic (1959) review of Skinner (1957); Fodor and Pylyshyn (1981) on Gibson (1979); Pinker and Prince (1988), Fodor and Pylyshyn (1988), Fodor and McLaughlin (1990) and Rey (1991) on connectionism, e.g. Smolensky (1988, 1991). lo Jon Barwise once put this difference vividly by contrasting the interests of the pioneers, sending forth a scout to report on the lay of the land ahead, from the interests of the settlers, turning to psychoanalysis t o learn the different ways different scouts construed the same information.

names, predicates, sentences) encoded in the agent's brain from the concepts or propositions that, via ( M ) , they express. Different representations (such as 'circle' and 'locus of coplanar point equidistant points'; or 'London is beautiful' and 'Loundres est belle') may play different roles in an agent's brain while still expressing the same concept or proposition (and, if Putnam's (1975) "twin earth" intuitions are correct, then two representations may play the same role but express different propositions). Thus, we might speak of a representation's "role meaning" in contrast to its "propositional meaning." (Whether the "role meaning" of a representation can in general be satisfactorily specified is not an issue that must be settled here. I will be considering only a few specific, probably very special cases.) A particularly important example of the advantage of this way of characterizing the attitudes occurs in the case of "indexical" thought. Many philosophers (e.g. Frege (1977), Castaneda (1968), Perry (1979)) have observed that, at least ordinarily, only I can have the thought that GR is bored by saying, or thinking, "I am bored"; you can't. You need to use some other sentence, such as "GR is bored." Indeed, I could think that I'm bored without thinking that GR is, even though the proposition expressed by 'I'm bored' and 'GR is bored' might be the same: in such a case my tokens of 'I am bored' would be tokens of a different representation than are my tokens of 'GR is bored', but they would express the same proposition. Exploiting the resources of (LOT), we can suppose that, just as 'I' is a restricted singular term in English, there is presumably a similarly restricted singular term in the LOT. The restrictions govern its specific use: in English the speaker is supposed to use it only to refer to his or herself. In LOT, the restriction will be something like: to refer only t o the receiver of present inputs, the instigator of outputs, and the subject of intervening mental states. These restrictions need not be themselves thought by the agent; it is enough that they are causally realized: the effect of receiving sensory input, entering a mental state and deciding upon a course of action, involves comp-judging certain sentences containing this restricted singular term, whose role meaning is provided by its

playing this specific causal role (cf. Kaplan 1978). The following might be a rough characterization of the restrictions on such a "first-person reflexive term" ("FPRT"): a is a FPXT for agent x iff:'' (1-1) Whenever an input @ is received, x stores [@a1 (1-2) Whenever x is in a mental state M, x is prepared t o comp-judge a predication [@a1that (ordinarily) gets released only when x is in M; (1-3) All preference states, and all basic action descriptions in x's decision system that lead up t o action in a standard decision theoretic way are states and descriptions whose subject is a. Along the lines of (LOT) above, we could then characterize special "first person reflexive" thoughts thus: (LOT-I) x judges he* is F iff ( 3 a ) ( 3 a) {a is an FPRT for x & x J [ @ a l & [@a1means [Fx]) (LOT-11) x judges he is F iff {either x judges he* is F o r (3 a ) (3 @)( a denotes x & x J [@a1& [@a1means [Fx]) Thus it is that first-person reflective thoughts exhibit a certain unanalyzability and "privacy": they cannot be analyzed into other more "objective" terms, and, barring neurophysiological hook-ups that could cause a FPRT in one brain t o play a similar role in another, it can't happen that (3a) (FPRT(a)& xJ[F(a)l & [F(a)l means [FYI,& x # y). I can't ordinarily think of Dr. Lauben, 'I am wounded', nor he that of me, although of course we can each think of the other "he is wounded."12 It is this capacity of (LOT) t o capture such fine-grained perspectives on a proposition that I think provides the key t o understanding the special features, in particular the special "privacy," of sensations, t o an analogous account of which I now turn. ''I present these conditions as sufficient; I suspect that they are not entirely necessary. T h e echoes of Kant's "Transcendental Synthetic Unity of Apperception" (1781/1929:B131ff) are not coincidental. ''The example is Frege's (1977). The point in these cases could be exaggerated: suppose someone was absolutely, but wrongly, convinced that he was the long lost Dr. Lauben, and that the causal history of

2

Sensations

One particular class of mental states that have been thought t o resist the above sentential, and indeed, any functionalist theory of mind has been the "qualitative states" associated with so-called "qualia" : the feelings, sensations, experiences that occur in us sometimes as a result of external stimuli, sometimes merely in imaginings, hallucinations, dreams. Thus, there are Locke's "ideas of violet and marigold," Hume's "taste of pineapple," Block's "pains," Nagel's "what it's like t o be a bat." Most recently, Frank Jackson (1982:127-136) claims: Tell me everything physical there is to tell about what is going on in a living brain, the kinds of states, their functional role, their relation to what goes on at other times and in other brains, and so on and so forth, and be I as clever as can be in fitting it all together, you won't have told me about the hurtfulness of pains, the itchiness of itches.. . It must be admitted that it is not a t all obvious just how qualitative states are t o be identified with a functional, much less sentential ones: they seem t o be present t o us somehow "immediately," in a way that functional states, and particularly computational states of the sort I've been discussing, do not. Indeed, they are thought t o have a great number of peculiar properties: they are "private," have a "lack of grain," seem t o be "ineffable" and unanalyzable, as well as involuntary in a way that others of our thoughts are not; and, lastly, they have some kind of ultimate subjectivity, an inherent relativity t o a "point of view." It is difficult t o imagine any, "objective" state -physical, functional, or sentential- displaying many of his 'Lauben' tokens could be traced as much to him as to the real Lauben. I t seems to me in some such cases i t would be possible for this person to be thinking of Lauben, 'I am wounded'. As I hope will be plain in the later use I make of this example, nothing will depend upon whether this possibility can in fact arise for these sorts of cases. And nothing, I hope, will depend upon the ontology of propositions, concepts, intensions, situations, that one might employ to spell out the square bracketed expressions.

all these properties. In this chapter, I want t o propose some ways in which such states could nevertheless be accommodated on the computational theory I have described. Let me caution the reader in advance, however, that I shall not be committed -here or elsewhere- t o preserving all of the pre-theoretic beliefs many people have regarding such states. What I discussed in the introduction about the primacy of explanation bears special emphasis here: I see the point of an exercise in this area t o be not merely t o find some analysis of our ordinary beliefs that avoids conundra and otherwise preserves those beliefs, but rather t o find some explanation that fits our beliefs into a general, coherent account of the world. If it turns out that, according t o such an explanation, many of our them are true, that is well and good. But it is important t o allow that the best explanation may be compatible with some of them turning out t o be false. And t h a t , I am afraid, is precisely what happens in the case of some of our (or, anyway, my) most cherished beliefs about qualia and consciousness generally. One does, of course, need t o make good on the actual explanations. Many traditional materialists have not been much more persuasive in this regard than most dualists. People are, I think, rightly sceptical about mere brute identifications of mental with some physical -or functional- state or other (e.g. pain with the stimulation of c-fibers), since no account is provided of why that particular physical state should be regarded as the appropriate one. What would motivate our selecting one state rather than another as the pain? More importantly: what about a physical state could possibly explain the peculiar properties (privacy, etc.) that qualitative states seem t o exhibit? One of the reasons traditional materialists have not been particularly helpful is that, until recently, philosophical (and a surprising amount of psychological) investigations have been more concerned with ontology than with explanation: the traditional materialists were less worried about explaining the properties of qualitative states, and more about refuting what they took to be the ghoulish proposals of the traditional dualists. In so doing, they tended merely t o replace inexplicable ghosts with an equally inexplicable "corn-

plexity," or "biology" in the machine.13 As I take Quine to have taught us, however, questions of ontology are secondary to questions of explanation.14 The puzzle qualia present is, I submit, primarily explanatory. The above quotation from Jackson could be taken to be more an explanatory than ontological worry: for it's the worry that one could have a complete explanation of everything in the "objective" world everything in physics, chemistry, biology, neurology and even psychology- and still fail to have an account of qualia, still fail, for example, to know "what it's like to be a bat." In a recent paper,'' Joseph Levine (forthcoming) has, I think, usefully identified one real worry about qualia. He argues that a requirement on any successful reductive identification is that the explicandum properties be shown to be somehow a necessary consequence of the explicans: thus, for the identification of water with HzO to be explanatory, (intrinsic) properties of water must be shown to be a necessary consequence of (intrinsic) properties of HzO. Such a demon13For example, Block's (1978), Searle's (1980), Shoemaker's (1981/1984) and my own earlier (1980) appeals to physiological states. See Rey (forthcoming) for further discussion. "As Tyler Burge (1986:18-19) has recently put it:

. . .questions of ontology, reduction, and causation generally, are epistemically posterior t o questions about the success of explanatory and descriptive practices. One cannot reasonably criticize a purported explanatory or descriptive practice primarily by appeal to some prior conception of what a "good entity" is, or of what individuation or reference should be like, or of what the overall structure of science (or knowledge) should turn out t o look like. Questions of what exists, how things are individuated, and what reduces t o what, are questions that arise by reference to going explanatory and descriptive practices. By themselves, proposed answers to those questions cannot be used t o judge an otherwise successful mode of explanation and description. Chomsky (1986:250-251) quotes this same passage with approval, making it one of the few points on which writers as diverse as he, Burge, and Quine might explicitly agree. 15Delivered at the conference on "Mind, Meaning, and Naturen at Wesleyan University, April 1989 (Levine (forthcoming)). Portions of the present paper were delivered there in part as a reply to Levine's complaint.

stration, he claims, is lacking, creating an "explanatory gap," in the case of sensations and physical or functional states. Interestingly enough, while Levine's requirement makes a stronger demand on accounts of sensations than is customarily met, it also plausibly weakens the demands from what they have standardly been taken t o be. The stronger requirement is for certain forms of "bottom-up" necessities. That demand could be satisfied without there being any "topdown" ones. That is, instead of the traditional demand for "logically necessary and sufficient materialist conditions," what is wanted are "explanatorily sufficient" but not necessarily necessary conditions for qualitative experiences.16 If functionalist accounts of the mental are generally true, mental structures being thereby realizable by indefinitely diverse physical states, the latter are quite possibly not available. But, I submit, functionalists account do have considerable potential for providing the former, as I hope now t o show. "I always think that when one feels one's been caring a theory too far, then's the time t o carry it a little further. -A little? Good Heavens, man! Are you growing old?" " quoth Fodor (1975:197) quoting Max Beerbohm. At the risk of causing Fodor t o feel his age, I want t o consider answering Levine's challenge by treating qualitative states as further instances of the (LOT) hypothesis, in particular as states analogous to the first-person reflexive states treated above. Some of the properties of the two kinds of states are, after all, quite similar: similar privileges are thought t o accrue t o qualitative as t o first-person states; they seem similarly "private," "ineffable," "unanalyzable." What I hope t o show is that a similar account will explain those privileges and other aspects of qualitative states. Let us suppose that, just as (1-1) - (1-3) provide restrictions on the entokenings of a specific singular term, there is another set of what I shall call "S-restrictions" that constrain the entokenings of certain predicates ( t o avoid irrelevant ontological issues, I will assume that these predicates 1 6 1 don't pretend to have a complete account of explanation whereby this situation is clearly understood. I look forward t o more details of Levine's account, and for the nonce rely on the insights about "functional analysis" provided in Cummins (1983).

standardly enter into "object-less" predications, [It(Q)s] on the model of the English 'It rains'): A sensory predication [It(Q)sl is S-Res(tricted) iff: (S-1) it is the output of sensory modules and the input t o the comp-thinking system, and can be comp-judged, normally, only in that way; in particular, it cannot be, normally, comp-judged as a consequence of central topdown reasoning; ($2) each type predication is correlated with specific proximal stimulation conditions (and antecedent states of that stimulus system). It is these conditions that provide the predication with its propositional meaning. Its role meaning is provided by the conditions being enumerated here; (S-3) the predications are typically parameterized in specific ways: e.g. visual predications apparently are marked for hue, lightness, saturation, and relative position in a 2-112)-dimensional grid; ($4) tokenings of each type of restricted predicate enter into further characteristic processing (for a predicate of type @ let [CP(@)l abbreviate: that such processing in fact occurs) that may involve other comp-judgments (e.g. "warm" vs. "cool" colors) and comp-preferences (e.g. t o scratch in the case of an itch); (S-5) comp-judged tokenings of these restricted predications provide sufficient but not necessary conditions for compjudged unrestricted observation predications. Given the general comp-judging ("xJa") and comp-avowing ("xAa") relations defined earlier, we now might define sensing as follows: (S-DF) x senses Q-ly iff (3 @ )(S-Res([It(@)sl & x J s ( @ )& xAs(@)& C P ( @ )& @ means [ F ] ) That is: a sensory experience of type F consists of the processing peculiar t o an S-restricted predicate, @, that means

[Q],17a processing that is initiated by a comp-judgment and comp-avowal of the form rIt(@)sl. Thus, for example, a red sensory experience would involve comp-judging a restricted predication, 'It(R)s', as a result of the stimulation of predominantly L-wave sensitive cones,'' a comp-judgment that, by (S-1) could normally occur only in that way. It is this latter correlation that makes it, by (S-2), a red experience, and, by (S-3), one involving the hue, lightness, saturation, and relative position that seems part of that experience. By (S-4), this comp-judgment characteristically causes processing, C P ( ' R ' ) ,involving further comp-judgments of "warm," and "advancing" predications (see Hardin:129). By (S-5), it also provides a sufficient condition for comp-judging the mentalese translations of e.g. "That looks red," "That feels 17~arG y ates has drawn my attention to a delicate issue with regard to the meaning of such restricted predicates. As I indicated earlier, I a m inclined to look to externalist, co-variational theories for the basis of semantic assignments. But with what property would an S-restricted predicate plausibly co-vary? T h e natural candidate presumed in (S2) is a certain pattern of proximal stimulation. But (Sl) restricts the compjudged tokenings of such a predicate to only those patterns that occur in the agent: the agent will never comp-judge a token of that type as a result of that pattern occurring in anyone else. So i t appears that the meaning of a restricted predicate would have to be a certain pattern of stimulation in the agent, i.e. [pattern S in z]. T h e unrestricted predications to which these restricted predications would, by (S6), give rise might reasonably be thought not to have their meaning confined in this way. Although this is a curiosity of my position, I'm not clear that it's an objection to it. In any case, a lot would depend upon the details of the externalist theory of meaning with which I've mercifully not burdened the present discussion. For simplicity, and because I don't think a lot turns on how this issue is resolved, I'll leave the confinement to the agent an open option for the meaning of such terms (cf. Wittgenstein's (1953:§302) criticism of the "argument from analogy.") "This is widely known to b e a gross over-simplification. A better candidate for the meaning of 'Red' and of the corresponding restricted predicate might be the sufficient condition provided by Hardin (1988:76): "Given an object, an illumination configuration whereby a spot of light of a particular size and spectral content and intensity and duration falls on a given retinal area, a fully specified visual surround and an observer in a particular adaptive state, the result of the interaction is determinate by nature.. . ". I hope these further complexities are not germane to the issues a t hand.

painful"; i.e. predications that, while they are close to the output of sensory modules, are not subject to these restrictions. However, someone could make these latter unrestricted comp-judgments without having made the corresponding Srestricted one, just as (to return to the analogy with FPRTs) I could judge that GR is bored without judging that I am bored. This account treats sensing as a species of propositional attitude and/or the processing of them. Indeed, besides its interest as a possible account of qualitative experience, one positive argument for it as an actual account is that, by assimilating such experience to attitudes, we explain the essential unity of the mind, what it is that makes beliefs, desires, memories, hopes, fears, and sensations all states of the same sort of entity. What are sometimes proposed as rival accounts lack this unity. For example, the aforementioned biologistic or dualistic accounts that regard qualia as biological or as entirely non-physical properties of a compuationally organized brain have trouble explaining how a mind that thinks by computing manages to feel by being in some as yet unspecified relation to such further properties. The further properties seem gratuitous and accidental -not t o mention, what I shall argue in section I11 below, that they may fail to stand in the right epistemic relation t o the introspector of them. Treating sensory experience as a species of attitude does, though, require some account of our ordinary non-attitudinal ways of thinking about it. As many philosophers have observed, much of our thought about sensations is reified: it is a pain, an itch, a sensation that we experience. "What it's like to see red" can seem to involve knowledge of a real property that can only be appreciated "from inside." Certainly there can seem to be such a property. Knowledge of it can seem to be what distinguishes the color-sighted from the color-blind. The proposed sentential account treats experiences as restricted propositional attitudes, some of the sentential portions of which involve predicates that can seem to invite corresponding properties. But this is an invitation that recent philosophy, if it has taught us anything, has surely

taught us how to resist.lg Many predications might function in a language without there being a property corresponding to the predicate.20 On the proposed account, the difference between a colorsighted and an intelligent color-blind person, who might detect color differences by unconscious inference from nonchromatic properties, is in the way their color thoughts are represented. While they both can think the same proposition, [It(red)s], one does it on the basis of a restricted predication that means [It(red)s], whereas the other does it, for example, by an inference from a restricted predication that means [It(reflect to degree n)s]. Since hue and comparative reflectivity apparently vary directly in most human environments, such a difference could go unnoticed behaviorally in those environments. Or suppose someone were t o realize Paul Churchland's (1979:28) dream of a sound scientific education, and so think to herself (the mentalese for) 'It(selective1y rem.)s7 whenever flect electro-magnetic waves at 0.63 x her retinas were so stimulated. Although this predication, too, could be taken to mean [It(red)s],since it is not suitably IgThis is probably as good a place as any to dispense with Kripke's version of Descartes' modal argument for dualism, based as it seems me t o be on an excessively "objectual" way of thinking about sensations. Kripke's premise that 'pain' is a rigid designator just is the premise that it names the same thing in all possible worlds. 'A pain' here is being construed as the same sort of term as 'a man'. However, this premise is part of what is denied by the functionalist. If, along the lines of the present proposal, pain(-experience) is best understood as a specific kind of functional process, then that is tantamount to denying that 'pain' is rigid; that 'a pain' is better understood as analogous to 'a president' than to ' a man'. See Feldman (1980:154) and Lycan (1987:15) for related observations. 20e.g. Wittgenstein (1953:§§304-308), Quine (1960:ch 5), and Dennett (1968:ch 1). I take the point of these discussions to be that one can't infer ontology from the superficial grammatical form of ordinary talk about the world. Rather, one needs to look to best explanations, and the values of the variables therein. Whether "the experience" consists of the sensation alone, or it combined with the way in which it is conceived, is a delicate question that I think is best left open. A lot would depend upon further details of introspective discimination along the lines of the "Presumption of Introspective Supervenience" that I discuss in Rey (forthcoming).

restricted, the judging of it would not constitute a red experience (although someone could probably get herself t o leap to it whenever the restricted one occurred). This latter possibility does raise, however, the interesting question of the extent to which "top-down" processing can sometimes interfere with and seem t o create sensory experiences that do not have their usual proximal causes. It is well established that the nervous system frequently "fills in" gaps in retinal input, creating e.g. an homogenous color field where there are in fact demonstrable gaps (such as the optic disk, or "blind spot" where the optic nerve meets the retina). What is less well-established, but essential to sorting out the nature of sensations in such cases is precisely how such processing occurs. As Fodor (1983:76-77) points out with respect to the similar phenomenon of "phoneme restoration" observed in word perception, some "top-down" processes may be internal to a perceptual module, affecting the output of that module, while others may be external, affecting not the output of the module but rather how that output is reported. It would be an entirely friendly amendment to the the account I am proposing that restricted predications constitute the output of such perceptual modules. If they were, then only the former sorts of processes would strictly affect the sensation itself, being further determinants of the comp-judging of restricted predications; the latter processes would affect only the transition from restricted to unrestricted predications, and so only the way in which the experience is conceived and then reported in unrestricted terms.21 Insofar, however, as one wanted to preserve first-person authority on the nature of experience, one might include some of the latter processing as part of the characteristic processing of an experience. A related question that is raised but need not be settled by this account is about the nature and extent of "unconscious sensation" as in purported cases of "hemianopia," or "blindsight" in Weiskrantz et a1 (1974), and of hypnotic analgesia Whether "the experience" consists of the sensation alone, or i t combined with the way in which i t is conceived, is a delicate question that for the nonce is best left open.

in Hilgard (1977). Subjects in these experiments seem t o be having sensory experiences of which they are unaware. The above definition of 'sensing' in (S-DF) requires that the agent both (comp-)judge and (comp-)avow the restricted predication. But this allows the possibility of one occurring without the other: blindsight on this view could involve judging without avowing; and a limited sort of "epiphenomenalism" could involve avowing without judging.22 It is an advantage of the proposed account that it leaves these possibilities open. As I mentioned earlier, mental states divide into LLoccurent" as opposed t o merely "dispositional" states, a distinction that functionalist theories often don't bother t o observe. Some of the implausibility of particularly functionalist theories of sensations has t o do with conceiving them too dispositionally: a pain, after all, isn't merely a disposition t o enter certain further states, since pains could persist even when, for some extraneous reason, the actual disposition t o cause further mental states were t o be interrupted.23 However, as their assimilation t o the "occurent" processing state of comp-judging should already make clear, a sensory state on the proposed view is fully activated. Per restriction (S-4), the state involves some "characteristic processing": they are best viewed not as single states, but, along the lines of a proposal I have advanced elsewhere in regard t o the emotions (Rey 1980:188), as processes involving interactions among a variety of cognitive states. A qualitative experience is presumably a process involving the comp-judging of a certain restricted predicate, a comparison of it with certain memories, involving restricted and unrestricted predicates and other associations, certain effects upon the non-cognitive (e.g. hormonal) sub-systems, and the production in that and other ways of certain other restricted and unrestricted judgments. (And, of course, much of this processing is probably normally in parallel.) Thus, red experiences are thought to be warmer, more 22Neurophysiological evidence for something along these latter lines has been advanced by Libet (1985) with regard to the phenomenology of decision. 23The importance of this point emerged from conversations with Michael Antony.

advancing, and lighter than green ones.24 Just how much of such a process counts as the having of a particular qualitative experience is a matter of empirical investigation. All that is important for our purposes is that the experience not be metaphysically simple. This is, after all, what the dualist claims, and is all, in essence, that the "materialist" (whatever her ontology) is committed to denying. What is epistemically brute -presented (sometimes) as simple in "the order of knowing5)- need not be metaphysically so -simple in the ultimate scheme of things.

3 The Standard Puzzles Any such proposal about the nature of sensory experience is obliged t o deal with some of the puzzling phenomena that such experiences notoriously seem to display. Sensory experience seems peculiarly "private" t o the subject of it, and to exhibit an unanalyzability, "lack of grain" and "ineffability" that physical phenomena don't otherwise possess. Moreover, it seems to involve special, "privileged" epistemic relations to these experiences, possibilities of publicly undetectable reversals among them, and a special epistemic state of "knowing what it's like" to be in them. Aside from the unity it bestows upon the mind, much of the interest of the present account lies in its ability t o explain these phenomena. I'll deal with each in turn. The special privacy of sensation is a consequence of these same peculiar restrictions, particularly (S-1) and (S-4). On 24See Hardin (1988:129) for a discussion of these associations and some suggestive theories of their cause. Some of my remarks here are amplifications of his insistence (p138) that these associations are constitutive of the identity of particular kinds of experiences. Boden (1988:53) goes so far a s t o suggest that "voluntary movement also is necessary for "visual" perception, citing experiments of Bach-y-Rita (1984) in which blind subjects "referred to objects located in the space in front of themn only when they controlled the movement of a tactile-transduced T V camera. An important empirical question that bears upon the philosophical worry about interpersonal commonalities of experience is the degree to which characteristic processing can be localized. T h e more global i t is, the less likely it is to be shared.

the present theory, it's a deep nomological fact that one person comp-judges a restricted predication only when a sensory module is excited in a specific way. At least normally, no other condition is sufficient. In particular, I can't comp-judge a restricted predication merely as a consequence of your sensory module being excited, nor you as a consequence of mine, although each of us could comp-judge the corresponding un-restricted predications under those circumstances. Nor do either of our own comp-judgments give rise t o the characteristic processing in the other. I can think "Things look red to you as they do t o me", but not "It's Ring t o you as it does t o me."25 Of course, should two people become so computationally integrated that excitations from one of their modules causes entokenings in the other's central system, we should have some reason t o think that they did in fact have the "same sensation." But this is not a possibility that will even be clearly definable for most pairs of brains, any more than for arbitrary pairs of The "unanalyzability" of sensory experience is explained on this view in quite the same way as it is in the case of "I" thoughts: just as no normal, unrestricted expression, or complex of expressions, can be substituted for 'I' in my first-person reflexive thoughts without changing the identity of those thoughts, so can no such expression replace the Srestricted predicates. Indeed, it is usually impossible t o get someone t o have a red experience merely by explaining it t o them; as Ned Block (1980:278) echoed Louis Armstrong, "if you got t o ask, you ain't never gonna get t o know." 2 5 0 f course I can indirectly indicate that you might be doing so by thinking a mental representation of an English sentence, such as 'It's R-ing to you', which is meant t o illustrate the limitation in question. T h e point here is that, strictly speaking, 'R' in 'It's R-ing to YOU' does not have the same role meaning of any mentalese restricted predication; rather 'R' simply stands in place of such a predicate to illustrate the specific form of the mentalese predication. 26The one, as it turns out, actual sort of case in which this might be thought to arise is that of Gazzaniga e t al.'s (1962) "split-brain patients." For discussion that could, with the present claims, lead to conclusions about "shared sensations" see Rey (1976), Nagel (1979), and Parfit (1984:$100). But see also Rey (forthcoming) for reasons to be especially cautious about such claims.

Similarly, the "lack of grain" to our sensational experience so often emphasized by e.g. Sellars (1956) may also b e explained by the simplicity of the S-restricted predicates. When I have a pink-ice-cubish visual experience, there may not be any "grain" or "parts" to the seeming pink expanse, since the predications don't themselves indicate any parts, in the way that they may (in the case of vision) indicate hue, intensity, tone, and relative position in a 2 - 1 / 2 0 grid. What you "see" is simply what restricted predicates you get: no more, no less. The "ineffability" of sensory experience is a consequence of the fact that no expressions in a natural language come close t o playing the specific role that S-restricted predicates play in a system's internal language. Specifically, no predicates in a natural language are constrained by any restrictions analogous t o S1 or S5, and it is quite unclear how they possibly could be. The situation here is quite different from that of FPRTs, where a convention in natural language for self-reference can sufficiently mirror constraints (I-1)-(1-3). How might we mirror constraints (S-1)-(S-5)? What would it be like t o create predications in a natural language that as a matter of nornological fact could be entokened only as a result of output from a sensory module, and that nomologically gave rise t o a certain characteristic processing? Most of the constraints on tokenings of natural language predicates are conventional and pretty clearly not nomologically tied t o any particular kind of situation (one can token any natural language expression pretty much at will). Of course we might construct a system that was organized nomologically in this way. Computers may well afford the possibility of doing so ( a possibility I will return t o later). But then such computers may thereby afford the possibility of a machine having sensations ( a possibility I worry about elsewhere (Rey 1983, .1988a)). The special privileges of knowing one's own state by and large fall out as features of a restricted predicate's characteristic processing. There are, of course, wide differences in the varieties privileged access (see Alston (1971), but all of them involve some further, usually second-order cognitive state, or disposition t o acquire such a state, being intimately tied

to the sensational state itself: e.g. if x is in pain then x believes/knows of herself that she is in pain, and/or conversely. Any such state may simply be included in the characteristic processing of the restricted predicate associated with the state: the experience of pain may well include the judgment and/or avowal that one is (and perhaps the distinct preference that one no longer be).27 Indeed, what has always seemed t o me the strongest argument for some kind of functionalist story is that it provides the right and even an illuminating account of the usual firstperson privileges. Any non-functionalist account2 -i.e. any account that makes the connection between a sensory state and a thought that one has it, less tight, as in the biologistic and dualistic proposals mentioned earlier- risks what seems to me intolerable first-person scepticism. If qualia are nonfunctionally defined objects, then their attachment to their role in my thought is accidental, and it would seem possible for me to think, clearly and otherwise normally, that I have one (of a certain kind) without it being of that kind, and for me to think that I have (of a certain kind) without my actually having one (of that kind). For all I know now what seems to me clearly a green experience is actually a red one, what seems to me a sharp pain is actually a tickle, what seems to me to be the sound of a Beethoven quartet is actually the smell of skunk. While there seems t o me to be some room for error in our qualitative thoughts, if those errors cannot be cashed out in terms of further comparisons and judgments I would make, it is utterly mysterious what I should be taken to be mistaken about. Scepticism abut qualia, however, can arise in a special way in connection with the notorious problem of "qualia reversals" ("How do you know other people don't see red where 2 7 ~ h extent e to which such further states are in fact implicated in

C P ( @ )i s a question that does not need to be settled here. I only want to indicate the resources of the present theory to implicate them as need be. 2 8 N ~ tthat e behaviorist and/or ezpressive views of first-person "knowledge" such as one finds in Ryle and Wittgenstein can be regarded here as limiting cases of functional views, behaviorism being a functionalist theory with null intervening states.

you see green?"). Pace much of Twentieth Century philosophy, I think this is a quite serious problem and won't attempt to do it justice here. Suffice it to say that the usual ways of raising the problem, as a problem for behavioristic analyses of sensational states, obviously do not arise for a functionalist proposal of the sort I am proposing here. It is pretty easy to construct nomologically posssible cases of reverse qualia involving behaviorally equivalent individuals; it is not nearly so easy to construct such cases involving cognitively and computationally equivalent ones.29 Unlike the cases produced against behaviorism, the cases against functionalism require tampering with the internal organization of the agent, in which case, I submit, we are deprived of any confidence we might have in the privileged access of the agent to what she is experiencing, and so in the reality of the reversals she thinks she might have undergone. The same questions raised above, about how one knows in one's own case that one is correctly judging that one is seeing red or green, smelling skunk or hearing Beethoven, can be raised about such cases. If it is claimed that these properties transcend the patterns in our judgments, then it may well be wondered whether qualia had at such sceptical expense are really worth having, or are the object of anyone's genuine concern. Lastly, there is the now well worn problem of "knowing what it's like." As many writers have emphasized,30 such "knowledge" may be more a matter of an ability, e.g. imagination than of cognition. Comp-imagining, we surely have every reason to suppose, is a different relation than compjudging: comp-judgments are the basis for action (the input to the decision system) where comp-imaginings presumably are not. Roughly, to comp-imagine X-ing seems to involve 29Ned Block (1990) has tried to produce such a case for specifically the kind of proposal advanced here. I reply to it more fully in Rey (forthcoming). See also Shoemaker (1984) for excellent general discussion. 30The locus classicus of this issue is Nagel (1974). Jackson (1982) presents a more specific form of it. This latter article, with replies of the sort I am pursing here -particularly Levin (1986), Lewis (1988), and Nemirow (1990)- are usefully gathered together in Lycan (1990:478518).

being able t o produce in certain addresses, protected from immediate consequences for action, many of the restricted predications that might result from actually X-ing. I can imagine what it's like t o be on the coast a t Big Sur, since I can comp-imagine many of the restricted predications that would be released by the sun, air, surf and cliffs were I actually there. This is made particularly easy for me since I can remember (and so comp-remember many of the predications caused by) being there. But memory doesn't seem to be essential. In The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane provided what, according t o veterans, were accurate depictions of what it was like t o be in war, despite never having been in one; depictions that in turn seem t o produce in readers similar comp-imaginings. Thus, Nagel's and Jackson's problems of "knowing what it's like t o X " are the difficulties of being able t o comp-imagine the restricted predications that are typically produced by X-ing. Insofar as we don't share such predications with bats, we can't know what it's like for them. The inability is not a logical, but merely a computational one. Of course, the fact that we do not automatically enter such states as a result merely of learning an explanatory account of what goes on when one X-es is no argument against the truth or adequacy of that account. I don't need t o have a heart attack in order t o have a completely adequate account of heart attacks; nor do I have to be able t o X (or be able t o imagine, or "know what it's like" t o X ) in order t o have a completely adequate theory of X-ing.

4

Conclusion

It might be felt that this solution t o the qualia problem is too glib, that I'm just inventing ad hoc entities that are supposed t o do the work of solving the qualia puzzles. And this would be true, were there no promise whatever of independent evidence for ascribing computational structures of the sort I have described. But I see no reason t o be so pessimistic. Although it is by no means easy t o see finally how t o sort out the elaborate computational structure of the

brain, we know we shall have to do this if we are to make sense of most contemporary information processing models of cognition, i.e. if we are to make sense of the combinatorial, deductive, inductive, abductive, and decision theoretic structures that many psychologists posit to explain standard regularities in peoples' behavior. Of course, it might also be felt that this solution to the qualia problem is simply crazy, that sensory experiences are obviously not sentences in the head. But any such objection needs to point to phenomena that the proposed account can't explain. I have tried to show how it explains all the phenomena st andardly thought perplexing about such experience (including why it doesn't introspectively seem to be correct). Perhaps there are defects in my accounts, or there are further phenomena that I have missed. The burden seems to me now clearly on the critic to cite them. But these defects or additional phenomena must, of course, be presented in terms that don't beg the question of whether such an account could be correct. Merely beating one's breast and saying that sensory experience simply doesn't seem sentential -as a surprising number of people have been inclined to do- obviously doesn't meet this requirement.31 If we are to take the explanatory view of the mind that I am recommending seriously, though, it might be wondered why S-restricted predications are needed. Perhaps positing them can explain some of the peculiarities associated with sensations, but one might well wonder why any system would have them, and in particular why just those restrictions. Although the need for evolutionary accounts of mental processes is often exaggerated, this much could be said: restricted predications are one very good way a cognitive system could keep track of "the data," i.e. of the interactions with the external 31As I said in the introduction, however, I am sympathetic to those who may feel that such an account of our mental lives may not ground our moral intuitions. After all, it would be hard to care about the experiences of a computer programmed to process S-restricted predicates in merely the ways I have sketched (see my (1983, 1988a)). But I see no reason to think that an explanatory psychology is obliged to justify what may in the end be arbitrary patterns in our personal and/or moral concerns for one another.

world that confirm, and so must not be determined by, the theories, desires, expectations that notoriously affect our unrestricted "observation" judgments. Restricted predications are judgments that are normally made only as a consequence of environmental interactions and in turn produce a stable characteristic effect upon us, independently of whatever else we might think or want. So the short answer might be: by specially marking the effects of our proximal interaction with the world, the S-restrictions help protect us from total "topdown" delusions. In talking as I have about sensations as sentences in the brain, it can appear as though I am making an appeal essentially t o biology as the basis of phenomenology. However, as many functionalists have pointed out, although the biological brain may in fact be the medium in which certain functional and/or computational/representational properties are realized, it is by no means essential to that role; other substances (silicon, wires and glass, perhaps even beer cans) may do just as well. This point is often obscured in discussions that are otherwise laudable for the richness of the psychological details that they bring t o bear upon the philosophical issues. For example, in his recent book on color on which I have greatly relied, C.L. Hardin (1988:127-131) writes: the important point is that the characteristics and relationships of colors depend upon their biological substrate, and we delude ourselves if we suppose it possible systematically to understand the relations colors bear to each other in isolation from that substrate.

But he then continues a few pages later: Why not regard the phenomenal domain as being in some fashion constituted by a subset of neural codes?

It is this last non-biological, essentially functionalist proposal that his own discussion, and mine here, has provided some reason to adopt; nowhere in his discussion, I submit, is there any essential appeal t o biology per se. Sensations are constituted by a certain kind of coding process; so long as that process has a certain computational form, e.g., the form set

out by the S-restrictions, the medium of that process would seem t o be entirely irrelevant. Indeed, how could it possibly be relevant? How could a mere physiological or other condition that was not represented in the coding of the mind possibly make a difference to its feel? That is the question which I hope my account will at least have raised, and maybe have answered.32

321 want t o thank Jonathan Adler, Ned Block, Jennifer Church, Larry Hardin, Brian Loar, Joseph Levine, Bob Richardson, David Rosenthal for much good discussion and advice. Martin Davies also read the penultimate ms. with great care, and made excellent editorial suggestions. Earlier versions of the present work were delivered a t the Washington D.C. Philosophy Club, the University of Cincinatti, SUNY Stony Brook, a t the conference on "Mind, Meaning, and Nature" at Wesleyan University in April 1989, and at Rutgers University and the University of Chicago. At the last, I was on a program with William Lycan, whose paper "What is the 'Subjectivity of the Mental'" independently advances a view very like the one advanced here.

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PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES, 1 Consciousness, 1991

Consciousness and Subjectivity J . I. Biro It is a frequently heard complaint in the philosophy of mind that whatever progress may have been made on other questions in it, such progress has not brought us nearer to understanding the central phenomenon of consciousness.1 Indeed, 'The most influential statement of the complaint is in Thomas Nagel's "What is i t like to b e a bat?", The Philosophical Review, LXXXIII, 3, October, 1974. (Page references in the text will be to this paper.) Elaborations of i t are to be found in other writings by Nagel, particularly in "Subjective and Objective", in Mortal Questions, Cambridge University Press, 1979, "The Limits of Objectivity", The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Cambridge University Press, 1980 and The View From Nowhere, Oxford University Press, 1986. Other authors expressing similar views include Frank Jackson (in "Epiphenomenal Qualia", The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 127, April, 1982), Colin McGinn (in The Subjective View, Oxford University Press, 1983) and John R. Searle (in, among other places, Minds, Brains and Science, Harvard University Press, 1985, "Consciousness, Explanatory Inversion and Cognitive Science", The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, forthcoming and What's Wrong with the Philosophy of Mind?, forthcoming).

some think that in spite of the appearance of impressive theoretical advances about those aspects of the mind where most of the attention of philosophers of mind has been concentrated for the last few decades, progress even there is only illusory. Nothing, it is urged, can be really understood about mentality as long as consciousness is ignored -as it often is, even as a matter of policy, in the hope of rendering other aspects of the mind more tractable. Consciousness should be recognized as the key t o all mentality, and thus all questions about the mind should be considered in relation t o it.2 Even among those who do not share this extreme pessimism about the prospects of the approaches t o other aspects of the mind, such as intentionality, currently in favour, there is a widely felt sense that these do pass by something absolutely central. Thus while theories abound concerning intentional states and their role in the explanation of behaviour, about various mental functions, operations and processes that are thought t o be involved in intelligent behaviour, and especially about the problems involved in giving a n account of these along acceptably physicalist lines, a feeling of incompleteness persists. There is a queazy feeling that with consciousness we don't even know where to begin. So relatively little by way of a philosophical theory of consciousness is on offer.3 Not surprising, say the complainers: There have been dissenting voices, too: among them, Lilly-Marlene Russow ("It's Not Like T h a t to be a Bat", Behaviorism, vol. 10, no. 1, 1982), J. Christopher Maloney ("About Being a Bat", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 63, no. 1, 1985), Robert van Gulick ("Physicalism and the Subjectivity of the Mental", Philosophical Topics, vol. xiii, no. 3, 1985) and Jeff Foss ("On the Logic of What I t Is Like To Be a Conscious Subject", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 76, No. 2, 1989). 'The most powerful recent expression of this view is to be found in the works by John Searle cited above. But one does not have to accept the strong link between intentionality and consciousness ("the connection principle") on which Searle insists, to see the absence of attention to consciousness in recent discussions of intentionality as problematical. 3There are, of course, noteworthy exceptions to this generalization. Some that leap to mind include work of David Armstrong (e.g., A Materialist Theory of the Mind, New York: 1968), Daniel Dennett (e.g., "Toward a Cognitive Theory of Consciousness", in Minnesota Studies

the first thing we need t o understand about consciousness is that, central as a recognition of its importance is to any theory of the mind, there can be no theory of it. Consciousness is essentially theory-resistant : this is because its essence is bound up with subjectivity, something that by its very nature must elude theorizing, since the latter's essential aim is t o give an objective account of its phenomena. No real progress can be made towards an understanding of the nature of the mind through approaches that fail to recognize this all- important fact. Powerful as the intuitive appeal of such a complaint is, it is difficult to make it precise enough to allow one to decide whether it is well founded. Yet doing so is clearly desirable, given the sweeping and radical metaphysical conclusions some are prepared to draw on its basis. Nagel, for example, regards the -allegedintractability of consciousness as quite fatal to any attempt to develop a science of the mind; giving consciousness its due would show that the very idea of such a science, and along with it that of a unified account of reality, is a mirage. Given the centrality in this kind of complaint of the notion of subjectivity, it is surprising how little careful analysis of that notion has been provided. In this paper, I try to make a beginning by looking at some of the characterizations of it that have been offered by those who urge that we do not usually take it seriously enough. Among these, un-systematic as they are, one can discern the following ideas: that subjectivity is a real property of experience; that it is sui generis and irreducible to other kinds of properties; that it is essentially and exclusively a first-person phenomenon; and that it is the key to understanding consciousness.

i n the Philosophy of Science, Minneapolis: 1978), David Rosenthal (e.g., "A Theory of Consciousness", ZiF, Bielefeld: 1990), Georges Rey (e.g., Mind W i t h o u t Consciousness: A Discrepancy Between Explanatory and Moral Psychology (MITfBradford, forthcoming), as well as the papers in this volume by Rosenthal and Norton Nelkin.

"Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable." Thus Nagel begins his well-known paper, "What is it like t o be a bat?" and goes on to claim that current discussions of the problem, when not altogether ignoring or side-stepping consciousness, "get it obviously wrong". Since Nagel's formulation of the complaint has been so influential, I shall focus on his version of i t , but I hope that the results will b e generalizable t o a whole family of claims and arguments flowing from the same intuitions. If most discussions of consciousness get it wrong, the way t o at least begin t o get it right, according t o Nagel, is t o focus on the notion of a point of view, something every conscious being has. A point of view gives access t o something that is irreducible t o any other fact or set of facts about such a being, but gives access to it only to that being. It is only from a creature's own point of view that the 'What is it like t o be. . . ?' question for that creature has an answer, and that answer, disclosing "the subjective character of the creature's experience," is what expresses the essence of its consciousness. Let me illustrate these claims with a couple of brief quotations, since they are central to Nagel's argument: The fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism (436). . . .fundamentally an organism has conscious states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism -something it is like for the organism (ibid.). Leaving aside the 'basically' and the 'fundamentally' -one is not sure whether these are here for emphasis or as qualifications- the thing t o note here is that the 'means' in the first quotation suggests that the 'if and only if' in the second should be taken in the strongest possible sense, as expressing a n analytical thesis. This makes sense of treating the something that it is like t o be a creature as the essence of its consciousness. Far-reaching consequences follow. To quote Nagel again:

. . . every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view. (437, my emphasis) Subjective facts, "whatever may be their status.. . appear t o be facts that embody a particular point of view", whereas objectivity consists in the abandonment of particular points of view. There is thus a range of facts associated with consciousness that an objective theory is, by its very nature, unable to capture. IIence the very ideal of a science of the mind is an impossible one, and so then is the ideal of a scientific account of the whole of real it^.^ It is thus clear that the notion of a point of view is central t o Nagel's explanation of what an essentially subjective phenomenon is, and to his argument that such phenomena are theory-resistant (437). The expression 'point of view' occurs again and again in what appear to be virtually definitions of both the subjective and the objective: the former is what is available only from a particular point of view, the latter what remains when particular points of view are set aside. So let us take a closer look at what light the notion can throw on the kind of subjectivity we are trying to understand.

Talk of points of view is, in most ordinary contexts, somewhat metaphorical, and it typically refers to the beliefs, conceptual framework or even values of some subject or group. Nagel sometimes so uses it, but if the radical claims about subjectivity and consciousness blocking the path of objective science are to be sustained on the basis of the notion, a more precise and somewhat narrower construal must be 'For a more detailed discussion of what is involved in characterizing a theory as objective in this context and of the alleged limitations of such theories vis-a-vis consciousness, see J . Biro, "Consciousness and Objectivity", in Approaches t o Consciousness, G . Humphreys and M. Davies, eds., Blackwell, forthcoming).

adopted. For one thing, some philosophers separate the question of the possibility of objective, even reductive, accounts of intentional phenomena from the same question about cons c i o u ~ n e s s .Further, ~ emphasizing the importance of allowing for, and respecting, points of view and individual perspective in the interpretation of others need not provoke any dissent even among defenders of the possibility of an objective account of consciousness. There are ways for the for the latter t o take on board whatever insights such emphasis yields without abandoning a basically objectivist position.6 It is only if the anti-objectivists can show that more is involved in subjectivity than this that they can hope t o make good on their larger, more sweeping, claims. Thus we must look at what the image of a point of view taken in a more literal way can tell us about subjectivity. Let us then consider two people A and B , and two instances of the expression 'X's point of view': 'A's point of view' and 'B's point of view.' Let us imagine A and B a t two different places in some scene, say this room, each observing it from his own vantage point. Then 'A's point of view' may be naturally taken t o denote one location, one vantage point, and 'R's point of view' another. Is there anything about either of these vantage points such that the other person (or anyone else) could not occupy it? It seems clear that there is not. A and B could change places, in which case A would occupy the vantage point formerly occupied by B (one possibly still denoted by 'B's point of view' -say, if Judging by some remarks in "What Is It Like to be a Bat?", Nagel is among these, while, as noted earlier, Searle most emphatically is not. However, even if we do separate the two questions, we should not let interesting and suggestive parallels between them go unnoticed. Some of these are highlighted by some recent arguments of Brian Loar's intended to show that objective specifications of intentional content (expressing so-called "social content") cannot by their very nature capture the very aspect of content -individual, idiosyncratic, essentially subjectivethat genuine psychological explanation requires. (I criticize these arguments in "In defence of social content", unpublished.) '1 sketch ways of combining objectivity and respect for individual perspective, with respect to consciousness in "Consciousness and Objectivity", and with respect to intentional explanation in "In defense of social content" and "Individualism and Interpretation", (forthcoming)

B is known usually to occupy it) and B would occupy the vantage point formerly occupied by A (perhaps still denoted by 'A's point of view7). This is one way to construe instances of the expression 'X's point of view7,and on such a construal the expression seems t o involve nothing that could be seen as essentially subjective. But of course there is another reading of 'X's point of view' on which things come out very differently. We could insist that, even if A and B exchanged places 'A's point of view7still denoted the vantage point then occupied by A (and formerly denoted by 'B7s point of view') and 'B7s point of view7 still denoted the vantage point then occupied by B (and formerly denoted by 'A's point of view7). This would amount to a theoretical decision to treat 'X's point of view' in such a way that substitution instances of it always denoted whatever position the individual whose name is substituted for 'X' occupied. Such a construal would not be merely stipulative, however, since it corresponds to a natural way of describing such a situation in ordinary discourse, where we do sometimes say after such an exchange of places that 'A's point of view7 denotes the vantage point newly occupied by A and 'B7spoint of view' denotes the vantage point newly occupied by B. And this shows that at least sometimes we do in ordinary discourse treat 'A's point of view' as denoting whatever point of view A has from time to time. The fact that we dos so may be taken t o show, in turn, that the right way t o think of points of view is as somehow tied not t o places but to observers. But as the equal plausibility of the first construal shows, this would be a mistake -we think and talk of points of view sometimes in the one way, sometimes in the other, and sometimes, perhaps, confusedly in both ways at once. This is harmless enough in ordinary discourse; but when the notion figures centrally in a philosophical argument, we should be more careful. So let us try to keep the two construals distinct by inventing some labels and calling the first way of reading 'X's point of view7 the fixed reading and the second the portable reading.7

h here is another use of the expression 'point of view' in Nagel's paper, one on which we can speak of the objective and the subjective

It is tempting t o identify these with an attributive and referential reading, respectively. It may even be that in the end the right way t o capture the difference I have tried t o bring out informally will be through something like the referentiallattributive distinction. But since that distinction is no less controversial and problematic than some others that may well turn out t o have some relevance t o the way in which different interpretations of the expression 'X's point of view' figure in Nagel's argument, I do not want t o commit myself t o any claim as to which, if any, of them really underlies the one between the fixed and portable readings illustrated above.' Nothing in my arguments depends, I think, on any disputed theoretical distinction; all I need is one I have drawn informally and which seems t o be both intuitively clear and undeniable. Which, if either, of these construals is the one most appropriate for interpreting the phrase as it occurs in Nagel's claims about subjectivity? It seems it cannot be the fixed one: it is fairly obvious that on such a construal there would be no particular connection between the two notions. There is nothing essentially subjective about a vantage point as such, understood as a location from which an observer might

points of view as indicating, roughly, two approaches or attitudes t o inquiry. Part of a person's point of view in the broadest sense may be the favouring of one of these over the other. (One of Nagel's theses is that with respect to some things, only the second is possible.) I shall not use the expression in this sense. What I have called the "portable" reading may be most natural in contexts where the expression 'point of view' is being used broadly and metaphorically, the "fixed" one where the phrase is intended narrowly and literally. This reflects the naturalness of thinking of a person as carrying his concepts and (non-perceptual) beliefs around with him through changes in his sense perceptions. Despite this slight asymmetry, the distinction I have tried to draw is one that allows us to classify a use of the expression as either portable or fixed on any construal of it along the literal-metaphorical continuum. 'Some other well-known but controversial distinctions that may be thought relevant here are those having to do with scope, rigidity, and de re and de dicto readings of expressions. I suspect that none of these, however understood, can quite do service for the one I am suggesting.

view the world.g Locations as such are in principle sharable by different observers, at least over time (and if they are thought of as non-spatial, perhaps even at the same time). And whatever the physical possibilities, there is no problem with thinking of the same location as occupied by different observers in different possible worlds. On the other hand, giving a portable construal t o 'X's point of view' seems equally not to the purpose. On such a reading, it is the mere ownership by someone of his point of view that seems to matter, rather than its location or character, whose point of view it is, rather than from where and of what sort. This relation of ownership is one that necessarily involves as one of its relata the subject whose name is substituted for 'X' in 'X's point of view', while accepting different actual locations or vantage points as the other. Thus 3 could never assume A's role with respect to A's point of view, as it can assume any vantage point or location. Now granted that on such a construal Nagel's conclusion that a point of view is not intersubjectively accessible and not objectively characterizable does follow. If what matters about my experience is its mine-ness (whatever that might be taken to mean), its being so does indeed seem to be the sort of thing that cannot be included in any description of the experience, and thus it may really make experience theoryresistant.1° The trouble is that it does so in a merely trivial way: on this reading there is no interesting qualitative content to the subjectivity that is said t o elude theory. There is 'Some mav doubt that we ever seriouslv intend a fixed construal in this sense. But, consider asking another t o adopt one's point of view, or describing people as having changed their point of view, and so on. There is some ground for thinking that Nagel also countenances such a construal. In "Subjective and Objective", he uses a variety of paraphrases of 'point of view' strongly suggestive of this: "e.g., "the view from where one is" (p. 203), "the point of view of one's position in the world" (p. 204), [the view from] "wherever one happens t o be in the world" (p. 209). "For interesting'discussions of these points see Russow, op. cit., section V and, especially, the exchange between Zeno Vendler and R.M. Hare in Hare and his Critics (D. Seanor and N. Fotion, eds., Oxford:1988).(See also Vendler's The Matter of Minds (Oxford:1984).) \-

nothing it is like for something t o be merely this person's experience rather than that one's in the sense of 'being like' that Nagel insists defines consciousness. Mere ownership does not in general contribute anything to the nature or character of the thing owned, and there is not reason t o think that it does so when that thing is experience. To assume that it does is both unmotivated and, in the present context, questionbegging. If there is no qualitative content t o be expressed by a predicate indicating only ownership, that predicate becomes, in effect, a proper name. For it t o express a genuine property, it would have t o be applicable t o more than one thing, a t least in principle. Ownership-predicates are not, by their very nature, except with respect t o the property of ownership itself.'' But that property is, surely, not what Nagel and others have in mind when insisting on the inability of an objective theory t o capture essentially subjective facts. In fact, neither the fixed nor the portable reading of 'X's point of view' provides content t o the notion of subjectivity it is intended t o help us understand, for opposite reasons. In the one case, there is qualitative content, but no subjectivity, in the other, there is a (trivial) kind of subjectivity, but no qualitative content. Thus the trouble cannot even be equivocation between the two readings. Rather, t o see what is really going on, we have to ask, as we have not so far, just what r6le is played in Nagel's argument by his discussion of bats and their alien and unimaginable "inner life." We will find, I suggest, that that role is essentially rhetorical.

In making the distinction between fixed and portable readings of 'X's point of view', I used, for the sake of simplicity, an example where both characters were thought of as human, so that we could make the assumption that the only relevant differences between them were their numerical distinctness "One might say that they express at most a character, but no content.

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and their different locations. But of course an example involving different kinds of creatures would still be open t o the same distinction and is obviously, it may be thought, more relevant t o Nagel's argument. It certainly looks as if in that argument it is the differences in kind between bats and people that are supposed t o matter. However, focusing on these differences can easily obscure the fact that the distinction between the fixed and the portable readings does apply even when there are no species-differences. Furthermore, Nagel, in spite of his emphasis on species-differences, insists that "the problem is not confined t o exotic cases" and that "it exists between one person and another" (p. 440). This must indeed be so if the argument is t o have any bearing on the human mind-body problem and on the prospects for theories of the mental in humans. For we can always go chauvinist and limit the range of the properly mental to human beings; would there then be no problem? It is clear that Nagel thinks there would be. Aside from this expository drawback of using an inter-species example instead of the intra-species one I used, the former would have shifted the focus away from individual points of view t o types of points of view. Now there is a sense in which that is just what Nagel wants, since the alleged inaccessibility of what a point of view is supposed t o disclose can be made more dramatic when the thing disclosed is of a type very different from what one's own point of view discloses. There is a price, however; the connection between types of point of view and ineliminable subjectivity is far less manifest than in the case of token, individual, points of view. Unfortunately, Nagel is never fully clear on this distinction between what we might call species-relativity and individual subjectivity, respectively. He does say that "extrapolating.. . 'from our case' should be taken t o mean extrapolating from the human case, rather than from just one's own" (438, fn. 5). But he also says that every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view (see the passages quoted earlier, as well as 445). What does seem clear is that the kind of qualitative content whose absence I noted on a portable reading of 'X's point of view' could come only from considerations having

to do with points of view as types, with species-relativity. But these considerations, resolving as they do into ones having t o do with the perceptual apparatus of different species, are not strong enough t o support claims about ineliminable individual subjectivity.12 To bring this out more clearly, however, let us take such species-differences seriously, as Nagel does, and suppose A again a human being, but B now a bat. It would still b e clearly the case that if they exchanged places, A could see exactly what B had seen earlier, and B could see exactly what A had. But while the bat would see just what the man had seen before, what it saw would presumably look very different t o it. There is, clearly, a distinction here between experience de re and experience de sensu or, better, a gap between de re and de sensu descriptions of specifications of experience. Still, the question is, how does this help Nagel's argument? We can grant that a being with perceptual apparatus A* will not perceive things in the same way as a being with perceptual apparatus B*, so that if A has one and B the other, they will perceive things differently. But after A and B exchange places, not only can we still say, as noted a moment ago, that each would still see what the other had seen before, but more importantly, we could say that each would perceive as the other would if it had the other's perceptual apparatus. If A were in B's place, with B * , he would have the same experience as B in fact has (and vice versa). (The same kind of experience qualitatively, that is, not, obviously, numerically the same experience.) Counterfactuals like these make no reference t o anything essentially subjective. W h a t gives the appearance that something subjective is involved is that we tend t o focus on the obvious fact that as A and B are in fact, viz., equipped with A* and B* respectively, they cannot perceive things

or

a more detailed discussion of these points -including a suggestion t h a t the only way t o impart content to points of view considered as types is through a n appeal t o physical types, something clearly unacceptable t o an anti-physicalist such as Nagel- see Biro, "Consciousness and Objectivity".

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(even the same things) in the same way from any point of view. The inability t o perceive in like ways as things are would matter more if it were the case that the antecedents of the above counterfactuals were necessarily unfulfilled. Then it would follow that A could never perceive de sensu B perceives de sensu, and vice versa. But there is no reason to think that A's having A* and not B* ( and the reverse for B ) is not a perfectly contingent fact, and no reason t o think that in principle A could not lose A* and acquire B*, much as Kafka's Gregor Samsa does.13 Short of an argument t o the effect that a creature's having a particular type of perceptual apparatus is a necessary property of that creature, the mere fact that it is A who happens t o have A* cannot be a barrier t o B's possibly having it and therefore t o B's possibly perceiving not just what A now perceives, but perceiving it just as A now perceives it.14 SO my unfriendly reconstruction of Nagel's argument is this. It is appreciating 1 3 0 r does he? In Kafka's story, when Samsa wakes up, he is described as thinking as a human being, indeed, as perceiving like one. What he perceives himself as being is beetle-like, but he is perceiving in a human way. Whether this is coherent depends on whether i t makes (physical) sense for someone t o have a beetle's body and a human (or sufficiently human-like) perceptual apparatus (and, hence, conceptual repertoire). (On this question, see Maloney, op. cit. esp. section vi). As to the contingency of the kind of perceptual apparatus a creature has: while there may be some limits t o this (perhaps it is necessary that the apparatus fall within some specifiable class, given other physical facts about the creature), it seems that we need such contingency in evolutionary explanations. In any case, Nagel does not offer an argument t o the contrary. He says " . . . i t is doubtful that any meaning can be attached to the supposition that I should possess the internal neurophysiological constitution of a bat" (p. 439). But the only reason he offers for this claim is that "...nothing in my present constitution enables me t o imagine what the experiences of such a future state of myself.. .would b e like" (ibid., my emphasis). I take it as obvious that imaginability alone is a t least as poor a criterion of possibility as it is of conceivability. 1 4 ~ c t u a l l ythe , only assumption we have to make here is that a being with my perceptual apparatus (that is, not just one like -even very like- mine, but with my very one, or a t least with one exactly like i t ) would experience as I in fact do. T h a t seems a very harmless assumption, one we can make even in the absence of psycho-physical laws. Not that there are no problems with it: sensory-apparatus transplants may

the difference between the character of the bats' perceptual apparatus and our own and with it the presumed vast difference between the character of their experience and ours that is supposed t o persuade us that there is something about the experience of such an alien species that is inaccessible t o us. It then seems that, in a less dramatic way, such differences must obtain among individuals, if they belong to the same species (440). It is only when we make this shift from differences among species t o differences among individuals that the argument becomes an argument for the essential subjectivity of experience. For any differences between the type of experience had by one member of one species and the type of experience had by members of another are susceptible of objective description. We can describe them indirectly, by (a) identifying the things experienced by the other creature and (b) describing the perceptual apparatus of that species. And (a) and (b) together will yield a perfectly objective description of the types of experience involved. Indeed, it is difficult t o see what else could be said about them.'' not be nomologically possible, partly because of the perhaps ineliminable vagueness of the notion of sensory apparatus. It seems likely that there will be no principled way to saying just what a creature's sensory apparatus comprises, where it leaves off and where the "rest" of the creature begins. There are also related essentialist arguments to consider. Were we to conclude that X's sensory-apparatus token is essential to X , we would have to regard the counterfactuals just discussed as having necessarily false antecedents. But then we would be once again construing 'point of view' in a portable way and from that, as we have seen, nothing interestingly subjective follows. (For a criticism of Nagel involving similar points, see John Kekes, "Physicalism and Subjectivity", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. xxxviii, no. 4 , 1977) I5It would not help to insist that to b e really informative, descriptions of experience must involve phenomenal concepts. To require that these be strictly subjective (that is, description-resistant) phenomenal concepts would beg the question against the objectivist. If, on the other hand, we allow concepts shared at least by members of the same species, the resulting description will be, relative to that species, perfectly objective. In the indirect form of description I have sketched, (a) would provide a de re specification of what is experienced by creatures with a perceptual apparatus different from ours and (b) would contain a description of that apparatus. (Compare Foss, op. cit., especially section

It is only when the question shifts from what goes into describing types of experience in this way to what is there about a token of one of these types that distinguished that token from another, that is, what makes the experience of one individual different from that of another, that something really ineffable seems to block an answer. But now we can no longer draw on the differences between species for giving that ineffable something any real content. We seem to be in 4). Neither would provide what might be called a de sensu description of the experience, since there is no such thing to be provided. There is, however, a sense -admittedly a loose one- in which together they imply one, since there will of course b e some systematic correlation between the type of apparatus and the type of experience, just as there is in the human case. (Or in the bat case. Otherwise, Nagel's question would have no bite!) It is not to the point here to complain that such correlations are never law-like. While that may be true, and while therefore qualia may be, in Feigl's phrase, "nomological danglers", it is no more true in the inter-species case than in the intra-species one. Even if I can't imagine what the quality of the experience of a member of a very different species might be like, whereas I can imagine this in the case of members of mv own s ~ e c i e sit. remains true even in the latter case that I can't be sure ;hat it Is as I imagine it to be, since there is no deductive relation between the kind of perceptual apparatus we share and the kind of experience we have. This means that in neither case do I have propositional knowledge about the experience, even though in the home case I can have a well-justified belief that i t is probably like mine. And, of course, in neither case do I have knowledge by acquaintance (see discussion below). Another feature of such indirect descriptions that can b e the source of unease is that in giving (a), we usually rely on descriptions whose content derives from our experience of the object identified. But not always: as Feigl argued long ago, we can "triangulate" on the same referent from a variety of evidential bases, only some of which may be, and a t most one of which need to be, in any way phenomenal. This is so even when the referent itself is phenomenal, even if it is a "raw feel". Thus, for example, my dentist can identify my pain (that is, refer to, and talk about, it) without feeling it or relying on descriptions that imply that he knows how it feels (to me). If he knows something about physiology, he can lean on known type-type correlations between that physiology and types of experiences familiar to him, thus coming to know what I am likely to b e feeling in a fuller sense, something like the one involved in Nagel's leading question. Given such knowledge, he can give descriptions deriving from it, ones in which phenomenal concepts do figure helpfully.

danger of ending up with the trivial conclusion about subjectivity that we saw issuing from a purely portable construal of the point-of-view metaphor. I can imagine the following response by, or on behalf of, Nagel.16 There is a difference between giving some description or other of a thing and giving a description of that thing relevant t o a given purpose, which may require describing particular features of it, perhaps in a particular way. (Perhaps, in the present case, in terms of phenomenal concepts). One can agree that there are many perfectly objective descriptions we might be able t o give of the experience of another, among them some perhaps along the lines I have suggested, even if that other is of a very different kind. But that does not mean that there is not also something about the other's experience that we cannot describe. And, the argument goes, if our goal is t o understand consciousness, it is precisely -and only- this indescribable something that matters. Of course we can't say what that something is: that is just the point! But don't we all know the sort of thing it is? T h a t certain j'ne sais quoi that all and only conscious beings are acquainted with? The objection relies on the very assumption I have been questioning, namely, that if one's description of a type of experience is t o be complete, any property that figures in that description must be one that one has encountered it in one's own experience. This is far from being self-evident. If in the intra-species case one can lean on the meanings of the terms of the shared language in describing one's experiences t o others whose understanding of those terms does not require (how could it?) acquaintance with the very same referents, why not in the inter-species one? T h e kind of indirect descriptions conforming t o the schema sketched above could contain all the information a description could be expected t o contain. (Whether a member of the other species, whose experience is being so described, could understand the (non-phenomenal) terms used is another question, one whose answer depends on considerations not special t o the issue at 161t was, in fact, p u t t o m e by Chris Swoyer.

6. C O N ~ C I O UA~N DN SUBJECTIVITY E~~ 129

hand.) So, the inability t o imagine (or duplicate) and experience qualitatively different from one's own need not stand in the way of one's describing it, or of one's understanding a description of it.

Earlier we noted the threat of triviality that involved in retreating t o token interpretations of the expression 'point of view'. A similar threat besets attempts t o elucidate the notion of subjectivity thought t o be so central t o understanding consciousness through focusing on the conceptual connection between a point of view and its owner. In his most recent attempt t o explicate the idea, Searle appeals t o what he takes t o be an analytic truth: that "every conscious state is always someone's conscious state". Thus, for a pain "to be a pain, it must be somebody's pain".17 This he takes t o show that such states have a "subjective mode of existence" (equivalently, "a first-person existence"), different from objective modes of existence chiefly in that their owner has "a special relation t o [them]", a relation no-one else can have. W h a t this sort of subjective mode of existence provides information about the world, but only "from a special point of view: . . . m y access to the world through my conscious states is always perspectival, always from a point of view." Clearly we have here the same intuitions being invoked, with very similar conclusions being drawn, t o those we saw in Nagel's discussion. But here the emphasis seems t o b e squarely on individual points of view, something not even members of the same species can share. I have already argued that the only way t o give any substantive content t o such a notion of a point of view is by curtesy of the related but different notion of a type of point of view, and that that notion, in turn, may not be specifiable except by reference t o physical types, something counter t o the point of the 17Searle, W h a t ' s Wrong with the Philosophy of Mind, Ch.4.

whole exercise. Avoiding the Scylla of such self-refutation drives us, however, towards the Charybdis of triviality: all that we have left t o appeal to, it seems, is the mere logic of ownership. T h e trouble is that it is not clear that that logic has anything especially t o do with conscious states as such. Things of almost any kind may be described in ways that suggest a similar privileged relationship between them and some individual. Nothing can be a brother without being someone's brother, and it is at least arguable that for something t o be a nose, say, it has t o be somebody's nose. (Severed from its owner, it will not be nose simpliciter. Being an erstwhile nose, or whatever we might choose t o call it in its now detached state, is not a way of being a nose.) I am not, of course, denying that what Searle says about the need for conscious states t o be "owned" is true. The point is that being told this tells us nothing about what conscious states as such are. Nothing informative has been said about their nature, any more than would be by insisting on the mere fact of such owner-relatedness with other kinds of things. There is an illusion that this case is different, but that illusion rests on the type-information t o which we appeal -illicitly and unawares- in virtue of our acquaintance with a token (our own) of the kind of thing t o which in this account the ownership relation itself is supposed t o provide the key. Any substantive information comes only from that appeal, without which the insistence on ownership considerations would be empty. My conclusion, again, is that there is no safe course between the two dangers, of self-refutation and of triviality, t o which the two different construals of the notion of a point of view respectively lead. Let me emphasize that questioning the substantiality of the notion of subjectivity in this way should not be seen as down-playing the reality and importance of individual -if one likes, subjective- perspective. Of course there is such a thing as a person's or, more generally, a subject's point of view on the world. My argument has been merely that this does not imply that there is any mysterious, ineffable, inexpressible additional content t o that experience that is in prin-

6. C O N ~ C I O U AND ~NE SUBJECTIVITY ~~ 131

ciple unknowable by another individual. Nor need I maintain that the perfectly unmysterious content of my experience is knowable by any other individual, or that it is knowable easily by even those who share enough relevant properties with me t o be able t o have the same kind of experience I have.18 What those properties are is an interesting and important question, but it is one that makes sense only in the context of the kinds of considerations t o which I called attention in discussing the fixed reading of the expression 'point of view', considerations that involve types, rather than tokens. And, as we have seen, such considerations have no tendency t o support the radical claims Nagel, Searle, and others wish t o advance. T h e point may be illustrated further through a brief look at another attempt t o rely on the language of 'perspectives' and 'points of view' in coming t o grips with the elusive notion of subjectivity. In discussing what he calls "indexical modes of presentation", which he takes t o be one kind of phenomenon exhibiting the ineliminable subjectivity of some representations of the world, Colin McGinn says that ". . .it is the perspectival character of indexical modes of presentation that stands out -the way they incorporate and reflect a 'point of view' on the world".lg He continues: "This perspective is something possessed by a psychological subject; and it is the subjectivity of the subject that makes it proper t o regard the indexical modes of presentation constitutive of a perspective as themselves subjective. The point may be put this way: all the indexicals are linked with I,

''See, again, the exchange between Vendler and Hare cited above. lgMcGinn, p. 17. T h e other phenomenon McGinn discusses is the experience of secondary qualities. He claims that such experience and indexical thought are both "types of subjective representation". After considering a number of analogies between the two types, he concludes that their subjectivity is both ineliminable and yet compatible with an objective conception (though not, perhaps, an objective description) of the world. While I have some sympathy with McGinn's final position, my present purpose is merely to focus on that aspect of his argument that involves use of the -in my view problematic- notions of a perspective and a point of view.

and the I mode of presentation is subjective in character because it comprises the special perspective a person has on himself' .20 W h a t needs t o be noticed here is that this kind of picture need not commit one t o anything like Nagel's "subjective facts" or Searle's "subjective mode of existence". There are no funny facts or funny existents, only the same boring ordinary facts as seen from here or from there, by me or by you. Typically, because our situations vis-a-vis the world and our internal physical constitutions are different, we will be looking a t different facts. But I can, within the sort of limits mentioned earlier, come t o learn what facts you are looking a t . I can do so in a variety of ways, ranging from science t o literature and art. In learning this, I come t o know what it is like t o be you, even, perhaps, if you are a bat.21 I suspect McGinn would not settle for this: he seems t o have in mind the more radical kind of individual subjectivity that I have argued cannot be given any interesting substantive content. He could, of course, appeal t o one of the aspects of the extended analogy he develops with the perception of secondary qualities. Doing so, however, would purchase content a t the price of at least intra-species generality.22 The general pattern should be clear enough. In attempting t o articulate the intuition that there is something special and singular about each subject's experience in a way that will give content t o that specialness and singularity, we inevitably lose the very thing we set out t o describe. There is no middle way, one that allows us t o both characterize a perspective or a point of view and t o save it from thereby becoming general enough t o share, a t least in principle. This is not t o deny the 2 0 B ~ tas, Vendler puts it in his contribution to the volume cited above, "Changing Places?": "There is no reason to think that the designation this (mine) or that (yours) brings in a new element. Indexicality is not a source of qualitative differences anywhere". (p. 175) 21 Compare Foss, op. cit., section 4. 22Even if the nature of the content is thought to be such that it is not expressible in terms of other, non-qualitative, concepts, that is not by itself sufficient to secure radical, description-resistant tokensubjectivity.

6. C ~ N ~ C I ~AND U ~SUBJECTIVITY N E ~ ~ 133

reality of such perspectives, or the importance of recognizing their existence. It is only t o question their usefulness in attempts t o articulate what subjectivity consists in. Whether there is a way t o spell out what is involved in that elusive notion that avoids the difficulties discussed here, I cannot say.23

23 For

their criticisms of earlier attempts to formulate these arguments,

I am much indebted to Richard Hare, Kirk Ludwig and to Chris Swoyer.

PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES,1 Consciousness, 1991

The Anatomy- of Consciousness Brian O'Shaughnessy This paper falls into three parts: the first part is devoted t o a discussion of the type and status of consciousness; the second t o an examination of the characteristics of consciousness; and the third and final part consists in a summary and elaboration of the main conclusions of the preceding discussion.

Status

I

States of Consciousness

(1) Some might take the problem of consciousness t o be the elucidation of the experience. Others might take it t o be the elucidation of the broad and covering category of the psychological. My concern is with something different again. It is with the vastly familiar light that appears in the head when a person surfaces from sleep or anaesthetic or dream. In other words with the state we call "waking", which I shall mostly refer t o as "consciousness". Then perhaps the first question

t o settle about consciousness is, whether it is a variety of a wider kind, or instead a kind all on its own (rather as livingness is). Then the natural presumption is, that it is a variety of the kind, state of consciousness. Whether or not this is so, depends upon the reality of "states of consciousness". This I shall try t o demonstrate. Might consciousness be to the animal what life is? That is, of the essence? It may not. The evident existence of events that are losses o r regainings of consciousness, demonstrates that consciousness cannot be necessarily co-extensive with vitality in animals. Something can be a living animal and not conscious. Now this is not enough t o demonstrate the reality of states of consciousnees. To accomplish this task we need to show that the non-conscious animal must be in a state which is a variety of a kind of which consciousness is another variety; that is, rule out the possibility that the non-conscious animal is merely one such that none of its states are consciousness; that is, merely one in whom consciousness is absent.We need t o show that there exist states which are specifically marked out for the characterisation, "not-consciousness". Then I think it plain that there are such states. A man who is not awake is either asleep, anaesthetised, comatose, or some such, and these states are from the start specifically marked out as "not-consciousness". It t s not merely a necessary property of sleep that it is not waking: because it goes some way t o telling us what sleep actually is, it is part of its essence that it is not waking. By contrast, we learn nothing about what feverishness actually is in learning that it is not waking. Thus, an animal must either be conscious, or in a state which has the necessary and indeed essential property of not being waking. This conclusion already tells us a little about consciousness. And it strongly suggests that whatever that alternate state might be, it and waking must be varieties of some one covering kind. (2) However, it does not actually prove it. The existence of a particular state, together with the necessary co-possibility of a state that is essentially other, leaves it open that these states are not different varieties of one encompassing kind. Are living and dead different varieties of some one encompassing kind? It seems to me that they are instead the op-

posed possibilities in a single line of business. Then could it be that the states that are essentially marked out for the property of not being consciousnesses, are so for the unsurprising reason that they essentially and exhaustively are-the absence of consciousness? That is, is consciousness t o the animal what life is t o the animal body (or cell, or vegetable, etc)? As an animal body is either alive or dead, might it be that the animal is either conscious or else in a second determinate state which simply is the lack of consciousness? Just as "dead" does not name any of a number of states which have in common that they are not states of livingness, could it be that there exists a single state which just is the lack of consciousness in the conscious? Let me express the question a little differently. Is the state of sleep (say) merely a special instance of a state which has the following property: that the concept under which it is individuated as a state is a contradictory rather than contrary of the concept under which consciousness is individuated? This position will be false if sleep is one type of state, and the state induced by chloroform another, for the three terms "conscious" "sleep" "unconscious", will then rate as contraries rather than contradictories. Then against the supposition that "life"/"death" provides the correct logical model for understanding the relation between "conscious"/ "asleep"/"unconscious", is the simple fact that the former list is of two terms whereas the latter is of three. But in any case the following considerations show that the model is incorrect. Because death simply and exhaustively is the absence of life in the vital, there are not ways of being dead -any more than a cupboard can be variously empty of food. Now this is not because death has the property of being an absence of life: it is because death exhausts its nature in this property. Thus, even though disease is an absence of health in the vital, any particular disease has some sort of determinate real essence; and this is so because it is an inessential property of any disease that it is a disease, no disease being global, which ensures that no disease is simply and exhaustively lack of health. Hence it comes about that there are ways of being unhealthy, as there are not ways of being dead, for death, is global and has no real essence. By contrast, it

seems certain that there are ways of not being conscious: say, by being asleep, or comatose. There are ways of dying as there are ways of losing consciousness, but whereas the paths t o death lead t o the monolithic state of death, the paths leading away from consciousness conduct one in different directions towards diverse states. This looks like a proof that the logical model of "life"/"death" is inapplicable. (3) Thus, one state is consciousness, and another is sleep, and a third and different state again is the one we call "unconsciousness"; and the three covering concepts relate as contraries rather than contradictories. And that is t o say that the concept of the state of consciousness is vindicated: it singles out a genuine reality. This likewise tells us a little about consciousness. Namely: that while it is not of the essence for an animal to be conscious; or conscious or in a state that is its absence; it is of the essence for it bo be in a state of which consciousness is a sub-variety. That is, it is of the essence for it t o be in a state of consciousness. Now the existence of this covering kind, together with the existence of a t least three sub-varieties, suggests that a proper logical model for stateof-consciousness terms might be a genus-species terminology of the kind of colour terms or animal terms. But if this were correct, there ought in principle t o exist novel states of consciousness. Indeed, as the actual colours might in principle be swelled with new colours beyond our experience and imagination, so the list of possible states of consciousness might be expanded t o include a limitless array of other states beyond our experience and imagination. There is something evidently the matter with this suggestion. This is because it is inconsistent with the pre-eminence of consciousness amongst states of consciousness -at least. The very term "state of consciousness" should halt us in our tracks! Developmentally consciousness must come first, and the others derive from it. Consciousness has I think to be a real part of the innate repetoire of anything that is a n animal; indeed, of anything that has a mind in the reduced sense of having the capacity t o support psychological phenomena. But it is not quite true t o say the other states develop out of it. Because the obtaining of consciousness can never constitute the obtaining of life, it should always be possible in

animal life for the state of livingness to inhere in the absence of consciousness. What must that state of consciousness be in the developmentally super-simple? It is difficult t o avoid the conclusion that it must be the state we call "unconscious"; for it must in principle be possible for an animal to exist while all vital function has been suspended, and that seems like a sufficient condition for the inherence of a state of sheer unconsciousness. Therefore the real potential for the state of unconsciousness must be as essential to the animal condition as the capacity for consciousness itself. The arise in creation of consciousness inevitably casts such a shadow. If this is how matters stand, it is not so much that consciousness comes first and the other states of consciousness develop out of it, as that consciousness and its inevitable derivative co-possibility unconsciousness appear simultaneously at the lowest rung of the developmental ladder. Consciousness is not temporally prior to unconsciousness, but prior in somehow providing the content for the state that necessarily exists as its companion possibilty. Then these two states look at this stage as if they relate in the manner of life and death. "The womb drives in a death as life leaks out", wrote Dylan Thomas; and that is how it appears in the developmentally super-simple case in which consciousness and unconsciousness exhaust all the possibilities in a way reminiscent of life and death. But it is mere appearance. The only alternative to death is modes of life, but there can in principle exist alternatives to unconsciousness which are not modes of waking. It remains to be seen what form these alternatives can take, and what constraints are exerted upon them. It is for such reasons as are advanced above that the logical model of genus-species fails. The various varieties of the kind, state of consciousness, are not on an equal footing as "lion7'/ "giraffe" / "buffalo" are one as good as the other. In an important sense the state that is consciousness comes first, and with it as inevitable derivative accompaniment the state of unconsciousness; and any other states that there might be, arise with them already present as background repetoire. Now if the logical model of life and death had been correct, the nature of the concept of a state of consciousnees would in

a certain respect be unproblematic. As the concept of vital condition allows for only two contradictory possibilities, life and its absence death, so it would be here. Because life is not the absence of death, whereas death is the absence of life, we could say that the content of the concept of vital condition was that of life. Similarly we could be able t o say that the content of the concept of a state of consciousness would be consciousness. But if matters are different from this, if there exist genuine third possibilities like sleep, the situation looks more obscure. All the more so when the existence of an order of priorities shows that the model of genus-species must fail.

2

The Individuation of States of

Consciousness

My concern has been t o discover if consciousness is a subvariety of a wider kind; and if so, the identity and logical character of that kind. This is the first thing t o know about it. It emerged that anything endowed with a mind must be in a type of state which is such that consciousness is the pre-eminent and parent sub-variety. The very expression "state of consciousness" points the way, and the "all or nothing" logical model of life and death, together with that of (say) colours (or mammals, say) prove inapplicable. Now a t this juncture we must grasp the nettle, the individuation of states of consciousness. I have elsewhere attempted this through a mere citing of properties, a procedure which works in the dark until we understand the significance of such properties. Then I suggest that state-of-consciousness properties do not contingently and at a remove signal the hidden presence of a real essence in the manner of familiar natural-kinds. They are something closer t o the matter than mere epistemological "pointers". For example, while the state consciousness has numerous typifying properties, it can be simply individuated by a priori -given necessary and sufficient conditions: namely, by the obtaining in the rational of a rational state wherein the attention is necessarily both available and functioning. Accordingly, consciousness

has no empirically hidden core, and wears its heart nakedly upon its sleeve. The same is true of unconsciousness, which in the rational is logically equivalent to the obtaining of a non-rational state -by which I mean a state such that belief is normally non-rationally caused- wherein the attention is absolutely switched off. In either case it is impossible to imagine analogues of "twin earth" diverse natural-kinds. I mention the problem of individuation t o enable me t o complete the task of delineating the logical character of the kind under which consciousness falls, The other important data in this regard is provided by the phenomenon of degree. Thus, while one can be absolutely or vividly awake, one can be neither more and more awake nor limitlessly awake; but one can by contrast be more profoundly asleep or more totally unconscious. This is not surprising, and turns upon the variable which determines degree: in the case of sleep the availibility of the attention, in the case of unconsciousness the possibility of dream or other experience and ultimately of mental life in any form.The rationale is fully transparent and a priori. The concept of total unconsciousness is as a result perfectly precise a priori: namely, the total suspension of psychological processes in the minded. (What would be a "twin earth" to that?) Then bearing in mind the property of degree, together with the individuating charxteristics of the several states of consciousness, the following theory concerning the covering concept of state of consciousness recommends itself. It is such that all possible alternatives to the state consciousness are privations in relation to it. They are not disminutions of the state, not faint or impoverished versions of consciousness; they are instead privative derivatives. Hence it comes about that there are not a potentially limitless array of states of consciousness as there are of colours or mammals. Conceptually we begin with consciousness and privatively derive the others by denuding it of powers. The state of waking marshals our central mental powers -to experience, sense-perceive, reason and think generally, to cogently and actively manipulate the environment with a view to fulfilling our needs- and all other states of consciousness are noteworthy for the absence of some or even all of the above. All of the other individuating syndromes of proper-

ties are marked by the absence of the use of a power that is pretty much an essential part of the armoury of a selfconscious being. So of what kind of a kind is consciousness a kind? A kind that is essential to its owner's very being: a kind such that it has a pre-eminent sub-variety; in relation to which the others are privative derivatives, modes of not being it rather than pure absences of it. Consciousness pre-eminently instantiates such an essential kind. This progeny is parent to its own logical family.

3 The Relation Between States of Consciousness and Their Properties (1) We have spoken of states of consciousness as if they were realities. Why? Why believe there are wakings and sleepings and etc? Certainly the syndromes of properties seem to show so. But if as we have argued these are not epistemological "pointers" of underlying real essences, why believe there is anything more than the properties themselves? Three considerations point that way. First, the existence of necessary and sufficient conditions for the states. Second, the fact that the states explain the properties, eg. the state unconsciousness explains the absence of sense-perception in one concussed. Third, the fact that there exist agreed techniques for causing and removing the states, eg. concussion, smelling salts. As a result I cannot bring myself to doubt, either the reality of states of consciousness or the usual taxonomical carve-up. Then how do these realities relate t o the syndrome of properties that ensure their presence and whose presence they explain? Might they be constituted of them? In that case the explanatory function of the states of consciousness would not be causal. This is a substantive issue. The question is: does concussion just knock out sense-perception? or does it instead knock it out by knocking in unconsciousness which then causes attentive shutdown? or is there some other as yet unformulated third alternative? One vitally important fact to remember is, that techniques for manipulat-

ing presence or removal of any one member of any stateof-consciousness syndrome, address themselves not so much directly t o the phenomenon itself as to the state of consciousness which guarantees or proscribes it. Thus, t o delete the phenomenon of attentive-function one does not attempt directly t o expunge it from the mind, but rather wreaks such change that many other alterations in the mind occur along with the phenomenon one sought t o produce, alterations such that a change of state of consciousness cannot but be effected along with it. And it is not that we lack techniques of sufficient finesse t o insert the phenomenon on its own, and have perforce in our clumsiness to resort to the equivalent of a club: there is in principle no remedy for such "crudeness". This "technical holism7' (as one might call it) should be borne in mind when we come t o adjudicate between the two rival theoretical positions on the issue of constitution. Neither position looks attractive. It is difficult t o belive that states of consciousness are complex mental states made up out of other mental states. Mental Chemistry and/or Mental Meccano are near universal impossibilities. Again, a state like consciousness is as elemental a mental phenomenon as any, and it is hard t o believe it could depend for its being upon other presumably more fundamental mental phenomena. Further, we have just noted that we never manipulate the supposed constituent properties on their own, but inevitably alter the state of consciousness in the process. It must be a strange kind of constitutive assembly when the putative constituents necessarily travel in packets which inevitably realise wholes! So much for the first theory. When we turn t o the second theory, we find something that looks if anything even less plausible. I mean, the theory that states of consciousness are the distinct and necessary cause of the phenomena which attest to their presence. The claim that unconsciousness causes attentive shut-down rings hollow t o my way of thinking, if only because the former is inconceivable without the latter. And what is the evidence of distinctness? The explanatory role of the state? But explanatory force would be preserved, albeit of a constitutive rather than causal variety, were distinctness to be discounted. Again, the rejection of distinctness would obviate the need to pos-

tulate necessary causation between distinct existents. These considerations push one towards the view that in some undetermined sense or another, the state of unconsciousness must actually involve attention-closure. That is, towards the constitutive theory in some shape or form. But what? And how t o avoid the difficulties facing the constitutive theory? What is the resolution of this problem? I think we must begin by rejecting the first theory, that states of consciousness are the distinct necessary cause of their phenomenal marks. Next, we note a measure of holism in the situation. It is true that some syndrome phenomena do not entail their brethren phenomena: for example, the non-rationality of unconsciousness does not entail attention-closure, since sleep realises the former without fully realising the latter. Nevertheless, others do; and all are consistent with only some states of consciousness. In other words, they each necessarily occur in sets, each of which realise a unique state of consciousness. Accordingly, the following account recommends itself. We accept that states of consciousness are constituted out of mental phenomena, but reject the supposition that the constituents have a fully autonomous existence. Because everything with a mind is in some one unique state of consciousness, which is logically rather than indexically individuated by its properties, each such property must be as dependent upon the state it helps constitute as is the latter upon it. In this sense the constituting of states of consciousness, while a real constituting out of real parts, is not additive in nature. The parts cannot even in principle be prior t o that which they succeed in constituting. Therefore concussion neither just knocks out sense-perception; nor knocks it out by knocking in unconsciousness which then causes attentive shut-down; it just knocks out sense-perception in knocking in unconsciousness. Here we have a third alternative t o two intolerable positions. (2) The theory that states of consciousness are logically rather than indexically individuated by their properties smacks at first of a kind of conventionalism, rather as if we cobbled together an arbitrary mental construct out of given parts. This would rob the constituted whole of a nature in any serious sense. (A lack that Real Essences would make good

in convincing fashion.) However, the remaining elements of the theory reveal this account t o be a misrepresentation. The dependence of the constituting states upon the constituted state of consciousness, together with the doctrine that states other than consciousness are privations of consciousness, block that interpretation. They block it by countering the additive theory, by placing constraints upon what part can join what in constituting a state, and by limiting the number and type of such states.

4 The Psychologicality of Consciousness (1) Consciousness involves a working attention: it is a state in which attending occurs. This suggests that consciousness must be a psychological phenomenon; indeed, it might seem obvious that it is. However, something like an antinomy threatens such a view, which I will shortly explain. But first a word about psychologicality. When I use this expression I am speaking of the property common t o primitive undirected phenomena like sensations and complex intentionally directed phenomena like thoughts. Just what this property is I shall not attempt to say, and doubt frankly whether there is anything t o say. Then in a way it seems obvious that consciousness is a psychological state. After all, it has essential properties which are psychological: for example, entailing experience in the bearer. And yet the living brain is not a psychological being, even though it has the essential property of supporting psychologicality. Then could that be how matters stand? Might consciousness merely be a non-psychological brain state with special psychological properties? But if consciousness actually involves psychological states like a working attention, it is difficult to see how it could avoid psychologicality in its own right. And it should be remembered that one inmediately knows one is conscious when one is. Is this likely in the case of a brain state that is not a psychological state? It is at this point that antinomy threatens. If consciousness is psychological in status, so too must be the covering kind of which it is a variety. That is, states of consciousness

must as such be accounted psychological states. But coma, and indeed the deepest conceivable depth of unconsciousness in which all mental life is suspended, are supposedly subvarieties of states of consciousness. Can this latter nadir of unawareness be rated a psychological state? (What price "priveleged access" here!) Now this supposedly unacceptable conclusion follows from the psychologicality of consciousness, and is thought to amount to antinomy. Can it be resisted? I think it can. For what exactly are the objections t o adjudging profoundest unconsciousness psychological in character? Two spring to mind: first, that it is inconsistent with experience of any kind; second, that it is a wholly negative condition. Consider them in order. It is true that profoundest unconsciousness is inconsistent with experience as such, being inconsistent with mental vital process as such. However, it is not merely consistent with, it actually necessitates life. Then the life resident in the suspended organism is attested by the continuing inherence of psychological items like cognitive states and character traits. Why should not unconsciousness join their ranks? After all, psychologicality is not experiencability. And while it is true waking consciousness manifests its presence in experience, it itself happens t o be no kind of experience. Then why should not an inexperiencable psychological st ate manifest its presence in the impossibility of experience? So much for the first objection.The second, more interesting objection, claims of profoundest unconsciousness that it is a wholly negative conditions and therefore that it cannot be psychological in character. The "therefore" is in order: were this condition nothing but specific absence of a state, it could not itself rate as of an order of being. The emptiness of food of a kitchen cupboard has not the ontological character of material object or material stuff or of anything else. However, what must be contested is the claim that profoundest unconsciousness is thus wholly negative. It is worth recalling that consciousness relates t o its alternatives as contrary rather than contradictory. Had it been the case that for a state of consciousness not be consciousness was for it to be sheer not-consciousness, the claim would be correct and the argument valid. (Though in that case the ~ r o f u n d i t yof deepest unconsciousness would

be at once an irrelevance and an impossibility!) Had matters stood thus however, the psychologicality of the state consciousness would no-wise imply the psychologicality of its companion contradictory alternative. On the contrary: the latter would precisely be the absence of the former; and would in consequence lack any order of being. The falsity of the above account returns us t o the doctrine that there is an encompassing kind which embraces consciousness, sleep, and unconsciousness, viz. state of consciousness. Even in the theoretically limiting case in which the privative alternatives to consciousness find maximum negative realisation, the kind itself doggedly lingers and refuses to vanish. This anchors that extremest of negative states in an order of being, despite the demise of all of the properties manifestative of the consciousness -ness of consciousnesssuch as attentive-function, rationality of state, and so forth. In the limiting case, the privative kind alone lingers; but it is enough t o guarantee to its instances an ontological status identical with that of the plenitude in relation to which it is thus privative: namely, with consciousness itself. I mean: psychologicality. Accordingly, I see the existence of deepest unconsciousness as no serious embarrassment for the relatively obvious doctrine of the psychologicality of consciousness. (2) Not only is consciousness a psychological state, in a good sense it is the psychological state. It is not merely that the alternate states of consciousness are privative in relation to it; and not just that consciousness must be a real potential in any minded being. One other consideration points strongly in the same direction, and provides a significant clue as t o the character and function of consciousness itself. This emerges when we adopt a verificationist standpoint and ask the question: How would we verify the presence of sheer psychologicality in a wholly novel object? The answer is general and simple. We would look for bodily phenomena, situated in determinate settings, which where indicative of an integrated battery of intelligibly linked psychological phenomena: t o wit, perception of sectors of that setting, cognitive attitudes concerning the latter, together with desires and intentions and intentional instrumental physycal willings directed to-

wards precisely those sectors of the enviroment. Two things are worthy of note concerning this psychological network. First, it is nothing less than the use of the central typifying mental powers of animals as such. Second, it is indicative of the inherence of a full state of consciousness. Thus, we would find it behaviourally all but impossible t o detect the presence of psychologicality in a Rip van Winkle species that scarcely ever emerged from sleep or hibernation. The occasional change of posture, the odd stray grimace of discomfort, would in an entirely novel animal be on their own insufficient to establish mentality of any sort. This conclusion suggests that cosnciousness has the function of enabling the central mental powers to arise and work together. It suggests that consciousness may be the psychological foundation of our normal mental life.

Properties So much for type and status. I turn at this point in a different direction: towards an examination of the actual characteristics of consciousness. Oddly enough, these seem t o divide into what might be termed "negative" and "positive" characteristics. I begin with the negative, the most noteworthy of which come t o light when we consider the issue of the object of consciousness.

5 Negative Properties 5.1 THEOBJECT

OF CONSCIOUSNESS

It is natural t o describe consciousness as a state of awareness. But of what? Of the World -of Reality? It may well be so. But what sort of awareness is that? It is not, I think, an awareness of an object. Indeed, the state consciousness is simply not a directed phenomenon. The following considerations show that a regress results if one construes it as such. Thus, "conscious" is put to different uses in "he was conscious" and "he was conscious of a faint rustling": the former

being the sateof-consciousness use, the latter what might be termed the "particular consciousness" use; and these are irreducibly distinct. Then the state of waking is not a directed phenomenon, precisely for the reason that to be so it would have t o be a particular consciousness-of. How could it be a directed phenomenal consciousness and fail to be? Then this conclusion has regressive implications. This is because particular consciousnesses-of, which is to say particular experiences, which is t o say the stuff out of which the stream of consciousness is constituted, are of necessity permitted by whatever state of consciousness prevails at the time. Thus, dreaming particular consciousnesses-of are permitted by sleep and proscribed by both waking and profoundest unconsciousness. Then if consciousness was a directed phenomenon, it would require a permissive consciousness-state matrix; while if that in turn was directed, as this theory should in consistency suppose, a further permissive matrix would be required; and so on. In short, the supposition that consciousness is a directed phenomenon leads to regress; the reason being, that the domain of particular consciousnesses is not psychologically self-sustaining and must take root in a supportive state of consciousness. The stream of consciousness flows so t o say upon a sustaining psychological bed that is no part of it: a rule that holds irrespective of what stream or state of consciousness it be. An inexperienced undirected psychological phenomenal state makes possible an absolutely contemporaneous ordered complex of experienced directed psychological phenomena. Reducing the former t o the latter neglects this concealed intra-psychic dependence, and leads inevitably t o regress. Accordingly, consciousness cannot be an experience of The World. Now this same conclusion may be reached by another route. Namely: via the proposition that consciousness is neither a perception nor putative-perception: a claim that is evident when one remembers that we do not redescribe any state as "consciousness" in the light of its finding its object. And this last is so because it is asolutely internal to consciousness that it is consciousness not because it is a particular experience -for it is not an experience; and not so to say purely idiosyncratically in the manner of a quale; but because

it is constitutively and intelligibly determined as consciousness. Then if there is no such thing as consciousness finding a perceptual or intuitional object, there can b e no such thing as its aspiring t o find such a n object; and this shows that it can be neither a perception nor putative-perception. Now this in turn shows that consciousness cannot be an experience of T h e World. But it has the further virtue of providing us with an additional proof of the more general claim that consciousness is not a n intentionally directed phenomenon. If consciousness were such a phenomenon, it is clear it would have t o be of the type, putative-perception. If consciousness is not of the type awareness-of, of what directed type then is it? None other is conceivable. This more general conclusion t o the effect that the state consciousness is not an intentionally directed phenomenon, can be readily generalised t o the state of consiousness as such. States of consciousness as such are wholly internally determined and wholly object-less. Thus, in its own strange way consciousness and indeed state of consciousness as such joins such psychological primitives as sensations and moods in being at once psychological and devoid of intentional directedness. Like them it has no content, is "about" nothing. And yet it is natural t o say that one who wakes surfaces t o an awareness of The World. Evidently, this is no intuition; nor is it any mode of contacting a n object. Provisionally, let us say that one who is conscious is "in touch with" Reality: meaning, in a position t o discover how The World is. This union of contentless-ness and a readiness t o follow the way of truth, makes the image of the empty canvas or virgin page a valuable one for the state consciousness. But it is really only an image.

An additional negative property stems from the kind of the origin of consciousness, which is wholly and merely bodily, ie. cerebral non-psychological. The same is true of unconsciousness; though not of sleep, which is in part mentally determined. Then because sleep develops uniquely out of consciousness, consciousness negatively depends on the absence of sleep-inducing mental factors (as unconsciousness

does not). However, this negative dependence can no-wise be reduced to a positive: consciousness is the product of nothing psychological: it is built on the solitary rock-cerebral state. This cannot be said of many psychological phenomena, and once more lines consciousness up with that primitive psychological mediator, the sensation. Then these undirected contentless phenomena are the recessive psychological groundwork of the edifice of experience, first in depending inmediately on brain alone, second in making possible the experiences which fill consciousness and variously transcend them. Consciousness explicitly founds the stream of consciousness in the flesh, explicitly revealing a necessary although mediated dependence of experience upon it. Indeed, a dependence which takes regular form. The science of Anaesthetics informs us of regular conditions for removal and presumably also reinstatement of consciousness, and thereby reminds us that psycho-physical law goberns the existence even though not the content of the stream-of-consciousness. The multidetermining mental source of content gives a foothold for individuality and the will, the sheerly bodily and nnmic origin of experience makes of such concerns a compulsion. Now these origin-characteristics are responsible for an additional negative property of consciousness. Thus, consciousness has proved t o be wholly without psychological cause. A fortiori without inmediately known psychological cause. A fortiori there can be no "my reasons" for consciousness, let alone "my good reasons". Accordingly, consciousness cannot in this sense be accounted a rational phenomenon, and we have no direct accountability for it. Rather, consciousness is the state wherein rational determination is the general rule: that is, it is the rational state. But it comes or goes as the brain decrees. We and our judgement are not consulted in the transaction. Then because consciousness lacks mental origins, consciousness is not susceptible of redescriptibe interpretation in the light of its origins. That is, no meaning can be assigned t o it, it fits into no meaning-conferring wider holistic network, it simply falls outside the "meaning circle". (More precisely, it falls under.) Consciousness is at once without direction, without content, without significance.

I come to the last of these negative characteristics: namely, inexperiencability. Consciousness is neither an experience itself nor the inmediate psychological object of an experience, and is thus not in any proper sense introspectible. This is a way surprising; probably because the state consciousness rigorously necessitates experience; maybe because coming-to or losing-of consciousness can be (but need not be) experiences; and probably also because one who is conscious knows so in the inmediate way he knows of his experience (which is psychological) and his own existence (which is not!) The fact remains, consciousness is neither experiencable nor attendable-to; and the best one can do is, think about this inmediately known psychological state as it persists. Accordingly, consciousness has no quale, no "feel", and there is nothing that is "what it is like" t o be conscious -though there is what it is like to be experiencing what one who is conscious must be experiencing, viz a rationally ordered stream of consciousness. Necessarily recessive, this psychological phenomenal continuity of which one is inmediately apprised, vanishes from view beneath that for which it functions as necessary supportive condition. When this property is conjoined with the aforementioned negative properties, it begins to look like a sort of psychological nothing. Devoid of experiential character as such, wholly without direction and content, lacking all sense or meaning, one wonders how it can corner any kind of reality within its confines.

6 Positive Properties 6.1

EXPERIENCE AND

ATTENTION

(1) Until now consciousness has proved noteworthy largely for what it is not. Yet it is worth recalling the little positive that has emerged. That it is a phenomenal continuity of type, state; psychological in order of being; a variety of the kind, state of consciousness: to wit, the parent variety-consciousness. And because it is the pre-eminent

variety and other states privative in relation to it, the normal genus-species schema proves inapplicable. Finally, consciousness is constituted out of various phenomenal states, such as rationality in the self-conscious; though these phenomenal constituents fall short of full autonomy in failing to be independent of the state they together constitute. Then if this account is correct, consciousness is no psychological atom which reveals its distinctive character merely through its causal properties: it is a complex state wherein certain requisite state-parts are both present and synthesised. I am reminded of the self-conscious condition itself-in which self-knowledge, rationality, language possession, capacity to think, knowledge of truth and falsity, and of the modalities of actual and possible and might have been, indeed of The World itself-are simultaneously realised and mutually necessitating. These characteristics are not generated by an inscrutable psychic atom; neither are they the autonomous independent parts of a unified whole like the parts of a machine; and yet ther are indubitably different one from another; and all that is required for self-consciousness to crystallise is that the whole charmed circle arise into being. This seem to me to be the correct model for the state consciousness that is under discussion. I propose at this point to start filling in the picture presented by that state. That is, to delineate the constituent phenomena themselves. I begin with the intimate connection holding between cosciousness and experience. It is not just that the two normally appear together: consciousness entails experience at whatever instant it exists; and is the only state of consciousness that does. Now this claim is not a trivial analyticity, precisely because we do not begin with experience and assemble consciousness out of it; and this because every experience depends of necessity upon the prevailing state of consciousness. This is evident enough in dream experience, where the very type of the experience demands a state other than consciousness; but it is a general necessity. Accordingly, the fact that consciousness necessitates experience is "substantial"; and that it does do so is clear when one recalls that one detects "blackout" in the midst of consciousness precisely by detecting absence of experience.

Then it must be a matter of colossal importance so far as consciousness is concerned that it entails contemporaneous experience. What can be the explanation of this need? Now the kind of explanation for which we may legitimately search is systemic rather than causal. Then my preliminary intuition is, that the constituents of consciousness so constitute the state that it acquires through their presence and interrelations the capacity to accomplish certain fundamental tasks. That consciousness is no psychic atom which shows its nature exclusively causally, does not entail that it lack powers: it leaves it open that it is a psychic structure with essential functional powers. My preliminary suggestion is therefore, that experience is essential to consciousness precisely because it is a necessary condition of consciousness managing to do what is its primary function to do.' (2) We approach closer to that function when we turn to the related phenomenon of the attention. This concept wavers between "mental interest" (roughly) and "intuition" (perception). A man inwardly ratiocinating "spends" attention thereby without his attention taking an intuitional object, and yet there are noticings and attendings which clearly do take intuitional objects. How do these phenomena relate? Evidently, intimately. For the more attention is expended in the one, the less is available for the other; and, attention being a kind of mental life-blood, the more the very existence 'My use of "function" is stipulative. When I say "the function of psychological item X is to cause/causally lead to Y", I merely mean that X tends typically to cause/causally lead to Y, and that its doing so is in general contributory to the working/surviving of the mental system and/or living system in which these events occur. This assumes minds can "workn, or "not work". But why not? Contrast a conscious sane man successfully pursuing a demanding task and a sleeper or waking catatonic; only the first marshals the distinctive powers of the mind. Then sometimes i t is unclear whether an item has a function, eg. dreams; though often clear that it has, eg. act-desire. Since most of the general causal properties of psychological items are essential properties, many of these "functional properties" will be a priori-given, eg. act-desire's function of causing willing, or limb-movement-willing's of causally leading to the non-psychological event of limb-movement. However, many may not be. For example, dreams may have the psychological function of preserving sleep, or re-ordering one's beliefs, etc. These, if true, are a posteriori.

of the other is threatened. Thus, the concept is quantitative in nature, and the amount limited: a mind can concern itself with so much and no more a t any instant: it can drink in or give forth t o that extent only. These considerations suggest that we are dealing with a unitary phenomenon with diverse objects. Conceived thus broadly, the attention has no peculiar bond with consciousness, as dreaming shows. However, when understood more narrowly as the faculty of intuition, it plainly does. Indeed, states of consciousness precisely divide on this count. Unconsciousness being a state in which that faculty simply shuts down, sleep a state in which it is operative but not necessarily recording, consciousness one in which it is necessarily both operative and recording. And yet a full consciousness is consistent with wholly null intuitional recordings: darkness, silence, and something the far side of total numbness: not a trace of the physical world in view. How can this possibility be accomodated? Well, a recording of null is not a null of a recording. In short, it is clear that consciousness necessitates some overall intuitional recording. No matter how lost in an experience, a man could scarcely be conscious if he did not know if his eyes had just been dazzled or his ears inundated by cacophany or his body racked with pain. How tight is this necessity? If angelic consciousnesses existed they might lack a faculty of intuition; but the concept of a soul substance in a Kingdom of Spirits is so burdened by difficulties as t o be near discountable. Nevertheless, the connection between attentive shut-down and loss of consciousness is not transparently necessary. For this reason the attentive element in the typical complex picture presented by consciousness must be accounted of a different order of necessity from that of rationality-of-state and occurrenceof-experience -which are no less than logical. In sum, consciousness entails present experience, which necessarily involves a measure of putative intuitional contact with the Physical World, whether of positive or null variety. For some reason as yet undivined, tuning out intuitionally on the Physical World is tantamount t o tuning out on Reality; that is, on the voice of Reason -which keeps track of Truth. Indeed, inasmuch as the (broadly conceived) atten-

tion is occupied in one thus (narrowly, intuitionally) wholly disoccupied, it is tantamount to being occupied with Unreality, viz. with the unreal world of the dream. It is as if such a quasi-narcissist withdrawal of the intuitional attention from Physical Reality inevitably conjured up for experience a substitute World which necessarily does not exist; and that is to say, that Reality cannot be twin. Whatever the reason, our (animal) consciousness (anyway) obliges that our (obligatory) experience in part be constituted out of putative intuitional contact with the Physical World. It seems that the function of consciousness must be to apprise us of the World that contains us. That, at least.

6.2

VERIFICATION AND

BELIEF-FORMATION

Further light is shed on the constitutive requirements for consciousness by returning to the verification of consciousness in an ideally simple animal. This coincides with the verification of the synthesised presence of the few elemental psychological phenomena essential to animality. Now these primordial phenomena provide a clue t o the constitution of consciousness. Whatever the necessary conditions for consciousness, they should obtain in this simplest animal as it generates such physical phenomena as evidence consciousness. Then my surmise is, that this simplest case is one in which the mind is stripped down to necessities, so that each inhering phenomenal kind will be at once operative and essential to the whole. Accordingly, my guess is that each such elemental kind must be a necessity for consciousness as such. The self-conscious variety of consciousness, while vastly more complex and structurally novel, will not I suspect break free of the rules binding in this simplest case: it will merely obey them its own peculiarly elevated way. So, at any rate, I surmise. Now the requirements for consciousness are wholly internal and constitutive. It is therefore inessential that the exemplar simple consciousness be verifiable, and inessential that perceptual and motor systems be in good order. The working principle I propose is therefore t o inspect the purely internal phenomena that are operative as this ideally simple

mind reveals its presence t o outside view. This should give a lead t o the constitutive requirements for consciousness. Then it is certain that intuitional attentive experience occurs. And certain that it takes outer-directed interpretational form -though just how this miracle happens is too dark a topic t o even peer into here. But equally important is what this intuition accomplishes in the mental system: namely, that it generates belief concerning the envimns; and in the right way. I believe we are here in the presence of a universal property of the state consciousness. Whatever the value of the above ideally simple case as test, I think we can on this count generalise from that case t o all. It is not that we need entertain belief about the present environment, nor that any such belief must stem from present intuition, if consciousness is to exist. Rather, a cognitive sensitivity to perceptual experience must inhere; and of the right kind. This sensitivity, and the mode of belief-formation concerning present environmental realities, are intrinsic to consciousness; which requires therefore that beliefs should be well-formed, and in the manner appropriate to the species; indeed, should normally lead to reality. Thus, in the conscious the mode of belief-formation out of veridical perception should be such as normally to make knowledge of that belief. For example, desire will in general switch off as a significant causal force, even though in sleep it tends to generate believed-in imaginings concerning the present world. By contrast, what one knows about the look of things generally mediates the formation of environmental belief out of visual experience; and does so in the right way. A word about "the right way". This takes different form in the super-simple, the medium-complex, and man. The super-simple arrive in the world heavily prepared, learn little from experience, and innate factors significantly mediate the formation of belief out of perceptual experience; yet because they evolved in matching environments, such well-formed beliefs tend to be knowings of their environment-in supersimple impoverished terms, eg. "moving" "near" "here". The medium-complex are advertisements for Humean Theory: regularities in experience tend, without comprehension, to trigger believings out of perceivings; yet because those

beings are a reliable guide t o the reality, seeing that Nature selected beings whose belief-formation mimicked Nature's regular ways, these well-formed beliefs tend likewise t o be knowledge. Reason enters the picture late; but it too is no more than a superior "right way". Reason is after all the very best instrument for discovering Reality and Truth (missing until now); but is nonetheless in the same line of business as the innate tendencies of the insect or the slavish dependence upon experience of the average animal: namely, it is a mode of access t o Reality. In place of innate predispositions, and an uncomprehended history of regular experience, we discover in Man a system of beliefs which is his internal Representation of Reality. Consciousness requires that this swing into play, and in the right or rational way, in the genesis of present environmental belief out of present perceptual experience. This is a way of saying that one is "in touch with Reality" at the time. Yet there is no guarantee that Reality will match the portrait; indeed, just as there are insane portraits of people so certain belief-systems insanely misrepresent The World. Nevertheless, they aim a t The World and this suffices for an actual, even if disturbed state of consciousness. Their very aim can be mad, for their method of truth-determination stands no hope of success; but if their aim is nonetheless truth, truth then it must be. The rational animal, however mad, will when awake tend t o form his beliefs through rational appeal t o his World-Picture; even though madness in the mad will doubtless stand revealed as the full content of his beliefs is spelled out. Thus, the madman believes he is being offered tea because he seems to see tea being offered, but believes he is being offered poisoned tea because in his belief-system there exists a form cognitive commitment t o the omnipresence of poison-feeders. In a word, there is method in his madness; and sufficient of it to ensure consciousness. Unless his thought processes are fragmented to an extent that matches "word salad" -which is more or less enough t o bring consciousness t o its knees- reason and consciousness are in the required fashion simultaneously ensconced. The gist of this is, that in the conscious the mode of beliefformation presently operative is such that perceptual experi-

ence generates belief in a way that tends in the proper setting t o make knowings of those believings. Here we see a prime function of the state consciousness. It puts us in a position t o know about the present state of The World. It is not itself a perception of The World, but is an empowerment so t o perceive. Consciousness is an empty canvas, ready to receive the imprint of Reality. Better, a perfect window onto The World: precisely because it is itself devoid of content and inexperiencable, yet expressly dedicated to revelation. Or like Tolstoy's perfect prose, which fits its subject-matter to the point of invisibility. Consciousness seems t o be all potential or fertility. Hence the importance of discussing its negative properties first.

7 Activity 7.1 THEBODILY

WILL

But life is more than congition, we have scarcely lived if we have not acted, and consciousness is a high point of life development. This should put one on guard against assuming it is exhausted by its cognitive function, and alert us to a certain dynamism in the condition. Once again it is instructive t o recall the mental state of the ideally simple animal as it revealed its conscious state t o outside view, and significant that it was active. I follow this lead, and wish to suggest that a certain use of the will is constitutive of consciousness. What that use is, will emerge shortly. Typically one who is conscious engages in two ontologically heterogeneous varieties of action: bodily and mental. A word here about the former. While absolute bodily stillness can be intentionally willed, it occasionally happens in the conscious thanks to sheer absence of act-desire and will. Therefore the bodily will can in the conscious take the occasional complete rest. Now this shows bodily willing is not constitutive of consciousness. But it suggests that availability of the bodily will might be. However, this view involves difficulties. For bodily willing rests on a substratum of putative inmediate body-awareness; and it could happen to the conscious that

their body not seem present; so it is in principle possible t o be conscious and the bodily will absolutely unavailable. One could be conscious, and unable t o even try t o move a body -which did not seem t o be there! While not a paralysis, this condition is a loss, not just of motility, but of the very will itself! Therefore availability of the bodily will cannot be constitutive of consciousness either. But something a little less is surely constitutive. For whereas in unconsciousness the bodily will is essentially unavailable, in consciousness it is conditionally and typically available. Indeed, this is an essential property of animal consciousness. And yet the property is not peculiar t o consciousness. Sleep is a state in which bodily awareness persists, and it resembles consciousness in the availability of the bodily will. But we are looking for a property peculiar t o the state consciousness and pertaining t o the bodily will. Then where sleep and consciousness significantly differ is in the origin and type of the motivating bodily act-desires. Typically in sleep either simple bodily act-inclinations or sensation-caused act-inclinations inmediately generate basic bodily willings; and these primitive transactions make no demand upon belief or concept system. Here, I think, we have a major unlikeness t o the state consciousness, in which perceptually-informed conceptualised-beliefs concerning one's present environment continually elicit active interaction with it. And yet sonnambulism shows that perceptually-derived beliefs can in the midst of sleep do the same. However, such beliefs are peculiar; and they are never rational; and the whole phenomenon is exceptional; and etc. In the light of these few observations it seems that in the conscious the following bodily-act mental phenomena and/or linkages are necessary and/or possible. A conditional availability of the bodily will is necessary. And the following are possible and indeed generally operative: bodily act-desire, bodily willing, and the rational determination of bodily act-desire a t the hands of that novel sector of the belief-system that derives from present perception. The onset of consciousness is in part the onset of such internal capacities and causal linkages. Animal consciousness is a state such that the seeming presence of the needed and actively

manipulable tends t o evoke the desire to perform such manipulations, which in turn tends t o generate bodily willing. When the conscious confront a seemingly inviting environment, the bodily act-system tends to come t o life; whereas by contrast comparable congnitive phenomena in a dreamer will simply call forth anything or nothing. Such responsiveness in such regions of the mind t o such beliefs is internal to animal consciousness. Animal consciousness is a condition of practical involvement in physical nature. I can think of two reasons why this might be so. First, consciousness is perceptive of reality, and active physical involvement is a necessary feature of most developed perceptual processes. Second, the vital character of animal consciousness suggest that the conscious be in a position to interactively impose their mental world upon the environment, and physical action is the only reliable transfer-system from mind to environs. A dialectical overcoming of the opposition between knowledge and desire may be effected in the internal union of consciousness with the bodily will.

7.2

THEMENTAL

WILL

(1) We have here spelled out certain mental capacities and causal linkages necessary to animal consciousness, and experienced active mental phenomena at least typical of the state. Then while the former are actualities, the latter are just possibilities. As already noted, animal consciousness is consistent with total quiescence of the bodily will; indeed, no experience pertaining to the bodily will is essential t o consciousness. But there is one psychological item which is at once processive, experienced, of the type of willing, and essential t o cosnciousness as such. I refer to the other ontological variety of willing, viz. mental willing. It is not that consciousness is an activity. Clearly it is not -if only because this continuous psychological state is neither process nor experience. Listening is both, and we engage in listening, but no one engages in being conscious. Rather, the mind of one who is conscious is of necessity a mind actively governing the direction of movement of its own thinking and attentive processes. We get and inkling of this necessity in

the following. I t is a n astonishing fact that we humans when conscious and open-eyed scarcely know, not just how not t o see, but how not t o look! In general the direction taken by our thoughts and attention is in the conscious actively selfdetermined. It has t o be. We have no choice in the matter. T h e inactiveness of a state which internally involves activeness, generates the paradox that the conscious find themselves in the grip of a necessity t o freely choose their own occupations of thought and attention. You might even say that we awake in this World in midstream, swimming for our own dear lives! Consciousness, which is not a perception, but which is perceptive, in that it so primes the mind and links us t o our Cognitive Representation of Reality that we are in a position t o here and now augment that Representation, simultaneously involves activeness. Thus, the present state of a sector of The World can be revealed only t o a being which takes active charge of its own thoughts and attendings. I do not mean actively determines their content, which would be a t once omnipotent, barren, self-refuting, and logically impossible; but the direction of their movement, which is t o say the content of the governing active mental enterprise. And so it seems clear that a measure of self-determination is a necessary condition of a proper cognitive contact with a sector of Reality. What is less obvious is why it is so. Why is it that the seventeenth-century image of consciousness as quiescent internal reflector is so far from the truth? This explanatory problem is, t o my mind, the main issue a t this point. Now in seeking such an explanation, I am not supposing that the active character of consciousness derives from some other more fundamental trait. Rather, the problem is t o discover how this property necessitates or is necessitated by the other equally essential properties. As knowledge of our own minds, capacity for thought, and rationality, form a tight circle of essentially self-conscious characteristics, so my assumption is that the active self-regulatory character of the conscious self-conscious mind forms a circle with the rationality of that state, and certain other properties. T h e problem is, t o trace out the rationale. Why should a mind that is in a position t o augment its present Representation of

Reality be one that actively takes charge of its own thinking and attentive function? (2) We find an important lead in the temporal properties of experience. Consciousness necessitates a certain simultaneous orientation towards past, present, and future. Significantly this is absent in the experience of a dreamer, as we shall see. Why? My suspicion is, that the inactiveness of the mind of the dreamer is a determinant. In any case I propose t o discuss the temporal properties of dream experience, partly because it reveals how such temporal structures are essentially connected with the character of the prevailing inner life, but above all because it puts us in a position t o demonstrate how the necessarily active nature of conscious experience guarantees the relation t o time essential t o consciousness. This constitutes a rationale of the active character of consciousness. What are the temporal properties of dream experience? What is the nature of the dreamer's encounter with Time? It is not independent of the nature of dream experience, which is in turn not independent of its origins. And in fact the question is best approached through a consideration of origins, for much is determined by this salient property. Then what is noteworthy is, how little say the dreamer has in the occurence of his own dream. He is the inactive and wholly unconsulted recipient of dream experience. He is inactive because dreaming is not an activity, and he is unconsulted because he neither knows why he dreams a t all, nor why he dreams what he does dream. Accordingly, while the dream present is undoubtedly a reality for the dreamer, it is a reality that merely happens t o him: it simply comes t o him out of the blue. This fact has significant implications so far as the other two temporal dimensions are concerned. It has repercussions concerning the dream future. Thus, not only does the dreamer not know what the dream future contains, he does not even adopt cognitive attitudes towards it. He neither expects nor hopes it contains one thing rather than another. A waking phantasiser expects his phantasy t o contain the next projected phantasised element, which is distinct from his phantasising expectation on his own part; so that expectation can occur without or within a phantasy.

This is not true of dreams, since nothing answers t o expectation from without. We entertain no expectations about succeeding dream stages, precisely because we are unable t o think about them. While a dreamer can entertain expectation within a dream, the object of his expectation is nonetheless drawn from Reality rather than from the dream. Why, if I dream I a m t o be shot a t dawn, should the object of my expectation be a dream shooting? And surely it is not. My relief upon waking is because the real World harbours no such prognosticated horror. What makes the phantasiser's expectations of phantasising true is subsequent phantasy; whereas nothing makes his phantasied expectations true, precisely because they are not expectations. The situation is exactly reversed in the dream.If I wake t o discover a coincidental inminent shooting hanging over my head, then my dream expectation was prophetic and true; but if I subsequently merely dream of a shooting, it was not. Thus, so far as the dreamer is concerned, the future of the dream does not even exist, being a t once out of sight and out of mind. It is because the dreamer confuses the dream world with the real world, that the dream world eludes detection and cognitive attitudes towards it cannot get off the ground. In dreaming one aims one's intentional arrows, which either miss their mark or discover it in The World. Strangely enough, they never find it in the dream. The dream never manages t o refer t o itself. In sum, a dreamer adopts no cognitive attitudes towards the dream future, even though he may adopt attitudes t o the future within a dream. The general movement of inner life in dreaming is such that its future has no reality for the dreamer: it lies beyond the horizon of his awareness. In this sense the mind of a dreaming person does not lay down this temporal dimension as a given structural principle, ie. part of an ordering temporal framework which might recieve and structure the phenomenal objects of awareness. (3) The dream past presents a different picture again. Whether one is awake or dreaming one retains the past of a dream: qua past of a dream if awake, qua past of experience if dreaming. Yet these recollections form no part of the dream; so that what makes them true is one's experience. I

recollect next morning that "I seemed to see a swan", and what makes this true is, not that in reality I saw a swan, but that in reality I had such an experience. The successful reference to the inner imaginative life is made possible by the fact that the recollection is no part of that imaginative life. So much for a relation to the dream past fmm without. What of the past within the dream? How does the dreamed-of past relate within the dream t o the dreamed present? It has not completely vanished from view, seeing that the present can continue what was. The dream, after all, is conceptualisable. Nevertheless, each instant disengages in ways from its predecessor instant. You could say that the dream present lacks modes of solidarity with, or responsibility to its past. The disengagement is at once cognitive and constitutive. Whereas when awake I believe I am half-way through an enterprise like (say) swimming The Hellespont because I believe the past contains my swimming the first half, when draming I simply believe I am thus half-way -and certainly not because I believe the past contains the first half. In dreams I believe what I believe for no reason, good or bad; and not even for the piffling reason of its seeming so; which at best acts as mere unreasoning cause. So much for cognitive disengagement. The other variety of disengagement is even more radical. It suggests an absence of persisting identities. It shows in the fact that I can be dreaming of anything in one instant and anything in the next. In a sense therefore the dream is created a new in each instant: not to the point where narrative disintegrates into unsynthesisable fragments; but in so far as the character of present experience necessitates neither a past nor a cognitive attitude to a past. It is an important feature of dreams that they arise out of nothing, appear in experiential mid-air so t o speak: a fact which must surely reveal something about each subsequent instant. In a sense each instant of the dream sprouts like an orchid out of thin air. This is because it is continuity of content rather than persistence of contents, that unifies the dream. These facts demonstrate that in dreams neither the dreamed past, nor our cognitive attitude t o the dreamed past, play any constitutive role in determining present experience. A dream present is consistent with absolutely any

dream past and any cognitive attitude towards that past. Despite the constraint imposed by the narrative, the past is all but lost as we dream. (4) Thus, the dream present is a sort of Time Island. First in failing t o have internal or constitutive connections with the past; second in having neither actively projected nor merely expected future-for dreams as they unfold neither surprise nor conform t o expectation. Such a relation t o Time is inconsistent with consciousness. This is because consciousness requires that we be in a position t o perceive events across time; which is t o say, not merely events which themselves cross time, but the very profile across time of the event itself. It is in this manner that we perceive temporally diversified phenomena like bodily gestures, a meaningful utterance, a unique melody; which may in this regard be taken as prototype objects for consciousness. Then such perception is possible only if we retain cognitive links with our internal past, and an open but real cognitive connection with an anticipated internal future. How, midway in hearing a sentence, could I know what I was hearing if I did not entertain views as t o what I had already heard and as t o what I might next hear? Then it is certain that intentional internal action is an experience which internally fuses the necessary three temporal axes. It manages t o unite a projection from a present of a determinate future, and a partial constitution a t the hands of a determinate past of a determinate present. This is particularly evident in the case of orientation towards the future. Thus, listening is not just t o what I have heard -in that the object of listening is something I have already heard, but t o what I will hear- in that the object of listening is something I will hear. I listen from.. . to.. . This listening-for, this craning the neck t o gain a glimpse of the future, typifies human or self-conscious consciousness. As listening tends t o fall away from itself into mere inactive hearing, it tends towards a condition of degeneration. The purely inactive perceptual recipient who merely hears, tends towards the condition in which he neither individuates the particulars of time nor structures them across time. W h a t would be the epistmological fruit of one who related thus

t o a protracted utterance or melody? Then what is true of listening to utterance or melody is in this regard true of all consciousness. Whatever entity that we perceive, it is as such not stationary in time. No matter how frozen and stationary in space, it is from the point of view of time like the prow of a boat imperceptibly cutting through infinitely glassy water. It is essential to consciousness that this quasi-motion be captured: without it we will not even manage t o perceive that which inmutably proceeds through time, viz. the unchanging material object itself. In short, the World of which we are conscious is not the Spatial World, it is the Spatio-Temporal World. Consciousness necessitates that the mind open out onto the latter; indeed, that awareness of the former is t o be accomplished only via awareness of the latter. Then my suggestion is that we will not achieve the above if we do not relate cognitively and experientially t o the past and future of things; and we will not relate thus to their past and future if we do not relate thus to our own internal past and future; and that this last is something that is manifestly accomplished in intentional internal action; indeed, in all probability uniquely so. It alone seems t o provide a unified temporal structure in which each present point essentially and explicitly grows out of its past and essentially points t o and engenders its future. It seems therefore that the inner world of the conscious must be intentionally active: an activity which explicitly is from (in the past) to (in the future) in form. This provides us with a temporal framework adequate t o awareness of the contents of The Physical World. Then since it is essential to consciousness that it put us in a position to enlarge our present Representation of Reality, it seems that for this reason alone the mind of the conscious must be intentionally active.

8 Conclusion One might at first think consciousness was as essential to its owner as life itself. The truth falls only a little short of this. It

is the state of consciousness, a type of which consciousness is pre-eminent parent variety, that is thus necessary -as is the potential for consciousness. Vitality and mentality are of the essence, consciousness something near. There exist in Nature orders of development that in pyramid fashion are necessary structures of their owner's being. In a general sense consciousness is such; indeed, is a necessary culmination point in development. For consciousness is the condition of a double revelation: of the essential nature of the subject through acts in the World, and of the World through perception t o that acting subject. At one stroke consciousness helps t o reveal what is there in the conscious, and what is there to conscious. T h e effecting of such active cognitive interaction is its peculiar function. These considerations help to clarify why it is that the remaining states of consciousness are privative in relation t o consciousness itself; that is, why there are no rivals in this line of business.The answer is a variant on the slogan: "Reality will not be mocked". It is because no alternative Reality is rendered accessible through such states, if only because the states cannot marshal the wherewithal t o inwardly represent a second Reality. For example, the necessary temporal co-ordinates are not available. The required elements simply fade away or fall apart, and what remains es merely a n exposed remnant of the machinery for accomplishing a single unique end, viz. interaction with The World. As there is only one Reality, so there is only one fully autonomous state amongst states of consciousness. Therefore the alternative states cannot have their own distinctive necessary function. Thus, it cannot be the a priori-given function of sleep t o reveal the (so-called) "World of the dream", even if it is a posteriori so. The only state with a priori-given function is consciousness, the potential for which is as essential t o its owner as life itself. Man's essence is t o be in active cognitive interaction with The World.

So much for the significance of consciousness. And yet when we come t o look a t what consciousness itself is, we encounter

a strange dearth of properties. Indeed, it seems almost t o be nothing. Paradoxically this first and preeminent of all mental phenomena proves t o be a glaring exception t o the rule according to which the mental is to be defined in terms of intentionality. For consciousness is wholly devoid of intentional content. More, it is completely without phenomenological character. Indeed, it is never even experienced. And it finds no place within the meaning circle of mental phenomena. And yet the poverty of nature is an illusion -produced by looking in the wrong direction. Far from being an outcast to the meaning circle of the mental, consciousness finds no place within the circle of one's conscious experiences precisely because it supports that circle. And if it seems like a psychological nothing, it is not that it is in reality some kind of essentially inscrutable psychological atom that is inexplicably endowed with a few distinguishing traits. If it looks that way, it is because we approach it armed with differentia draw from too narrow a mental taxonomy. We take it to be yet another particular mental phenomenon, alongside fundamentals like thought and will and feeling. We fail to note its global character. By "global" I mean "systemic". For consciousness is a system and supports a system. It is precisely this feature which renders the st ate ineligible for the differentia,phenomenology and intentional content. The intentionally directed for the most part take particular realities as putative object. How could consciousness restrict itself in this fashion? Either it takes The World as its object, or it takes nothing; and since The World is not a particular perceptible, it takes nothing. Then consciousness is in two respects significantly unlike the other fundamental occupants of the mind. First in making possible an entire mental scene and as a result falling outside that scene; second in thereby lacking all mental explanation. For consciousness is at the end of a particular line of mental dependence: experience depending on experience, which in turn depends thus on others, and so on; and the whole stream of experience depends finally upon consciousness. Here mental explanation comes to an end, and openly gives way to the cerebral. While the properties of consciousness are susceptible of mental explanation in terms of its own mental con-

stituents, the existence of consciousness is not; and the same must be true of the constituents themselves. Consciousness and constituents arise simultaneously together poised on the one purely physical base. Thus, a n unremarked and intra-psychic relation of dependence exists between the stream of experience and its distinct psychological contemporary, consciousness. And yet t o represent consciousness as no more than such a sustaining mental bed, is t o lapse into obscurantism. It is true that consciousness is not a naturally hidden nature like the familiar natural-kinds of the physical sciences. But it is obscurantist t o take refuge in sheer particularity, t o represent it as a n idiosyncratic atomic mystery which is inexplicably blessed with a few properties, as if idiosyncracy was the only alternative t o pure emptiness of being. In fact consciousness is constitutively analysable a priori; and its properties are as a result explicable-non-reductively. T h e state consciousness therefore has parts. But they are parts "with a difference"; indeed, they are the most unpartlike of all conceivable parts. The reason is, they are neither more nor less original or autonomous than each other or than consciousness itself. They and each other and that which together they constitute, arise of necessity simultaneously together in the one ontological miracle. Their diversity is beyond dispute, but so too I suggest is the interdependence that obtains in all directions. The parts depend for their identity on the whole precisely t o the extent that it constitutively depends on them. It is true that experience can occur without consciousness, whereas the reverse is impossible; but it is only because consciousness is a reality that experience exists. The unique autonomy of the state consciousness guarantees this conclusion. In a word, the interdependence of consciousness and its constituents is mutual and total.

T h e constituents of consciousness help t o determine its function. They therefore play their part in making possible whatever it is that consciousness specifically equips its possessor t o accomplish. To wit: to transact in a certain way with Re-

ality; and most especially concretelly with contemporaneous physical Reality. This is consistent with the fact that the unconditional occurrence of experience is the first necessity for consciousness. And alongside that, at least in animate consciousness, the continuing availability and indeed actual working of the intuitional attention -even if it deliver mere null readings like "silence". How transact in the concrete with the environment if these conditions are not met? Because of its complexity I shall say nothing about the genesis of the interpretation-laden perceptual impression made posible by the attention -except to note a characteristic and very important accord between their content and one's beliefs. But I must say something about the mode of formation of belief concerning present empirical Reality that is distinctive to the conscious. Thus, the conscious show a natural tendency to believe what they seemingly perceive. They share this property with dreamers, but differ in that in the conscious perceptual-seemings cause rather than merely accompany belief. The mode of belief-formation, and doubtless also of impression-formation, is such that when the subject is in the proper environment, let us say that of evolutionary ancestry, the beliefs tend towards knowledge. The sub-system: experience-intuition-perceptual impression-empirical belief, has the function of leading to empirical knowledge of present environs. But the function is more specific. It is not enough as a general rule that the conscious form a belief like "there is a door at the end of this passage". This could be the discovery of a sonnambulist. The element of indexicality ought to be replaceable, and at the same time capable of supplement. Thus, "this passage" should be replaceable by (say) "the passage in the middle of The Hotel Imperial in Marienbad in mid-June 1960"; while "this passage" should be supplementable by "in which I, Mr N., now stand" The typical end-effect of the working of the cognitive sub-system within consciousness, is knowledge that locates the known in its widest setting, and in relation to the subject. This requires that something in animal belief-formation play a role primitively analogous to that of a human belief-system. Roughly, a knowledge of region and of one's place in it. A

cognitive perspectival effect is necessary. The conscious subject is a n oriented being. It is true that consciousness can survive the loss of orientation of this kind. Even then the tendency persists in the form of the thought "wherever may be" -and discomfort. The knowledge, and indeed the scarcely noticed shadowlike accompanying propositional feeling, of being sited where one is in space and time, is the norm even if not the necessity. Were one transported effortlessly t o the moon in ten seconds flat, or discontinously projected a century hence through sudden refrigeration and subsequent thaw, one would dramatically discover what that feeling was -by its absence! T h e rational conscious generally are endowed with cognitive and affective orientation. T h e sub-system: experience-intuition-Region/World mapperceptual impression-belief, is functioning successfully when it is throwing up such oriented knowledge. By contrast, the particular states constituting the alternative states of consciousness do not form sub-systems which have specific functions within those states. Thus, the states constitutive of sleep can causally interlock and lead t o quiescence, dream experience, sensation-response, even sonnambulism; but a distinctive function is not being discharged when a sonnambulist acquires his tunnel-vision beliefs or performs his bizarre tunnel-vision tasks. The causally engaged states do not constitute a sub-system whit the express functional purpose of effecting sonnambulist seeings, believings, and doings. All we have here is a truncated version of a genuine sub-system that works in the state consciousness towards a genuine end.

8.4

THEBODILY

WILL

T h e cognitive sub-system tends t o effect knowledge of a n environment under headings which locate it in Regional/World space-time and relate it indexically t o the subject. Consciousness, though wholly lacking in phenomenology and intentional content, nonetheless harbours within itself machinery with this express fuction. Knowledge is an essential aim of this inexperiencable contentless state. Hence the attraction of such comparisons as empty canvas, invisible window, light in the visual field. As noted earlier, this was the 1 7 ~ ~

century image of consciousness. One thinks of all those paintings by Descarte's contemporaries of people standing by windows flooded by light. They inhabited a mental climate of such a kind, doubtless a reflection of the early triumphs of the physical sciences. Light was of obsessive interest to them precisely because it was a mediator to knowledge, just as it proved to be of great importance to a later generation of painters because it was a mediator and thus closer to subjectivity. For the significance of the mediator is double. It conducts the mind outwards to Nature, yet crops up between Nature and the mind. Which significance is to the fore, depends upon one's interest. This cognitive sub-system does not suffice to constitute cosnciousness. If it did, knowledge would reign supreme in our lives. When Heidegger wrote that "dasein is fascinated by The World", he was thinking of something more than cognition. And ought there not in any case to be a natural function for knowledge? Knowledge is not a feasible final end for living matter. and must be presumed to have some natural purpose or another. Thus, why such interest in knowing how one is physically placed here and now? This unshareable fragment of data is of absolutely no consequence in itself. It can scarcely be doubted that the evolutionary function of knowledge must have been to assist in the satisfaction of vital need by action. Indeed, that the function of knowledge is thus active is evident on other grounds. When Schopenhauer claimed that knowledge was originally a servant of the will, when Freud asserted that the ego differentiated out of the id, they were if this mind. But in any case to suppose that consciousness has discharged its function when it strands us with situational knowledge of a region, is to forget a simple general truth which emerged earlier. Namely: that when consciousness is showing what it can accomplish in its surrounds, a double revelation is occurring. Of The World to the subject, and of the subject's distinctive powers to the outside. So far we have spoken as if justice needed to be done merely to the first phenomenon. The other phenomenon is active, and bodily active at that. Animate consciousness encompasses a special availibility of the bodily act-system. Indeed, instead of simply asserting

that the function of conscious perceptual knowledge is the engendering of bodily action, it is I think more illuminating t o delinete the sector of consciousness expressly concerned with bodily action. In particular, distinctive causal sensitivity of the bodily-act system t o present perceptual cognition. If the functional claim is correct, several such causal bridgeformations should inhere in consciousness. Then attempting t o determine their nature is procedurally equivalent t o asking the following specific question. What particular causal sensitivities of the bodily-act system t o perceptual cognition come into being as a dreaming subject wakes? What such sensitivities are absent in the dreamer and present in the waking? T h e novel states of affairs involving the bodily-act system that the onset of consciousness ushers into being are several, and they occur a t very fundamental levels. Thus, it is not just that the conscious tend t o do what they desire t o do. (Which is true and important, but not the most fundamental fact). It is not even that they desire t o do what they desire t o be so. (Which is also true and important, yet act-desire neither reduces-to -nor as such depends-onpropositional-desire). The whole edifice of the bodily will rests upon something even more elemental than these propensities. It depends upon the unmotivated active expression of a set of basic inclinations. For the propensity for mere inclinatory act-desire, when faced with the situational disclosures of consciousness, is as essential t o animal nature as the epistemological apparatus which fathers it. It is the very starting point of willing. Thus, it typifies the conscious that when seemingly confronted by the actively accesible (that, typically, and in fact, is necessary in some way t o their own or t o Life's systems), they tend to experience inclinatory bodily act-desire upon which they act. Often they do not in the case of a particular such item, but often enough they do, and in general thereby express one of a stable repetoire of natural inclinations; and these first inclinatory desires form a base upon which arises a generally desiring attitude towards the environment that is universally pervasive in the conscious. Most of us sometimes feel like drinking water or running, few of us feel like eating parrot-feed or coal, and

all of us want t o do something or other of a physical nature for most of our waking lives. This gives a picture of how the bodily-act system responds in the conscious t o perceptual cognition. Animal consciousness is as such actively, and in the first place through inclinatory bodily act-desire, anchored in its surroundings. While the link need not be manifest in each instant, it must nonetheless be a continuing reality.

What of the mental will? Its functioning is a categorically necessary condition of consciousness, a t the very least in the self-conscious. It is not that order requires i t , as dreaming demonstrates; nor, for the same reason, does self-knowledge, but rationality does; and the internal time-structure that is necessary for the satisfaction of consciousness' cognitive function seems possible only if the mental will is operative. Experience, which is necessary t o consciousness, must in part take intuitional attentive form, which is also necessary, and overall active form likewise, which is equally necessary. Consciousness is such that these three experiential conditions have t o be categorically satisfied so long as it exists. While none of these phenomena are part of the phenomenon consciousness, all are necessitated by it. It can tolerate neither pure blanks, sheer drift, total inwardness. How do the two varieties of willing relate ? How does the internal active process relate t o the bodily active process that we have taken it t o be the ultimate function of consciousness t o produce? Is it simply a second parallel functional goal? Or is i t , on account of its ontological "superiority", perhaps the overarching goal? It seems t o me that it is not. Animal consciousness provides a lead on this matter. Whether or not it too necessitates mental willing, it is I think significant that perceptual activity is the only mental activity animals perform, and that it is subordinated activity. Thus, watching, listening, smelling; which are all internal, and all modes of active attention. These activities do not as a general rule occur independently of the range of phenomena occurring when

consciousness is manifesting its presence in informed intentional action. Rather, they tend t o feed it. Think how a n animal that is pursuing its quarry will actively train its perceptual attention upon it. Then I wish t o suggest that this instantiates a general tendency. In a n extremely wide sense, ranging over the above simple practical cases and the most inward and intellectual self-conscious mental activities, such subordination is I suggest the general rule and presumably the natural function of the mental will. I will try t o explain how this might be. It is not just that we generally write or talk or paint of perform whatever actively transpires within. Certain considerations make the connection look closer. Thus, internal activities are for the most part subordinated t o what might be described as "the life", taking the term stipulatively t o stand for that totality of largely public phenomena in terms of which we compute the overall qualities of a man. Think how one might ruminate for days in making a vital decision that issues in a simple but momentous act of signing one's name. Then it is the outcome in the public world that ultimately matters t o one's life. More: it is the active outcome. For a life is something which is almost in its entirety assessed in terms of physical action in situation. Man may not actually be the sum total of his intentional physical deeds. Not much slips through the net however. But the mental will through thinking plots the course of a life. It therefore determines, without actually constituting, the final functional end of mind and consciousness; which is t o say, the general character of a whole constituted largely of physical deeds. It is in this way that the mental will comes t o be subordinated t o the bodily will. And we see how the mental will manages t o find a role consonant with its dignity. Thanks t o the almost limitless weight of meanings that bodily-movements and arte-facts can bear, the mental will discovers an avenue of expression in the physical realm that amounts t o nothing less than the appearance in Physical Nature of an entirely new dimension of meaning. But the intentional bodily will that is (so t o say) "stand-in" or proxy in Physical Nature for these ontologically "superior" phenomena in the inner life of the conscious, remains the end of the functional line of consciousness. This is because

its history largely constitutes the life, and it is the life that is the end of that particular line. Let me a t this point emphasise that I do not intend the above conclusion as a mindless paean t o the glories of sheer physical doing. Far from it. The end of the functional line for consciousness is not frenetic bodily action spurred somehow into being by the onset of cognition. It is informed intentional action dedicated t o the transformation of that which is the subject-matter of the causative cognitions. Likewise it is not the mere shifting of matter prompted somehow by internal active process. It is far-ranging informed bodily action which seeks t o realise ends which were brought to light only through internal enterprise. Therefore even though bodily action is the functional end-point of consciousness, it does not transcend or put behind it that t o which it owes its existence. Those progenitive sources are integrated in the act. This natural unity is an inmediate reflection of the unity to be found holding between the constituent sub-systems of the state consciousness. Finally, a brief apology on two counts. First, the discussion is noteworthy for the absence of any account of selfknowledge, often thought of as the most distinctive feature and indeed as the final arbiter of self-consciousness. I acknowledge the gravity of this omission, and plead in extenuation what is the substance of my second apology. Namely: that I had hoped to provide a theory of consciousness that would freely range over the self-conscious and unself-conscious varieties, and reveal each as a special realisation of the one property. I am afraid I have not managed to do so, at times conducting myself as if self-consciousness was the theme, at other times as if it was consciousness itself. The latter long-term project to a degree inhibited the extent t o which I felt I could address myself to the topic of self-consciousness and its most important property.

PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES,1 Consciousness, 1991

Between Internalism and Externalism* Ernest Sosa

1 Internalism and Externalism In defining these terms, two preliminary definitions will be of use (where K 1 and K 2 are sets or kinds of properties):

D l K 2 determines K 1 (or, conversely K l is determined by iff Necessarily: (x) or supervenes on or consists in ( F ) [ ( F is a member of ITl & x has F) only if (There is *A version of this paper was presented in the SOFIA conference a t the University of Buenos Aires. T h e commentators on that occasion were Donald Davidson, Ronald DeSousa, and Alejandro Tomasini. Some of this material was also used for a talk a t the Skepticism Conference held a t the University of Rochester in 1989. T h e commentator on that occasion was Earl Conee. Later versions were presented a t Duke University and as the 1991 invited talk for the meetings of the Georgia Philosophical Society. Others with whom I have discussed these matters include David Armstrong, James Dreier, John Gibbons, John Heil, Jaegwon Kim, David Martens, David Sosa, James Van Cleve, and Robert Welshon. My warm thanks to all the people mentioned.

a G such that G is a member of K 2 & x has F wholly in virtue of having G)] Thus a determinable -e.g. being chromatically coloredis determined by its determinates -e.g., chromatic color properties such as being red and being blue. D 2 Kl involves K2 iff Necessarily: ( F ) [ ( F is a member of K l ) only if (There is a G such that G is a member of K2 & F is constituted or defined at least in part by G)] Thus three-dimensional shapes involve two-dimensional shapes, being a brother involves being male, being a bachelor involves being single, etc. Consider, for a further example, the set or kind A P , whose members are particular absolute powers, and the set or kind P Q of primary qualities. Where: an absolute power is one not at all dependent on external circumstances. In that case, A P is determined b y P Q whereas A P involves not only P Q , but also relational properties concerning the circumstances. Here I am assuming that we can view an absolute power as a strong conditional, as when a round marble has at t the power of incline rolling: i.e., is at t such that if (while remaining in its actual internal state at t ) it were released atop an incline with downward gravity, etc., then it would roll down that incline. (And note that the determination here is nomological and perhaps not metaphysical.) This power of that marble (m) of being thus an incline roller is determined by the internal primary quality of m of being rigidly spherical. But m's being an incline roller is not constituted or defined exclusively by internal properties of m. For it is a conditional property, roughly as follows:' If it were the case that (there is an i such that i is an incline & at t , x is at the top of i) then it would be the case that [(there is an E such that x rolls down i from t to t

+ €)I

'I use here a very broad conception of properties. Anyone with a narrower conception may wish to replace my vocabulary of "properties" with more suitable terminology: that of "conditions", perhaps.

8. BETWEEN INTERNALISMAND EXTERNALISM 181 The property expressed by that whole open sentence is the power of being an incline roller. That property is constituted by -and hence involves- such relational properties as that of being at the top of an incline, and that of rolling down something. One last terminological note: In what follows 'intrinsic' and 'internal' will be interchangeable, as will the pairs of cognates; and the same goes for 'extrinsic' and 'external'. As for 'determination' it will abbreviate 'concurrent, metaphysical determination' and not 'antecedent, causal determination'. And, finally, let's assume that all properties are either intrinsic (internal) or extrinsic (external), by understanding the intrinsic properties of x as properties of x that, if relational at all, involve relations only to the parts of x. "Radical Internalism" with respect t o the absolute powers of bodies is the view that such powers of a body b are (a) determined by the intrinsic primary qualities of b, and (b) involve no extrinsic properties of b, but involve only b's intrinsic properties. "Radical Externalism" with respect to such powers of b views them as (a) determined not wholly by the intrinsic primary qualities of b but at least in part by extrinsic and relational properties of b, and (b) involving some extrinsic properties of b. Both radical views are mistaken. Absolute powers of bodies are neither all of them radically internal nor all radically external. The right view of such powers lies between internalism and externalism. Externalism with respect t o a kind of property K tends to argue from the premise that, for any x, K properties of x involve extrinsic properties of x, to the conclusion that A' properties of x are determined by such external properties. Internalism tends to argue from the premise that K properties are determined by intrinsic properties of x t o the conclusion that IC properties involve only such internal properties. Depending on the sort of necessity involved in our definition, there are varieties of determination. Similarly, we could recognize different sorts of involvement. All of which yields a variety of involvement/determination pairs, and a variety

of radical internalism/externalism disagreements. Because there are varieties of determination (or, conversely, of supervenience), and because there are varieties of involvement, therefore there are varieties of internalism and externalism. Here I want to approach the distinction in a rather general way, so that our results might apply across much if not all such variety. I have selected a particular case, as defined above, but perhaps the following discussion will illustrate a form of argument usable in such cases generally, t o refute both extremes. Concerning determination or supervenience, for example, there is the well known distinction between causally nomological and metaphysically necessary sorts. As for our terminology of "involvement", here again there is considerable variety. Consider examples in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. For one example, let X be a certain word w's having a certain meaning for a speaker S, or a certain thought t's having a certain content for a thinker T. And let Y then be the natural history of S's acquiring and using word w, or the natural history of how a causal relation is set up between aspects of S's environment and certain intrinsic states of S, whether these are themselves structural or functional. (Alternatively, these natural histories could be much more complex, of course, by including for example the society and even the species of the speaker or thinker, etc.) Again, externalists tend to argue from involvement to determination; for example, they tend to argue from the claim that meaning or content involves the external environment of the speaker or thinker, to the conclusion that meaning or content supervenes on the external environment of the speaker or thinker. But there may be some variation in the concept of involvement used by different externalists, and there is certainly some variation in the terminology used. Thus Hilary Putnam speaks of X's being "constituted" by Y, and of X's being "a matter of' Y (at least in part); Tyler Burge speaks of X's being "individuated by" Y (at least in part); and Donald Davidson appeals to the fact that the "correct interpretation" of X "depends" on Y (at least in part), and says that X "derives" from Y. Consider for example the

8. BETWEEN INTERNALISM AND EXTERNALISM 183

following quotations from Putnam and Davidson (with the relevant expressions capitalized): We have seen that possessing a concept Is NOT A MATTER OF possessing images (say, of trees -or even images, 'visual' or 'acoustic' of sentences, or whole discourses, for that matter) since one could possess any system of images you please and not possess the ability to use sentences in situationally appropriate ways (considering both linguistic factors -what has been said before- and non-linguistic factors as determining 'situational appropriateness'). A man may have all the images you please, and still be completely at a loss when one says to him 'point to a tree' even if a lot of trees are present.. . . [No] matter what sort of inner phenomena we allow as possible expressions of thought,. . . i t is not the phenomena themselves that CONSTITUTE understanding, but rather the ability of the thinker to employ these phenomena, to produce the right phenomena in the right circ~mstances.~ As Hilary Putnam put it, "meanings ain't in the h e a d . The point is that THE CORRECT INTERPRETATION OF WHAT A SPEAKER MEANS is not determined solely by what is in the head: it DEPENDS also ON the natural history of what is in the head.. . . [In] the simplest and most basic cases words and sentences DERIVE their meaning from the objects and circumstances in which they were learned.3

Again, here I propose to focus on strong varieties of supervenience and of involvement, and I will argue for a middle way between internalism and externalism, defined strongly. But the sort of middle way to be explained can also be applied t o weaker versions of the externalism/internalism division.

'Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 16. 3Donald Davidson, "The Myth of the Subjective", in Krausz, M., ed., Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1989), p. 164.

2 Meaning and Content: the Narrow and the Wide Some have argued that belief content would have t o be wide (so that believing is generally extrinsic or external), and that therefore in general nothing meets the specifications required of a belief as an effect of stimulation and a cause of behavior (S tich). Others have turned the reasoning around, concluding that beliefs have narrow content -content with no essential relations t o the environment (Fodor)- or with a highly restricted such relation, a t most. Others yet have concluded instead that though belief content is often wide and does include essential external relations, this does not prevent such belief from having its proper causal roles (Burge). And it is generally assumed that belief content is constitutive of belief, that the individuation of a belief includes its having just the content which in fact it has: it is of the essence of that belief, in whatever possible world it might put in an appearance, that it contain that content. This may be understood in terms of an acceptance relation between the subject and a certain proposition. For some this relation is fundamental, but for others it is explicated by reference to causal relations relating the subject t o exemplifications in his surroundings (past, present, and future) of the properties or relations constitutive of the proposition believed. We suppose in what follows that there are beliefs. Perhaps their ontological constitution is purely narrow and internal, involving only a functional system of inputs, intervening states, and outputs. Still some account is surely needed of what we are up t o when we attribute belief contents that appear external, as in belief that snow is white, or that Mt. Everest is tall or the Gobi Desert dry, or that water flows downhill. What is involved in the attribution of such content s? That meanings and contents lie a t least in part outside the head is a view most vigorously and radically propounded by Tyler Burge, who adopts Putnam's examples and arguments about the externality of meaning, adds some of his own, and draws conclusions even more radical than Putnam's

8. BETWEEN INTERNALISM AND EXTERNALISM 185 own, more radical for example in supposing that the very content of one's natural kind beliefs depends on the constitution of one's environment and one's causal relations to it. Contra Burge I take beliefs not to be individuated widely, by reference to their environments, at least not in such a way that intrinsically identical believers could have beliefs differing in content because of some difference in their respective environments (e.g., because one contains XYZ wherever the other contains H20).4 On externalist views of content ascription it is not possible t o understand how properly isolated vat-brainers could believe in an ordinary external world and turn out so radically mistaken. If a subject so much as believes in such an external world, he must be right to a significant extent. For if he were largely enough isolated from any such world, he could not even have the contents required in his beliefs for him to believe in such a world.' The opposing Cartesian intuition is still powerful, however, and it goes to the opposite extreme by holding that we could all have been always deceived by an evil demon powerful enough t o give us streams of consciousness indistinguishable from those we have in fact enjoyed, with this difference: that our streams would flow directly from the will of the deceiver, and reflect nothing 4Tn "Abilities, Concepts, and Externalism", forthcoming in John Heil and Alfred Mele (eds.), Mental Causation (Oxford University Press, 1992), I explain some of my doubts about Burge's reasoning, as i t is put, e.g., in "Other Bodiesn, in A. Woodfield, ed., Thought and Object (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). 'On the Putnam-Burge-Davidson view, therefore, content is Lcen~ir~nment-dependentn, whereas on the view proposed here content is rather "environment-relative", in terminology suggested to me by Jaegwon Kim. Other important and influential contributions also include environment-dependence. Compare Fred Dretske's Explaining Behauior: Reasons in a World of Causes (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), and Ruth Millikan's Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984). 'And compare also the intuitions that lead to methodological solipsism's commitment to psychological autonomy, as described and discussed, for example, in Fodor's "Methodological Solipsism Considered as a Research Strategy in Cognitive Psychology", The Behavioral and

My own view is that content should be relativized t o environment. Both the Earthian and the Twin-Earthian say 'This is water'. According t o the present proposal both utterances and both corresponding beliefs have the same content relative t o Earth, and the same content relative t o TwinEarth. There is of course a sense in which the two utterances differ in meaning. In this sense when they both utter 'I a m standing' the Earthian means the Earthian, and the TwinEarthian means the Twin-Earthian. Two different entities are "meant", just as in the Twin-Earth example two different kinds of stuff are meant: XYZ and H20.(But the de re content constituted by the entities thus "meant" derives from the shared de dicto content combined with the context of utterance or belief.) When we attribute beliefs t o each other here on Earth, the relativization is left implicit, since it may be presumed t o be mutually understood. As for the Twin Earthian, if we are asked for the content of his belief expressed by 'There is water', we can give either of two answers: (a) "Relative t o Twin-Earth, it has the content that there is T-water (twinwater, with composition XYZ)" or (b) "Relative t o Earth, it has the content that there is water". Actually, in the particular case of water, it seems most plausible t o accept an account according t o which the content of 'There is water' would be the same relative t o both planets: roughly, that there is stuff that is colorless, odorless, flows in one's rivers, and out of one's taps, etc. But if we press further toward more basic concepts -perhaps concepts of colors, shapes, etc.- then differences will eventually emerge. This seems clearly possible in principle, just on a theoretical basis, difficult though it is to describe concrete examples. Anyhow, in one possible case differences in normal or standard medium on Twin-Earth and Earth may yield visual experiences that are cross-planet intrinsically alike yet different in content, since relative t o Earth they represent a polka dot blue and yellow facing surface whereas relative t o Twin-Earth they represent a green Brain Sciences 3 (1980): 63-73; in Kim's "Psychophysical Supervenience", Philosophical Studies 41 (1982): 51-70; and in Stich's From Folk Psychology t o Cognitive Science (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983).

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surface; and such systematic difference would then extend t o correlated beliefs. An analogy may help. Consider a pressure gauge that may be used either as an altimeter in the sky or as a depth gauge in the ocean. The gauge has a display marked with the letters A through K . In the sky these represent descending altitudes from 10,000 t o 0 feet, with intervals of 1,000 feet. In the ocean, on the other hand, these same letters A-K represent rather increasing depth from 0 t o 100 feet, with intervals of 10 feet. Take now the gauge with the arrow pointing t o the letter D. If the device is in the ocean we might say that it thinks it's a t a depth of 30 feet. If it's in the sky, however, it thinks rather that it's a t a height of 7,000 feet. If the device is built into an airplane then we might say that 'D' means 7,000 feet. Even if the plane is on the ground and pressure is applied and the gauge is "fooled" into the state above, we might still say that it thinks it's a t a height of 7,000 feet. And similarly, mutatis mutandis, for a device built into a submarine. Another view of the device and its "beliefs" is that it is really just a pressure gauge and that when it is in the state above what it really thinks is that the pressure on it is of level D (say). This is the narrow content of its "belief'. This narrow content state set in the sky context yields a broad content belief that it is at a.height of 7,000 feet. But that same narrow content state set in the ocean context yields rather a broad content belief that it is at a depth of 30 feet. So far we have considered the broad content and narrow content analogue "beliefs" of our pressure device. The narrow content belief abstracts from all external contexts and sticks t o ability-constituting conditionals involving only intrinsic or internal states of the device. The broad content belief goes t o the opposite extreme. The device has the broad content belief that it is at a height of 7,000 feet only if it is in the sky, or at least is a permanent part of a wider system that normally operates in the sky, or the like. In any case, possession of the broad content belief has implications that go beyond what is the case within or at the surface of the device. Our approach identifies a different sort of content, neither narrow nor broad but relative (and indexical). Thus the

gauge in state D above "believes" it is a t a height of 7,000 feet relative t o a sky environment, and "believes" it is a t a depth of 30 feet relative t o an ocean environment. And there are of course other, related, beliefs. Thus if it has progressed through states A, B, C, on t o its present state D , then we might say that it takes itself t o be falling rapidly, a t a rate of 1,000 feet per minute, relative t o a sky environment; but that it takes itself t o be falling gradually, at a rate of 10 feet per minute, relative t o an ocean environment. And so on. Suppose now that the device is connected t o switches SB, Sc,. . . , SK, and that it has switch Sx on when and only when it is a state X. Return now t o our device in state D above. Why does it have switch SD on? Several alternatives answers might be offered. If the device is in the sky, and if the switches control the cabin pressure, then we might say that switch SD is on because the system "tries" t o keep the cabin pressure a t a certain level, and this requires adjusting t o the altitude. Since it "thinks" the altitude is 7,000 feet, it has on the switch for 7,000 feet, switch So. On this approach the "belief' that plays a role in our explanation is the device's "belief' that it is a t a height of 7,000 feet. And a corresponding story could of course be told for a submarine with the "belief' that it is at a depth of 30 feet. These are the broad content explanations. It might be replied, however, that the real reason why the device has switch SD on is that it is in state D (caused by pressure of level D on its relevant surface), and that the system is set up t o have switch Sx on if and only if it is in state X. This explanation might appeal t o a narrow content "belief' on the part of the system that it is subject t o pressure of level D a t the moment. Now it does not matter whether the system is in the air or in the water. All that matters is the level of pressure on its surface and the mechanism connecting such pressure with its system of switches. This move is supported by the reasoning that even when the device is in the air, what is really, immediately operative in its having switch SDon is just that the device is in relevant internal state D. And it might have been in that state even in the water, in which case again it would have had switch SD on. Hence, is this not what is really operative, and is it

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not irrelevant whether or not the device is in the air or in the water? Of course that the device is in the air may be relevant t o why i t is in state D t o begin with. But the sky-involving states such as its being 7,000 feet up in the sky cannot possibly be the ones that explain why the device has switch SD on when it does so in the water. And clearly there is a state intrinsic t o the device that does explain both in the sky and in the water. Now an airplane pilot may know about such devices, but may conceive of them only as altimeters, and may not think of them a t all as depth gauges. He recognizes the device in a submarine, however, and can tell that it has switch SDon. He is tempted t o attribute t o the device a "belief' that it is 7,000 feet up, but rejects that as very little plausible in a submarine. Is the pilot now at a loss t o explain why the device a t various stages has on certain switches? Can't he simply postulate a system of internal states corresponding t o the various altitudes, such that in the sky these states would represent the corresponding altitudes. Thus the pilot could explain So's being on as a result of the device's being in a state that relative t o the sky would be a "belief7 that the altitude is 7,000 feet. And when SD is turned off and SE is on, he can explain that in turn as a result of the device's having switched from the preceding state t o a new state that relative t o the sky would be a "belief' that the altitude is 6,000 feet. And so on.

3 Splitting the Difference: Content

as Relative and Indexical

Consider the having of proposition that-p as content by belief b or by experience e, i.e. b7s being a belief that-p, say a belief that there is something white before one, or e's being an experience as if p, as if there is something white before one. We are asking questions of the following sorts: What does b's being a belief that-p, or e's being an experience as if p 7 supervene upon? What does it derive from? How is it

determined? Is it fundamental or does it obtain in virtue of something ontologically deeper -which determines it, from which it derives, upon which it 'supervenes' ? ? In what follows we use the following thesis:

TI X 's having Q (or, alternatively, bearing R to Y ) is determined by the intrinsic nature and character of X only if: If X has Q (bears R to Y ) in some context C, then for any context C', if X ' in C' is intrinsically indistinguishable from X in C (in all intrinsic properties), then X ' in C ' must also have Q (must bear R to Y). Again, we assume that all properties are either intrinsic or extrinsic, by understanding the intrinsic properties of x as properties of x that, if relational at all, involve only relations to the parts of x. (This is rough, but I think sufficient for present purposes. See Dl above for a definition of determination.) The disagreement between internalism and externalism of external content may be tabulated as follows. Suppose X is the having of content that-p by a belief b or the having of content that-p by an experience e (so that it is an experience as if p).8 Internalism and Externalism hold the following, respectively, about X : INTERNALISM

I(a) X is determined by the intrinsic nature and character of the subject of belief (experience)

I(b) X does not necessarily (by analysis) involve any relation to an external environment EXTERNALISM

E(a) X is not determined by the intrinsic nature and character of the subject of belief or experience. (Rather, 7 ~ n very d similar questions can be asked about the being justified of a belief b , say a belief that there is something white before one. 'Or, carrying the argument into epistemology, X might be the having of epistemic justification by a belief b.

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X is determined by causal relational properties of the subject of belief or experience to his or her external environment, either wholly or at least in part.)

E(b) X involves (by analysis) a relation to an external environment. (Where we assume thesis T I above.)

I will argue that each is partly right and partly wrong: internalism is right on determination and wrong on involvement; externalism is wrong on determination and right on involvement. The key is that both content and justification are in a sense relativistic and indexical. Length in meters provides an illuminating comparison, if we view it as an operationalist notion defined by reference to the Parisian meter stick. Consider how (where X is the having of length L by a rod R): LENGTH INTERNALISM

LI(a) X is determined by the dimensional intrinsic nature and character of rod R.

LI(b) X does not necessarily (by analysis, or operational definition) involve any relation to an external environment. LENGTH EXTERNALISM

LE(a) X is determined by a relational property of rod R to its environment.

LE(b) X involves (by analysis, or operational definition) a relation to an external environment (external to the intrinsic dimensional character of R). Each of length internalism and length externalism is partly right and partly wrong: internalism right on determination and wrong on involvement; externalism wrong on determination and right on involvement. The key here again is that length in meters, operationally defined, is in a sense relativistic and indexical (indexical because relative to a certain

meter stick in Paris, as it actually is, i.e., given how long it is in this our actual world). Might beliefs, desires, and experiences be determined by narrow intrinsic states of a brain or a soul -whether functional states of an inner system, or intrinsic non-functional exemplifications of primary properties or relations? That might be so while in spite of it we might still have no better way t o describe or specify those narrow, intrinsic states in ourselves or others than by appeal t o their distinctive relations, especially their appropriate causal relations, t o their external surroundings beyond the skin of the subject. Accordingly, the relevant surroundings of a subject, one with eyes and ears, may give us a system of characterization of some of that subject's inner states (of experience or belief). And this appeal t o the relevant surroundings of a subject might be rather like appeal t o the meter stick in describing the lengths of rods. It is not constitutive of the intrinsic length of a rod R that it be the length of the meter stick. Nevertheless, we may specify or describe the length of R, in subjunctive, operationalist terms, as being one meter -appealing thus t o a related concept of operationalist length. If we think thus of functionalist belief content, as like operationalist length "content", and similarly for experience, we can stay neutral on the ontological constitution of intrinsic beliefs and experiences; or, better, we can stay neutral on the ontological constitution of intrinsic states in virtue of which subjects have beliefs and experiences, intrinsic states that are determinants of the subject's beliefs and experiences. In particular we need not think of these psychological states as constituted by special relations t o properties or propositions. This does not rule out metaphysical dualism, not even substance dualism. It simply enables us t o stay neutral on such metaphysical issues of ontology. What it does question is the notion that our descriptions of the experiences or beliefs undergone by ourselves or others are descriptions which postulate fundamental intentional relations or ties of acquaintance or presence between ourselves and properties like shape or color properties, or the like. No such special ties are required on the present view, since we now specify

8. BETWEEN ~ N T E R N A L I S MAND EXTERNALISM 193

a belief, for example, simply by describing it as a state with certain environmental and other causes and with effects of certain sorts (i.e., as a state that would be caused in certain ways and would have certain effect^).^ In thus characterizing our experiences and attitudes by causal relation to our ordinary actual environment are we committed to essentialism of content? Suppose S believes there is something white and round before her. In attributing such content to that belief we are saying something roughly like this: that it is a state whose normal cause is the presence of something white and round before the believer -that is to say, whose normal cause in the actual world for normal actual believers is as specified. Consider now further a non-actual world containing a state B , of subject S, a state with a certain intrinsic character C. Since it would still be true of this actual world a of ours, that in a a state B with that intrinsic character C normally would be apt for entering into such and such causal relations, therefore that state B is a belief on the part of S to the effect that there is something white and round before her. And this does not imply that S would speak truly were she to say the following in W in English: "I believe that there is something white and round before me". For "actual" is an indexical. Therefore I might be right in saying that such and such concerning S in W is actual (in a ) even though S, speaking English, would not be right to say: "Such and such involving me in W is actual (in W)." By my proposal, what determines the "content" of an experience or attitude is a relative matter. One and the same state X of a subject S may have content P relative to environment E, and content P' (for P' distinct from P) relative to environment E' (where such environments may differ differently: e.g., (i) as Earth and Twin-Earth in a single possible world, or (ii) as W and W', distinct possible worlds). Normally we do not advert explicitly to an environment or world, because we implicitly assume our actual environment in our actual world. On the present view, therefore, attributions of 'compare the operationalist property of a meter-long rod of being such that it would coincide end to end with the Parisian stick (invariant vis-a-vis its length in the actual world).

content t o experiences and beliefs are not only relative but also indexical, since there is an implicit relativization t o "us" and t o our "actual" environment or context. (Why thus indexical? So that attributions of meaning and/or content can be univocal from context t o context without having t o privilege a particular context for all persons, places, and times.) And they are also vague, a t least as vague as the boundaries, physical and conceptual, of our "environment", or "context". The numerical measurement content of dimensional states of bodies may be compared with the propositional content of the mental states of subjects. Our systematic conception of dimensional states has often been by operational comparison with standards. Take again length in meters as defined by comparison with the Parisian meter stick. Of course that stick might have been rather longer or shorter. But even on a n operationalist view, there is an alternative t o the absurdity of supposing that the whole universe could have been made t o shrink or swell just by working on that stick. Better t o relativize the operationalist definition as follows: ( D m ) X is one meter long = dfX has the length possessed in the actual world by stick M (in Paris) -or, more operationalistically, X would coincide end t o end with the stick (held length-invariant with respect t o the actual world). By D m , if in world W (other than the actual world a ) M were slightly longer than it actually is in a , the following follows: 1. In a we can say correctly in English: "The Parisian meter stick M is of course one meter long, but in W M would be slightly longer than one meter". 2. In W they can say correctly in English: "The Parisian meter stick M is of course one meter long, but in a M would be slightly shorter than one meter".

These sayings and their correctness are all compatible with each other, thanks t o the indexicality of 'actual'. The best operationalism would thus seem t o define operationalist concepts both relativistically and indexically.

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There is however an important difference between dimensional content of bodies -e.g., length content- and proposi tional content of psychological states: namely, that we take sameness of operationalist dimensional content to correlate with sameness of corresponding intrinsic state. Thus we may plausibly suppose there t o be a unitary property of intrinsic length of rods such that if two rods both have the same operationalist length of one meter -since each would coincide end t o end with the Parisian stick- then they must have the same intrinsic length as well. But the corresponding assumption concerning intrinsic psychological states lacks corresponding plausibility, and has been widely denied under the assumption of multiple realizability. In conclusion, my proposal is, again, that content is neither wide nor narrow, neither radically external nor radically internal, but relative and indexical. According t o this view, what determines the "content" of an experience or attitude is, first of all, a relative matter. One and the same state X of a subject S may have content P relative t o environment E, and content P' (for P' distinct from P ) relative to environment E' (where such environments may differ differently: e.g., (i) as Earth and Twin-Earth in a single possible world, or (ii) as W and W ' , distinct possible worlds). Normally we do not advert explicitly t o an environment or world, because we implicitly assume our actual environment in our actual world. On the present view, moreover, attributions of content t o experiences and beliefs are not only relative but also indexical, since there is an implicit relativization to "us" and t o our "actual" environment or context.1°

''Why thus indexical? So that attributions of meaning and/or content can be univocal from context to context without having to privilege a particular context for all persons, places, and times. And such relativizations are not only implicit but also vague, a t least as vague as the boundaries, physical and conceptual, of our "environment", or "context".

PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES, 1 Consciousness, 1991

What is Present to the Mind? Donald Davidson* There is a sense in which anything we think about is, while we are thinking about it, before the mind. But there is another sense, well known to philosophers, in which only some of the things we can think about are said to be before the mind; these are things that are before the mind when we think about anything a t all, but we do not have to think about them for them to be before the mind. These are things supposed t o be so directly before the mind that it is impossible t o misidentify them, or we can misidentify them only if we do not know what we think; in this they differ from ordinary physical objects, which are easy to misidentify. We cannot mistake these entities for others simply because it is these objects that fix the contents of our thoughts. It is things of this second sort I want to discuss. It is things of this second sort, for example, that are the objects, so called, of desires, beliefs, intentions, worries and hopes; they are the propositions t o which we have the various attitudes, the thoughts (as Frege named them) which our * @ Donald Davidson.

sentences express. We must also include, of course, the constituents of propositions, such things as properties, relations, functions, and so forth. The objects I have mentioned have a special relation t o the mind: it is only through the mind that we can know them. Since they are abstract, they cannot be accessed by the senses. They have no causal powers, and so cannot act on, or be acted on by, our minds, our brains, or us. This raises the question what sort of relations we or our minds are thought to have to these objects when we say they are before the mind. We have many words to express our relations to propositions: we grasp them when we understand a sentence, we entertain them, reject them, wish they were true, hope they aren't, or intend to make them true. But what sort of relations are these? They sound like psychological relations, as if there were some sort of mental transaction between us and these entities. But what kind of business can be transacted with an abstract object? The propositional objects of the mind, and their constituents, are supposed, then, to have these two properties: they identify a thought by fixing its content; and they constitute an essential aspect of the psychology of the thought by being grasped or otherwise known by the person with the thought. The problem I discuss in this paper is how to reconcile these two properties. My thesis is that they cannot be reconciled. Here is the main difficulty. I take for granted that for the most part we do know what we think, even though there are departures from total self-knowledge. (I use "think" to cover all the propositional attitudes.) But if a thought is constituted the thought it is by the mind's knowledge of the identifying object, then someone knows what thought she is thinking only if she knows which object she has in mind. Yet there seems to be no clear meaning to the idea of knowing which object one has in mind. The trouble is that ignorance of even one property of an object can, under appropriate circumstances, count as not knowing which object it is. This is the reason philosophers who have wanted to found knowledge on infallible identification of objects have sought objects that, like Hume's impressions and ideas, "Are what they seem and seem what they are" -that is7 have all and only the prop-

9. WHATIS PRESENT TO

THE

MIND?

199

erties we think they have. Alas, there are no such objects. Every object has an infinity of logically independent properties, even those objects, like numbers, all of whose "essential" properties we specify.' Recent discussion of de re belief brings out the point. If we agree with Russell that a person cannot form a judgment about an object unless he knows which object it is, or (to put it in another way that Russell favored) it is an object with which the person is acquainted, and that this demands, in the case of propositions, that this special relation hold between the judge and each part of the proposition judged, then there is a special problem about attitudes like the following: There is a recipe for making corn bread that Joan believes is easy. The truth of this attribution not only demands that there be a recipe for making corn bread, but it also seems to require that Joan know which recipe it is -or be somehow acquainted with it. When Quine first emphasized the distinction between de re and de dicto belief sentences in modern terms, he was inclined t o see de re reference as an island of develclarity in the opaque sea of i n t e n ~ i o n a l i t ~Subsequent .~ opments led t o a change of mind. In "Intensions Revisited" he wrote, "The notion of knowing or believing who or what

Michael Dummet describes this feature of Fregean "senses" : ". . .A sense cannot have any features not discernable by reflection on or deduction from what is involved in expressing or in grasping it. Only that belongs t o the sense of an expression which is relevant to the determination of the truth value of the sentence in which i t occurs; if we fail to grasp some features of its contribution to the truth-conditions of certain sentences, then we fail fully to grasp its sense, while, on the other hand, any aspect of its meaning that does not bear on the truth-conditions of the sentences containing it is no part of its sense. It cannot be, therefore, that the sense has all sorts of other features not detectable by us.. . A thought is transparent in the sense that, if you grasp it, you thereby know everything to b e known about i t as i t is in itself". The Interpretotion of Frege's Philosophy, Duckworth, 1981, p. 50. Dummett limits the features of senses we cannot fail t o detect to their "internal properties", but it is not clear on what principle such properties are to be told from others. W.V. Quine, "Quatifiers and Propositional Attitudes", The Journal of Philosophy 53 (1956), pp. 177-187.

someone or something is, is utterly dependent on ~ o n t e x t " . ~ What led t o the change of mind was the difficulty in explaining the relation between a person and an object that would justify the claim that the person knew which object it was. A number of attempts have been made to clarify the relation: F~llesdaldeclared only "genuine" names could enter into it; Kripke spoke of "rigid designators"; David Kaplan called the elect names " ~ i v i d " .Gareth ~ Evans studied the problem in depth; he thought, with others, that the only psychological relation that could count as providing the requisite sort of "fundamental identification" of an object was demonstrative identification. In such a case alone could one say that the object was part of the proposition entertained. Following Russell, Evans concluded that when a person thinks he is entertaining a singular thought, but is using a non-referring name, there is no proposition for him t o contemplate, and therefore no thought that he has. If he uses a sentence containing a non-referring name, he expresses no thought. If, like me, you have trouble feeling confidence in the criteria for genuine cases of "fundamental identification", you will appreciate why Russell limited such cases to situations in which the mind is directly acquainted with its objects, something he thought was possible only with sense data (and perhaps with oneself). What lies behind some of these attempts to characterize the special relation between the mind and its objects is, of course, the Cartesian drive to identify a sort of knowledge which is guaranteed against failure. If this search is combined with the assumption that all knowledge consists in the mind being in psychological contact with an object, then objects must be found about which error is impossible -objects that must be what they seem and seem what they are. There simply are no such objects. Not even appearances

are everything we think they are. Nor can the "aspects"

3 ~ e p r i n t e din Theories and Things, Harvard University Press, 1981, p. 121. (Originally printed in 1977.

' ~ a ~ f i nFdlesdal, n

"Knowledge, Identity, and Existence", Theorie

33 (1967); Saul Kripke, "Naming and Necessity", in Semantics of Nat-

urn1 Language, ed. D . Davidson and G. Harman, Reidel, 1972; David

Kaplan, "Quantifying In", Synthese 19, 1968.

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of sense data, if they really are objects, be protected from one or another sort of misidentification. The reason Quine is right in thinking we cannot pick out "the" relation that constitutes knowing which object some object is is simply that any property of an object may, under suitable conditions, be considered the relevant identifier. I have dwelt briefly on the problem as it has been studied in relation to proper names because it is there that philosophers seem t o have come closest t o appreciating the nature of the difficulty. But if my diagnosis is correct, the problem really has nothing special t o do with proper names; it is a perfectly general problem about the objects of the mind. If the mind can think only by getting into the right relation t o some object which it can for certain distinguish from all others, then thought is impossible. If a mind can know what it thinks only by flawlessly identifying the objects before it, then we must very often not know what we think. Why, if they make so much trouble, do we suppose there are propositional objects of thought? Well, for one thing we certainly talk as if there were such entities: we think deep thoughts, share thoughts, discard and embrace beliefs, entertain, consider, reflect on, contemplate ideas and propositions -one could go on for a long time. These are the sort of remarks we have been taught, with reason, t o view with ontological suspicion. But it is much harder to take lightly the problem we get into when we attempt t o give a systematic account of what certain sentences mean- the ones we use to attribute thoughts t o thinkers. For it is difficult to see how ordinary sentences like "Paul believes that the Koh-i-noor diamond is one of the crown jewels" can be analyzed except as relating Paul to some entity picked out by the phrase "that the Koh-i-noor diamond is one of the crown jewels", or perhaps by the sentence "the Koh-i-noor diamond is one of the crown jewels". Plenty of attempts have been made to avoid taking "believes" as a relational term, that is, as relating two objects, a believer and something else, but none of these attempts is, as far as I know, successful. One proposal is to treat the rest of the sentence after "believes" as a complex adverb. The reading might be something like: "Paul believes in a that-the-Koh-i-noor-diamond-is-

one-of-the-crown-jewels fashion". But this is an unsatisfactory suggestion, since no one has any idea how t o derive the meaning of such an adverbial modifier from the meanings of the constituent words. Yet it is intuitively obvious that we understand the sentences that follow the "that" in belief sentences because we understand the constituent words. If the meanings of such contained sentences (which give the "contents" of propositional attitudes) are not constructed from the meanings of their parts, they must have t o be learned independently -as if they were new, often very long, words. It seems clear that this is a wrong idea, and probably an impossible one, since any declarative sentence can feature as a content-sentence, and there is an unlimited, and so presumably unlearnable, totality of these. Other suggestions along similar lines have been made fairly often, but no one has ever shown how t o implement such suggestions by incorporating them in a developed semantic theory.5 The governing principle seems clear: apart from sentences, whenever we recognize a grammatical category t o which we must assign an infinity of expressions, ontology is required. There must be an infinity of objects that can be referred t o either indexically or by means of descriptions; these are the two devices available t o enable a finite vocabulary t o cope with any of a potential infinity of objects. Objects allow us t o manage adjectives; events do the same for at least some adverbs. Numbers do the job when we want t o measure. There is, then, no plausible alternative to taking belief sentences as relational, and therefore no alternative t o taking the content sentence ("The Koh-i-noor diamond is one of the crown jewels" plus, perhaps, the word "that" when it is present) as a singular term which, by referring t o an appropriate entity, specifies the relevant belief.6 'For a discussion of a number of attempts to eliminate the ontological commitment to "objects of thought" in the analysis of belief sentences, and other sentences that attribute propositional attitudes, see my "On Saying That" in Inquiries into T r u t h and Interpretation, Oxford University Press, 1985. 6Stephen Schiffer quite rightly emphasizes that the possibility of "compositional semantics" (the idea that the meanings of complex ex-

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Apparently we have a dilemma. On the one hand there is the fact that to have a belief or other propositional attitude is t o be related to an object of some sort; on the other hand there is the fact that there seems t o be no satisfactory account of the psychological relation a person must be in t o the appropriate object in order t o have the attitude. The difficulty in giving such an account hinges on the idea that since a person generally knows what he thinks, he must be directly acquainted with, or be able in some special way t o identify or individuate, the object or objects that define (give the contents of) his thought. If we rid ourselves of preconceptions, I think it is easy t o see where we have gone wrong. It does not follow, from the facts that a thinker knows what he thinks and that what he thinks can be fixed by relating him to a certain object, that the thinker is acquainted with, or indeed knows anything at all about the object. It does not even follow that the thinker knows about any object at all. Someone who attributes a thought to another must, I have argued, relate that other to some object, and so the attributer must, of course, identify an appropriate object, either by pointing t o it or by describing it. But there is no reason why the attributer must stand in any special relation to the identifying object; all he has to do is refer to it in the way he refers t o anything else. We specify the subjective state of the thinker by relating him to an object, but there is no reason to say that this object itself has a subjective status, that it is "known" by the thinker, or is "before the mind" of the thinker. This consequence was already implicit in some analyses of sentences about propositional attitudes, for example the suggestion once entertained by Carnap, and discussed by Quine, that belief sentences be taken t o relate a believer t o a sentence of the attributer. Thus Quine, who holds that a cat can pressions must be seen as a function of the meanings of the expressions of which they are composed) depends crucially on the relational analysis of sentences that are used to attribute attitudes. He despairs of finding a satisfactory analysis for reasons I do Not share, and so abandons hope for a compositional semantics. Stephen Schiffer, Remnants of Meaning, M.I.T. Press. 1987.

have a belief, points out that there is no reason to suppose a cat is acquainted with the sentence "Food's on" just because it can correctly be said that the cat believes that food's on. For those who doubt that cats have propositional attitudes, the same point can be made by remarking that we may identify a belief of Sebastian's by saying he believes that Naples is north of San Francisco, though he doesn't know a word of English. My point here isn't that belief sentences relate believers to sentences, but that this familiar proposal assumes that the objects used to identify a belief may not be within the ken of the believer. Once we grant this possibility, we are free t o divorce the semantic need for content-specifying objects from the idea that there must be any objects at all with which someone who has an attitude is in psychic touch. Here is an analogy: consider weight. Some things weigh more than others; some things weigh nothing; occasionally two things weigh the same. One thing may weigh twice what another does. These relations among objects are what we wish to report when we assign weights to them. Introducing a standard does not alter the situation. Thus a monetary pound in the time of William the First weighed the same as 12 ounces; it took 20 pennies t o weigh an ounce; and a penny weighed the same as 32 grains of wheat taken from the middle of the ear. Thus a pound weighed the same as 7680 grains of wheat. All that we wish t o say about how much things weigh can be put in terms of these comparisons: for example, the Koh-i-noor diamond in its present condition weighs about the same as 15 113 pennies, or 490 grains of wheat. All these comparisons can be tedious, and in any case we make the relevant comparisons perspicuously by using numbers. So the convenient thing is to settle on a way of representing the relations among objects with respect t o weight by using numbers directly. Thus we say the Koh-i-noor diamond weighs 109 carats or 345 grams. But talk of this sort does not require us to include carats or grams in our ontology. The only objects we need are the numbers and the things that have weight. To say the weight in carats of the Koh-i-noor diamond is 109 does not commit us to weights as objects: it is just to assign the number 109 t o the diamond as a way of relating it to other objects on the carat scale.

Seen this way, talk of how much things weigh is relational: it relates objects to numbers, and so to one another. But no one supposes the numbers are in any sense intrinsic t o the objects that have weight, or are somehow "part" of them. What are basic are certain relations among objects: we conveniently keep track of these relations by assigning numbers to the objects, and remembering how the relations among the objects are reflected in the numbers. One important aspect of numerical measurement is that typically some only of the properties of numbers are relevant to their use in reporting relative weights. Thus it is relevant that whatever numbers we use to keep track of weights preserve ratios: if one thing weighs twice as many grams as another, it must also weigh twice as many pounds. On the other hand, the absolute size of the number is irrelevant: measurement in pounds, grains of wheat, and grams yield different numbers, but the same relative weights when compared to other object^.^ The analogy with beliefs is this. Just as in measuring weight we need a collection of entities which have a structure in which we can reflect the relations between weighty objects, so in attributing states of belief (and other propositional attitudes), we need a collection of entities related in ways that will allow us to keep track of the relevant properties of and relations among the various psychological states. In thinking and talking of the weights of physical objects we do not need t o suppose there are such things as weights for objects to have. Similarly in thinking and talking about the beliefs of people we needn't suppose there are such entities as beliefs. Nor do we have to invent objects to serve as the "objects of belief' or what is before the mind, or in the brain. Such invention is unnecessary because the entities 'A comparison between how we attribute beliefs and numerical measurement has.been made by Paul Churchland, Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, Cambridge University Press, 1979, p. 105. But he makes the mistake of supposing we can take a phrase like "345 grams" in "The Koh-i-noor diamond weighs 345 grams" as an adverb of "weighs", and thus get rid of the ontological problem (he would say the same about the sentence that follows "believes"). But as we have seen, this suggestion cannot be supported by a serious semantics.

we mention t o help specify a state of mind do not have t o play any psychological or epistemological role for the person in that state, just as numbers play no physical role. As a consequence, there is no reason t o conclude, from the thinker's lack of knowledge of the entities we use t o track his thoughts, that he may not know what he thinks. The suggestion I am proposing about the nature of the propositional attitudes applies directly t o a problem that has troubled a number of philosophers in recent years. There are convincing arguments t o show that the correct determination of the contents of beliefs (and meanings and other propositional attitudes) depends in part on causal connections between the believer and events and objects in the world of which he may be ignorant. A now familiar example is Putnam's twin earth case. We are invited t o imagine that there is a twin t o our Earth which is, in all immediately discernable respects, identical with our Earth. On it is my doppelganger, molecule for molecule the same, having been exposed t o the same conditioning, and having exactly the same linguistic dispositions, as I have. Yet one of us believes it is water he sees before him (me) when the other believes it is twater. The explanation is that where there is water on Earth there is twater on Twearth, though no one has yet detected the difference. Since there is no inner, or psychological difference between me and my twin, neither of us has any reason t o say he believes one thing rather than the other. Therefore neither of us knows what he believes. (I don't know whether I believe this is water or twater.) So there may be, and perhaps always are, non-subjective factors, factors unknown t o the thinker, which decide what the "object of thought" is. If the identity of the "object of thought" is partly dependent on factors of which the person who has the thought is ignorant, doesn't it follow that the person may not know what he thinks? The answer is that it doesn't follow. It would follow if the object used t o identify my thought were something I had t o be able t o discriminate in order t o know what I think. But this is the assumption we have abandoned. What I see before me I believe t o be water; I a m in no danger of thinking it is twater, since I do not know what twater is. I also believe I think I am seeing water, and in this I a m right, even though it

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may not be water but twater. I know I think it is water I am seeing because I know that I believe this stuff I am looking at is the same as the stuff in whose presence I learned t o use the word "water". And that is the stuff I mean by my word "water". Of course if I were my twin on Twearth, I would refer to twater by my word "water" -and twater would then be what I believed was before me. If in our sleep my twin and I were to be exchanged, I would mistakenly think it was water before me when it was twater. But neither of us would be wrong about what he thought. The possibility of error, or of failure t o distinguish one's own state of mind, due solely t o the external elements that help determine that state of mind, is intelligible only on the supposition that having a thought requires a special psycholo ical relation to the object used to identify the state of mind. The point of this exercise may surprise us. It is that subjective states are not supervenient on the state of the brain or nervous system: two people may be in similar physical states and yet be in dissimilar psychological states. This does not mean, of course, that mental states are not supervenient on physical states, for there must be a physical difference somewhere if psychological states are different. But the interesting physical difference may not be in the person; like the difference between water and twater, it may be (we are supposing) elsewhere. Many philosophers faced with this result have decided that beliefs and other so-called propositional attitudes, as we usually identify them, are not quite as subjective as they were thought t o be. Thus Jerrold Fodor, in recommending "methodological solipsism" t o the psychologist, thinks he is recommending that the psychologist deal with truly subjective states, states whose identities are determined only by what is in the head. David Kaplan and Daniel Dennett have made similar suggestions. Steven Stich's idea is along the same lines, but more portentous, since he thinks we must give up folk psychology entirely if we want to have a serious science

Q

'For further discussion of this point, see my "Knowing One's Own Mindn, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 1987, pp. 441-58.

of human behavior. I agree that the concepts of belief, desire, intention and the like are not suited t o a science like the physical sciences, and I agree that one of the reasons is that mental states are partly identified on the basis of their causes and effects. But since the same is true of human actions as we normally identify them, there seems to be no chance of more "scientific" explanations in this area (assuming that what we mean by a "scientific" explanation is the kind of explanation we hope for from physics). But whatever we think about the scientific future of folk psychology, there is no good reason for claiming that beliefs and the other propositional attitudes are not truly subjective states. We have discovered no reason for saying that thinkers don't generally know what they think, or that there isn't always a presumption in favor of their being right when they disagree with others about what is on their minds. And this seems to be as good a test of subjectivity as we have. There are two important points I have left hanging, and I shall devote a few remarks to them. The two points are these. First, I have not said anything about what the objects are to which we refer when we want to specify what someone believes. And, second, I have argued that the discovery that what is believed is partly settled by facts of which the believer may be ignorant does not show he doesn't know what he believes. But this is only a negative point; it does not even hint at why there is a presumption -usually correct- that he does know. These two points are closely related. First, then, what are the objects we name or describe in order to characterize states of mind? Well, what do we say? We say things like "Paul believes the Koh-i-noor diamond is one of the crown jewels". The words "believes that the Koh-i-noor diamond is one of the crown jewels" characterize Paul's state of mind. The relational word is "believes", and what follows names the object -not of thought, I have insisted- but the object which in some regular way indicates Paul's state of mind. I have in the past suggested that we take the word "that" in such sentences as a demonstrative that picks out or refers to the next utterance of the speaker

who is doing the attributing. The following gives the idea: Paul believes what I would believe if I were sincerely to assert what I say next. The Koh-i-noor diamond is one of the crown jewels. Since I am not trying to make subtle semantic points, you may take either my actual utterance, with its time and place, as the "object"; or the sentence of which it is an utterance (relativized to a time and a speaker). If you wish, you even may take the object to be a proposition. Since utterances, sentences and propositions are so closely related, the chances are if one choice will serve, the others can be made t o serve. But utterances have certain prima facie advantages, since they are non-abstract, and so come with a speaker, a time, and a context attached. So I will assume we have settled on utterances, the very utterances that are produced in attributing attitudes, as the objects that serve to individuate and identify the various states of mind. Such objects serve very well in their role of characterizing states of mind. There certainly are as many different utterances (or potential utterances) at our disposal as there are states of mind we are able t o distinguish in attributing them -more, in fact. Even the special difficulties having t o do with demonstrative or indexical expressions are not insoluble if we give up the idea that we are trying t o identify objects with which those who have attitudes are in mysterious psychic touch. Utterances are related to each other in much the same way beliefs are: by relations of entailment and evidential support. Utterances, like beliefs, are true and false. Aside from complications due to indexical elements, we identify a belief by uttering a sentence that has the same truth conditions as the belief it is used to identify. Nor is any of this surprising since we often express our beliefs by uttering sentences with the truth conditions of the belief we are expressing. At this point you may think I am coming dangerously close t o restoring the very theory that made all the trouble in the first place. For why not go on t o say that since utterances have determinate meanings, and it is meanings that match up with belief states, the objects we are naming when we

utter content-sentences in the context of attributing beliefs just are the meanings of those content-sentences, that is, propositions. This would fix it so that when a Frenchman attributed the same state of mind to Paul as I did, we would both be naming the same object: this would not be the case on the theory I was just considering, for the Frenchman's relevant sentence was not mine. I have only marginal objections in the present context to taking this step, for it is not the step that makes the trouble. (It may make some other kind of trouble, meanings and propositions being the tricky things they are.) The trouble we have been concerned with here sprang from the identification of the object used to characterize a state of mind with an object that the mind "knows" or is "acquainted with" -an "object of thought". If we avoid this identification, we can stay out of the difficulties I have been exploring. But if we avoid this identification, neither do we gain anything by the steps from utterances to sentences t o meanings or propositions. So as a help in keeping my main point in mind, it is well t o stick t o utterances. There will then be no danger of supposing that in general the believer is acquainted with the objects used to characterize his states of mind. It should not bother us that the Frenchman and I use different utterances to characterize the same state of Paul's mind: this is like measuring weight in carats or ounces: different sets of numbers do the same work. This last point directs our attention to a larger issue. When we use numbers to keep track of the relations among weights and lengths and temperatures we are not apt to respond to the fact that different sets of numbers do as well as others in keeping track of all that is relevant empirically by complaining that weights or lengths or temperatures are not "real". We know there is no contradiction between saying that the temperature of the air is 32' fahrenheit and saying that it is 0' celsius; there is nothing in this "relativism" to show that the properties being measured are not "real". Curiously, though, this conclusion has repeatedly been drawn. John Searle, for example, finds it incomprehensible that either of two quite different interpretations might correctly be

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put on the same thought (or utterance) of a person.g Yet in the light of the considerations put forward here, this amounts merely to the recognition that more than a single set of one person's utterances might be equally successful in capturing the contents of someone else's thoughts or speech. Just as numbers can capture all the empirically significant relations among weights or temperatures in infinitely many different ways, so one person's utterances can capture all the significant features of another person's thoughts and speech in different ways. This fact does not challenge the "reality" of the attitudes or meanings thus variously reported. Jerrold Fodor is another philosopher who thinks that holism, or the indeterminacy of translation that is associated with it, threatens realism with respect to the propositional attitudes.'' This is the same mistake. Indeterminacy of translation means that different sets of utterances (or sentences, as Quine has it) do equally well in interpreting a speaker's language (or thoughts); this does not suggest that the states of mind of the speaker or thinker thus captured are somehow vague or unreal. Holism maintains that the contents of speech and thought depend on the relations among meanings and among thoughts. But again there is nothing in this claim to threaten the reality of the states that are related in these ways. The threat to the reality of thoughts and meanings that Searle and Fodor think they detect is in fact a quite different threat, a threat to the assumption that the entities used to identify thoughts and meanings are somehow "grasped" by the mind, and so, if the entities are different, the thoughts themselves must be different. It is as if the "difference" between being a yard long and 36 inches long in a yardstick were a difference in the yardstick itself. I come now to the last question: given that a correct view of the way in which the "objects of thought" determine the identity of the various states of mind does not threaten first person authority, what accounts for that authority?

John Searle, "Indeterminacy and the First Personn, The Journal of Philosophy 84 (1987), pp. 123-146. lo err^ Fodor, Psychosemantics, M I T Press, 1987.

One difficulty was created by grammar and false inferences from it: these led to the idea of an inner object known in a privileged way. This obstacle was removed by showing that there was no reason to suppose there are such objects. A second difficulty sprang from the conviction that the truly subjective -that of which the person has privileged knowledgecan owe none of its subjective quality to connections with the outside world. Here I argued that though an interpreter must, if he is to get things right, look t o relations between the mind he is interpreting and its environment, this does not prejudice the a self-knowledge of the knower. Having removed the obstacles, there is little left t o say about how we know what we think. In the interesting, and originally puzzling cases, there is no way we know -for there is no evidence to be sought, no inner object to be scrutinized, no competing hypothesis to be weighed. The point comes out if we consider this situation: suppose I say, "I believe the Koh-i-noor diamond is a crown jewel". Or don't just suppose it, for I do say this. And suppose, as is the case, that I know what the words I have just uttered mean, and that I am making a sincere assertion. Finally, let us suppose that both you and I agree on these points, namely that I did utter those words and that in doing so I was sincerely uttering words I understood. From these suppositions it follows that I know what I believe, but it does not follow that you know what I believe. The reason is simple: you may not know what I mean. Your knowledge of what my words mean has t o be based on evidence and inference: you probably assume you have it right, and you probably do. Nevertheless it is an hypothesis. Of course, I may not know what I mean by those words either. But there is a presumption that I do, since it does not make sense to suppose I am generally mistaken about what my words mean; the presumption that I am not generally mistaken about what I mean is essential to my having a language -to my being interpretable at all. To appeal to a familiar, though often misunderstood, point: I can do no better, in stating the truth conditions for my utterance of the sentence "The Koh-i-noor diamond is a crown jewel" than to say it is true if and only if the Koh-i-noor diamond is a crown jewel. If I say this, I utter a tautology, but

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if you give the truth conditions of my utterance in the same words, you are making an empirical claim, though probably a true one." According t o Dummett, Brentano "...refused to admit that a mental act.. .had any inner object distinct from the external one, namely a mental representation.. .by which the external object was presented t o the mind".12 Dummett points out that this leaves Brentano with the problem of thoughts (or apparent thoughts) about objects that don't exist, a problem, Dummett remarks, Brentano "did not succeed in resolving". But the problem is easily solved if we give up the idea that there are inner objects or mental representations in the required sense. There is no need to suppose that if there are no such inner objects only outer objects remain t o help us identify the various states of mind. The simple fact is that we have the resources needed t o identify states of mind, even if those states of mind are, as we like t o say, directed to non-existent objects, for we can do this without supposing there are any objects whatever "before the mind".

"For a more detailed discussion of the argument in this paragraph, see my "First Person Authority", Dialectica 38 (1984), pp. 101-111. ''Michael Dummett, The Interpretation o f Frege's Philosophy, Duckworth, 1981, p. 57. Dummett refers us to Franz Brentano, Psychology from a n Empirical Standpoint, ed. 0. Kraus, trans. L. McAlister, London, 1973, p. 79.

PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES, 1 Consciousness, 1991

Thought and its Objects Akeel Bilgrami To the question of the title of his paper -what is present to the mind?- Donald Davidson's answer is: nothing. He argues that if the phrase 'objects of thought' is intended to suggest that thinkers stand in a psychological or epistemological relation with such objects, then we must deny that the phrase picks out anything at all. What is his reason for rejecting such objects? It is simply this. By definition, these objects of thought, these 'epistemological intermediaries', as he calls them, are such that thinkers cannot be wrong about what they are. But, he says, there is nothing like that, nothing about which we cannot on occasion be wrong. He, then, asks two questions. First, he wonders, since many philosophers think that selfknowledge or first person authority is ensured only if there are objects of thought, does i t follow from denying objects of thoughts that we do not know what we think? He argues that it does not. There is no threat that the denial brings to self-knowledge. He goes on to give a positive account of why we can have self-knowledge despite denying objects of thought. The positive account shows how there could be no interpretation of agents at all if we did not assume that

agents had self-knowledge or first person authority. The very idea of interpretation necessitates self-knowledge. Second, he wonders, since many philosophers have thought that the relational nature of the predicate forces us t o posit objects of thoughts, does denying objects of thought amount t o giving up on the idea that 'believes7 is a relational predicate? He canvasses various criticisms philosophers have offered of the idea that it is a relational predicate, and then reminds us of compelling arguments which he himself has given against such criticisms many years ago. He concludes that one ought not t o deny that it is a relational predicate. He then offers his own positive account of how t o reconcile the relational nature of 'believes' with the denial of objects of thought. 'Believes7relates the thinker to an object, about which we need never say that it is "within the ken of the believer". He or she need not stand in any psychological relation with it. It is not that sort of object. What sort of object is it, then? He answers this question by saying that it is none other than an utterance of our's (the interpreters7) which we take t o have the same truth-conditions as the belief whose content is being identified. This involves no commitment t o saying that it is something with which the thinker stands in a psychological or epistemological relation. I find myself in general agreement with Davidson on both questions. But Davidson uses his answers t o draw certain philosophical consequences and to make certain polemical points against recent philosophical work on intentionality. He thinks his answer t o the first question shows that philosophers like Putnam are quite wrong t o think that the doctrine of externalism about intentional content threatens selfknowledge. He thinks his answer to the second question shows that philosophers like Searle and Fodor are quite wrong t o think that indeterminacy and holism threaten the reality of intentional states. Here I find myself unconvinced that Davidson has fully and adequately addressed the worries that these philosophers are concerned with. Not that I think that the worries are unanswerable. It is Davidson's response to them that I have qualms about. I will spend the rest of this comment discussing these two consequences that Davidson draws from his denial of objects of thought. I will first

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look a t the consequences he draws from his answer to the question of self-knowledge, and then to the consequences he draws from his answer to the question about the relational nature of the predicate 'believes'

1 Self-Knowledge and Objects of Thought The denial of objects of thought is intended by Davidson to have a devastating effect at once on conflicting philosophical conceptions of the relation between self-knowledge and intentional content. On the one hand, there is a conception held by certain internalist philosophers who believe that only if there are these internal objects of thought can we guarantee that we have self-knowledge. Descartes, and some of the empiricists were such philosophers. On the other hand, there is a conception held by certain externalist philosophers who deny that there are these inner objects of thought and who, as a result, are happy to deny self-knowledge. He cites Putnam among these. He argues that they are both wrong and they are wrong for the same reason. They both share an assumption that brings them to their wrong conclusions. The assumption is that only objects of thought will guarantee self-knowledge. Let me elaborate on this and then comment on it. Davidson poses the following question: how can externalism, the doctrine that our intentional contents are constituted by items in the external environment, allow for selfknowledge? And this is his answer: The suggestion I am proposing about the nature of the propositional attitudes applies directly to a problem that has troubled a number of philosophers in recent years. There are convincing arguments to show that the correct determination of the contents of beliefs (and meanings and other propositional attitudes) depends in part on causal connections between the believer and events and objects in the world of which he may be ignorant. A standard example is Putnam's twin-earth case. We are invited to imagine, I'm sure you will remember, that there is a twin to our Earth which is, in all immediately

discernable respects, identical with our earth. On it is my doppelganger, molecule for molecule the same, having been exposed to the same conditioning, and having exactly the same linguistic dispositions. Yet one of us believes it is water he sees before him (me) when the other believes it is twater. The explanation is that there where there is water on Earth there is twater on Twearth, though no one has yet detected the difference. Since there is no inner or psychological difference between me and my twin, neither of us has any reason to say he believes on thing rather than the other. Therefore neither of us knows what he believes. So there may be, and perhaps always are, non-subjective factors, factors unknown to the thinker, which decide what the "object of thought" is. If the identity of the "object of thought" is partly dependent on factors of which the person is ignorant, doesn't it follow that the person doesn't know what he thinks? The answer is that it doesn't follow. It would follow if the object used to identify my thought were something I had to be able to discriminate in order to know what I think. But this is what we have abandoned.'

Davidson, as I said, has argued that internalist philosophers have assumed that thoughts take objects which are inner epistemological intermediaries, and they have assumed this in order t o account for the special fact of first-person knowledge of thoughts. In the hands of the internalists he thinks the assumption amounts t o what he calls a 'myth of the subjective'. For reason that I mentioned a t the very beginning, he thinks that we should not assume that thoughts take any objects. He claims that once we give up on the objects of thought thesis, we can then see that there is no threat that externalism poses t o first person authority, since it is only the obsession with that thesis which would have conjured up the threat in the first place. As I said, it does seem t o me that that the denial of objects of thought is a very important part of the proper understanding of the contents of the propositional attitudes. Attributors 'Donald Davidson, "What is Present to the M i n d , in this volume, p. 214.

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of thought use their own sentences to state what the contents of an agent's propositional attitudes are, and this need not and should not imply that anything is the object of the agent's attitude^.^ And I think the criticism of internalism in the first suggestion is quite telling against many internalists, especially Descartes, but also the empiricists, who did take thoughts to have inner objects given to consciousness. Even so, I worry about the following. In itself, the denial of objects of thoughts does not tell us why there is not a problem for self-knowledge if one thinks the world external to us determine our thoughts in the specific way suggested by P ~ t n a m .It~ does not seem t o even so much as address that issue. I think Davidson's diagnosis of what is wrong with Putnam's acquiescence in the rejection of self-knowledge is unsatisfyingly general and does not pay enough attention to the way in which the acquiescence flows from Putnam's specific externalism. It is Putnam's (and Kripke's and Burge's somewhat different) specific externalism which poses a threat to self-knowledge rather than an assumption on Putnam's part that only objects of thought will ensure that we (by and large) have self-knowledge. To repeat, Davidson says that internalists assume that our intentional states have objects in the sense of epistemological intermediaries which we cannot be wrong about. This is how internalists explain first person authority. He strongly disagrees with them that this is how to give an explanation or account of first person authority. I myself have no quarrel with this criticism of internalism. He then argues that externalists such as Hilary Putnam go straight from the denial of such internalism to the conclusion that we often do not know what we believe, that we lack first person a ~ t h o r i t y . ~ Davidson finds this equally unacceptable and charges such 2Not epistemological intermediaries in consciousness nor even anything sentence-like, as is sometimes claimed today. 31n this paper Davidson discusses only Putnam's externalism, but in (Davidson 1987) he raises the same question -is externalism compatible with self-knolwedge?- and gives the same answer with a quite different externalism in mind, Burge's social externalism. 'Burge, unlike Putnam, does not accept this conclusion that we may lack self-knowledge. Putnam accepts the conclusion because he thinks

externalists with wrongly accepting and sharing an aspect of internalist faith, which is that first person authority can only be explained by the positing of epistemological intermediaries that serve as the objects of thought, and which we cannot be wrong about. That is, he says that they swing to their conclusion about lack of self-knowledge because they share the assumption with internalists that self-knowledge requires the thesis about inner objects of thought which are directly perceived. Giving up on the thesis, i.e., giving up on inner objects of thoughts, they give up on self-kn~wledge.~ Let's look a little harder at the criticism of Putnam. The trouble with the criticism is that it takes Putnam to be saying that a mere denial of internalism is sufficient to give up on first person authority. It is only if we take Putnam this way, and then take internalists to be committed to the objects of thought thesis, that lay Putnam open to Davidson7s criticism that he shares an assumption with the internalist. But it does not seem to me that Putnam's idea that we may not always know what we believe turns on just simply denying the internalist position with its commitment to internal objects of thought. Rather it turns on the specific externalist commitments which flow from his (and Kripke's and Burge's) views on reference and meaning.6 I think there is enough textual evidence in Putnam's "Meaning of Meaning" (where his that there is another notion of content, narrow content, which raises no problem for self-knowledge since i t is purely internal. Burge denies that there is any need for a second notion of internal content and argues that his externalism does not imply a denial of self-knowledge. In (Bilgrami 1991) and much more briefly in (Bilgrami 1987) I argue that Burge must adopt a second notion of content, given his specific form of externalism. 5 0 r a t any rate, as I said in the last footnote, they retain selfknowledge by bifurcating content, i.e., by manufacturing a second notion of purely internalist content. And Davidson will presumably want to say that this second notion falls once again within the thesis that there are epistemologically intermediary objects of thought. 'This is a common conflation in the few discussions of this subject that exist. See, for instance, Crispin Wright in (Wright 1989a, p. 630) -especially his long footnote 6)- for a move from the specific externalisms of Putnam and Burge t o remarks about why externalism need not threaten self-knowledge, remarks which talk much more generally about externalism rather than about these specific externalist views. A genuine defence of their externalisms against the charge that they

externalism is first discussed) to establish that this is what he took his denial of first person authority, over many of our beliefs, to turn on. But even apart from textual evidence of his intentions, the point is easy to demonstrate. Putnam is committed to an externalism that comes from a certain scientific essentialist view of natural kind terms and concepts. And it is this that gives rise to the problem for self-knowledge. If many of my concepts -say, the concept of water- are fixed by the objective natures of kinds in the environment, then my intentional contents which are composed of these concepts -say, the belief that water will quench thirst- will not be something that I will have (full) self-knowledge of, if I have no knowledge or only partial knowledge of their objective natures; that is, if I have not the appropriate knowledge of chemistry in this case, and the chemical facts about water at least partly determine my concept of water, then I will at best have only partial knowledge of the contents which contain my concept of water. If Putnam were to join Davidson in denying objects of thoughts, could he avoid this consequence of his externalist view? I don't see how he can. Here is a way of showing why he cannot. Suppose a chemical ignoramus on Earth believes that water is not H 2 0 . It would seem that if we take Putnam's externalist view this person believes in something inconsistent. But that is an absurd conclusion to come to. A chemically ignorant person is chemically ignorant not logically deficient. It would be absurdly uncharitable to attribute something that makes him come out to be a logical idiot. How can Putnam, then, get out of this absurd conclusion that seems to follow from his externalism? Only, I suggest, by saying that this person does not know (or does not know fully) what he believe^.^ If he does not know what he believes then attributing an inconsistent belief is not absurdly threaten self- knowledge must take up their externalisms in detail and must respond to them. 7 ~ (nBilgrami 1991, ch.2), I canvass various things Putnam, Burge and other externalists of a certain kind might say to get out of this dilemma of attributing either inconsistent beliefs or beliefs not known to the agent himself. And I reject them all. I think they are stuck

uncharitable. But this has landed Putnam with just the rejection of self-knowledge which we said he cannot avoid. No amount of denying that there are objects of thought is going to help Putnam avoid this conclusion. I think that Putnam's intent can also be established by pointing out that these externalist commitments better explain why it is that, for Putnam, first person authority fails to hold only in some cases only (cases, where an agent does not know the right chemistry or some other of nature's essences.). Whereas if one gave Davidson's explanation for why Putnam gives up on self-knowledge, then self-knowledge would fail t o hold much more comprehensively than Putnam seems to want to say; more comprehensively, because if one believed that self-knowledge of thoughts was a result of thoughts having inner objects and one also thought that there are no inner objects of thought, then presumably one would not restrict one's denial of self-knowledge to the sorts of cases (natural kinds) Putnam d i s c u s ~ e s . ~ It is because Davidson thinks that Putnam's surrender of first person authority is due t o his sharing an underlying assumption with the internalism he rejects (rather than because of his specific externalist commitments), that he thinks it is sufficient t o criticize Putnam's externalism for sharing the objects of thoughts thesis with internalism. But it is not sufficient. The correct and complete diagnosis of Putnam's abandonment of self-knowledge for externally constituted contents is that his specific externalism sometimes does not allow for self-knowledge, when it should. The proof of this point is that one can formulate a specific alternative externalist view of content that does not threaten self-knowledge with this dilemma and they must b e impaled on one of the horns or they must posit another notion of content that is not externalist in their sense in order t o avoid being impaled. I cannot possibly reproduce that discussion here. 'Putnam casts his externalist net a little wider than I am indicating here. I t is more than natural kind terms that will raise a problem for self-knowledge. If one takes Kripke's externalism about proper names that too will raise a similar problem. Burge casts the net even wider by bringing in a social externalism over and above a scientific essentialist one.

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in this way. One can, for instance, claim that the external world constitutes concepts but not have any truck with the scientific essentialism or rigid designation that is essential t o Putnam's view of certain terms and concepts that go into the specification of concepts. Spelling out the details of this externalism is an important and complex task, which I cannot possibly take on here. I have tried t o do so in (Bilgrami 1987) and more elaborately in (Bilgrami 1991). My point for now is that there are externalisms which threaten self-knowledge and there are externalisms which do not. Davidson's diagnosis for why an externalist need not abandon self-knowledge does not distinguish between these externalisms and is, as a result, an unsatisfyingly general diagnosis. Putnam's externalism threatens self-knowledge even if Putnam were t o grant t o Davidson that objects of thoughts are not the only way t o guarantee self-knowledge. Once you adopt Putnam's externalism nothing will guarantee self-knowledge. It is his particular externalism that gives rise t o the problem. Any complete diagnosis must show how it threatens it and propose an externalism that does not. This unsatisfyingly general diagnosis in Davidson feeds into the similarly unsatisfying positive suggestion he goes on t o make about how t o make externalism compatible with selfknowledge, once we give up on objects of thoughts. His answer a t the end of the paper is that there can be no denying the presumption of first person authority or self-knowledge because without it agents could not be said t o be "interpretable a t all". In an earlier paper, (Davidson 1987)' he makes the same point more explicitly: When we have freed ourselves from the assumption that thoughts must have mysterious objects, we can see how the fact that mental states as we commonly conceive them are identified in part by their natural history not only fails to touch the internal character of such states or to threaten first person authority; it also opens the way to an explanation of first person authority. The explanation comes with the realization that what a person's words mean depends in the most basic cases on the kinds of objects and events that have caused the person to hold the words to be appli-

cable; similarly for what the person's thoughts are about. An interpreter of another's words and thoughts must depend on scattered information, fortunate training, and imaginative surmise in coming to understand the other. The agent herself, however, is not in a position to wonder whether she is generally using her own words to apply to the right objects and events, since whatever she regularly applies them to gives her words the meaning they have and her thoughts the contents they have. Of course, in any particular case, she may be wrong about what she believes about the world; what is impossible is that she is would be wrong most of the time. The reason is apparent: unless there is a presumption that the speaker knows what she means, i.e., getting her own language right, there would be nothing for an interpreter to interpret. To put the matter another way, nothing could count as someone regularly misapplying her own words. First person authority, the social character of language, and the external determinants of thought and meaning go naturally together, once we give up the myth of the subjective, the idea that thoughts require mental objects.

This positive suggestion is intended t o show that there is no incompatibility between externalism and self-knowledge. But I think it is arguable that it does not do that and the only reason Davidson thinks it does is that he has conceived of the incompatibility in unsatisfyingly general terms, he has conceived of it as flowing from a misguided commitment t o objects of thought. This way of conceiving of the incompatibility ushers out the relevance of specific versions of externalism, it ushers out the relevance of specific versions of externalism which do indeed make externalism incompatible with self-knowledge. It therefore allows Davidson t o go away with the impression that his positive remarks get rid of the incompatibility. Instead all that the positive remarks do is answer a very different question, they answer a question that has nothing specifically t o do with externalism: what, in general, explains the undeniable fact that agents whom we are interpreting have self-knowledge of their own thoughts, given that in our interpretations we are not specifying objects of

thought within their epistemological ken? And it answers it by appealing to the necessity of the interpreter's assuming or granting that agents, whom they are interpreting, have such self-knowledge. Now putting aside for a moment whether this answers the question adequately, the relevant point for now should be that the question itself, though it does focus on the interpreter or the third person rather than the agent himself, is nevertheless quite different from the initial question we were interested in (and that Davidson himself has posed in this passage): how is self-knowledge compatible with externalism? I think that Davidson is under the impression that because his explanation is given from the point of view of what the third person or interpreter must acknowledge about the first person or interpretee's authority over his own states, it is an explanation which does answer the initial question. But externalism is a much more specific doctrine than one which says that contents are constituted by the deliverances of a third person or interpreter. The externalism, in the question we are interested in, claims that the interpreter makes essential appeal to items in the agent's external (social or non-social) environment as constituting his contents. Davidson's positive explanation of self-knowledge makes no mention of this appeal at all. I would suggest that however self-knowledge of intentional contents is explained generally, an explanation of how selfknowledge of contents is retained, despite the appeal to external items in the determination of content, must turn on coming up with specific and detailed positive proposals for an externalism that does not threaten self-knowledge. It must come up with a precisely specified externalism that is a genuine alternative to the Putnam-style externalism which Davidson is discussing and trying to make compatible with self-knowledge. I do not believe, for the reasons I gave, that Putnam's externalism can be made compatible with self-knowledge. I would agree with Putnam that if we endorsed his externalism there is no way that externalist contents would not threaten self-knowledge. One cannot make it compatible by giving a general account of what accounts for self-knowledge in the way that Davidson suggests. The question before Davidson is what makes self-knowledge pos-

sible, given externalism. His positive account which invokes the need t o posit self-knowledge t o find agents interpretable a t all does not address this question. The claim that interpretation requires self-knowledge on the part of the interpretee is unhelpful with the problem that arises for self-knowledge when interpretation and content-attribution proceeds along Putnam's (or Burge's lines) i.e, proceeds by looking t o scientific essences (or t o experts' opinion) in the attribution of concepts t o the interpretee. Just pointing out that the very idea of interpretation requires self-knowledge on the part of the interpretee, therefore, says something unsatisfyingly general about the problem we are struggling with: how t o make externalism compatible with self-knowledge?

2

Indeterminacy, Holism and Objects of Thought

Let me now turn t o Davidson's discussion of what he takes t o be another consequence of his denial of objects of thoughts. Here the target of his criticism is not Putnam, but Searle and Fodor. He thinks that they too have missed the point that there are no objects of thoughts, and have therefore unnecessarily raised worries about certain sensible views of intentional content. Here again I think Davidson has misunderstood the source of Searle's and Fodor's worries. I do no think their worries stem from a hidden commitment t o objects of thought. Let me elaborate. Having denied that taking 'believes' as a relational predicate requires that there be objects of thought within the epistemological or psychological ken of thinkers, Davidson suggests that the relational nature of the predicate is best understood in terms of an interpreter's assigning his own sentences t o specify the contents of a thinker's thoughts. He spells this out with the analogy of assigning numbers in the measurement of temperature. And having done so, he takes up Searle's and Fodor's worries that this will introduce a holism and an indeterminacy in the study of intentional con-

tent which will, in turn, destroy the possibility of taking a realist attitude towards intentionality. He argues that once we give up on objects of thought, then neither indeterminacy nor holism is a threat to their status as real things. His argument could be summarized as follows. Taking a realist attitude towards a class of sentences is to take them as being capable of truth and falsity. Attributions of thought and meaning could be taken to be true or false, despite indeterminacy; only now there is no temptation to think that a statement of the conditions of their truth or falsity specify objects of the mind. Indeterminacy is inevitable since there are no such objects which would bestow determinacy. But the analogy with numbers and temperature which he offers, and the consequent analogy of indeterminacy with metres and feet, Fahrenheit and Centigrade, shows that there is no serious threat that indeterminacy brings with it. After all, saying "Its 32' Fahrenheit" does not mean one is not saying something true or false, just because one could also have said "Its 0' Centigrade". However, I would have thought that Searle's objection is not that objects of thought exist and so I know from my gaze on an object present to my mind, which of two meanings that two translation (or truth) manuals have attributed to me is the right one.g I would think that Searle's point is the more sophisticated one that if one takes Davidson's and Quine's third person approach to these things, one is saddled (in the attribution of meanings and thoughts) with the interests of the interpreter. And, I would have thought that he argues that these interests of the interpreter have the effect of producing indeterminacies in the attributions which will not be of the trivial and harmless kind of indeterminacy that 91n fact there is a question about whether Searle is even committed to the 'objects of thought' thesis. In (Searle 1983) he explicitly announces a Fregean conception of sense and thought but explicitly denies that he is committed to Frege's view of senses grasped by agents. Perhaps Davidson has in mind to argue that anybody who embraces the kind of Cartesian internalism about the mind in the way that Searle does must, despite this explicit denial, embrace objects of thought. But the argument for that is not itself explicit in Davidson's paper.

Davidson's analogy with Fahrenheit and Centigrade scales for the measurement of temperature suggest. It is true that Searle sometimes speaks as if even examples of trivial indeterminacy are threatening in some way to the reality of intentional states. But here I think he does so, not because he is insisting on an 'object of thought' conception of intentionality, but because he is not following through on his own argument from the point about interests of the third person to see that the point only applies if there are non-trivial examples of indeterminacy. Thus the issue between Searle and Davidson lies in the question whether the the third person approaches can impose enough constraints of the right sort, such that the interest-relativity inherent in these approaches is kept enough in check so as to ensure that the indeterminacies are trivial and harmless. Davidson has argued elsewhere that his principle of charity will keep things under such check but, unfortunately Searle has never joined him in any dispute about the relevance of this to indeterminacy.10 But that is where the deep issue lies and that is an area quite distinct from the question of objects of thought, since the issue can arise even after denying that there are such objects. The case of Fodor seems to me even more complicated and distant from the thesis about objects of thought. Fodor's objections to holism and how it threatens the reality of thought and meaning has not much to do with indeterminacy. His worry is that if the content of a thought is the content it is because it has inferential relations with other thoughts, then there will be no saying that one person has the same thought as another since their surrounding beliefs are bound t o be somewhat different. What is worse, for almost exactly the same reason, there will be no saying that someone's thought is the same from one waking moment to the next. This will ''In (Bilgrami 1989) I argue that Davidson's early formulations of the principle of charity will not keep things enough under check and i t is probably what Searle has a t the back of his mind when he criticizes radical interpretation for being too caught u p with the third person point of view. I argue further that subsequent formulations by him and others like Grandy are more likely to keep things in check and I explicitly connect this point with the entire question of realism about intentional states. See also (Bilgrami 1991, ch. 5.)

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make generalizations about beliefs and desires impossible and there will be no sense in which such states will explain behaviour. If intentional states are not pulling their weight in explanations, that will, in turn, put into doubt the status of intentional states as real things. It will undermine any realist attitude toward intentional states. Now this worry does not seem to me to be one that the analogy with numbers and the measurement of temperature will help to allay. For even within the triviality and harmlessness of a holistically induced indeterminacy, the holism that Fodor worries about will survive; it will survive because meanings and contents, as Davidson has always insisted, will always get their specification and individuation in the holistic context of an indefinite number of other meanings and contents. That holism is a fact about meaning that persists even if the indeterminacy it induces is harmless. And it is a fact that Fodor finds far from harmless. And what he finds harmful in it would not be erased if he joined Davidson in denying objects of thought. What is neurotic about Fodor's worry flows from a quite different source than a commitment to objects of thought. It flows from a deeply mistaken view, I believe, of the relationship between a theory of meaning which (I agree with Davidson) is necessarily holistic and the contents which go into the explanation of behaviour. A theory of meaning specifies the meanings of the terms of an agents language, or one might say, it fixes his concepts. I think of these specifications (even if they were given in the clauses of a truth-theory) as summarizing the beliefs a person has associated with each term. Since no two persons are likely to have the same beliefs associated with a term, no two persons, at the level of a theory of meaning, are likely to share concepts. But when we attribute contents to beliefs and desires of agents to explain actions, these contents are not composed of those unshared concepts. Rather the particular local context in which a particular action is being explained will allow us to distil out of the aggregate of beliefs associated with the concept (at the non-local, meaning-theoretic level) just what is required for that locality. So, imagine two agents. One knows chemistry the other doesn't. Hence their concepts of water at the

meaning-theoretic level are quite different since their respective aggregates of beliefs associated with 'water' will not overlap. Yet if in a particular explanatory locality we are explaining their common action of drinking tumblers full of a certain substance to quench their thirst, we may distil out of their differing aggregate sets of beliefs those that are necessary for the contents that go into that explanation. These may well coincide; for the chemical beliefs that the chemically knowledgeable one of them associates with water can be left out of the explanation of that action of his. It is irrelevant t o it. Fodor's mistake is to think that the relationship between a theory of meaning on the one hand and particular contents on the other is such that the concepts fixed by the former go exactly and directly into the latter, i.e, the concepts fixed by a theory of meaning go exactly and directly into the contents which explain behaviour." If they did go directly into it then what he finds harmful about holism will indeed be harmful to intentional content. But it is a mistake t o think that they go into it directly. And the point I want to make against Davidson is that I don't see that this mistake, if it is a mistake, is related in any obvious way to any commitment to objects of thought. I have argued that Davidson is right to deny that there are objects of thought in the epistemological sense, and right to insist that neither self-knowledge nor the relational nature of 'believes' is under threat, if there are no such objects of thought. I have, however, expressed reservations against the consequences he has drawn from these insights for his criticisms against certain contemporary views of intentionality due t o Putnam and Searle and Fodor. If these philosophers are wrong t o hold the views they respectively hold about self-knowledge and indeterminacy and holism regarding intentional states, it is not for reasons having t o do with objects of thoughts. "This is a very widespread mistake in the study of meaning and content, and it has partly to do with unclarity about what one should mean by the idea that truth-theories give meanings and truth-conditions individuate content. For a more detailed discussion of these themes and an account of content which is not based on this mistaken conception, see (Bilgrami 1991, ch.1 and ch.4.)

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Bilgrami, A. 1985: "Comments on Loar", Contents of thought, eds. R.H. Grimm and D.D. Merrill (Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press), Bilgrami, A. 1987: "An Externalist Account of Psychological Content", Philosophical Topics 15. Bilgrami, A. 1989: "Realism without Externalism", Journal of Philosophy 86. Bilgrami, A. 1991: Belief and Meaning (Blackwell). Bilgrami, A. (forthcoming): "Self-Knowledge and Resentment", Philosophical Topics (Special Issue on The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam). Burge, T . 1979: "Individualism and the Mental", Midwest Studies i n Philosophy 6: Studies in Metaphysics, eds. P. French, T. Uehling, H. Wettstein (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Burge, T. 1988: "Individualism and Self-Knowledge", Journal of Philosophy 85. Davidson, D. 1987: "Knowing One's Own Mind", Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 60. Fodor, J. 1987: Psychosemantics (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press). Kripke, S. 1972: "Naming and Necessity", Semantics for Natural Language, eds. D . Davidson and G. Harman (Boston: Reidl). Kripke, S. 1979: "A Puzzle about Belief', Meaning and Use, ed. A. Margalit (Dordrecht: Reidel). Putnam, H. 1975: "The Meaning of 'Meaning'", Language, Mind and Knowledge: Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy

of Science 7, ed. K . Gunderson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Searle, J. 1983: Intentionality (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press). Searle, J. 1987: "Indeterminacy and the First Person", Journal of Philosophy 84. Wright, C. 1989a: "Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy of Mind: Sensation, Privacy and Intention", Journal of Philosophy 86.

PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES, 1 Consciousness, 1991

Belief, Self-Ascription, and Ontology James E. Tomberlin The present essay continues my examination of alternative accounts of the psychological attitudes -believing, desiring, intending, and the like. In [94] I addressed Castafieda's unique guise theoretic proposal as set out in his [14], [15], [16], and elsewhere. My [97] and [98] treat the novel version of two-schemism developed by Boer and Lycan ([7], [54], and [55]). And I critique the intriguing self-ascription theories of Brand ([a], [9]) and Lewis ([52], [53]) in Tomberlin [96] and [99], respectively. Here my plan is t o focus on the important but very different form of self-ascription impressively articulated in Chisholm [30], [31], and [32].l

1 Belief De Se Consider: (1) The local restaurant critic believes that he himself is feared. 'As such this paper serves to extend, refine, and unify my earlier [95] and [ l o l l .

(2) The local restaurant critic believes that the local restaurant critic is feared. (3) The local restaurant critic believes, of the local restaurant critic, that he is feared. In a series of formidable and provocative essays HectorNeri Castaiieda has argued that items like the de se belief (1) are semantically i r r e d ~ c i b l e .In ~ particular, he contends, ( I ) is not equivalent with either the belief de dicto (2) or the belief de re (3). Though (1) implies (3), neither (2) nor (3) imply (1): as documented by situations involving amnesia or selective ignorance, it will always be possible that (2) and/or (3) are true while (1) is false because the local restaurant critic is unaware that he himself is the critic in question.3 Chisholm concurs. Like Lewis ([52] and [53]) and later Brand ([a], [9]), Chisholm independently theorizes that the various psychological attitudes are attitudes toward properties instead of, say, propositions ([30] and [31]). By way of a sketch, his account of believing includes the following key ingredient^.^ Taking the notion of directly attributing a property as conceptually primitive (or undefined), Chisholm stipulates that if x directly attributes a property t o y, then x = y. Next, he introduces belief de se as an abbreviation of the above primitive via the biconditional ([32], p. 23): (4) x believes himself t o be F if and only if x directly attributes t o x the property of being F . ~ 'In his ([12], 1131, [27], and elsewhere). 3 ~ a s t a f i e d a ' sirreducibility thesis has won increasing favor. In some form or another, i t is upheld by Baker ([3], [4]), Brand ([8], [9]), Devitt [37], Fitch 1401, Lewis ([52], [53]), Perry [61], Pollock (1701, [72]), Richards [73], Saarinen [82], and Sosa [93]. There are searching examinations of Castaiieda's own views of he himself in Boir and Lycan ([6], [7]), Brand [a], Perry [62], Saarinen 1821, and Smith [91]. Castaiieda's 1231 is a reply to Boer and Lycan [6], his (1181 and 1221) are replies to Perry and Brand, and he replies to Smith and Saarinen in Castaiieda [25]. There is a discussion of BoCr and Lycan [7] on these matters in Castafieda [26] and Tomberlin 1971. I have addressed Castaiieda on he himself as it relates to his guise theory in Tomberlin 1951. 4Some of this summary coincides with portions of Tomberlin [ l o l l . 'Here and elsewhere the numbering is mine.

To accompany this notion of direct attribution, Chisholm supplies a concept of indirect attribution ([32], p.19):

(5) x indirectly attributes to y the property of being F = d f . There is a relation R such that (a) x bears R to y and only to y and (b) x directly attributes to x a property P which is necessarily such that (i) whatever has P bears R to something that is F, (ii) whoever conceives P conceives being F, and (iii) it is possible to attribute P directly without directly attributing being F .6 This definition takes digesting. Suppose, for example, that Sue is the only student in my logic class who has so far mastered natural deduction within the numerous systems of quantified modal logic. If, now, I should directly attribute to myself the property of being a philosopher such that the only student expert in the class at modal natural deductions is fond of the Converse Barcan formula, then I have by the above definition indirectly attributed to Sue the property of being fond of the Converse Barcan formula. Unlike direct attribution, therefore, indirect attribution can be (and often is) to others. Indeed, belief de re is characterized as follows ([31], p. 107 and [32], p. 23):

(6) x believes, of y , that he/she/it is F = df x directly or indirectly attributes to y the property of being Fa7 By this account, inasmuch as one may indirectly attribute a property to oneself without directly attributing that property to oneself, it is a straightforward matter that the de se (1) entails, but is not entailed by, de re (3). For Chisholm, then, belief de re is but a special case of the primary de s e belief. What now of belief de dicto -the acceptance of propositions (= the bearers of truth values)? Here, Chisholm maintains, 'The phrase 'x directly attributes to x.. . ' in clause (b) serves to correct a misprint in Chisholm's definition ([32], p.19). '1 here ignore the fact that Chisholm gives a considerably more involved characterization of de re belief ([31], pp. 107-120), since the complication does not affect my present discussion.

there are two conditions under which a person may accept a proposition: first, x can accept p by directly attributing (to x) the property of being such that p; and, second, x may accept p by indirectly attributing to p the property of being true ([31], pp. 38-39).8 Accordingly, de se (1) neither implies nor is it implied by the de dicto (2). This ingenious approach t o the vexed notion of belief, it ought t o be noticed, admits of a straightforward extension to the other psychological attitudes -desiring, hoping, intending, and such- while yielding a theoretically elegant solution to the standard problem of referential opacity as it besets intentionality. To illustrate, we need only consider the following scenario. After months of careful planning and excited anticipation, Bob and Mary have arrived for a vacation in Spain. During their first week this transpires. While dining at one of the justly celebrated restaurants in Valencia, Bob observes that they feature Zarzuela de Marisco -a famous medley of shellfish done with a wonderfully fragrant sauce of tomato, saffron, and an appropriate white wine. Though dearly fond of seafood, Bob suffers from a severe allergy t o mussels. Not to fear, he is assured, the medley will be prepared without them. Fine. In preparation for this main course, they enjoy a superb first course of mixed tapas: mushrooms in garlic sauce, chicken and cured ham croquettes, and frogs' legs in green sauce. After a leisurely second course of Caldo Gallego, the waiter arrives with the Zartuela. A splendid rendition, they concur, upon tasting; but only moments later, to Bob's utter panic, the dish is found to be replete with mussels. Now in this unfortunate situation it seems clear that ('7)-(9)are all true: 'An important qualification: In [31] and [32] Chisholm eschews both particularistic attributes as well as singular propositions. With an ontology confined to individuals, properties and relations, and states of affairs, he reduces general propositions, times, and possible worlds to sub-species of states of affairs ([31], pp. 123-132). But Chisholm's ontological reductionism does not end there. In ([32], p.29) states of affairs are now banished in favor of an ontology of just individuals and attributes. If I understood this correctly, it appears that Chisholm's position as of his [32] is that there is no such thing as genuine belief de dicto.

11. BELIEF,SELF-ASCRIPTION, AND ONTOLOGY 237

(7) Bob wanted to eat his portion of Zarzuela. (8) Bob's portion of Zarzuela = Bob's serving of a shellfish medley containing mussels. (9) It is false that Bob wanted to eat his serving of a shellfish medley containing mussels. And yet, it may be argued, from (7) and (B), along with the indiscernibility of identicals and other plausible assumptions, this follows: (10) Bob wanted to eat his serving of a shellfish medley cont aining mussels. Because (9) contradicts (lo), something is amiss somewhere. Owing to Chisholm's view of attitudes de se, a ready solution is at hand. To begin with, (7), (9), and (10) are parsed as (7a) Bob wanted to acquire the property of eating a portion of Zarzuela, (9a) It is false that Bob wanted to acquire the property of eating a portion of shellfish medley with mussels, and (10a) Bob wanted to acquire the property of eating a portion of shellfish medley with mussels, respectively. Next, (7a) and (9a) are adjudged true; and consequently (10a) must be false. Still, by the indiscernibility of identicals, in order for (7a) and (8) to entail (lOa), (8) has to be transformed into: (8a) The property of eating a portion of Zartuela = the property of eating a shellfish medley with mussels. But (8a) is surely false: since the dish could have been prepared sans the mussels, it is possible that Bob eats a serving of Zartuela without eating any shellfish medley containing mollusks belonging to the family ~ ~ t i l i d a e . ~ '1 am here assuming of course that a necessary condition for property-identity is coextensiveness at every logically possible world. But I am confident that (8a) will remain false under any even remotely viable account of property-identity.

The theoretical elegance and power of Chisholm's intricate account of self-ascription and the psychological attitudes notwithstanding, I think there are serious difficulties with his treatment of belief de se.lo Take, for example, the pivotal tenet that (11) The local restaurant critic believes that he himself is F and (12) The local restaurant critic directly attributes t o the local restaurant critic the property of being F are equivalent. As I understand it, Chisholm would count (12) as an instance of (Ia) in the unrestrictedly valid schema: (I) (a) Person a bears relation R to the property of being F. (b) The property of being F = the property of being G. (c) Thus, a bears R to the property of being G. (A weaker but equally serviceable working assumption would be one to the effect that the positions of both 'the local restaurant critic' and 'the property of being F' in (12) are referentially transparent.) Next, let '4' and '+' be any pair of distinct predicates satisfying these two conditions: (a) they express the same property; and (b) it is possible that the local restaurant critic believes that he himself is 4. For Chisholm, accordingly, the local restaurant critic will directly attribute the property of being 4 just in case he directly attributes the property of being $. Even so, the local restaurant critic may without believing nevertheless believe that he himself is that he is 4, since this critic might not be cognizant that there is only one property here rather than two. It follows, then, that (13) and (14) are not equivalent:

+

(13) The local restaurant critic believes that he himself is q5. ''In what follows I considerably widen and sharpen the set of criticisms presented in my [loll.

11. BELIEF,SELF-ASCRIPTION, AND ONTOLOGY 239

(14) T he local restaurant critic directly attributes the property of being $. Now the above objection, I submit, squarely holds against the versions of direct attribution (or self-ascription) in Lewis ([52], [53]) and Brand ([8], [9]).11 But it does not appear to apply to Chisholm [32]. For there, unlike Lewis and Brand, he adopts an intentional account of property-identity: properties F and G are identical only if they are necessarily such that whoever conceives the one conceives the other ([32], p.32). If I understand this correctly, in the above objection, Chisholm will deny that the local restaurant critic may believe that he himself is 4 without believing that he is +, if and 4 are indeed identical. Against Chisholm's intentional account of property-identity, I offer these doubts, queries, and objections: First, Chisholm, it should be recalled, insists with Castaiieda on the primacy of the 'he himself' locution. In particular, they both affirm

+

(A) x can believe, of x, that he is he himself is 4,

4 without

believing that

thereby denying that belief de se is just a special (but harmless) case of de re belief. Suppose this is so. Then analogous reasoning would appear to dictate: (B) x can believe that he himself is 4 without believing that he himself is +, even though the property of being 4 = the property of being

+.

If, that is, (A) is true because of the ever present possibility of x's not being aware that he is x due t o amnesia, selective ignorance, or whatever else, surely the same sort of considerations apply to (B): it too will hold inasmuch as x may fail to realize that 4 and are one and the same attribute owing to selective ignorance, faulty memory, or whatever. With his

+

"For the argument see my [96] and 1991. There is an important treatment of the metaphysics of self-ascription in Castaiieda 1261; and BoCr [5] contains an excellent survey of Chisholm's general approach to intentionality as set out in Chisholm [31].

intentional account of property-identity, however, Chisholm must deny (B) -otherwise my previous objection to Brand and Lewis tells equally well against Chisholm with the result that (13) and (14) are not equivalent, after all, contra his central theoretical tenet. By rejecting (B), on the other hand, Chisholm seems denied proper theoretical motivation for affirming (A) and the irreducibility of Castaiieda's 'he himself'.12 Second, as he makes abundantly clear, Chisholm's current ontology includes just two sorts of entity: individuals and attributes ([32], p. 28 and elsewhere). Why, then, embrace an intentional account of identity for the latter though not the former? Is it, perhaps, because attributes are abstract whereas individuals are concrete? I think not: classes and numbers, if such there be, are abstract but do not properly have an intentional criterion of identity. Is the reason then because attributes but not individuals are the objects of psychological attitudes? Once more it seems a correct answer is in the negative: concrete individuals are, or should be, bona fide objects of de re attitudes, directly or indirectly. What therefore is it about attributes as opposed t o individuals that brings Chisholm to insist on an intentional criterion of identity for the one while shunning any such for the other?13 12That de se belief is but a special case of belief de re is precisely the view held by Bo2r and Lycan [6] and Salmon [78]; and I at least flirted with this same position in Tomberlin [94]. Lycan [54], [55] and Boer and Lycan [7], I should remark, have softened their earlier view. Adopting a form of t w o - s c h e m i s m for belief ascriptions, they now grant the irreducibility of belief de se for one of these schemes while denying it for the other. I critically examine this fascinating proposal in Tomberlin [97] and [98]. For a lively critique of earlier versions of two-schemism (or "two-factorism") see LePore and Loewer ([50], [51]). There is a powerful critique of Salmon's general view in Schiffer [84], and Salmon gamely rejoins in [81]. For related discussion, see Lycan [56], Fitch [40], and my critical notice of the latter [loo]. 13Like it or not, if an intentional criterion of individuals is adopted, one is well along the path to something close to Castaiieda's guise theory. There are important discussions of guise theory in Clark [33], [35], Plantinga [66], Lee [49], Rosenberg [77], and Sicha [go]. Castaiieda's [19] and [21] are replies to Plantinga and Clark, and he replies to Rosenberg

(Objection: "One need only consider an intentional criterion of identity for concrete individuals to see that it is incorrect ." Reply: The force of such a rebuttal here would appear to be no more or less than if directed instead against an intentional account of property-identity, But Chisholm, I take it, will surely find the objection to be without merit there.) Third, I think that Chisholm's intentional account of property-identity is simply mistaken. According to it, properties F and G are identical only if they are necessarily such that whoever conceives the one likewise conceives the other ([32], p. 32). Now Chisholm takes his technical notion of conceiving an attribute as an undefined conceptual primitive, and I readily own to an incomplete and tenuous grasp of this concept. To the extent that I do understand what it is to conceive a property, however, it seems that Chisholm's account of property-identity has these unacceptable consequences: (a) no two distinct predicates 'F' and 'G' ever express the same property, since there might always be someone who (rationally or otherwise) conceives F without conceiving G; and (b) for any person x, and properties F and G, if x believes that F and G are distinct, they are.14 I for one possess no such infallibility as to whether properties are identical or diverse. Quite the contrary, questions of property-identity are notoriously difficult, and it ought to be possible for one to make an erroneous judgement.15 (Objection: "But x's conceiving F only if he conceives G (and vice versa) does not require that x believes that F and G are identical. For it may very well happen that F and G are one and the same, dictating that x conceives the one and Sicha in [25]. For the record, I deem intentional accounts of identity for individuals and attributes equally unpalatable. "Because I share Chisholm's realism concerning properties, the explicit quantification over them is deliberate. But reductionists and/or nominalists may reformulate in whatever fashion they deem appropriate without disrupting the objection. 15Similar difficulties appear to plague Castaiieda's guise-theoretic intentional account of identity for his individual guises, but I have no space to pursue that matter here.

just in case he conceives the other, even though x wrongly believes that F and G are distinct." Reply: Perhaps. But if so, this serves to firmly reinstate (B) even under Chisholm's intentional account of propertyidentity: (B) x can believe that he himself is 4 without believing that he himself is $, even though the property of being q5 = the property of being $. With the truth of (B), however, Chisholm's treatment of de se belief succumbs to my earlier objection against Lewis and Brand, after all.)

2 De Re Attitudes and the Nonexistent Because of an ontology confined to actual individuals and attributes (some exemplified, others not), together with a relational theory of believing and his favored Russellian treatment of definite descriptions, Chisholm's approach demands that no person ever has genuine de re beliefs toward nonexistents.16 Now surely, if, say, Ponce de Leon may really search for the fountain of youth, hope to find it, and such, he should also be able to entertain beliefs of or about the object of his search. To deny that Ponce de Leon had any de re beliefs toward the fountain of youth, therefore, Chisholm must select one of these alternatives: (a) deny the truth of items like (15) Ponce de Leon searched for the fountain of youth; or (b) interpret (15) in such a way that its truth does not stand Ponce de Leon in a genuine de re relation to the (nonexistent) fountain of youth. Chisholm, quite correctly, rejects option (a). Instead, after his account of believing as a relation between a believer and an attribute, it is proposed that the intentional verb in (15) be taken as the dyadic relation searched for (or endeavored to find), holding between Ponce 16As opposed, for example, to Meinongian views such as Castaiieda ([27], [28], and elsewhere) and Parsons [59].

de Leon and an attribute. That is, (15) is parsed along the line of something like ([32], pp. 56-57): (15a) Ponce de Leon endeavored to find the attribute of being a unique site of the only fountain of youth. Since there is such an attribute even though it fails to be exemplified, (15) -thus construed- does not require that Ponce de Leon stand in a genuine relation to the nonexistent fountain of youth. Chisholm's view of this matter is akin to one advanced independently by David Kaplan in his classic essay "How to Russell a Frege-Church" [45]. To begin with, Kaplan rightly observes that Russell's own primary-secondary scope distinction for eliminating descriptions within intensional contexts fails in the case of (15), owing to the fact that its intentional verb takes no sentential complement. In consonance with Chisholm, Kaplan suggests, why not model (15) semantically (and ontologically) as the assertion of a dyadic searched for relation among Ponce de Leon and an attribute, with the resulting paraphrase turning out much like (15a) above ([45], p. 729)? A tempting view indeed for those who adhere to a relational treatment of intentional attitudes while insisting on an ontology devoid of nonactual individuals. But this theoretical attraction aside, I don't think the proposal works. To explain why, exactly, let me start with Kaplan, turning thereafter to Chisholm. By Kaplan's view, (15) requires that Ponce de Leon stand in the same searched for dyadic relation to any attribute identical with being a unique site of the only fountain of youth. Within Kaplan's background framework of standard possible worlds semantics, this attribute proves to be identical with (say) being a unique site of the only fountain of youth or a unique odd number exactly divisible by two inasmuch as they are coextensive at every logically possible world. From this and (15a), consequently, we are free to infer that (16) Ponce de Leon searched for the fountain of youth or the odd number exactly divisible by two.

Because (15) is true while (16) is doubtless false, it seems that (15a) cannot be a correct interpretation of (15)) after all. This objection, it should be observed, does not stand or fall with the customary (but I think untenable) possible worlds semantics tenet that properties coextensive at every logically possible world are identical. Set this particular tenet aside, that is, and adopt any other account of property-identity so long as it is an extensional one.17 Next, let 'is a unique 4' and 'is a unique +' be any pair of distinct predicates satisfying these two conditions: (a) the two predicates express the same property; and (b) it is possible that Ponce de Leon sought the 4-er. According to Kaplan's proposal, Ponce de Leon will seek the 4-er just in case he seeks the +-er. Contravening this, since Ponce de Leon may not be cognizant that the 4-er is the +-er, (17) and (18) are not equivalent: (17) Ponce de Leon searched for the 4-er. (18) Ponce de Leon searched for (the attribute) of being a unique

+.

What now of Chisholm on this issue? True, thanks to his intentional account of property-identity, Chisholm's treatment appears to escape the above difficulty. But it does so only at high cost: all of the criticisms directed at his intentional criterion in the previous section apply here mutatis mutandis.

3 Singular Propositions and Particular Characteristics In Person and Object [29] and before, Chisholm's ontological horizon was quite expansive. Besides concrete individuals, it included all of the following: properties and relations; states of affairs; propositions, singular as well as general; and possible worlds. In the case of propositions, he assumed, the "Like, for instance, the finer-grained structured version of propertyidentity in Lewis ([53], p. 56).

proper role of singular declarative sentences, monadic or relational, with names or indexicals as subject terms, was to express singular propositions. These were t o be contrasted with geneml propositions-those expressed by such sentences as 'Any decent cookbook of Spanish cuisine includes multiple recipes for tapas', 'There are superb fish dishes in Thai cooking', and, since Chisholm favors a Russellian treatment of definite descriptions, 'The most popular stew in Madrid is cocido'. This two-fold division among propositions matched a similar partition between attributes: in addition t o properties like being a Spanish chef and being a first mte garlic sausage, each capable of multiple exemplification, there were supposed to be particular characteristics such as being Penelope Casas and being me, properties christened individual essences and regarded as very special inasmuch as the individuals who have them do so necessarily and it is impossible that any other individual possess them.'' To accompany his version of essentialism, Chisholm embraced a relational view of believing and the other intentional attitudes: the de dicto belief (19) Jones believes that there are excellent ethnic restaurants in Los Angeles is treated as expressing a dyadic relation between Jones and a certain proposition, and all other forms of belief -de re and whatever else- constitute subspecies of the primary de dicto variety ([29], pp. 159-175). Chisholm has radically departed from the above view. To begin with, the previously liberal ontology has grown increasingly austere. In his contribution to Sosa [30] and The First Person [31], Chisholm eschews both particularistic attributes and singular propositions; sentences appearing to express singular propositions are to be parsed so as not to commit one "There are excellent discussions -even if mutually conflictingof Chisholm's essentialism in Person and Object in the essays by Castaiieda [17], Heidelberger [42], Henrich [43], and Plantinga [65], all collected in Sosa [92]. To illustrate the conflict here, Castaiieda would deny Chisholm knowledge of even Chisholm's individual essence, while Plantinga campaigns on behalf of this very sort of knowledge plus ever so much more.

to the existence of such items ([30], pp. 317-318 and [31], chapters five-six). With an ontology confined to individuals, properties and relations, and states of affairs, he reduces general propositions, times, and possible worlds to subspecies of states of affairs ([31], pp. 123-132). But Chisholm's ontological reductionism does not stop there. In his [32], states of affairs are now banished in support of an ontology consisting of just individuals and attributes: the state of affairs, all men being mortal, for example, becomes the attribute of being such that all men are mortal; and to say that this state of affairs obtains only means that something has the attribute in question ([32], p. 29). Take now the various psychological attitudes and the matter of their proper account. Here Chisholm remains an ardent relati~nalist.'~In The First Person, for instance, one finds: Believing must be construed as a relation between a believer and some other thing; this much is essential to any theory of belief. ([31], p. 27)20

But even so there is a severe alteration of theoretical stance: whereas before the basic form of believing was held to be a dyadic relation among a believer and a proposition, Chisholm would now jettison propositions from this model entirely in favor of attributes -the primary form of believing, he presently theorizes, comes as a dyadic relation between a believer and an attribute; and all other sorts of belief are to be explicated in terms of this basic non-propositional form. By way of closing, I attach this sceptical response to Chisholm's current ontological frontage: ''As opposed to each of the following: (a) the non-relational views of consciousness articulated in Sellars ([86], [87]), Rosenberg ([74], [75], [76]), Clark ([34], [36]), and others; and (b) the recent "No-Theoryn view of believing defended by Schiffer in his brilliant and controversial [83]. I plan to critically address Schiffer's fascinating proposal in the near future. 2 0 methodological ~ caveat: although I share Chisholm's conviction that believing is a relation, his remarks here suggest that we may know that any non-relational theory must b e mistaken even before it is fully articulated. I think this suggestion erroneous.

11. BELIEF, SELF-ASCRIPTION, AND ONTOLOGY 247

First, with the inclusion of properties like being such that all men are mortal it appears that for Chisholm the traditional problem of truth -what is it, and what, if anything, bears it?- has been transformed into the problem of exemplification: what is it, exactly, and when does an individual do it? But what theoretical benefit is supposed t o accrue from this transformation? Second, why, besides the fact that they are widely regarded as creatures of darkness, oust singular propositions? As I understand it, Chisholm's reasoning goes like this. To begin with, a singular proposition like John makes a superb roux, if such there be, would have to be a structured entity containing John and a certain property as constituents. In addition, Chisholm endorses the "existence-entailing" principle that if a structured object exists, so too must its parts. It follows, therefore, that singular propositions are contingent items if any of their constituents are: at worlds where John fails to exist, singular propositions containing him won't either. For Chisholm, however, singular and general propositions, if they exist, are abstract entities; as such, with attributes they should exist in every possible world. Since the concrete individual John is plainly a contingent object, populating some possible worlds but not others, the above considerations preclude singular propositions. Now I quite agree that singular propositions are best construed as structured complexes; otherwise it is difficult t o fathom how they would stand in familiar logical relationships concerning quantification and identity, for example. But I firmly decline the existence-entailing principle for structured entities. To explain why, suppose we agree (with Chisholm) that there are no nonactual objects, possible or otherwise, and that quantification is ~ b j e c t u a l . ~ Then ' one faces two fundamentally different approaches to quantificational validity. According to standard quantification, bona fide singular

211nstead of, say, both substitutional as well as Sellarsian quantification. For important discussions of the substitutional account, see Marcus [58], Dunn and Belnap [38], and Kripke [46]. The rudiments of a Sellarsian account are presented in Sicha ([88], [89]).

terms all serve t o designate. As its variables range over act u a l ~ a, nd there are no non-denoting terms among the substituends, the quantificational operations universal inst antiation and existential generalization are valid without restriction. By the lights of free logic, on the other hand, nondesignating terms are permitted among the stock of genuine singular terms. Because quantification remains objectual and one continues t o countenance actual objects exclusively as values of the variables, universal instantiation and existential generalization are no longer valid without restriction. Instead, we find and

t- ( A ( t l x ) & ( ~ Y ) (=Yt ) ) 3 (3x)A, where [(3y)(y = t)] formulates a truth just in case the singular term in question designates some actual object.22 With objectual quantification and a commitment t o just actuals, I think there is no denying that free logic is superior t o standard quantification. To see this, let us assume for the moment that every actual individual is spatio-temporally located. Then (20) should be true: (20) (Vx)(x is spatio-temporally located). Even so, inasmuch as Hercules does not actually exist,23 22This constitutes the core of free logic. By now a large number of free logics have been developed, differing among themselves over various other details. T h e interested reader may consult any of Burge ([lo, [ l l ] ) , Hintikka [44], Leblanc and Hailperin [48], Lambert and van Fraassen [47], and Schock [85]. - 2 ' ~ e r e I disagree with the theoretically ingenious proposal -suggested by van Inwagen [lo81 and Richard Grandy in discussion- to the effect that 'Hercules', 'Sherlock Holmes', and the other singular terms of fiction turn out designating actual objects: abstract items dubbed fictional chamcters. If I understand this view correctly, it has the unpalatable consequence that there are no nondesignating singular terms. For suppose 't' is held to b e nondesignating. Since we now make u p a story using it, this term will come out designating, after all. Worse yet, descriptions like 'the unique non-fictional character' will (paradoxically) designate a fictional character once we tell an appropriate story.

(21) Hercules is spatio-temporally located is surely false; and consequently, as free logic demands, universal instantiation is not unrestrictedly valid. If so, however, these same considerations appear to impugn Chisholm's existence-entailing principle: since (20) does not entail (21), in any situation where the former is true and Hercules does not exist, the proposition Hercules is spatio-temporal ly located exists all right even though it is false.24 It follows, contra the existence-entailing principle, that the existence of singular propositions does not require the existence of (all of) their constituent^.^^ If singular propositions are to be expelled, we require some other reason for doing so. Third, and finally, I think some of Chisholm's very own tenets dictate the ontological reification of particularistic attributes. To bring out this need, let us return t o Chisholm on belief de se. Here, it should be recalled, he holds that (22) and (23) are not equivalent under either a de dicto or a de re construal of the latter: (22) John believes that he himself is a master chef. (23) John believes that T is a master chef. (Here 'T' stands for any singular term designating John but containing no reflexive element such as 'he himself'.) Now this view of (22) and (23), I submit, carries with it the consequence that (24) and (25) are not equivalent either: 2 4 ~ e s i d ethe s pivotal assumption that the bearers of truth-values are propositions, I likewise assume that if a proposition has a truth-value at a world, it exists a t this world. 251do not mean to imply that the combination of actualism, free logic, and objectual quantification is the proper treatment of quantificational validity. Quite the contrary, in Tomberlin [97] and Castaiieda ([20], [24]) there is an argument that free logic is inadequate. To my mind, the inadequacy of free logic, coupled with a need for genuine singular terms that do not designate actual individuals, leads to the collapse of actualism -the view that there neither are nor could have been objects that do not exist. But I cannot pursue this vexing matter here. There are excellent (even if jointly conflicting) treatments of actualism and related modal issues in Adams ([I], [2]), Fine [39], Kaplan [45], Lewis [53], Lycan and Shapiro [57], Plantinga ([63], [64], [68], [69]), Pollock [71], Salmon ([79], [80]), van Inwagen ([log], [110]), and Yagisawa [ I l l ] .

(24) John believes that he himself is self-identical. (25) John believes that he himself is identical with John. In particular, if -as Chisholm contends- (23) may be true when (22) is not, owing to amnesia, selective ignorance, or whatever on John's part, similar considerations compel the possibility that (24) is true even though (25) is false. By Chisholm's definitional schema for belief de se, of course, (24) and (25) are to be parsed as (24a) John directly attributes to John the property of being self-identical, and (25a) John directly attributes to John the property of being identical with John, respectively. Since the former of these may hold when the latter does not, Chisholm's own intentional account of propertyidentity demands that being self-identical is one property whereas being identical with John is another. Clearly, inasmuch as the second of these now qualifies as a genuine attribute, Chisholm appears forced to readmit particularistic attributes, after all. But with the ontological inclusion of singular attributes, I take it, singular propositions will assuredly gain the same footing. This in turn seems to undo Chisholm7s severe ontological backdrop for his non-propositional theory of the psychological attitudes, and one is left to query anew whether propositions might be fit objects of belief.26y27 26AsI presently see it, one should accommodate Castaiieda's profound insights concerning he himself while resolutely steering clear of his own guise theory and Chisholm's attribute theory. To accomplish this, it suffices to properly theorize that believing is a relation between a believer, a proposition, and some one or more other items. In future work, I will set out such a view, delineating the approach I favor from the (rather distantly) related propositional accounts of Salmon ([78], [81]) and Fitch ( [401, [411). 27For rewarding discussion and/or correspondence about various topics of this essay, I am grateful to Roderick M. Chisholm, Hector-Neri Castaiieda, William G. Lycan, Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen, and

[I] Adams, Robert M.: 1974, "Theories of Actuality", NOUS8, 211-231. [2] Adams, Robert M.: 1981, "Actualism and Thisness", Synthese 49, 3-41. [3] Baker, Lynne Rudder: 1981, "On Making and Attributing Demonstrative Reference", Synthese 49, 245273. [4] Baker, Lynne Rudder: 1982, "De Re Belief in Action", The Philosophical Review 91, 363-387. [5] Boer, Steven E.: 1986, "Chisholm on Intentionality, Thought, and Reference", in Roderick M. Chisholm, R. Bogdan, ed., Dordrecht, D. Reidel, 81-111. [6] Boer, Steven E. and Lycan, William G.: 1980, "Who, Me?", The Philosophical Review 89, 427-466. [7] Boer, Steven E. and Lycan, William G.: 1986, Knowing Who, Cambridge, MA, Bradford Books, The MIT Press. [8] Brand, Myles: 1983, "Intending and Believing", in Tomberlin, ed. [102]. [9] Brand, Myles: 1984, Intending and Acting, Cambridge, MA, Bradford Books, The MIT Press. [lo] Burge, Tyler: 1980, "Truth and Singular Terms", in Reference, Truth, and Reality, M. Platts, ed., London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.

[I 11 Burge, Tyler: 1983, "Russell's Problem and Intentional Identity", in Tomberlin, ed. [102]. my colleagues Frank McGuinness, Jeff Sicha, and Takashi Yagisawa. I also thank Lynn Pasquerella [60] for forcing a reconsideration of my critique of Chisholm's account of de se belief, even though I remain unrepentant. I do not mean to imply, of course, any agreement on their part with what has been argued here.

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PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES,1 Consciousness, 1991

Chisholm's Intentional Criterion of Property-Identity and De Se Belief Lynn Pasquarella In a series of recent reviews and articles,' James Tomberlin has argued that Chisholm's direct attribution theory of objective reference has an advantage over similar theories proposed by Myles Brand and David Lewis in that Chisholm's, alone, allows for the semantic irreducibility of the 'he, himself' locution used to describe certain de se beliefs. Yet, Tomberlin contends that Chisholm's account of the de se belief is unacceptable, as well, because it relies on an intentional criterion of property-identity that is not only arbitrary and unwarranted, but mistaken. Tomberlin further maintains that Chisholm's reductionist ontology and his attempt 'See: James Tomberlin, "Critical Review of Ernest Sosa, ed., Essays on the Philosophy of Roderick Chisholm", Now 19 (1985) pp. 136-144. Tomberlin, "Critical Review of Myles Brand's Intending and Acting", Now 21 (1987) pp. 45-53. Tomberlin, "Critical Study of David Lewis", Now 23 (1989) pp. 117-125. Tomberlin, "Critical Review of Radu J. Bogdan, ed., Roderick M. Chisholm", Nous, forthcoming.

t o avoid ontological commitment t o particularistic attributes and singular propositions fails, since some of Chisholm's own theoretical tenets demand countenancing such entities. In what follows, I present a detailed discussion of Tomberlin's objections against Chisholm's account of objective reference. While I find Tomberlin's objections extraordinarily interesting and provocative, I conclude that these objections do not provide a successful challenge to Chisholm's treatment of de se belief. According t o Chisholm's theory of direct attribution, the most plausible solution t o the problem of how it is possible for one thing t o direct its thoughts upon another is one that involves the person him or herself as the primary object of all intentional attitudes. Thus, our reference t o all other things is by way of reference t o ourselves. Since Chisholm's ontology is limited t o properties, individuals, and events or states of things, on the Direct Attribution view of objective reference, mental attitudes consist of relations bet ween persons and properties. Traditional propositional attitudes, therefore, become attributional attitudes, involving ontologically a thinker as the subject; a property, which may be considered the content of thought; and an intentional relation between the subject and the content. The criterion of property identity Chisholm formulates t o accompany his account of objective reference is that "a property P is identical with a property Q if and only if P and Q are necessarily such that whoever conceives the one conceives the other". If P and Q are identical properties, then it will be impossible for someone t o believe that he himself is P without believing that he himself is Q. Tomberlin, however, believes that issues of property identity are notoriously difficult and it seems t o him that an adequate account of objective reference must allow that one can be mistaken about whether the property P is the property Q. Thus, Tomberlin is led t o affirm a thesis denied by Chisholm, namely, "z can believe that he himself is 4 without believing that he himself is 1C, even though the property of being 4 is the property of being 1C,".2 At 2Tomberlin, "Belief, Self-Ascription and Ontologyn (1989) in this volume, p. 239.

the center of the dispute between Tomberlin and Chisholm then is the following question: "Can one be mistaken about property-identity?" It seems that in one sense the answer is clearly "yes" and in another sense the answer is obviously "no". What we need t o discover is whether the sense in which one can be mistaken about property identity would lead t o the conclusion that Chisholm's intentional criterion of property identity and its consequences are untenable. Let's begin then by considering carefully the circumstances under which one can make mistakes with respect t o property identity. Against Chisholm's intentional criterion of property identity Tomberlin proposes as an illustration of genuinely mistaken property identity an example along these lines: Suppose (1) the local food critic believes himself to be fat. It follows on the direct attribution view that (2) the property of being fat is one that the local food critic believes directly of himself. However, let's assume that (3) the property of being fat is identical with the property of being obese. (4) According to Chisholm's intentional criterion of property identity if a property F is identical with a property G, then whoever can conceive F can conceive G. (5) Nevertheless, it is quite possible that the local food critic doesn't know that being fat is the same as being obese. Perhaps, believing 'obese' to mean obedient, he is even horrified at the suggestion that he is obese. In this case the local food critic wouldn't be aware that there is only one property being referred to rather than two. (6) Hence, the local food critic could conceive of being fat without conceiving of being obese. Yet, in considering arguments of this sort Chisholm would most certainly deny that the conclusion follows from the premises. That is, even though the local food critic may fail t o know that the English words 'fat' and 'obese' have the same sense, it doesn't follow that he can conceive of the property of fatness without conceiving of the property of obesity. If being fat is indeed the same as being obese, then one cannot believe oneself t o be fat without believing oneself to be obese. Tomberlin seems to assume from the fact that (1) the local food critic believes that he can use the word 'fat' t o correctly describe himself but doesn't believe that the word

'obese' correctly describes him, it follows (2) that he can believe himself t o be fat without believing himself t o be obese. This reasoning would require us t o say that no foreign speaking person who does not speak or understand English could ever believe him or herself t o be fat. But surely that can't be right. But, from the fact that one doesn't believe the word 'obese' applies t o oneself, it doesn't follow that one doesn't believe oneself t o be obese. Here the local food critic's misunderstanding is one involving words not properties. Thus, this case provides no grounds for accepting Tomberlin's thesis or denying Chisholm's criterion of property identity. What would count as a genuine mistake with respect t o property identity according to Chisholm? Consider the following: Suppose again that (1) Hans, the local food critic, believes himself to be fat. Let's further assume that (2) the property of being fat is the property Mary most wants to avoid. In this case, Hans, even if he knows Mary, may have no conception at all that Mary is concerned with the property of being fat. Since Mary has ambitions of being a pilot, Hans may believe she is more concerned about being near-sighted. (3) Here Hans believes that there are two properties instead of one, since he thinks the property of being fat is diverse from the property of being Mary most wants to avoid. He is mistaken about property identity in this case, however, because, as we've seen, the property of being fat is the same property Mary most wants to avoid.

It is important t o note that while Chisholm wants t o allow for mistakes in property identity of this sort, they pose no problem for the Direct Attribution view. That is, one shouldn't be misled into thinking that it follows that (4) if there is just one property being referred t o in the above case rather than two, in believing himself t o be fat, Hans thereby believes himself t o have the property Mary most wants t o avoid. There is no way t o get this conclusion from the previous steps. To do so would require an argument of the following form: (a) Being F is identical with being G.

(b) The property of being F is one that Hans believes directly of himself. Therefore, (c) The property of being G is one that Hans believes directly of himself. In the above argument the letters 'F' and 'G' may be replaced by any predicate -for example, "near-sighted", "wise", "fat". Predicates, in turn, can be replaced only by other predicate expressions having the same sense as the original predicate expression. They can not, however, be replaced by terms or substantival expressions such as "the property of being fat". In the above schema, if 'F' is replaced by the predicate "fat", and we substitute the expression "that which Mary is most concerned about having" for 'G' in (a) and (c), the form of the argument can't be preserved. In replacing "G" in this way, we end up with ill-formed sentences which, once corrected, change the form of the argument necessary for the conclusion that "Hans believes himself to have the property Mary is most concerned about having". Are there other cases of mistakes with respect to property identity? Just as one can be mistaken in believing that one is thinking of diverse properties when one is not, Chisholm would grant that one can make erroneous judgments of property identity of the following sort: Frank believes that the property Jane and Sally both admire him for is his honesty. And indeed this is the property Jane most admires about Frank. Sally, however, admires Frank most for his humor. Thus, Frank judges that the property Jane most admires about him is identical with the one Sally most admires about him but Frank is mistaken about property identity in this case. He thinks that there is only one property being referred to instead of two. But again, this example is quite different from the kind Tomberlin would need to support his thesis that one can believe oneself to be 4 without believing oneself to be $, where 4 is $. In fact, it seems clear that providing such an example will not be possible if we are dealing with only one property. What would make Tomberlin think otherwise?

Let's suppose that the predicates 'drunk' and 'inebriated' refer t o the same property. Tomberlin might offer as a reason for maintaining that an individual can believe himself t o be drunk without believing himself t o be inebriated the individual's claim: "I keep telling you I'm drunk, but I'm not inebriated". We might even imagine that the individual in question is in such a drunken stupor that he has forgotten what the word 'inebriated' means. The person is telling us that he believes himself t o be drunk but doesn't believe himself t o be whatever he's being accused of in being called 'inebriated'. Yet again, from the fact that the person doesn't know what the word 'inebriated' means, it doesn't follow that he doesn't believe himself t o be inebriated. There are a number of other circumstances under which one might emphatically report "Sure I'm drunk, but I'm not inebriated". In believing himself to be drunk but not inebriated, the captain of the Exxon oil tanker, the Valdez, may have made such a claim because he falsely believes the term 'inebriated' means "offensively drunk". And while he often believes himself t o be drunk, he thinks whenever he is drunk he is especially likable. Or, the captain may believe that the terms 'drunk' and 'inebriated' have different emotive senses. He may think that only alcoholics become inebriated and surely he's not one of them. Or, he may believe that being 'inebriated' denotes a more medically dangerous condition in addition to being drunk in the way that one may think being 'obese' is not the same as being 'fat' since the former involves morbidity that the latter doesn't. In reviewing the above cases in relation t o Tomberlin's thesis about property identity, one needs t o be careful not t o confuse schematic letters with variables. The thesis that x can believe himself t o be q5 without believing himself t o be ?1, even though q5 is identical t o Il, is not a thesis about words, but about properties. Yet there is the danger that the Tomberlin type counter-examples will involve a misuse or misunderstanding of language and not a mistake in property identity of the kind needed t o support Tomberlin's claim. Thus, Chisholm would not agree that there are conditions

under which the captain believes himself to be drunk without believing himself to be inebriated where the property of being drunk is the property of being inebriated. However, with Chisholm's firm commitment to denying that "X can believe himself to be 4 without believing himself to be +, even though 4 = +" Tomberlin contends that Chisholm now lacks the proper theoretical motivation for accepting Castaiieda's irreducibility thesis with respect to the "he, himself' locution that "X can believe x is 4 without believing that he himself is 4 even though he himself is X?"3 In defending his acceptance of the latter thesis while denying the former, Chisholm might point out that there appear to be genuine cases along the lines of those proposed by Castaiieda, where x can believe x to be without believing himself to be 4. Hence, Chisholm's theory of Direct Attribution must account for such cases and it does so by way of the distinction between direct attribution and reflective indirect attribution. On the other hand, Tomberlin hasn't shown that one can be mistaken about property identity in a way that would render either Chisholm's rejection of Tomberlin's thesis or the intentional criterion of property identity employed by Chisholm either mistaken or unwarranted. Until that is done it would appear that Chisholm has the correct theoretical motivation. Nevertheless, Tomberlin persists in his search for Chisholm's justification in offering an intentional criterion of identity for properties. He asks, "What, therefore, is it about attributes as opposed to individuals that brings Chisholm to insist on an intentional criterion of identity for the one while shunning any such for the ~ t h e r ? "In~ criticizing Chisholm's intentional criterion of property identity as arbitrary, Tomberlin argues from the position of Chisholm's having rejected a similar criterion for individuals. Yet this isn't quite right. It's too strong to say that Chisholm shuns an intentional identity criterion for individuals. Rather, it is the case that he doesn't propose one. Why not? Well, we might start off by considering what a criterion of identity for individuals would look like. In proposing any criterion of identity, x's identity

+

with y will depend on x and y standing in the same relation to some other of the same entity or entities. But, Chisholm remarks "it's not clear to me that we have any concepts by reference to which we can formulate a criterion of individual identity".5 Possible candidates might include places or individual essences. Thus if we admit places into our ontology we could say of the individual things x and y that they are identical if and only if they are always in the same place, or if for some z, x and y stand in the same relation to z. Taking a different approach, we could say x is identical with y if x and y share an individual essence. Hence, they stand in relation t o the same haecceity. Since Chisholm accepts neither places nor haecceties into his ontology, he rejects both approaches. Further, as Chisholm points out, such attempts to provide a criterion of identity for individuals will always leave some other individual the identity of which needs to be addressed. That is, if x and y are identical because they share the same place what makes the place x and y share the same place and if x and y are identical because thy share an individual essence, what makes x's individual essence the same as y's? There is, however, a mark of identity for properties as Chisholm sees it and that is their conceivability. According to Chisholm, properties are examples of what have been called entia rationis -things which are capable of being grasped or conceived by rational beings. What differentiates properties and individuals on Chisholm's view is that it is the essence of properties to be capable of being conceived. While the conceptualist would maintain that it is the essence of properties to be conceived, Chisholm's more liberal "intentionalist" account regards the essence of properties t o be their conceivability. Individuals, on the other hand are not essentially conceivable things. And though Chisholm would agree that individual things can serve as the genuine objects of de re attitudes, he wouldn't assume (as Tomberlin seems to in asking his question) that one can conceive or grasp of individuals in the way one can properties. Nor would he agree that one can attribute individuals along with properties. 5 ~ o d e r i c kChisholm, "Events Without Times: An Essay on Ontology" (1989) forthcoming, p. 27.

Tomberlin has failed t o show that Chisholm's theory rests on a mistaken or unwarranted account of property identity that should be regarded as providing a basis for rejecting Chisholm's treatment of de se belief and the accompanying solutions to puzzles Tomberlin proposes for Brand, Kaplan, and Lewis. What now of Tomberlin's arguments against Chisholm's ontology? Tomberlin notes that in eliminating propositions, once viewed as the bearers of truth, traditional problems of truth become problems of exemplification. He begins his attack by calling into question the benefits of making such a In proposing his reductionist ontology, Chisholm assumes the principle of parsimony according to which the fewer things called on to explain matters, the better. Given two theories, each invoked in order to explain the same thing and where both are adequate, it would seem reasonable to prefer the simpler of the two. The proper question is whether the more parsimonious theory is truly adequate. This is something Tomberlin doubts. What he finds most troubling is Chisholm's exclusion of singular propositions from his ontology. Tomberlin makes two attempts to demonstrate that Chisholm cannot successfully eliminate singular propositions. The first involves a principle he terms the "existence-entailing" principle which states that if a structured object exists, so too must its parts. Using this principle Tomberlin goes on to construct an argument, he takes to be a representation of Chisholm's reasoning in eliminating singular propositions.7 The argument is this: If singular propositions existed, they would be structured entities with individuals and properties as constituents. If a structured object exists, so too must its parts. Thus, singular propositions are contingent if any of their constituents are contingent. Yet, propositions, if they exist, are abstract and exist in every possible world. Since singular propositions wouldn't exist in any world in which 6Tomberlin, op. c i t . p. 247.

' B i d p. 247.

their constituents didn't exist, there are no singular propositions. First, it should be noted that Tomberlin doesn't refer to any passages where Chisholm explicitly makes this argument, and it's not clear that the reasoning Tomberlin has represented in "ousting singular propositions" is indeed Chisholm's. Chisholm would, nevertheless, support the existence entailing principle upon which the argument is based. It is difficult to imagine a structured object existing without its parts existing unless one has in mind the Aristotelean view that, strictly speaking, the parts of an object, while they are parts of the object, are not in themselves actual. Tomberlin, however, rejects for other reasons the existence entailing principle and the conclusion to which it leads. He proceeds t o explain beginning with a reminder that there are two approaches to quantificational validity when dealing with systems where there are no nonactual objects and quantification is objectual. There is standard quantification and then there is free logic. Tomberlin maintains, With objectual quantification and a commitment to just act u a l ~ I, think there is no denying that free logic is superior to standard quantification. To see this, let us assume for the moment that every actual individual is spatio-temporally located. Then (20) should be true: (20) (Vx)(x is spatio-temporally located). Even so, inasmuch as Hercules does not actually exist, (21) Hercules is spatio-temporally located is surely false; and consequently as free logic demands, universal instantiation is not unrestrictedly valid."

Since (20) does not entail (21), where (20) is true and Hercules does not exist, the proposition Hercules is spatio-temporally located will exist, according to Tomberlin, even though Hercules does not. Thus he concludes that the existence entailing principle fails. In spite of Tomberlin's claim to the contrary, there is denying that free logic is superior to standard quantification. In

fact, Chisholm would do so. Underlying his disagreement with Tomberlin is a fundamental ontological issue. The issue is whether or not there are truths that can be construed only as predicating something of objects that do not exist. Tomberlin assumes with Meinong that objects which are such that there are no such objects can nevertheless serve as the subjects of true predication. Supporting this view is the fact that there are many truths which ostensibly pertain to objects of which there are no such objects. For instance, it seems t o be the case that the following all express truths: "Sherlock Holmes lives on Baker Street", "Hercules had twelve prodigious labours imposed on him", and Meinong's "The golden mountain is golden". Chisholm, however, in following Brentano and Russell would say that while such claims may appear to express "truths", they should not be taken t o be of the form "A is F". On Chisholm's robust sense of reality, there are no literal truths pertaining to nonexistent objects. Truths which seem to refer to nonexistent objects can be paraphrased in such a way that we can avoid commitment to entities that do not exist. Since Chisholm's approach enables us to avoid adopting free logic, Tomberlin cannot conclude that free logic has the advantage over standard logic in allowing that the false proposition Hercules is spatiotemporally located exists even though Hercules dos not without begging the basic ontological question. Tomberlin's second attack on Chisholm's ontology attempts to go further. Here Tomberlin is concerned with showing not only that Chisholm hasn't provided us with good reason for eliminating singular propositions but that Chisholm's own criterion of property identity dictates an acceptance of the particularistic attributes Chisholm eschew^.^ According t o Chisholm, all properties are purely abstract objects. This means that while there are many properties which are such that only I have those properties and also many propnrties which are such that I am the only thing that will ever have had those properties, for instance, the nth person to be born under such-and-such circumstances,

there are no properties which depend for their existence on any concrete individual. Hence, Chisholm rejects those "universals as particulars" which Stout said existed. On Stout's view, if you and I both have a headache, then, in addition to you and to me and that abstract object which is the property of being a headache, there is that particular headache which you have and that particular headache which I have. Where the former would depend for its existence of me, the latter would depend on you. Because Chisholm denies particularistic attributes of this sort he says, "it would be a mistake to infer from 'There exists and x such that x is identical with x', that there is a property, being identical with x which x has".1° If there were such individual essences, where one's essence would be a property that one has necessarily and that nothing else could possibly have, Chisholm has said, presumably each one would be able to grasp his or her own individual essence. Yet he is not aware of any such property. But now Tomberlin asks us to consider the following claims:

(24) John believes that he himself is self-identical. and

(25) John believes that he himself is identical with John. For Tomberlin, both sentences "appear to be genuine instances of the schema" 'x believes that he himself is F'." Thus he says on Chisholm's view since John can directly attribute to John the property of being self-identical without directly attributing the property of being identical with John, Chisholm's own criterion of property identity requires that being self-identical is one property and being identical with John is another. Therefore, while Chisholm may want to deny individual essences along with the singular propositions that imply them, it's not clear to Tomberlin that Chisholm can successfully escape ontological commitment to either of these entities. ''Chisholm, "Some Questions About Self-Atributionn, unpublished manuscript, 1987. p. 4. "Tomberlin, "Review of Ernest Sosa, ed., Essays on the Philosophy of Roderick M . Chisholm", pp. 140-141.

12. PROPERTY-IDENTITY A N D DE SE BELIEF

273

In response, Chisholm would suggest that Tomberlin has too readily inferred the literal truth of the sentence "John believes he himself is identical with John". It is unlikely that John himself would express his belief in this way and, given this, we have to ask, "What exactly is John believing in this situation?" The language used seems to presuppose that there is a clear sense of being identical with John. As we've seen, Chisholm would deny this. John may attribute to himself the property of being named 'John' or any number of unique properties he alone has. These are all different, however, from the universal as particular of being identical with John. So Chisholm would grant that Tomberlin may think that there are such properties as the property of being me and that one can thereby attribute such properties. Further, Tomberlin's own theory of belief may imply that this is possible. But none of this implies that when John believes himself to be identical with John that he is in fact attributing a genuine property to himself. For Chisholm, an adequate theory of properties need not include concrete particulars and, so far as I can see, there is nothing Tomberlin presents that would require Chisholm to think otherwise.12

'1 am indebted to Roderick Chisholm, James Tomberlin, and Hector Castaiieda for helpful discussions and correspondence.

Contributors D. M. Armstrong, Department of Traditional and Modern Philosophy, University of Sydney. Akeel Bilgmmi, Department of Philosophy, Columbia University. J. I. Biro, Department of Philosophy, University of Florida a t Gainesville. Donald Davidson, Department of Philosophy, University of California a t Berkeley. Daniel C. Dennett, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University. Brian O'Shaughnessy, King's College, London. Lynn Pasquarell~,Department of Philosophy, University of Rhode Island. Georges Rey, Department of Philosophy, University of Maryland. David M. Rosenthal, Center for Graduate Students, The City University of New York. John R. Searle, Department of Philosophy, University of California a t Berkeley. Ernest Sosa, Department of Philosophy, Brown University. James E. Tomberlin, Department of Philosophy, California State University, Northridge.

Enrique Villanueva is a research fellow at the Instituto de Investigaciones Filodficas in the Universidad Nacional Aut6nom a de Mdxico in Mkxico City. He has published Lenguaje y Privacidad, 1984, Ensayos de Historia Filosdfica, 1988, and is the author of Las Personas, forthcoming. He is the editor of the series Simposio Internacional de Filosofia published by the Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mdxico. He is the Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Program in Cognitive Science at the Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mdxico, and the President of the Sociedad Filodfica Ibero Americana.