THE PHILOSOPHY OF DANIE~ DENNETT
Con tribu tors Lynne Rudder Baker • Ned Block • Fred Dretske • Ivan Fox Joseph Levine • Eric Lormand • Jeff McConnell Brian P. McLaughlin • John O'Leary-Hawthorne • Georges Rey Mark Richard • David M. Rosenthal • Carol Rovane Michael Slote • Joseph Thomas Tolliver • Robert Van Gulick Stephen Webb • Stephen L. White • Daniel Dennett
Volume 22
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Number 1 & 2
PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS FOUNDING EDITOR: Robert W. Shahan
EDITOR: Christopher S. Hill
Department of Philosophy University of Arkansas
Address correspondence not pertaining to subscriptions to:
PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS Department of Philosophy 318 Old Main University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR 72701 t' Copyright 1995 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas. Published by The University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Philosophical Topics VOLUME 22. NUMBER 1 & 2 SPRING AND FALL 1994
THE PHILOSOPHY OF DANIEL DENNETT
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Contents
I. COlltent Meets Consciollsness Lynne Rudder Baker
,
23
What Is Dennett's Theory. a Theory. of? Ned Block
3. Differences that Make
No Difference
41
Fred Dretske
59
4. Our Knowledge of the Internal World
Ivan Fox
5. Out offill' Closet: A Qualophill' Joseph Le\ine
COl~frollts
QllaloJ71lObia
6. Qualia! (Nm\' Sho"'ing at (/ Theater near You)
107 127
Eric Lormand
7. III Defcnse (If the Knowledge AI;r.;II/1lent Jeff McConnell
157
8. Dellnett's Logical BchCll'iorism
189
Brian P. McLaughlin and John O·Leary-Hav.'thorne 9. Del/I/eft's UI/realistic P,\Tchology
259
Georges Rey 10. What 1.\'11 't (/ Beli(/,?
Mark Richard
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
291
11. First-Person Operationalism and Mental Taxonomy David M. Rosenthal
319
12. The Personal Stance Carol Rovane
351
13. The Problem of Moral Luck Michael Slote
397
14. Interior Colors Joseph Thomas Tolliver
411
15. Dennett, Drafts. and Phenomenal Realism Robert Van Gulick
443
16. Witnessed Behm'ior and Dennett's IlltellfioJlal Stance Stephen Webb
457
17. Color and Notional Content Stephen L. White
471
18. Get Real Daniel Dennett
505
1. SCALE CP I;\" THE FOX ISLANDS THOROFARE
506
ReplY to Fox
II. DRETSKE'S BLIj\;D SPOT
511
ReplY to Dretske
III. TRl'TH-MAKERS. COW-SHARKS. AND LECTERNS
517
ReplY to McLaughlin and 0 "Learr-Hml'lhorne, Richard. Baker. and Vv'ebb
IV. SUPERFICIALIS:-.1 VERses HYSTERICAL REALISM ReplY
to
530
ReI'
V. OTTO AND THE ZOMBIES
537
Reply {o LeI'ine and Van Gulick
VI. HIGHER-ORDER THOUGHTS Al'.'D MENTAL BLOCKS
543
Repll' to Rosenthal and Block
VII, QUAL/A REFUSE TO GO Ql'IETLY
551
Rep/r to To/lil'er, White, McConnell, and Lormand
VIII. LUCK. REGRET. AND KINDS OF PERSONS Reply to Slote and Romne
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
55H
PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS VOL.
22
NO.
I
&
2,
SPRING
AND
FALL
1994
Content Meets Consciousness
Lynne Rudder Baker UJliI'crsity of Massachusctts, Amherst
In Consciousness E\pfailled, Daniel C. Dennett investigates consciousness from an empiricaL third-personal point of view. The facts of consciousness are to be validated, not by a subject's own introspective authority, but by neurophysiology. Citing neurophysiological research, Dennett discredits one model of the brain ("the Cartesian Theater") and replaces that model with a more empirically adequate model of the brain ("'the Multiple Drafts model"). Like most other investigators of consciousness, Dennett focuses on sensory phenomena that are putatively conscious. However. since much of what we report as conscious is intentional ("I just can't stop thinking about yoU"),1 and since Dennett's theory of intentionality makes no appeal to brain processes, the question arises: How can Dennett's neurophysiological method accommodate (putatively) conscious episodes with intentional content? How is Dennett's theory of consciousness, which identifies conscious states with particular hrain events, related to his theory of content. which does not identify "contentful" states with brain events'? Speaking of his overall project. Dennett says: My fundamental strategy has always been the same: first. to develop an account of content that is independent of and /l/ore .filllci(lI1ll'l1lulthan consciousness-an account that treats equally of all unconscious content-fixation (in brains. in computers. in
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
evolutIOn's "recognitIOn" ot propertIes ot selected deslgns)and second, to build an account of consciousness on that foundation. First content, then consciousness.'
Since Dennett wants to erect his theory of consciousness on the foundation of his theory of content. it is of more than ad hominem interest to explore how these two halves of Dennett's project fit together. After setting out the two halves of Dennett's project-the theory of content and the theory of consciousness-I shall consider two points at which content meets consciousness: (i) reports of conscious belief, and (ii) putative events of content-fixation in the brain. I shall try to show that Dennett's theory of content does not have the features that could be a foundation for a physicalistic theory of consciousness. Then, I shall locate a fundamental tension between the two theories in the metaphor of "depth." Finally, I shall urge that. in the investigation of the mind, Dennett's intentional-stance theory is methodologically superior to his theory of conscIOusness.
DENNETT'S TWO HALVES Dennett's theory of content is his well-known intentional-stance theory. Intentional-stance theory was developed as a theory for interpreting behavior of rational agents. From the intentional stance. we discern patterns in our own and others' behavior: We spontaneously interpret a physical body with an appendage making jabbing motions in a container as an apartment dweller searching for her key in her purse. and we spontaneously predict and explain this behavior on the basis of the person's attitudes: She wants to get into the apartment and believes that the best way to enter is to unlock the door with the key which is in her purse. Intentional-stance theory frees intentional attributions from any assumptions about the internal states of the subject.; One's intentional states (her beliefs, desires. intentions, and so on) have their contents in virtue of patterns of the subject's gross observable behavior, not in virtue of particular events or processes in the brain. The very same internal physical states and physical motions of an individual in a different environment may exhibit different intentional patterns'-' All there is to being a "'true believer" is to behave in ways interpretable from the intentional stance: all there is to being a true believer i~ being a system whose behavior i~ reliably predictable via the intentional ~trategy. and hence all there is to really and truly believing that p (for any proposition p) i~ being an intentional system for which p occurs as a belief in the best (most predictive) interpretation.'
2
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett goes on to comment that "this apparently shallow and instrumentalistic criterion of belief puts a severe constraint on the internal constitution of a genuine believer."" The severe constraint is that only systems with complex internal states turn out to satisfy the criterion, not that there is a one-to-one matchup between particular brain states and beliefs. Dennett thus disagrees with Fodor, whom Dennett characterizes as holding that "the pattern of belief must in the end be a pattern of structures in the brain, formulae written in the language of thought."7 As I see it, the difference between Dennett and Fodor is this: According to Fodor, whether a person believes that p is fixed by whether the person has a particular brain state that plays a particular causal role and that means that p; whereas, according to Dennett, whether a person believes that p is determined wholly by whether or not a belief that p is predictively attributable to the person. The fact that only systems with complex internal states turn out to have beliefs is an interesting fact. but what makes a belief attribution true. on Dennett's view, concerns only patterns of behavior, not any particular internal state. It is the absence of any attempt to identify particular behefs with particular internal states that distinguishes Dennett's intentional-stance theory from Fodor's "industrial-strength realism." So, according to Dennett's theory of content. if we want to understand the contents of a person's mental states. we see what the person does and says; we do not turn to neurophysiology.' The intentional stance, from the perspective of which a person has "contentful" states. is thus contrasted with the physical stance. From the physical stance. "if you want to predict the behavior of a system. determine its physical constitution (perhaps all the way down to the microphysical level) and the physical nature of the impingements upon it, and use your knowledge of the laws of physics to predict the outcome for any input."" Properties attributed from the physical stance are what I have called elsewhere 'stance independent.' III That is, from the physical stance, we attribute properties that are instantiated independently of (the possibility of) anyone's taking any particular stance toward them. On the other hand, from the intentional stance. we discern patterns that "are not out there entirely independent of us, since they are patterns composed partly of our own 'subjective' reactions to what is out there: they are the patterns made to order for our . • . ..II narclsslstIc concerns. As we have seen, according to intentional-stance theory, an entity has a "contentful" state only in virtue of someone 's predictive strategies. This is true not only of a person's having a belief. as we have just seen. but of any entity's having any "contentful" or intentional state. Since intentional-stance theory is Dennett's only account of content-one that applies equally to brains. to computers. and to Mother Nature herself-an entity's feature of having content is not a physical or stance-independent feature. Having
3
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
content is not an intrinsic property (and hence is unlike, say, the property of being constituted by H 2 0): it is not a relational physical property (and hence is unlike, say, being a planet). Rather, having content is a stance-dependent feature-a feature that a system can have only in virtue of its (possibly) being the object of the intentional stance. I" Now tum to Dennett's theory of consciousness. Dennett aims to show how the various conscious phenomena "are all physical effects of the brain's activities."I' That is, he aims to give a physical-stance theory of consciousness. To this end, he uses neurophysiological research to impugn the model of consciousness as a "Cartesian Theater," where "a light-and-sound show is presented to a solitary but powerful audience, the Ego or Central Executive.','4 Brain research suggests a better model, the "Multiple Drafts" model of consciousness, according to which consciousness is not a single narrative, with an author of record, but rather the gappy product of many processes of interpretation in the brain. IS To investigate consciousness empirically, Dennett proposes an ingenious method. The theorist begins with a sound tape of a subject. perhaps accompanied by an electroencephalograph: the taped sounds provide the raw data of the investigation, from which a transcript is prepared. The transcriber distinguishes text from noise (e.g., a hiccough) and makes appropriate changes: If a phonetic transcription would read, say, 'from reft to light.' the transcriber would interpret the speaker to mean 'from left to right: Then the theorist interprets the transcript as a record of speech acts-"not mere pronunciations or recitations but assertions, questions, answers. promises. comments, requests for clarification. out-loud musings, self-admonitions.',J Perhaps there is a clue to content-fixation in the brain in Dennett's discussion of the phi phenomenon-the phenomenon of subjects' reliably reporting seeing a moving dot that changes color when presented with two stationery dots. one red and one green. Dennett says that "retrospectively the brain creates the content (the judgment) that there was intervening motion. and this content is then available to govern activity and leave its mark on memory:"" (Sometimes Dennett contrasts what we judge to be the case with what we are conscious of. I am not concerned with such a contrast but with cases in which the subject is putatively conscious of her own judgment.) Dennett's remark again suggests that brain events and processes have propositional content (that there is a moving dot) and that this content has causal powers (the content can govern activity and leave its mark on memory). So, the content that Dennett attributes to the brain seems to be fullfledged propositional content. not just, say. reference to addresses of other brain states.'" 31 This at least suggests that the theorist should seek to map Eve's putatively conscious episode onto a brain process that has the content. "I am not alone in the house:' Dennett suggests that ""liJn some regards. you
9
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Baker, Lynne Rudder, Content Meets Consciousness , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.1
could say that my theory identifies conscious experiences with infonnationbearing events in the brain-since that's all that's going on, and many of the brain events bear a striking resemblance to denizens of the heterophenomenological worlds of the subjects."'c However, it is difficult to see how any brain events could bear a "striking resemblance" to Eve's consciousness of not being alone in the house. What neural properties could even count as bearing a striking resemblance to what Eve reported when she said, "I was suddenly conscious of the fact that I was not alone in the house"? The question, then, is this: How does content get fixed in the brain? Officially, Dennett's only basis for attributing content is his intentional-stance theory. For Dennett takes intentional-stance theory to be "an account of content that treats equally of all unconscious content-fixation (in brains, in computers, in evolution's 'recognition' of properties of selected designs )."" On intentional-stance theory, a brain process has content only in relation to someone's (possible) predictive strategies. Officially, having content is not a physical or stance-independent property of anything. So, if we understand content-fixing in the brain from the point of view of intentional-stance theory, then not even the neurophysiological side of Dennett's theory of consciousness has left the intentional stance behind; like the Cartesian he criticizes, Dennett himself has not avoided "the lazy extrapolation of the intentional stance all the way in."'~ Thus, he has not shown how heterophenomenological items even could map onto purely physical events in the brain; for the brain events onto which the heterophenomenological items map are themselves identifiable only from the intentional stance. On the one hand, if Dennett retains his unified account of content in terms of intentional-stance theory. then the relevant brain events are the content-fixing events that they are only relative to someone's (possible) predictive strategies. And if content-fixation is itself stance dependent. then either content-fixation is no part of neurophysiology or neurophysiology is itself an intentional-stance theory. Given the intentional-stance theory of content. events of content-fixation in the brain cannot be part of a wholly physicalistic theory. On the other hand, if content-fixation in the brain is stance independent then Dennett violates his intentional-stance theory of content; at the least. Dennett needs a separate account of content-fixation in the brain from his general theory of content. But even with a physicalistic theory of contentfixation in the brain, we would need to know how physically-fixed content is related to propositional content attributed from the intentional stance. We cannot tum to the would-be mapping for an answer; for the question is about the possibility of such a mapping in the first place: Which of the indefinitely many possible mappings onto brain states of heterophenomenological items with intentional content would be a correct mapping? In the absence of ansVvers to such questions, the brain-mapping test is not an adequate test for conscious events with intentional content.
IO
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Baker, Lynne Rudder, Content Meets Consciousness , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.1
So, here is a dilemma: Either the neurophysiological theory of consciousness is itself a theory that essentially depends on the intentional-stance theory of content or it is not. If it is. then even "when we aspire to a science of the mind," we do not leave the intentional stance behind. If it is not. then we need a physicalistic account of content-fixation in the brain-an account l5 that would push Dennett toward Fodor. Why has this dilemma gone unnoticed? Let me hazard a guess: Dennett takes intentional-stance theory to give him all the content he ever wants-for free, so to speak. ", So. he is not worried about the propriety, from a physicalistic point of view, of speaking of events of content-fixation in the brain. However. I do not think that things are so easy. For if intentional talk about the brain is just a manner of speaking. then how can content "leave a mark on memory," if memory is understood neurophysiologically? And if content does any work in neurophysiology. then we need a physicalistic theory of content-on pain of making neurophysiological features themselves stance dependent. Let me conclude this section by pointing out another place where intentional-stance theory and the neurophysiological theory of consciousness tug in opposite directions. The Multiple Drafts model of the brainaccording to which there is just continual revising and editing in the brain with no sharp demarcation between what is conscious and what is notitself is formulable only from the intentional stance, not from the physical stance at all. Since editing and revising are intentional processes. it is only from the intentional stance that there is editing and revising in the brain. In responding to the charge that replacement of the Central Meaner (of the Cartesian Theater model) by a Pandemonium of Homunculi (of the Multiple Drafts model) is simply replacement of one set of metaphors by another. Dennett says that "metaphors are not 'just' metaphors: metaphors are the tools of thought:'" I agree. But the metaphors in question are intentionalstance metaphors.'s Can Dennett's preferred model of the brain be expressed except from the intentional stance?
THE METAPHOR OF "DEPTH" We have examined two places where the theory of content meets the theory of consciousness-putatively conscious belief and putative content-fixation in the brain-and have seen that Dennett's two halves do not sit comfortably on the same bench. In this section. I want to show that Dennett's physicalism, with its metaphor of "depth," precludes any rapprochement of the two theories. Like many physicalists. Dennett is committed to a metaphor of depth. According to the depth metaphor, there are distinct levels of reality. In an inversion of the idea of the Great Chain of Being. what is genuinely real resides at the bottom level. And the bottom level of reality is physical: its II
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Baker, Lynne Rudder, Content Meets Consciousness , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.1
properties are stance independent. The intentional stance is introduced in contrast to the physical stance, from which one predicts and explains an entity's behavior on the basis of "its physical constitution (perhaps all the way down to the microphysical level) and the physical nature of the impingements upon it."w Indeed, "if one wants to predict and explain the 'actual. empirical' behavior of believers. one must ... cease talking of belief. and descend to the design stance or physical stance for one's account."JO Physical-stance theories are thus deeper than intentional-stance theories. The intentional stance is only a resting place on the way to the 'lower: more mechanistic stances from which stance-independent of theories of genuine reality are formulated." I With this understanding of depth in mind. recall that Dennett's strategy is "first. to develop an account of content that is independent (~f and more .timdamenlal thall consciousness ... and second. to build an account of J2 consciousness on that foundation:· Content is more fundamental than consciousness in that it is much more widespread: Entities can have contentful states without having consciousness, but (presumably) no entities can have consciousness without also having contentful states. Moreover. in the passage just quoted. Dennett aims to build an account of consciousness on the foundation of the theory of content. Given the depth metaphor. how can content as Dennett understands it be a suitable foundation for a physicalistic account of consciousness'? What the theory of content appeals to-patterns discernible only from the intentional stance-are. from a physicalistic point of view, less fundamental than what the theory of consciousness appeals to-neurophysiological processes that are presumably stance independent. So. given the metaphor of depth. it is difficult to see how Dennett's theory of content could be a foundation for the theory of consciousness-at least if the theory of consciousness is to be a physicalistic theory-when the features countenanced by Dennett's theory of content are much less fundamental than those countenanced by the theory of consciousness. Let me try to be more explicit. Dennett may be committed to two different ways in which one theory may be more fundamental than another: (i)
Theory A is more fundamental than theory B if and only if theory B presupposes (in some sense) theory A and theory A does not presuppose theory B.
(ii)
Theory A is more fundamental than theory B if and only if the properties. states. and entities that theory A refers to are more fundamental (are closer to the physical ground-level of reality) than those that theory B refers to.
We have seen ways in which Dennett's theory of consciousness presupposes his theory of content. Content has a crucial role not only in the construction of heterophenomenologies but also in the identification of brain events as events of content-fixation. That is, even the "neurophysiological side" of his
)2
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Baker, Lynne Rudder, Content Meets Consciousness , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.1
theory presupposes the theory of content. So, according to (i), the theory of content is more fundamental than the theory of consciousness, Also, Dennett says that his theory of content is more fundamental than his theory of consciousness, and in sense (i), it is. However, there is another sense in which physicalists take one theory to be more fundamental than another: Physics is more fundamental than chemistry because the entities countenanced by physics (subatomic particles) are more fundamental than the entities countenanced by chemistry (molecules).~' In this sense-sense (ii)Dennett's theory of consciousness is more fundamental than his theory of content: The properties, states, and entities countenanced by his theory of consciousness (brain states, etc.) are closer to the physical ground-level of reality than those countenanced by his theory of content (intentional patterns of behavior). That is, the two ways in which one theory may be more fundamental than another come apart for Dennett. The problem is not only that (i) and (ii) come apart in Dennett's two theories. The further problem is that the depth metaphor of physicalism commits Dennett to giving precedence to (ii), according to which the theory of consciousness is really the more fundamental theory. According to the depth metaphor, stance-dependent features are always less fundamental than stance-independent features. If the neurophysiological theory of consciousness is stance independent. then it should be explicated in a way that does not presuppose the stance-dependent features of intentional-stance theory. But if the neurophysiological theory of consciousness is /lot stance independent, then it is not a purely physicalistic theory. For a theory cannot legitimately claim to be physicalistic (and stance independent) if it appeals to stance-dependent features that are irreducible as far as we know. Dennett cashes out talk of Mother Nature's intentions in terms of the theory of natural selection, which does not presuppose unreduced intentional-stance features. Similarly, the theory of consciousness-if it is to be physicalistic-should provide a way to cash out talk of conscious states (including those with intentional content) without presupposing unreduced intentional-stance features. Dennett may respond that the beauty of intentional-stance theory is that it invokes no features that need to be reduced: it simply affords a convenient way to predict phenomena for which we have no strictly physical account. But in that case, a ground-level physicalistic theory must be formulable without appealing to features discernible only from the intentional stance. To the extent to which Dennett is less a realist about what is discerned from the intentional stance than about what is discerned from the physical stance, a genuinely physicalistic theory (of anything) cannot appeal to features discernible only from the intentional stance. To sum up the difficulty, as I see it: According to the depth metaphor, Dennett's theory of consciousness and theory of content have domains at different levels of reality. The theory of consciousness is more physicalistic
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Baker, Lynne Rudder, Content Meets Consciousness , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.1
and thus (by (ii) above) the more fundamental theory. Yet, the theory of consciousness presupposes the (less fundamental) theory of content. The depth metaphor precludes an easy reconciliation of the two theories. For what is "deeper" cannot presuppose what is "shallower." So, the problem is this: According to the depth metaphor, the theory of consciousness is more fundamental than the theory of content: but the theory of consciousness presupposes the theory of content. Therefore, according to the depth metaphor, the more fundamental theory presupposes the less fundamental theory. This prohlem would dry up if we dropped the physicalistic metaphor of depth. For there would be nothing untoward about a neurophysiological theory of consciousness that presupposes a theory of content-and hence is the more fundamental theory in sense (i)-if one did not also hold the neurophysiological theory to be "deeper" than the theory of content that it presupposes. So, the metaphor of depth precludes reconciliation of Dennett's theory of content with his theory of consciousness: The deeper theory cannot presuppose the shallower one. and Dennett's theory of content cannot be a foundation for a physicalistic account of consciousness. But if Dennett gave up the depth metaphor, he would lose the motivation for the hrain-mapping test to determine what a subject is conscious of.
REAL PATTERNS My proposal is that Dennett take the same approach to consciousness that he does to content.-l-l Test heterophenomenological items, not against brain states, but against their predictive attributability. That proposal rejects the dichotomy according to which the facts of consciousness are established either by introspective reports, taken to be authoritative, or by neurophysiology: yet. it retains the empiricaL third-personal approach to consciousness. In this section, I want to suggest that his physicalism alone does not commit Dennett to a neurophysiological approach to consciousness and that Dennett's discussion of "real patterns" gives him the resources to approach consciousness in the same way that he approaches content. In "Real Patterns." Dennett discusses, among other things, the relation hetween what is discerned from the intentional stance and what is discerned from the physical stance. As a physicalist, Dennett takes what is discerned from the physical stance to be what is "really there;" but Dennett also is a 'mild realist' about what is discerned from the intentional stance. Beliefs, says Dennett, are as real as centers of gravity. This "mild realism is the doctrine that makes the most sense when what we are talking about is real patterns, such as the real patterns discernible from the intentional stance."-" Since we lack the time and often the means to make predictions of behavior in term'> of fundamental physics (which Dennett takes to be the real locus of
14
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Baker, Lynne Rudder, Content Meets Consciousness , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.1
reality), we adopt the intentional stance as a basis for prediction. In the interest of efficiency we "trad[e] off reliability and accuracy of prediction against computational tractability."~6 We know that we have discerned a "real pattern" (and not just noise) when it is the basis for reliable predictions. And since beliefs and desires are reliable predictors of intentional action, we know that there are real intentional patterns. And. as I have emphasized, we know this quite apart from any neurophysiological investigation: Beliefs and desires would still be reliable predictors no matter how our brains turned out to be organized. This is a central message of intentional-stance theory. It is important to see that the "real patterns" of behavior discerned from the intentional stance need not mirror any detectable patterns of physical states.~' Suppose that there is a real pattern in Beth's behavior: She votes Republican in national elections~ she goes to school board meetings to protest increases in the budget; she sends money to a group whose goal is to privatize prisons and abolish welfare-all out of a belief that taxes are too high. This real pattern does not "correspond to" any pattern--either of bodily motions or of brain states-discernible from the physical stance. Indeed, according to "Evolution, Error, and Intentionality," transferring Beth to a different environment could change her intentional states without changing her physical states.~' But absence of correspondence between physical and intentional patterns does not impugn our claim to have found a real patternalbeit a real intentional pattern. In general. real patterns of a person's intentional behavior do not mirror 4 real physical patterns of the person's brain states or bodily motions. " What makes something the intentional action that it is, is often determined by context: The same bodily motion (produced by the same type of brain state) may be a vote in a faculty meeting, a request to be excused. or an attempt to distract the speaker. As intentional-stance theory suggests. there is no more reason to think that intentional behavioral patterns mirror neural patterns that cause the relevant bodily motions than to think that the patterns of play that win the U.S. Open in tennis mirror muscular motion in a player's anns and legs. This important point may be obscured by Dennett's emphasis on examples like "bar code" and Life World as examples of "real patterns." Looking at these examples. one may suppose that a believer or agent is to her internal physical states as "gliders" in the Life World are to arrays of pixels that constitute them.'(J Such an analogy would misfire: for the glider's behavioral patterns do mirror the physical (geometrical) patterns of the pixels that constitute the glider together with the pixels in adjoining cells. But Beth's intentional behavioral patterns (voting for Republicans. say) do not mirror physical patterns of her bodily movements (nor of her bodily movements together with the physical motions of nearby objects). Indeed. we know of no physical patterns whatever that are even candidates for mirroring patterns of one's voting behavior.
15
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Baker, Lynne Rudder, Content Meets Consciousness , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.1
A second way in wnicn / tninJ.' tnat the Lik JJ0ddi5' misleading if Ih81 it suggests that understanding a bit-map (and the Jaw that governs the "bits") gives a deeper understanding of the glider. But consider this: Bill Gates of Microsoft Corporation has bought up digital rights to many art works all over the world." Does a bit map afford deeper understanding of The Birth qfVellus'? Would we suppose that we can now understand the Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile because we can reproduce it digitally? Suppose that we found no bit-map-level patterns that mirrored differences between smiles and leers; would we use the bit map to deny the reality of the smile or to say that there was no fact of the matter about whether a painting represented a smile or a leer?" No doubt neurophysiology can show us necessary conditions for consciousness: but it is a non sequitur to suppose that whatever "real patterns" there are in consciousness must be mirrored by "real patterns" in the brain-just as it would be a non sequitur to suppose that whatever "real patterns" there are in an artwork must be mirrored by "real patterns" in a bit map of it. In his "Appendix A (for Philosophers)." in COllsciousness Explained. Dennett responds to the charge that there is "a tension-if not an outright contradiction-between the two halves of [his] theory" by saying this: The shock-absorbers that deal with the tension are the strained identifications of heterophenomenological items (as conceived under the traditional perspective l from which we treat people as single-minded agents l) with events of content-fixation in the brain (as conceived under the new perspective [from which we break the single-minded agent down into miniagents and microagents with no single Boss 1)."
Far from being shock-absorbers. "the strained identifications of heterophenomenological items ... with events of content-fixation in the brain" seem to me to expose the tension that they are supposed to overcome. From the perspective of neurophysiology. there are no unified agents. However. from the intentional stance, of course there are ullified agents: intentional-stance theory was designed specifically to accommodate the "real patterns" discernible when we think of each other as unified agents. From the intentional stance. the question of whether there is a Boss neuron is simply irrelevant to whether a system is a unified agent. The fact that there are no unified agents discernible from the physical stance is wholly unsurprising: neither are beliefs. desires, or plans discernible from the physical stance. Why should the existence of unified agents any more depend on neurophysiological facts than the existence of beliefs? Yet, Dennett is a "mild realist" about beliefs.'4 I suggest that he assume the same position about agents. Indeed. from the intentional stance, agents and believers are treated in exactly the same way, as they should be.'; Here is my suggestion about consciousness: Look at consciousness from the intentional stance: as we have seen, intentionality infects Dennett's
16
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Baker, Lynne Rudder, Content Meets Consciousness , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.1
theory of consciousness anyway Suppose that Jack reports becoming conscious of a belief that has been induced by advertising. The transcript for his heterophenomenological text contains this: "I suddenly saw that I had believed that Wisk got clothes cleaner than Tide. When r realized how I had been taken in. I stopped buying Wisk and went back to Tide." Here is a report of a conscious belief. and one the consciousness of which changed Jack's behavior. The "real patterns" here are real intentional patterns. The stability of these patterns is independent of whether or not they map onto brain patterns. If such patterns are reliable bases for prediction. then they are real (mildly real?) regardless of the outcome of the brain-mapping test. Before publication of Consciousness Explained. Dennett's major insight (in my opinion) was that intentional patterns are "real patterns" and that real intentional patterns do not mirror patterns of brain processes.'" Why does he turn his back on his own insight when he considers consciousness? Perhaps Dennett would take the answer to be obvious: In the absence of immaterial souls. an account of consciousness must be in terms of brain processes. Early on. Dennett remarks that his hcterophenomenological approach "permits theorists to agree in detail about just what a subject's heterophenomenological world is. while offering entirely different accounts of how heterophenomenological worlds map onto events in the brain (or the soul. for that matter):'o' This at least suggests that Dennett sees only two possible loci for studying consciousness: brain or soul. But this dichotomy is a false one. Events of consciousness need not map onto events in the brain or soul. Now Dennett's particular brand of materialism may lead him to approach the study of consciousness via neurophysiology-even when such an approach conflicts with his own intentional-stance theory. But a neurophysiologicaJ approach to consciousness is not the only approach consonant with materialism. According to intentional-stance theory. an intentional attribution (as many attributions of conscious episodes are) is true if and only if it is predictive: and it is predictive if and only if the attributer has discerned a "real pattern." Now a perfectly respectable materialist may suppose that there are real intentional patterns in Dennett's sense. without supposing that these intentional patterns map onto any known or knowable physical patterns. For example. when investigators suspect someone of insider trading of stock in a company which is on the verge of announcing a take-over. they look for patterns of buying and selling the particular stock in the days before the announcement. Sometimes they find such patterns: sometimes juries are sufficiently convinced of the reality of the patterns that they are willing to send people to prison on the basis of them. I agree with juries that there are such patterns: Patterns of buying and selling a stock are real intentional patterns. and such patterns stand on their own whether we ever find any physical-pattern correlates for them or not. Indeed. it would be highly unlikely that the real patterns of trading the stock were mirrored in real
17
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Baker, Lynne Rudder, Content Meets Consciousness , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.1
patterns of bodily motions of the traders. Yet, physicalists need not withdraw their claim to have found a real intentional pattern for all that. In generaL there is simply no need to suppose that real intentional patterns must map onto "deeper" physical patterns. The patterns of consciousness are just a special case of real intentional patterns. So, 1 think that the following argument is unsound: (a) real patterns of consciousness map onto patterns in either brains or immaterial souls; (b) there are no immaterial souls. Therefore, (c) real patterns of consciousness map onto brains. It is important to see that my complaint about the argument is not based on affirmation of immaterial souls but on denial of the dichotomy: mapping onto brains or mapping onto souls. I am not denying the relevance of neurophysiology to the study of the mind. Rather, I am questioning the method that narrows its focus on consciousness to mapping heterophenomenological items onto brain events. One can reject the brainmapping test without rejecting the claim that consciousness has a biological basis. Once we take seriously the fact that intentional patterns need not mirror detectable physical patterns, we should be less tempted to try to map intentional heterophenomenological items onto brain events. We do not need such a mapping to ward off immaterialism. In some ways, conscious thinking is like making money. Making money doesn't take place in some immaterial space. Sometimes making money does have a definite location-e.g., at a certain poker table or at a certain race track." In other cases, specification of the location for making money is just silly: When Jack's Coca-Cola stock goes up. what is the location of his gain? In generaL I believe that it is a mistake to think that one must find spatial locations for intentional phenomena. including putatively conscious intentional phenomena. So, one need not believe in anything immaterial in order to question Dennett's neurophysiological approach to consciousness.
CONCLUSION Dennett's theory of consciousness is not. and cannot be, independent of his theory of content. Yet as we saw in examining his brain-mapping test for determining what we are and are not conscious of, the two halves of Dennett's project do not fit comfortably together. Moreover, I argued, the metaphor of depth precludes reconciliation of Dennett's theory of consciousness with his intentional-stance theory of content. Although I would be more of a realist than Dennett about what is discerned from the intentional stance, I suggested that intentional-stance theory offers a better way to study putatively conscious phenomena with intentional contents than does the brainmapping test.
18
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Baker, Lynne Rudder, Content Meets Consciousness , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.1
On the one hand, in the case of putatively conscious phenomena with intentional contents, we get a distinction between conscious belief and llonconscious belief from the intentional stance alone: From the intentional stance. the theorist confinns Jane's report that she was conscious of believing that Hal was trying to embarrass her at a particular time by noting the change in Jane's intentional behavior at that time. Brain mapping is irrelevant from the intentional stance. On the other hand, it is difficult to see how to go about applying the brain-mapping test to putatively conscious beliefs anyway. If the object of (putative) consciousness has intentional content. application of the brain-mapping test requires that we be able to assess the similarity between Jane's brain states and what is attributed to her by. for example. a belief that Hal is trying to embarrass her. What properties of brain states could be similar to what Jane attributed to herself when she said, "At that moment, I realized that I believed that Hal was trying to embarrass me"? What would count as similarity in this case'?'" So. it seems to me that Dennett neither needs nor has logical space for the brain-mapping test in the case of putatively conscious phenomena with intentional contents. Finally. a look at real intentional patterns. about which Dennett is a "mild realist" suggests that the brain-mapping test is not required for an empiricaL third-personal account of consciousness. A claim to have found an intentional pattern would not be impugned by our failure to find a physical pattern onto which to map the intentional pattern: this is plain in nonpsychological cases. (It is no defense against allegation of income-tax fraud to complain that the prosecutors have not come up with a physical pattern that the culpability-producing intentional pattern mirrors.) Dennett himself says that one can adopt the intentional stance to construct a heterophenomenological text "without giving up science."r,fI Since I am dubious that we will ever have a theory of consciousness. or of the mind generally, that is free of intentional presuppositions. I find it heartening that Dennett does not think that intentionality imperils science. But if we can adopt the intentional stance without giving up science. then we need not worry about mapping heterophenomenological items onto brain events. So. my suggestion for someone who wants an empiricaL third-personal account of consciousness is to take the science and leave Dennett's brand of physicalism with its metaphor of depth behind."!
NOTES I. I am not claiming that thoughts of a person are wholly intentional. always devoid of any sensory aspect. nor that sensory phenomena (reported as. e.g .. "r see a moving red dot'·) are wholly nonintentional. My point is that intentionality intrudes on any investigation of the full range of putatively conscious phenomena, 2. Daniel C. Dennetl. Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little. Brown & Co .. 1991). 457: emphasis his.
19
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Baker, Lynne Rudder, Content Meets Consciousness , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.1
3. The "intentional stance presupposes neither lower stance." where the lower stances are the design stance and the physical stance. Daniel C. Dennett. "Mechanism and Responsibility:' in Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (Montgomery. VI.: Bradford Books. 1978). 240. 4. Daniel C. Dennett. "Evolution. Error. and Intentionality," in The Intentional Stance (Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press/Bradford Books. 1987). 287-321. 5. Daniel C. Dennett. "True Believers." in The intentional Stance, 29: emphases his. 6. Ibid. 7. Daniel C. Dennett. "Real Patterns:' The Juurnal of Philosophy 88 (1991): 30. 8. On this point. I think that Dennett is exactly right. See my Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the Mind (Camhridge: Cambridge University Press. 1995). 9. "True Believers:' 16. 10. Sec my chapter eight of S{ll'ing Belief A Critique afPhnicalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1987): and my "Instrumental Intentionality:' Philosuphy of Science 56 (1989): 303-16. 11. Daniel C. Dennett. "Reflections: Real Panerns. Deeper Facts. and Empty Questions." in The Intentiollal Swnce . 39: emphasis his. 12. This aspect of Dennett's work is responsihle for his being taken to he an instrumentalist about belief. In "Real Patterns:' he resists the simple 'instrumentalist/realist' dichotomy. However. his discussion on pages 48f[' with continued endorsement of Quine's indeterminacy thesis. reaffirms the idea that to have an intentional feature is to he the object of a particular interpretive stance. Dennett allows that at least on occasion. "the choice of a pattern would indeed be up to the observer" (49). Here I am not concerned with the argument ahout realism but with the relatiom between the intentional stance and the physical stance. 13. Consciousness Explained. 16. 14. Ihid .. 227. 15. Ibid .. 9-1-. This summary comes from my review of Consciousness Explained in The Rel"ie\\' olMeraph\'sics -1-5 (1992): 398-399. 16. Consciousness t:1:plained. 76. In "How to Change Your Mind." in Brainstorms. Dennett distinguishes between beliefs that beings without language can have and what he called 'opinions: which are more language-infected states. In Consciousness Explained. Dennett comments on the distinction: "While I will not presuppose familiarity with that distinction here. I do intend my claims to apply to both categories" (7S). 17. COllSciousness Explained. 76: emphasis his. Since intentional-stance theory is independent of the theory of consciousness. I am not complaining ahout the theorist's exploitation of the resources of intentional-stance theory in investigating consciousness. 18. Ibid .. SI. 19. Ibid .. -1-07. 20. Ibid .. 85: emphasi, hi,. 21. Ibid, 81. 22. I am ,imply pointing out a way to isolate putatively conscious beliefs from all others~ including t<Jcit beliefs and heliefs that are subcom,cious in a p,ychoanalytic sense. 23. Consciousness Explained. -1-59. 24. I would take this result to be tantamount to saying that no one i, ever conscious of anything. Whatever consciousness would remain after removing consciousness of states of affairs (only pure sensations?) would seem to me negligible. For what it is worth. pure sensations seem at most to be a paltry part of one's conscious life. 25. Consciollsness Explained. 319. 26. Daniel C. Dennett. "Styles of Mental Representation." in The Intentional STance. 224. 27. Daniel C. Dennett. "Reflections: Instrumentalism Reconsidered." in The IntentiOlllll '5tance. 70-1. 28. Consciousness Explained. 365.
20
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Baker, Lynne Rudder, Content Meets Consciousness , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.1
29. Ibid., 128. 30. The mathematical idea of . information , in the Shannon-Weaver sense is a syntactic notion that does not suffice for propositional content. Syntax underdetermines propositional content. 31. Dennett emphasizes the indeterminacy of content in the brain and takes his opponent to claim that a thinker "begins with a determinate thought to be expressed" (CollSciouslless Explained. 241 ). I differ from both Dennett and his fictional opponent in that I hold that it is a mistake to try to locate propositional content in particular brain processes at all. 32. Consciousness Explained, 459. 33. Ibid., 457. 34. Ibid .. 458; emphasis his. 35. A physicalistic account of content-fixation \",ould not collapse Dennett into Fodor; for on Fodor's view, but not Dennett's, brain events have syntactic structure. 36. I have no objection to helping oneself to intentionality. but then I am not a physicalist. 37. Consciousness Explained, 455. 38, Indeed. it would seem that only from the intentional stance is anything a metaphor in the first place. 39. 'True Believers." 16. The intentional stance is also contrasted with the design stance, from which one predicts and explains an entity'~ behavior on the basis of its function or normal operation. 40. "Intentional Systems." in Brainstorms, 22. 41, Compare: "Of course. if some version of mechanistic physicalism is true (as I believe), we will never need absolutely to ascribe any intentions to anything" ("Conditions of Personhood." in Braimtorms. 273), 42. Consciousness Elplained. 4.57: emphasis his. 43. Although I agree that physics is more fundamental than chemistry. I reject the idea that all the sciences are neatly ordered according to depth. 44. Unlike Dennett. I would be as much a realist about features discerned from the inten" tional stance as about features discerned from the physical stance. But that major difference between Dennett and me is irrelevant to my proposal that Dennett treat consciousness as he treats content. 45. "Real Patterns:' 30-1. 46. Ibid .. 36. 47. A physicalist who holds that intentional patterns mirror undetectable physical patterns is in no position to use physical patterns as a constraint on intentional patterns. 48, See Dennett's "case of the wandering two-bitser" in Daniel C. Dennett. "Evolution. Error. and Intentionality," in The intenriollal Stance. 290-95. 49. If the thesis of global supervenience is true, then the intentional pattern may cOlTespond to some physical pattern, hut not one localized in space and time. Thus. it would be folly to try to find patterns of an agent's physical properties that correspond to the agent's intentional patterns. One does not have to be a dualist to see that brain states and bodily motions do nol match up with beliefs and actions. 50. For a description of the Life World. see "Real Patterns." 51. John Seabrook, ."E-mail from Bill." The New Yorker. 10 January 1994.48-61. 52. There may be cases of indeterminacy here: but there are many clear cases in which an intentional pattern is a smile and not a leer.
53. Consciousness Explained. 458. 54. "Real Patterns." 30-1. 55. I would treat agents and believers in the same way as well: but. giving up the metaphor of depth, I would be more than a "mild realist" about both. 56. See "Evolution, Error, and Intentionality." 57. COl1sciousness Explained. 81.
21
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Baker, Lynne Rudder, Content Meets Consciousness , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.1
But even so. is the location the physical facility that includes the track, the finish line with your horse crossing it first. or the window where you collect your winnings? Such questions are not serious spurs to inquiry; nor are similar questions about the location of the awareness that Jack has of his belief. 59. This is not a complaint [hat putatively conscious beliefs fail the brain-mapping test. Rather. the question is how the brain-mapping test could be applied: What would count as passing it? 60. Consciouslless Explained. 76. 61, I am extremely grateful to Derk Pereboom and to Louise Antony for helpful comments and criticisms. 58,
22
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS VOL. 22 NO. I & 2. SPRING A!'lD
FALL
1994
What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory of?
Ned Block MIT
In Consciousness Explained and some papers written before and since, Dan Dennett expounds what he says is a theory of consciousness. But there is a real puzzle as to what the theory is about. There are a number of distinct phenomena that 'consciousness' is used by Dennett and others to denote. If the theory is about some of them, it is false: if it is about others, it is banal. A convenient locus of discussion is provided by Dennett's claim that consciousness is a cultural construction. He theorizes that "human consciousness (I) is too recent an innovation to be hard-wired into the innate machinery. (2) is largely the product of cultural evolution that gets imparted to brains in early training."I Often, Dennett puts the point in terms of memes. Memes are ideas such as the idea of the wheel or the calendar or the alphabet: but not all ideas are memes. Memes are cultural units. the smallest cultural units that replicate themselves reliably. In these terms then. Dennett's claim is that "Human consciousness is itse(f a huge complex of memes."" The claim is sometimes qualified (as in the "largely" above). I think the idea is that consciousness is the software that runs on genetically determined hardware. The software is the product of cultural evolution, but it would not run without the hardware that is the product of biological evolution. I claim that consciousness is a mongrel notion. one that picks out a conglomeration of very different sorts of mental properties. Dennett gives us little clue as to which one or ones, which of the "consciousnesses'" is
23
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
supposed to be a cultural construction. Now this would be little more than a quibble if his claims about consciousness were plausible and novel proposals about one or more "consciousnesses," one or more "elements" of the mongrel. OK, so he doesn't tell us exactly which consciousness his claims are about, but we can figure it out for ourselves. As far as I can see. there is no kind of consciousness that is both plausibly and non trivially a cultural construction, a collection of memes. (But perhaps Dennett will prove me wrong in his reply.) For some kinds of consciousness. the idea that consciousness is a cultural construction is a nonstarter. For others, there is an empirical issue, but the cultural construction claim seems likely to be false, and Dennett does not defend it. For others, it is utterly banal-certainly not the exciting new thesis Dennett presents it as. So my challenge for Dennett will be to provide us with a notion of consciousness on which his claim is both true and interesting. Of course. I wouldn't be bothering with all this if I thought Dennett had an answer. What I really think is that Dennett is using the mongrel concept of "consciousness" the way Aristotle used the concept of "velocity." sometimes meaning instantaneous velocity, sometimes meaning average velocity, without seeing the distinction.' I think Dennett has confused himself and others by applying an unanalyzed notion of "consciousness," conflating theses that are exciting and false with others that are boring and true. I won't be arguing for this directly, but it is the upshot of what I will have to say. My procedure will be to go through the major elements of the mongrel briefly, with an eye to filling in and justifying the claim that what Dennett says is not both true and novel. I should say at the outset that I do not intend to be presupposing any controversial views about whether the inverted spectrum hypothesis makes sense, whether there can be "absent qualia" (that is, whether there can be creatures functionally identical to us, such that there is nothing it is like to be them) and the like. What I have to say here is supposed to be independent of such issues.
PHENOMENAL CONSCIOUSNESS Phenomenal consciousness is experience. Phenomenal conscious properties are the experiential properties of sensations, feelings, and perceptions; for example. what it is like to experience pain, what it is like to see. to hear, and to smell. Thoughts, desires, and emotions also have phenomenal characters, though these characters do not serve to individuate the thoughts, desires, and emotions. Phenomenal properties are often representational. For example. what it is like to see something as a refrigerator is different from what it is like to see the same thing from the same angle as a big white thing of unknown purpose and design. And there is a representational commonality
24
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
to what it is like to hear a sound as coming from the right and what it is like to see something as coming from the right. I believe that there is a difference in these experiences that is not representationaL a difference that inheres in nonrepresentational features of the modalities; but I will not assume this in what follows. I also think that phenomenal consciousness is not characterizable in functional or intentional or cognitive terms, but again I will not assume this here. There was a time when Dennett was an out and out eliminativist about phenomenal content, but his views have changed. He now offers a theory of it, though he cautions us that his views of what phenomenal consciousness is are at variance with a picture of it that has a strong hold on our intuitions. I hope it is just obvious to virtually everyone that the fact that things look, sound, and smell more or less the way they do to us is a basic biological feature of people, not a cultural construction that our children have to learn as they grow up. To be sure. cultural constructions have a big impact on the way things look, sound. and smell to us. As I said, phenomenal consciousness is often representational, and the representational aspects and phenomenal aspects of phenomenal consciousness often interact. To use Dennett's wonderful example, suppose we discovered a lost Bach cantata whose first seven notes tum out by an ugly coincidence to be identical to the first seven notes of "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer." We wouldn't be able to hear the cantata the way the Leipzigers of Bach's day would have heard it. So culture certainly has an impact on phenomenal consciousness. But we have to distinguish between the idea that culture has an impact on phenomenal consciousness and the idea that phenomenal consciousness as a whole is a cultural construction. Culture has a big impact on feet too. People who have spent their lives going barefoot in the Himalayas have feet that are different in a variety of ways from people who have worn narrow pointy high-heeled shoes for eight hours a day. every day. Though culture has an impact on feet. feet are not a cultural construction. So the impact of culture on phenomenal consciousness does not give us a reason to take seriously the hypothesis that phenomenal consciousness was i111'enfed in the course of the development of human culture or that children slowly develop the experience of seeing. hearing, and eating as they internalize the culture. Indeed. children acquire the culture by seeing and hearing (and using other senses) and not the other way around. We should not take seriously the question of whether Helen Keller had her first experience of eating or smelling or feeling at the age of seven when she started learning language. We should not take seriously the idea that each of us would have been a zombie if not for specific cultural injections when we were growir.g up. We should not take seriously such questions as whether there was a time in human history in which people biologically just like us used their eyes and ears, ate, drank, and had sex. but there was nothing it was like for them to do these things." And a view that says that such questions should be taken seriously should be rejected on that basis.
25
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
Though almost everyone believes in phenomenal consciousness, some hold a deflationary or reductionist view of it, identifying it with a functional or intentional or cognitive notion. Mightn't such views of phenomenal consciousness make the thesis that phenomenal consciousness is a cultural construction more intelligible? The best way to answer this question, I think, is to examine the other consciousnesses, the other elements of the mongrel. They are the best candidates for a deflationist or a reductionist to identify with phenomenal consciousness.
ACCESS-CONSCIOUSNESS Let us say that a state is access-conscious if its content is poised for free use in controlling thought and action. More specifically, a state with a certain content is access-conscious if, in virtue of one's having the state, a representation which has that content is (1) poised to be used freely as a premise in reasoning, according to the capabilities of the reasoner, (2) poised to be used freely for control of action. In the case of language-using organisms such as ourselves, a major symptom of access-consciousness would be reportability. But reportability is not necessary. My intent in framing the notion is to make it applicable to lower animals in virtue of their ability to use perceptual contents in guiding their actions. In my view, this is the notion of consciousness that functionalists should want to identify with phenomenal consciousness. We needn't worry about whether access-consciousness is really distinct from phenomenal consciousness, since the question at hand is whether either of them could be a cultural construction. I am dealing with these questions separately, but I am giving the same answer to both. so if I am wrong about their distinctness it won't matter to my argument. Access-consciousness is a tricky notion which I have spelled out in some detail elsewhere.' I will briefly make two comments about it. First. the reader may wonder what the "in virtue of" is doing in the definition. It is there in part because there are syndromes such as blindsight in which the content of a perceptual state is available to the perceiver only when he is prompted and hears himself guess what he is seeing. In blindsight, there are "blind" areas in the visual field where the person claims not to see stimuli. but the patient's guesses about certain features of the stimuli are often highly accurate. But that doesn't count as access-consciousness because the blindsight patient is not in a position to reason about those contents simply in virtue of having them. A second issue has to do with the fact that the paradigm phenomenally conscious states are sensations, whereas the paradigm access-conscious states are thoughts, beliefs. and desires, states with representational content expressed by "that" clauses. There are a number of ways of seeing the access-consciousness of sensations such as
26
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
pain. Pains are often (some have argued always) representationaL and so these representational contents are candidates for what is inferentially promiscuous, etc., when a pain is access-conscious. Alternatively, we could take the access-conscious content of pain to consist in the content that one has a pain or a state with a certain phenomenal content." Now to the point of this excursion into access-consciousness: Could access-consciousness be a cultural construction? Could there have been a time when humans who are biologically the same as us never had the contents of their perceptions and thoughts poised for free use in reasoning or in rational control of action? Could there be a human culture in which the people don't have access-consciousness? Would each of us have failed to be access-conscious but for specific cultural injections? Did Helen Keller become access-conscious at age seven? Once asked, the answers are obvious. Dogs have access-consciousness in virtue of their abilities to use perceptual contents in guiding their actions. Without access-consciousness, why would thought and perception ever have evolved in the first place? The discovery that access-consciousness is anything other than a ba~ic biological feature of people would be breathtakingly amazing, on a par with the discovery that housecats are space aliens. Anyone who claimed such a thing would have to marshal a kind of evidence that Dennett makes no attempt to provide. (Of course, to say that access-consciousness is a basic biological feature of people is not to say that it is literally present at birth. Teeth and pubic hair are biological, but not present at birth.) Access-consciousness is as close as we get to the official view of consciousness of CO/lSciouslless Explained, and also in Dennett's later writings. In a recent reply to critics, Dennett sums up his current formulation of the theory, saying "Consciousness is cerebral celebrity-nothing more and nothing less. Those contents are conscious that persevere, that monopolize resources long enough to achieve certain typical and 'symptomatic' effectson memory, on the control of behavior. and so forth.'" The official theory of Consciousness Explained is the Multiple Drafts theory, the view that there are distinct parallel tracks of representation that vie for access to reasoning, verbalization, and behavior. This seems more a theory of access-consciousness than any of the other elements of the mongrel. But surely it is nothing other than a biological fact about people-not a cultural construction-that some brain representations persevere enough to affect memory, contml beho\'iO/; etc. Of course, our cOllcept of cerebral celebrity is a cultural construction, but cerebral celebrity itself is not. No one should confuse a concept with what it is a concept of. Now we have reached a conundrum of interpretation: The closest thing we have to an official cOllcept of consciousness in Dennett's recent work is not a concept of something that can be taken seriously as a cultural construction. In his reply, I hope Dennett tells us how, according to him, cerebral celebrity could be a cultural construction. In the meantime, I will search for another kind of consciousness that he could have in mind.
27
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
I said that the concept of consciousness is a mongrel concept. Our use of a single word reflects our tendency to see the elements of the mongrel as wrapped together. In particular, we think of conscious qualities as given, as completely present with nothing hidden. To see phenomenal consciousness as completely present is to see it as entirely accessible. These are ideas about consciousness. but they are ideas that affect phenomenal consciousness itself. what it is like to be us, just as in Dennett's example; what it is like to hear the imaginary Bach cantata would be influenced by the idea we have of the Christmas ditty. Our theories of phenomenal consciousness do influence phenomenal consciousness itself to some extent. Our experience might be somewhat different in a culture in which a different view of phenomenal consciousness was prevalent. But we should not allow such interactions to make us lose sight of the main effect. True. culture modulates cerebral celebrity, but it does not create it. We must not conflate cultural influence with cultural creation. It should be noted that our theories, even wildly false theories. about many things. not just consciousness itself. can influence our experience. For example, we sometimes think of seeing as a process in which something emanates from the eyes. We talk of moving our gaze sometimes as if it were a beam of light. And we sometimes talk of seeing through a dirty window as if our gaze could to some extent penetrate it. These notions were parts of theories of vision in ancient times, and even now appear in childrens' theories." Perhaps these ideas affect our phenomenal consciousness-or perhaps it is the other way around.
MONITORING CONSCIOUSNESS The idea of consciousness as some sort of internal monitoring takes many forms. One form is one that Dennett discusses in COllsciousness Explained: higher-order thought. In Rosenthal's version," to say that a state is conscious in this sense is to say that the state is accompanied by a thought to the effect that one is in that state. Perhaps in another time or culture people were or are much less introspective than they are here and now, but would anyone claim that there was a time or place when people genetically like us (and who are not shell-shocked or starving to death) had children who had no capacity to think or say something on the order of "Carry me. my leg hurts"? To be able to think or say this involves being able to think that one's leg hurts. and that is to think a higher-order thought in the relevant sense. I won't say that it isn't possible that some wise child of our species discovered that she could get Mom to carry her by talking (and thinking) about her pain, but it would take weird and wonderful discoveries to convince me that this is a theoretical option to be taken seriously. Dennett does not give any hint of the kind
28
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
of weird and wonderful discoveries that would be needed. So we have to doubt that this is what he means. (Though it should be noted that Dennett makes a number of very favorable remarks about this idea of consciousness in Consciousness Explained.)
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS There are a number of closely connected notions of self-consciousness clustered around the notion of the ability to think about oneself. Let us begin with a minimal notion of self-consciousness, one that requires thinking about oneself, but not in any particular way. Certainly this very minimal kind of self-consciousness is unlikely to be a cultural construction. Consider deception. Deception involves thinking about getting others to think that one believes something other than what one actually believes. This involves the minimal self-consciousness just mentioned. There is pretty good evidence that higher primates practice deception, so it seems unlikely that humans had to invent it. 10 Further. some higher primates. notably chimps. show other signs of self-consciousness in the minimal sense. Some primates show signs of exploring their bodies in mirrors. while other primates and humans below age one and a half do not. Gallup" and others have painted bright spots on the foreheads and ears of anesthetized primates. watching what happened. Chimps between the ages of seven and fifteen usually show surprise on looking at their mirror images. then touch the spot. attempting to wipe off the mark. This is known as the mark test. Nonprimates never do this. Human babies don't pass the mark test until the middle of their second year. This is now a well-established phenomenon replicated numerous times. though there are raging controversies. I' As far as I can see. the controversies have little to do with chimp self-consciousness in the minimal sense. One of the controversies is about whether chimps have a "theory of mind." but that is not required for minimal self-consciousness. Anyway. there is independent evidence from the literature on genetic defects that humans have an innate module dedicated to understanding the minds of other humans, a module which is therefore most unlikely to be a cultural construction. Autistic people appear to lack that module. even when they are otherwise cognitively normaL and there is another syndrome. a chromosomal abnormality. Williams Syndrome. in which the patients have the mind-module even when they are terribly subnormal in other cognitive respects. I , Carey. et aL mention a story that illustrates the lack of theoretical understanding characteristic of Williams Syndrome. A young adult woman with Williams Syndrome had read a number of vampire novels. When asked why vampires bite necks. she was very puzzled, and eventually answered that they must have "an inordinate fondness for necks." She had no idea that vampires are supposed to consume
19
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
blood. This sort of evidence for genetic mental modules certainly puts a heavy burden of proof on anyone who claims that anything so basic as consciousness in any of the senses discussed so far is a cultural construction. Another controversy is over whether chimps really realize that they are seeing themselves in the mirror. Perhaps a chimp who is a subject of the experiment thinks she is seeing another chimp with a dot on his forehead. and that makes the subject chimp wonder whether she has a dot on her forehead too. Maybe so, but the ability to wonder whether I have a dot on my forehead presupposes that I have minimal self-consciousness. Another objection to these experiments is that perhaps they mainly test understanding of mirrors. But plausibly understanding mirrors involves having some idea that it is oneself that one is seeing in the mirror. The most fascinating result I've heard of in this area in recent years is unpublished work by Marc Hauser on the cotton-top tamarin, a small monkey which has a large white tuft on the top of its head. Monkeys had never been observed to pass orthodox versions of the mark test. Hauser thought that perhaps the inconsistent responses shown by chimps and other higher primates had to do with the lack of salience of the dots, so he died the cottontop tuft outrageous electric colors, flamingo pink, chartreuse, etc. The finding is that the cottontops passed the mark test. Normally, they don't look in the mirror much. and rarely longer than one to three seconds at a time. Hauser observed long stares on the part of the monkeys with died tufts of thirty to forty-five seconds, and a three-fold increase in touching their tufts. Further. it seems unlikely that the monkeys thought they were looking at other monkeys. since staring in this species is a threat, and these monkeys were staring peacefully, something they do not normally do. Hauser has run all sorts of controls. for example. painting the mirror instead of the monkey, checking what happens when a monkey sees another monkey with a died tuft, 14 checking the effect of the smell and the feel of the die, and the result stands. Another experiment (mentioned by Dennett) is that a chimp can learn to get bananas via a hole in its cage by watching its arm on a closed circuit TV whose camera is some distance away.15 Though there is strong evidence that chimps (and maybe monkeys) are self-conscious in the minimal sense, given the controversies in the field, I will draw a weaker conclusion, namely that it is up to anyone who claims that humans are not, as a biological matter, selfconscious in the minimal sense to debunk this evidence. In the absence of such debunking, we are entitled to suppose that it is false that selfconsciousness in the minimal sense is a cultural construction in humans. (I will ignore the possibility that self-consciousness is an independent creation of monkey, chimp, and human culture.) The idea that minimal self-consciousness is a cultural construction is certainly more of a genuine possibility than the options canvassed earlier, but it is nonetheless a poor empirical bet. But haven't I given up my case for confusion by admitting that this is an empirical question which could come out either way? No, Dennett will
30
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
not get off the hook so easily. To be sure, he sees his theory of consciousness as empirical, but empirical in a diffuse way, not something that could be refuted by experiments on cottontop tamarins. Dennett is well aware of the work on the mark test and chooses not to mention it, at least not in anything I've seen. He clearly does not see his theory of consciousness as depending on these specific empirical results, since he mentions few of them; indeed, to the extent that he does mention this type of work, he appears to have something like the same view that I have expressed. He seems to discuss the Menzel experiment so as to support the idea that chimps are self-conscious in something like the way that we are. He describes the result as "a decidedly non-trivial bit of self-recognition."[" Where are we? I have argued that if Dennett's theory is about phenomenal consciousness or access-consciousness, it is obviously false and if it is about minimal self-consciousness, it is less obviously false but still false. There is a notion of self-consciousness that is a better candidate for what Dennett has in mind than minimal self-consciousness. He does have a chapter on the self in which he paints the self as a fiction, a fiction invented in human history. Now I should say right off that I have long been sympathetic to something like this idea, though I prefer a more conservative version; viz., that the self is much more fragmented than we like to think. This is an idea that has been around for many years, one that grows ever more prominent as the evidence mounts up. The first really impressive case for it by a philosopher was Thomas Nagel's famous paper on split brains and the unity of consciousness. Nagel argued that the fragmentation observed in split brain patients exists to some degree in normal people, and in the light of it our concept of the self crumbles. This sort of idea has been widened and elaborated for many years now by many psychologists and neuropsychologists, notably by Gazzaniga and his colleagues.[~ Gazzaniga tries to explain many ubiquitous cognitive phenomena in terms of the relations among "sub-selves," especially the efforts of some "sub-selves" to rationalize the behavior of other "sub-selves:'[') Now here is the relevance to Dennett. I have been talking about a rather minimal notion of self-consciousness, one that it seems tout chimps and human toddlers and maybe monkeys have. This is a very unintellectual notion of self-consciousness, because it is very relaxed about the notion of the self. In particular, this weak notion of self-consciousness does not require any conception of the self as being or as not being a federation of subselves. But we are free to frame a more intellectual notion of the self that does presuppose that we are not such a federation. I think it is the self in this sense, the nonfederal sense, that Dennett thinks is a fiction. And that sense of the self gives rise to a conception of self-consciousness, namely thinking about oneself in some way that is incompatible with being a federation. Let us call this sense of self-consciousness NONFEDERAL-SELF-consciousness. I spell it this way to remind the reader that the emendation attaches to the [7
31
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
concept of the self; and only derivatively to the concept of consciousnessit is self-consciousness that involves thinking of the self in a certain sophisticated way, a way that Dennett thinks (and I agree) is probably wrong. Note that unity and nonfederation are distinct. since unity is compatible with both federation and nonfederation. The United States is a unity as well as a federation. One could think of oneself as a unity without having the conceptual equipment to think of oneself as either a federation or not a federation. I would guess (and it's just a guess) that members of our species have always thought of themselves as a unity, but only in recorded history have thought of themselves as NONFEDERAL, or, in the case of Dennett, Nagel, et aI. (including myself) as FEDERAL. So perhaps what Dennett means when he says that consciousness is a cultural construction is that NONFEDERAL-SELF-consciousness is a cultural construction because the nonfederal self is a cultural construction. But that would make the claim a total banality. It is no surprise at all that the ability to think of oneself in a very sophisticated way is a product of culture. You can't think of yourself as falling under a sophisticated concept without having the sophisticated concept. We could call thinking of oneself as chairman CHAIRMAN-SELF-consciousness. CHAIRMAN-SELFconsciousness involves thinking of oneself as the person who guides the department, the person who has the keys. etc. And all could agree that CHAIRMAN-SELF-consciousness is a cultural construction because the concept of a chairman is a cultural construction. But that is no news. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that the idea that selves are not federations is a banality. On the contrary, J think it is an interestingly false thesis. What I am talking about is the claim that it requires culture to think of one's self as nonfederal (or as federal)-that's the banality. To put it slightly differently. Dennett's claim that we are federations, that we have federal selves. is a very interesting and profound idea that J agree with. What is banal is that it takes culture to think of oneself using such an interesting and intellectual concept (or its negation). The thesis about the self is interesting, the thesis about self-consciousness is banal. However, J find nothing in the texts to justify the idea that what Dennett means is that NONFEDERAL-SELF-consciousness is a cultural construcco tion. So I can't claim to have figured out what Dennett means yet. But there is an important piece of the puzzle that I haven't introduced yet. Before I get to that piece, I want to guard against one source of misunderstanding. I mentioned earlier that we think of phenomenal consciousness as wrapped together with access-consciousness in thinking of phenomenal consciousness as accessible. And this way of thinking-which may be a cultural product-influences phenomenal consciousness itself. We think of phenomenal consciousness as having nothing hidden about it, and experience might perhaps be somewhat different in a different culture in which phenomenal consciousness was not thought about in this way. I cautioned
32
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
against the mistake of jumping to the conclusion that if this is right it shows that consciousness is a cultural construction. To confuse being influenced by culture with being created by culture would be a serious error, one that I am not attributing to Dennett. Consciousness and feet may both be influenced by culture, I concluded, but neither is created by it. What I am leading up to is that a similar point can be made about the relation between phenomenal consciousness and self-consciousness. There is a "me"-ness to phenomenal consciousness that may come in part from culture; this aspect comes out in part in the way we describe phenomenal consciousness as "before the mind." Whether or not the "me"-ness of phenomenal consciousness is in part cultural, the ideology of the unity of the self mentioned earlier gives us reason to think there is an influence of culture on the way many or most of 21 us experience the world. But once again. though there may be a cultural influence on phenomenal consciousness here. this is no reason to postulate that phenomenal consciousness is a cultural creation. Surely, in any culture that allows the material and psychological necessities of life, people genetically like us will have experiences much like ours: There will be something it is like for them to see and hear and smell things that is much like what it is like for us to do these things. I mentioned a new piece of the puzzle. Here it is: In the early part of Consciousness Explained,2' Dennett tells us that consciousness is like love and money. He thinks that you can't love without having the concept oflove, and (more plausibly) that there wouldn't be any money unless some people had the concept of money. (In another work, soon to be mentioned and quoted from, he includes right and wrong in the list of things that don't exist without their concepts.) According to Dennett. you can't have consciousness unless you have the concept of consciousness. This is certainly a wildsounding view (and he concedes this). Its incompatibility with common ideas is exemplified by the fact that we are inclined to think that animals are conscious (in at least the phenomenal. access and minimal-self senses) but don't have the concept of consciousness. I don't know what Dennett's argument for his claim is or what kind of consciousness he has in mind, but it does seem closely connected with the idea that consciousness is a cultural construction. Here is a line of reasoning that connects them. Suppose that Dennett is right that we can't be conscious without having the concept of consciousness. And suppose further that the concept is a cultural construction. Then consciousness itself requires a cultural construction and could for that reason be said to be a cultural construction. Since there is a close connection between the claim that consciousness requires its own concept and the claim that consciousness is a cultural construction, we should consider what kind of consciousness it is supposed to be that you can't have without having a concept of it. For whatever kind of consciousness it is that requires its own concept will no doubt be the Holy Grail, the kind of consciousness we have been seeking that is a cultural construction (and interestingly so).
33
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
Dennett credits Julian Jaynes as one of the sources of the idea that conD sciousness is a cultural construction. Now we are in luck because Dennett has written a long review of Jaynes's book, Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown (~f the Bicameral Mind which links this view to the idea that consciousness requires its own concept, a view which Dennett also credits 24 to Jaynes. What kind of consciousness is it that Jaynes is supposed to think 25 requires its own concept? Dennett criticizes my review of Jaynes for misconstruing a revolutionary proposal as a simple blunder. In a review of Jaynes's book some years ago, Ned Block said the whole book made one great crashing mistake, what we sometimes call a "use mention" error: confusing a phenomenon with either the name of the phenomenon or the concept of the phenomenon. Block claimed that even if everything that Jaynes said about historical events were correct, all he would have shown was not that consciousness arrived in 1400 B.C., but that the concepf of consciousness arrived in 1400 B.C. People were conscious long before they had the concept of consciousness, Block declared, in the same way that there was gravity long before Newton ever hit upon the concept of gravity. , .. [A discussion of morality follows] Right and wrong, however, are parts of morality, a peculiar phenomenon that can 'f predate a certain set of concepts. including the concepts of right and wrong. The phenomenon is created in part by the arrival on the scene of a certain set of concepts .... Now I take Jaynes to be making a similarly exciting and striking move with regard to consciousness. To put it really somewhat paradoxically, you can't have consciousness until you have the concept of 2 consciousness. " [Note: Though Dennett calls this a paradoxical way of putting it, he says this repeatedly and does not put it any other way.]
Jaynes has a very concrete version of Dennett's hypothesis that consciousness is a cultural construction, namely that it was invented in Europe by the ancient Greeks around 1400 B.C. We don't need to get into the issue of what Jaynes actually meant by 'consciousness'. For my purposes, the issue is what Dennett takes Jaynes to mean, because Dennett himself endorses the idea that consciousness is a cultural construction in this sense. Here is what he says. Perhaps this is an autobiographical confession: I am rather fond of his way of using these terms; ["consciousness', 'mind', and other mental terms] I rather like his way of carving up consciousness. It is in fact very similar to the way that I independently decided to carve up consciousness some years ago. So what then is the project'? The project is, in one sense, very simple and very familiar. It is bridging what he calls the 'awesome chasm' between mere inert matter and the inwardness, as he puts it, of a conscious being. Consider the awesome chasm between a brick and a bricklayer. There isn't, in Thomas
34
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
Nagel's famous phrase, anything that it is like to be a brick. But there is something that it is like to be a bricklayer, and we want to know what the conditions were under which there happened to come to be entities that it was like something to be in this rather special sense. That is the story. the developmental, evolutionary. historical story, that Jaynes sets out to tell."
So it looks like the kind of consciousness that requires its own concept and is a cultural construction is after all phenomenal consciousness. W. V. Quine tells me that he asked Jaynes what it was like to be a person before consciousness was invented. Jaynes replied, Quine says, that what it was like to be them was no different from what it is like to be a table or a chair. The passage just quoted suggests that Dennett would agree. So we are back to square one. I've been going through concepts of consciousness one by one looking for a concept of consciousness for which Dennett's thesis escapes both falsity and banality, and phenomenal consciousness is the first concept of consciousness I tried. If phenomenal consciousness is not reducible to one of the other consciousnesses, then the claim that phenomenal consciousness requires its own concept and is a cultural construction is obviously false for reasons I gave. But if Dennett does favor one of these reductions, we have every right to ask: "Which oneT And if the answer is one of the consciousnesses I have covered, the claim is false or banal. Perhaps Dennett will say that he will have no part of my distinctions, that they impose a grid on the phenomena that doesn't sit well with his way of thinking of things. But this is no defense. Consider randomness. The concept can be and is used in two very different ways. Sometimes we say a particular sequence is random if it is produced by a random process, even if the sequence itself consists of eighteen consecutive sevens. Other times what we mean is that it is of a type that one would expect to be produced by a random process, that is, it has no obvious pattern. Suppose someone makes a claim that is false on one concept of randomness and banal on the other. It would be of no use at all for the offender to defend himself by saying that he didn't find the distinction congenial. Given the fact that on one way of cutting things up, his thesis is trivial or banal. it is up to him to give some precise way of thinking about randomness that disarms the objection. He must show how his thesis can be neither false nor banal, and to do this he will have to make his notion of randomness precise in a way that allows us to see that the criticism is wrong. The application of the analogy to Dennett is straightforward. I have argued that on one grid that we can impose on the phenomena. his claim is either false or banal. He does not have the option of simply saying he doesn't like the distinctions. He will have to find a way of making more precise what he is talking about under the heading of "consciousness" in a way that rebuts the charge of falsity or banality. It is no good just refusing to make
35
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
distinctions at all, since anyone can see that 'conscious' is highly ambiguous, and my argument puts the burden of proof on him. In another publication written about the same time as this paper, I have made a shorter version of some of these points about Dennett and Dennett 2K has replied. Here is what J see as his main point: Although Block discusses my theory of consciousness at some length, his discussion always leans on the presupposition that his putative distinction is in place. My theory of consciousness is stranded, he concludes, between being trivially false (if a theory of P-consciousness), non-trivially false (if a theory of "just" A-consciousness) and banal if a theory of "a highly sophisticated version of self-consciousness." But since I not only decline to draw any such distinction, but argue at length against any such distinction. Block's critique is simply questionbegging. I may be wrong to deny the distinction, but this could not be shown by proclaiming the distinction, ignoring the grounds I have given for denying it, and then showing what a hash can then be made of ideas I have expressed in other terms. with other presuppositions. If Block thinks his distinction is too obvious to need further defense, he has missed the whole point of my radical alternative. This is a fundamental weakness in the strategy Block employs. and it vitiates his discoveries of "fallacies" in the thinking of othertheorists as well. Those of us who are not impressed by his candidate distinction are free to run the implication in the other direction: since our reasoning is not fallacious after all. his distinction must be bogus. ,,,
First of all, though Dennett has some complaints against the phenomenal consciousness/access-consciousness distinction, he never mentions any problem about the notions of access-consciousness. monitoring consciousness or self-consciousness, nor does he impugn the distinctions among these things. Oversimplifying (see below), Dennett wishes to treat phenomenal consciousness as a type of access-consciousness. But the argument 1 gave can run on just monitoring consciousness. self-consciousness, and accessconsciousness of various sorts. Supposing that phenomenal consciousness just is a type of access-consciousness, what then is Dennett's theory about? If it is about access-consciousness, Dennett will run into the problem mentioned earlier, that it is obviously a biological fact about people and not a cultural construction that some brain representations persevere enough to affect memory. control behavior. and the like. Since this is Dennett's favored way of describing access. it is not easy to understand how seeing phenomenal consciousness as a type of access-consciousness is supposed to avoid the problem. If there is some novel form of access that his theory is about, it is surprising that he has not told us in any of his many publications on this topic, including his reply to a version of the criticism of this paper. Secondly, Dennett does not reject the phenomenal consciousness/ access-consciousness distinction. Far from it-he reconstructs it. His idea
36
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
is that phenomenal-consciousness contents are richer in information and more accessible than the level required for access-consciousness. Thus, he says, I am "inflating differences in degree into imaginary differences in kind.")O I believe I can show that this reconstruction will not do. J I For present purposes, let's suppose Dennett is right: The difference is one of degree. Which degree, then, does his thesis apply to? Or does it apply to monitoring or self-consciousness? My criticism does not depend on taking the distinction to be one of kind rather than of degree. Thirdly, Dennett contrasts the informational paucity of the perceptual contents of the blindsight patient with the informational richness of normal vision. Some classic blindsight studies involve prompting the blindsight patient to guess between an 'X' and an '0' or between a horizontal and a vertical line. Normal perceptual contents are much richer. representing colors and shapes that are a small subset of a vast number of possibilities. In normal vision, we can "come to know, swiftly and effortlessly, that there was a bright orange Times Roman italic 'X' about two inches high, on a blue-green background, with a pale gray smudge on the upper right arm, almost touching the intersection? (That's a sample of the sort of richness of content normally to be gJeaned from the sighted field, after all.)" Supposing that Dennett is right that phenomenal-consciousness contents are just contents that are particularly rich in information and accessibility, is it phenomenally conscious contents that are cultural constructions and require their own concepts? It is hard to take seriously the idea that the human capacity to see and access rich displays of colors and shapes is a cultural construction that requires its own concept. Indeed, there is a great deal of evidence that culture does not even injfuence these perceptual contents. For example, in cultures which have only two or three color words, the people make all the same perceptual distinctions that we do. Further. they recognize the same colors as focal that we do even if their languages do not separate out those colors.': In a fascinating series of studies, Eleanor Rosch showed that the Dani. a New Guinea tribe that has only two color words, nonetheless remember and represent colors in many respects just as we do. For example, they learned words for focal colors much more easily than words for nonfocal colors (e.g., blue as opposed to greenish blue). When asked to learn words for oddball color categories covering focal colors plus adjacent nonfocal colors, some subjects wanted to quit the study." There is reason to think that many aspects of color and shape perception are genetically coded features of the visual system, and not a product of culture or something that requires any concept of • 3-+ conSCIOusness. So I leave the reader with a quandary, one that I hope Dennett will now resolve, since he gets the last word. Consciousness is a mongrel notion: There are a number of very different concepts of consciousness. On some of these, notably phenomenal consciousness, access-consciousness and monitoring consciousness, the idea that consciousness is a cultural construction
37
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
is hard to take seriously. If it is minimal self-consciousness that is meant, it is an empirical issue where available evidence goes against the cultural construction idea. (But if that was what Dennett meant, you would think he would have commented negatively on that evidence; instead his limited comment is positive.) If it is a sophisticated self-consciousness that is meant (NONFEDERAL-SELF-consciousness), then the thesis is true but utterly banal, because it is no surprise that the ability to apply a sophisticated concept to oneself requires a cultural construction. I don't claim to have covered all the options. But I have covered enough options to make it fair to ask for an answer: What kind of consciousness is it that requires its own concept and is a cultural construction?"
NOTES I. Daniel Dennett.Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little. Brown & Co .. 1991). 219. 2. Ibid., 210. J. T. S. Kuhn. "A Function for Thought Experiments:' in Melanges Alexandre Korre, vol. I. (Hermann. 1964). 307-34. 4. This last point could be rebutted by the claim that throughout human evolution there was a culture that created phenomenal consciousness (apparently contrary to Julian Jaynes' view to be discussed later). If we allow ourselves to take the view that phenomenal consciousness is a cultural construction seriously we will have to take this issue seriously. My point, however, is that we should not take this question seriously. It is a poor question that will just mislead us. 5. Ned Block, "On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness." The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (1995): 227-47. See also my reply to my critics in the same volume. This paper is reprinted in The Nature ot' Consciousness: Philosophical Debates. ed. N. Block, O. Flanagan. and G. Guzeldere (Cambridge. Mass.: MIT Press, 1995). 6. One problem with the first of these suggestions is that perhaps the representational content of pain is nonco/lcepfuali;:.ed. and if so, it would be too primitive to playa role in inference. After all. dogs can have pains. and it is reasonable to doubt that dogs hm'e the relevant concepts. In response to an earlier version of this distinction, Davies and Humphreys have made a suggestion which I can adapt. (See the introduction to their Consciousnes.1 [Oxford: Blackwell. J 993].) A state with nonconceptualized content is access-conscious if. in virtue of one's having the state, its content ""ould he inferentially promiscuous and poised for rational control of action and speech if the subject were to have had the concepts required for that content to be a conceptualized content. 7. Daniel Dennett, "The Message Is: There Is No Medium:' Philosophr and Phenomenological Research 53 (1993): 929. 8. The,e theories are known as extramission theories. 9. D. Rosenthal, "Two Concepts of Consciousness," Philosophical Srudies 49 (1986): 329-59. 10. Merlin Donald's Origins (Jf the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cogniriol7 (Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1991) is often thought to be rather critical about the evidence for the conceptual capacities of chimps compared to humans. It is interesting in this regard to tind Donald replying to six critics who criticize him for [his by admitting that there is impressive evidence for ape deception, See his reply to critics in The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (1993): 777. Merlin says he is espe-
38
Copyright (e) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (e) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
cially impressed with data on chimps' capacities, including some that indicate "sense of 'self'" in Alexander Marshak's "Correct Data Base: Wrong Model?" Behal'ioral and Brain Sciences 16 (1993): 767. Mitchell and Miles (in the same issue) provide further data supporting this conclusion. II. G. Gallup. "Self-Awareness and the Emergence of Mind in Primates." The American Journal oj Prima to logy 2 (1982): 237-48. The most complete and up-to-date survey on the mark test as of my writing this is D. Povinelli's "What Chimpanzees Know about the Mind," in Behavioral Diversity in Chimpan;:ees (Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994). See also R. W. Mitchell, "Mental Models of Mirror Self-Recognition: Two Theories," in New Ideas in Psychologv 11 (1993): 295-332 and "The Evolution of Primate Cognition: Simulation, Self-Knowledge and Knowledge of Other Minds:' in Hominid Culture in Primate Penpective, cd. D. Quiatt. and I.ltani (University Press of Colorado, 1993). 12. Self-Awareness in Animals and Humans. ed. S. T. Parker. et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). See also New Ideas in Psychology II (1993). R. W. Mitchell's paper, "Mental Models of Mirror Self-Recognition: Two Theories" draws fire from Gallup and Povinelli, De Lannoy. Anderson, and Byrne, and there is a reply by Mitchell. I think one gets a pretty good idea of what the controversies are like from this exchange. 13. S. Carey. S. Johnson. and K. Levine. "Two Separable Knowledge Acquisition Systems: Evidence from Williams Syndrome": H. Tager-Flusberg. K. Sullivan, and D. Zaitchik. "Social Cognitive Abilities in Young Children with Williams Syndrome" (papers presented at the Sixth International Professional Conference of the Williams Syndrome Association, July 1994). 14. M. Hauser. J. Kralik, C. Botto-Mahan, M. Garrett. and 1. Oser. "Self-recognition in Primates: Phylogeny and the Salience of Species-Typical Features" (forthcoming). 15. E. W. Menzel, E. S. Savage-Rumbaugh, and 1. Lawson. "Chimpanzee (Pan Troglodwes) Spatial Problem Solving with the Use of Mirrors and Televised Equivalents of Mirrors:' The Journal oj Comparatil'e Psychology 99 (1985): 211-17. This experiment is mentioned by Dennett on 428 of Consciousness Explained. 16. Consciollsness Explained. 428. 17. Thomas Nagel. "Brain Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness." Syntilese 22 (1971): 396-413. 18. M. Gazzaniga and 1. E. LeDoux, The Integrated Mind (New York: Plenum, 1978): M. Gazzaniga, The Social Brain (New York: Basic Books, 1(85). See also Marvin Minsky's The Society ()f Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985). 19. For a detailed account of the difference between phenomenal consciousness and selfconsciousness. and of why it is self-consciousness that matters to morality, see Stephen White, "What Is It Like to Be a Homunculus'?" The Pac(fic Philusophical QuarterlY 68 (1987): 148-74. 20. Further. if that was what Dennett meant, wouldn't he have advanced his theory of the self as a fiction in the course of presenting the theory of consciousness'? Instead, the theory of consciousness (including consciousness as a cultural construction) is presented in part II of the book (mainly chapters 7-9), and the theory of the self is given in part III at the end, in the next to the last chapter of the whole book, chapter 13. I am indebted to an unpublished paper on the self by Stephen White. Consciousness Explained, 24. Ibid .. 259. Daniel Dennett, "Julian Jaynes's Software Archeology," Canadian PHchology 27 (1986): 149-54. 25. Ned Block. review of Julian Jaynes's Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind in Cognition and Brain Theory 4 ( 1981 ): 81-3. 26. "Julian Jaynes's Software Archeology:' 152.
21. 22. 23. 24.
27. Ibid .. 149.
39
Copyright (e) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (e) University of Arkansas Press
Block, Ned, "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory" of? , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.23
28. Block, "On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness." Dennett's reply is "The Path Not Taken,"The Behal'ioral and Brain Sciences 18 ( 1995): 252-3. 'P-consciousness' and 'A-consciousness' are the terms used in that paper for phenomenal and accessconsciousness. 29. Dennett. "The Path Not Taken:' 253. 30. Ibid. 31. Sec my reply in The BehUl'ioral and Bmill Sciences 18 (1995): 272-84. 32. B. Berlin and P. Kay. Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Emllliion (University of California Press, 1969). 33. Eleanor Rosch. "On the Internal Structure of Perceptual and Semantic Categories," in CO,Rnitil'e Del'elopmelll and the Acquisition of Language. ed. T. E. Moore (Academic Pre~s. 1973). 111-44. 34. Ican't resist commenting on Dennett' s suggestion that phenomenal consciousness can be characterized in part in term~ of informational richness. (l won't comment on the accessibility part of the theory.) Wciskrantz notes that his patient DB had better acuity in some areas of the blind field (in some circumstances) than in his sighted field. And there is an obvious way to increase the superiority of the blind field-namely by decreasing the richness of the deliverances of the sighted field. Suppose a Mad Scientist kidnaps a blindsight patient and damages the sighted part of the visual system. Many blind people are unable to do much more than distinguish light and dark. so we can imagine the Mad Scientist injuring a blindsight patient by so damaging his sighted field. In the sighted field. he experiences the difference bctween light and dark. But don't we still have an informational superiority of the blind field? Dennett describes thc informational content of blindsight as "vanishingly" small. In his book. he emphasizes the cafoCS in which the blindsight patient is given a forced choice: e.g .. an 'X' or an '0'. But blindsight patients can exhibit contents that are far more informational than that. In PoppeL et a!.'s famous paper. the first human blindsight study. the patients wcre asked to move their eyes in the direction of the stimulus. \\'hich Ihe\' (,()lIld do. (E. P(jppe!. R. Held. and D. Frost."Residual Visual Function" after Brain Wounds Involving the Central Visual Pathways in Man:' Nafllre 243 [1973]: 2295-6.) So we could have a blindsight patient whose blind field discriminations involved distinguishing among a number of different direction~. and who could not make that many discriminations in his sigliu-d field. In the light of this point, no one should maintain that high informational content is the essence of or necessary for experience. Further. blind sight patients can catch a ball thrown in the blind field. and shape their hand to grasp an object presented in the blind field. These are cases of far more than binary information. and more. I would guess, than some cases of near total blindness of the sort described. Further. there are othef blind sight-like phenomena in which subjects have rich informational contents without phenomenal or access-consciousness of it. Prosopagnosia is a neurological impairment in which subjects cannot recognize faces. even the faces of their friends and family. Bauer ("Autonomic Recognition: A Neuropsychological Application of the Guilty Knowledge Test," Neurop.\·yc/wlogica 22 [1984J: 457-69) showed patients photographs of people they had seen many times. fOf example, John Wayne, and went through a number of names. noting a polygraph blip when the right name came up. Other experiments have shown that many prosopagnosics have information about the faces that they cannot consciously recognize in either the phenomenal or access senses. What's the informational value of seeing that it is John Wayne? Not vanishingly small. Compare the rich· ness of this content with that of say a salty taste (while holding your nose ~o there is no smell). It is not at all cledf that the experience of tasting without smelling has more informational value than the prosopagnosics nonexperiential appreciation that he is seeing John Wayne. 35. I am grateful to Susan Carey, Chris Hill. Paul Horwich. and Stephen White for comments on a previous draft.
40
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dretske, Fred, Differences that Make No Difference , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.41
PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS VOL. 22 NO. I & 2. SPRING ,\ND
FALL
1994
Differences that Make No Difference]
Fred Dretske Stanford Ul1il'crsity
Never mind differences that make no difference. There are none. I want to talk, instead. about differences that do not make a difference to anyone, differences of which no one is aware. There are lots of these. According to Daniel Dennett, though, there are fewer than you might have thought. There are. to be sure. physical differences---even some that exist in you-of which you are not aware. There are also conscious events in me, and differences among them. that you don't know about. But there are no conscious events in you that escape your attention. If you do not believe yourself to be having conscious experience 0, then 0 is not a conscious experience at all. Dennett calls this view. a view that denies the possibility in principle of consciousness in the absence of a subject's belief in that consciousness. first-person operationalism.' Dennett is a first-person operationalist. For him there are no facts about one's own conscious lifeno. as it were, conscious facts-of which one is not conscious. Philosophers like to call each other names. I'm no exception. The preferred term of abuse these days. especially among materialists. seems to be "Cartesian." So I will use it. First-person operationalism sounds like warmed-over Cartesianism to me. For Descartes. the mind is an open book. Everything that happens there is known to be happening there by the person in whom it is happening. No mental secrets. For Dennett. too, there are no secrets. no facts about our conscious lives that are not available for external
41
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dretske, Fred, Differences that Make No Difference , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.41
publication. Differences that make no difference to the publicity department, to what a person knows or believes and can thus exhibit in overt behavior, are not conscious differences. The mind is like everything else: There is more to it than we are aware. 1f making a difference to someone is understood, as Dennett understands it, as a matter of making a difference to what that person believes or judges, then conscious differences need make no difference to anyone-not even to the person in whom they occur.
1. HIDE THE THIMBLE From Content and Consciousness' to Consciousness Explained, a span of over twenty years, Dennett has been resolute in his conviction that awareness of something-an apple or a thimble-requires some kind of cognitive upshot. In the 1969 book (chapter six, "Awareness and Consciousness"), this is expressed as the idea that awareness of an apple on a table is awareness that there is an apple on a table. Awareness that there is an apple on a table, in tum, gets cashed out-l as a content-bearing internal state like a judgment or a belief that controls behavior and (for those who can speak) speech. In 1991, the same view is expressed by saying that Betsy, who is looking for a thimble in the children's game "Hide the Thimble," does not see the thimble until she "zero's in on" it and identifies it as a thimble. Only when an appropriate judgment is made-"Aha, the thimble"-will she see it. Only then will she become aware of it. Only then will the thimble be "in" Betsy's conscIous expenence. As a historical note, the same year Content and Consciousness appeared, I published Seeing and Knowing.' Although I was concerned primarily with epistemological issues, how seeing gives rise to knowing, I made a great fuss about what I called nonepistemic perception, perception that does not require (though in adult human beings it is normally accompanied by) belief or knowledge. In contrast to seeing facts (that they are apples and thimbles), seeing objects (apples and thimbles) is a case of nonepistemic perception. I made a fuss about nonepistemic perception because so many bad arguments in epistemology (and, at that time, in the philosophy of science) were pivoting on a confusion between the perception of objects and events (like oscilloscopes and eclipses), on the one hand, and the perception of facts (that they are oscilloscopes and eclipses) on the other. The perception of objects and events, I argued, could, and often did (especially in the case of children, animals, and theoretically untutored adults), occur in the absence of conceptual uptake-without such propositional attitudes as knowledge, identification, belief, and recognition. When it comes to objects and events, seeing is not knowing, and it isn't believing either.
42
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dretske, Fred, Differences that Make No Difference , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.41
At the same time, therefore, that I was arguing that awareness of apples was quite distinct from awareness that they are apples or, indeed, awareness of any fact about the apples, Dennett was assuming that these were essentially the same thing, that awareness of things is awareness of facts about 6 those things. Although Dennett's book was, in many ways, an absolute eye-opener for me (awakening my interest in the philosophy of mind), we were obviously in disagreement about a fundamental point concerning perceptual consciousness and, therefore, the nature of perceptual experience. Since the perception of objects and events was, for me, a relation between a perceiver and a thing that could exist without the perceiver understanding what was being perceived-or even that something was being perceived-perception could not be understood in terms of judgment, belief. or knowledge. Cognitively speaking. seeing is like touching, a relationship between a person (or animal) and an object that can exist (though it normally does not exist) without identification or recognition. One does not need the concept of a thimble~oes not need to understand what a thimble is-to touch it. Neither does one need the concept of a thimble to see a thimble. This, by the way. is why the context "S sees ..." is referentially transparent.' If S sees X. and X = Y. then S sees Y. Compare: If S touches X, and X = Y. then S touches Y. Of course, many of the objects we see every day are objects we identify in some way or another. But this is also true of the objects we touch. I don't always, but I often know what I'm touching. I do not normally touch thimbles and apples without knowing what I'm touching. The same is true of perception. I do not always. but I often know what I'm seeing--especially so when I see familiar objects at close range in good light. But that isn't the point. The point is not what is usually true of the objects one sees and touches, but what must be true to see and touch them. what it is that constitutes the seeing and touching. Knowledge. belief. recognition, judgment. identification-none of this is necessary.' In view of Paul Grice's work on conversational implicatures. I hope it is not necessary to mention (I'll do it anyway) the irrelevance of what we would say (or deny) we saw or touched. I would not normally say I saw, touched, or stepped on a thimble unless I thought I saw, touched. or stepped on a thimble-unless I recognized or identified (as a thimble) what I saw. touched, or stepped on. None of this is relevant to what it takes to see. touch. or step on a thimble. And I would be quick to deny that I saw a thimble if I returned empty-handed from a search for a thimble through a cluttered drawer. The denial is conversationally appropriate and perfectly reasonable, not to mention informative to my impatient wife. even when it is false. I did see it; I just failed to recognize it-at least as a thimble. What I imply, and therefore, the information I succeed in communicating with this false statement is, of course, that I did not tind (identify, recognize) the thimble. As so Y
43
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dretske, Fred, Differences that Make No Difference , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.41
often happens in communication, listeners are more interested in the implied truths than in the false statements that imply them. In a footnote in Consciousness Explained, 10 Dennett asks whether identification of a thimble comes after or before becoming conscious of it. He tells us that his Multiple Drafts model of consciousness "teaches us" not to ask this question. One can understand why he wouldn't want to ask this question and, therefore, why he would favor a theory that did not let one ask it. He doesn't want to hear the answer. Are we really being told that it makes no sense to ask whether one can see, thus be aware of, thus be conscious of, objects before being told what they are? Does it make no sense to ask. Macbeth style, "What is this I see before meT That it does make sense seemed obvious to me in 1969. It still does. Frankly, I thought when Dennett read my book it would seem obvious to him. Apparently it didn't. Maybe he didn't read the book. Whatever the explanation. he is still convinced that seeing is a form of knowing (or believing or taking-see below), that being conscious of a 0 is being conscious that it is a 0." I remain convinced that as long as these perceptual attitudes-seeing objects and seeing facts, being aware of apples and being aware that they are apples-are conflated. it is hard (to be honest, I think it is impossible) to give a plausible theory of consciousness. One has already suppressed one of the most distinctive elements of our conscious life-the difference between experience and belief.
2. ANIMALS AND INFANTS Cats and birds can see thimbles as well as (probably better than) little girls. They have better eyesight. The department in which little girls surpass birds and cats is in the conceptual department: They know, while cats and birds do not, what thimbles are. They know that, other things being equal. things that look like that are thimbles. When they see things that look like that. then they can judge them to be, identify them as, take them to be, thimbles. They can. as a result, not only see thimbles, but, when they are attentive and the thimbles are not too far away, see that they are thimbles-something quite beyond the capacity of birds and cats. This, though, is no reason to deny that animals can see thimbles. That would be to confuse ignorance with blindness. In replying to criticisms by Lockwood and Fellows and O'Hear, Dennett questions the "methodological assumption" that animals and infants are conscious.12 Whether or not infants and animals are conscious, he declares. has no clear pretheoretical meaning. What Dennett is doing here, of course, is recapitulating Descartes's answer to Arnauld. Holding that all conscious
44
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dretske, Fred, Differences that Make No Difference , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.41
phenomena are thought-like in character. Descartes concluded that animals. lacking the power of thought. could not be perceptually conscious of anything. If sheep seem to see the wolves from whom they run. the appearances are deceptive. Such flight is an unconscious reflex to retinal stimulation. Dennett is no Cartesian. but he does. like Descartes. have a theory of consciousness to which conceptually impoverished animals (and infants) are an embarrassment.!' How can a bird who cannot take a thimble to be a thimble, cannot judge, believe. think (let alone say) that something is a thimble. see a thimble? How can sheep be aware of wolves if they cannot judge them to be wolves? Descartes's bold way out of this problem was to deny that animals were conscious of anything. Dennett's way out-not quite so bold-is to insist that it isn 'f clear that animals (not to mention infants) are conscious of anything. For dialectical purposes, though. the result is the same: Embarrassing counterexamples are neutralized. One cannot use the fact-obvious to most of us-that animals can see to argue that seeing is not believing. For the sake of joining issues, I am willing to defer to Dennett's judgments about what is. and what isn't, clear in this area, but I have my suspicions about what is shaping his convenient intuitions on this matter. It wasn't so long ago. after aIL that this, or something very like this, was clear to Dennett. In Consciousness E>. plained he said that "'birds and fish and reptiles and insects clearly [~] have color vision. rather like our 'trichromatic' (redgreen-blue) system."!4 If Dennett still believes this. one is left to conclude that he thinks color vision doesn't enable an animal to see colors. Either that or seeing colors is not a way of being aware of colors. Or. perhaps, that being aware of colors does not require consciousness. There is the further fact. as Dennett himself points out in Consciollsness Explained,!; that according to his own theory!" lower animals (including frogs) have beliefs and wants (he adds that there is no good reason for putting these words in quotes). Since perceptions are also part of the intentional stance, lower animals presumably have perceptions too. Is one to infer, then, that the intentional stance entitles one to attribute perceptual beliefs about X to animals but not perceptual awareness of X? Why? Why go skittish about this part of the intentional stance'? It isn't only pet owners (and new parents) that will strenuously disagree with Dennett's treatment of animals and infants. I think scientists who make it their business to study animals will too. Hom is typical: The evidence available. mainly from studies of the visual abilities of vertebrates. including macaques. rats. chickens and pigeons ... gives no support to the view that the visual capacities of these animals resemble those of humans \vith blindsight. and no reason. therefore, to infer that these animals are unaware of the stimuli to which they respond.:-
45
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dretske, Fred, Differences that Make No Difference , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.41
3. COGNITIVISM Cognitivists (as I call them) are people who interpret perception, including the perception of thimbles and wolves, as some form of cognitive or conceptual achievement, as a species of identifying, knowing, judging, recognizing, taking, or believing. All awareness-of is awareness-that, all seeing is seeingas. Sensations are minithoughts. Hence. following Descartes, if one cannot think. one cannot feel or experience. The ignorant, the ones who cannot think the appropriate thoughts, are thereby rendered unconscious. Confronted with examples of perception that do not involve recognition. cognitivists typically give ground by diluting the cognitive requirements of perception. Quantifiers are shuffled. Though there is nothing in particular you must see something as in order to see it. you must. in order to see it, see it as something or other. Though you can see a thimble without seeing that it is a thimble. without taking it to be a thimble, you must, in order to see it, at least take it to be something in Granny's sewing basket or, maybe. just a shiny thing up there on the mantle. This maneuver has the welcome result of allowing people who are ignorant of thimbles to see them. but it still requires too much. It has the unwelcome result of making noticing-forming beliefs about-a thimble necessary for seeing a thimble. Even if one doesn't balk at this (some people, I know, don't), there is the fact that people can see objects without believing they are seeing anything. People have seen things when they thought they were hallucinating or imagining-when they took themselves to be seeing IK nothing at all. If some hallucinations are similar enough to veridical perception to convince the hallucinator that he is really seeing something. then. by parity of reasoning. they are similar enough to convince some perceivers that they are hallucinating. Hence, perceiving physical objects. induding thimbles, must be possible without believing one is perceiving any thingwhile. in fact, believing one is perceiving nothing. If seeing really is l believing. it is hard to see what the beliefs are supposed to be. This debate has a long and undistinguished history. I will not try to summarize it here. I merely intend to be locating Dennett within a certain tradition, a tradition that seeks to understand sensory phenomena in cognitive or conceptual terms. The motives for this assimilation in current philosophy of mind are usually functional (Consciousness Explained defends "a version of functionalism,,).211 Beliefs, as behavior-dedicated mental states, are, in principle, detectable in the behavior of the organism in which they occur. Given the game she is playing. Betsy'S belief that the object she sees is a thimble will result in her sitting down. From a functionalist's point of view, then, it would be convenient if Betsy's thimble-sightings were Betsy's thimblebeliefs. For then Betsy'S thimble-sightings would (together with her desires) have behavioral relevance. We could tell, from the outside, that she saw the thimble. If. on the other hand, there could be thimble-sightings without ,!
46
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dretske, Fred, Differences that Make No Difference , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.41
thimble-beliefs, if Betsy could experience a thimble without realizing it, then-good grief!-how could we ever find out she saw a thimble? How could Betsy ever find out she saw a thimble?2! What possible functional role would thimble-sightings have? If the difference between seeing a thimble and not seeing a thimble is going to make a difference to anyone, the cognitivist concludes, it had better be identified with a difference between taking and not taking-between judging and not judging-an object to be a thimble. David Armstrong is a cognitivist who has long appreciated the problems inherent in telling this kind of story about sense experience. the problem of anal yzing how things seem in terms of belief and judgment. The problem. as he put it in his 1968 book," is that there is, quite simply. perception without either belief or the acquiring of belief. After citing some examples he concludes: All these cases seem to show that we ought to make a distinction between the beliefs that we acquire in perception. and the perceptual experience on which these beliefs are based."
Armstrong makes the distinction. but he prefers to do so by assimilating perceptual experience to perceptual belief. Experiences are inclinations to believe or what Armstrong calls potential beliefs-beliefs we would have if we did not have certain other beliefs. Adapting Armstrong's analysis to the thimble example, we get something like this: Betsy's seeing a thimble is Betsy's acquiring a potential belief. a physical event in her brain that would be a belief if certain other beliefs didn't interfere. This does not seem like much progress. Armstrong's potential beliefs are as elusive as are the experiences they are meant to replace. How does one tell that Betsy had a potential bel ief that some object was a thimble (or whatever potential belief an experience of the thimble is supposed to be)? How does Betsy tell she has one? In observing a crowd of people or a shelf full of books. does one have a potential belief for each (visible) person and book? The difference between having a potential belief and having no belief at all sounds like a difference that doesn't make a difference. Potential beliefs about thimbles seem to be "cognitions" one can have without knowing one has them. Why trade experiences one can have without knowing it for cognitions one can have without knowing it? George Pitcher is another cognitivist who understands the problems in accounting for sense experience. 2~ Realizing that X can look red to 5 without S's consciously believing that X is red. Pitcher identifies X's looking red with an unconscious belief state.'5 In order to account for the "richness" of perceptual consciousness-seeing a red ball among a cluster of other colored objects-the belief state with which the "look" of things is identified is said to be a large set of such unconscious beliefs.'o Finally. for the person who mistakenly thinks he is experiencing an illusion. a person who sees an oasis before him when he consciously believes that there is no oasis before him
47
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dretske, Fred, Differences that Make No Difference , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.41
and that nothing there in the desert even looks like an oasis,'7 Pitcher resortsC~ to suppressed, or "partially" or "mostly" suppressed, inclinations to believe. According to this way of talking, Betsy's thimble-sightings tum out to be her thi mble-caused-suppressed-inclinations-to-believe. Once again, it is hard to see what is gained by these verbal maneuvers. The difference between a visual experience and a belief about what you experience seems reasonably clear pretheoretically. Why must the distinction be rendered in quasi-cognitive terms-especially when this results in the awkward identincation of conscious experience with unconscious beliefs and inclinations? After all the huffing and puffing. we are left with a difference that doesn't make a difference to anyone. So why bother? Dennett. working within this tradition, has his own philosophically "correct" way of talking about perceptual experiences. In 'Time and the Observer: The Where and When of Consciousness in the Brain:,c9 Dennett and Kinsboume talk about microjudgments and microtakings. Microjudgments are "sort of like" judgments or decisions.'" They are contentful states or discriminations '1 that are the multiple drafts and narrative fragments of Consciousness Explained. These judgments. decisions, drafts, narrative fragments. contentful states. registrations, interpretations, and discriminations (all these terms are used) are "sort of like" judgments in much the same way that Armstrong's potential beliefs were "sort of like" real beliefs and Pitcher's suppressed inclinations were "sort of like" real inclinations. The persons in whom they occur need never know, need never be aware, that they are taking place. This, presumably. is why these contentful states. these decisions and discriminations, are labeled "micro"-a prefix that does exactly the work of "unconscious." There can be microjudgments in 5 that X is soand-so without 5 ever judging that X is so-and-so. There can be contentful discriminations in 5 of X from Y without 5 consciously discriminating X from Y. That. apparently. is why Dennett speaks of cells and circuits in people. not people themselves. as making microjudgments.'c The job of Dennett's micro "cognitions" and multiple "drafts" is to do precisely what potential or suppressed "beliefs" do for Armstrong and Pitcher: provide a cognitive rug under which to sweep conscious experience,'; Philosophers are free to use words as they please. As long as one is clear about what microjudgments are, there is, I suppose, no ham1 in describing Betsy's nervous system, when she sees a thimble, as swarming with microjudgments about all manner of topics. But, if we choose to talk this way, then. we must also be prepared to say that. in the same sense, automobile fuel gauges are making "contentful discriminations" when they distinguish an empty from a full tank of gasoline. Ringing doorbells are "deciding" that someone is at the door. And a thermometer is "interpreting" the increased agitation of the molecules as a room temperature of 78°. We can talk this way, yes,'-1 but one must be careful not to conclude from this way of talking
48
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dretske, Fred, Differences that Make No Difference , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.41
that anything significant is being said about the nature of perceptual experience. One has certainly not shown that seeing an object, being perceptually aware of a thimble, consists in a judgment that it is a thimble (or anything else) in anything like the ordinary sense of the word "judgment." One is certainly not entitled to conclude that "there is no such phenomenon as really seeming over and above the phenomenon of judging that something is the case." Once the bloated terminology is eliminated, all one can really conclude is that perception is a complex causal process in which there are, in the nervous system. different responses to different stimuli. Causal theorists have been saying that sort of thing for years. No one took {hem to be propounding a theory of consciousness. Perhaps they could have improved their case by calling the products of such causal processes "narrative fragments" or "microtakings." It sounds so much more ... uh ... mental.
4. CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE Despite his reputation as an instrumentalist, Dennett is a rugged (not just a "sort of' )" realist about conscious experience: "Conscious experiences are real events occurring in the real time and space of the brain, and hence they are clockable and locatable within the appropriate limits of precision for real phenomena of their type:,36 He is. however, also a cognitivist: "There is no such phenomenon as reaBy seeming-over and ahove the phenomenon of judging in one way or another that something is the case:')' Perceptual awareness is real enough. yes. but it consists of judgments all the way down-or out (to the retina). I have no quarrel with Dennett's realism. I am taking issue only with his cognitivism. the idea that seeing or hearing X-being perceptually aware or conscious of X-is a species of judgment. I reject the idea that conception of ohjects is necessary to, let alone identical with, their perception. It is important to understand that the disagreement is not about the existence of qualia-at least not if qualia are conceived in the way Dennett conceives of them when he quines qualia." I'll return to the issue of qualia in the next section. Here I only mean to point out that the dispute about qualia-what they are and whether they exist-merely muddies these waters. What Dennett is rejecting in his well-known essay against qualia is the existence of mental particulars that are (1) inetIable. (2) intrinsic. (3) private, and (4) directly or immediately apprehensible. L too. have serious doubts about whether anything can have all these properties. Thus, I am happy, for the sake of argument. and because I agree with so much of what he says about qualia, to grant that our experience of the world has none of these qualities. That, though. is not the point. The point is not whether perceptual experience is ineffable. It isn't. It is not whether the properties
49
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dretske, Fred, Differences that Make No Difference , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.41
external objects seem to have are intrinsic properties of our experience. I agree they are not. Neither is the quarrel about our direct apprehension of experience. The issue, rather, is whether our experience is constituted by thought-like entities, entities that, like beliefs and judgments, require some conceptual understanding on the part of the agent of that which the judgment is about. If perceptual experience of a 0 is not a judgment, a belief. a taking (macro, mini, or micro) of 0 to be a 0 (or whatever), what is it? I have elsewhere answered this question in terms of the way sensory information is coded.'" There is more information in our experience of the world than can normally be processed in a way appropriate to belief and judgment. The transition from an experience of X to a belief about X is a conversion of sensory information from analog to digital form. I have sometimes illustrated this process with examples involving our perception of complex scenes: crowds of people, shelves full of books, a sky full of stars, arrays of numbers, and so on. Since Dennett has used similar examples to reach an opposite conclusion, let me sharpen our points of disagreement by considering such an example. Consider a two-year-old child-I will call her Sarah-who knows what fingers are, but has not yet learned to count, does not yet know what it means to say there are five fingers on her hand, five cookies in the jar, etc. Sarah can, I claim, see all five fingers on her hand-not one at a time, but all five at 41l once. This is, I know, an empirical claim, but it is an empirical claim for which there is. for normal two-year-olds. an enormous amount of evidence. Whether or not Sarah sees all five fingers depends, of course, on Sarah, the lighting. the angle at which she sees the fingers, and so on. Let us suppose, though, that Sarah is a child of average eyesight (intelligence has nothing to do with it), that she is looking at the fingers in good light, and that each finger is in plain view. Part of what it means to say that Sarah sees all five fingers is that if you conceal one of the fingers, things will look different to Sarah. There will then be only four fingers she sees. There will not only be one less (visible) finger in the world, but one less finger in Sarah's experience of the world. This difference in the world makes a difference in Sarah's experience of the world, and it makes a difference even when Sarah is unable to judge what difference it makes or even that it makes a difference. I would like to say that the same is true of birds and cats, but, out of deference to Dennett's unstable intuitions. I promised not to mention animals again. I have heard cognitivists insist that one can see five objects, even without judging there to be five, by executing five judgments, one for each object seen. Although Sarah cannot count to five-thus cannot take there to be five objects-she can, simultaneously as it were, take there to be a finger five different times. Cognitivists are a stubborn bunch, but this strikes me as a fairly desperate move, not one that Dennett would happily make. Cognitivists want to define what is seen in terms of what one judges, the content
50
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dretske, Fred, Differences that Make No Difference , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.41
of a judgment, not in tenns of properties of the judgment itself. An object is supposed to look blue, according to orthodox cognitivism, if and only if one takes it to be (or look?) blue, not if the taking is itself blue. Likewise, one would suppose, seeing five fingers is a matter of taking there to be five fingers, not of there being five finger-takings. I know this is tedious. Nonetheless, these facts. though painfully obvious, appear to need repetition. For it follows from these facts that there is a sense in which objects can look 0 to a person without that person judging or believing that anything is or looks 0. If Sarah had the concept FIVE and knew the difference between FIVE and FOUR, she would have a way of describing what she sees and a way of describing the way things look. But the fact that she is not able to describe the way things look does not mean that things do not look that way to her. Though she cannot describe the way five fingers look to her, we can. Dennett denies that the multiplicity. the richness, the tiveness. is in Sarah's experience of the world. A child who does not judge there to be five fingers is not conscious of five fingers: When we marvel. in those moments of heightened selfconsciousness, at the glorious richness of our conscious experience. the richness we marvel at is actually the richness of the world outside. in all its ravishing detail. It does not "enter" our conscious minds. but is simply available."
This is false. It is false. not on philosophical grounds. but (for anyone willing to admit that one object can "enter" a conscious mind) false on straightforward empirical grounds. The ravishing detail of the world does not cease to exist when we close our eyes. Our experience of this ravishing detail does cease to exist when we close our eyes. So the ravishing detail is not only "in" the world.": I take such situations to be critically important. and I harp about them at wearisome length in order to bring out the basic difference between perceptual experience and perceptual belief. A person's experience of the world can exhibit"" the property 0 even if the person in whom that experience occurs does not have the concept 0. does not understand what it means to be 0, is unable (therefore) to make judgments or have beliefs to the effect that something is 0. In terms of descriptive detail, Sarah's experience of five fingers exceeds her powers of judgment. She experiences more than she can know, more than she can believe or judge. This. indeed, is what the adjective "phenomenal" is meant to signify. Phenomenal properties are, in exactly this sense. independent of belief. Your experience can exhibit 0 even though you may not be able to judge that something is 0. It is in this sense that fiveness is a phenomenal property of Sarah's experience of her own hand."'"' Though the point is especially obvious with regard to numbers, the same holds true for color, shape, orientation. movement, and many other properties. Though they would not describe it that way, something can look blue
51
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dretske, Fred, Differences that Make No Difference , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.41
and hexagonal to persons who have neither the concept blue nor the concept hexagonal-to anyone, therefore, who is unable to judge or describe it as looking this way. Dennett is rightfully sceptical of the more extravagant feats of "filling in" alleged for perceptual experience. Does one really see hundreds of Marilyn Monroe pictures spread across the wall? There may be a hundred "out there" on the wall, but how many are "in here:' in one's experience of the wall? I don't know. Given what we know about diminished acuity outside the fovea, probably not as many as it seems, certainly not as many as are actually out there. But, often enough, there are a lot more "in here" than I bother to discover by counting. Personally, I think it fairly easy to see, in a brief glance, dozens, sometimes hundreds, of objects. I do it all the time.~' But we needn't quarrel about big numbers. The argument for phenomenal experience is made as wen with five objects as it is with a hundred. If one can see five objects without judging or taking there to be five. and seeing five involves a different experience from seeing four, then experience of the world exhibits properties that are not exhibited in judgment.
5. QUALIA In "Quining Qualia" Dennett tells us that qualia are the way things look or appear.~(' As long as one understands the look to be what I just called the phenomenal appearances (= the way things look that is logically-though surely not causally-independent of what a person believes or judges). this is a workable definition. It captures what most philosophers mean to be arguing about when they argue about qualia. I'm willing to work with it. According to this definition. then, a person who sees a blue hexagon in normal circumstances will have an experience that exhibits the qualia blueness and hexagollality. These are among the person's visual qualia whether or not that person is able to judge or say that there is, or appears to be. a blue hexagon in front of her. Although I promised not to mention animals again. I cannot forbear saying that it will also be the qualia of normally sighted chimpanzees and a great variety of other mammals. If there are genuine doubts about this. the evidence lies in discrimination and matching tests plus a little neurophysiology."' I said earlier that I agreed with much that Dennett has said about qualia. II qua\\a are sU\:l\:l0seli to be 'mellab\e, lntnnslc, \:l'l\ll\egeli, anli so on, tnen, I agree. there are no qualia. But there is no reason to throw a clean baby out with dirty bath water. We can, as Flanagan argues, keep the qualia and renounce the philosophical accretions."' I do not believe in sense-data. but I don't renounce sense perception because philosophers have said confused things about it.
52
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dretske, Fred, Differences that Make No Difference , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.41
Consider ineffability. If S's qualia are identified with the way things look to S, then, since something can look ~ to a person unable to judge that it is~, a person's qualia may be quite ineffable by that person at the time she has them. Sarah, at two years old, cannot express the fiveness that she experiences. But we can. I did. Those of us who know what properties objects have-and, thus, the ways that objects will appear in normal conditionscan describe our own and other people's qualia. I did this for Sarah and J can do it for chimps. If chimps and children can see blue hexagons, and if they are not colorblind, then, whether or not they know it, their visual qualia are hexagonality and blueness. In normal viewing conditions, that is the way blue hexagons look to normally sighted children and chimps. There is nothing ineffable about their qualia. In fact, according to Dennett's own characterization, it is difficult to see how qual1a could fail to be effable. If a phenomena\ property, a qua\e, is simply one of the ways things can appear to be, and we assume that things sometimes are the way they appear to be, then a catalog of qualia is, presumably, a list of the way things are: blue, hexagonal, bigger than a bread box. moving, loud, far away, bright, salty, circular, angry, upset, and so on. Qualia. in fact. are just our old, familiar properties. If qualia are the properties of phenomenal consciousness. there is nothing "sublimely inaccessible" about them.4" The problem is not with qualia but with the way experiences "exhibit" qualia. More of this in a moment. Also. if we remember that in the definition of qualia the sense of "looks" or "appears" is the phenomenal sense, the sense in which something can look ~ to a person unable to make ~-judgments, then qualia, quite clearly, do not enjoy privileged epistemological status. Most of a two-year-old's qualia are completely inaccessible to the two-year-old. This is not to say that the two-year-old doesn't have qualia. It is only to say that she does not know, perhaps cannot know, what qualia it is she has. Introspection isn't going to help Sarah figure out that there appear to be five fingers on her hand. Others. those who have the relevant concepts and are in a position to make informed judgments about how things look to Sarah, have better access (epistemologically speaking) to some of Sarah's qualia than she does. That is why we, or at least informed ethologists, know more about a chimp's qualia than the chimp does. Sarah and the chimp "enjoy"' the qualia, yes. They are, after alL their qualia. But we know better than they what it is they are enjoying. In that sense there is no privileged access. Up to this point I have been careful to say that experiences "exhibited" phenomenal properties (qualia). Sarah's experience of five fingers exhibits .fiveness. Her experience of blue hexagons exhibits blueness and hexagonality. J avoided saying that one's experiences had the properties they exhibited. I avoided saying it because. frankly. it sounds silly. This is an instance of the old Sense-Datum Fallacy-the fallacy of inferring that if an object. X.
53
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dretske, Fred, Differences that Make No Difference , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.41
50
looks 0, then something (the look of X?, an X-ish sense-datum?) must be 0. An experience of five fingers is different than an experience of four, and different in a way that depends on the number of fingers being viewed, but the experience of five need not itself be five nor need it differ numerically from the experience of four. An experience of blue exhibits the property blue, but need not itself be blue nor need it be a different color (if it is colored at all) than the experience of red. Qualia, if these are the way things seem, are not to be understood as properties of the seeming. If this is what it means to deny that qualia are intrinsic properties of experiences, then, once again, I agree with Dennett that qualia are not intrinsic properties of experience. But if qualia are not intrinsic properties of experience, if my experience of blue need not itself be blue, what is the relation between an experience and the qualia it exhibits'? How can an experience exhibit the qualia blueness (during hallucination, for instance) if there is nothing either inside or outside the head that is blue? It is the search for an answer to this question, a question about the relationship between an experience of blue and the blue that is experienced, that drove many philosophers into sense-data wonderland. If something looks blue and there is no available object either inside or outside the head that is blue, then some object has to be invented, a sense-datum, to bear or have the property blue. Dennett rightly rejects this nonsense. Along with other cardcarrying cognitivists, he avoids the fallacy by replacing sense-data with their modem equivalent: minijudgments or microtakings. When an object looks blue. there need be nothing in the head that is blue. Why? Because looking blue is, you see, a form of judgment, a microjudgment, that something is blue, and just as a judgment that something is edible need not itself be edible, a judgment that something is blue need not itself be blue. Blue sense-data are thereby banished. Replacing them are, let us say, soggy grey judgments (microtakings, potential beliefs, suppressed cognitions) that something is blue-something one might actually hope to find in the brain if one knows what to look for. The trouble with this answer, as I have been at pains to argue, is that the microjudgments, the potential beliefs, the suppressed inclinations, have to occur in persons and animals incapable of making the corresponding judgments or having the relevant beliefs. Why, then, call them judgments or beliefs? If Sarah's visual system can "take" there to be five fingers on her hand without Sarah taking there to be five fingers on her hand, what sort of inventions are these microtakings, these narrative fragments, these partial drafts? Until we know, we won't know what conscious experience is.
54
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dretske, Fred, Differences that Make No Difference , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.41
NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
7.
8.
9. 10. 11.
12. 13.
14. IS. 16.
I am grateful to Giiven Giizeldere for many helpful suggestions. D. Dennett. Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1991), 132. Dennett, Content and Consciousness (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1969). Ibid., 118. F. Dretske, Seeing and Knowing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969). Since I have just introduced the term "awareness" and will shortly be talking about consciousness, I should perhaps take this opportunity to register a point about usage. I take seeing, hearing, tasting, etc .. an object or event. X. to be ways of being (perceptually) aware of X. I assume the same with factive clauses: To see or smell that P-that the toast is burning, for example-is 10 be (perceptually) aware that P. I also follow what I take to be standard usage and take perceptual awareness of X (or that P) 10 be a form-in fact, a paradigmatic form--of consciousness (of either X or that Pl. This is what T. Natsoulas ("Consciousness," American Psychologist 33 [1978]: 906-14) calls "consciousness 3," and he describes this as our most basic concept of consciousness. It should also be evident that I use the verbs "aware" and "conscious" interchangeably. There are some subtle differences between these verbs (see A. R. White's Attention [Oxford: Basil BlackwelL 1964 j), but I don't think any of these nuances bear on the disagreement between Dennett and me. So I ignore them. In calling this a referentially transparent context, I mean to restrict the values of "X" and "Y" to noun phrases referring 10 specific objects and events (e.g., "the appie on the table," "the thimble on the mantle"). When interrogative nominals (what X is. who X is. where X is). factive clauses (that it is Xl, and abstract nouns (the difference, the pattern, the problem, the answer) follow the perceptual verb. the context is no longer transparent. As certain forms of agnosia testify: "Associative agnosia is also often taken to be a more specific syndrome, in which patients have a selective impairment in the recognition of visually presented objects. despite apparently adequate visual perception of them" (M. 1. Farah, Visual Agnosia [Cambridge. Mass.: MIT Press, 1990].57 J. P. Grice. "Logic and Conversation," in P. Cole and J. Morgan, eds., Syntax and Semal1tics (New York: Academic Press, 1975). Consciousness Explained, 335. Given his commitment to the view that all seeing is seeing-that. I do not understand Dennett's reaction to the work of Anne Treisman. In 'Time and the Observer: The Where and When of Consciousness in the Brain" (The Behm'ioral and Brain Sciences 15 r 1992]: 335, n. 8). Dennett and (co-authOr) M. Kinsbourne say that Treisman has conducted important experiments to support her claim that seeing should be distinguished from identifying. I didn't think experiments were needed to establish this. Are experiments also needed to establish that touching X should be distinguished from identifying X? Aside from the issue of whether experiments are needed, though, I am puzzled as to why Dennett, who thinks seeing thimbles is identifying thimbles, believes Treisman's experiments support the view that seeing should be distinguished from identifying. Are we to conclude that he thinks Treisman's important experiments are a failure') Has he told her about this') Dennett, "Living on the Edge," InquirY 36 (1993): 144-45. Other theories of consciousness-in particular the so-called Higher-Order Thought (HOT) theory according to which an experience is not conscious hnless one thinks (judges, knows) one is having it-also seem driven to deny con~ciousness to animals. See, e.g .. Carruthers. "Brute Experience:' The Journal (if Philosophy 86 (1989): 258-69. Consciousness Explained. 377. Ibid .. 194. At least the theory set forth in The Intentional Stance (Cambridge. Mass.: MIT Press, 1987).
55
Copyright (e) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (e) University of Arkansas Press
Dretske, Fred, Differences that Make No Difference , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.41
17. G. Horn, "What Can the Bird Brain Tell Us about Thought without Language?" in L. Weiskrantz, ed., ThoU8ht without Lan8uage (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1988). 18. A well-known experimental demonstration of this is C. W. Perky, "An Experimental Study of Imagination," in D. C. Beardslee and M. Wertheimer. eds" Readil18s in Perception (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 1958). 19. One could insist that in order to see a thimble one must at least believe that it is some, thing or other, where that is meant to include figments of one's own imagination. Philosophers are capablc of defending almost anything, I know. but this doesn't sound like a move that Daniel Dennett would be happy to make. So I ignore it. 20. Conscioll.rness Explained, 31. 21. The answer to this question. an answer that cognitivists tend to overlook, is: Ask someone! Other people may be able to supply information which. together with what you already know, helps you to discover what (or who) you saw. The way I tell I saw Harold's cousin last night is to ask Harold whether his cousin was at the party I attended last night. What does he look like. where was he standing. when did he arrive? Was he in that crowd of people I was watching') If so. I must have seen him. 22. D. Armstrong. A Materialist TheorY of the Mind (New York: Humanities Press, 1968). 23. From dn excerpt in J. Dancy, ed" Perceptual K/1{}\\1ed8e (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1988). 134. 24. G. Pitcher, A Theory of Perceptio/1 (Princeton. N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971). 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.
Ibid" 29. Ihid" 72. Ibid" 83. Ihid" 93. Dennett and Kinsbourne, op. cit.. 183-247. Ihid" 238. Ibid" 184, 185. We are told (ibid" 190) that even the ganglion cells in the rabbit's retina have the content "from left to right." Also see Consciousness Explained. 134-5. where the cortex is described as making discriminations, decisions. and judgments. 33. The resemblance between Dennett and Pitcher is really quite remarkable at times. To account for the richnes, of sense experience. Pitcher postulated m(1l1,l' unconscious beliefs. Dennett is more economical. He needs to posit only one microjudgment because he is much morc liberal with the content he is prepared to give that judgment: "There is 110 upper houlld on the 'amount of content' in a single proposition, so a single. swift, rich 'propositional episode' might (for all philosophical theory tells us) have so much content. in its brainish, non"sentential way, that an army of Prousts might fail to express it exhaustively in a library of volumes" ("Living on the Edge," 150).
34. I like to talk this way myself. but to avoid confusion I prefer to use the word "information"' for these (largely) causal relationships-see my KnowledRe and the Flo,,' of hlformation (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 1981). Information can be described in propositional terms, and in thi~ sense it (like judgment and helief) has propositional content. But lest we start ascribing judgments, decisions, and t(lkings to doorbells. fuel gauge" and thermometers, I think it useful to distinguish information from such conceptual phenomena as belief and judgment. Dennett did too in Content and Consciousness: see his distinction between intelligent and non intelligent storage of information (45ff.). 35. The reference to "sort of' realism comes from Dennett's own description of his position in "Postscript: Reflections: Instrumentalism Reconsidered," in Rosenthal. ed .. The Nature oj'Milld (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1991), 627. 36. Dennett and Kinsbourne, op. cit .. 235. 37. Consciollsness Explained, 364.
56
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dretske, Fred, Differences that Make No Difference , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.41
38. Dennett. "Quining Qualia.'· in Marchel and Bisiach. cds .. COllSciollsness in COllfelll/)oran- Science (Oxford: The Clarendon Press. 1988). 39. See my "The Role of the Percept in Visual Cognition:' in Wade Savage. ed .. Mil1l1eso({/ Studies in the Phzlosophy of'Science: Perception Gnd Cognition. vol. 9 (Minneapoli;,. Minn.: University of Minnesota Pre,s. 1978) and Kllowledge und the FlOlI" or In{rmllafirm. 40. There is a sense in which one can see II objects without seeing any of the II objects. One might. for example. see a flock of eighty-four birds or a herd of thirty-;,ix cow, without seeing any individual bird or cow. The flock or herd. seen from a great distance. might look like a spot in the distance. This is not the sense in which I say Sarah sees five fingers. Sarah sees each of the five fingers. not (just) a heap (flock. herd. pile) of five fingers. 41. COl1sciolls Erplailled. 408.
42. M. J. Farah (op. cit., 18) points out that counting require, seeing more than one object at a time and. I would add (since otherwise why would you be counting'.'). seeing more than you know or judge yourself to be seeing. 43. I choose this word carefully. I explain why below. 44. This way of putting the case for phenomenal propenies is. I think. quite close to Ned Block's insightful suggestions about the need to distingui,h what he calb phenomenal consciousness from access-coD5ciousness. See Block's "Inverted Earth:' in Tomberlin. ed .. Philosophicaf Penpectil'es. 4: Acrion Theory Clnd Philosoph." or Mind (Atascadero. Calif.: Ridgeview Publishing Co .. 1990); "Consciousness and Accessibility." The Beh{l1'iowl and Bra ill ,,,'ciences 13 (1990): 596-8: "Evidence against Epiphenomenalism." The Behm'ioral and Brain Sciences. 14 ( 1991 ): 670--2: and his review of Dennetfs Consciousness Explained in The Journal of' Philosophy 90 ( 1993): 18/-92,
45. I argue this point in greater detail in "Conscious Experience." Mind 102 ( 1993): 263-83. 46. "Quining Qualia:' 42. 47. See. for example. S. Walker. Animol Thoughl (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 19831. ch. 7: D, R Griffin. Allinw/ Minds (Chicago: University of Chicago Pres',- 1992). 48. 0, Flanagan. Consciollsness Reconsidered (Cambridge. Mass.: MIT Press. 1992). 49. Dennett and Kinsbourne. op. cit.. 240. I may appear to be skating rather ca\'alierly over the inverted-spectrum problem here. I admit the appearance~. but deny the reality. I do not. however. have the time to justify this claim. So the appearances will h,l\e to stand. SO. Dennett and Kinsbourne (op, cit.) do an excellent job of exposing this fallacious pattern of inference when it occurs in our thinking about representations----especially those having to do with temporal properties. The properties represented are not. or need not be. properties of the representation.
57
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Fox, Ivan, Our Knowledge of the Internal World , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.59
PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS VOL. 22 No.1 & 2. SPRING AND
FALL J 994
Our Knowledge of the Internal World
1
Ivan Fox Princeton University
The world, the external world. is replete with things in themselves unthinkable-chairs. cups, and dogs. for example. Even my own body is unable literally to enter into thought. For this reason thought, if it is to be about these objects, must contain representatives of them. The representatives in thought might be either of two sorts. They might be like representatives in Congress. Since the political reality is that once elected, representatives are pretty much free agents, everything depends on the electoral system to yield representatives who resemble their constituencies. Insofar as I have a representative in the legislative halls just like me in politically relevant respects then this stand-in for me. through acting and being treated as a citizen in her own right, will pass legislation reflecting my positions, as well as, of course, the agenda of the administration. The mental representatives which allow us to think about the external world might be like that, they might be surrogates for external objects. Then again it might be that what represents me in Washington is only my social security number indexing my file of numbers in a huge system of cross-indexed computer files corresponding to everyone, everything, and every how of which the central government is cognizant. One suspects this. The success of this system would require reliable compilers, on the input side to pair persons with numbers headed for congressional computing and on the output side to translate numerically encoded legislation into action
59
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Fox, Ivan, Our Knowledge of the Internal World , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.59
directed to the folks back home. Mental representatives of external objects might be like social security numbers. that is, mental states which succeed in representing external objects through an arbitrary but consistent inputoutput correspondence with them. Representatives of this type complementary to surrogates we may call representations. Both surrogate and representational systems of cognition would mediate action in the external world. but they would accomplish this end by very different functional architectures. The surrogate of a thing passes in cognition for that particular itself. that is. the surrogate is successfully subject to the same object attitudes of fear, desire, attention, memory. and planning as is the object for which it is a surrogate. with the system's legislative faculties so arranged that attitudes directed to a surrogate equivalently affect the 'ur-object' for which it goes proxy in thought. This is not true of representations. We do not attempt, much less with success. to pick up "the cup" from "the table" in the representation "the cup on the table". We do not attempt this even for a nonlinguistic analogue representation, i.e., an image of the cup on the table: if we did then by that token the image would cease, for cognition. to be an image. The behavior and success of surrogates in cognition is a consequence of their having literally or for all intents and purposes the properties of their ur-objects. By contrast perceptually induced beliefs or formulae in a language of thought are not themselves colored, moving. or weighty in any respect relevant to their representing colored, moving, or weighty things. Equivalently. while both surrogates and representations have meaning or content, the cognitively effective meaning of surrogates for intents and purposes is just the Gricean natural meaning they share with their ur-objects. By functional design an F representation, once interpreted. can be tokened in reflective thought independently of F things. This, indeed. is the peculiar advantage of representations over surrogates which makes it possible using representations to think and plan now about what is not now present. Insofar as an F representation can make an appearance in cognition apart from the occasioning causality of an F individuaL the import of an F representation is general. Such an F representation applies to no F individual in particular. Even an ordinary proper name denotes its referent at all times of the referent's existence independently of the time of the name's own tokening and is thus a term of temporally divided and general reference. But by design and function a surrogate is a stand-in for a particular, and that only in the here and now of the particular's perception. With surrogates we act on objects: with representations we act on information. Thus surrogates and representations are categorially distinct. Surrogates are of the same intentional type as the objects for which they go proxy. while representations are up a level in the semantic hierarchy from what they represent. Representations stand for, surrogates stand-in. The meaning of
60
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Fox, Ivan, Our Knowledge of the Internal World , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.59
representations is symbolic. It is realized through the internal computational transactions between representations and the peripheral tethering of these symbols to their interpretations in the external world. But should there never have been an external interpretive source then there would be no information content to the symbols and hence their internal manipulations would be utterly without intentional significance. But even in such a dire strait. the surrogate objects, while they would not be surrogates. would serve, as in ordinary circumstances, as interpreting termini of the system's desires, fears, and plans. Human cognition-by which of these two world systems does it operate? Is it by surrogate or by representation of the external world? In the penultimate section (Cogito?) I will argue that the representational theory of mind is untenable. If internal states are not immediate objects for us, but rather representations themselves known through representation. then even as there can be Cartesian skepticism concerning the represented external domain so there can be Cartesian skepticism concerning the represented internal domain of our own thoughts. and so Cartesian skepticism concerning our existence as thinking things. Thus the representational theory of mind, I will argue, is incompatible with the actual certainty of the Cartesian cogito. In the long interim before that complaint I will apologize for the alternative view that our cognition functions at its interpretive base on a surrogate system. an internal world of objects-for-us with which we enjoy immediate and incomparably de re acquaintance.
THE INTERNAL WORLD THE TWO-WORLDS SYSTEM
That there are internal surrogates of external things which we do not distinguish in our practical intentions. actions. beliefs, desires. fears. and memories from the objects of perception. and that this systematic equivocation is the basis of our cognition's design and practical success. is a prospect so repugnant to contemporary philosophy of mind that we will do well to begin our consideration of the two-worlds system with a less controversial instance. As a novelty I offer a computer analogy to the mind. Consider the use of a Mac implementing Microsoft word processing. Here there are two text worlds. There is hard. or 'noumenal'. text which persists even when the monitor is sleeping (as it were). I know very little of this domain, but I am told it consists of invisible sequences of electric charges. In any case it is not colored. word shaped. or in motion except in a sense Locke would regard as secondary. Perhaps. for all I know. it exists spatiotemporally only in the same sense. Depending on hard text in some systematic. reliable, automatic. and hardwired way there is monitor, or 'phenomenaL
61
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Fox, Ivan, Our Knowledge of the Internal World , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.59
text. I have even less conception of the mechanisms implementing this perceptual correspondence of noumenal and phenomenal text-worlds than I do of the ding an sich nature of hard text. No matter. The two-texts system has been cleverly designed so that even the recognition of there being two text domains is practically irrelevant. In practice 'the text' and how to deal with it is free of ambiguity.' When I want to delete a piece of 'text' I simply highlight 'it' and enter the delete command. Such is my naive practice. It is not that I think that monitor text is hard text or that phenomenal text is only the appearance of hard text. In practice J don't have any idea of there being two text-domains, a fortiori I don't have any view as to the status of the relation between the two worlds. For me there is simply 'the text'. The whole point of the system's design is to make this naive lack of discrimination a successful way of life. The system has been so engineered that when I 'highlight' 'the text' and enter the delete command 'the text' naively conceived is 'deleted' according to my naive intentions. Of course the sophisticated theory of the success of this naive practice must unpack the systematic, albeit unnoted, ambiguity of 'the text', 'highlight', 'delete', etc. According to sophisticated theory, the naive success is the fact that both the hard text and the coordinated monitor text are 'highlighted' and 'deleted' by my action in the respective domain-dependent senses which interpret these notions sub specie aeternitatis. But which textobject did I intend to delete and in which sense of 'highlight' did I demonstrate it? How did I discern the meaning of the 'delete' command? The fact of naive realism is that there is no fact of these matters. Or rather there are two facts of the matter. There is the naive-fact-on-its-own-terms that I intend to save, delete, produce, or amend 'the texf-period. And there is the fact that sub specie aeternitatis my naive intentions, desires, actions, and thoughts are systematically ambiguous. This is not to say that it is uncertain or indeterminate in which text domain I naively intend to operate, but that it is a determinate fact that there are two intentional termini of my naive intentions and actions. I have neither two intentions nor the intention to delete two objects. I have a single intention which has two interpretations. One interpretation systematically construes the objects and commands exclusively in terms of hard text, the other is equally single-minded in its monitor reading of text and intent. Under neither interpretation do I intend to delete two objects. Nonetheless, under ordinary operating conditions, my text-directed cognition admits and requires both interpretations, and the respective text domains, noumenal and phenomenal, are equally and by a single mental act the objects of my naive thoughts and actions. I naively perceive 'the text' and succeed in my naive intention to 'delete it' just in case the disambiguated text objects of the two sophisticated interpretations exist and the naive intention is satisfied when evaluated with respect to each of these domains.)
62
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Fox, Ivan, Our Knowledge of the Internal World , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.59
So it is, I am claiming, with sentient cognition. It is a fundamental feature of perceptual cognition that by nature we do not distinguish the internal product of perception from the external cause of it. This is not to say that we are incapable of philosophic reflection which distinguishes an inner appearance and an outer reality. But such cogitation is an affectation which cannot reform the practical architecture of perceptual cognition, which is founded in undiscerning and unreflective naive realism. In the street no one is appeared to car-ly. With equal naivete, 'I feel the prick in my finger', look down and see the intruding 'thorn in the same place as I feel the pain'. Accordingly I 'remove the thorn', to my immediate relief. Is it the mental event or the physical insult to which I object? In what sense of 'same place' do Ijudge that 'pain' and 'thorn' are 'located'? In practice these questions no more arise than questions of which 'text' I wish to 'delete' or in what sense of 'beside' 'the word I wish to delete' is beside 'the one I want to save'. But once posed for theory these questions of intentional object have the same two answers just noted in the case of Mac engineering. There is the naive and unequivocal response of practical reasoning: I object to 'the pain in the finger' for which I blame 'the thorn in the finger' and so act in the way I know how to get rid of 'the former' by 'removing' 'the latter'-period; next case. This action takes place on its experientially unequivocal objects within the single, causally closed, world of naive objects. But then too there is the sophisticated fact that sub specie aeternitatis the content and objects and worlds of this naive cognition are systematically equivocal. How does this two-worlds account go? There are two story lines. On the phenomenal reading the naive intention to 'remove the thorn' from 'the finger' is an event internal to the phenomenal world analogous to the highlighting of monitor text. Practically speaking the intention gives the phenomenal world a particular charge, construed both as a particular causal disposition (as with electric charge) and teleologically as a mission. As a particle with negative charge attracts a positively charged particle so the phenomenal world with Pick out d-that! ('the thorn') charge evolves to bring 4 phenomenal hand to phenomenal thorn in the phenomenal finger. Thus the significance of the will for the phenomenal world is Kantian. The principle of practical reason is to act on maxims which through their willing become laws for phenomenal nature. My decision Pick out d-that! posits an end which through its willing becomes a temporary practical law for phenomenal nature naively construed. Given Pick out d-that! the phenomenal world will evolve to the posited end as if it were a constitutive law of phenomenal nature for the phenomenal hand to be drawn to the phenomenal thorn. But how does the phenomenal hand pick out the phenomenal thorn? By way of the external-world story line. The immediate effect of the phenomenal hand with Pick out d-thatt charge is to move the physical hand to d-that; the physical thorn in the physical finger. At the same time perception transduces this physical event as the phenomenal hand moving toward and
63
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Fox, Ivan, Our Knowledge of the Internal World , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.59
removing the phenomenal thorn. This new state of the phenomenal world leads to a refined targeting of the phenomenal thorn by the phenomenal hand in accordance with the charge Pick out _! This updating of the phenomenal charge causes a refinement of the motion of the physical hand which by perceptual feedback leads to the thus effected refinement of phenomenal targeting. And so on until 'the hand' comes into 'contact' with 'the thorn' and 'picks it out' . That is how I remove the phenomenal thorn from the phenomenal flesh. But by the same token of intent and action it is how I remove the physical thorn from the all too solid flesh: A single naive intention succeeding through being simultaneously implemented in the phenomenal and noumenal domains. This example illustrates the reciprocal determination of the external and internal worlds which is constitutive of successful surrogacy. The phenomenal hand in moving toward the phenomenal thorn controls the physical hand according to the temporary teleological dynamics of the internal world. while the movement of the physical hand to the physical thorn controls the phenomenal hand according to the nomologically fixed dynamics of the external world. More explicitly. although 'picking out the thorn' is naively experienced as a single action, there are, sub specie aeternitatis. two series of events--one series in the phenomenal world consisting of the phenomenal hand with Pick-outcharge moving to and picking out the the phenomenal thorn: Pick out_!
= IT,m"o1l' ...• IT, ....• IT""JI =_
picked out.
and one series in the external world constituting the physical hand moving to and picking out d-thal, the physical thorn of which _ is the surrogate:
n ,m"JI' ...• n, ..... n"nal =d-that picked out. The two series mutually determine each other. Events of the phenomenal-world series directly determine events in external-world series by intentional action, [--7]. Events of the external world directly determine events of the phenomenal world by perception. [~]. To wit: In this composite series, each nonterminal event of either the IT or n series is both a cause and an effect of events in the other series. This is how the phenomenal hand controls the physical hand and how. in tum. it is moved by it. The action here is of worlds in collusion: there are no representations. While events of the phenomenal world directly determine events in the external world. they indirectly determine subsequent events in the phenomenal world: via --';> n,:::;' .... ]t,
64
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
) ",
Fox, Ivan, Our Knowledge of the Internal World , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.59
This is how the phenomenal hand picks out the phenomenal thorn. Correspondingly, events of the 0 series indirectly cause the succeeding events of this series:
n
via:=:::}
n
11J --+
I
)
j
This is how I pick out the thorn. physically speaking. for it is in virtue of this indirectness of the dependence of bodily movements on preceding ones that the physical motion is my action and not merely a happening in nature. Ultimately, then, the naive intention, Pick out d-that!, brings about its phenomenal-world satisfaction, i.e., ]tlill"i = _ picked out, and its satisfaction in the external world, i.e., O'lnnl = d-that picked out. Under the semantics of the two-worlds system this naive intention with its two undiscerned termini is modeled as the joint satisfaction of two intentional actions. each with a single disambiguated endpoint state. Under the internal-world interpretation there is the intent Ac_! directed to _. and terminating with ]ttio"I' Under the external-world interpretation there is the corresponding intent directed to d-that which terminates with 0']11
Indeed, it is not. I" Here Dennett appears to be dissociating himself from any sort of behaviorism. The passage seems to conflict with his response to Jackson only months later. The use of 'his' in "let me confirm Jackson's surmise that I am his behaviorist" does not help to remove the perplexity. For unless "behaviorally exactly alike" or "psychologically exactly alike" is being used in some unusual way. Dennett's endorsement of the supervenience thesis makes him everyone's behaviorist. What is it to be a behaviorist if not to endorse the thesis that necessarily, if two organisms are behaviorally exactly alike, they are psychologically exactly alike? However, the passage in question ("But people like a memorable label. ...") is, to our knowledge, the only one in which he eschews the label 'behaviorism' altogether. He has long used the label in qualified ways to characterize his views. Let us look at some passages that might be thought to provide clues as to the sort of behaviorism he might be endorsing in 'his response to Jackson, if he is indeed not endorsing any sort of logical behaviorism. Dennett says in one place that Searle is mistaken "about my behaviorism, when he insists that my third-person point of view compels me to 'Iook only at external behavior', but remember that everything the neuroscientist can look at is also external behavior by this criterion.,,2o Dennett would, then, it appears, allow that there are other sorts of behavioral differences than peripheral behavioral differences that can make for psychological differences, that the kinds of internal-to-the-brain behavioral ditferences neuroscientists investigate, differences in the behavior of neurons and complex chemicals, can make for psychological differences. If there is a brand of behaviorism here, it is certainly not Rylean or Skinnerian behaviorism. Indeed, Dennett says elsewhere in response to Searle that his (Dennett's) behaviorism is the bland "behaviorism" of the physical sciences in general, not any narrow Skinnerian or Watsonian (or Rylean) dogma. Behavior in this bland sense, includes all intersubjectively observable internal processes and events (such as the behavior of your gut or your RNA)."
It may appear, then, that not just peripheral behavior, and not just that and everything the neuroscientist can look at, but "all intersubjectively observable internal processes and events" of organisms count as their behavior in Dennett's intended sense. This is an unusual use of 'behavior', but let us follow it and see where it leads. The distinction that emerges from Dennett's texts between peripheral behaviorism and a sort of behaviorism that includes under the heading of 'behavior' "everything the neuroscientist can look at," indeed "all intersub-
194
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
jectively observable internal processes and events," bears a close resemblance to a distinction C. D. Broad drew explicitly some seventy years ago. In the context of discussing the wave of behaviorism that was then sweeping from the United States to England, Broad distinguished "molar" behaviorism from "molecular" behaviorism. Molar behaviorism is close to what Dennett calls 'peripheral behaviorism'; it is, roughly, the view that the truth-makers for mental attributions are facts about disposition to "gross overt actions. like shrieking and kicking."" In contrast, molecular behaviorism includes under the heading of 'behavior' all this and any molecular behavior occurring in the body and brain. 2) One might wonder, then, whether Dennett's brand of behaviorism is just molecular behaviorism. Perhaps, in his response to Jackson, he does not intend to be endorsing molar or peripheral behaviorism but only molecular behaviorism. However, if so, his response to Jackson remains puzzling. For it is quite clear from Jackson's texts that by 'behaviorally exactly alike' in the statement of the supervenience thesis, he means exactly alike with respect to peripheral behavior. Indeed, he offers Ned Block's example of a giant look-up table (what has come to be called a 'Blockhead') with the same behavioral dispositions as a normal human being as raising "a serious problem" for the supervenience thesis.'''' But. of course, a Blockhead will be exactly like a human being only, at best. with respect to dispositions to peripheral behavior; the behavior of the innards of a Blockhead will be quite different from those of any human being. If behavior includes "everything the neuroscientist can look at." then, as we are sure Jackson would readily agree, Blockheads pose no problem at all for the supervenience thesis, not even an apparent problem. For no Blockhead is a molecular behavioral twin of any human being. If. then, in his response to Jackson, Dennett does not mean by 'behaviorally exactly alike' exactly alike with respect to peripheral behavior but means instead exactly alike with respect to all behavior, "including any behavior the neuroscientist can look at," then he is not really agreeing with Jackson. The supervenience thesis Dennett endorses is not the one Jackson proposes. Dennett simply misunderstands Jackson's surmise when he says: "I am his behaviorist," He is not Jackson's behaviorist. Jackson has him pegged for a molar or peripheral behaviorist. But he isn't: he is, rather. simply a molecular behaviorist. Jackson complained that "the problem," in understanding Dennett's materialism, "is that Dennett leaves it unclear where he stands on the truthmaker question." Dennett tried to clear that up, but, as we have just seen, a problem remains. The problem now is to understand what Dennett means by 'behaviorally exactly alike' in the supervenience thesis he endorses in response to Jackson. If Dennett is not a peripheral behaviorist but only a molecular behaviorist, then an observation Broad made about molecular behaviorism is well
195
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
worth repeating here. Molecular behaviorism, he observed, "is just old fashioned materialism which has crossed the Atlantic under an alias."c, If 'behaviorally exactly alike' is understood in the sense of molecular behaviorism, then the supervenience thesis Dennett endorses is implied hyoId fashioned cn materialism. If Dennett is not a molar or peripheral behaviorist but only a molecular hehaviorist, then there truly has been much ado about nothing. Molecular behaviorism is a brand of hehaviorism that, we think. Searle, for one. would join Dennett in unhesitatingly endorsing.'7 Newfangled materialists, persuaded by Twin-Earth thought experiments. will insist that material environment must be included in the supervenience base for intentional states, capacities, and dispositions. (Dennett is himself, you will recall, a newfangled materialist.) But no materialist would quarrel with the thesis that necessarily. if two organisms are molecular behavioral twins and material environmental twins, then they will be psychological twins.'~ If Dennett has been using 'behavior' in the molecular behaviorist's sense, then, had that fact heen appreciated, an awful lot of fuss in print could have been avoided. No materialists will disagree with him about the organismic contribution to our psychological nature. However, we don't think that Dennett intends to be just endorsing molecular behaviorism in his recent response to Jackson.'" By 'behaviorally exactly alike' Dennett means exactly alike with respect to peripheral behavior and dispositions to such. He is, we believe. endorsing peripheral behaviorism (as concerns the organismic contribution). One reason for thinking this-in addition to wanting to read him charitably as not having blatantly misunderstood Jackson-is that Dennett does not respond to Jackson's claim that Blockheads pose a serious problem for the supervenience thesis by pointing out that a Blockhead could not be a molecular behavioral twin of any human being. But that would have been the obvious response if being behaviorally exactly alike includes being exactly alike with respect to everything the neuroscientist can look at. Another reason is that Dennett appears to say in response to Jackson that the ahility to pass the Turing Test suffices for having mentality. ", And the Turing Test, as Dennett himself notes in his response to Jackson. is a "simple 'external' behavioral test,,'1 for mentality. (Whether it is indeed a test for mentality depends. of course, on whether the presence of the patterns of dispositions to peripheral behavior it could be used to test for suffice for mentality.) If an individual can pass the Turing Test, then so can any peripheral behavioral twin of it. Thus, if a Blockhead is a peripheral hehavioral twin of an individual who can pass the Turing Test, then that Blockhead can pass the Turing Test too. But if Dennett is endorsing peripheral behaviorism in his response to Jackson, has he changed his mind and decided that he is. after all, a peripheral behaviorist: The short answer is "no," for he has not changed his mind.
196
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
He has been a peripheral behaviorist all along. We proceed now to give the long answer. To begin, what do we make of his apparent denials of peripheral behaviorism? Consider, once again, the following passage: The standard arguments against both Skinnerian and Rylean behaviorism do not touch my view: indeed, I am the author of some of those arguments (",Skinner Skinned," "A Cure for the Common Code"). My anti-behaviorist credentials are impeccable.':
Dennett's views about intentionality indeed differ in striking ways from those of Skinner and Ryle. He emphatically rejects Skinnerian psychology." And unlike Skinner and Ryle, he does not deny the possibility of a scientific intentional psychology. 1~ On the contrary. Dennett has long championed cognitive psychology. which, as he himself has often pointed out, is full of intentional hypotheses. He holds that there may well be inner mental processes in which mental representations participate. Some years ago he remarked that one probably ought to be able to construct a compelling argument to the effect that the brain couldn't function in such a way that intentional explanations work to the extent that they do unless there were in fact perspicuous functional divisions, with the functions of larger divisions being functions of smaller or subsidiary brain parts. such that we could consider these functional parts as representations in some sense. 50
In more recent years. he has at times expressed considerable sympathy with the view that there is a full-blown Fodorian "language of thought."'" For example, he says: Now somehow the brain has solved the problem of combinatorial explosion. It is a gigantic network of billions of cells, but still finite. compact. reliable, and swift. and capable of learning new behaviors, vocabularies. theories, almost without limit. Some elegant, gelleratil'e, indefinitely extendable principles of representation must be responsible. We have only one model of such a representation system: a human language. So the argument for a language of thought comes down to this: what else could it be"? We have so far been unable to imagine any plausible alternative in any detail. That is a good enough reason, I think, for recommending as a matter of scientific tactics that we pursue the hypothesis as far as we can. ,-
Since the new wave of connectionism, Dennett's enthusiasm for the language of thought hypothesis has waned. but he remains open to the possibility that we (human beings) possess a language of thought." And the following may still be his considered position: Ryle said. aprioristically, that we cOltldn 'f be mentalrepresentation-manipulators; Fodor and others have said.
197
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
aprioristically, that we must be. Some of the details of the computer metaphor suggest what we might be, and in so doing may eventually shed light on what we are. W
However, perhaps he would now underscore the word 'may' too. But given that by 'behaviorally exactly alike' he means exactly alike with respect to peripheral behavior, how does this willing embrace of cognitive psychology square with his endorsement of the supervenience thesis? The intentional factors postulated by cognitive psychology do not supervene on behavior. We are led to this question: What does he mean by 'psychologically exactly alike' in the supervenience thesis? We contend that Dennett does not mean to include all of the psychological respects cognitive psychology deals with under the heading of 'psychologically exactly alike'. The context of Dennett's reply to Jackson indicates that he is tacitly restricting the psychological to beliefs, desires, intentions, hopes, fears, and the like, to the so-called "ordinary propositional attitudes." That is to say, by 'psychologically exactly alike' he means exactly alike with respect to beliefs, desires, and their kin and does not mean to include all the intentional phenomena covered by cognitive psychology. Similarly, when Dennett acknowledges that the truth-makers for psychological attributions consist of facts about dispositions to peripheral behavior (together with environmental facts). his acknowledgment concerns only the truth-makers for attributions of belief. desire, and the like. not all attributions of cognitive states. Recall that Dennett admits that there is "historical justification" for labeling him, as Dahlbom does, a 'logical behaviorist' .-10 His well-known intentional system theory (to be described in detail below), a theory he first proposed in 1971-11 and has been developing and refining since, above all provides the warrant for that label. The Intentional Stance. a book largely devoted to intentional system theory and its relationships to other doctrines about intentionality. introduces the term 'behavior' as a term for the "observable macro-activity,,-1C of whole systems. Moreover, Dennett himself labels intentional system theory "a sort of holistic logical behaviorism"·' and tells us that it explicates "folk psychology ... as a sort of logical behaviorism."4-J Indeed. as we will see shortly, the term 'logical behaviorism' occurs frequently in his characterizations of the theory. The subject matter of the theory is precisely belief. desire, intention, and the like. And, like logical behaviorism, intentional system theory concerns itself with peripheral behavior only, not with "everything the neuroscientist can look at," not with "all intersubjectively observable inner states and processes." Intentional system theory "treats the individual realizations of ... [intentional] systems as black boxes,'·-1' Dennett notes that it is the fact that "intentional system theory is almost literally a black box theory, which makes it behavioristic to philosophers like Searle and Nagel:,-l6 Indeed it is, and not just to Searle and Nagel.
198
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
But how do we square our interpretation of intentional system theory with the remarks: "The tricky word 'behavior' can be understood to mean something like 'peripheral', 'external', 'readily observable' behavior. I am not now and have never been that kind of behaviorist,,?"7 We could easily square these remarks with our interpretation were they made only in the context of discussing cognitive psychology. But unfortunately, they were not; propositional attitudes were also on the table for discussion. We think, however, that Dennett was simply remiss in not making it clear that the remarks concerned only his view of the domain of cognitive psychology. How, then, do we square our view that Dennett is a sort of logical behaviorist with these remarks quoted earlier: "People like a memorable label for a view, or at least a slogan, so since I reject the label ['behaviorism']' I'll provide a slogan: 'once you've explained everything that happens, you've explained everything: Now is that behaviorism? No"?"' These remarks immediately follow Dennett's "My anti-behaviorist credentials are impeccable" declaration. To be frank, we are simply unable to square the remarks either with the earlier texts in which Dennett presents and defends intentional system theory or with his nearly contemporaneous response to Jackson. However, we have a speculation about Dennett's frame of mind when he dissociated himself from behaviorism in the passage in question ("But people like a memorable label ..."). We feel justified in our speCUlation because he reveals his frame of mind in the relevant surrounding text. Shortly before the remarks in question, he says: If I held a view that could be seen. in a certain light, to be a sort of dualism. I'd be extremely reluctant to "admit it." since the debates that ensued would so boringly gravitate towards defending my view against all the old arguments."';
We can all relate to the worry that if we identify ourselves with an "ism," someone will lay a simple-minded interpretation on our view and trot out "the old arguments," whether they are applicable or not. And Dennett shares with us a quite unpleasant experience of this sort: I once made the mistake of acquiescing. in a cooperative spirit. when Ned Block suggested that I should let myself be called an instrumentalist. Never again. In
(Yes, this counts as putting the blame on someone else. But let us listen while he shares his experience, rather than jumping to criticize.) Dennett goes on: When I let myself be counted as an instrumentalist. I then found I had to work very hard to undo the damage. People quite naturally reasoned that if I was a self-professed instrumentalist. and if some dime-store argument refuted instrumentalism. the same must refute me.' I
199
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
Dennett is quite understanding about this sort of thing. He doesn't claim to be above it himself. We all go in for this sort of reasoning. If I learn that somebody is an idealist, or a dualist, my initial working assumption is going to be that this person holds a forlorn view. since the "refutations" of idealism and dualism are well known."
It is. we believe, this unpleasant experience with the term 'instrumentalism' that accounts for the remarks in question. It was fear of "isms" that drove him to make them. The fear is. of course, not only understandable, but justifiable. Use of the labels 'behaviorism' and 'logical behaviorism' might well lead someone who took only a quick look to mistake him for some Ray Bolger caricature. BUL of course. we all risk being uncharitably understood when we say what we helieve. Still. we must say what we believe. Ism labels are useful: though, of course, they should be used with caution. If one uses an 'ism' and that leads critics to trot out the old arguments, that is not necessarily a bad thing. If an old argument is obviously inapplicable. it is nothing to worry about. One can trust that folks will realize that. If it fails for subtle reasons. there may be something to be learned from its failure. And, of course, there is always the chance that one or another of the old arguments runs deeper than one realized. One might think one's account escapes the argument when, in fact, it doesn't. And if so, that is important to find out. Anyway, to his credit. only months after making the remarks in question. Dennett forthrightly tells us: Let me confirm Jackson's surmise that I am his behaviorist; I unhesitatingly endorse the claim that necessarily, if two organisms are behaviorally exactly alike. they are psychologically exactl y alike."
We understand him to be endorsing the following thesis: Necessarily. if two organisms are exactly alike with respect to their actual (narrow and wide) peripheral behavior and dispositions to such (as well as exactly alike environmentally), then they are exactly alike with respect to their beliefs, desires. and the like. Of course, we may be wrong: Perhaps we too have misunderstood Dennett. If we have. we invite him to try. once again, to clarify his position on the truth-maker question by answering the following: What, exactly, is meant by 'behaviorally exactly alike' and by 'psychologically exactly alike' in the supervenience thesis? However, in section III. we will make a textual case that intentional system theory implies the supervenience thesis as we construe it. The theory is /lot an instrumentalist theory, though it is a sort of logical behaviorism.'4 It does not imply that beliefs and desires are theoretical fictions that never-
200
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
theless have predictive utility, but rather (roughly) that exhaustive beliefdesire profiles describe global patterns of dispositions to peripheral behavior within an environmental context." We will present intentional system theory in section III without pausing for criticism. Then, to further clarify the theory, we will, in section IV, pose and respond to some objections to it. Finally, in section V, we will argue that the organismic contribution to beliefdesire profiles does not consist only in facts about dispositions to peripheral behavior and that the supervenience thesis is thus false. Since it is, and since intentional system theory implies it. the theory should be rejected.
III. INTENTIONAL SYSTEM THEORY IMPLIES THE SUPERVENIENCE THESIS Intentional system theory, Dennett tells us, is "a self-consciously abstract idealization of folk psychology:,ob "Folk psychology." he notes, "is the perspective that invokes the family of 'mentalistic' concepts, such as belief. desire, knowledge, fear. pain. expectation. intention. understanding. dreaming. imagination. self-consciousness. and so on."'" Gilbert Ryle's The COllcept (~lMind'x could. he says, serve as a good introductory textbook of folk psychology."! It meticulously studies folk psychology "'in the field." Intentional system theorists begin with folk psychology. However. Dennett tells us, intentional system theorists do not attempt to capture "what folk psychology in the field truly is. but [rather] what it is at its best. what deserves to be taken seriously and incorporated into science:,oll Intentional system theorists are engaged in a proto-scientific quest ... an attempt to prepare folk [psychology1 for subsequent incorporation into, or reduction to. the rest of • fol sCIence.
Given this quest. such theorists should be critical and should eliminate all that is false or ill founded. however well entrenched in popular doctrine,'"
rather than simply meticulously record folk-psychological platitudes. Intentional system theory attempts. moreover. to systematize. idealize. and precisionize (this last is not Dennett's term) folk-psychological notions of belief, desire. intention, and their kin. Dennett's favorite analogy is the relationship the notion of Turing-computability bears to the intuitive. informal notion of computability.'" He tells us that According to Church's Thesis, every "effective" procedure in mathematics is recursive, that is, Turing-computable. Church's Thesis is not provable. since it hinges on the intuitive and informal notion of an effective procedure. but it is generally accepted, and it provides a very useful reduction of a fuzzy-but-
201
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
useful mathematical notion to a crisply defined notion of apparently equal scope and greater power. Analogously, the claim that every mental phenomenon alluded to in folk psychology is intentional-svstem-characteri:able would, if true, provide a reduction of the mental as ordinarily understood-a domain whose boundaries are at best fixed by mutual acknowledgment and shared intuition-to a clearly defined domain of entities whose principles of organization are familiar, relatively formal and systematic, and entirely generaL'';
As we will see, Dennett has already presented the broad outlines of intentional system theory, arguing that belief, desire, and their kin are intentionalsystem-characterizable. The main work left to be done by intentional system theorists, as he appears to see it, consists of showing how various other folkpsychological notions are intentional-system-characterizable."< It should be emphasized at the outset that it is a mistake to view intentional system theory as offering entirely stipulative notions of belief. desire, and their kin that are in no way beholden to the folk-psychological notions. The theory purports, as Dennett says, to be a reduction of the intentional "'as ordinarily understood."'6 Indeed, he tells us that "A prospect worth exploring is that folk psychology (more precisely, the part of it worth caring about) reduces-conceptually-to intentional system theory."b" Of this idea of conceptual reduction, more shortly. Dennett tells us that: Folk psychology is abstract in that the beliefs and desires it attributes are not-or need not be-presumed to be intervening distinguishable states of an internal behavior-causing system."
Rather than opficatin[!, folk psychology as a proto-scientific theory of intervening (between stimulation conditions and behavioral response) distinguishable states of an internal behavior-causing system, intentional system theory explicates it as a kind of logical behaviorism. Dennett tells us: I am claiming. then. that folk psychology can best be viewed as a sort of logical behaviorism: what it means to say that someone believes that p. is that that person is disposed to behave in certain ways under certain conditions.(··'
However. unlike Rylean logical behaviorism,70 intentional system theory is a sort of holistic logical behaviorism because it deals with the prediction and explanation from belief-desire profiles of the actions of whole systems (either alone in environments or in interactions with other intentional systems), but it treats the individual realizations of the systems as black boxes .... and individual beliefs and desires are not attributable in isolation, independently of other belief and desire attributions. The latter point distinguishes intentional system theory most clearly from RyJe's logical behaviorism, which took on the impossible burden of characterizing individual beliefs (and other mental
202
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
states) as particular individual dispositions to outward behavi or. . i
There is much to discuss in this compressed passage. To begin. like Rylean logical behaviorism. intentional system theory. in answering the truth-maker question, cites facts about dispositions to "outward" (i.e., peripheral) behavior. However. unlike Rylean logical behaviorism. intentional system theory eschews "the impossible burden of characterizing individual beliefs (and other mental states) as particular individual 2 dispositions to outward behavior.,,7 As is well known. the realization of the impossibility of this burden is one of the primary factors that led to the demise of logical behaviorism. William Alston nicely summarizes the problem: Analytical [i.e .. logical] behaviorism sought to construe a belief or a desire as a disposition to behave in a certain way. given certain conditions. Thus a belief that it is raining might be thought of as a set of dispositions that includes. e.g .. the dispo· sition to carry an umbrella if one goes out. Behaviorism failed because it was committed to the thesis that each indil'iduaf psychological state determines a set of dispositions to behavior. Human beings just are not wired that simply. Whether I will carry an umbrella if I go out is determined not just by whether I believe that it is raining. but rather by that in conjunction with my desire to keep dry. my preferences with respect to alternate ways of keeping dry. my beliefs about the other consequences of carrying an umbrella. and so on. Even if I believe that it is raining I might not carry an umbrella, if I am wearing a raincoat and hat and I believe that is sufficient. or if I do not object to getting Viet. or if I believe that I will project an unwanted image by carrying an umbrella. What I do is not just a function of a single psychological state but rather of the total psychological "field" at the moment.~;
Eschewing the impossible burden, intentional system theory is a holistic logical behaviorism. It characteri::,es exhaustive belief-desire patterns as highl:,; determinable global patterns of di!>positions to peripheral behavior.~-l Like Rylean logical behaviorism, intentional system theory treats "the individual realizations of the [intentional] systems as black boxes:'"' Dennett tells us: Intentional system theory deals just with the performance specifications of believers while remaining silent on how the systems are to be implemented."
However. while intentional system theory treats the realizations of (intentional) systems as black boxes, it nevertheless makes some minimal assumptions about what is inside. It is thus not literally a black box theory. Rylean behaviorism employed the phenomenalistic notion of a disposition. the simple counterfactual notion, according to which an object possesses a
203
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
disposition iff some appropriate counterfactual is true of it.;; But that would be an accidental feature of intentional system theory were Dennett to adopt it. It is unfortunate that, with all of his talk of dispositions, Dennett has not (to our knowledge, at least) discussed what dispositions themselves are. We will assume. however, that his holistic logical behaviorism eschews simple counterfactual analyses of dispositions. Dennett holds that dispositions must be "realized" in the system. We will take it that a system's possessing a disposition is not reducible to certain counterfactuals being true of it. Unlike Rylean logical behaviorism, intentional system theory, as we will understand 7 it. requires that dispositions have bases within the system. < Moreover. unlike Rylean behaviorism, the theory finds a place for scientific psychology. Dennett says: [The J microtheoretical science of the actual realizations of ... intentional systems [is 1 what I will call sub-personal cognitive psychology.,q
Subpersonal cognitive psychology looks into the black boxes. We take it that subpersonal cognitive psychology investigates the bases for the global patterns of dispositions. However. what cognitive psychology finds in a system has no bearing whatsoever on whether the system is an intentional system. provided there is a basis for an appropriate pattern of dispositions to peripheral behavior in the system. But of the relationship between cognitive psychology and intentional system theory. more shortly. Which patterns of dispositions to peripheral behavior are appropriate? To answer this. we must first consider Dennett's notion of the intentional stance. To take the intentional stance toward a system is to employ the intentiollal strategy to predict the system's behavior. Dennett tells us: To a first approximation. the intentional strategy consists of treating the object whose behavior you want to predict as a rational agent with beliefs and desires and other mental stages [sic] exhibiting what Brentano and others call illtellfiollality.'"
The intentional strategy is. Dennett tells us. a "predictive strategy.'·~1 It is first and foremost a strategy for predicting behavior on the basis of beliefs and desires. where: A svstem's behavior will consist of those acts that it \l"Ould he rati;mal for an agent with those beliefs and desires to perform.':
What. exactly. is the rationality assumption involved in the intentional strategy? Dennett says: One starts with the ideal of perfect rationality and revises downward as circumstances dictate. That is, one starts with the assumption that people believe all the implications of their beliefs and believe no contradictory pairs of beliefs."
204
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
Moreover, one employs decision theory in calculating how they will behave on the basis of their beliefs and desires."~ It should be stressed, however. that the intentional strategy is used not just to predict behavior but also to predict beliefs, desires, and other mental states. But the prediction of behavior is primary in that behavioral predictions are tested "directly by looking to see what the agent does: [while] belief and desire predictions are tested indirectly by employing the predicted attributions in further predictions of eventual action.""; The intentional strategy is also used to predict mental acts that do not themselves include peripheral behavior. For example, we might give a belief-desire explanation of why an individual is performing a certain mathematical calculation, even when the calculation is performed "in her head." "silently to herself." rather than out loud or on paper or computer. But attributions of mental acts are. like attributions of belief and desire. tested only indirectly by employing them in further predictions of actions involving peripheral behavior. Attributions of mental acts are thus ulrimately tested against the predictions they help yield about actions involving peripheral behavior.'" Let us ask again what patterns of dispositions to peripheral behavior are appropriate for being a believer and desirer. Dennett claims that: Any object-or as I shall say, any system-whose behavior is well predicted by this strategy [i.e .. the intentional strategy 1 is in the fullest sense of the word a heliever. What iT is to he a true believer is to be an intentional sYstem. a system whose behavior is reliably and voluminously predictable via the intentional strategy.'-
A system has an appropriate pattern of dispositions to peripheral behavior to be a true (i.e., genuine) believer iff it possesses a dispositional pattern that renders its behavior reliably and voluminously predictable via the intentional strategy. So long as a system possesses such a behavioral dispositional pattern. it is a genuine believer, whatever its innards are like. Dennett is emphatic on that point: Any object-whatevt'r its innards-that is reliably and voluminously predictable from the [intentional] stance is in the fullest sense of the word a believer. What if is to be a true believer. to have beliefs and desires. is to be an intentional system."
The notion of being reliably and voluminously predictable via the intentional strategy is, of course, vague. How reliable must the predictions be? How voluminous must be the reliable predictions? These are vague matters. Still. there are clear-cut cases of intentional systems and clear-cut cases of nonintentional systems. A lectern is not an intentional system since its behavior is not \'Uluminously predictable via the intentional strategy."" Humans are clear-cut intentional systems; and so are higher nonverbal
205
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
· Is. 'ill P l 'me cases. "I S uc h vagueness poses no anima er h aps 'msects are b order problem so long as our conception of a believer and desirer is correspondingly vague. Dennett holds that it is, or at least that an explication of the conception that preserves what is best in it. what in it deserves to be retained and incorporated into science, is correspondingly vague. There is a certain not unnatural reading of Dennett's statement of what it is to be a genuine believer that we want to reject as incorrect. A recent expositor of Dennett says: Dennett ... provides an exceptionally lucid. concise. and challenging statement of a doctrine which we can call pure ascripTit'ism concerning mental states. The pure ascriptivist holds thaI being a genuine believer is. in a certain sense. essentially a matter of how others might find it profitable to treat you. It is not. as the mental realist believes. a matter of how you are in yourself. regardless of the ways in which any other being might find it useful to consider you. On this Dennett is absolutely forthright. Whatever is 'voluminously predictable' by the technique of treating it as if it had beliefs and desires does have beliefs and desires. When we treat something as having beliefs and desires. we are said to be looking at it from the viewpoint provided by an imenTiollai stance."e
But Dennett is 1101 espousing "pure ascriptivism." If whether a system is an intentional system is not a matter of how it is in itself but rather is a matter of how an individual or group might find it useful to treat it. then a system can be an intentional system for one individual or group but not for another. given differences in what individuals and groups can find useful. Moreover. no system would have the property of being an intentional system independently of how any individuals or groups might find it useful to treat it. The property of being money is arguably like that (of this. more shortly). But it is not Dennett's view that the property of being a genuine believer is like that. appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. Dennett says: Would it not be intolerable to hold that some artifact or creature or person was a believer from the point of view of one observer, but not a believer at all from the point of view of another. cleverer observer? That would be a particularly radical version of interpretationalism. and some have thought I espoused it in urging that belief be viewed in terms of the success of the intentional strategy. I must confess that my presentation of the view has sometimes invited that reading. but I now want to discourage it. The decision to adopt the intentional stance is free, but the facts about the success or failure of the stance, were one to adopt it. are perfectly objective."'
And consider what Dennett says in response to an example of Robert Nozick:
206
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
Suppose. he suggested. some beings of vastly superior intelligence-from Mars. let us say-were to descend upon us. and suppose that we were to them as simple thermostats are to clever engineers. Suppose. that is. that they did not need the intentional stance ... to predict our behavior in all its detail. They can be supposed to be Laplacean super-physicists. capable of comprehending the activity on Wall Street. for instance. at the microphysical level. Where we see brokers and buildings and sell orders and bids. they see vast congeries of subatomic particles milling about-and they are such good physicists that they can predict days in advance what ink marks will appear each day on the paper tape labeled "Closing Dow Jones Industrial Average." They can predict the individual behaviors of all the various moving bodies they observe without ever treating any of them as intentional systems. Would we be right then to say that from their point of view we really were not believers at all (any more than a simple thermostat is)? If so. then our status as believers is nothing objective. but rather something in the eye of the beholder-provided the beholder shares our intellectual limita• '1-1 Hons.
In answer to the question he raises in the penultimate sentence of this passage. he says: Our imagined Martians might be able to predict the future of the human race by Laplacean methods. but if they did not also see us as intentional systems. they would be missing something perfectly objective: the patfems in ~uman !:~~il~iQ~hat...are describable from the inJ~mi.QI1(t!2~Ilt;:.e~-
Our status as believers is objective. not something in the eye of the beholder. We are believers. whether or not Martians would find it useful to so treat us. We do not fail to be believersfbr Martians. Being a believer is not a matter of being a believer for some individual or group. Moreover. thennostats are not believers. even if. for limited purposes. janitors find it useful to so treat them. There are. Dennett holds. actual objective patterns of behavior possessed by systems that make their behavior voluminously and reliably predictable via the intentional strategy. whether or not anyone or any group ever takes the intentional stance towards them or would find it useful to take the intentional stance towards them. As he tells us: Where there are intelligent beings. the patterns must be there to be described. whether or not we care to see them.'"
Whether a system has an appropriate pattern of dispositions to (narrow) peripheral behavior is. as much as anything ever is. something about how it is in itself. It is not a matter of how an individual or group might find it useful to treat it. Similarly. whether a system is a genuine believer is. as much as anything ever is. something about how it is i9it~elf. for ifjt l1,! Given that praying mantises are not intelligent and that Manthra (lacking a motor strip) is possible. Jackson's supervenience thesis is false. For Manthra is normally embodied, intelligent. free to move about his environment and a praying mantis could be a duplicate of Manthra in ways (0) and (b). All the dispositions to peripheral behavior of Manthra are just like those of a praying mantis. and. we have imagined, so are the bases for those behavioral dispositions. Thus. the way the totality of the praying mantis's behavioral dispositions at one time causally depends on what sustains the totality of his behavioral dispositions at earlier times is the same as in Manthra. However, unlike Manthra. the praying mantis is not intelligent. We see no conceptual connection between the intelligence of a normally embodied creature and that creature's having the capacity to exert intelligent motor control. As we said, Manthra is conceptually possible, indeed. metaphysically possible. Perhaps Manthra is nomologically impossible, but if he is, we would be very curious to know why. In any case, the point to note for present purposes is that Jackson's mistake is to assume that a normally embodied intelligent creature must have the capacity to exert intelligent motor control. There is no "must" about it; no conceptual "must;" no metaphysical "must;" and, we think, it remains to be seen even whether there is any nomological "must" about it. There is a fish found off the coast of Sydney, Australia, that is called 'the ball fish' because it is shaped like a ball. While not very large, the fish,
243
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
it turns out, has a hrain about lVv'o-thirds the size of a human brain and v.'ith fully three-times the density o{ neural connections. So far as we know, no intelligence test has been performed on it. It could be that the fish is not very intelligent. On the other hand, it could be that the fish is highly intelligent. ]t could be that it is intelligent enough to have a belief-desire profile. We do not yet know enough one way or the other. It would be difficult to design an intelligence test for it since its ball-shaped fish body makes its peripheral behavior limited and very different from the sorts of behavior we know how to evaluate for intelligence. There are, however, various ways we might try to test its intelligence. We could try to see whether it is educable."() We might see if we can teach it to swim through very complex mazes. We might even see if we can teach it to hit buttons with its fish body by bumping into them in such a way as to print symbols on a screen. (Think of the well-known work with chimps along these genera] lines; chimps use their hands of course.) However. such attempts to educate might prove unsuccessful. There could be many explanations of this that are consistent with the assumption that the ball fish is highly intelligent. Perhaps ball fish are terrified of humans, are frozen with fear around them, and are unable to get over their fear. Or perhaps they are uncooperative, unlike dolphins and "killer" whales. These would. of course. not impose insuperable difficulties for testing their intelligence. We could keep our presence unknown and try to trick them in various ways into doing things that would test their intelligence. Suppose, however, such tests fail simply because the ball fish is too easily fatigued. Or. finally. suppose that, as in the far more extreme case of Manthra. the ball fish won't pass a behavioral intelligence test simply because it lacks sufficient intelligent control over its peripheral behavior. The dense neural connections might have very little to do with its control over its peripheral behavior. There may be only a small range of speeds it can take when it swims; it may be limited in how it moves its eyes; it may be able to make only limited sorts of simple turns: and so on. We can imagine. however. that while we cannot get it to pass a behavioral test for high intelligence. we someday learn enough about brain functioning to understand what those dense neural connections-three-times more dense than they are in us-are doing. And we can imagine that we come to learn by studying the ball fish's brain that it has a fairly rich mental life. rich enough for a belief-desire profile. Discovering this would be perfectly compatible with there being a kind of fish that is indistinguishable from the ball fish with respect to its dispositions to peripheral behavior and with respect to the bases for the dispositions, but which is no more intelligent than, say. a cod fish.211 Unlike the ball fish, such a fish might have a simple fish brain. Notice that if we found a fish with a simple fish brain but that was behaviorally exactly like the ball fish, there would still be reason to wonder whether the ball fish has far greater intelligence. And discovering that the bases for the ball fish's dispositions to peripheral behavior are simple
244
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
and typically fish-like, not involving very much of the ball fish's complex brain, would hardly settle the issue. For it may be that much of its complex brain engages in other work, work that supports the ball fish's intelligence. The moral is that dispositions to narrow peripheral behavior neither exhaust nor are (in general) essential to the organismic contribution to psychological natures. ,I,
NOTES 1. Dennett, COIlSciollslless Explained (Boston: Little. Brown & Co .. 1991). 2. Jackson, "Appendix A (for Philosophers)," Philosopln und Phenomenological Research 53 (1993): 901.
3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 902. A supervenience thesis is a thesis to the effect that there cannot be a ditlerence of one sort without a difference of another sort. The kind of supervenience thesis in question here is essentially a strong supervenience thesis in Jaegwon Kim's sense. (See his "Concepts of Supervenience." PhilosophY and Phenomenological Research 44 11984J: 153-76.) Moreover. the mode of necessity in question is metaphysical necessity. (Something is metaphysically necessary iff it is true in "every possible world.") This is quite clear from the context of Jackson's discussion and was confirmed by him in conversation. S. Dennett. "The Message Is: There Is No Medium." PhilosophY and Phenomenological Research 53 (1993): 922. 6. Ibid .. 923. 7. See. e.g .. "Beyond Belief." in The !melltional Stallce (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT PresslBradford Books, 1987 J. 117-202, and ·'Evolution. Error. and Intentionality," in The !nlelllional Stallce. 2R7-322. 8. For the seminal discussion of Twin-Earth. see Hilary Putnam's "The Meaning of 'Meaning'." in Putnam, cd .. Mind, Language, and Reality: Philosophical Papers. vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975),215-71. 9. It is important to keep in mind that we are speaking here only of narrow and wide beha\'ioral dispositions l1ollillfelltiOlw/lr characteri7ed. Dennett and Twin-Dennett will not he disposed to engage in the same intentional actions. Dennett may be disposed to intentionally drink water: Twin-Dennett will not. He lacks the concept of water. 10. Sce, e.g .. Dennett. "Evolution, Error. and Intentionality." But see also note 106 below. We are uncertain what Dennett's considered opinion is as to whether the environmental contribution to content i, evolutionary. or even historical. 11. "Beyond Belief." 134. 12. Students of Dennett's work may wonder whether the stronger thesi, is intended. with psychological respects restricted to what he calls 'notional attitudes' (sec '"True Believers." in The Intentiollal Stallce. 15: "Beyond Belief." 151-73: and "Reflections: Ahout Aboutness." in The Inrellfiol1al SWIlC/,. 209-10). Subtleiies aside. notional attitudes are. hy stipulation. psychological states typed by their "narrow content." supervenient on the organismic contribution only, and thus not dependent on environment. Iran organism's dispositions to narrow behavior exhaust its contribution to its psychological nature, then. by stipulation. it is necessarily the case that if two organisms are narrowly behaviorally exactly alike. then they are exactly alike with respect to their notional attitudes. The question about notional attitudes. however. is whether there are any: it is quite controversial whether anything answers to Dennett's stipulated notion. We think that there may be something answering to it. However. we don't think that Dennett means hy 'psychologically exactly alike' exactly alike with respect to notional attitudes. For he recognizes that it is controversial whether there are any: and there is not even a hint of a
245
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
suggestion in his response to Jackson that he intends 'psychologically exactly alike' to be understood in the stipulative sensc in question. We will say in due course in this section what we think he means by 'psychologically exactly alike'. BUI even if he means by 'psychologically exactly alike' exactly alike with respect to notional attitudes, that won't affect our point that the organismic contribution to psychological nature is not exhausted by thc organism's dispositions to behave. Notional attitudes, if there are any. won't supervene on behavior. 13. Dennett, "Back from the Drawing Board: Replies to My Critics," in B. Dahlbom, ed .. Dennett and His Critics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993),210.
14. Ibid. 15. Dennett, "The Intentional Stance: Author's Response," Behm'ioral and Brain Sciences II (1988): 543: emphasis Dennett's. 16. Narrow behavioral dispositions, when activated, are manifested by "peripheral" movements or postures of the body: and wide behavioral dispositions are, when activated, manifested by peripheral movements or postures of the body within an environmental context. The wide dispositions are thus manifested by the manifestation of narrow behavioral dispositions within an environmental context. Logical behaviorists were concerned oilly with actual narrow and wide peripheral behavior and dispositions to such. A few terminological points: Hereafter, unless we explicitly say otherwise, we will use 'peripheral behavior' to mean both wide and narrow behavior that involves peripheral movements or postures of the body. We will write simply of movements rather than of movements or postures. And we will use 'environment' in such a way as to allow that it may include natural historical environment, such as the evolutionary history of a species. 17. "The Intentional Stance: Author's Response," 543. 18. "Back from the Drawing Board: Replies to My Critics." 210. 19. It is also. we think, false, if by 'everything that happens' Dennett means everything that actually happens. For there are nonactivated dispositions and unexercised capacities that also require explanation. 20. "The Intentional Stance: Author's Response," 543. Dennett is right that a third-person approach to intentionality does not compel one to "look only at external [i.e .. peripheral] behavior." Moreover. he is right that if the criterion for being external behavior is being intersubjectively observable behavior. then everytbing the neuroscientist looks at is external behavior: external behavior is not restricted to peripheral behavior. However. Searle's claim is that Dennett's particular brand of third-person approach looks only at peripheral behavior. Dennett appears to be emphatically denying that too, however. 2\. Dennett, "Fast Thinking," in The lllTentional Stance, 334. y) Broad, The Mind and Its Place in Nature (London: Kegan PauL 1923),616. 23. Ibid .. 617. 2-1-. See Jackson's "Appendix A (for Philosophers)," 902. Block presents Blockhead in "Psychologism and Behaviorism," Philosophical Review 90 (1981): 5-43. Block's lookup table was designed to pass the Turing Test (introduced by A. M. Turing, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," Mind 59 [1950]: 433-66). Block asks us to Imagine the set of sensible strings recorded on tape and deployed by a very simple machine as follows. The interrogator types in sentence A. The machine searches its list of sensible strings, picking out those that begin with A. It then picks one of these A-initial strings at random, and types out its second sentence, call it "B". The interrogator types in sentence C. The machine searches its list, isolating the strings that start with A followed by B followed by C. It picks one of these ABC-initial strings and types out its fourth sentence, and so on. The reader may be helped by seeing a variant of this machine in which the notion of a sensible string is replaced by the notion of a sensible branch of a tree structure. Suppose the interrogator goes first, typing in one of A" .. A,. The programmers produce one sensible response to each of these sentences B, ... Bo' For each of B, ... B" the interrogator can make various replies, so many branches will sprout below each of B, ... Bo' Again, for each of these replies, the programmers produce
246
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
one sensible response. and so on. In this version of the machine. all the X-initial strings can be replaced by a single tree with a single token of X as the head node; all the XYZ-initial strings can be replaced by a branch of the tree with Y and Z as the next nodes. and so forth. This machine is a tree-,earcher instead of a stringsearcher ("Psychologism and Behaviorism." 20). As Block, Dennett. and Jackson are aware. we can extrapolate to a look-up table that mediates the transition from all sorts of stimulus input to all sorts of motor output in such a way as to match the overt or peripheral responses of a human being. Jackson has in mind that sort of Blockhead: so will we when we speak of Blockhead(s). It is IORic£111\' possible for any pattern of dispositions to peripheral behavior (that is, in principle. non intentionally characterized) to be possessed by a Blockhead. It is logically possible for the basis for the pattern of dispositions to be a look-up table. Some years ago. D. M. Mackay pointed out that any peripheral behavioral test for a mental attribution could in principle be passed by an automaton (see his "Mentality and Machines." Aristolelial1 Society Supplement 26 [1952]: 61-81), This is true even for a subclass of automata. namely the class of Blockheads. automata that work by look-up tables (whether of the tree-searching kind or the string-searching kind), We will have more to say in section V about Blockheads and Dennett's responses to their possibility.
25. The Mind and Its Place il1 Nature, 617. 26. Broad took what is nowadays called 'the knowledge argument' (see Frank Jackson's "Epiphenomenal Qualia." Philosophical Quarterly 32 [19821: 127-36) 10 pose an insuperable difficulty for molecular behaviorism (see The Mind and It.1 Place in Nature. 71). Here is what he had to say about lIlolar behaviorism in particular: It seems to me that ... strict [i.e .. molar] Behaviorism ... may be rejected .... [It i, an] instance of the numerous class of theories which are so preposterously silly it i, important to that only very learned men could have thought of them. remember that a theory which is in fact absurd may be accepted by the simpleminded because it is put forward in highly technical terms by learned persons who are themselves too confused to know exactly what they mean. When this happens, as it has happened with [molar] Behaviorism, the philosopher i, not altogether wasting time by analyzing the theory and pointing out its Implications (ibid .. 623-4) Broad related that in his experience. as the consequences of molar behaviorism are pointed out. molar behaviorists tend to retreat closer and closer to molecular behaviorism. He tells us: What happens is that a man starts as a Molar Behaviorist and is then pushed back by criticism into Molecular Behaviorism. at which stage his theory has lost most of its interest [as a "new form of Reductive Materialism"] (ibid .. (17). 27. It is true that Searle rejects Dennett's thoroughgoing third-person approach to intentionality. Searle holds that mental states are "subjective states," states that can be fully understood only by taking up a certain experiential point of view (see his The Redisc(wery of Mind [Cambridge, Mass,: MIT Press, 1987]), However. Searle also holds that these subjective states arc nevertheless physical states of the brain. He denies that all physical states are "objective states." Dennett would insist that all physical states are objective states. understandable. in principle, from the third-person point of view (see. e.g .. "Setting Off on the Right Foot," in The Intentional SWnce, 5-7). But despite this important difference in their views. Dennett and Searle can agree about the supervenience thesis implied by molecular behaviorism. As we read Searle. he allows that two individuals who are intrinsic objective physical twins will be subjective (physical) twins. While he emphatically rejects molar (peripheral) behaviorism. he would. we think, have no quarrel with the thesis that molecular behavioral twins (i.e .. behavioral twins right down to the behavior of the molecules that make them up) cannot fail to be psychological twins. A molecular behavioral duplicate of the brain of a conscious being will. on his view. also be the brain of a conscious being. and the brains will token all and only tile same types of subjective states. 28. Well. almost no materialist would quarrel with it. David Lewis would claim that the term 'necessary' must be understood by universal quantihcation over (mh nonalien \\orlds,
247
Copyright (e) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (e) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
29.
30. 31. 32. 33. 34.
35. 36. 37. 38.
39.
40. 4!. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.
47, 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.
otherwise the supervenience thesis will be stronger than any reasonable materialist should endorse. See his "New Work for a Theory of Universals:' Australasian Journal of Philosopl1l" 61 ( 1(83): 343-77. We think that some such qualification is required for the reasons Lewis enumerates. but we will ignore these complications for present purposes. Of coursc. molecular behavioral twins will he peripheral narrow behavioral twins: and in the same environmental setting (where that includes the same laws). molecular behavioral twins will be peripheral wide behavioral twins too. Proponents of peripheral behaviorism are committed to molecular behaviorism, but not conversely. See. for example. 'The Message Is: There Is No Medium," 923. Ibid. Dennett. "Back from the Drawing Board," 210. See his "Skinner Skinned," in Brainstorms (Cambridge. Mass.: MIT Press. 1978). 53-70: and see also, "Why the Law of Effect Will Not Go Away," in Brainstorms. 71-89. See, for example. Dennett's "A Cure for the Common Code':''' in Brainstorms, 90--108. Sec also Dennett's respectful disagreements with Ryle about cognitive science in "Styles of Mental Representation:' in The inrentioll(i/ Stance, 213-25. Dennett, "Comment on Wilfrid Sellars," Syl11iJese 27 (1974): 444. Sec Jerry Fodor's The Language of Thought (Scranton, Pa.: Harvester Press: Hassocks. Sussex: Crowell. 1975). "True Believers," 35: emphasis Dennett's. Sec Dennett's "Mother Nature versus the Walking Encyclopedia:' in W. Ramsey, S. Stich. and D. E. Rumelhart. eds .. Philosophy and Connectionist Theon (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlhaum, 199 I): see also "Reflections: The Language of Thought Reconsidered," in The Intentional Stance, 227-36. "Styles of Mental Representation:' 225. While it won't matter at all for what follows, we wish to note. for the record, that Fodor does not hold that it is a priori true that we are mental-representation-manipulators. Dahlhom, "Editor's Introduction." Dennell and His Critics, 5. In "Intentional Systems," Journal of PhilosophY R (1971): 87-106. "Setting Off on the Right Foot:' 7. "Three Kind, of Intentional Psychology," in The Intentional Stance. 58. Of the holism. more in section III. Ibid .. 50. Ibid .. 58. "Reflections: Instrumentalism Reconsidered:' in The Intentional Stallce, 74: emphasis his. In "Witnessed Behavior and Dennett's Intentional Stance:' this issue, Stephen Webb claims that Dennett is committed to logical behaviorism. "The Intentional Stance: Author's Response." 543. "Back from the Drawing Board." 210. Ibid.: emphasis his. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. "The Message Is: There Is No Medium." 923. There are many passages in which intentional system theory appears to be an instrumentalist theory, and not jusl because the word 'instrumentalism' occurs in them. In its original formulation in "Intentional Systems." it clearly appeared to be instrumentalist. However. we view intentional system theory, as we believe it should now he viewed, in the light of "True Believers." 13-36: "Reflections: Real Patterns, Deeper Facts, and Empty Questions:' in The intentional Stallce, 37--42; "Three Kind~ of Intentional Psychology," 43-68: "Reflections: Instrumentalism Reconsidered." 69-82: and in the light of Dennett's more recent "Real Patterns." Juurnal of PhilosophY 88 (1991): 27-51. For a powerful
248
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
critique of intentional system theory construed as an illstntl11t'nw/is/ theory of nelief and desire, see Lynn Rudder Baker's Sm'ing Beli!:',f (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), ch. 8. 55. We are using "exhaustive nelief-desire profile" in a quasi-technical sense: We mean to include not only a total profile of neliefs and desires hut a total profile of these and of intentions, hopes, fears, and the like. It is an interesting question how these otht:[ anitudes relate to helief and desire. Dennett takes helief and desire to he the fundamental members of the family of psychological attitudcs in question, (For an interesting discussion of this issue see Searle's Intt'ntiollality [Camnridge: Camhridge University Press, 1980], 29-36,) We use 'exhaustive nelief-desire profile' (and sometimes 'total heliefdesire profile') rather than 'exhaustive intentional profile' to avert misunderstanding. For recall that Dennett is not a logical behaviorist about the intentional factors postulated hy cognitive psychology, 56. "Reflections: The Language of Thought Reconsidered:' 235. 57. "Setting Off on the Right FOOL" 7. 58. Ryle, The Concept (~f Mind (London: Hutchinson, 19.+9). 59. See "Three Kinds of Intentional Psychology," 46. For anyone who docs not know. Dennett had the honor of having Gilhert Ryle as his thesis advisor. 60. Ihid .. 54. 61. Ibid .. 47. 62. Ihid. 63. See "Introduction:' in Brainstorms, XYllL See also "Thrce Kinds of Intentional Psychology," 67-8. 64. 'Three Kinds of Intentional Psychology," 68.
65. He has, moreover. attempted to do that himself in many cases. Hc discusses dreams in "Arc Dreams Experiences?" in Brainstorms, 129-48. and pain in "Why You Can't Make a Computer that Feels Pain." in Bminstorms, 190-232. And. of course. he offers a theory of consciousness in COllsciollsness Explained. 66. "Three Kinds of Intentional Psychology." 68. 67. Ibid .. 66. 68. Ihid .. 52: emphasis his. 69. Ibid .. 50. 70. As Dennett is well aware. the lahel 'logical behaviorist' is not fully appropriate for Ryle since Ryle analyzes certain sorts of mental states ny appealing to inner episodes. See Rylc's The COllcept ofMmd where. for example. in his analysis of vanit}. he appeals to dispositions to "indulge in roseate daydreams ahout [one's] own successcs" (86: quoted in Dennett's "A Cure for the Common Codc',''' 96). Suffice it to note that Ryle may well not have been a Rylean. 71. "Three Kinds of Intentional Psychology." 58. 72. Ibid. 73. Alston. "Functionalism and Theological Language:' in Dil';ne .!Vature (fnd Humall Language (Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1989).68. 74. See note 55. 75. 'Three Kinds of Intentional Psychology." 58. 76. Ibid .. 59. 77. See McLaughlin's "Dispositions:' in E. Sosa and 1. Kim. ed, .. A Companion to Meta· physics (Oxford: Basil BlackwelL 1994).70-3. On the phenomenalistic view of dispositions. something is. for instance, water soluble iff it would dissolve if immersed ill water. For a criticism of the phenomenalist view of dispositions. see C. B. Martin's "Dispositions and Conditionals:' Philosophical Quanerly 20 ( 199.+): 256-3. 78. We appeal to this feature of intentional system theory in our responsc to objection one in section IV
249
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
McLaughlin, Brian P., Dennett's Logical Behaviorism , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.189
79. 80. 81. 82. K3. 84.
"Three Kind,., of Intentional Psychology." 57. "True Believers:' 15. Ibid .. 2S. "Three Kinds of Intentional Psychology," 49. "True Believers:' 21. It has been countered that a more workable strategy is a perspectiva/ist one: Start with the assumption that the subject i, psychologically just like yourself and adjust that assumption only insofar as you have to for successful prediction of behavior. See Stephen Stich's "Dennett on Intentional Systems," PhifosoplziC!lf Topics 12 (1981): 38-62. Stich offers a powerful critique of the ideal-rationality strategy. Dennett replies to Stich in "Making Sense of Ourselves:' in The Intentional Stance, 83-102. Dennett appears to hold that the difference between the ideal-rationality strategy and the perspectivalist strategy is not deep but rather more a difference in emphasis. The strategies strike us, however. as importantly different. (How can a perspectivalist strategy be considered an entirely third-person strategy") But this is not a matter we will pursue since so doing would take us far afield of our central concern,. We will simply leave open the details of the rationality assumption. KS. "Three Kinds of Intentional Psychology." 52n. 86. While we speak of actions and of peripheral behavior, we do not mean to suggest that they are different. We address this issue in section IV: see the reply to objection two. 87. "True Believers," 15; emphases his. Notice that this holistic logical behaviorist version of intentional system theory differs from the early instrumentalist version. In "Intentional Systems." he say,: The definition of intentional systems I have given doe, not say that intentional "ystems really have heliefs and desires, but that one can explain and predict their behavior hy ascrihing beliefs and deSires to them (7). To repeat: We will not discuss the early instrumentalist version. 88. "The Intentional Stance: Author's Response:' 542-3. 89. See "True Believer4 now abandoned because I saw that instead of there being sharp levels of seeming, there was something more blurry, something
544
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "HIGHER-ORDER THOUGHTS AND MENTAL BLOCKS" Reply to Rosenthal and Block , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.543
more like a continuum, as revealed most vividly in Marcel's experiment requiring subjects to make multiple "redundant" responses to the same stimulus.1U5 Normally, all the responses of a person (or animal) pull together in favor of one reading of how things seem "to" that unitary agent, but in pathological or just extreme circumstances, the "transcendental unity" of seeming can come apart. When it does, we are not entitled to assume that some still unidentified property of consciousness (a "player to be named later") belongs to some subset of the seemings. Rosenthal recognizes this, in part: He allows me the category of unconscious seemings (what, in the old days, I would have called cases of awareness, without awareness l ), but in spite of his several recognitions of the onset of bluniness in his own account as he develops the details, he persists in holding out for a sharp divide between the unconscious and the conscious, and he persists in trying to make the divide distinct from the brutally incisive rule of first-person operationalism: If the subject can't report it, it isn't part of the subject's consciousness. Heterophenomenological reports give us our best evidence about how people's conscious mental lives appear to them. But things aren't always as they seem. So Dennett's methodological appeal to these reports is neutral about whether sincere reports truly describe the conscious [emphasis added] events that go into a subject's first-person viewpoint or simply express the subject's beliefs about those mental events, events which may be entirely notional. 1«.
In a passage I quoted earlier, Rosenthal claims that in "Orwellian" cases, there are putatively conscious events that do not "go into a subject's firstperson viewpoint," and here he claims that there can be "entirely notional" events that are part of that viewpoint but are not conscious (you only think you are "transitively" conscious of such events). He has not met the burden of establishing independent grounds for these categories, nor do I think that any such grounds can be motivated. Ned Block's essay is his fourth in a series criticizing my theory of consciousness, and they arrive again and again at the same verdict: He can't see anything radical about it. I(s either trivial or obviously false on any interpretation he can muster. He has so far overlooked the reading I intended. We all have fixed points-assumptions so obvious to us that we don't even consider them up for debate-and I have long thought that Block's inability to encounter my theory must be because he just couldn't bring himself to take seriously the idea that I was challenging some of his fixed points. Now he has confirmed this diagnosis, not just avowing that he has not taken it seriously but flatly urging no one else to take it seriously as well! He says "I hope it is just obvious to virtually everyone that the fact that things look, sound, and smell more or less the way they do to us is a basic biological feature of people, not a cultural construction that our children 1()7
545
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "HIGHER-ORDER THOUGHTS AND MENTAL BLOCKS" Reply to Rosenthal and Block , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.543
have to learn as they grow up." I must dash his hopes; it is neither obvious nor so much as true. He goes on to offer quite a list of ideas "we should not take seriously." It is not just, as I had suspected, that he was simply incapable of taking my hypotheses seriously. "My point," he says, "is that we should not take this question seriously. It is a poor question that will just mislead us." No wonder he has been so unmoved by my account! He has discarded it on general principles, without a hearing. That is a serious failure of communication, but we can now repair it. Block agrees with me that consciousness is a "mongrel notion" and follows my strategy of titration-breaking down the ungodly mess into its components-but he underestimates the importance of the difference that language (and reportability) makes. I took a shot at it in 1969 with my distinction between the awareness I that language-using creatures have to the contents that "enter" their "speech centers" and the awareness c that marks appropriately discriminative uptake and is "enjoyed" equally by anteaters, ants, and electric-eye door-openers. As I have just acknowledged in my discussion of Rosenthal, that postulated speech center was all too Cartesian, and the role that language plays in consciousness is much more interesting and indirect than I saw in 1969, so I have had to make major adjustments to that doctrine. But the continuing importance of seeing a major distinction between the consciousness of language users and the so-called consciousness of all other entities is made particularly clear by Block's work, which, by ignoring it, creates a powerful theoretical illusion. Block puts his major division between "access" and "phenomenal" consciousness and, without further ado, declares that the "access" of awareness c is all the access that matters. Block deliberately frames access consciousness so that language and hence reportability does not playa role. "My intent in framing the notion is to make it applicable to lower animals in virtue of their ability to use perceptual contents in guiding their actions."ICJK As we shall see, this enhances the illusion that there is an "obvious" sense of consciousness in which lower animals and infants are conscious, and to make matters worse, Block actually enjoins people not to pursue the questions that would expose this illusion. My own efforts to convince Block of this in the past have all been frustrated, but he and I have kept plugging away, and now I have hopes of straightening it all out. At least he should now be able to see, for the first time, what my position is and always has been. Again and again in this paper he asks what he takes to be crushing questions, questions to which he thinks I can have no answer. He will "surely" be surprised by my answers-and even more, I expect, when I point out that these have always been my answers to them. Block's attitude in the current essay towards his own major division (between "access" and "phenomenal" consciousness) is curiously ambivalent: He wields it, acknowledges that I have rejected it, but excuses himself
546
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "HIGHER-ORDER THOUGHTS AND MENTAL BLOCKS" Reply to Rosenthal and Block , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.543
from mounting the defense I say it needs. "We needn't worry," he tells us, "about whether access-consciousness is really distinct from phenomenal consciousness, since the question at hand is whether either of them could be a cultural construction. I am dealing with these questions separately, but I am giving the same answer to both, so if I am wrong about their distinctness it won't matter to my argument." lOY But it does matter, since it is the very move of supposing that he can make this cleavage between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness that conceals from him the way in which consciousness could be a cultural construction. By looking at two misisolated components of the phenomenon, Block has convinced himself that since neither "separately" could be a cultural construction, consciousness cannot be a cultural construction. But these supposed sorts of consciousness don't make sense "separately"-they only seem to do so. To put it bluntly,"°Block can't distinguish phenomenal consciousness from phenomenal unconsciousness without introducing some notion of access, a point he almost sees: "There is a 'me' -ness to phenomenal consciousness." Like Dretske, he needs there to be some sort of uptake to ensure that the "phenomenal" is to or for some subject--Dr could phenomenal itches and aromas just hang around being conscious without being conscious to anyone? Rosenthal enunciates as if it were a constitutive principle the intuitive demand that raises these problems for Dretske and Block: "Still, if one is in no way transitively conscious of a particular mental state, that state is not a conscious state." III This "transitive" consciousness must be a variety of "access" consciousness, for it relates "one" to what "one is conscious of." But once we let access come back in, we will have to ask what sort of access we are talking about (for "phenomenal" consciousness, mind you). Is the access to color-boundary information enjoyed by the part of your brain that controls eye movements sufficient? If it is. then the anesthetized subject (a monkey, most likely) whose eyes move in response to these "perceived" colors is enjoying phenomenal consciousness. And so forth. (In this area I think Ivan Fox's essay has valuable further lessons to offer.) Block doesn't tell us anything about which features of access would suffice for phenomenal consciousness, but in any case, however Block would resolve this issue, I resolve it. as he correctly notes. via the concept of cerebral celebrity. This idea "seems more a theory of access-consciousness than any of the other elements of the mongrel," but it is also, I claim. a theory of phenomenal consciousness (after all, I deny the distinction). Can this really be so? Could the sort of access requisite for phenomenal consciousness really be "constructed" out of cerebral celebrity. and could this feature in turn be a cultural construction? Block is forthright in his incredulity. "I hope Dennett tells us how, according to him, cerebral celebrity could be a cultural construction." But I already have, at great length, over more than a decade. He just didn't notice.
547
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "HIGHER-ORDER THOUGHTS AND MENTAL BLOCKS" Reply to Rosenthal and Block , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.543
He helpfully italicizes his main error for us: "But surely it is nothing
other than a biologicalfact about people-not a cultural construction-that some brain representations persevere enough to affect memory, control behavior, etc."112 Surely? No. Here Block completely overlooks all my patient efforts to explain precisely why cerebral celebrity is not a biologically guaranteed phenomenon. This is the point of all my discussion (going back to Elbmv Room) of the evolution of consciousness: to open up as a serious biological possibility the idea that our brains are not organized at birth, thanks to our animal heritage, in ways that automatically guarantee the sorts of mutual influence of parts that is the hallmark of "our access" to conscious lI3 contents. My little thought experiment about talking to oneself is central. It suggests a way-a dead simple way, just to get our imaginations moving in the right direction-in which a culturally "injected" factor, the use of language. could dramatically alter the functionally available informational pathways in a brain. Now does Block think that my story is inconceivable? Does he think it is inconceivable that human infants. prior to rudimentary mastery of a language, and the concomitant habits of self-stimulation, have brain organizations that do not yet support "access" consciousness beyond the sorts "lower" animals enjoy? Probably not. But tempting though it undoubtedly is, he may not now fall back on his undefended distinction between access and phenomenal consciousness. He is in no position to say: "Surely" these lower animals, even if they do lack human-style access consciousness, have phenomenal consciousness?!II~ In an elegant paper. "Cued and Detached Representations in Animal Cognition," Peter Gardenfors points out "why a snake can't think of a mouse." It seems that a snake does not have a central representation of a
mouse but relies solely on transduced information. The snake exploits three different sensory systems in relation to prey. like a mouse. To strike the mouse, the snake uses its ~'isual system (orthermal sensors). When struck, the mouse normally does not die immediately, but runs away for some distance. To locate the mouse, once the prey has been struck, the snake uses it~ sense of smell. The search behavior is exclusively wired to this modality. Even if the mouse happens to die right in front of the eyes of the snake, it will still follow the smell trace of the mouse in order to find it. This unimodality is particularly evident in snakes like boas and pythom, where the prey often is held fast in the coils of the snake's body. when it e.g. hang:.. from a branch. Despite the fact that the snake must have ample proprioceptory information about the location of the prey it holds, it searches stochastically for it, all around, only with the help of the 1 olfactory sense organs. " Finally, after the mouse has been located, the snake must find its head in order to swallow it. This could obviously be done
548
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "HIGHER-ORDER THOUGHTS AND MENTAL BLOCKS" Reply to Rosenthal and Block , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.543
with the aid of smell or sight, but in snakes this process uses only tactile information. Thus the snake uses three separate modalities to catch and eat a mouse. 1H.
Can we talk about what the snake, itself, "has access" to, or just about what its various parts have access to? Is any of that obviously sufficient for "phenomenal" (or any other kind of) consciousness? What-if any thingis it like to be a (whole) snake? Postponing consideration of that question, does such an example render plausible-at least worth exploring-my hypothesis? My radical proposal is that the sorts of internal integrating systems the snake so dramatically lacks but we have are in fact crucial for consciousness, and they are not ours at birth but something we gradually acquire, thanks in no small measure to what Block calls "cultural injection." I hope that, unlike Block, you think these are ideas that just might be worth taking seriously. Block says: "True, culture modulates cerebral celebrity, but it does not create it." Since this flat assertion directly contradicts my claim about the role of culture in creating the conditions for cerebral celebrity, some supporting argument is called for. Presumably Block doesn't realize that this is the phantom Dennettian claim he makes such a labor of searching for. He's utterly right about the banality of the view that it takes culture to think of oneself as a federal self: the interesting view is that it takes culture to become a federal self. But he doesn't consider this view. Whenever Block says "Surely," look for what we might call a mental block. Here is another: "Surely, in any culture that allows the material and psychological necessities of life, people genetically like us will have experiences much like ours: There will be something it is like for them to see and hear and smell things that is much like what it is like for us to do these things.""- Block says "in any culture"-and 1 have never claimed that consciousness is a product of a very spec~fic culture. since all sorts of human cultures for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years have had the perquisites. So Block ignores here the appropriate case, given my claims. What about the (fortunately, imaginary) case of Robinson Crusoe human beings, each raised in total isolation, in an entirely depopulated, a-sociaL a~ cultural world. with no mother to cuddle and feed them, no language to learn. no human interactions at all? Is it obvious that "there will be something it is like for them to see and hear and smell things that is much like what it is like for us to do these things"? I don't think so. But "surely," you retort. however appallingly different it would be, it would be like something! WelL here is where "what it is like" runs into trouble. Is it obvious that it is "like something" to be an eight-month fetus in the womb? Is it obvious that it is "like something" to be a python'? The less the functional similarities between normal adult. socialized consciousness and the test case under consideration, the less obvious it is that we are entitled to speak of "what it is like." Block's confidence about phenomenal consciousness masks this growing
549
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "HIGHER-ORDER THOUGHTS AND MENTAL BLOCKS" Reply to Rosenthal and Block , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.543
tension by supposing, optimistically, that of course there is something we can hold constant, in spite of all these differences in "access" consciousness: phenomenal consciousness. With this I flat disagree, and that is the primary source of our miscommunication up to now.ll~ When we tum to Block's discussion of my comparison between consciousness and money, I must first correct a misrepresentation of my view. I don't say-let alone "repeatedly"-that you can't have consciousness unless you have the concept (~f consciousness, but that the phenomenon of consciousness depends on its subjects having a certain family of concepts (none of them necessarily any concept of consciousness). In Consciousness Explained, I speak of consciousness depending on "its associated concepts."II" Block finds the one passage in my homage to Jaynes in which I deliberately overstated this point (while drawing attention to its "paradoxical" flavor). Let me try to undo the damage of that bit of bravado. Acquiring a concept is, on almost any view of concepts I have encountered, partly a matter of acquiring a new competence; before you had the concept of x, you couldn't really y, but now thanks to your mastery of the concept of x (and its family members and neighbors--don't try to pin some sort of atomism on me here), you can y, or more easily y, or more spontaneously y. Now if consciousness is "good for something "-if having it gives one competences one would lack without it-then there should be nothing surprising or metaphysically suspect about the claim that the way you make something conscious is by giving it (however this is done) some concepts that it doesn't already have. And so it is somewhat plausible-at least worthy of consideration, I would have thought-that acquiring concepts is partly a matter of. or contributes to, building new accessibility relations between disparate elements of a cognitive system. Concepts, you might say, are software links, not hardware links. Well then, here's an idea: Maybe consciousness just is something that you gain by acquiring a certain sort of conceptual apparatus that you aren't born with! If you say, but "surely" that couldn't be true, since you have to be conscious to have concepts in the first place, I reply: that is a Big Mistake that Jaynes helped overthrow. "It is hard to take seriously the idea that the human capacity to see and access [emphasis added] rich displays of colors and shapes is a cultural construction that requires its own concept." It is too hard for Block to take seriously, that's for sure. But if he were right, why don't the experimenters run the same color experiments on nonhuman mammals? Hint: Because nonhuman mammals don't "have access" to all the richness of the colors and shapes their nervous systems nevertheless discriminate in one way or another.121J Now perhaps you want to insist that the animals do "have access" to all this richness but just can't harness it the way we can, to answer questions, etc., etc. That, however, is a surmise that is fast losing ground, and rightly so. The idea that we can isolate a notion of "access"-"you know,
550
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "QUALIA REFUSE TO GO QUIETLY" Reply to Tolliver, White, McConnell, and Lormand , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.551
conscious access"-that is independent of all the myriad things that access thereby enables is just an artifact of imaginative inertia. It has no independent warrant whatever.
VII. QUALIA REFUSE TO GO QUIETLY What is color? Joseph Tolliver clearly describes the logical space and the motivations behind the various theories of color that have recently been proposed. By my lights, however, he has been insufficiently critical of the shared assumptions of the literature he considers: what should be seen as differences of emphasis have been pumped up into differences of doctrine, rendered spuriously at odds by being forced into the procrustean bed of essentialism, leading, as we have seen. to hysterical realism. In fact, thanks to Tolliver, hysterical realism can be seen in a particularly clear light. Consider his lovely example, alexandrite, the philosopher's stone indeed. In sunlight it looks blue-green and in incandescent light or candlelight, it looks red. lei What color is it really? What makes anybody think this question must have an answer? Essentialism. They think color has a real essence, and hence they cannot tolerate a view that leaves the answer to such questions indeterminate. Thus Edward Averill, raising his problems of counterfactual colors. poses a litmus test for theories of color parallel to my stumper about magnets. What would we say: that gold had changed its color or that the true color of gold had been obscured? As Tolliver notes, when my evolutionary theory faces this situation. it fails to resolve it. I don't view that as a criticism. however. for I don't think that the question of what color gold really is (in "all possible worlds") deserves attention. He sees that my evolutionary account gives you a "principled means" of identifying the normal conditions. relative to the functions. and hence the standards. by which we identify the class of observers. But it must be essentialism ("color is a transworld property") that leads him to think that these evolutionary considerations don't suffice. since they don't provide similarly "principled" ways of fixing the standard viewing conditions of colored things that played no role in our evolution. such as "lasers. dichromic filters, gemstones. stars. and Benham disks."122 So what? All such colors should be considered mere byproducts of the perceptual machinery designed to respond to the colors that have had evolutionary significance for us or our ancestors. If the sky's being blue (to us) is just a byproduct of the evolutionary design processes that adjusted human color vision. then no functional account (which would assume that the sky "ought" to look some particular color under some canonical circumstances) is needed. If. however. some features of our responsivity to color (e.g .. the pleasure we take in seeing blue) itself derives. indirectly, from some later evolutionary response
551
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "QUALIA REFUSE TO GO QUIETLY" Reply to Tolliver, White, McConnell, and Lormand , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.551
to this byproduct, then the sky's being blue is "right"-but now for a reason that is purely anthropocentric, and none the worse for that! Tolliver also makes the minor error of elevating my evolutionary expla~ nation of the grounding of color into some sort of constitutive claim on my part. Evolution answers the question for us, since evolution is the source of our functionality, but if the Creationists' story were true, then God the Artificer would have to hold the key. That's fine with me, as a fantasy. For I take it that we can readily imagine a race of robots endowed by their creators with a sort of "color" vision (scare-quotes to mollify the scaredy-cats), in which an entirely different set of patterns ruled, and ruled for equally "prin~ cipled" reasons. In that world, thanks to the design decisions of the robots' creators, undesigned things (gemstones, stars, the sky) could fit into color~ equivalence classes different from ours. On either this story or our nonfan~ tastic evolutionary story, we anchor the standard conditions to the class of normal observers by functional considerations. Tolliver's own functionalism is clearly superior to the alternatives he considers, but I think he misses a few crucial points. Functional architecture is the formal structure that makes possible the construction of complex representations within the symbolic system. But the functional architecture is not another representation over and above the representations defined by l means ofit. "
True, but the functional architecture does contribute content-just not by "being a representation." There are many other ways of contributing content. Since this is an oft~ignored possibility, I wish 1 had hammered harder on this theme when I first raised it, in my example of the "thing about redheads" in "Beyond Belief."lc-l The idea that content must all be packaged in symbols or syntactic properties of representations is a very bad idea. Tolliver shows how a color~coding system can be implemented by ordered triples, since every perceivable color can be uniquely placed in a three~space. the color solid. I" "Surely," one is inclined to argue, a system of color coding all by itse(f doesn't amount to subjective color experience; there is nothing exciting or pleasurable, for instance, about ordered triples! Adding a fourth variable to represent the appropriate "affect" would not be a step in the right direction, and '"translating" the ordered triples back into "subjective colors" (or qualia) would be a step in the wrong direction-a step back into the Cartesian Theater. We take a step in the direction of genuine explanation by postulating that these ordered triples are ensconced in a functional archjtec~ ture in such a way that they have the right sorts of high-powered functionsthe sort of thing Hardin and (earlier) Meehl note. That, the excitement potential of colors, and their capacity to soothe and delight us is part of the content of color properties, and it is-must be--embodied in the functional architecture of the color system. The person who cannot use color as an
552
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "QUALIA REFUSE TO GO QUIETLY" Reply to Tolliver, White, McConnell, and Lormand , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.551
alarm, as a reminder, as an ease in tracking or aide-memoire, does not have our color system. My view of colors is an instance of what Stephen White calls the holistic strategy towards the problem of saying what experienced colors are, but Ned Block has raised his "Inverted Earth" fantasy against any such view. J did not discuss Block's thought experiment in Consciousness Explained, thinking its intricacies would not repay the time and effort it would take to present and criticize them, especially since I thought I had provided all the tools necessary to scuttle his case for anyone who sought them. That was wrong. White's analysis of the difficulties facing Block's thought experiment as published, and its subsequent postpublication variations, goes far beyond anything I had laid the ground for. And since I have failed to convince large and important segments of the philosophical audience. I have been making at least a tactical error which White's work repairs. White treats patiently what I rush by with a few gestures. For instance, his expansion of Block's four-stage example to five stages permits him to spell out-in enough imaginative detail to persuade-the sorts of thoughts "from the inside" that would go on in you were you to be in Block's posited circumstances. This was what I was getting at in Consciousness Explained,'"' especially the example of the shade of blue that reminds you of the car in which you once crashed. But White works it out so carefully. so crisply, that the point cannot be lost. See especially his nice observation on the inevitability of overcompensation. should your old hard-to-suppress inclination spontaneously disappear faster than you expected. Another excellent point: The subpersonallevel could change in a gradual way while the personal level might stick for awhile. until it flipped in a "gestalt switch." White then takes on notional worlds. an idea that J left rather vague and impressionistic in "Beyond Belief," and sharpens it up with a variety of his own insights and innovations to meet a host of objections. For the reasons discussed in the section on cow-sharks, I have no stomach for discussions of amnesiacs in blinding snowstorms who think they are being attacked by a bear (and are under the impression that other snow-covered amnesiacs are currently in the same pickle!), but for those who think such counterexamples are telling, White has a detailed response. thus forcing the antirelationalists to take these ideas seriously. As he concludes from his examination. "Thus if we think seriously about the full range of discriminatory skills that a relational account can allow. its inadequacy as an account of our experience is far less obvious.',J:' Hear. hear. White's analysis also sharpens some points in Block's thought experiment that then invite a short-cut objection that can be used to forestall whole families of similar enterprises. In one of Block's variations, you have an identical twin, who is sent otT to Inverted Earth with contact lenses chronically installed. As White notes: "Here we have two subjects whose
553
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "QUALIA REFUSE TO GO QUIETLY" Reply to Tolliver, White, McConnell, and Lormand , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.551
experiences have all the same qualitative properties, and hence the same qualitative content, but different intentional contents."m Block's argument requires this assumption, but where does it come from? Must qualia "supervene on" physical constitution? Thomas Nagel once claimed otherwise, in conversation with me; he insisted that there was no way to tell of two identical twins whether they had identical qualia. Whether or not qualia do supervene on physical constitution, something else definitely does, and that is what we might call functional micro-implementation-e.g" Tolliver's ordered triples of something small in the brain. Thus in "Instead of Qualia," I describe color-discriminating robots that use numbers in registers to code for the different "subjective" colors they discriminate. The particular number systems they use (functionally parallel to the "file-keeping" system White describes) are physical microdetails that anchorfunctions, but the numbers (which are arbitrary) could all be inverted without any detectable functional change. These, presumably, are not qualia that many qualophiles could love; they are in fact what I propose instead of qualia. And I claim that they can do. without mystery, all the work qualia were traditionalIy supposed to doincluding telling qualia-inversion fantasies! We can retell Block's thought experiment with two identical robots, one of whom is sent off to Inverted Earth with contact lenses chronically instalIed. Then we will have two robots whose "experiences" have alI the same details of functional micro-implementation but different intentional contents. Since everything Block says of you and your twin would also be true of the robot and its twin on Inverted Earth. for exactly the same reasons, and since qualia are not enjoyed by the robots (ex hypothesi). Block's argument cannot be used to show why a functionalist needs to posit qualia. Functional micro-implementation schemes will do just as well. Jeff McConnell takes equal pains in his examination of another fantasy, Frank Jackson's case of Mary the color scientist who is, in Diana Raffman's fine phrase, chromatically challenged. I gave Mary short shrift in Consciousness Explained, and McConnell gives her long shrift in the attempt to demonstrate that Jackson's Knowledge Argument "remains alive and well" in the wake of my criticisms. I think he has drastically underestimated their subversiveness. They challenge not just the details but the whole strategy of attempting to prove anything by Jackson's methods. I am claiming that it counts for nothing-nothing at all-that Jackson's (or McConnell's or anybody's) intuitions balk at my brusque alternative claim about Mary's powers. Their fixed points are not my fixed points. but precisely the target of my attack. The most that can be said for an intuition pump such as Jackson's, then, is that it dramatizes these tacit presumptions, without giving them any added support. Now of course I might be wrong, but one cannot defeat my counterargument by blandly describing as an "insight"' something I have been at considerable pains to deny.
554
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "QUALIA REFUSE TO GO QUIETLY" Reply to Tolliver, White, McConnell, and Lormand , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.551
In any case, McConnell gradually concedes some ground, if only for the sake of argument, adding proviso after proviso to the original story. By the time he is through, Jackson's deceptively crisp scenario has given way to the utterly imponderable hypothesis that "it does not seem inconsistent to suppose" that there could be a neuro-omniscient but imaginationally challenged person who, in virtue of the latter and in spite of the former, lacked the ability to construct a special sort of knowledge to be called "imaginative knowledge" (defined in terms of the suspect category of phenomenal properties). McConnell may think that the Knowledge Argument is still "alive and well" after this exercise. but it sure looks like a shadow of its former self to me, barely able to hold our attention, let alone vivify our convictions. At one juncture McConneIl points to the gap in his own case: "My counterargument shows that unless there is a defect in the mechanics of the Knowledge Argument or a deep flaw in our common sense about what Mary knows. then the standard positions about the nature of the mind are untenable."!2Y But all along I have been claiming that there is just such a deep flaw UIl in our common sense. Our common sense is strongly if covertly committed to the Cartesian Theater, and since many philosophers have wondered who on earth I can be arguing against (since the\' certainly weren't committed to there being a Cartesian Theater!), it will be instructive to show how McConnell's own commitment to the Cartesian Theater arises. especially since it is nicely concealed in his quite standard exploitation of familiar philosophical assumptions. He builds his case by extending the received wisdom about external reference in ordinary language to internal reference: The success of demonstrative reference depends upon the demonstratum's being picked out for demonstrator and audience by a mode or manner of presellfatiun-by something that individuates the cognitive significance of referring expressions.I'I [emphasis added]
These assumptions are widely shared. It has seemed harmless to many philosophers of mind to couch their discussions of reference in perception. knowledge by acquaintance. inner ostension. and the like in the terms so weIl analyzed by philosophers of language dealing with reference. ostension, and similar phenomena in ordinary language. But as this passage nicely illustrates. these are poisoned fruits that quietly force the hand of the theorist: We have to have an inner audience. to whom things are presented. if we are to take these familiar extensions of linguistic categories literally (and if nol literally. exactly what is left to be asserted?). Thus philosophers have debates about "modes of presentation '. versus "definite descriptions in the language of thought" and the like. but these only make sense if we are presupposing an inner agent, capable of appreciating or perceiving presentations, or understanding the tenm of the definite descriptions, but still in need of being informed about the matter in question. which is sti II somehow
555
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "QUALIA REFUSE TO GO QUIETLY" Reply to Tolliver, White, McConnell, and Lormand , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.551
external to the agent. In other words, these discussions all presuppose a Cartesian Theater occupied by a Central Meaner who either has or has not yet been apprised of some fact that must somehow be borne to him on the vehicle of some show that must be presented or some inner speech act that must be uttered, heard, and understood. But this is forlorn. As I argued at length in Consciousness Explained, this too-powerful inner agent has to be broken down, and all its work has to be distributed in both space and time in the brain. When that is done, the properties by which "agents" are "acquainted with" this and that have to be broken down as well. That is the point, once again, of my answer to the question of how I know these things: because a knower and reporter of such things is what is me.l3c But see how McConnell puts it: We are able to know our qualitative mental states by acquaintance, picking them out by direct reference as states "like this," so to speak, producing examples in imagination [for whose perusal, pray tell?] or ostending to ourselves [to our selves?] occurrent states. I." .
This isn't common sense: this is disaster, for as he himself shows, it leads quite inexorably to "irreducibly mental properties:' Loar. on McConnell's reading, is thus headed in the right direction in trying to forestall this development. McConnell's objection to Loar-the imagined Marcy-is thus question begging: "Imagine someone. for example, who can, without physical evidence, report and categorize many of her own brain states, even states that lack qualitative character [emphasis added]."l'" But what is "qualitative character" that might thus be absent? Who says that there are any states that even hm'e "qualitative character"? It seems obvious to McConnell that there are "phenomenal properties." and so he never truly confronts the denial I am issuing. Perhaps the most telling instance-telling. because it strikes him as so tangential that he buries it in note nineteen-is the following: The critic of the Knowledge Argument. however. must take the position that Mary's neuroscientific expertise would not just enable her to do this but would constitute the grasping of phenomenal red, and this is implausible. For it seems easy to imagine a person in Mary's shoes. someone perhaps unlike Mary biologically, who doesn't have the powers of hallucination Flanagan supposes but about whom we would say the things Jackson says of Mary.
I have at least tried to cast doubt on any such appeals to what "seems easy to imagine" in these cases, claiming that after one undergoes a certain amount of factual enrichment about the nature of color perception and related topics, these things no longer seem so easy to imagine after all. That they seem so to McConnell is thus a biographical fact of no immediate use in an argument-at least not in an argument against me.
556
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "QUALIA REFUSE TO GO QUIETLY" Reply to Tolliver, White, McConnell, and Lormand , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.551
Eric Lormand brings out vividly how the Friends of the Cartesian Theater can cling to their fantasies. He shows how many different escape hatches there are for Theater lovers and points out that I can't block them all at once. No doubt. For instance, you can always "postulat(e] a distinctive. nonprimitive but also nonrational, means of access"!" or some other variety of "access mechanism" if you want to, but why? Whose access to what? My point was to remove the motivation, but if you still ~vanI to posit qualia, I doubt that I can show that you will inevitably contradict yourself. I did not claim to prove a priori that there could not be a Cartesian Theater; I claimed to prove, empirically, that there was no Cartesian Theater, and that since there wasn't one, theories that presuppose otherwise must be wrong.!)(- There is an empirical point and then there is an a priori point, and the two have not yet been clearly enough distinguished-by me or my readers. Consider the Brobdingnagians, the giant people of Gulliver's Trm'e[s, and suppose we set out to do some anthropology there, and decided that the best way to do this was to make a giant humanoid puppet of sorts, controlled by Sam. a regular sized human being in the control room in the giant head. (l guess that is at least as "logically possible" as the scenarios in other thought experiments that are taken seriously.) Sam succeeds in passing for Brobdingnagian in his giant person suit, but then one day he encounters Brobdingnagian Dennett sounding off on the unreality of the Cartesian Theater with its Central Meaner. Risky moment~ Sam pushes the laugh button and directs the giant speech center to compose the appropriate response (in translation): "Ha Ha! Who could ever take seriously the idea that there was a control room in the head, the destination of all the input. and the source of all the output! Such a fantasy~"-al1 the time hoping that his ruse would not be uncovered. Yes, this thought experiment shows that a Cartesian Theater is ··possible." but we already know that there are no such places in our own brains-that's the empirical point. We also know-this is the a priori point-that sooner or later as we peel the layers off any agent. we have to bottom out in an agent that doesll 'f have a central puppeteer. and this agent will accomplish its aims by distributing the work in the space and time of whatever counts as its brain. Putting the two points together. we see that we have to live with these implications sooner, not later. We have to live with them now. Lormand vividly supports my contention that qualia and the Cartesian Theater stand or fall together. The reason he is a Friend of the Theater is that he thinks he has to have qualia, and qualia without a Theater is no show at all. But then we must ask: What does the claim that there really are qualia get him? What does it explain? I'm not asking for a lot. I'd be content ifhis only answer was: "It explains my unshakable belief that I've got qualia!" But even this Lomland concedes to me. It would be quite possible. he says. to believe you had qualia when you didn't. Philosophically naive zimbos,
557
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "LUCK, REGRET, AND KINDS OF PERSONS" Reply to Slote and Rovane , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.558
for instance, would fervently believe they have qualia. As I said in my discussion of Levine, I view zimbos as a reductio. Others don't, but that's their problem, not mine. The hydra-headed qualia live on, in Lormand's various options, shifting from one version to another. That is enough to establish one of my main points for me: You simply cannot talk about qualia with the presumption that everyone knows what you're talking about. These different avenues are too different. It is only equivocation that permits the various different qualophiles to claim they agree about something, to wit: qualia.
VIII. LUCK, REGRET, AND KINDS OF PERSONS Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger across a crowded roomor you may not, and it may make all the difference, as the song suggests. For the stranger might have tempted you into moral dilemmas that you were not "ethically gifted" enough to resolve honorably, and then your life might end in ignominy, disgrace, and bitter regret. Or the stranger might have provoked you to embark in a direction that led you to acts of great courage and self-sacrifice, bestowing on you a hero's role that otherwise would have been inaccessible to you. In such a case, luck makes a huge difference. we can reasonably suppose, and has nothing to do with the prospect of negligence. or the capacity to estimate probabilities, important though those considerations often are. I take myself to have been, so far. quite a good fellow: I have no terrible sins on my conscience. But I am also quite sure that there are temptations that, had they been placed before me. I would not have been able to resist. Lucky me; I have been spared them, and hence can still hold my head up high. It is not just luck, of course; policy has had something to do with it. 1 don't go looking for trouble, but I also don't go looking for opportunities to be a hero. Some people face life with a different attitude: They play for high stakes-hero or villain, with little likelihood of a bland outcome. And surely Michael Siote is right that some people are more ethically gifted than others by accident of birth-and other accidents. Perhaps in the best of all possible worlds, only the ethically gifted would be inspired to play for high stakes lives, while we more cowardly and self-indulgent folks just tried to keep our noses clean. I am very glad Slote didn't give up on me altogether. After Elbow Room, in which I put some of his good work to good use, he proposed we join forces on an article developing further our shared views about luck, modality, and free will, to which I readily agreed. He sent me some notes and sketches, but for reasons unknown to me, J never picked up my end. The
558
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "LUCK, REGRET, AND KINDS OF PERSONS" Reply to Slote and Rovane , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.558
engine was running, but somehow I couldn't let out the clutch. His essay on this occasion reminds me of how fruitful I find his perspective, and makes me regret all the more my strange inactivity in response to his previous sally. On this occasion, the focus is on the curious role of luck in rendering our acts blameworthy or praiseworthy. When it comes to assigning blame and credit, Slote suggests, we are confronted by an irresoluble war of competing intuitions. Blame should not be a matter of luck at all, proclaims one intuition. but living by that standard would seem to force us to absolve everyone always, which goes equally against the grain. One variety of compromise would be what Slote calls moral criticism without blame. This would extend to adults at their most responsible the attitude we tend to endorse towards young children; since we want them to improve, we are firm in our condemnation of their bad behavior, but we don't condemn them. We hold them quasi-responsible. you might say, not thereby illuminating anything. Isn't it the case that any policy, any ethical theory, must accept luck as part of the background? Given that luck is always going to playa large role. what is the sane, defensible policy with regard to luck? Set up a system that encourages individuals to take luck into consideration in a reasonable way by not permitting them to cite bad luck when it leads them astray. The culpability of the driver is settled as a matter of higher-order holding accountable: We have given you sufficient moral education so that from now on you are a person (in Carol Rovane's sense), deemed accountable, like it or not. not only for your acts but for your policies. If you are reckless and get away with it, you are just lucky, but if you are reckless and thereby bring about great harm, you will have no excuse. If you are not reckless but bring about great harm. your blame will be diminished. Slate expresses mild sympathy for such a policy'r but thinks it won't do. The problem. I gather. is that since there would still be unsupportably counterintuitive implications in any such policy (in Slote' s eyes). it could be maintained only by slipping in one way or another into the sort of systematic disingenuousness Bernard Williams identifies in "Government House utilitarianism:"" Peter Vallentyne has suggested to him that the situation is not so grim: tying praise and blame to probabilities. not outcomes. has some intuitive support in any case. so some of the jarring intuitions might be ignored. Slate finds this attractive, but thinks that "it is a mistake to say nothing more needs to be said.""" Let me try to fill that gap a little. Slate lists two items of common sense that obtrude: the difference of blameworthiness between cases where an accident occurs and cases where none occurs and h) our intuitive sense that the person whose negligence leads to an accident doesn't enjoy a low degree of blameworthiness (simply because of the extreme unlikelihood of an accident). 141' a)
559
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "LUCK, REGRET, AND KINDS OF PERSONS" Reply to Slote and Rovane , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.558
I suggest that our intuitions are playing tncks on us here-at least to some extent. With regard to a), consider the case in which you learn that Jones has enticed your child to play Russian roulette with a loaded revolver. Fortunately. both survive unharmed, but your moral condemnation of Jones will be scarcely diminished compared to the case in which your child actually dies. Is he blameworthy? He most certainly is. We don't get to put him in prison for murder, thanks to his undeserved luck, but we might think it entirely appropriate to ensure that nobody ever forgot, for the rest of his days. what an evil thing he did. In other words, I think Jones is just as blameworthy in both cases, even though there is vastly more harm to regret, and therefore vastly more justifiable anger, in the case in which there is a catastrophric outcome: and I think common sense is comfortable with this, after all. Now go to the other extreme and imagine the following variation on the scenic drive. You are showing friends the mountain scenery. and see a scenic lookout turnoff up ahead. "Let's just stop. so I can show this magnificent view to you!" you say, but your friends demur. "Don't bother, we can see it well enough while moving along." But you persist, and as you turn off the highway into the lookout, sunlight glinting off your windshield momentarily blinds the school-bus driver. and calamity ensues. In this case. you broke no laws, you weren't negligent in any way. you were a good, safe driver. But for the rest of your life you will surely be racked with regret. thinking "if only I hadn't persisted!" This regret is not self-reproach: you know in your heart that you did nothing wrong. But this regret about that awful free choice of yours will perhaps overwhelm your thoughts-and the thoughts of all the parents of those dead schoolchildren-for years. Now alter the circumstances ever so slightly: In order to enter the scenic turnoff. you had to brake rather more suddenly than cars typically do. and it was the distraction of the bus driver in response to your (arguably) negligent braking that caused the accident. A tiny bit of negligence now and at least as much regret. How much self-reproach? How much moral blameworthiness'? Can we isolate in our imaginations the regret that any bad-outcome act is likely to provoke and distinguish it clearly and reliably from the moral (self-)condemnationif any-that is provoked in unison? If not. then perhaps-this is just a hypothesis for further thought-experimental exploration-Slote's conviction that a) and b) are worthy items of common sense can be undermined. But there is still more to be said. of course. Saving the best for last, I come to Carol Rovane's wonderfully constructive essay. She takes the main ideas in "Conditions of Personhood" and fixes them. They needed fixing. It is great to see ideas I like a lot protected from second-rate versions of them-my own. She wonders whether I will reject her revisions and elaborations or embrace them. I embrace them, with a few further amendments and virtually no reservations worth mentioning. Thus she is right that (I) my six conditions of personhood fall naturally into
560
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "LUCK, REGRET, AND KINDS OF PERSONS" Reply to Slote and Rovane , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.558
two groups of three; (2) I would be in much better position if I retreated from Kant as she recommends, opening up ethical disagreement among persons: (3) persons are committed to all-things-considered judgments, even though we can't actually make them; (4) I can have my naturalism and gradualism, and still have a rather sharp watershed dividing the persons from the nonpersons; (5) her alternative is a "more integrated, and explanatorily complete. conception of the person, in which the ethical and metaphysical dimensions of personhood are in perfect accord."I-ll Indeed, Ijust made use of points (4) and (5) in my commentary on Slote. Although different human beings may not be equally "ethically gifted," those that have the capacity to treat others as persons, are precisely those who are fit to be run through the mill of reason giving. Those who are disqualified for personhood by not being up to the exercise are excused, but for those who are fit. there is indeed a choice, and if you are in this special category. you can stand convicted of having made a wrong (but informed, rational) choice. This watershed permits us to settle the inevitable penumbral cases of near-persons. persons-to-be. persons on the verge of incompetence, etc .. in an ethically stable and satisfying way. (It doesn't settle all the morally troubling cases, of course-that would be too much to ask for-but it lays the ground for settling them as best we can.) As she says, she argues 'from the ethical criterion of personhood to Dennett's list of conditions of metaphysical personhood, thereby preserving his uncompromisingly normative approach."lo2 What about her discussion of rationality, evaluation, and higher-order intentionality in animals'? I have come to realize in recent years that human rationality is so much more powerful than that of any animaL that. as she says, my list of six conditions "does not capture a spectrum of rational sophistication at all.',I-l' I have begun discussing alternative spectra in recent years (in Dan",'in's DallRcrolls Idea. and "Learning and Labeling"(-l and I intend to develop these ideas further. in a little book to be called Kinds of Minds, which will soon be completed, Therein I will offer a somewhat different account from the one sketched by Rovane. but not different in any way that undercuts her points. I have been stumbling along towards this for years. Ashley's dog was just the first of many cases to consider. Reading. listening to. and even working with ethologists over the years has taught me a lot about the differences. as well as the similarities. between animal and human minds. Discussing Gricean communication. she notes that "it is the absence of a guarantee for the first sort of reliability that affords the possibility of sincerity and insincerity:·l-l' Yes, as Gibsonians would say, there are aflordances here, affordances that simply do not exist for nonpersons, such as vervet monkeys and other animal quasi communicators. (I now think. by the way, that Sperber and Wilson 'SI-10 vision of communication is much more realistic than Grice's and would save some minor errors of overidealization in her account.)
561
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "LUCK, REGRET, AND KINDS OF PERSONS" Reply to Slote and Rovane , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.558
What, finally, of her punch line about mUltiple and group persons? I have already granted MPD-with suitable caveats-as she notes. In my discussion of Lynne Rudder Baker above, I opened the door to group persons, not quite for the first time. There is rpy brief definition and discussion of FPD, "Fractional Personality Disorder," in Consciousness Explained. 147 Since my theory of the self (or personhood) "predicts" FPD, I am now on the lookout for instances of its acknowledgment in print. My favorite to date is the comment by one of the actors in the Coen brothers' film Barton Fink when asked what it was like to act in a film with two directors. The reply: "Oh, there was only one director; he just had two bodies."
NOTES I. I am grateful for constructive feedback from Nikola Grahek and Diana Raffman. at the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts, and Derek Browne and his colleagues and students at Canterbury University. Christchurch. New Zealand. where drafts of this essay were prepared and discussed. 2. The Fox Islands Thorofare is a beautiful but treacherous passage between the Scylla of North Haven and the Charybdis of Vinal Haven. in Penobscot Bay. 3. See Dennett. "The Practical Requirements for Making a Conscious Robot." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 349 ( 1994): 133-46. 4. Rodney Brooks. "Intelligence without Representation:' Artificial Imel/igence jo 1I rna I 4 7 (]99]): 139-59. 5. For a discussion of Good Old Fashioned AI. see]. Haugeland. Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea (Cambridge. Mass.: Bradford BooksfMIT Press. 1985): and for an exposition of the Language of Thought. see 1. Fodor. The Lal1/?uQ/?e of Thought (Scranton. Pa.: CrowelL 1975). 6. See Dennett. "The Logical Geography of Computational Approaches: A View from the East Pole." in Harnish and Brand. eds .. Prohlenzs ill the Representation of Knmr/edge (The University of Arizona Press. 1987). 7. Fox. "Our Knowledge of the Internal World:' this issue. 80. 8. Ibid .. 75. 9. Ibid .. 81. 10. Ibid .. 101. 11. Dedictomorphs are zombies. he tells m (ibid .. 103). and I wonder how one can tell whether a particular implementation of Cog is a dedictomorph. Not by behavior. since a dedictomorph "may conform to the outward behavior of persons with de re states." But then why should the Cog team worry about getting de re states into Cog? 12. By far the best model of a research program in phenomenology that uses the fruits of careful introspection to discern the features of engineering modeb is Douglas Hofstadter Fluid Analogy Research Group. See Hofstadter. Fluid Concepts and Crearil'e Analo/?ies (New York: Basic Books. 1995): Melanie Mitchell, Analo/?r-Makin/? as Perception: A Computer Model (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993): Robert French. The Suhllety of Sameness (Cambridge. Mass.: MIT Pres~, forthcoming): and my review of Hofstadter (op. cit.). forthcoming in Complexin'_ 13. Fox, op. cit., 98. 14. E.g .. Ruth Millikan, "On Mentalese Orthography," in Bo Dahlbom. ed .. Dennett and His Critics: DemrslifrinR Mind (Oxford: Blackwell. 1993).
562
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "LUCK, REGRET, AND KINDS OF PERSONS" Reply to Slote and Rovane , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.558
IS. Fox, op. cit., 95. 16. I was surprised that Fox didn't use the standard term "user illusion." It fits his case rather well, since he claims that the phenomenal world is a benign, designed illusion of sorts (a philosophical illusion). 17. Fox, op. cit .. 68, 18. See Dennett. Consciousness Exp/ained (Boston: Little, Brown & Co .. 1991 J. 108-11. 19. See ibid., 211. 20. Fox, op. cit., 67. 21. Ibid., 76. 22. Ibid. 23. At just one point, I thought Fox's phenomenology fell into error. He claims to be able to remember "melodies which (for me) have an intervalic structure but no pitch" (ibid., 70). I cannot do this, any more than I can remember or imagine a melody which reels off in no particular tempo. Melody seems entirely unlike imagined speech in this regard: imagined speech, for me and others I have queried, can have tempo and prosodic contour without any pitch. I raised the melody issue with Diana Raffman and Ray lackendoff, both accomplished musicians; neither of them can do what Fox says he can do, so either he has a rare talent or has given us a demonstration of how phenomenologists can be wrong about even their carefully considered claims. 24. In his "Conscious Experience," Mind 192 (1993): 263-83. 25. In the same article Dretske also cites the amazing case of eidetic imagery reported by C. F. Stromeyer and 1. Psotka in "The Detailed Texture of Eidetic Images," Nature 225 (1970): 346-9, in support of his theory of "thing-awareness." But Stromeyer and Psotka's report turned out to be too good to be true. Their subject refused to cooperate with those who wanted to replicate the original experiment. and it is now generally presumed that the results were fraudulent. a practical joke played on the experimenters. most likely. This is not a trivial matter; Dretske needs something like this imaginary result to support his position, just as my theory needs support of the sort provided by Grimes' experiments, and more recently, those of Rensink. O'Regan and Clarke, to be described shortly. (Dretske also cites, in note 18. the "well-known experimental demonstration" by C. W. Perky. This series of experiments---conducted in 191 O~-is in fact seldom cited any more and is perhaps best known for not being replicated by others. For a neutral account. see Roger Brown and Richard 1. Herrnstein, PS\'ch%gy [Boston: Little. Brown & Co .. 1975 J. 435-6.) 26. Many of the diftlculties I saw were picked up hy Virgil Aldrich. in his review of Dretske', hook in the jOllrlla/ ojPhiiosopin 67 (1970): 995-1006. '27. The game of Hide the Thimble actually exploits something very close to Dretske's concept of nonepistcmic seeing. The rules are clear: You must hide the thimble ill plain siKhr. It must not he concealed behind anything, for instance, or too high on a shelf to fall within the visual tield~ of the sear~hers. Or one might say: The "hidden" thimble must he \·isihle. Is something that is \isible seen as soon as it call he seen by someone looking at it'J That set'ms to he what Dretske's concept of nonepistemic seeing insists upon. 28. Dretske. "Differences that Make No Difference." this issue, n. 21. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.
Ibid .. 43. Ihid .. 42. Ibid., 51. Ibid .. 48. Ibid .. 49. Ibid., 44. Dretske misses the point of my claims ahout the lack of clarity of animal consciousnessa fact that I would think would have become obvious to him when he noted. as he does, the passages in which I calmly grant sight---color vision-to birds and fish and honeybees. It must be. mustn't it. that I don't think seeing is a matter settled by experience
563
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "LUCK, REGRET, AND KINDS OF PERSONS" Reply to Slote and Rovane , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.558
(conscious experience-of the sort he finds obvious). He does see the way out: "being aware of colors does not require consciousness" (ibid., 45), but he can't see how this can be taken seriously. Why not? Because, I think, he is still committed to ordinary language philosophy. But vision, and color vision, can be, and routinely are, investigated in complete disregard of the ordinary senses of "aware" and "see" and "conscious." There is no doubt at all that honeybees have color vision: whether they are conscious in any interesting sense is quite another matter. 36. "On the Failure to Detect changes in Scenes across Saccades," in Kathleen Akins. ed" Perception, Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science, vol. 5 (Oxford: Oxford University Press. forthcoming). 37. Dretske, "Differences that Make No Difference," 50. 38. Rensink. O'Regan, and Clark, "Image Flicker Is as Good as Saccades in Making Large Scene Changes Invisible" (paper presented at the European Conference on Visual Perception. Summer, 1995). 39. Dretske, "Conscious Experience," 273. 40. Ibid .. 275. 41. Ibid .. 277. 42. Blindsight in Nicholas K. Humphrey's monkey. Helen. is a particularly challenging case for Dretske. (See Humphrey. "Vision in a Monkey without Striate Cortex: A Case Study." Perception 3 [1974]: 241. and Consciousness Regained lOxford: Oxford University Press. 1984)). To put it with deliberate paradox. did Helen see-in Dretske's sense-in spite of her blindness? Humphrey and I once showed his film of Helen to a group of expertspsychologists and primatologists-at a meeting at Columbia University. and asked them if they could detect anything unusual about Helen. and if so what. For ten minutes they watched the film of Helen busily darting about in her space. picking up raisins and pieces of chocolate and eating them. avoiding obstades. never making a false move or bumping into anything. Nobody suggested that there was anything wrong with her vision. but her entire primary visual cortex had been surgically removed. She was cortically blind. Would Dretske say that this was a case of epistemic seeing without nonepistemic seeing" 43. In note 19. Dretske mistakenly dismisses this as an avenue unworthy of my explorationa measure of how much mi,understanding there has been between us. 44. This was also brought home to me by Christopher Hill. "Riding the Whirlwind: The Story of My Encounter with Two Strands in Dennett's Theory of Intentionality" (paper presented at the University of Notre Dame. April I. 1995), and the ensuing discussion. 45, See Dennett, "Features of Intentional Action;.:' Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 29 (1968): 234. 46. "Do Animals Have Beliefs')" in Herbert Roitblat. ed .. ColllparaJiI'e ApproL/c!ze.1 [() CORniri\'e Science (Cambridge. Mass.: MIT Pres;.. forthcoming). 47. Dennett. DarH'in's Dangerous Idea: f:l'(ilwion and rile Meanings of" Lif"e (New York: Simon & Schuster. 1995). 109. -1-8. What about real ca;.es of peripheral paralysis') First. the only real cases havc to be people who have lived an unparalyzed life for years-all other imaginable casc;. are cow-sharb-. only logically po"ible and rudely dismissable. Second. the persi;.tent integrity of the internal structures on which their continuing mental lives putatively depends is not a foregone conclusion. To the extent that the paralysis is truly just peripheral (unaccompanied by the atrophy of the internal). then, of course, such a sorry subject could go on living a mental life (as I imagined myself doing in the vat. in "Where am p"). But all good things come to an end. and in the absence of normal amounts of "peripheral narrow behavior," mental life will surely soon fade away, leaving only historical traces of the vigorous ahoutness its activities once exhibited. How long would it take" A gruesome empirical question. whose answer has no metaphysical significance. 49. See Dennett. Brainstorms: Philosophical Essavs on Mind and Psycho lORY (Montgomery. Vt.: Bradford Boob" 1978), 23-8. 50. Richard. "What Isn't a Belief?" this issue, 297.
564
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "LUCK, REGRET, AND KINDS OF PERSONS" Reply to Slote and Rovane , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.558
51. Seepages 412-9. 52. If all these examples concern opinions, not beliefs, then why not just reconstrue the theory of propositional attitudes as the theory of opinions? Because there could be no such theory-for the same reason there is not a theory of things said: People say the darndest things. People can be got to say all manner of crazy things for all manner of weird reasons: the set of things they say, or would say under various provocations. is not a tidy set of phenomena for which one might reasonably aspire to provide a theory. The set of opinions is very much like-is scarcely distinct from-this set of things said. 53. Richard, op. cit., 311. 54. Ibid., 313. 55. See Saul Kripke. "A Puzzle about Belief." in A. Margolit. ed., Meaning and Use (Dordrecht: Reidel. 1979). 239-83. 56. Dennett, The Intentional Stance (Cambridge. Mass.: Bradford BookslMIT Press. 1987). 208n. 57. See Dary,in's Dangerous Idea. 45. 58. See. esp .. A. Clark and A. Karmiloff-Smith, "The Cognizer's Innards." Mind and Language 8 (1993): 487-519. 59. Richard. op. cit .. 292. 60. In Churchland, Scientific Realism and the Plasticit\' afMind (Cambriugc: Cambridge University Press. 1979). 61. Dennett. The Intentional Stallce. 208. 62. Baker. "Content Meets Consciousness." this issue. n. 58. 63. Turing. "Computing Machinery and Intelligence." Milld (1950): 447. 64. See COl1sciousness Explained. 179. 65. Baker. op. cit.. 7. 66. Quine. Pursuit (){Truth (Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1990). 67. Rony has warned me that feminists will object to my use of the word "hysterical." but I am confident that few if any feminists would be so insensitive to irony as to overlook the recursion that woulu occur were they to object to my usage. It's a fine word. the only word we have for a real phenomenon. and it would be cretinous to denigrate it because of it> ignoble etymology. 68. See Brainsrorms. xix-xx. 69. In Owen Flanagan. Consciollsness Reconsidered (Cambridge. Mass.: MIT Press. 1992). 14-15. 70. Cf. Hartry Field. "Quine and the Correspondence Theory:' Philosophical Re\'iell' 83 ( 1974): 200-28. and "Con\'entionalism and Instrumentalism in Semantics:' Nous 9 (1975): 375--405. 71. While he is at it. he might tell us how he would show that there is a fact of the matter about just when-i.e .. to the day or week-the British Empire learned of the signing of the treaty ending the war of 1812. Is it determined by the dates and postmarks on the various documenb. or bv their time of arrh'al at various critical places, or by some combination of such factors" He had better not say that the question is meaningless. and hence has no proper answer-that would be raving superficial ism about empires. 72. Rosenthal, "First-Person Operationalism and Mental Taxonomy:' this issue. 332. 73. Flanagan, op. cit.. 15-6. 74. Consciousness Explained. 128n. 75. N. Logothetis and 1. D. Schall. "Neuronal Correlates of Subjective Visual Perception," Science 245 (1989): 761--63.
76. See. for instance. Jeffrey Grey. "The Content of Consciousness: A Neuropsychological Perspective." presenting his model of the role of the hippocampus in consciousness. and my commentary "O\'erworking the Hippocampus." both in Bellm'ioral alld Braill Sril'llcc.I' 18 (forthcoming).
565
Copyright (e) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (e) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "LUCK, REGRET, AND KINDS OF PERSONS" Reply to Slote and Rovane , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.558
77. Putnam, "Dreaming and Depth Grammar," in R. J. Butler, ed., Analytical Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962). 78. See also Dennett, "Features of Intentional Action." 79. In spite of the gulf of disagreement, it is good to see that Rey joins me in giving the back of his hand to wmbies and their ilk. The trouble I see with his way of doing it is that the qualophiles and wmbists can complain, with some justice, that he is just changing the subject, redefining the problem out of existence. 80. See his, 'The Meaning of 'Meaning' ," in Keith Gunderson, ed .. Language, Mind. and Knowledge: Minnesota Studies in the Philosoph\' of Science, vol. 7 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975). 81. See Dennett, Dandn '05 Dangerous Idea. 82. In heavy water, the heavy isotope of hydrogen, H' or D, replaces the ordinary hydrogen atom. Heavy water is found in about one part per 5000 in ordinary water; it has slightly higher freezing and boiling temperatures than ordinary water; seeds can't germinate in it, and tadpoles can't live in it. XYZ must be more like H,O than deuterium oxide is, and deuterium oxide is a kind of water. 83. In "Beyond Belief' (in A. Woodfield. ed .. Thought and Object: Essays on Intentionality !Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982]; reprinted in The Intentional Stance), my example was the scientifically backward people who had a word for "gas" or perhaps "gaseous hydrocarbon"-surely a fine natural kind, but on this minimalist principle it would have to be translated "methane." since this is in fact the only gaseous hydrocarbon they have encountered. 84. Van Gulick. "Dennett. Drafts. and Phenomenal Realism." this issue. 446.
85. Levine. "Out of the Closet: A Qualophile Confronts Qualophobia." this issue. 115. 86. See Stubenberg, "Dennett on the Third-Person Perspective" (paper presented at the University of Notre Dame. April I. 1995). 87. Besides. it seems to me that if you renounce the neutrality of heterophenomenology. you make it systematically impossible to close the putative explanatory gap. because you give up ab initio on the goal of finding a rapprochement between the first- and third-person point of view. What shape could a closing of "the explanatory gap" take,) It seems to me it would have to be an explanation that permitted one to tell a third-person. scientific story about subjectivity. I don't see how anything else would count as a closing of the gap. So far as I know. nobody has defended another framework. 88. Levine. op. cit.. 124. 89. Ibid. 90. Dennett. "The Message Is: There Is No Medium." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (1993): 889-931. 91. Consciousness Explained, 410. 92. "Outsmart. v. To embrace the conclusion of one's opponent's reductio ad absurdum argument. 'They thought they had me. but I outsmarted them. I agreed that it was sometimes just to hang an innocent man'" (Dennett, ed .. The Philosophical Lexicon. 7th ed. [distributed by the American Philosophical Association]). 93. Van Gulick, op. cit .. 452. 94. Ibid., 451-2. 95. Rosenthal. op. cit.. 326. 96. Ibid., 325. 97. Ibid., 327. 98. Ibid. 99. Rosenthal says at one point that "It can happen that, even though one doesn't consciously see an object. one later recalls just where it was and what it looked like" (ibid., 330). I wonder what his evidence for this startling claim is. Wouldn't this be confounded with high-quality blindsight beyond anything yet reported in the literature'? How would Rosenthal tell the two phenomena apart')
566
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "LUCK, REGRET, AND KINDS OF PERSONS" Reply to Slote and Rovane , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.558
lOll See Bruce Mangan, "Dennett. Consciousness. and the Sorrows of Functionalism," Consciousness and Cognition 2 (1993): 1-17. 101. Rosenthal, op. cit., 324. 102. This is the illusion typically engendered by functionalistic "boxology" (see Consciousness Explained, 270n, 358n). One defines a box in a flow chart in terms of the functional role anything entering it plays, and then forgets that if this is how "entrance" into that particular "box" is defined, it makes no sense to excuse an occupant of any of the defining powers. The boxes are not automatically salient tissues, organs. or separate media in the systems described, such that entrance into them can be distinguished independently of fulfilling the defining functional roles. 103. See Dennett. "Consciousness: More like Fame than Television." in Ernst Poppel. ed., Munich conference volume. forthcoming. 104. Made in Content and Consciousness (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1969). 105. See Consciousness Explained. 248. 106. Rosenthal. op. cit.. 339. 107. Block. "Begging the Question against Phenomenal Consciousness." Behm'ioral and Brain Sciences 15 (1992): 205-6: review of Consciousness E ,plained by Daniel C. Dennett. Journal of Philosophy 90 (1993): 181-93: and "On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (1995). 108. Robert Van Gulick correctly notes the strong tie between consciousness and reportability I have always endorsed. Since inability to report is in fact our most heavily relied upon grounds for presuming nonconsciousness-in blindsight, for instance-when you loosen the tie to reportability. as Van Gulick suggests. you face the problem of motivation in a particularly severe form. 109. Block. "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory thi, issue. 26. 110. For a few more details. see "The Path Not Taken:' Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 ( 1995 l. my commentary on Block. "On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness." Ill. Rosenthal. op. cit.. 326. 112. Block. "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory of?" 27. 113. First pre~ented in Elbaii' Room. 38-43. and. elaborated. in Consciousness Explained. I 93ff. 114. Cf. Michael Lockwood. "Dennett's Mind:' Inquiry 36 (1993): 59-72: Thomas Nagel. "What We Have in Mind When We Say We're Thinking." \t'all Street Journal. 11/7/91 (review of Consciousness Explained): Dennett. "Animal Consciousness: What Matters and Why." Puhlic Affairs (forthcoming). 115. S. Sjolander. "Some Cognitive Breakthroughs in the Eyolution of Cognition and Consciousness. and Their Impact on the Biology of Language." Emilltion and Cognition 3(1993):3. 116. Peter Gardenfon,. "Cued and Detached Representations in Animal Cognition." Behal'ioral Processes (forthcoming). 117. Block. "What Is Dennett's Theory a Theory of''' 33. 1J 8. I am partly to blame. since r have myself often introduced Nagel'S famous formula into the discussion. without being sufficiently explicit in announcing my rejection of its presuppositions. It is. I think. a chief source of this illusion of constancy of meaning in our questions about consciousness. 119. See CO/lSCiOIiSIlCS.I Etplaillcd. 2~. 120. Cf. note 35 above on Dretske on color vision in animals. 121. Wanting to obtain a hunk of alexandrite (to see for myself). I consulted a geologist friend. who provided the appropriate literature. including color photographs of thi~ marvelous mineral-but no samples. sad to say. Alexandrite is rare. and consequently commands a price commensurate with other gemstones. 122. Tolliver. "Interior Colors." this issue. 425.
or"
567
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Dennett, Daniel, "LUCK, REGRET, AND KINDS OF PERSONS" Reply to Slote and Rovane , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.558
123. Ibid .. 428. 124. On 33-4; as reprinted in The Intentional Stance, 148-9. 125. See also Dennett. "Caveat Emptor," Consciousness and Cognition 2 (1993): 48-57 (reply to Mangan. Toribio, Baars. and McGovern); "Instead of Qualia," in A. Revonsuo and M. Kamppinen. eds., Consciousness ill Philosoph\" and Cognitive Neuroscience (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994), where these ideas are developed further. 126. See 393ff. 127. White. "Color and Notional Content." this issue, 500. 128. Ibid .. 475. 129. McConnell. "In Defense of the Knowledge Argument," this issue, 166. 130. I am unmoved, then, by his advice to Churchland and me that we adopt a different strategy. I'm speaking for myself, and will not venture an opinion about Churchland's argument or McConneJr s criticisms of it, since I don't rely on it. 131. McConnelL op. cit., 177. 132. See Consciousness Explained, 410. 133. McConnell, op. cit., 178. 134. Ibid .. 181. 135. Lormand. "Qualia l (Now Showing at a Theater near You)." this issue. 135. 136. At one point. Lormand says: "My retinal and other very early visual representations are as rich as or richer than the osprey experience in difficult-to-express information. yet I can say exactly what it's like to have them: nothing.'" (ibid., 141). Why does he think this is true? Presumably because he thinks that while "very early visual representations" are unconscious. some "late visual representations" are conscious. But this is a terrible model of consciousness. It is true that "Iater" cerebral effects (not necessarily representations) are necessary for one to become conscious of the contents of one', early visual representations. but when those normal effects are there. no "later" visual representation has to occur. So normally it is like something for us to have them. 137. Slote. "The Problem of Moral Luck." this issue. n. 4. 138. In Williams. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. (Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1985), 101. 139. Siote, op. cit., 405. 140. Ibid. 141. Rovane. "The Personal Stance." this issue. 362. 142. Ibid. 143. Ibid .. 381. 144. Dennett. "Learning and Labeling." Mind and Lanf;uaf;e 8 (1993): 540--7. (Commentary on A. Clark and A. Karmiloff-Smith, "The Cognizer's Innard,.") 145. Rovane, op. cit.. 379. 146. See Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, RelewJ/lce: A Theon of Communication (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1986). 147. On 422-3.
568
Copyright (e) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (e) University of Arkansas Press
, Unindexed Back Matter , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.0
Synthese An International Journal for Epistemology, Methodology and Philosophy of Science Editor-in-Chief Jaakko Hintikka Dept. of Philosophy, Boston University, USA Synthese publishes articles in the theory of knowledge, the general methodological problems of science, such as the problems of scientific discovery and scientific interest, of induction and probability, of causation and of the role of mathematics, statistics and logicin science, the methodological and foundational problems of the different departmental sciences, insofar as they have philosophical interest, those aspects of symbolic logic and ofthe foundations of mathematics which are relevant to the philosophy and methodology of science, and those facets of the history and sociology of science which are importantfor contemporary topical pursuits. Particular attention is paid to the role of mathematical, logical and linguistic methods in the general methodology of science and the foundations ofthe different sciences, be they physical, biological, behavioral orsocial. Most of the issues of Synthese are organized into thematic issues, taking the character of symposia dealing with described themes. Synthese is surveyed by Current Contents/Arts &Humanities; Current Contents/Social & Behavioral Sciences; ASCA; Arts & Humanities Citation Index; Social Sciences Citation Index; Informationsdienst tur Philosophie; Zentralblattfiir Mathematik; Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts; Mathematical Reviews; Referativnyi Zhuma/; Reviewof Metaphysics; Revue Philosophique de Louvain; The Philosopher's Index, IBZ/IBR; Sociological Abstracts; Academic Abstracts; The Philosophical Review; American Philosopher Quarterly; Research Alert; Current Mathematical Publications; MathSci; PASCAL ISSN 0039-7857 1995, Volumes 102-105 (12 issues) Subscription Rate: NLG 1428.00 I USD 792.00, including postage and handling.
Subscription Infonnation
PO Box 322. 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands P.O, Box 358. Accord Station, Hingham, MA 02018-0358, U.S.A
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Journal Highlight
Kluwer academic publishers
, Unindexed Back Matter , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.0
Philosophical Studies An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition Editor-in-Chief: Stewart Cohen
Arizona State University
Journal Highlight
Editor: K. Lehrer
(Special Editions) University of Arizona Philosophical Studies was founded in 1950 by Herbert Feigl and Wilfrid Sellars to provide a periodical dedicated to work in analytic philosophy. The journal is devoted tothe rapid publication of analytical contributions, particularly (but not exclusively) in epistemology, philosophical logic, the philosophy of language and ethics. Papers applying formal techniques to philosophical problems are particularly welcome. The papers published are models of clarity and precision, dealing with some significant philosophical issues; they are intelligible to philosophers whose expertise lies outside the subject matter of the article. A diligent reader of the journal will be kept informed of the major problems and contributions of contemporary analytic philosophy. Philosophical Studies is surveyed/indexed/abstracted by Bulletin Signa/etique; Current Contents/Arts & Humanities; Arts & Humanities Citation Index; InformationsdienstfOrPhiiosophie; Linguistic & Language Behavior Abstracts; MLA International Bibliography; The Philosopher's Index; Referativnyi Zhumal; Revue Philosophique de Louvain; IBlIIBR; Mathematical Reviews; Centre Nationale de la Recherche; Intemational Bibliography of Austrian Philosophy; Sociological Abstracts; Academic Abstracts; The Philosophical Review; Research Alert; International Political Science Abstracts: PASCAL Database ISSN 0031-8116
Subscription Infonnation 1995, Volumes 77-80 (12 issues) Subscription Rate: NLG 1128.00 / USD 628.00, including postage and handling.
P.O. Box 322,3300 AH Dordrecht. The Netherlands P.O. Box 358, Accord Station, Hingham, MA 02018-0358, U.S.A.
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Kluwer
academic publishers
, Unindexed Back Matter , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.0
e
fP
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume 20,1994
Edited by Mohan Matthen and R.X. Ware
Price: CDN$30.00 (in Canada) US$30.00 (outside Canada) ISSN 0229-7051 ISBN 0-919491-20-0
Order University of Calgary Press from; c/o UBC Press 6344 Memorial Road Vancouver, Be V6T 1Z2
Postage and Handling (Canada) is $3,00 for the first book and $,75 for each additional book. Postage and handling (outside Canada) is $4,00 for the first book and $.75 for each additional book Canadian residents, please add no GST to the total cost of the book(s) plus the postage and handling, Price outside Canada In US dollars,
Contents: Gender and the Biological Sciences Kathleen Okruhlik Evolutionary Biology and Cultural Values: Is It Irremediably Corrupt?, Michael Ruse Humankind(s) Nancy Holmstrom Individ ualisms Andrew Levine Biological and Social COllStraints on Cognitive Processes: The Need for Dynamical InteractiollS Between Levels of Inquiry William Bechtel Methodological Individualism and Reductionism in Biology John Dupre Individualism and Local Conlrol Ronald de SDitsa The Ontology of Complex Svstems: Levels of Organization, Perspectives, and Causal Thickets William C. Wimsatt Managing Complexity and Dvnamics: Is There a Difference Between Biologv and Physics) Paul Thompson
The Ca/IQdUln lou mal of Philosophy IS published quarterly, in March, June, September, and December, In addition to these regular ISSUes, the erp publishes annually a supplementary volume of original papers on a selected theme of contemporary philosophical interest. This supplementary volume is free to indiVIdual and student subscribers to the journal m that year, Supplementarv volumes may also be purchased separately from UOC Press, Correspondence regardmg subscriptions, renewals, and single issues should be addressed to Carwduln /ollT1UlI of Philosophy, (/0 University of Calgary Press, 2500 Universitv Drive N,W" Calgary, Alberta, Canada TIN 1N4,
University of Calgary Press 2500 University Drive N.W. CALGARY, Alberta, Canada T2N IN4
1995 volume/four issues; Instttuhons indiVIduals Students Smgll' issues
Country ____~_____ Postal Code_ __
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press
Canad. Cdo $40,00
25,00 1500
qoo
Foreign
us $40,00 ~5 00
1500 q 00
Individual
0
Student
0
Please send me information on ClP Supplementarv Volumes
0
Name____________________________ Address, ______________ City _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __
VIsa No,
0
Mastercard
0 Expiry Date _ _
, Unindexed Back Matter , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.0
Australasian JDumal
of Philosophy Editor: Robert Young SOME RECENT AND FORTHCOMING ARTICLES Gregory Currie Jerrold Levinson John Passmore Ross Poole Ienefer Robinson
The Moral Psychology of Fiction Messages in Art The End of Philosophy? On Being a Person
L' Education Sentimentale
Annual Subscription: Individuals A$40.00 (US$40.00 or Stg£20.(0); Special Student Rate A$20.00 (US$20.00 or Stg£IO.(0); Institutions A$70.00 (US$70.00 or Stg£3S.(0). For individual subscribers a special offer is available of ajoint subscription to Australasian Journal of Philosophy and Canadian Journal of Philosophy for an additional A$l 0.00 (US$IO.00 or Stg£S.OO). All correspondence should be addressed either to the Editor or to the Business Manager. Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Department of Philosophy. La Trobe University. Bundoora, Victoria, 3083. Australia; e-mail:
[email protected]; fax: 61 3 479 3639. Published quarterly by the AusrraJasian Association of Philosophy with suppan from La Trobe University
Copyright (e) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (e) University of Arkansas Press
, Unindexed Back Matter , Philosophical Topics, 22:1/2 (1994:Spring/Fall) p.0
PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS
Philosophical Topics appears twice yearly. Each issue is devoted to questions in one of the major areas of philosophy and consists entirely of solicited papers.
Forthcoming Issues: VOLL'ME
23, No.1
Topic: VOLLMl
1995
Epistemology
23, No.2
Topic:
SPRI"C;
FALL
1995
feminism
Subscription Rates: Domestic Indi\'idual Rate (U.s. and Canada)-S25; Foreign Indi\'idual Rate-S30 in U.s. Currency; Domestic Institutional Rate (U.s. and Canada)-$45; Foreign Institutional Rate-S50 in U.S. Currency. All checks should be made payable to The L"niYersity of Arkansas Press/ Philosopizical Topics and sent to The Uni\'ersity of Arkansas Press, 201 Ozark A \'enue, Fayette\'ille, AR 72701.
ISS;\ 0276-2080
Copyright (c) 2007 ProQuest LLC Copyright (c) University of Arkansas Press