Syracuse
University
Syracuse,
NY 13244-1170
RNVANGUL@syr.edu
Inward
and Upward - Reflection, Introspection and Self-Awareness
We
are conscious, self-aware and introspective. But
whether those three ways we are depend upon each other, and if so how and
why remains unclear. They form
no doubt a triad of related aspects of our nature, but are they separate
and merely similar, or are they linked in some more intimate way? They
typically overlap in us, but could they come apart in special cases or
in other creatures? Do ties of logical
or natural entailment run in one-way or two-way links between some members
of the trio, or are they three distinct and merely co-occurring and causally
interactive aspects of our particular mental makeup. These
are large questions to which I wish I could give complete and convincing
answers, but for the present the best I can do is articulate the issues
a bit and offer some tentative and partial hypotheses about what the links
might be. I will do so in part by
situating the problem within the context of the higher-order model of consciousness,
i.e. the within the family of views that attempt to explain consciousness
in terms of meta-mentalityand the
self-reflexive turn by which the mind directs its intentional aim upon
itself and its own states and operations.
I
There
are many different higher-order theories of consciousness, but all treat
the distinction between conscious and unconscious mental states as a relational
matter about the presence or absence of a relevant meta-mental state (Armstrong
1980, Rosenthal 1986, Lycan 1987, Gennaro 1996). What
makes one of a person P’smental
states M a conscious state is not some intrinsic fact about M itself, but
rather the fact that P has a simultaneous higher-order (i.e. meta-mental)
state H which represents or asserts to P that P is in state M. A
conscious mental state is a state of which one
is conscious;e.g.,one
consciously desires a cup of coffee if one both desires it and is aware
of doing so. Most higher-order
theories aim to explain consciousness (or at least the conscious/ nonconscious
distinction) in terms of self-awareness, which they explicate in turn by
appeal to higher-order states and meta-intentionality. Thus
they seem to regard the notion of self-awareness as more basic than that
of consciousness or of being a conscious mental state. Insofar
as it is the addition of the relevant meta-intentional self-awareness that
transforms a nonconscious mental state into a conscious one, such theories
imply a dependence of consciousness on self-awareness.
However,
higher-order theories disagree strongly about the status of introspection. In
part this reflects the major division among current higher-order theories
about the psychological modality of the relevant conscious-making meta-mental
states;some theorists take them
to be higher-order thoughts, but others regard them as quasi-perceptual
higher-order states produced by some system(s) of internal monitoring -
the mind’s inward turning eye. Those
in the former group, such as David Rosenthal (1986, 1992) are said to hold
a HOT (higher-order thought) view of consciousness, while the latter, including
David Armstrong (1980) and William Lycan (1987, 1996) are classed as offering
a HOP (higher-order perception) model. On
both models the higher-order states have a similar reflexive meta-intentional
content, something like “I now have a desire for a caffé latt锓I
now have (or feel) a sharp and cramping pain in my left foot”, or “I am
now thinking about the election”. The
content is more or less the same on the two models;what
separates HOT theories from HOP theories is the psychological mode of the
meta-mental bearer of that content:thought-like
on the former and quasi-perceptual on the latter.
The
difference has immediate implications for our present concerns, especially
regarding the status of introspection relative to the other two members
of our triad. On the HOP model, e.g.
as in Lycan (1987, 1996), introspection is the process that generates the
quasi-perceptual meta-mental states that make unconscious states into conscious
ones. Thus introspection turns out
to be the most basic feature of the trio on the HOP model. It
produces the states of self-awareness that function as the meta-mental
components of the relational complexes needed for conscious mental states. Were
there no introspection, there would be no perception-like states of self-awareness,
and without them no mental states could count as conscious. Thus
on the HOP model, there is a very real sense in which introspection, understood
as an inward-turned system or process of mental monitoring, is more basic
than our two other features and might even be said to be their cause. We
can show the priority relations in figure 1.
Introspection
-->HOP --> Conscious Mental States
figure
1
The
HOT model does not accord introspection a similarly foundational status. Rosenthal
(1992) denies that the required higher-order states are perceptual or perception-like. He
denies that there any organs of inner perception or that conscious-making
meta-psychological states have any sensual or qualitative character except
in the sense that they represent some other lower-order states as having
such properties. My higher-order
thought of my pain may make me aware of its hurtfulness but the thought
itself has no qualia, painful or otherwise. The
HOT model requires no inner-directed monitors through which introspection
generates self-awareness on the HOP view. The
main constraint that Rosenthal imposes is that the conscious-making meta-states
be must noninferential;if I come
to think that I am in pain or angry by observing my behavior and inferring
that my mental state from the outward evidence then the resulting HOT would
not make my sensation or emotion a conscious mental state. The
HOT must arise noninferentially, but beyond that there is no requirement
that it be produced by an inner monitoring system or even that it be caused
by its lower-order mental object.
How
then, if at all, does introspection fit in on a Rosenthal-style model? Rosenthal
reserves the term “introspection” for those cases in which the HOT is itself
a conscious thought .(1986)Though
HOTs make their mental objects conscious, they are themselves not generally
conscious;indeed if they were generally
such, an infinite regress would be generated by the relational model of
consciousness. A given HOT H* is
itself conscious only if it isaccompanied
by a yet higher-order thought H** whose content is “I am in state H*”. Rosenthal
believes that we do not ordinarily have such third order thoughts. When
I consciously feel a pain by being aware of it in thought, I do not typically
also have the thought that I am aware in thought of my pain. I
just have the second order thought, and by doing so I am aware of my pain
but not of my thinking of myself as being in pain. However,
even if they are not the norm of everyday experience, I can and sometimes
do have such third-order thoughts. I am at times aware not only of my pain
of but of myself being aware of my pain. It
is just such cases that Rosenthal classifies as introspective. Thus
rather than being the foundational operation of self-awareness and consciousness
as it is on the HOP model, introspection on the HOT model is a special
and derivative case of meta-self-awareness that is generated by the iterative
operation of the higher-order thought looping back on itself. Diagrammatically
we might represent the priority relations on the HOT model by figure 2.
HOT
about(1st
order M-state) --> conscious M-state/self-awareness
HOT
about(HOT)
--> conscious HOT/meta-self-awareness/introspection
figure
2
Unsurprisingly
the foundational notion on the HOT view is that of higher-
order
thought; it provides the basis
not only for self-awareness and conscious states in its initial operation,
but also produces introspective awareness through its iterative application.
Let
us sum up the relations that the two higher-order models imply among our
trio of mental features. HOP and
HOT models agree that it is self-awareness that produces conscious mental
states. However, they disagree about
the primacy of introspection. HOP
models accord it a foundational role as the source of the perception-like
self-awareness that makes states into conscious mental states. Thus
on the HOP model, conscious mental states depend upon self-awareness and
self-awareness in turn depends upon introspection. The
HOT theory accepts the former dependence but rejects the latter. It
implies that conscious mental states depend upon self-awareness but of
a thought-like type, and that introspection rather than serving as the
ground floor basis of self-awareness comes in only at the level of third-order
states. For the HOT theorist, introspection
is not the source of consciousness but merely the product of the iterative
operation of a basically thought-like process of self-awareness.
Thus
if is one is sympathetic to the higher-order view - as I confess I am (Van
Gulick 1988) - then it seems one could not clarify the status of introspection
without deciding between the HOP and HOT versions of the theory. However,
that assumes that those two variants exhaust the options open to the higher-order
(HO) theorist, and as we will see below in Section III there are plausible
alternative ways of developing the HO view that fit neither the HOP nor
the HOT model and that offer quite a different account of the role and
status of introspection. Nonetheless,
the HOP and HOT models are the dominant variants discussed in the literature,
and thus we should first review the evidence favoring one of them over
the other before turning farther afield to consider other less familiar
formulations.
II.
The
basic issue that divides the HOP and HOT approaches is whether the conscious-making
meta-mental states are perception-like or thought-like in nature. The
issue is somewhat ill defined in so far as it is unclear how the notion
of “perception-like” is to be interpreted. No
one supposes that we have a literal “mind’s eye’ with which we view our
inner mental workings, but it remains unclear just what features should
lead us to count a meta-state as perception-like or quasi-perceptual in
the sense supposed by the HOP theory. Trying
to define the notion of “perception” is notoriously difficult, and I do
not intend to do so here. Hopefully,
it will suffice to list some of the main features of paradigm cases of
perception and consider which of those might be shared by our meta-mental
states and the inner process that produces them.
Given
the prominence of vision in humans, philosophers typically take some everyday
example of seeing an ordinary object under normal conditions as their paradigm
of perception, e.g., seeing a mug of coffee sitting on the desk beside
my computer monitor. The focus on
vision may not be theoretically innocent, but for present purposes let’s
stick with the standard practice. We
can list at least twelve features involved in such cases that seem relevant
to their being perceptual.
1. The
mental state M generally provides an accurate/veridical representation
of
the object O.
2.
Error
and illusion are possible, even if (necessarily) atypical.
3.
M is informationally linked by some reliable channel to O.
4.
There is a causal link between O and M, including more specific
causal links between O’s having a given property F and those of M’s features
that represent O as being F.
5.
The content of M represents the roughly simultaneous nature of O, i.e.
perceptual states in the first instance represent to the perceiver how
the world is now.
6.The
process that produces M is noninferential (or at least involves
no
personal-level inferences of which the perceiver is aware.)
7.
The process that produces M is (to a high degree) informationally encapsulated
or modular in the sense that it is not penetratable by personal-level
beliefs or other information outside the visual system. (Knowing the lines
are the same length in the Müller-Lyer illusion does not make one
see them as equal).
8.
The process is on the whole nonvoluntary - we can control where
we look but we can not control what we see when we look.
9.
There are organs of sensation/perception involved in the link (e.g.
eyes).
10.
The object and its features are represented in a given sensory modality
(e.g. represented visually as square vs tactilely as square.)
11.
M’s content is presentational; M presents O to the agent rather
than merely representing O. There is sense in which from the 1st person
perspective the perceiver seems directly aware of O.
12.
M’s mode of representation involves (or at least seems to involve) a sensuous
medium of presentation with associated qualitative properties (or sensuous
“feels”) such as the phenomenal greenness of my percept of the mug on my
desk.
There
are thus two questions to answer:Which
of these twelve features are shared by the relevant meta-mental states? And
do the analogies that hold suffice to count the meta-states as perception-like
or quasi-perceptual in the sense claimed by the HOP model? HOP
and HOT theorists obviously give different answers to the second questions,
but that is in part because they disagree about some cases in answering
the first. Though there are surely
some features they both regard as shared (or both regard as not shared)
there are others about which there is no consensus. Moreover
in many cases, the comparison is a matter of degree;the
meta-mental state shares at most an analogous feature with the perceptual
case, and there is room to disagree about both the closeness and significance
of the analogy. For example, neither
HOP nor HOT theorists believe there are inner sense organs, but HOP theorists
do appeal to inner monitors or inner monitoring systems, and one might
regard such monitors as functionally equivalent in important respects to
organs of outer sense.
With
that in mind, let us run through the twelve features and consider to what
degree each is or is not paralleled in the meta-mental case. I
can not do justice here to the many large issues that such a survey raises,
but even a first approximation may help us get a better grip on the underlying
dispute.
1
& 2. Accuracy and
Illusion. Our meta-mental states
are generally veridical at least those that concern occurrent present states,
and contrary to past beliefs about the infallibility of self-awareness,
most contemporary theorists including both HOP and HOT advocates accept
the possibility of error and illusion in at least some such cases. Nonetheless
self-awareness seems to have an intimacy, immediacy and epistemically privileged
status that is not readily explained by either the HOP or the HOT model.
3.
& 4. Causality and Channel Conditions. HOP theorists with all
their talk of inner monitors and internal scanning clearly regard the meta-mental
case as satisfying both the informational channel (3)and
causalconditions, though Lycan has
been at pains to acknowledge that there are likely many scanning systems
that operate in a diversity of ways. By
contrast Rosenthal, the most prominent HOT advocate, is noncommittal on
the causal condition. He does not
deny that lower-order mental states may typically be among the causes of
higher-order thoughts about them, but he declines to build such a causal
requirement into his account of when a HOT makes a lower-order mental state
conscious. It is the intentional
relation not any causal condition that matters. If
for example, both the lower-order state and the HOT directed were related
not as cause and effect but rather as joint effects of some common cause
that need not on Rosenthal’s view exclude the HOT from making its lower-order
object into a conscious state. Indeed
once such possibilities are raised it seems a HOP theorist as well might
accept some relaxation of the causal condition, as long as the inner monitors
were still linked in some informationally reliable way with the states
within their domain.
Moreover,
it seems Rosenthal must concur in accepting the reliable informational
channel condition, at least as an overwhelmingly likely empirical hypothesis
about the relevant meta-mental states, even if he chooses not to build
it into his analysis. For without
such a channel condition, the general veridicality of the HOTs would seem
like magic or wildly implausible coincidence. So
it seems likely that regardless of whether or not he explicitly includes
it in his analysis de jure, he is committed to regarding any states
that in fact satisfy his analysis as also de facto satisfying
the reliable channel condition.
5. Simultaneity. HOP
and HOT theorists agree in regarding rough simultaneity both as a condition
on the co-occurrence of the higher-order state with its lower order object
as well as an aspect of the intentional content of the higher order state. One
can have higher-order awareness of states that one is not now in (e.g.
I might now recognize or remember that I wanted to contact a friend last
week), but such nonsimultaneous HO states do not make their lower-order
objects conscious on either the HOP or the HOT model.
Although
the HOP and HOT theorist agree in this regard, the HOP theorist may be
better positioned to explain why it is so. Leaving
aside cases in which the causal path from object to perceptual system is
of long duration ( e.g. the extreme case of light traveling from distant
stars or galaxies) we can normally perceive only what is now the case since
our perceptual systems are input-driven and constantly tracking the current
state. Our thoughts by contrast are
not so bound to the present moment. Thus
the HOT theorist has a further explanatory obligation to discharge where
the HOP theorist has a ready explanation that falls out automatically from
the very nature of perception. The
HOT theorist needs to provide some special account of why the
meta-thoughts involved in making states conscious can only concern one’s
roughly simultaneous mental states. Since
we can have thoughts about nonsimultaneous mental states, why do such HOTs
not make their lower-order objects conscious?
6. Noninferentiality
and Informational Encapsulation. Higher
order theorists typically include an noninferential condition in their
analysis to exclude cases in which one comes to know of one’s lower order
states indirectly by inference or reasoning, for example from evidence
about one’s own behavior. (Rosenthal 1992, Lycan 1996)As
the result of discussions that lead him to reflect on his patterns of behavior,
a patient in psycho-therapy may come to recognize that he is often moved
by a powerful desire to avoid criticism. Though
such self-insight may be of great practical value, it does not involve
the sort of HOTs or HOPs that make their lower-objects into conscious mental
states. As result of indirectly and
inferentially coming to be aware of one’s desire, one might go on to become
directly aware of it as well in a way that did indeed make it a conscious
desire, but the initial indirectly derived higher-order states would not
by themselves do so on either the HOT or HOP models.
The
addition of a noninferential condition in the analysis may indeed be required
to exclude counter examples, but it seems in need of further justification
or explanation. Why should it matter
that a given higher-order state was (or was not) arrived at by a process
involving inference? If it is the
intentional content of the higher-order state that makes its lower-order
object conscious, why should it fail to do so when inference plays a role
in producing the higher-order state? Even
if the division between those HO states that make their objects conscious
and those that do not should turn out to coincide with the division between
those that are arrived at noninferentially and those that are not, that
would seem at best an extensional coincidence. That
is, based on facts about how we humans specifically operate, we might de
facto be able to delimit
the set of conscious-making HO-states by adding a noninferential condition,
but we would not have explained why the two divisions coincide. It
would seem that the real explanation of why some HO-states make their objects
conscious and others do not must be found at a deeper level in some other
feature(s) that covaries with the inferential/noninferential distinction
rather than in that distinction itself. For
example, the sorts of meta-representationsgenerated
by the inferential route might be different in some important ways from
those produce noninferentially. But
immediate questions arise: What might that difference be? Why
is it required for making a state conscious? And
why does it covary with being produced noninferentially?
As
with the simultaneity condition, the HOP proponent might claim that his
version of the theory gains a small advantage. If
as many believe, perception is a basically noninferential process but thought
in general is not, then the HOP theorist could give a simple nonad hoc
explanation of why the relevant conscious-making HO states are noninferential:they
are so because they are a form of inner perception and perception is by
nature noninferential. However, the
assumption on which the explanation relies may not be justified by the
facts;perception may more inferential
than many suppose.
We
admittedly draw a common sense distinction between what one literally saw
or heard and what one inferred on the basis of what was perceived. In
response to cross examination of his testimony about when the defendant
left his house, a witness might admit that he heard only the car pulling
out of the driveway and that he had inferred that the defendant had left
home. Or a doctor might acknowledge
that he saw only the pallor of the patient and inferred that she was in
shock. Despite the ease with which
we make such everyday divisions between what was perceived and what was
inferred, the distinction blurs when we look closely at our current empirical
models of the perceptual process.
Most
perception involves the extraction of information about the environment
from the features of the sensory signal through the computational derivation
of a succession of representations of both the proximal and distal stimulus. Many
of these derivational operations are at least quasi-inferential in that
they involve content-sensitive processes whose conclusions or end points
are more or less logically entailed by the earlier representations in the
process. They are sometimes described
as “ratiomorphic” to indicate the degree to which they resemble more ordinary
cases of reasoning. For example,
the human visual system uses stereopsis to compute the distance of an object
in the scene on the basis of binocular disparity, i.e. from the slight
differences in the images that the object projects onto the two retinae. The
details are fascinating but not important here. What
matters is merely the fact that the process moves in a content-appropriate
way from representations of the retinal images and the disparities between
them to representations of the 3D locations that object would have to occupy
to produce such slightly offset pairs of images. (Marr 1982)Is
such a process inferential? The answer
would seem to be, “Yes and no.”It
involves some, but probably not all, of the relevant features of paradigm
inferences. The process produces
representations whose content is rationally implied by the content of the
representations from which it derives them. If
an engineer carried out similar calculations we would have little reluctance
in labeling it as inferential. On
the other hand, the process is automatic, unconscious and relatively encapsulated
and cognitively insulated. Other
sources of information are not typically able to influence its outcome. Nor
can the relevant representations enter into other content-sensitive rational
processes;their activity is restricted
to the internal operations of the steropsis module. To
use a colorful term from Stephen Stich (1978), the representations that
occur within the process of stereopsis are not very inferentially promiscuous
;the
inferences into which they can enter are strictly limited to those that
occur within the normal computation of distance. Although
my steropsis module uses representations of binocular disparity to compute
distance, I have no personal level access to them, and I can not integrate
them logically with my general stock of personal level beliefs. Nonetheless,
the process is at least “quasi-inferential” in so far as it moves through
sequence of representations to conclusions that are implied by the joint
content of those that occur earlier in the process.
Consider
another visual example, that of the size and distance illusions induced
in a viewer by a so called “Ames room”. The
famous experimental set up, designed by the psychologist A. Ames (Ittelson
and Kilpatrick 1951, Rock 1983), involves a trapezoidal room whose rear
wall recedes at an angle, so that its far left corner is twice as far from
a front central viewing point as its right corner. However,
everything in the room is scaled to compensate for the increase in distance. The
black and white checkerboard floor tiles and the window in the rear wall
are all trapezoidal rather than rectangular and increase in size from right
to left just enough to project the same retinal image to the viewing point
as would a normally rectangular items in a standard rectangular room. Thus
when the subject looks into the room from the fixed frontal viewing point
she sees what appears to be an ordinary room. However,
if two people of equal height are placed in the respective back corners
of the room, they look to the viewer to be of enormously different sizes. The
person in the right corners appears to be a giant, and the one in the left
corner is seen as much shorter than an average person. If
the two inhabitants of the room switch locations so too does their apparent
size, though they both briefly “normalize” as they pass at the midpoint
of the back wall.
Two
levels of inferential-like processing are involved. First
the visual system interprets the retinal image as indicating rectangular
objects at a constant distance along the back wall. Given
its learned familiarity with the rectangular construction of most rooms,
its assumptions are well justified (though false), as is the conclusion
it reaches about the likely nature of the distal stimulus. Interestingly
the illusion does not appear to work (or at least not nearly so strongly)
when it is tried on subjects who do not live in typically rectangular environments. For
example when it is run with a subject population of southern African people
who live in mostly circular huts, the illusion is not generated. Thus
the relevant processes are at least to some extent cognitively penetratable
by individually acquired information or beliefs. The
second stage of the illusion is produced by inferring the size of the two
inhabitants from the conjunction of their retinal image size and their
erroneously represented distance. Once
again as with the steropsis case, the process does not share all the features
found inparadigmatic cases of conscious
language based reasoning, but it shares enough to qualify in important
ways as inference-like or quasi-rational.
As
these examples show,once we begin
to investigate the details of perceptual processing, the common sense distinction
between what is actually perceived and what is merely inferred gets quite
blurry and hard to draw. Thus the
HOP theorist may not gain much of an advantage, if any,over
the HOT theorist in motivating or explaining their common commitment to
the noninferential nature of the higher-order processes needed to produce
conscious mentality. The more inference-like
perception turns out to be in general, the less help it provides to the
HOP theorist in trying to explain why the specific forms of inner perception
required for consciousness need be noninferential. Thus
both HOP and HOT theorists are left in need of some explanations of why
the relevant processes need to be noninferential. As
noted above, it seems likely that the real work is being done not the noninferential
condition per se, but by some more directly relevant feature that correlates
with it.
8.
Involuntariness. What
we perceive is not generally under our voluntary control. I
can will where to direct my gaze but what I see is more or
less determined by the structure of my surroundings. Though
expectation, memory and acquired knowledge no doubt exercise some top-down
influence, perception remains a largely input-driven process. Prior
knowledge makes some non zero contribution to my present perception of
a keyboard and computer monitor on the desk in front of me as I type, but
nonetheless it is the physical stimulus of the light reflected from them
that plays the overwhelming role. As
long as I keep my eyes open and looking straight ahead, I can not choose
to not see the monitor or to produce a visual experience in myself of some
other sort of object. Given their
evolutionarily based function of providing the organism with accurate current
information about the immediate environment, perceptual processes operate
automatically and beyond the reach of interference by volition. Our
voluntary control is restricted to matters of orientation and attention. We
can decide where to look, what to focus on and what to attend to, but we
can not in general chose or even voluntarily affect what we perceive as
when we direct our gaze. From the
design perspective of natural selection that is probably a good thing.
The
matter is quite different with thought. We
far more able to direct and control the stream of our thoughts. I
can voluntarily shift my thoughts from the paper I am writing to what I
am planning to prepare for dinner or to the movie that I saw yesterday. Even
if I keep my focus on my paper, I can move back and forth between various
issues and direct my thinking down particular lines of reasoning in search
of a more compelling or satisfying argument or explanation. If
my search succeeds, what I will have “found”will
be the mental product or result of an intentionally directed process of
construction that operates largely under my voluntary control. Thinking
far more than perception responds to volition, and the evolutionary rationale
for such a difference is obvious. Nonetheless,
ourcontrol of our thoughts has
limits. There are things one probably
can not will oneself to think, and sometimes we have thoughts that obsessionally
resist our best attempts to banish them from our stream of awareness. Yet
on the whole we are masters of our thoughts to a far greater degree than
we are of what we perceive.
To
what degree is introspection under our voluntary control. We
obviously have some degree of control over our awareness of our mental
states. Through an act of will, the
patient in therapy becomes aware of previously unconscious desires, and
in more ordinary contexts we can choose to observe desires, beliefs or
even sensations that had been beyond our prior notice. However,
this might be solely a matter of selective attention, directing our focus
of inner awareness upon one or another area of our minds much as we may
move our visual gaze around the scene before us. Perhaps
in the inner case as well, we can determine where we “look” but not what
we see there. If so, our higher
order awareness may be no more under our voluntary control than is our
vision. If I have a pain in my leg
can I turn my attention upon it and yet choose not to be aware of it? If
I yearn to win the prize, can I reflect upon my wants but voluntarily exclude
that desire from my higher order
self-
representation? In some cases, the
answers would seem to be negative. I
can not by an act of will make my being in pain appear to me as my merely
having a tickle. Perhaps I can distract
myself and pull my attention elsewhere, much as I might avert my eyes from
a disturbing scene. But in so far
as my inner attention falls upon the sensations in my leg, I seem to lack
the power to control how they appear to my higher order awareness. However,
the situation is less clear with other sorts of mental states, especially
those that are more dispositional in nature. Most
of us seem able on occasion to hide our motives from ourselves, and self-deception
though problematic seems at least possible in many such cases. The
nature, indeed even the reality of self-deception is controversial, butin
so far as it does occur, we seem to have voluntary control not only over
where
we direct our inner attention, but also some limited control over what
we observe when we do so. However
it’s not clear how much this counts as a disanology with the perception. In
the external case as well, we accuse people of willful blindness, we say
of such a person,“He sees (hears)
only what he wants to.”Again there
are limits;one may choose to not
see a foul committed by one’s team or the misbehavior of a favored child,
but can one easily chose not to see the lamp on the table before one’s
open eyes.
To
the extent that inner awareness seems beyond voluntary control, it may
seem more like perception than like thought and thus to favor the HOP theory
over its HOT rival. However, the
HOT theorist has a ready reply. The
HOT theory requires an assertoric higher
order thought to make a state conscious. (Rosenthal 1992)One
must not merely entertain or consider the thought, but think
it in a way that involves treating it as a true, i.e. thinking it in a
belief-like way. Once the assertoric
requirement comes to the fore, our degree of voluntary control seems to
shrink if not altogether disappear. To
what degree, if any, we can voluntarily control our beliefs remains controversial
and unresolved -Descartes (1641),
William James (1897) and Bernard Williams (1973) not withstanding. Thus
the HOT theorist may well argue that his view need not conflict in any
way with the limited degree to which our higher order awareness is under
our voluntary control. Assertoric
HOTs may be just as involuntary as HOPs.
Thus
if we construe the voluntariness of higher order awareness as primarily
an attentional matter of where we
direct our inner focus,it would
seem to favor neither the HOP nor the HOT view. However,as
we will see below, the distinction between where we
focus and what we are
are aware of it when we do so may not carry over so well from outer to
inner awareness, especially if the shift of our inner attention often alters,
transforms or even creates the objects that it brings into focus.
9.
Organs
of Sensation. As noted above,
no one supposes that there is a literal mind’s eye that turns its gaze
inward on the mental realm;there
are no organs of inner sense that transduce physically encoded information
into neural patterns for further processing as do our eyes and ear. Nonetheless,
the HOP theorists are committed to inner monitors or inner scanners that
in some way extract information about our mental states and actions from
the mental flux of our mind/brain’s activity. The
connection may be more direct and unmediated by any physical carrier of
information that plays the role that patterned light and sound do in external
sense perception. Nor need there
be any anatomically distinct brain unit that has a separate and distinct
monitoring function as is the case with external sense organs. Internal
monitoring may be realized solely by the pattern of interconnections between
brain regions rather than by any distinct organs of inner sense. Nonetheless,
the HOP theorists might argue that the systems of inner monitoring no matter
how diffusely realized still share enough similarities to sensory systems
to count as perception-like or quasi-perceptual in the sense implied by
the HOP model. The HOT theorist
by contrast will emphasize the differences and deny the analogy suffices;he
might well invoke the absence of any organs of inner sense as a basis for
rejecting the HOP view.
10.
Sensory
modality. In ordinary cases
of external perception, one is not merely aware of objects and their properties
but aware of them in a way distinctive of one or another sensory modality. We
see them, hear them or feel them. One
may see a book’s rectangular shape or feel it. Although
the two perceptual states share a common content, there are obvious differences
in how they represent that content. Being
visually aware of the shape is quite a different experience from being
tactilely aware of it, even if both concern the same external state of
affairs. Of course, we do not see
or hear our mental states, but if the our self-awareness is perception-like
one might expect there to be some distinctive modality associated with
inner sense. Yet it is not obvious that there is any such aspect and HOT
theorist may see that an mark against the HOP theory.
HOP
theorists can respond in at least three ways. Firstly,
they might concede that inner sense has no modality akin to those associated
with outer sense, but argue that having some such aspect is not essential
to perception but merely a contingent feature of our human external senses.
Alternatively
they could deny that even our outer perceptions have any aspects of which
we are experientially aware other than their representational contents. A
defender of the strong representational view might agree that seeing the
book’s rectangular shape is different from feeling it, but argue that the
differences are all differences in content, i.e. differences in what properties
the world is represented as having. (Tye1995)My
visual perception of the book only partially shares its content with my
tactile experience of it. The former’s
total content concerns many other features of the book such as its color,
its illumination, and the angle from which I am viewing it. Similarly
the total content of the tactile state represents the book as having a
certain hardness, texture and as resisting my fingers that push against
it with a given pressure. According
to the thorough going representationalist, such differences in total content
exhaust the experiential differences between the two states. If
so, weneed not invoke any modal
differences distinct from content differences to explain why the two perceptual
experiences seem so different. If
there are no special modal aspects associated with external perception,
then the HOP theorist should not be embarrassed by their absence in case
of inner sense.
As
a third option, the HOP theorist might argue that our self-awareness does
involve a modality specific aspect, not of course one shared with any of
our outer senses but rather a distinctively introspective aspect. Such
a claim might be supported by an appeal to first person phenomenological
evidence, and I must admit that based on my own self-observation the claim
has at least some plausibility.
However,
HOT theorists seem not to share such introspectively based intuitions. When
they examine their own self-awareness they seem to find only bare propositional
representations unclothed in a modally distinctive form. If
they be correct, the HOT view might better fit the facts. If
our higher-order states represent their lower-order objects in only an
abstractly propositional way, then higher-order thoughts might seem more
likely as the bearers of such content. Thus
whether one counts the modal nature of perceptual states as favoring the
HOP view or the HOT view turns in part on one’s intuitions about the phenomenology
of self-awareness.
11.
Immediacy
and Presentness . Our ordinary
perceptual experience of objects has an immediacy that is not typically
paralleled in thought. In G.E. Moore’s
(1922) famous phrase, perceptual experience is “diaphanous”;we
“look through” our experience and are aware of objects right before our
eyes. (See also Van Gulick 1988 and
Strawson1994.)As a matter of phenomenology,
the monitor, keyboard and lamp on my desk are present to me rather
than representedto me. The
objects themselves appear to me directly, or so at least that is how I
experience them. Though my perceptual experience may depend upon representational
processes, I am not aware of it as such. The
underlying basis of my experience may be representational, but as a matter
of first person phenomenology I simply see the objects on my desk, and
it is they that appear present to my awareness.
The
objects of thought do not seem similarly immediate or present to awareness. If
I think now of the Eiffel Tower, of my breakfast a few hours back, or even
of the lamp on my desk which I believe continues to exist when I close
my eyes or turn my gaze away, the intentional objects of my thought do
not seem present with the immediacy or directness I find in perception. Though
my primary focus in on the objects I am thinking about, their status as
objects of thought insinuates itself to some degree into the phenomenal
content of my experience. I am thinking
first and foremost of the Eiffel Tower;it
is there that my attention is focused. But
I am nonetheless also aware that it is not the Tower itself, butmy
idea or mental act of thinking of it that is the immediate object of experience. Returning
to Moore’s metaphor, thinking of an object seems less transparent than
perceiving;the means or medium of
representation is never fully lost from the experiential view. It
is difficult if not impossible to “look through” one’s thoughts as fully
as one typically does in perception. The
distinction between mental act and object seems phenomenologically more
salient in the case of thought and never completely invisible.
As
we will see below in Part III, our initial intuitions may mislead us here. As
a phenomenological matter, perception may turn out to be more self-referential
and at least implicitly less diaphanous than is commonly supposed. But
for now, let us accept the common phenomen- ological assumption that perception
presents its objects to awareness in an apparently more immediate way than
does thought. If that were so, what
consequences if any would that have for the HOP vs HOT debate?
At
least initially the HOP view may seem to gain a slight advantage. Our
awareness of our own mental states and process does seem to have the sort
of presentational immediacy that commonly occurs in perception. When
I am aware of my having a pain in my toe, of my being thirsty, or even
of myself as now thinking of Paris, the mental object of my awareness does
itself seem present to me in much the way my keyboard and lampappear
as present to when I see them on my desk. Of
course, the HOP theorist’s claim that such states of inner awareness are
perception-like does not in itself explain their apparent immediacy;indeed
that feature stands in need of further explanation with regard to external
perception as well. Nonetheless,
the HOP theorist might seem better situated to provide a satisfactory account
of the immediacy of self-awareness in so far as that feature seems analogous
to that which we find in other cases of perception. By
contrast, the HOT theorist shoulders an extra burden or explaining why
the objects of inner directed thoughts are immediate in a way that outer
directed thoughts are not. Or so at least it seems.
The
HOT theorists again has multiple avenues of reply:
•He
might deny the alleged difference of immediacy in the ordinary casebetween
first-order thoughts and first-order perceptions.
•He
might challenge the alleged immediacy of inner awareness and deny that
we have any relevant sort of direct acquaintance with our mental states
and processes.
•He
might acknowledge that our inner awareness of our mental states has an
immediacy not typically present in our first order outer directed thoughts,
but provide some satisfactory explanation of why HOTs should immediately
present their objects in ways that first-order thoughts do not.
Of
the three strategies, the third looks the most promising since the first
two seem to require overturning powerful first person intuitions about
the phenomenal immediacy or nonimmediacy of various forms of inner and
outer awareness. Nonetheless, even
well entrenched intuitions can mislead us and may have to be revised given
enough evidence. So neither of the
first two options should be counted out, even if the third offers better
odds of success. To pursue the latter,
the HOT theorist might appeal to the existence of a direct causal link
between the sorts of HOTs that make a state conscious and their lower order
mental objects. Given the noninferential
nature of the link, one might suppose that as a matter of phenomenology
the object of such a thought would be experienced as present in an unmediated
way. I am not sure that would work,
but perhaps something along those line might enable the HOT theorist to
explain why HOTs present their objects with an immediacy that first-order
thoughts do not. In sum, the HOP
theorist seems at least initially better able to accommodate the apparent
immediacy of self-awareness, but the HOT theorist has options for dealing
with it as well.
12.
Qualia. We
come at last to the most controversial feature on our list. Our
perceptual encounters with external objects typically involve a rich variety
of sensory properties such as colors, tastes, smells, sounds and feels. When
I lift the coffee mug to my lips and drink:I
see its celadon green color, I feel the smooth texture of its handle, I
smell the aroma of the just brewed coffee, I taste the pleasantly bitter
just-burnt edge of the French roast beans, and I feel the warmth of the
liquid against my lips. Such experiences
are often said to involve qualia or phenomenal properties. However,
the status and nature of such properties remains a matter of ongoing philosophical
dispute. There is no consensus on
even the most basic matters:Are
qualia identical with or distinct from the properties of the external objects?
(Lycan 1987, 1996, Jackson1980, Shoemaker 1990)Are
qualia features of inner objects or are they merely properties that inner
states represent external objects as having? (Lycan 1996,Block1996)
If there are any qualia, are they ineffable, private, nonrelational or
intrinsic? (Dennett 1988)These
are not questions we can settle or even begin to discuss here. Nonetheless,
the fact that perception involves sensory qualities of the sort that lead
many to believe in qualia is an issue that we must consider in assessing
the state of play between the HOT and HOP theorist. So,
let us set the controversies to one side and speak of qualia in relatively
neutral way. That is, let us assume
that external perception typically involves qualia, but where we take that
to mean only that it involves the perception of sensory properties (e.g
colors, tastes, smells, feels) of the sort that lead many to believe in
philosophical qualia.
What
implications might that have for the HOP vs HOT debate? The
HOP theorist might seem to gain an advantage similar to that which he appears
to have on the issue of immediacy. The
situation with qualia looks to parallel that with immediacy;first-order
externally directed thoughts seem to have qualia, but first-order thoughts
appear to lack them. If, as many
suppose, self-awareness involves qualitative character, then the HOP theorist
might seem better set to accommodate them by analogy with cases of external
perception, on a par with his advantage regarding immediacy. Again
the mere fact that the relevant feature, qualia (or immediacy) is present
in both the externally directed first-order case and in the internally
directed higher-order case, does not by itself suffice to explain its presence
in the latter, but at least it provides some hope of finding an explanation
that relies on theperceptual nature
of both sorts of states. If there
is no similar parallel between externally directed thoughts and internally
directed ones, then the HOT theorist would again be left needing an additional
explanation of that disparity.
However,
the phenomenological facts are far from clear. As
long as we do not pack too much controversial philosophical baggage into
the notion of “qualitative character” we can probably safely assume two
things. First that external perception
involves qualitative character, and second that self-awareness involves
awareness ofqualitative character.
When
I am aware of myself as having a pain in my toe, I am aware ofits
hurtfulness.
However,some
of the other claims needed to make the alleged disparity argument work
are more controversial. In particular,
it is not obvious that first-order thoughts lack qualitative character,
nor that our states of self-awareness - as opposed to some of their first-order
mental objects - themselves have any qualitative character. If
either of these two claims were not merely unobvious but in fact false,
then the disparity to which the HOP theorist appeals would collapse. If
first-order thoughts do have qualitative character, then the HOT theorist
would be at no disadvantage in addressing the qualitative nature of self-awareness. Alternatively,
if the only qualia involved in self-awareness are those present in some
of its first-order objects, then there are no higher-order features that
the HOT need be at a disadvantage in explaining. How
might the HOT theorist try to motivate either of these two moves. Regarding
the first, he might argue that in so far as there is something that it’
`s like to think, then there are qualitative features associated with such
thoughts even if they are not the same qualia associated with perceptual
experience. When I think of drinking
of the coffee from my mug, my mental state may not involve any taste qualia
or warmth qualia as it would were I really to sip it, but there is nonetheless
a phenomenological aspect, a “what it’s like-ness” to be having such a
thought. If so, the HOT theorist
could argue that first-order thoughts have qualitative character and thus
that he is no worse off in addressing the supposed qualitative character
of self-awareness. The alternative
move would be to challenge the belief that higher-order states themselves
have qualitative character. Though
widely held, the HOT theorist might attack that belief as the result of
confusedly treating the character of the states of which we are aware as
some character of the states of awareness. Rosenthal
(1991) argues that when we have a conscious pain, we are aware of hurtfulness
and when we have a conscious visual experience of a ripe tomato we are
aware of phenomenal redness, but neither the hurtfulness nor the redness
is a qualitative feature of the relevant higher order state. That
state, which on his view is a HOT, has no qualitative character of its
own. What has qualitative character
is the first-order perceptual or sensory state that is the object of the
HOT. By having a relevantly directed
HOT, we make the first-order state into a conscious perception or conscious
sensation and thus become aware of its qualitative character. Since
on Rosenthal’s account the higher-order state has no qualitative character
of its own, the HOT theorist need not be embarrassed or disadvantaged if
thoughts lack qualitative character. Indeed
Rosenthal tries to turn the tables and gain an point against the HOP theory. He
argues that if the conscious-making higher-order states were perception-like,
then they should have distinctive qualia associated with them just as externally
directed perceptual states do. But,
as he goes on to argue, we encounter no such distinctive higher-order qualia;the
only qualia we met are those of the first-order states themselves. There
are distinct qualia associated with a first-order state of seeing red,
and we become of aware of them if our visual perception becomes conscious. However,
there are no further qualia associated with the second-order state of being
aware of that perception, nor do we become aware of any such second-order
qualia if and when we form a third-order awareness of that second-order
state. According to Rosenthal’s account
of our phenomenology, the only qualia that ever show up are those of first-order
states. Thus he believes the appeal
to qualia supports the HOT view rather than the HOP. Once
again, there appears to be no decisive resolution of the debate.
Having
surveyed each of the twelve features of paradigmaticperception,
let us recap their implications for the HOP vs HOT debate.
Conditions
1-5 appear generally compatible with both views and thus seem to favor
neither;both seem able to accommodate
a norm of veridicality, the possibility of error, the causal condition,
the information channel condition, and the simultaneity condition. Neither
view seems to have an adequate non ad hoc explanation of their shared noninferential
requirement. Though the HOP theory
may seem at first to garner some support from the alleged noninferential
nature of perception, that benefit vanishes upon a closer examination of
the nature of perceptual processing, yielding a draw on noninferential
(6) and informational encapsulation conditions (7). On
some of the other conditions, one side or the other seems to gain at least
an initial advantage, but the opposing side always has resources with which
to fashion a plausible reply. In
that sense the HOP view seems initially favored by the nonvoluntary (8)
and presentational (11) conditions, and the HOT side gets prima facie support
from the organs of sensation (9) and sensory modality (10). But
in each case the initially disadvantaged side has options for reply. Finally,
the qualia condition (12) can tilt either way depending on what one takes
the facts to be about the phenomenology of inner awareness. Thus
we are left with no clear judgment in favor of either side, though I hope
that working through the specific conditions has clarified the parameters
of the dispute.
III.
We
come back thus to our original question about the relations among our triad
of concepts:introspection, consciousness
and self-awareness. The HOP and
HOT views give different answers about which of the three is fundamental. Introspection
in particular turns out to be foundational on the HOP view, but derivative
on the HOT view. In so far as we
can not decide between its two main variants, the higher-order theory per
semay seem to provide us with
no real answer regarding the status of introspection. However,
we may gain some insight by considering an alternative form of the theory
that differs from both the HOP and HOT models.
Moreover,
such a move might be independently motivated by some common problems that
confront both of the mainstream versions, in particular a challenge raised
by Fred Dretske (1993, 1995) among others (Byrne 1997) that we can call
the generality worry. The problem
in brief is as follows. Why and how
do higher-order states turn their lower-order mental objects into conscious
states, given that in general perceiving some x or thinking of x does not
make x conscious. If I perceive the
pencil on my desk or think of the the snow that fell yesterday, I do not
make either the pencil or the snow conscious. They
become objects of my awareness, but it would be bizarre to
hold that I had thereby created conscious writing instruments or conscious
precipitation. But how then can
the relational fact of my having a higher-order state about some first
order belief, desire or sensation convert what had been an unconscious
state into a conscious one? We
might mean by “conscious state” merely one of whichI
am aware, but in that sense the pencil as well is conscious when I perceive
it. It too is an “x of which I am
aware.”But the distinction between
conscious and unconscious desires, beliefs, or sensations seems to mark
much more than that. The higher-order
theorist - whether HOP, HOT or something else - needs to explain what is
special about the meta-mental case in virtue of which merely perceiving
or thinking of something nonconscious can make it conscious. Nor
will it do to claim it is just a definitional matter;i.e.
that we apply the word “conscious” to mental states of which we are aware,
but do not apply it to nonmental items of which are aware in either perceptual
or thought-like ways. A deeper
explanation is needed of why we use the word that way and of the
real distinction that we believe we capture in doing so. To
use Thomas Nagel’s famous phrase, a conscious state is one “that it’s like
something to be in.”(1974)There
is something that it’s like to have a conscious desire, a conscious sensation
or a conscious thought. Conscious
states have a subjective or phenomenal aspect, and the generality argument
turns on the apparent inadequacy of the higher-order theory to explain
how a state without any such aspect could be transformed into one with
it by the merely relational addition of a meta-state having the first state
as it intentional object. It seems
that converting the first state into one that there is “something that
it to be in” would require some change in the state itself rather than
just making the object of a higher-order thought or perception.
Higher-order
theorists have responded to the generality objection in several ways, but
all seem less than adequate. Rosenthal
(1991) has defended the HOT theory by arguing that nonconscious sensations
and perceptions have qualia, but since the states themselves are not conscious
we are not aware of their properties. Thus
there is nothing that it is like to be a person having such a nonconscious
state. It is only when we come to
have an appropriate HOT about the sensation that we are aware of its qualitative
properties and thus that there is something that it is like to be in such
a state. On this view, the first
order state had its qualia all along. When
the person forms a HOT about the state,she
does not change that state. However,
she does change her overall state of mind to one that there is something
that its like to be in because now, and only now, is she aware of the
qualia in virtue of her HOT directed at them.
AcceptingRosenthal’s
account would indeed entail that there is something that’s like to have
a conscious state, but it seems oddly off target. It
implies that there is something that it’s like for the agentto
be having a HOT about a first order perception, but that subjective aspect
seems stranded between the two states. It
is not an aspect of the first order state itself since there need be nothing
that it’s like to be in that state. Nor
is it really an aspect of the higher order state since that state on Rosenthal’s
account has no qualia. The subjective
“what it’s likeness” thus exists in a sort of twilight zone between the
two;it’s not really a feature of
either state but yet there is something that it’s like for agent. In
that respect Rosenthal’s reply to the generality argument is not likely
to allay worries about how the addition of a meta-state, itself without
qualitative character, somehow moves the agent from a state that there
is nothing that “it’s like to be in” into one that there is something that
it’s like to be in. Merely adding
a non-qualia thought about qualia seems incapable of producing such a transformation.
Lycan
(1997) has defended his HOP version of the theory against the generality
objection in part by invoking a “divide and conquer” strategy. He
denies that the HOP model is supposed to explain the “what it’s like-ness”
of conscious states, a notion about which he is deeply skeptical and which
we regards as engendering a wealth of confusions. According
to Lycan, the HOP model aims merely to mark the distinction between conscious
and nonconscious states. It does
so by defining the former as states ofwhich
we are aware in the relevant inner perceptual mode. The
HOP model in not intended to explain qualia or a mental state’s having
a qualitative aspect. Lycan deals
with qualia in another part of his overall theory of consciousness, which
offers a purely representational theory of qualia as properties that actual
objects (or possible objects) are represented as having. Given
the divided nature of his explanatory project, to complain that the HOT
model does not adequately account for the qualitative aspect of conscious
mentality is to fault it for failing to produce a result it never aimed
to achieve. Fair enough, but one
might still fault the HOP model for doing less than one would like or expect
of the higher-order theory . One
can distinguish conscious mental states in many ways. Lycan’s
reading of it as “state of which we are aware” is one plausible reading,
but we also often use it to distinguish states with a qualitative aspect
from those without. In so far as
the generality argument appeals to that latter notion, one may reasonably
criticize the HOP model for explaining less than we may want, even if it
is modestly eschews any aim to explain such matters. We
would like to have a convincing account of what the difference is betweena
conscious desire with a felt experiential aspect and unconscious unfelt
desire. Lycan may perhaps be able
to satisfy our explanatory demand with other parts of his theory, but the
generality argument seems to show that the HOP model by itself it does
not seem to do so. Thus it would be nice if we could find an alternative
version of the higher order theory that did.
Thus
we need to consider what alternative forms the higher-order theory might
take that would differ from both the standard HOP and HOT models. Both
agree in regarding the relevant higher-order state as distinct and separate
from its lower object. This is perhaps clearest and most explicit on Lycan’s
HOP model, since he accepts a generalized language of thought view of representation
and describes the higher-order perceptions as being realized by token representations
that occur within the operations of the monitors that produce higher-order
inwardly directed perceptions. (1996)However,
Rosenthal’s HOT model is equally committed to the token distinctness of
the higher and lower-order states. As we just noted, he accepts that many
first-order states have qualia, but he denies that higher-order states
have any qualia of their own. Thus
by a simple application of Leibniz’s law they can not be very same states. Although
both HOP and HOT theorists assume distinctness or nonidentity, it is not
entailed by the higher-order theory per se, and
one HOT theorist (Gennaro 1997) has disavowed it. Thus
one could try to develop the higher-order view in a way that rejected or
at least weakened that assumption, and for the remainder of the paper I
will explore that option. Although the idea may seem initially odd
and little more than a mere logical possibility, closer examination will
reveal it to be far more plausible than one might at first suppose. Indeed
it may offer a line of reply to the generality argument that is stronger
than any of those produced by more mainstream HOP or HOT theorists.
Three
strands from the current literature offer important clues about how one
might go about constructing a nonstandard version of thetheory
with a lessened commitment to the nonidentity of lower-order and higher-order
states:Daniel Dennett’s theory
of consciousness as cerebral celebrity, Chris Hill’s view of introspection
as a matter of volume control, and the widely accepted hypothesis that
the neural correlate of consciousness is a globally distributed brain state.
Let me say a bit about each.
•Consciousness
as cerebral celebrity. According
to Dennett’s multiple drafts theory 1991), the distinction between conscious
and nonconscious mental states is blurry, admits of degrees and turns on
two principal dimensions. The first concerns the degree to which a mental
state (or content fixation) influences the subsequent development of the
system’s states and its outputs. This
is what is meant by “cerebral celebrity”;to
put it crudely, the more effect a given content fixation has on what other
content fixations occur, the more “famous” it is. Conscious
states take a more powerful and broader range of content-relative effects
throughout the agent’s mind;a conscious
perception (thought or desire) and its content will be accessible to other
processing areas, more able to affect other states (thoughts, desires,
memories) and have more impact on those states driving the system’s output,
especially on the system’s reports about its state of mind since conscious
state are normally ones that we can report ourselves as being in. All
these aspects of influence admit of degree, and in general the greater
the impact of any given state the greater its level of cerebral celebrity. Thus
in so far as being a conscious state is a matter of such “intra-mental
fame”, whether or not a state is conscious need not have a strict yes or
no answer.
The
other dimension of consciousness on the multiple drafts model is the degree
to which a given content gets integrated into what Dennett describes as
the ongoing serial narrative the system constructs from the “stream of
consciousness”. This is not a separate
meta-narrative that is produced independently or over and above the system’s
lower-order content fixations. Rather
it is an assemblage of activated lower-order contentful states that cohere
together in such a way that they form a more or less integrated set from
the perspective of a unified self. Dennett denies that there is any separate
self that constructs or views the sequence;rather
it is the other way round. It is
the coherent serial narrative that is fundamental and the self is merely
a virtual entity that exists as the perspectival point which is implicit
in the narrative and from which the narrative hangs together as unified.
Dennett’s
multiple drafts theory is thus a higher-order theory of a sort, though
it differs greatly from more mainstream HOP and HOT models. A
state with a high degree of cerebral celebrity will typically be one that
the agent can report being in, and such a report would express the relevant
higher-order thought. Indeed Dennett,
like Rosenthal,relies heavily
on a tight link between a state’s being reportable and its being conscious. The
second aspect of his theory also has a decidedly higher-order slant, since
incorporation into the serial narrative carries with it the status of being
represented as a state in the stream of the (virtual) self, which at least
implicitly involves higher-order representation.
•Introspection
as volume control and activation. Chris
Hill (1991) has faulted the “inner eye” model of introspection as overly
passive. He has argued that introspection
is active in the sense that it often alters its lower-order mental object.
In
a case of paradigmatic external perception, as when I see the lamp on my
desk, my awareness of the object does not change it. The lamp is unaffected
by being seen. However, inner awareness
does often seem to alter its objects. When
I turn my inner attention to the lingering taste of the olive that I ate
a few minutes ago or to the ache in my lower right molar, directing my
awareness upon those sensations can change many of their features. The
sensation often gains in intensity and vividness;various
sensory properties may become more specific, shift from one specific character
to another or even emerge where no detailed character was previously present. Of
course, as noted above in section 3, a redirection of attention typically
leads to changes in external perception as well, but there it is usually
only the perceptual state that changes not its object. When
I visually scrutinize my desk lamp, I become aware of many details that
were previously unnoticed but the properties of the lamp itself remain
unchanged. Admittedly in some external
cases, the act of observation does change its object. That
is apparently so at the quantum mechanical level and obviously so in many
social situations. Indeed designing
non-obtrusive measures is a perennial problem in the social sciences. However,
in the interpersonal case, it is not the act of observation per sethat
produces the change but rather the subject’s awareness at some of level
of being observed that does so.
Hill
thus contrasts the “inner eye” model of introspection with alternatives
that he refers to as “volume control” and “activation” to emphasize the
respects in which the intensity, character, or even the existence of a
sensation (or other lower-order state) can be affected by the occurrence
of a higher-order awareness directed at it. He
seems to regard this as a problem for the perceptual view of introspection
and thus for the HOP model of consciousness. Lycan
(1996), however, denies any such negative consequence follows for the HOP
view. He accepts the active nature
of inner awareness and the many ways in which it may alter its lower-order
object, but denies that the HOP view is committed to a passive model of
inner perception as the “inner eye” analogy might suggest. Thus
Lycan accepts the data Hill presents but claims they are fully consistent
with the HOP theory. For present
purposes, we need not settle that latter dispute over consistency;it
is the active nature of introspection that matters, and about that they
agree.
•
Globally distributed neural correlate of consciousness. Current
scientific evidence on the neural correlates of consciousness indicates
that there is no special local brain area(s) that are the unique (or special)
basis of conscious experience. Rather
any given conscious state appears to be realized by a globally distributed
pattern involving many different cortical and subcortical regions that
are simultaneously active and bound together in some way, perhaps by regular
oscillations that entrain neural firing patterns in disparate areas of
the brain. An important consequence
of this result is that the very same regions that are involved in the processing
and realization of nonconscious mental states are also among the correlates
or realization bases of conscious mental states. For
example the areas of visual or auditory cortex that are active when one
nonconsciously perceives a stimulus are also components of one’s conscious
perception of such a stimulus. The
difference between the neural correlates of the conscious and nonconscious
states is not that the information gets passed on and re-registered or
re-represented elsewhere but rather that those same areas get integrated
into a larger unified pattern of global brain activity in the conscious
case.
Given
these three suggestions from Dennett, Hill and the neuro-imagers, we are
in a position to construct an alternative higher-order model that more
intimately links the meta-mental states with their lower-order objects
and thereby offers a possible solution to the generality problem. We
can tentatively label it the higher-order global state (HOGS) model. The
basic idea is that a mental state becomes a consciousness state by being
recruited into a globally integrated pattern of brain activity that is
the momentary neural realization of an episode in the experiencing subject’s
stream of consciousness. Contrary to the HOP and HOT models, the transition
from unconscious to conscious status on the HOGS model does not result
from the production of an independent meta-representation, but rather from
the original lower-order representation’s taking on a new systemic role
through its integration into the larger pattern associated with the transient
and shifting dominant focus of neural and mental activity.
Nonetheless the HOGS model remains a type of higher-order theory in so far as the change that occurs in a lower-order state’s function as it is integrated into the momentary global correlate of self-awareness transforms its content in ways that involve a heightened element of experiential self-reference. Let me spell this out a bit more fully. Though some might disagree, let us assume that an intentional state’s content is (at least in large part) a function of its functional role with the system that contains it (however that might be defined, whether narrowly, widely or otherwise). Thus when there is a significant change in a state’s function, there will typically also be a corresponding change in its content. Thus if a lower-order state changes its function by being integrated into a larger global pattern, its content may well change accordingly. What sort of content change might occur? The global patterns associated with the HOGS model are the neural correlates or realizations of the sequence of states of a self-consciously experiencing subject. Thus when a previously nonconscious state is recruited into such a global pattern of activity, one would expect it to take on a role and content relative to the mental reality of that lar