Everything You Wanted to Know About Consciousness but Were Afraid to Ask
A Review of The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates, Edited by Ned Block, Owen Flanagan, & Güven Güzeldere
Josh Weisberg
CUNY Graduate Center
Philosophy and Cognitive Science
365 5th Ave.
New York, NY 10016-4309
U.S.A.
jwsleep@aol.com
Copyright (c) Josh Weisberg 2002
PSYCHE, 8(17), October 2002
Previously held: http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v8/psyche-8-17-weisberg.html
KEYWORDS: Consciousness, Qualia, Knowledge Argument, Explanatory Gap, Representationalism, Reduction.
REVIEW OF: Ned Block, Owen Flanagan, and Güven Güzeldere. (1997). The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 843 pp. $42 pbk. ISBN 0262522101.
ABSTACT: The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates, edited
by Ned Block, Owen Flanagan, and Güven Güzeldere, is reviewed. A brief
introduction lays out the organization of the anthology, and then a
section-by-section summary details the articles and debates contained in
the work. These philosophical disagreements concern the nature and
function of conscious experience, the prospects of a scientific theory
of consciousness, the existence of qualia, representationalism, the
explanatory gap, the knowledge argument against physicalism, and
higher-order theories of consciousness. I conclude that the Nature of
Consciousness is an excellent collection, despite a paucity of
historical background material and few connections to the continental
tradition in philosophy.
1. Introduction
The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates, edited by Ned
Block, Owen Flanagan, and Güven Güzeldere, is the best anthology of
material on the philosophical study of consciousness currently
available. It is an extensive collection, including fifty different
readings and a helpful introductory essay by Güzeldere. Though its 843
pages may seem daunting to the reader approaching this area of study for
the first time, the anthology contains several classic papers in the
philosophy of mind that are required reading in the field. Furthermore,
it contains groups of articles that serve as a foundational introduction
to several of the hottest topics in consciousness studies. The work
functions both as a guided tour of the landscape of consciousness and as
a useful reference and source book for extended research. The Nature
of Consciousness has already become the standard text in graduate- and
advanced-level undergraduate courses on consciousness, and it certainly
is a "must have" for anyone engaged in philosophical research on the
conscious mind.
The book is broken down into ten sections, each dealing with a sub-topic
in consciousness studies. Most of the chapters are wholly devoted to
philosophical issues, but there is also an important section presenting
background empirical information culled from psychology and the
neurosciences. An introductory essay that attempts to place the study
of consciousness in an historical framework kicks off the work. It also
introduces the major themes that dominate the rest of the readings. The
bulk of the selections in the book were written after 1970, so the
introduction is really the only place where the origins of the current
debates are laid out. Unfortunately, it is impossible to fully present
the details of this history in such a restricted format, so the reader
is left to fill in many of the blanks herself. But this is the nature
of The Nature of Consciousness. In keeping with the a historical
style of analytic philosophy, the editors chose to present the specifics
of today's debates, and to leave questions of historical etiology to the
side. This may prompt the reinvention of the wheel in some cases, but
it does provide the reader with the essential dialectic of current
research.
2. Section-by-Section Summary
The first section of the book considers the nature of the so-called
stream of consciousness. Here we see the only work composed before the
late 60's, an excerpt from William James' Psychology. James argues
that consciousness proceeds in a flowing, ever-shifting manner, and that
the objects of conscious experience possess a "fringe" that blends them
into each other. The following selections by Daniel Dennett and Owen
Flanagan debate the very existence of this stream-like flow, with
Dennett typically skeptical of a robust phenomenal procession, and
Flanagan defending a naturalistic realism concerning the phenomenon.
Section II deals with the relationship between scientific methodology
and the study of consciousness. A selection by Flanagan proposes a
"natural method" for studying consciousness, one that accepts data from
psychology, neuroscience and phenomenology. Alvin Goldman argues that
considerations gleaned from our folk-psychological conception of
consciousness are important in theorizing, and shouldn't be rashly
eliminated. Approaching the subject from a different direction,
Patricia Churchland argues that a reductive approach proceeding on a
variety of explanatory levels is the best plan for deciphering the
riddles of consciousness, and furthermore, she claims that nothing
stands in the way of a complete reductive, scientific explication of the
conscious mind.
Churchland's piece is followed by an important work by Daniel Dennett
and Marcel Kinsbourne laying out their "Multiple Drafts" model of
consciousness. The authors rail against a "Cartesian theater" model of
the mind, where there is a special place or medium where everything
comes together in conscious experience. Instead, they argue that
consciousness is the result of distributed, divergent processes vying
for domination of the mind's resources. In such a model, there is no
canonical stream of conscious experience. The next two chapters are
critical commentaries on Dennett and Kinsbourne's hypothesis, by Ned
Block and Robert Van Gulick.
Section III contains five selections from the sciences designed to give
a sample of empirical work on consciousness, and to provide a primer for
some of the strange dissociative disorders that can afflict the damaged
mind. These syndromes figure in many philosophical arguments and
thought experiments throughout the book, so it is nice to have them
presented in some scientific detail. Bernard Baars, Martha Farah,
Edoardo Bisiach, Tim Shallice, and Francis Crick and Christof Koch all
contribute chapters. Several of the authors in this section, notably
Crick and Koch, offer preliminary theories about the nature of conscious
awareness. It is an informative study to compare the approaches of
these working scientists to the more philosophical approach taken in
most of the other selections. Empirical research often unearths things
undreamed of in philosophical reflection.
The fourth section deals with the relationship between consciousness and
intentional content. Colin McGinn considers whether the apparent
difficulties with explaining consciousness extend to the project of
explaining the representational content of thoughts. He concludes that
the two are deeply intertwined, and is thus pessimistic about an
informative explanation of either phenomenon. Martin Davies argues
that, like the content of thought, perceptual experience is externally
individuated, though it is best considered as "nonconceptual" content.
Michael Tye and Christopher Peacocke debate whether conscious experience
is fully determined by its representational properties, or if there is a
nonrepresentational element in experience that demands a separate
treatment. This discussion, concerning "representationalism," is one of
the hottest topics in philosophy of mind today, and these selections
make a great introduction to the basic dialectic.
Section V addresses the function of consciousness. What is the role of
consciousness in our mental lives, and could these same functions be
achieved without phenomenal awareness? Owen Flanagan argues that
consciousness does indeed play a vital functional role in our
psychology, but Ned Block counters that the concept of consciousness is
equivocal between a functional, causal notion, and a purely phenomenal
one. Block's important paper "On a Confusion about a Function of
Consciousness" is the centerpiece of the section. His notions of
"phenomenal" and "access" consciousness are explained, and the danger of
reasoning from one to the other is exposed. Block's article is followed
by four critical commentaries, by Daniel Dennett, David Chalmers,
Jennifer Church, and Tyler Burge. Several of the authors reject Block's
distinction, but some accept it, and Chalmers argues that Block does not
go far enough in noting the implications that phenomenal consciousness
has for the prospects of understanding the conscious mind. The section
closes with a piece by Van Gulick that taxonomizes a variety of
arguments against a physicalist explanation of consciousness. In Van
Gulick's analysis, the anti-physicalist arguments fail to achieve their
goal.
The seventh section of the anthology addresses the metaphysics of
consciousness. There is an excerpt from Saul Kripke's classic "Naming
and Necessity" lectures presenting an argument against mind/body
materialism based on considerations from modal logic and the nature of
identity. John Searle also argues against a reduction of mind to body,
but he contends that the failure of reduction does not threaten the
completeness of our scientific worldview. The failure of the reduction
is a result of the pragmatics of our definitional practices rather then
any deep metaphysical fact. Frank Jackson maintains that even a
physicalist theory of mind requires some a priori foundation in order
to fit the mental in with the physical. Thus, conceptual analysis is
still a necessary part of theorizing about consciousness. Georges Rey,
on the other hand, offers arguments to the effect that consciousness
does not exist at all. He claims that when the folk notion of
consciousness is stripped of various indefensible pieces of
philosophical baggage, there is no reason to believe that it exists.
Another chapter by Searle runs in the opposite direction, holding that
the existence of consciousness is evident in such a way that no theory
or argument is needed to establish its existence from the first-person
perspective. Furthermore, the concept of consciousness is unconnected
to any causal, functional or behavioral concepts. Sydney Shoemaker
accepts that first-person access is important to theorizing about
consciousness, but maintains that the third-person perspective is
equally valid, and things posited from the first-person point-of-view
alone need to be vindicated from the third-person viewpoint.
The next three sections of the book revolve around attempts to explain
the subjective aspects of consciousness, which are sometimes referred to
as "qualia." Thomas Nagel's classic "What is it Like to be a Bat?"
argues against an objective scientific explication of the subjective
aspects of mind, at least as we conceptualize things at present.
Consciousness is an essentially subjective feature of the world, while
current science attempts to explain things from an objective,
non-personal viewpoint. Colin McGinn goes farther, arguing that an
explanation of consciousness is "cognitively closed" to creatures like
us. We are like squirrels trying to comprehend quantum mechanics when
it comes to consciousness. Joseph Levine is also pessimistic about
explaining what it is like to have a conscious experience (he terms this
the "problem of the explanatory gap"), but he holds this is an
epistemic, rather than a metaphysical issue. Conscious experience may
indeed be a physical phenomenon, but we don't yet know how to provide
a satisfying explanation of this identity.
Next, there is a series of articles focused on the "Knowledge Argument"
against physicalism. The argument claims that even if someone knew all
the physical facts, there would still be facts that person did not know,
namely subjective or phenomenal facts about what it is like to have
conscious experiences. Robert Van Gulick provides a paper summarizing
the argument, and laying out the logical space of replies to the claim.
Frank Jackson, who gave the Knowledge Argument its most recognized
formulation, and Paul Churchland engage in a debate over the validity
and significance of the argument. David Lewis offers a different
materialist defense, arguing that the supposed phenomenal facts left out
of a physicalist description of consciousness are really just various
abilities or "know how" whose absence does not threaten the completeness
of physics. Brian Loar contends that the Knowledge Argument does not
achieve its goal once a proper distinction between concepts and
properties is in place. Qualia may well be known under independent
concepts, a physicalist concept, and a "phenomenal" concept. This does
not entail that phenomenal properties are not in fact identical to
physical properties, so physicalism is not threatened by the knowledge
argument.
The next set of papers considers the possibility of a so-called
"inverted spectrum," where things might phenomenally look one way to me
and another way to you, despite the fact that we are functionally and
behaviorally identical. Daniel Dennett rejects this idea, and offers a
variety of "intuition pumps" to disavow the reader of any belief in
qualia. Sydney Shoemaker argues for the possibility of spectrum
inversion by first establishing the possibility of intrasubjective
inversion and then moving to intersubjective inversion. If we can
imagine ourselves inverted over time, it may be that we can imagine
another person inverted relative to us. Gilbert Harman defends a
functionalist theory of mind, and holds that the only qualitative
features of experience are those we represent objects to have. These
representations can be individuated functionally, so there is no
possibility of undetectable spectrum inversion. Ned Block rejects
Harman's "representationalist" thesis, and offers a modified version of
the inverted spectrum case, called "Inverted Earth," to challenge
Harman. In Block's scenario, representational content shifts due to
externalist factors, while the quality of experience arguably remains
unchanged. If this is possible, then representational content and
phenomenal character are independent and Harman's representationalist
thesis fails. Finally, Stephen White reviews the various positions on
qualia, and holds that either one is threatened with dualism, or one
must embrace a functionalist position on qualitative experience. This
may be unappealing, but this, alas, is the "curse of the qualia."
The last section of the anthology explores what have come to be known as
"Higher-Order" theories of consciousness. These theories hold that
mental states are conscious when we are conscious of them in a
suitable way, either by having thoughts about them, or by perceiving or
sensing them. David Armstrong and William Lycan present higher-order
perception version of the thesis, while David Rosenthal defends a
higher-order thought theory. These theories offer the hope of a
reductive theory of consciousness, where conscious experience is reduced
to either perception or thought. Because we arguably have independently
viable theories of perception and thought, the problem of explaining
consciousness is thus solved. Fred Dretske offers a number of
criticisms against both versions of the view. Central to his critique
is a rejection of the claim that we are always conscious of our
conscious experience. To conclude the section, Güven Güzeldere lays
out the details and subtle differences between the two "higher-order"
positions, before offering his own criticisms.
3. Conclusion
The Nature of Consciousness is the best anthology currently available
on this topic, and it is well designed both as an introduction to the
field and as a reference volume for in-depth study. One mild criticism
is that the work makes no attempt to link the study of consciousness in
the analytic tradition with that of the "continental" or
phenomenological school of thought. Both research programs are keenly
interested in the foundations of human conscious experience, and a
bridge between the two sides, even a thin one, would help promote
cross-pollination of ideas on this rich and difficult subject. Also, as
noted above, there is very little in the way of historical perspective
in the book. Perhaps this is as it should be. Why delve into
historical exposition when there is vibrant current research in
progress? But many of the issues pursued with such vigor in the volume,
particularly the battles over qualia and representation, bear a
resemblance to the debates over sense data and direct realism that
occupied analytic philosophy in earlier parts of the twentieth century.
Having an outline of that dialectic might help us to avoid repeating the
mistakes of the past.
But in the final analysis, The Nature of Consciousness is a superbly
crafted collection. The editors have done a standup job of collecting
and arranging the selections in the work. The Nature of Consciousness
is an excellent roadmap to the ever-expanding terrain of consciousness
studies.
