Reading Notes: April 11th, 2022

“[One] theory of consciousness [is] based on the basic idea that every conscious state is one of which the subject is in some way aware. Defenders of this view regard this “transitivity”…in terms of higher-order thoughts (HOTs). The HOT theory holds that a mental state of a subject is a conscious state when the subject is having a thought that the subject is in that state. For example, a pain becomes conscious when the subject comes to have a thought that “I am in pain” caused by and referring to that very pain. It is immediately important to note that the HOT itself need not and usually will not be a conscious state (that would require a further HOT)….[There is] a variant of standard HOT theory which relaxes the conditions that a mental state’s being conscious requires an occurrent thought about it. Dispositional HOT theory demands only that the candidate mental state be disposed to produce an appropriate HOT….Some who are sensitive to the objections facing HOT theory but who accept that mental transitivity is deeply related to consciousness have tried to internalize, so to speak, the consciousness-conferring HOT within the target mental state itself. They regard conscious mental states as ones that are in some way self-representational….The Wide Intrinsicality View of Rocco Gennaro is a self-representational theory very closely related to HOT theory. This theory presents a clear example of self-representationality which highlights a number of issues for the approach. One is the transitivity principle itself. Another is the problem of understanding introspection from the self-representational point of view. A third is a rerun of the problem of conceptuality: the worry that requiring conscious beings to have a rich repertoire of concepts is deeply implausible.” (Seager, Theories of Consciousness, 3-4) 

“We have gleaned that ontological dependence is a synchronic relation which is non-causal. It is such that when X ontologically depends on Y then it is absolutely impossible for X to fail to exist if Y exists. In short, we can say that X ontologically depends on Y just in case Y provides the metaphysical ground for X….There is, however, another quite distinct dependence relation that we should also consider, that of epistemological dependence. What I mean here is the dependence of understanding some aspect of reality upon understanding some other aspect of reality….We can define absolute epistemological dependence thus: X is absolutely epistemologically dependent on Y if and only if it is impossible to understand X except via an understanding of Y….Furthermore, some domains can be understood independently but can also be understood via other domains. For our purposes, the important form of this weaker relation is one I will call reductive epistemological dependence, defined as: X is reductively epistemologically dependent on Y = it is possible to understand X via an understanding of Y.” (Seager, Theories of Consciousness, 12-13) 

“Descartes’ vision of the mind is the foundation of modern cognitive science. [For Descartes] the mind is a field of representations, encompassing perception and action and everything in between. Some of these representations are conscious but most are unconscious. A huge variety of cognitive processes operate upon them….According to [Descartes], all these representations are present to consciousness and the operations are presumed to be inferences, though by no means are all of these logically impeccable….[Descartes’] equation of perception with judgment [is] strikingly modern and in line, once again, with orthodox cognitive science, [and] the ground of Descartes’ assimilation is similarly modern. Since the mind is a field of representations, the contents before the mind are such as can be either correct or incorrect. Even when I “bracket” the referential nature of my representations they remain “in the space of” truth; they present a way the (or a) world could be. The notions of correctness and incorrectness lie within the realm of judgment and belief, rather than in some putative zone of pure sensation….[It] cannot be denied that the core idea of the representational mind is to be found in Descartes, and that it is this vision that provides the foundation of what is really the only currently viable scientific picture of how cognition works….Descartes says that between the mind and the world stands the nervous system, which serves (amongst other functions) to lay down representations of the world in the brain. These representations do not represent in virtue of resembling their objects. Descartes does not have a theory of representation which pins down the relation between a brain representation and its object but…it is some kind of causal/historical covariance theory, with admixtures of some kind of a “topological-homomorphism” resemblance theory thrown in now and then for good measure.” (Seager, Theories of Consciousness, 34-35) [Underlining is mine]

“An interesting identity theory has been advanced by Paul Churchland. His views depend on the theoretical paradigm of connectionism. Connectionist models begin with the idea of a network composed of very simple units whose individual outputs depend upon the set of inputs they receive from all the units feeding into them. In this, they are taken to be rather like the brain. It is possible to regard the whole network as defining an abstract space, within which each of its possible states forms a vector. Churchland’s identity theory is that there are sub-networks of the brain, operating in an essentially connectionist fashion, which can be identified with states of sensory consciousness. Thus the abstract space associated with these sub-networks is a space of qualitative consciousness, and the vectors correspond to particular sorts of sensory experience. A problem with this view is that it confuses the sources of conscious experience with experience itself. That is, while we might agree that activation of the appropriate neural “vectors” is required for conscious experience, this would not show that such activation was identical to experience. In fact, there are reasons to suspect that these activations can occur in the complete absence of consciousness.” (Seager, Theories of Consciousness, 57) [Underlining is mine] 

“Qualia are, for example, the visual qualities of colour, shape, texture, etc.; the auditory qualities of pitch and tone; the gustatory and olfactory qualities; the felt qualities of pain and pleasure, warmth, cold, pressure, and so on. Qualia are what make up the way it is to be a conscious being….[Qualia] do not exist in the absence of consciousness or, to put it another way, qualia are nothing but the qualitative or phenomenal “part” of conscious experience.” (Seager, Theories of Consciousness, 65-67) 

“I shall refer to the problem of explaining why experiences seem to have phenomenal properties as the illusion problem.” (Frankish, Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, 1) 

“When I talk of phenomenal properties not being real or not existing, I mean that they are not instantiated in our world. This is compatible with the claim that they exist qua properties—a claim which illusionists need not deny.” (Frankish, Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, 1) 

“I shall use the term “experience” itself in a functional sense, for the mental states that are the direct output of sensory systems. In this sense it is not definitional that experiences are phenomenally conscious.” (Frankish, Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, 2) [Underlining is mine] 

A sad artifact of a generation brought up in, and hypnotized by, 20th century gadgets and consumerist culture.

“Illusionists deny that experiences have phenomenal properties and focus on explaining why they seem to have them. [Illusionists] typically allow that we are introspectively aware of our sensory states but argue that this awareness is partial and distorted, leading us to misrepresent the states as having phenomenal properties. Of course, it is essential to this approach that the posited introspective representations are not themselves phenomenally conscious ones. It would be self-defeating to explain illusory phenomenal properties of experience in terms of real phenomenal properties of introspective states.” (Frankish, Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, 3) 

“Illusionism makes a very strong claim: it claims that…experiences do not really have qualitative, “what-it’s-like” properties, whether physical or non-physical….[Illusionism holds] that experiences have distinctive physical properties that are misrepresented by introspection…[and] denies that [physical] properties to which introspection is sensitive are qualitive….A quasi-phenomenal property is a non-phenomenal, physical property that introspection typically misrepresents as phenomenal. For example, quasi-phenomenal redness is the physical property that typically triggers introspective representations of phenomenal redness.  There is nothing phenomenal about such properties…” (Frankish, Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, 3-4) 

“Introspection delivers a partial, distorted view of our experiences, misrepresenting complex physical features as simple phenomenal ones. Sensory states have complex physical features, representational content, and cognitive, motivational, and emotional effects. We can introspectively recognize these states when they occur in us, but introspection doesn’t represent all their detail. Rather, it bundles it all together representing it as a simple, intrinsic phenomenal feel. Applying the magic metaphor, we might say that introspection sees the complex slight-of-hand performed by our sensory systems as a simple magical effect….Forming the theoretical belief that phenomenal properties are illusory does not change one’s introspective representations, and one remains strongly disposed to make all usual phenomenal judgments.” (Frankish, Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, 5-6) 

“One [form of illusionism holds that] sensory states…are the basis for the illusion. [These sensory states] will be representational states, possibly modality-specific analogue representations encoding features of the stimulus, such as position in an abstract quality space, egocentric location, and intensity. Accounts will differ, however, on the details of their content, functional role, relation to attentional processes, and so on. Theories will also differ as to which properties of these states are responsible for the illusion of phenomenality (their quasi-phenomenal properties). Is introspection sensitive only to the content of sensory states, or are we also aware of properties of their vehicles? Do reactions and associations evoked by our sensory states also contribute to the illusion of phenomenality?” (Frankish, Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, 6) 

“Relatedly, there are questions about our introspective access to our sensory states. Do we have internal monitoring mechanisms that generate representations of sensory states, and if so what sort of representations do they produce? (Are they thoughts about sensory states or perceptions of their neural vehicles?) Are the introspective representations conscious or unconscious? (They are not phenomenally conscious, of course, but they could be conscious in the psychological sense of being globally available.) Are sensory states continually monitored or merely available to monitoring?” (Frankish, Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, 7) 

“If realists are to maintain that phenomenal consciousness is a datum, then they must say that we have a special kind of epistemic access to it, which excludes any possibility of error. And since no causal process could provide such certainty, they must say that this access is not causally mediated. This is indeed what some realists propose. Chalmers holds that we are directly acquainted with phenomenal properties….This view protects the status of phenomenal consciousness as a datum but does so at a high cost. First, acquaintance can have no psychological significance. In order to talk or think about our phenomenal properties, we need to form mental representations of them, and since representational processes are potentially fallible, the certainty conferred by acquaintance could never be communicated, either to others or even to ourselves, considered as cognitive systems.” (Frankish, Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, 14) [Underlining is mine]

It’s all so tiresome. If only he put more effort into understanding and appreciating conceptions of Experience other than his own (which, I dare say, is an outmoded, unnecessarily garish, and philistine product of generational, cultural, and amnestic factors). Until then, he’ll continue to shadowbox caricatures of his own making. 

“What exactly is it that is claimed to be identical to brain process? It would appear [to Smart] that sensations are likely candidates, and Smart seems to make such a claim in a number of places. But here the issue becomes quite murky, for in other places he identifies brain processes not with sensations, but with the having of them (the having of a pain, the having of an after-image, etc.). To make matters worse, he also talks of brain processes as identical with experiences, the having of an experience, and even “the experience of having a sensation”. Smart does not distinguish between any of these, often using them interchangeably. But since they are not synonymous we need to sort them out to arrive at the most coherent of the alternatives.” (Noren, Identity, Materialism, and the Problem of Danglers, 320-321) [Underlining is mine]