The New Science of the Mind

by Mark Rowlands

  2 Experiences as Empirical: The Pull of Objectivity

  Most recent treatments of experience presuppose-sometimes implicitly but usually explicitly-that experiences are objects of some sort. By this, I do not mean, of course, that they think of experiences as objects as opposed to some other category of existent-events, states, processes, properties, facts, and so on. Rather, I mean that they conceive of experiences as items of which we are, or can be, aware. That is, in the terminology I am going to employ, they conceive of experiences as empirical items. I use this term in a recognizably Kantian sense. To say that an item is empirical is simply to claim that it is an actual or potential object of consciousness: it is the sort of thing of which I might become aware if my awareness is suitably engaged.

  It is not only experiences but also their properties or aspects that can be empirical in this sense. I can attend both to my experience of a bright red apple and to, as Locke might put it, the forcefulness and vivacity of this experience. Moreover, among these properties is a particularly important-arguably definitive-one: what it is like to have or undergo the experience. This too is one of the things of which we can be aware in the having of the experience. What distinguishes me from my zombie twin, so the idea goes, is that when we have an experience of a given type, I am, but he is not, aware of what it is like to have the experience. It is my awareness of the phenomenal character of my experiences that distinguishes me from my zombie twin.

  In an earlier work (Rowlands 2001), I argued that this empirical-or as I then preferred to call it, objectualist-model of experience is false. Here, I shall be somewhat less sanguine-but only because my former youthful level of sanguinity is not required for the arguments I am going to develop in the remainder of this book. Here, I shall argue that the empirical conception of consciousness is not so much false as incomplete. Experiences and their properties, I shall accept, may be items of which we are aware when our attending is suitably engaged. But they are also, necessarily, more than this. There is an aspect of any experience that cannot be an item of which we are aware in the having of that experience. It is here that we find the intentionality of the experience. I shall argue that understanding why this is so, and the sense in which it is so, is essential to a proper understanding of the thesis of the amalgamated mind.

  The precise nature of the relation between a subject and her experiences required for her to be aware of these experiences and/or their properties is a matter of dispute. The following categories-not necessarily mutually incompatible ones-have proved influential:

  1. Experiences and what it is like to have them are objects of knowledge.

  2. Experiences and what it is like to have them are objects of introspection.

  3. Experiences and what it is like to have them are items to which we have access.

  Each of these claims can be subdivided further, depending on one's favored model of the implementation of each type of relation. It is here, for example, that the debate between first-order and higher-order models of consciousness becomes relevant. The discussion to be developed in this chapter, however, proceeds at this more abstract level represented by (1)-(3).

  Frank Jackson's (1982, 1986) knowledge argument is explicitly predicated on claim (1). The knowledge argument is based on the assumption that what it is like to have an experience can be an object of knowledge-a peculiarly factive attitude, but nonetheless a form of awareness in the general sense invoked in this chapter. Mary, despite the impediment of being locked away in a monochromatic environment for her entire life, nevertheless becomes the world's leading authority on the neurology of color vision. In fact she knows everything there is to know about the neural processes involved in seeing colors. However, Jackson comments:

  It seems, however, that Mary does not know all there is to know. For when she is let out of the black-and-white room, she will learn what it is like to see something red, say. This is rightly described as learning-she will not say "ho, hum." Hence physicalism is false. (Jackson 1986, 292)

  Before her release, she does not know what it is like to see red. After her release she does. This is what she learns upon her release. What it is like to see red, therefore, becomes an object of her knowledge. I am presupposing only a very minimal sense of "object of knowledge": if s knows that p, then p is an object of knowledge for s. This claim is distinct from, and does not entail, more specific claims concerning the nature of this knowledge or the object. For example, to claim that p is an object of knowledge for s does not entail that p is some sort of peculiar "mental object"-a particular with irreducible and intrinsic phenomenal qualities on which the mind can direct its knowledge-acquiring gaze. I doubt that there are any such objects, and I am using the term "knowledge" in such a way that it entails no such thing. The sense of the term is so broad that it is compatible with any proposal concerning what a subject knows when he or she knows what it is like to have an experience. If there is a presupposition here, it is a tautology.

  Colin McGinn's (1989a,b, 1991, 2004) defense of his transcendental naturalist position explicitly requires claim (2). His arguments presuppose that what it is like to have an experience is an object of introspection-in the broad sense of "object" presupposed in this book. Thus:

  Our acquaintance with consciousness could hardly be more direct; phenomenological description thus comes (relatively) easily. "Introspection" is the name of the faculty through which we catch consciousness in all its vivid nakedness. By virtue of possessing this cognitive faculty we ascribe concepts of consciousness to ourselves; we thus have "immediate access" to the properties of consciousness. (McGinn 1991, 8)

  Through introspection, we become aware, introspectively, of what it is like to have a conscious experience, or, as McGinn puts it: it is through introspection that we catch consciousness in "all its vivid nakedness." What it is like is, thus, an object of our introspection: something given to us by a form of "immediate access." Again, given the broad conception of object presupposed in this book-one that is entirely neutral with regard to the nature of the object (and, indeed, the nature of introspection)-this is a tautology. If you can introspect what it is like to have or undergo an experience, then what it is like is an object of introspection.

  I have been emphasizing the entirely unremarkable character of the idea that what it is like to have an experience is an object-in the sense required by this book-of awareness. If the claim that what it is like to have an experience is an object of awareness is tautological then it can hardly be false. Nonetheless, it is disingenuous because it is incomplete. The very ordinariness of the idea that consciousness is an object of awareness masks something deeply significant about consciousness. What this is begins to emerge if we turn our attention to (3). Here, Thomas Nagel's (1974) position is particularly instructive, because here we find an implicit commitment to (3), and this, in the work of the arch-champion of subjectivity, brings out just how widespread and tenacious-utterly unremarkable-is the empirical conception of experience. We also begin to see just what this conception hides.

  In his seminal (1974) paper "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" Nagel argued that (1) "Fundamentally, an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism-something that it is like for the organism" (Nagel 1974, 166). However, (2) "If physicalism is to be defended, the phenomenological features of experience must themselves be given a physical account" (ibid., 167). But (3) "When we examine their subjective character it seems that such a result is impossible. The reason is that every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective physical theory will abandon that point of view" (ibid., 167).

  What is important for our purposes is not the success or otherwise of Nagel's argument, but a particular conception of subjectivity embodied in it. Nagel begins with a certain common understanding of objectivity. An "objective fact par excellence" is "the kind that can be observed and understood from many points of view" (ibi
d., 172). Objective facts are ones to which there exist many routes of epistemic access. It is the existence of such many and varied routes, capable of being adopted by many and varied individuals, that constitutes the objectivity of an item. In short, objective items are ones to which epistemic access is generalized. Taking this concept of objectivity as primary, Nagel then constructs a concept of subjectivity based on the guiding metaphor of a route of access. Subjective phenomena are ones to which our routes of access are reduced to one: they are items to which our access is idiosyncratic. To think of subjective phenomena in this way is to think of them as part of a region of reality that in itself is just like any other. This region of reality differs from other regions not in any of its intrinsic features: the only difference lies in our mode of access to it. Our port of epistemic entry to this region of reality is unusually small. Classically objective phenomena are like objects on a savannah, and can be approached from many different directions. Conscious phenomena are locked up in a remote canyon whose only route of access is a narrow tunnel.

  This way of thinking about consciousness is, I think, part of the pull of the idea that all reality is intrinsically objective. Objectivity is taken as primary, and subjectivity is understood as a derivative and truncated form of objectivity. And the notion of a mode or route of access lies at the heart of both concepts. Thus, it is our having idiosyncratic (i.e., truncated) access to an item that constitutes the subjectivity of that item. If only our routes of access could somehow be beefed up; if only they could be suitably generalized, then the very same item would become objective. The idea that reality is intrinsically objective is the idea that this generalizing of routes of access could, in principle, take place without any change in the intrinsic nature of the object toward which this access is directed.

  To see the significance of this way of understanding the subjectiveobjective distinction, consider Nagel's tendency to slide from claims such as:

  Every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view. (Ibid., 167, emphasis mine)

  to claims such as:

  For if the facts of experience-facts about what it is like for the experiencing organism-are accessible only from one point of view, then it is a mystery how the true character of experiences could be revealed in the physical operation of that organism. (Ibid., 172)

  The claim that a subjective phenomenon is one essentially connected with a single point of view mutates into the claim that a subjective phenomenon is one that is essentially accessible from only a single point of view. However, these two claims are not equivalent. To suppose that they are is a symptom of the grip exerted on us by the empirical conception of experience. To see why this is so, we must first look more closely at the alternative. This is to think of experience not as empirical but as transcendental. This term I am also employing in a recognizably Kantian sense that opposes the transcendental to the empirical. If empirical items are objects of consciousness, then transcendental items are what allow empirical items to be as such. Transcendental items are, as Kant put it, conditions of possibility of empirical items.

  The idea that experiences have a transcendental as well as empirical element has the curious distinction of being both mundane and difficult (although not, of course, in the same respects). Here is the mundane part. According to the empirical conception, experiences and their properties are items of which we are, or can be, aware when we have those experiences with their properties. But experiences, of course, are not just objects of awareness but also acts. It is through inward engagement of my awareness that I make my experiences and what it is like to have them into objects of my awareness. My inward engagement is, in this case, an act of awareness. This claim is utterly unremarkable. If I am aware of a conscious state and/or its properties-I am aware of my pain or what it is like to have it-then my conscious experience at that time consists not just in that of which I am aware; it consists also in my awareness of it.

  The idea that experiences are not merely empirical items but also transcendental ones is, in part, an expression of this rather commonplace observation. In general, experiences are not just items of which we are aware. They are also items in virtue of which we are aware, both of nonmental objects and their properties and also of other experiences. As acts of awareness, experiences are items that reveal objects to subjects. Thus, experiences are not simply empirical things: they are also transcendental. As transcendental, experiences are not objects of awareness but that in virtue of which objects-whether mundane physical objects or other experiences-are revealed to a subject precisely as objects of that subject's experience.

  A more precise understanding of the idea of experiences as transcendental requires us to move from the mundane to the difficult. And, here, a good place to begin is one that might seem an unlikely one: Frege's ruminations on (and indeed tribulations with) the concept of sense.

  3 Two Senses of Sense

  The discussion to follow is perhaps best regarded as a constructive misreading of Frege's attempts to understand the idea of linguistic sense. It is a misreading because it attributes to Frege a concern with the psychological that he did not have, and so veers in the direction of a psychologicm that he eschewed. It is constructive because the primary concern of this chapter is, of course, the psychological: specifically, conscious, intentional experience. The thesis I shall defend is that the advertised Fregean ruminations on sense translate almost exactly into contemporary discussions of consciousness. And this reveals an important way in which those discussions are incomplete.

  As many commentators have noted, there is a pronounced tension in Frege's account of sense (Sinn). Frege wants to attribute two distinct types of feature or function to senses or thoughts (Gedanken). On the one hand, Frege claims that senses can be objects of mental acts in a way akinalthough not identical-to that in which physical objects can be the objects of mental acts (Harnish 2000). Physical objects can be perceived; senses or thoughts (i.e., the senses of declarative sentences) can be apprehended. Moreover, when a thought is apprehended, Frege claims, "something in [the thinker's] consciousness must be aimed at the thought" (Frege 1918/1994: 34-35). In one of its guises, therefore, a sense is an intentional object of an act of apprehension.

  However, according to Frege, senses also have the role of fixing reference. Although senses can be objects of reference, that is not their only, or even typical, role. In its second guise, the function of sense is to direct the speaker's or hearer's thinking not to the sense itself but to the object picked out by that sense. In this case, senses do not figure as intentional objects of mental acts, but as items in virtue of which a mental act can have an object. In their customary role, senses are determinants of reference: they are what fix reference rather than objects of reference.

  It is clear that there is a tension between these two ways of understanding sense. It is not simply that these characterizations are distinct. More importantly, when sense is playing the role described in the first characterization, it cannot also play the role described in the second, and vice versa. This inability to play both roles simultaneously shows itself in a certain noneliminability that attaches to sense in its reference determining role. In its first guise, a sense is an object of apprehension: an intentional object of a mental act. But the second characterization of sense tells us that whenever there is an intentional object of a mental act, there is also a sense that fixes reference to this object. If we combine these characterizations, therefore, it seems we must conclude that whenever sense exists as an intentional object of a mental act of apprehension, there must, in that act, be another sense that allows it to exist in this way. And if this latter sense were also to exist as an intentional object of a mental act, there would have to be yet another sense that allowed it to do so. Sense in its reference-determining guise, therefore, has a noneliminable status within any intentional act. In any intentional act, there is always a sense that is not, and in that act cannot be, an intentional object!

 
It is the second way of thinking about sense, sense as determinant of reference, which underwrites the familiar idea that Fregean sense is inexpressible: as something that can be shown but not said. Dummett states the initial worry: "even when Frege is purporting to give the sense of a word or symbol, what he actually states is what its reference is" (Dummett 1973, 227). Some have tried to upgrade this worry to a charge of outright incoherence. Consider an analogy employed by Searle (1958). There is a collection of tubes through which marbles pass to drop into holes below; in some cases different tubes may lead to the same hole. We cannot succeed in getting a marble to lodge in a tube; it always passes through the tube to the hole beneath. Senses, it might be thought, are like this. And, if so, they are not the sorts of thing that can be grasped. Thus, sense in its reference-determining role undermines the possibility of its figuring as an object of apprehension.

  This conclusion would, however, be premature. Searle's analogy invites us to think of sense as a route to a referent. This sits comfortably with Frege's idea that different senses can determine one and the same reference: there can, similarly, be many routes to one and the same location. However, the analogy introduces too much of a gap between sense and reference. One might imagine, for example, someone switching around the tubes so that they now pass into entirely different holes. A better way of thinking about reference is not as route to a referent, but as a way or manner of presenting a referent (Dummett 1981). If the sense of an expression is the manner in which we determine its referent, then should we want to convey the sense of an expression, all we can do is choose a means of stating the referent where this means displays the sense we wish to convey. Thus, we say what the referent of an expression is, and in choosing the particular means for saying this, we thereby show what the sense of the expression is (Dummett 1973, 227).2