The New Science of the Mind

by Mark Rowlands

  The claim that all objects of consciousness are transcendent is one that Sartre takes to be a transparent entailment of the idea that consciousness is intentional. The question is: why? When applied to mundane worldly objects-tables, chairs, and the like-the claim that these are transcendent is simply part of a commonsense realism about the external world.' But Sartre wants to claim more than this: he is claiming that all objects of consciousness are transcendent.

  Consider something that might be thought a prime candidate for inclusion among the contents of consciousness: a mental image. I close my eyes and picture the glass sitting on the table in front of me. To the extent that it is an object of consciousness, something of which I am aware, this image, Sartre claims, is a transcendent object: something irreducibly exterior to consciousness. His argument for this claim, in effect, presages a point more widely associated with Wittgenstein (1953). The image is, logically, just a symbol. In itself, it can mean anything at all, and therefore, in itself, means nothing at all. The image might signify the glass that sits on my table and from which I have recently been drinking. But it might signify glasses in general. Or it might signify glass objects in general; or things that have been on my table; and so on. In order to have meaning, it must be interpreted. For Sartre, unlike Wittgenstein, it is consciousness that interprets the image, and thus gives it meaning (or, more accurately, consciousness, in a given context, is the interpretation of the image-in the mode of not being it). Any intentionality possessed by the image is thus derivative on that supplied by the interpreting consciousness. Therefore, if all consciousness is consciousness of something, the mental image is not part of consciousness. The image has merely derived intentionality. The same holds true of all objects of consciousness. Nothing of which we are aware can be intentional in itself. Therefore, nothing of which we are aware can be part of consciousness. Thoughts, feelings, mental images, the ego: all these, for Sartre, are transcendent objects.

  It would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that Being and Nothingness is nothing more than an attempt to work out the implications of this idea. Consider, to take just one example, Sartre's famous discussion of anguish, or consciousness of freedom. In one passage, Sartre discusses anguish in the face of the past:

  [A]nguish in the face of the past ... is that of the gambler who has freely and sincerely decided not to gamble any more and who, when he approaches the gaming table, suddenly sees all his resolutions melt away ... what the gambler apprehends at this instant is again the permanent rupture in determinism; it is nothing which separates himself from himself. (Sartre 1943/1957, 69)

  The "nothing" in question is consciousness conceived of simply as directedness toward objects that are outside it. Sartre continues:

  After having patiently built up barriers and walls, after enclosing myself in the magic circle of a resolution, I perceive with anguish that nothing prevents me from gambling. The anguish is me since by the very fact of taking my position in existence as consciousness of being, I make myself not to be the past of good resolutions which I am.... In short, as soon as we abandon the hypothesis of the contents of consciousness, we must recognize that there is never a motive in consciousness; motives are only for consciousness. (Ibid., 70-71)

  The gambler's resolution, as something of which the gambler is aware, is a transcendent object, and therefore has no meaning in itself. It is merely a symbol. For it to be about anything, and so possess an efficacy vis-a-vis the gambler's future behavior, it must be continually interpreted anew by the animating consciousness.

  This animating consciousness is what we might think of as the noneliminable intentional core of experience. If we think of intentionality as directedness toward extrinsic-or as Sartre would put it, transcendentobjects, then we will look in vain to these objects if we want to understand intentionality. Intentionality cannot be found among transcendent things. Sartre's depiction of consciousness as nothingness is a reflection of the ideas that (i) consciousness is essentially intentional, and (ii) that intentionality is not to be found among transcendent things. But a list of the furniture of the world would be a list of all the things one can, in principle, encounter when one's consciousness is suitably directed. The world-being en-soi or in-itself-is a collection of transcendent things. Consciousness, as essentially intentional, is therefore not part of the furniture of the world. Consciousness is nothingness.

  6 Systematizing the Strands: The Argument

  Most recent treatments of experience presuppose, explicitly or implicitly, that experiences and their properties are objects of some sort. That is, they are items of which we are, or can be, aware. That is, in the terminology employed in this book, they conceive of experiences as empirical items. We have examined a clear historical strand of twentieth-century philosophy that suggests, strongly, that experiences must also have an aspect that is not like this at all. Whenever we are conscious of the world-that is, whenever the world appears to us as a collection of objects and properties-there must be an aspect of our experience of which we are not aware, and, when we are having that experience, cannot be aware. In Frege, this aspect appears in the form of sense playing one of its two possible roles. In Husserl, this aspect of experience is the Auffassungsinn, or, in his later work, the experiential noesis (East Coast interpretation) or noema (West Coast interpretation). In Sartre, the relevant aspect of experience is described as nothingness: consciousness as pure directedness toward the world. The underlying idea is, in each case, the same. When we have an experience, this is an aspect of the experience with which, or in virtue of which, the experience makes us aware of things. It is not something of which we are aware when we have that experience. If this historical line of argument is cogent, then consciousness does not consist simply in items of which we are aware-experiences and their various properties. Crucially, it also consists in that of which we are not aware: it consists in what allows us to be aware of whatever it is we are aware. Consciousness is not simply a collection of experiential objects. Consciousness is also (in a sense I shall try to make clear in the next chapter) the condition of possibility of experiential objects.

  In the remainder of this chapter, historical analysis gives way to logical argument. I am going develop and defend an argument that systematizes the historical strands identified in the preceding sections-strands found in Frege, Husserl, and Sartre. However, although the argument I shall develop here legitimizes those strands, it is logically distinct from them, and stands or falls independently of whether the interpretations of Frege, Husserl, and Sartre proffered in the preceding sections are correct.

  The argument I shall develop, in the first instance, is restricted to states that are both intentional and conscious: that is, it applies most obviously to experiences rather than sensations (and will apply to the latter only if the minority opinion that these are also intentional turns out to be true). I shall defend two claims:

  1. Experiences contain a noneliminable intentional core; and in this core we find the essence of intentionality.

  2. This essence of intentionality consists in a kind of disclosing or revealing activity.

  In the next chapter, I shall argue that these claims have important implications for any non-Cartesian science of the mind. First, these claims allow us to make considerable headway in understanding the idea of ownership of embodied and extended cognitive processes. Second, and more important, the central claims of the amalgamated mind-embodiment and extendedness-emerge naturally and obviously from these two claims. If these two claims are correct, then the thesis of the amalgamated mind turns out to be obviously true. In the rest of this chapter, I am going to defend these two claims.

  A. The Structure of Intentionality

  It is not, of course, clear that all mental items are intentional. It is common to cite sensations-pain and associated genera-as examples of mental items that are not, although this claim is disputed by many. The argument I am going to develop, in the first instance, is one that pertains to the nature of
intentionality, and so I shall be working only with states that are clearly both conscious and intentional-that is, experiences. In the next chapter, the focus will switch to cognitive states (and the consciousness condition will be relaxed). But, here, the argument will focus on, and be formulated in terms of, perceptual experiences-largely visual experiences.

  More significantly, I shall be working with a model of intentionality that has become sufficiently widely accepted to be referred to as the standard model. According to this, intentionality has a tripartite structure, comprising: (i) act, (ii) object, and (iii) mode of presentation of that object. This can legitimately be referred to as the standard model, being widely accepted by writers in both the phenomenological and analytic traditions. Widespread acceptance is, of course, not universal acceptance. The claim that all forms of intentional directedness must conform to this model has come under attack in recent decades, largely owing to the work of Kripke (1980). The argument I shall develop in this chapter need not, and does not, dispute the possibility of forms of intentionality that do not conform to the traditional model. However, it assumes that at least some forms of intentional directedness do thus conform. It applies only to states that exhibit this form of intentional directedness. Happily, the claim that perceptual experiences exhibit this form of intentional directedness is commonplace.'

  For example, it is common to hold that the content of perceptual experience is not object-involving (Martin 2002). Suppose you have a visual experience as of a bright red tomato. The claim that the content of your perceptual experience is not object-involving is the claim that it would be possible to replace the tomato with an exact duplicate without altering the content of your experience. In this, it is argued, the content of perceptual experience is different from that of demonstrative propositional attitudes, where substitution of the object would alter the content of the attitude. The nonobject-involving character of perceptual experience is easily accommodated by the standard or tripartite model of intentionality, since this ties the content to the mode of presentation of an object-a mode of presentation that could, in principle, remain the same given the substitution of an object with its exact duplicate. But it is more difficult to accommodate this claim on a Kripkean model.

  Therefore, I shall assume that the standard model provides an accurate account of the intentional directedness of at least some conscious statesperceptual experiences in particular. In at least some cases, intentional directedness is a tripartite structure composed of act, object, and mode of presentation of that object. The key to the argument I am going to develop in this chapter lies in a proper understanding of the concept of a mode of presentation. I shall argue that this apparently univocal concept masks a systematic ambiguity (one that, in effect, parallels the dual nature of Fregean sense).

  B. Modes of Presentation and the Noneliminable Intentional Core

  According to the standard model, the mode of presentation is what connects intentional act to intentional object. Employing a terminology made famous by Kaplan (1980), we can say that the intentional act has a character, and the content of this act can be expressed in the form of a description. The intentional object of the act is the object that satisfies this description. The mode of presentation of the object, then, consists in the content expressed in the relevant description.

  If an object satisfies the content-specifying description, however, this will be because the object possesses certain aspects: aspects that are picked out by the content-specifying description. Aspects are not to be identified with objective properties of objects. Aspects are objects of awareness in an intentional rather than an objective sense. Aspects are the ways in which objects are presented, the ways in which they appear, to subjects. And to the aspect there may or may not correspond an objective property of the object. An object may appear-be presented as-round, even if it, in fact, is not. A necessary condition of an object's having aspects is the intentional activity of a subject. Barring the sort of antirealism that sees all worldly properties as dependent on intentional activity, such activity is not a necessary condition of an object's having properties. Therefore, aspects are not identical with objective properties.

  Since the aspects of the object are that in virtue of which it satisfies the content-specifying description, and since the mode of presentation of the object is the content expressed in that description, this invites the almost irresistible identification: we identify the mode of presentation of the object with that object's aspects. This identification, however, is problematic: it can be both true and false, depending on how we understand the concept of a mode of presentation. And this reveals that this concept is crucially ambiguous.

  Aspects are intentional objects of awareness. I can attend not only to the tomato, but to its size, color, and luster. Indeed, typically I attend to the tomato in virtue of attending to these sorts of aspects. Thus, if we identify modes of presentation with aspects, and if we adhere to the standard model of intentionality as a relation whereby an object of awareness is determined only by way of a mode of presentation, it follows that whenever there is a mode of presentation-an aspect-there must be another mode of presentation to fix reference to it. Intentional directedness toward objects is mediated by way of a mode of presentation. Therefore, if aspects are intentional objects of experience, there must be a mode of presentation in virtue of which the intentional activity of a subject is directed toward these aspects.

  In short, intentional objects require modes of presentation. If aspects of objects are themselves intentional objects, then there must be a mode of presentation that allows them to be as such. So if modes of presentation are aspects, then any experience that contains them as intentional objects must contain another mode of presentation-one that is not, in that experience, an intentional object. And if we were to make this second mode of presentation into an object of awareness-an aspect of our experience of which we are aware-there must be another mode of presentation that enables us to do this.

  This is an issue of noneliminability rather than regress. It is not that any experience must contain an infinite number of modes of presentation. That regress is stopped as soon as we stop trying to make modes of presentation into objects of our awareness. For example, if we identify a mode of presentation of a tomato with an aspect of that tomato-its redness or shininess, for example-and so think of it as an intentional object of my experience, then it follows from the traditional model of intentionality that there must be another mode of presentation that allows it to be such. However, as long as I do not attempt to make this further mode of presentation into an intentional object, there is no need for an additional mode of presentation to fix reference to it. Therefore, in any given experience, there must be a mode of presentation that cannot, in that experience, be made into an intentional object. In the experience, this mode of presentation is not something of which we are aware (as we might, for example, be aware of aspects) but something with which or in virtue of which we are aware of the intentional object of our experience.

  The concept of a mode of presentation, in other words, admits of both empirical and transcendental interpretations in the sense introduced earlier. An item is empirical if it is the sort of thing that can be an intentional object, 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. Aspects of objects are empirical in this sense. A transcendental item, on the other hand, is one that is not and cannot be an intentional object-at least not in its transcendental role-because it is that which permits objects to appear under aspects. That is, in its transcendental role, a mode of presentation is a condition of possibility of intentional objects. An empirical mode of presentation is an aspect of objects. A transcendental mode of presentation is what makes a given empirical mode of presentation possible. This, ultimately, is what justifies the rubric transcendental.

  If we assume that the identification of modes of presentation with aspects is a legitimate way of understan
ding this concept-and it is certainly common to understand a mode of presentation in this way-then the standard model of intentionality has this clear entailment: any given experience must contain not only an empirical but also a transcendental mode of presentation. It is the transcendental mode of presentation that corresponds to Frege's first concept of sense-sense as determinant of reference rather than object of apprehension. It is in this transcendental mode of presentation that we find the noneliminable intentional core of the experience. If intentionality is understood as directedness toward objects, then it is in the transcendental mode of presentation that this directedness is to be found. Empirical modes of presentation-aspects-are simply objects consciousness is directed upon. They are not the sort of thing that could constitute the directedness of consciousness toward its objects. This is, in essence, the Sartrean point that underwrites his claim that consciousness is nothingness. Consciousness has no content, because consciousness is intrinsically intentional, and any content of consciousness (understood as something of which the subject is aware) would not be intrinsically intentional. The point is, ultimately, a straightforward one: any intentional object-mundane object, aspect, empirical mode of presentation-is something toward which consciousness or intentional activity is directed. Therefore, if we want to understand intentional directedness itself, we will have to look elsewhere. We will not find intentional directedness in the objects of that directedness.

  The transcendental mode of presentation, on the other hand, is not an intentional object of the experience, and in its transcendental role cannot be an object of any experience. In its transcendental role, it is that which allows mundane worldly objects to be presented to subjects by way of aspects and, thus, that which allows the intentional states of subjects to be directed toward the world. If intentionality is understood as the directedness of consciousness toward its objects, it is in this noneliminable intentional core of experience that this directedness resides. This has one implication that is crucial for the purpose of defending the theses of embodied and extended cognition: intentional directedness toward the world consists in a form of revealing or disclosing activity.