Abstract
The phenomenal properties of conscious mental states happen to be exclusively accessible from the first-person perspective. Consequently, some philosophers consider their existence to be incompatible with materialist metaphysics. In this paper I criticise one particular argument that is based on the idea that for something to be real it must (at least in principle) be accessible from an intersubjective perspective. I argue that the exclusively subjective access to phenomenal contents can be explained by the very particular nature of the epistemological relation holding between a subject and his own mental states. Accordingly, this subjectivity does not compel us to deny the possibility that phenomenal contents are ontologically objective properties. First, I present the general form of the argument that I will discuss. Second, I show that this argument makes use of a criterion of reality that is not applicable to the case of subjective experience. Third, I discuss a plausible objection and give an argument for rejecting observation models of self-knowledge of phenomenal contents. These models fall prey to the homunculus illusion.
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Notes
Kripke (1972) argues that both “pain” and “firing of C-fibers” are rigid designators.
Indeed, it is not easy to give a positive account of ‘ontological subjectivity’. Defining it as the condition of being real, but only from a subjective point of view, falls short.
I use ‘materialism’ instead of ‘physicalism’, for the latter is often taken to be the stronger thesis that every real phenomenon can be captured in terms of the language of the natural sciences.
‘Every physical property’ includes not only microphysical properties, but properties at every level. It is an open question whether macroscopic properties logically supervene on microscopic ones, which I would answer on the negative. Cf. Kistler (2010).
I will only be concerned with conscious phenomenal properties. Rosenthal (2005) claims there are unconscious ones. Note that statement (b) plays a key role in the famous “knowledge argument” (Jackson 1986): Mary, before leaving the black-and-white room, is said not to know the phenomenal property ‘red’ (what it is like to see red), since she has never had the experience of seeing red. To have had the experience of seeing red is tantamount to having had subjective access to the phenomenal property ‘red’.
Note that G. Strawson (2006) develops a version of panpsychism that he claims is compatible with physicalism and hence with (a).
Even though some structural characteristics of ‘phenomenal spaces’ can be inferred from behavioural analyses, this does not contradict the statement that phenomenal contents are only accessible from the subjective perspective. Certainly, if phenomenal properties are physical properties, they are accessible in the same sense that the property ‘mass’ or ‘electric charge’ is accessible. But besides this third person point of view type of access, I will claim that there is another type of epistemological relation a subject can establish with—and only with—his own mental states, which is the one that presents phenomenal properties as phenomenal properties.
Scientific realists and antirealists disagree about the existence of unobservables. However, the problem posed by unobservables in the realism/anti-realism debate is orthogonal to the present one. There, unobservability is not related to the exclusivity of a subjective access. Were our senses powerful enough, we would have intersubjective access to, e.g., a microscopic particle. Nevertheless, it can be claimed that, from the scientific point of view, phenomenal properties are to be considered sui generis unobservable properties.
Note that even if a subject, in order to be able to establish an epistemological relation with an X, may require special equipment and skills, it is (in principle) possible for him to meet these requirements.
I am indebted to Max Kistler for the analogy between self-knowledge of mental states and self-knowledge of body positions.
For mental states to be ‘embodied’ does not mean ‘within’ or ‘contained in’ a body. It means that they are (for materialists) physical states belonging to the body they are part of.
The interpretation of the experiments used by eliminativists to support the claim that no satisfactory descriptions of phenomenal contents can be given is controversial. For the sake of the argument I will accept that in fact we are usually misled or laden by folk psychology concerning phenomenological descriptions.
For instance, Dennett (1991, chap. 11) seems to argue in this direction.
This is indeed the position I will defend in forthcoming work.
Daniel Dennett (2005) would say that, precisely, there is no ‘I’. There is no homunculus enjoying the “Cartesian Theatre” show. I agree with this claim, but for different reasons. First, I take conscious mental states to have the non-illusory property that there is something it is like to be in those (somehow bound) states. Second, Dennett also talks as if there were a subject who would or not have access to some mental states or properties of mental states: “ […] you do not “have access to” the intrinsic qualities of your own experiences in any interesting sense, any more than outside observers do. You have access only to the relations between them that you can detect” (2005, p. 81, italics in the original).
In G. Strawson (2009, p.59) words: “There can’t be experience without a subject of experience simply because experience is necessarily experience for—for someone-or-something. Experience necessarily involves experiential ‘what it-is-likeness,’ and experiential what-it-is-likeness is necessarily what-it-is-likeness for someone-or-something. Whatever the correct account of the nature of this experiencing something, its existence cannot be denied” (italics in the original).
Even when you are looking at yourself in a mirror, subject and object are detachable; you may not know that it is you that you are looking at.
A mind can be considered as the complete history of someone’s mental states, or as a (wide enough) time-slice of this history. In discussing conscious experience, I am using the second sense.
If materialism is true—and I have supposed that it is—the psychological subject supervenes on some physical system undergoing some neural processes.
Note that consequently if the experiencer is real, so are the phenomenal properties of his conscious mental states.
It could be argued that conscious mental states are not necessary for the epistemological activity of a (human) subject obtaining perceptual knowledge. For instance, subjects who suffer blindsight claim to be completely blind regarding some part of their visual field. However, experiments show that there is some perception of the items belonging to the blindsight field: when asked to ‘guess’ about some features of these items, subjects are well above chance for the correctness of their answers. But does this kind of unconscious perception gives rise to knowledge? I think it does not: these perceptual contents do not produce (or amount to) beliefs, since the subjects think they are randomly guessing; neither are these contents used in appropriate ways (for instance, the subjects do not spontaneously grasp a blindsighted object).
Note that even if the subset of conscious mental states corresponding to the ‘I’ was not permanent, for the mental states constituting the ‘I’ could change, each mental state while belonging to the ‘I’ would still be conscious and nevertheless inaccessible.
I am indebted to Conor McHugh for the suggestion of this point.
Indeed, this is the thesis I will defend in forthcoming work: the property for a mental state being conscious, i.e., that there is something it is like to be in that state, is an intrinsic (and emergent) property of a complex physical state.
Moreover, it seems plausible to attribute conscious experience to some non-human animals, despite their lack of metarepresentational capacities, against what HOTs entail.
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Acknowledgments
I am indebted to Max Kistler, Joëlle Proust, Conor McHugh, Kirk Michaelian, Santiago Echeverry, the participants of the “Carnap lectures 2010” workshop (Bochum-Germany), the participants of the “3rd CEU Philosophy Graduate Conference” (Budapest-Hungary), and an anonymous reviewer of Philosophia for very useful and enlightening discussions and comments.
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Bernal Velásquez, R.J. Materialism and the Subjectivity of Experience. Philosophia 39, 39–49 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-010-9276-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-010-9276-3