Abstract
One of the major divides in contemporary philosophy of consciousness is on whether phenomenal consciousness requires some form of self-consciousness. The disagreement revolves around the following principle (or something in the vicinity):
IA: For any subject S and phenomenally conscious mental state C of S, C is phenomenally conscious only if S is aware of C.
We may call the relevant awareness of one’s own mental states “inner awareness” and the principle “Inner Awareness Principle” (IA). In a paper recently published in this Journal, Stoljar (2021) puts forward a massive theoretical criticism of IA. He addresses many extant arguments for IA, and argues, for each of them, that it is unpersuasive. In this paper, I focus on what strike me as the two most compelling arguments in Stoljar’s list: the argument from memory and the argument from attention. I argue that Stoljar’s objections to them can be rebutted; accordingly, those arguments promise to constitute the steadiest theoretical ground for IA.
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Notes
My disagreement on those assumptions, however, will not play a role in my criticism of his arguments.
See also Williford (2019), who shows how a self-acquaintance view of consciousness can overcome the infinite-regress problem.
Where: “S is (cognitively) aware of a’s being F iff S knows (or believes) that a is F.” “S is (perceptually) aware of a’s being F iff S perceives (e.g. via the senses) a’s being F”. “S is (phenomenally) aware of a’s being F iff (a) S is aware of a’s being F and (b) it is possible that S is not (cognitively) aware of a’s being F and is not (perceptually) aware of a’s being F” (2021, pp. 3–4).
Stoljar characterizes “phenomenal awareness” only negatively (i.e., as awareness that is neither cognitive nor perceptual; cf. Footnote 3) without offering any positive construal of it. Thus, it may be that the notion at work in his argument does not imply that phenomenal awareness is conscious and thereby phenomenally manifest. If by “phenomenal awareness” Stoljar means a notion that entails “possibly unconscious awareness,” then his notion of phenomenal awareness is indeed compatible with higher-order thought and higher-order perception theories. However, although some authors maintain that there can be unconscious phenomenology (Carruthers 2005; Rosenthal 2005), this is arguably not the orthodox view and indeed most philosophers seem to agree that phenomenal awareness is always conscious and phenomenally manifest. For this reason, the more neutral formulation of IA I propose in the main text is preferable. At any rate, neither Stoljar’s arguments nor my criticism of them rely on a specific characterization of “phenomenal awareness.”
The argument from transitivity and the related reductio argument (number 3 and 4 respectively in Stoljar’s list), for example, are manifestly question-begging. Here is the argument from transitivity (Stoljar 2021, p. 8):
P1. I am in a (phenomenally) conscious state C iff I am conscious of my being in C.
P2. I am conscious of my being in C iff I am aware (in some way) of my being in C.
C. Ergo, I am in a conscious state C only if I am aware (in some way) of my being in C.
Arguably, P1 of this argument directly entails IA. Similar considerations apply to the reductio argument (Stoljar 2021, p. 9):
[S]uppose (a) I am in conscious state C and (b) I am not aware (in any way) of my being in C […]:
P1. If I am not aware (in any way) of my being in C, then C is not a conscious state.
C1. Ergo, C is not a conscious state (from P1 and (b)).
P2. But C is a conscious state (from a).
C2 Ergo, C both is a conscious state and is not a conscious state. Contradiction.
As noted by Stoljar himself, here P1 is just the contrapositive of IA.
There are some other arguments in Stoljar’s list that I think could be convincing if properly developed. However, due to space constraints, I focus on the two that strike me as most compelling.
For a fuller and more developed criticism of Stoljar’s “perceptual model,” see Giustina (2022).
This is how Kriegel (2019, p. 146) reconstructs it. The other reconstructions are based on similar premises.
An anonymous referee objected to P1 that, according to some recent empirical research on memory, episodic memories systematically misrepresent the event that originated them (see, e.g., Schacter et al. forthcoming). The idea is that only some salient properties and objects are actually recalled; the rest of the memory experience is the result of the subject’s a posteriori “reconstruction of the scene,” formed on the basis of the subject’s context, needs, and interests. However, even if all memories were “reconstructions of the scene” in the sense just described, this would not threaten the memory argument. For one thing, what P1 says is that being aware of E is a necessary condition for S to episodically recall E—not that it is (also) a sufficient condition for S to veridically episodically recall E. So, P1 is compatible with all of S’s memories being (partial) misrepresentations. Moreover, as pointed out by the referee, although (some) episodic memories misrepresent the relevant past event, there are at least some elements of some events (some properties and objects that were salient to the subject at the time of the event’s occurrence) that the subject can correctly recall. If the subject can recall them, according to P1, the subject must have been aware of them.
For a much more extensive defense of P1 and P2 see Kriegel (2019).
Although Stoljar works with the previous, unrefined version of the argument, his objection applies to the refined and more charitable version as well.
This formulation of P1 is also straightforwardly true, since introspection does imply conscious attention to the experience.
The argument would be question-begging if P1 was “For any conscious state C I am in, I consciously attend to C,” since consciously attending to C is just a way of being aware of C; such a premise, besides being false, would implicitly state the argument’s conclusion. It being possible for one to consciously attend to C (which is all it is stated by P1 of the attention argument as I articulate it), instead, is not a way of being aware of C. As noted, that for it being possible for one to consciously attend to x requires S’s being or becoming aware of x is just a fact about conscious attention. Therefore, P1 of my argument does not implicitly state the conclusion and does not make the argument question-begging.
This objection was raised by an anonymous referee.
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Acknowledgements
This paper benefitted from very helpful discussions with Davide Bordini, Arnaud Dewalque, and Uriah Kriegel. I am particularly grateful to Uriah Kriegel for his comments on a previous draft.
Funding
This study was supported by Fonds De La Recherche Scientifique—FNRS.
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Giustina, A. Nature Does Not Yet Say No to Inner Awareness: Reply to Stoljar. Erkenn 89, 861–871 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-022-00557-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-022-00557-3