1. I do not agree that a clear advantage of HOT is that it can provide some principled distinction between the conscious and the unconscious, as has been supposed
(by Miguel and Alex). The idea that what it is for some state to be conscious is that it can be thought about draws the conscious-unconscious distinction as whatever is thought about is conscious, whatever is not thought about is unconscious. But this is trivial, you do not need HOT, you can merely say that unconscious states are latent or dispositional and conscious actual. Furthermore if the HOT theorist takes the conscious-unconscious distinction in this way, how does he propose to explain the difference between veridical perception and dreaming (unless he takes dreaming to be conscious-but again there would have to be some difference)?

2. I was reading Dennett again and got lost. Suppose we take the easiest example of Dennett
in chapter 6 Time and Experience the disc and the ring in a metacontrast task:
“if a stimulus is flashed briefly on a screen (for, say, 3Omsec — about as long as a
single frame of television) and then immediately followed by a second
“masking” stimulus, subjects report seeing only the second stimulus.
The first stimulus might be a colored disc and the second stimulus acolored ring that fits closely outside the space where the disc was displayed.If you could put yourself in the subject’s place, you would see foryourself; you would be prepared to swear that there was only onestimulus: the ring” (Dennett 1991:142).
The Stalinist explanation is that in this type of task is that the second masking prevents conscious experience of the first stimulus (or prevents the first stimulus “from finding its way in consciousness” (ibid). What is embarassing in this Stalinist picture according to Dennett is that “The first stimulus never plays onthe stage of consciousness, but has whatever effects it has entirelyunconsciously” ibid. The unconscious influence is said to be proved by experiments which show that if subjects are made to guess the location of the first masked stimulus they have a good chance of getting it right. So the paradox is that stimuli can influence us unconsciously “without playing on the theatre of consciousness” (Dennett 1991: 142).
On the Orwellian alternative: ” subjects are indeed conscious of the first stimulus ( which explains their capacity to guess correctly) but their memoryof this conscious experience is almost entirely obliterated by the second stimulus (which is why they deny having seen it,
in spite of their telltale better-than-chance guesses). The result is a standoff — and an embarrassment to both sides, since neither side can identify any crucial experimental result that that would settle the dispute” (Dennett 1991: 142).
So is what is embarassing the issue whether a) there exists unconscious perception or b) unconscious influence on the two accounts? One could not really say given the difficulty in interpreting Dennett at times. I think however that a basic target of Dennett’s criticism is the idea of a temporal stream of conscious experience made up of slices which we can cut and which could remain static like the frames envisages and which has a temporal dimension which represents the temporal order of the world.

Sorry for the long reply, not my cup of tea.

Are you saying that ‘explains’ induces a nonextensional context? I would resist that. If I have explained how a gases temperature has gone up, I have also explained how the energy of the molecules in the gas has gone up (even if I don’t know I have done this, it follows from the identity, no?).

I’d like to begin by tackling some criticisms from Richard’s commentary and David’s reply to my paper. One of the biggest worries seems to be that the view that I attack, HOTs, is not the most charitable version of the higher-order view. My first aim is to show that the criticism I raised for HOTs also applies to HOTi:

HOTi: A mental state is conscious IFF one has a further mental state representing oneself as being in that state, caused non-inferentially.

The main difference between HOTs and HOTi is that HOTi allows for misrepresentation of our first-order mental states. Certainly representing x doesn’t usually require that x exists. One of the primary benefits of representationalism is its ability to give an account of illusion and misperception. As David put it, HOTi allows for the possibility that appearance and reality do not coincide.

The problem is that in allowing for the possibility of misrepresentation, the higher-order view sacrifices an explanation of state consciousness. Consider how HOTi would account for empty thoughts. Richard writes, “When there is an empty thought there is a state that is being represented.” Consistent with HOTi, we should interpret this as the claim that empty thoughts represent some state x, but that representing x doesn’t require that x exists. There is a higher-order state that represents oneself as being in some non-existent first-order state. Note that HOTi doesn’t tell us that the higher-order state is conscious. On the higher-order view, proponents typically hold that a higher-order thought is unconscious, unless it is represented by some further higher-order state (e.g. Rosenthal 2000 discussion of higher order thought and metacognitive judgments). But in the case we are considering, there is only the higher-order state, since the represented first-order state doesn’t exist. So where is the conscious state in this picture? As far as I can see, HOTi gives us no better answer to this question than HOTs. We now need to explain why some higher-order states are conscious states with a first-order content (e.g. green thing), while other higher-order states are conscious states with a higher-order content (e.g. I’m seeing a green thing), and still others are not conscious at all.

Perhaps the solution to this problem is to abandon HOTi as a theory of state consciousness in particular. I’m curious as to whether David had something like this in mind when he wrote: “…the property of a state’s being conscious is not like the property of an object’s being round or red; it’s not properly speaking a property at all. It’s simply an apsect of the way our mental lives appear to us subjectively.”

In his commentary, Richard similarly suggested that we should separate questions concerning state consciousness from questions concerning phenomenal consciousness. He offered a higher-order principle for phenomenal consciousness:

HOROR: Phenomenal consciousness just is a higher-order representation of a representation.

I have a few concerns with HOROR. My biggest worry is that HOROR makes all higher-order mental representations conscious just in virtue of being higher-order. This seems psychologically implausible. Unconscious cognition accomplishes a wide variety of sophisticated tasks. Some of these tasks may require a mental state that represents some other mental state. To stipulate that all higher-order representation is phenomenally conscious seems premature. Another concern I have is that HOROR may be redundant. If I understood him correctly, Richard thinks that one could hold both HOROR and HOTi as an account of phenomenal and state consciousness, respectively. But the ambitious version of HOTi is an account of phenomenal state consciousness. It tells us when a subject will be in a phenomenally conscious state, and so, when she will be phenomenally conscious. HOROR seems to be needed only if we think that a subject can be phenomenally conscious, even though she isn’t in any phenomenally conscious state. What would be an example of this kind of phenomenal consciousness? In the absence of examples, is there another reason to hold HOROR?

Finally, I’d like to address Richard’s question about my alternative interpretation of Charles Bonnett Syndrome. I suggested that the symptoms of Charles Bonnett Syndrome might be better explained by first-order belief or judgment, rather than an empty higher-order perceptual representation. Richard asked whether I was suggesting that subjects with Charles Bonnett Syndrome are wrong when they claim to have visual phenomenology. I agree with Richard that this isn’t particularly plausible. While a belief that I am having a visual experience suffices to explain subjects’ reports, taking this interpretation goes against the principle of charity that we typically extend to other human beings. When they tell us that they’re having a vivid conscious experience, we should at least lean toward taking them at their word. So I’d be happy to say that the belief (or judgment) has a phenomenal content, maybe even a content that is phenomenally quite similar to a visual phenomenal content. My point was simply that the evidence does not (yet!) force us to conclude that there are real-life cases of conscious empty thought.

Your other proposal is that the demonstrative might pick out the perceiver’s body. I objected in my reply that it seems impossible for a visual demonstrative to refer to something that’s unseen. In response, you give as an example the statement “Look over there”, where the location in question is out of view. Hmm. But now suppose instead you say “Look at this (or that)”, where the thing you refer to isn’t something I see. Hasn’t there been a failure in the act of communication? In this respect I think that “this” and “there” are as different as “here” and “there” are: the first member of each pair presupposes (as Evans would put it) a perceptual link with the referent, whereas the second member just presupposes something like the possibility of establishing one. And so I don’t think it’s possible for me to represent a proposition of the form “This is moving” without having the right sort of perceptual link with the thing I refer to as “this”: and since in the case in question the content is supposed to be represented visually, it seems to me that the body would have to be seen for the content not to be empty.

Yes or no? Again, there is the exhaustion.

It is true that the concept of generality plays an important role in Campbell’s position. And in fact I think he has pressed this line of argument on me before, so I am glad to have to revisit it. But I don’t think his view can be saved in the way you suggest. Here is the difficulty: I claim that in the illusion of vection, there is an experience of motion, and I take it that you concede this. But on our ordinary way of thinking motion is a property; it’s not something that can be experienced just as free-standing. So then this raises the question, what is this motion experienced as the motion of? Once we allow this much, my argument leads to the conclusion that it is the motion of the self, and so the Minimal View is finished.

Now, perhaps you could try to head off this move by saying that in the illusion of vection the change in what’s represented doesn’t fall under (what Campbell would call) the “general conception” of motion: that’s to say, this experience doesn’t have the content “x IS MOVING”, where “__ IS MOVING” is a predicate that can be applied to some arbitrary subject. By contrast, the content is something like “It moves (here)”, where this has the same sort of semantic structure as “It is raining”, in which rain isn’t predicated of any thing. But then the experience will not really be representing motion at all, will it? It is just representing some ineffable property. And this gets the phenomenology wrong: for motion seems to be represented in the illusion of vection in the same respect (i.e., as the same property, though as possessed by a different object) as it is represented in the experience where the cylinder is seen to move; and in addition it seems like the content “It moves (here)” would be equally applicable to the veridical experience as to the illusory one: perhaps it corresponds to visual field motion or something, but as we have seen that is the same in the two experiences.

Does that make any sense? I fear it does not, as I am writing through a fog of exhaustion.

BERNIE: “Stevan, may I ask UNDER WHAT CONDITION would YOU CONSIDER subjectivity TO HAVE A NATURALISTIC ANSWER?”

If you mean ‘What would count as an explanation of the causal role of feeling?”: Psychokinetic dualism would do the trick: Feeling is a fundamental force, like gravity and electromagnetism.

(This is probably what 95% of people believe is true — and it’s what 100% of us *feel* is true, whether or not we believe it. Unfortunately, psychokinetic dualism is false; all evidence — except what feeling itself feels like — contradicts it.)

To describe any other potential causal explanation, I would have to resort to sci-fi fantasies, and I don’t think much is to be learned from that.

ARNOLD: “so in order to to ask… what the causal role of feeling is… you have to give some description of what it is like for you to feel.”

Not at all. It is enough *that* you feel (regardless of what it happens to feel like). With the fact of feeling (anything) we are already facing the “hard” problem.

ARNOLD: “it is reasonable to ask what system of brain mechanisms might generate… feeling.”

It is indeed. But correlation and prediction are not enough. You have to explain how and why brain mechanisms generate feeling. (On the face of it, it looks as if all they need to do is generate doing…)

WHIT BLAUVELT: “…if you’re invoking causal closure as leaving no room for “feeling,” isn’t it more broadly the case that causal closure would leave no room for free will…”

Yes, if feeling has no causal role, then doing something because you feel like doing it has no causal role.

(But I don’t really know what “causal closure” means. I am not a metaphysician.)

WHIT BLAUVELT: “…where [choosing] ‘consciously’… includes both self-awareness and “something it is like,” which you’re.. calling ‘feeling’?”

Choosing to do something consciously means doing it because you feel like doing it, and, yes, it feels like something to feel like doing something.

(But how did “self-awareness” get into this? An amphyoxus can move away because it feels like doing it without having any ideas worth mentioning about “self.”)

WHIT BLAUVELT: “…If we accept causal closure, and thus see no room for conscious free will, there may be a problem in explaining the point of biology instantiating a non-conscious version of essentially the same thing…”

I can’t follow.

There is no explanation of how and why feelings cause anything, including doing.

And far from creating a problem for unfelt doing, it is in fact only unfelt doing that is unproblematic.

WHIT BLAUVELT: “…in a world in which causal closure is true, why should biology carry out a blind pantomime of choosing, if the very claim that choice exists is taken to be false?”

I still don’t understand what you are asking or supposing, because I don’t know what “causal closure” means. Causality is not a problem in physics, engineering and biology. It is just a problem when we try to explain the causal role of feeling.

There is no problem with Insentient Nature making a functional/adaptive distinction between voluntary and involuntary behavior. The problem only arises if the voluntary behavior is *felt* (and would arise no matter what the voluntary behavior felt like: whether it felt as if one was doing what one was doing because one had chosen to do it, or it felt as if one was soing it because one was pushed. Either way it would feel like something, and explaining the causal role of that fact is the hard problem).

WHIT BLAUVELT: “…If causal closure fails, does your whole argument regarding “feeling” fail?”

I’m not a specialist in — nor am I invoking — anything special about the metaphysics of causation as it occurs in physical, engineering and biological phenomena and their explanation.

I have no idea what it means for “causal closure” to fail or not fail.

WHIT BLAUVELT: “…If causal closure does not fail, what is your argument for why biology should concern itself with something with no causal role, where that something is not just ‘feeling,’ but choice itself?”

“Choice” is just an extra word for when and what it feels like to do something because you feel like it.

There is no reason at all to speculate about determinism vs. indeterminism here (if that is what you are doing). The hard problem would be just as hard in a deterministic universe as in an indeterministic one. Explanation would still be causal explanation, and the causal function of feeling would remain unexplained in either case.

WHIT BLAUVELT: “…It’s one thing to try to explain away an “illusion” of conscious choosing. Can you explain away an “illusion” of unconscious choosing when there’s no one for it to be an illusion for?”

To repeat, it makes no difference whatsoever whether the feeling you have is that you do some things because you feel like it (voluntarily, by conscious choice) or you feel that everything you do you do because you are impelled to do it (involuntarily, not by conscious choice). The hard problem is and remains to explain the causal role of the fact that some functions are felt and some are not.

(Perhaps in an indeterministic universe causality itself matters less? Things just happen? No cause; no explanation?)