How to study folk intuitions about phenomenal consciousness1

[1] The first author did most of the work on this paper.

Abstract

The assumption that the concept of phenomenal consciousness is pretheoretical is often found in the philosophical debates on consciousness. Unfortunately, this assumption has not received the kind of empirical attention that it deserves. We suspect that this is in part due to difficulties that arise in attempting to test folk intuitions about consciousness. In this article we elucidate and defend a key methodological principle for this work. We draw this principle out by considering recent experimental work on the topic by Joshua Knobe and Jesse Prinz (2008). We charge that their studies do not establish that the folk have a concept of phenomenal consciousness in part because they compare group agents to individuals. The problem is that group agents and individuals differ in some significant ways in terms of functional organization and behavior. We propose that future experiments should establish that ordinary people are disposed to ascribe different mental states to entities that are given behaviorally and functionally equivalent descriptions.

Keywords:

• Folk Intuitions
• Phenomenal Consciousness
• Subjective Experience

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Bryce Huebner, Tony Jack, Joshua Knobe, Jonathan Livengood, Shaun Nichols, David Rosenthal, and two anonymous referees for Philosophical Psychology for their comments on previous versions of this article.

Notes

Notes

[1] The first author did most of the work on this paper.

[2] For additional problems, see Arico (2007).

[3] The two sentences to be discussed in section 2.3 were added to the 10 psychological sentences in either a “feeling condition” (when the sentences included the expressions “is feeling upset” or “is feeling regret”) or a “no-feeling condition” (when the sentences included the expressions “is upset” and “regrets” without “feeling”); this was done to match the procedure used in Knobe and Prinz's fourth study.

[4] It should be noted that Knobe and Prinz's third study, not discussed above, explores what it is about group agents that accounts for people's unwillingness to ascribe phenomenal states to them (we wish to thank an anonymous referee from Philosophical Psychology for bringing this to our attention). They present two possibilities, both of which center on physical constitution: It might be that “subject's judgments are based on similarity to humans” or that “they are applying a far more specific restriction on constitution (say, a restriction against agents that are composed of other agents)” (2008, p. 76). To test this they presented subjects with a description of an Enchanted Chair (a chair endowed with a mind by a powerful sorceress and that now thinks, plans, makes requests, and complains when those requests aren’t accurately carried out). They then asked, “Can the enchanted chair feel happy or sad?” The average response was 5.6 (on a 7-point scale), compared to 1.8 for the same question posed of Acme Corporation. Knobe and Prinz take this to support the second possibility presented above: since the chair differs significantly from a human being in terms of physical constitution, subjects’ judgments do not appear to be based on physical similarity to humans. This does not bear on our claim, however: we have suggested that it might be the functional or behavioral differences between group agents and individuals that explains subjects’ unwillingness to ascribe phenomenal states to Acme Corporation; but, the Enchanted Chair is an individual with an individual mind and carrying out individual behavioral responses. Given the magical nature of the chair, we expect that most subjects will assume that it is capable of exhibiting the functional and behavioral cues typically associated with happiness and sadness. We do not think that subjects are likely to make the same assumption about Acme Corporation.

[5] One might wonder why we used the first website shown on a Google search, rather than the DSM to characterize the behavioral manifestations of depression. The reason is that we are interested in how the folk (and not professionals) think about the behavioral manifestations of depression.

[6] Our assumption of a large effect size is justified by the fact that having associated an abstract functional role with depression, we primed people to agree with the sentence ascribing depression to the corporation (the no feeling condition). In addition, if Knobe and Prinz were correct, subjects’ mean answer in the feeling condition would be low. Thus, Knobe and Prinz predict a large effect size.