Liberal phenomenal concepts

Abstract

In this paper, I offer a third way in debates over the scope of phenomenal consciousness, in the form of a novel synthesis of liberal and conservative introspective observations. My primary claim is that at least some liberal observations arise due to the existence of a heretofore unrecognized type of phenomenal concepts, liberal phenomenal concepts, while conservative observations arise by virtue of the nonexistence of at least some types of liberal phenomenal contents. Liberal phenomenal concepts, when deployed in direct introspection on phenomenal consciousness, misrepresent consciousness as including high-level, liberal contents. The misattribution of these contents to consciousness is partly defeasible, however: by using a more methodical, stringent heuristic for cataloging the introspected contents of consciousness, it is possible to note the nonexistence of liberal phenomenal contents. Thus, at least in some cases, conservatives are right and liberals are wrong about the scope of phenomenal consciousness. However, liberals have picked up on something conservatives have missed: an inaccurate introspective appearance caused by liberal phenomenal concepts. The structure of the paper is as follows. I begin by defending the faithfulness to introspection of liberal and conservative observations in the context of the debate over the existence of cognitive phenomenology. I then show how liberal phenomenal concepts can explain these observations, and discuss three jointly sufficient conditions whose collective truth serves to establish that a type of liberal content is misattributed to phenomenal consciousness by such concepts. Before concluding, I briefly consider an explanation for why liberal phenomenal concepts might exist.

Keywords:

• phenomenal concepts
• cognitive phenomenology
• admissible contents of experience
• high-level properties of experience

Notes on contributor

Benjamin D. Storer is a PhD student in the Graduate Program of the Department of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis. His research is concentrated on cognitive phenomenology and the nature of consciousness.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Strawson provides a couple of rationalizations for this observation that I find interesting (excluding his “argument from interestingness”). His first rationalization is that thoughts can be difficult to examine introspectively because “One’s mind is taken up with the sense of the thought in such a way that it’s very hard to think about the character of the experience of having the thought” (295–296). There is something to this characterization of thought (it can seem that having a thought requires a certain commitment to its contents), but it implies that the sense or content of a thought should be more easily introspectable as a property revealed in the stream of consciousness. This implication leads into Strawson’s second rationalization. He writes, “Both [a] sensation of blue and [a] cognitive experience can be said to be ‘transparent’ or ‘diaphanous,’ given the sense … in which we’re not aware of them as such in our dealing with the blue object or the cognitive content.” Again, the problem with explaining the difficulty in introspecting cognitive phenomenology in terms of the “diaphanousness” of said phenomenology is that unless the meaning or content associated with that phenomenology is also diaphanous, it is unclear why that content should not be introspectable as a property revealed in the stream of consciousness. Compare this diaphanousness of cognitive experience with the diaphanousness of a sensation of blue. Strawson admits that even such a sensation, which we can (he argues) consider as a sensation, “isn’t that easy” to consider as such. And yet, it is almost always easy to introspect the color blue as a property revealed in one’s stream of consciousness. Why shouldn’t this be the case for the meaning or content of a thought, despite the thought’s diaphanousness? Strawson has no answer.

2 Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this objection.

3 Nevertheless, one can see why it might be tempting to say that there are such sui generis phenomenal properties. Thought contents differ in significant ways from truly phenomenal contents. That much is clear from introspection. If one believes that thought contents are phenomenal, then it is natural to suppose that the differences between thought contents and other phenomenal contents are phenomenal differences.

4 However, it is likely that, in all cases of introspection of liberal contents that never enter phenomenal consciousness, LPCs misattribute such contents to consciousness. This is not to say, of course, that when introspecting any example of liberal content, one must also attend to one’s current state of phenomenal consciousness. By analogy, consider what happens when one introspects the phenomenal character associated with a sensation one is currently experiencing. The phenomenal character will seem to be part of one’s current state of consciousness, but this can seem to be the case without one attending to the phenomenal character of the conscious state as a whole. The same is true of the introspection of liberal contents.

5 Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this point.

6 Carruthers (2008) argues similarly that it may be simplifying and therefore adaptive for the mind to treat itself as self-transparent. I think Carruthers’s account is insufficient to explain liberal observations about experience. Even if it is adaptive for the mind to treat itself as self-transparent, it may not be possible for the mind to do this in all circumstances without the aid of LPCs.