One-level accounts of self-consciousness

It is customary to distinguish between two uses of the term ‘conscious’, a transitive and an intransitive use. On the one hand, we can speak of our being conscious of something, be it x, y, orz. On the other we can speak of our being conscious simpliciter (rather than non-conscious). For the past two or three decades, a widespread way to account for intransitive consciousness in cognitive science and analytical philosophy of mind has been by means of some kind of higher-order theory. The distinction between conscious and non-conscious mental states has been taken to rest upon the presence or absence of a relevant meta-mental state (cf. Armstrong 1968; Lycan 1987,1996; Carruthers 1996, 2000; Rosenthal 1997). Thus, intransitive consciousness has been taken to be a question of the mind directing its intentional aim at its own states and operations. As Carruthers puts it, the subjective feel of experience presupposes a capacity for higher-order awareness, and as he then continues, “such self-awareness is a conceptually necessary condition for an organism to be a subject of phenomenal feelings, or for there to be anything that its experiences are like” (Carruthers 1996, 152). But for Carruthers, the self-awareness in question is a type of reflection. In his view, a creature must be capable of reflecting upon, thinking about, and hence conceptualizing its own mental states if those mental states are to be states of which the creature is aware (Carruthers 1996, 155, 157).
One might share the view that there is a close link between consciousness and self-consciousness and still disagree about the nature of the link. And although the phenomenological view might superficially resemble the view of the higher-order theories, we are ultimately confronted with two radically divergent accounts. The phenomenologists explicitly deny that the self-consciousness that is present the moment I consciously experience something is to be understood in terms of some kind of higher-order monitoring. It does not involve an additional mental state, but is rather to be understood as an intrinsic feature of the primary experience. That is, in contrast to higher-order accounts of consciousness that claim that consciousness is an extrinsic or relational property of those mental states that have it, a property bestowed upon them from without by some further state, the phenomenologists would typically argue that the feature in virtue of which a mental state is conscious is an intrinsic property of those mental states that have it. Moreover, the phenomenologists also reject the attempt to construe intransitive consciousness in terms of transitive consciousness, that is, they reject the view that a conscious state is a state we are conscious of as object. To put it differently, not only do they reject the view that a mental state becomes conscious by being taken as an object by a higher-order state, they also reject the view (generally associated with Brentano) according to which a mental state becomes conscious by taking itself as an object (cf. Zahavi 2004, 2006).
What arguments support the phenomenological claims, however? The traditional phenomenological approach is to appeal to a correct phenomenological description and maintain that this is the best argument to be found. But if one were to look for an additional, more theoretical, argument, what would one find? One line of reasoning found in virtually all of the phenomenologists is the view that the attempt to let (intransitive) consciousness be a result of a higher-order monitoring will generate an infinite regress. On the face of it, this is a rather old idea. Typically, the regress argument has been understood in the following manner. If all occurrent mental states are conscious in the sense of being taken as objects by occurrent second-order mental states, then these second-order mental states must themselves be taken as objects by occurrent third-order mental states, and so forth ad infinitum. The standard response to this phenomenological objection is that the regress can easily be avoided by accepting the existence of non-conscious mental states. This is precisely the position adopted by the defenders of higher-order theory. For them a second-order perception or thought does not have to be conscious. It would be conscious only if accompanied by a (non-conscious) third-order thought or perception (cf. Rosenthal 1997, 745). The phenomenological reply to this solution is rather straightforward, however. The phenomenologists would concede that it is possible to halt the regress by postulating the existence of non-conscious mental states, but they would maintain that such an appeal to the non-conscious leaves us with a case of explanatory vacuity. That is, they would find it quite unclear why the relation between two otherwise non-conscious processes should make one of them conscious. Or to put it differently, they would be quite unconvinced by the claim that a state without subjective or phenomenal qualities can be transformed into one with such qualities, i.e., into an experience with first-personal character or mineness, by the mere relational addition of a non-conscious meta-state having the first-state as its intentional object.
The phenomenological alternative is to insist on the existence of pre-reflective self-consciousness. As Sartre writes: “[T]here is no infinite regress here, since a consciousness has no need at all of a reflecting [higher-order]consciousness in order to be conscious of itself. It simply does not posit itself as an object” (Sartre 1936, 29 [1957, 45]). That is, pre-reflective self-consciousness is not transitive in relation to the state (of) which it is aware. It is, as Sartre puts it, the mode of existence of consciousness itself. This does not mean that a higher-order representation is impossible, but merely that it always presupposes the existence of a prior non-objectifying, pre-reflective self-consciousness as its condition of possibility. To quote Sartre again, “it is the non-reflective consciousness which renders the reflection [and any higher-order representation of it] possible” (1943, 20 [1956, liii]).

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One-level accounts of self-consciousness

One-level accounts of self-consciousness :: تعاليق

One-level accounts of self-consciousness

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