Conscious Experience versus Conscious Thought

Abstract

Are there different constraints on theories of conscious experience as against theories of conscious propositional thought?Is what is problematic or puzzling about each of these phenomena of the same, or of different, types?And to what extent is it plausible to think that either or both conscious experience and conscious thought involve some sort of selfreference?In pursuing these questions I shall also explore the prospects for a defensible form of eliminativism concerning conscious thinking, one that would leave the reality of conscious experience untouched.In the end, I shall argue that while there might be no such thing as conscious judging or conscious wanting, there is (or may well be) such a thing as conscious generic thinking. 1The demands on theories of conscious experience What needs to be explained about conscious experience is its what it is likeness, together with a number of surrounding puzzles.The primary demand on a theory of conscious experience is that it should explain how conscious experiences come to possess their distinctive subjective dimension, and hence explain why there should be something that it is like for subjects to undergo them.Arguably, a good theory should also explain the distinction between conscious and unconscious perceptual states, accounting for the fact that the latter aren't conscious. 1It should explain how we can come to form purely recognitional concepts for our conscious experiences. 2And a successful theory ought also 1 Consider, for example, the kinds of visual percepts that one finds in blindsight (Weiskrantz, 1997), or in the online guidance of movement, if a 'two systems' account of vision is correct (Milner and Goodale, 1995;Jacob and Jeannerod, 2003).2 Such concepts are arguably at the bottom of inverted-qualia and zombie-style thought experiments.Possessing such concepts, there will be no incoherence in thinking, 'Someone might possess states with such-and-such functional role / intentional content while lacking this type of state' -where the indexical this expresses a concept that is purely recognitional, with no conceptual connections to causal-role concepts or intentional concepts.See Carruthers, 2004a.Experience versus thought 2 to explain why our conscious experiences should seem especially ineffable and private, why they should seem to possess intrinsic (non-relational and non-intentional) properties, and so on.Is it also a desideratum of a successful theory, that conscious experiences should be shown to be somehow self-referential in character?While not in the usual catalog of things to be explained, it is arguable that the answer to this question is, 'Yes', in each of two distinct senses.First, it is plausible that the contents of perceptual experience contain an implicit reference to the self (Bermúdez, 1998).Objects are seen as being closer or further away, for example, or as being above or below.Closer to or further from what? Above or below what?The only available answer is: oneself.Equally, when one moves through the world there is a distinctive sort of 'visual flow' as objects approach, loom larger, and then disappear out of the periphery of the visual field.This experience of visual flow is normally apprehended as -that is, has as part of its intentional content -motion through a stationary (or independently moving) environment.Motion of what?Again the only available answer is: oneself.There is also quite a different sense in which it can be argued that conscious experiences involve a sort of self-reference, however.This is not reference to the self (in the manner sketched above), but rather reference to the very same experience itself.For it seems that conscious experiences, in their distinctive subjectivity, somehow present themselves to us, as well as presenting whatever it is that they are experiences of.So conscious experiences, besides presenting or referring to items in and properties of the world (or of our own bodies), also present or make reference to themselves.On this sort of view, then, an experience of red, besides having the world-presenting content, red over there, will also have the self-referential content, this is an experience of red over there.How can these varying demands on a theory of conscious experience best be met?My own view is a version of higher-order representational account.This is developed and defended at length elsewhere (Carruthers, 2000(Carruthers, , 2004a(Carruthers, , 2004b)); here there is space for just the barest sketch.What constitutes an experience as phenomenally conscious, in my view, is that it possesses a dual representational content: both world (or body) representing and experience representing.And experiences come to possess such a dual content by virtue of their availability to a higher-order thought faculty (which is capable of entertaining higher-