Brain Hammer

Treehead Series - Inheritance

Originally uploaded by redhousepainter

All representations have contents. Even representations of things that don’t exist are meaningfully described as “representations of something”. But not all representations are representations of themselves. Compare, for instance, the sentences “The cat is on the mat” and “This sentence has seven words in it”. Compare also, the thought that “Cherries grow on trees” and “I like thinking about thinking”.

While there may be a sense in which a representation ‘s content is a property of the representation, representing the content doesn’t suffice for representing the representation. All representations represent their contents, since their contents just are what they represent. But not all representations are representations of themselves. So whatever does suffice for representing a representation, it cannot simply be representing its content. If all properties of representations that aren’t content properties are vehicular properties, then whatever does suffice for representing a representation, it must include representing its vehicular properties.

States in which we are conscious of something bear sufficient similarities to representation to warrant postulating that such states are implemented by mental representations. What’s postulated, then, is that being conscious of something is just a certain kind of mentally representing something –that the content of consciousness just is a kind of representational content. It won’t follow from this implementation story without further argument, though, that all states in which we are conscious of something are automatically states in virtue of which we are conscious of those states. Nor will it follow without further argument that simply by being conscious of the state’s content are we thereby conscious of the state itself.

Tromp d’oeil painting

Originally uploaded by moocatmoocat

Robert Lurz’s challenge to the standard view of transitive consciousness is constituted by the following claim from his paper, “Neither HOT nor COLD: An Alternative Account of Consciousness”:

[A] creature can be conscious of its thoughts and experiences simply by being conscious of what it thinks or experiences in having those thoughts or experiences

Here is what the Lurz challenge is supposed to be a challenge to. What lots of people seem to agree on, and this would include Tye, Dretske, Rosenthal, Churchland, Prinz, and me, is that transitive consciousness - consciousness of - is implemented by (certain kinds of) representation in the following way: what one is conscious of is what (certain kinds of) representations are representations of. (What further criteria the representations need to meet is what separates the various authors listed, and thus the use of the parenthetical “certain kinds of”.) Call this the Standard View. On the Standard View, one is conscious of such-and-such only if one mentally represents such-and-such. And if one has a (certain kind of) mental representation of a leafy tree, one is thereby conscious of a leafy tree. Or, in other words, what one is conscious of is the content of a certain representation, in this case the content is a leafy tree.

Now, when one has a state of the sort described in the previous paragraph, what sense could it possibly make to say that one is conscious of the state itself? This I try to spell out on pp. 60-61 of The Subjective Brain in terms of the content/vehicle distinction. Being conscious of a leafy tree involves representing a leafy tree. Being conscious of a representation of a leafy tree must involve representing something more than just the leafy tree, that is, something more than just the content of the representation. And the only candidate for the something more is the vehicle of the representation. Thus one is conscious of the representation itself only if one represents vehicular properties of the representation.

So on what basis can adherents of the Standard View resist Lurz’s position that consciousness of what a state represents suffices for consciousness of the state itself? One kind of response would be to point out that it’s not particularly clear what Lurz’s position even means. Another kind of response would be to point out that it isn’t particularly clear that any arguments have been given for Lurz’s position (or even that he takes himself to have supplied any arguments).

Regarding the first kind of response, regarding the meaning of Lurz’s position, is he asserting that being conscious of what a state represents suffices for being conscious of vehicular properties of the representation? Or is he stipulating that being conscious of the content is another way, distinct from the vehicular way, of being conscious of the representation? I’ll come back to this in a moment.

Regarding whether an actual argument is supplied, Lurz does offer “some intuitive support for this claim” in terms of an analogy concerning paintings. He writes:

It seems plain that in order to see what a particular painting represents, one must see the painting itself. If one does not see the painting itself — say, if one is looking in the wrong direction, or is seeing a different painting, or is blind — then one cannot be said to see what that particular painting represents.

Note that while Lurz says this “seems plain,” it seems plain to me that it doesn’t seem plain at all. If what a particular painting represents is the flight of Icarus and I am looking at some other particular painting which also represents the flight of Icarus, then I can see what the first painting represents without seeing the first painting. I do it by seeing the second painting, which is a representation of the same thing as the first painting. So it looks like I can be aware of what a particular painting represents without being aware of that particular painting. (And if paintings and non-paintings can share contents, then I can be aware of what a particular painting represents without being aware of any particular painting at all.)

To make matters worse, it looks like Lurz agrees with this sort of point. He writes:

Three identical-looking paintings by different artists, for example, may each depict a woman seated before an open window…. [I]n one sense of the phrase “what the painting represents,” the intentional-content sense, what these three paintings represent is the same: a woman seated by an open window.

If what they represent is the same, then I can be aware of what the first represents without ever having had any exposure to the first; I just see the second or the third. Imagine further, that while looking at the second, when I blink it is, unbeknownst to me, replaced by the third. And when I blink again, it is once again replaced. I would continue to be aware of what the painting represents without being aware of which particular painting it is –the second or the third –I am looking at. Being aware of what a particular painting represented would suffice for being aware of that particular painting only if different particular paintings necessarily represented different particular things. But, as Lurz admits, paintings can share contents. So which particular painting does being aware of a content suffice to make you aware of?

To return to question of what Lurz’s claim is supposed to mean, specifically whether it is a claim about awareness of vehicles, I note that thinking about typical cases of looking at paintings suggests awareness of vehicles. When I look at paintings I typically notice whether they’re oil or water color, how fat the paint strokes are, etc., and these are vehicular properties of the painting, the properties with which Icarus is represented, not properties that the painting represents.

However, there are atypical cases in which one notices none of the vehicular properties of a painting, and Lurz discusses such cases: trompe l’oeil cases in which, as Lurz points out, we see neither that a painting is present nor the painting as a painting. I might take myself to be looking out a window at a leafy tree when in actuality I’ve been fooled by an incredibly realistic painting. It seems natural to say in such cases that we would not be aware of any vehicular properties of the painting. However, it seems strained to say, as Lurz wants to, that in such cases we are aware of the painting or that we see the painting. Lurz presents his claims about paintings as “intuitive” and I don’t feel the intuitive pull.

So, in summary, the only support offered for Lurz’s challenge to the standard view are some remarks about paintings that are themselves easily resisted.