Did Daniel Dennett Believe that Qualia Are Real?

According to Owen Flanagan, Daniel Dennett happily accepted that there is a way things seem to us. However, is that the same thing as accepting the philosophical notion of qualia?

Despite the general view, the philosopher Daniel Dennett believed (or accepted) that “qualia are for real”… at least according to the American philosopher Owen Flanagan.

Flanagan wrote the following:

“Qualia are for real. Dennett himself says what they are before he starts quining. Sanely, he writes, ‘‘Qualia’ is an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways thing seem to us’ [].”

Saying “what [x’s] are” isn’t the same as believing that x’s are “for real”. I can, after all, say what goblins are, without also believing that they are real.

Yet, okay, there are ways things (i.e., certain conscious mental states) seem to us…

But where do we go from there?

More relevantly, is accepting that there is a way things seem to us the same as accepting the philosophical notion of qualia?

Dennett might well have (initially) accepted qualia. (“Dennett himself says what they are before he starts quining.”) However, he certainly didn’t accept what he took to be the main philosophical account of them to be. [“Seemings [which are] atomic, intrinsic, exhaustive, ineffable, and so on.” See here.] In other words, such qualia (at least in Dennett’s view) are mere “quicksilver”. (Quicksilver? Things with very little scientific or philosophical point?)

So can we untangle the way things seem to us from qualia?

Flanagan (again) put Dennett’s position on qualia in the following way:

“To think this, Dennett must think that the identification of qualia with the ‘way things seem to us’ must be interpreted as meaning that a quale is a state such that, necessarily, being in it seems a certain way and, necessarily, there is nothing else to it.”

On this account of Dennett, if quale x “seems a certain way”, then it seems a certain way…

There is nothing else to it.

So perhaps Dennett’s account of qualia (if via Flanagan) raises certain questions.

If Dennett’s account of qualia weren’t broadly accurate (i.e., that they are “atomic, intrinsic, exhaustive, ineffable”), then qualia wouldn’t do all the work their supposed to do for anti-physicalists and many others. In other words, such people actually require Dennett’s account of qualia to be accepted. And that’s because without it their own qualia-based case against physicalism simply wouldn’t work. [Note: some physicalists accept the existence of qualia. See here.]

So it’s not just the case that Dennett wanted to portray qualia in this (extreme) particular way: it seems that qualia enthusiasts do so too. That’s because (again) if qualia aren’t taken to be as Dennett believes they’re taken to be (i.e., by qualiaphiles), then what would be the (philosophical) point of them?

More broadly, much qualia-talk is designed to end up with Flanagan’s final statement — “there is nothing else to it”. That nothing else to it is used to guarantee qualia complete freedom and autonomy from any physical, functionalist and/or scientific account (or description) of them.

As it is, Flanagan isn’t entirely happy with Dennett’s account.

Flanagan Explains His Own Position

Owen Flanagan wrote:

“[] I claim that the concept simply doesn’t need to be understood that way. The alternative interpretation is that a quale is a state such that being in it seems a certain way. This interpretation is better because it allows us the concept of the way things seem without making seemings atomic, intrinsic, exhaustive, ineffable, and so on.”

This is a hard passage to grasp.

On first reading, Flanagan seemed to be simply repeating Dennett’s own account of qualia — if with slightly different wording.

Thus, in one passage Flanagan says that Dennett identifies qualia “with the ‘way things seem to us’”. On Flanagan’s own account, on the other hand, a quale is “a state such that being in it seems a certain way”.

So is there a substantive difference between the way x seems to us, and quale x is a state such that being in it seems a certain way?

That question just asked, I believe that Flanagan’s point is the following:

For qualiaphiles, qualia seeming a certain way is (literally) the end of the story…

To Flanagan, on the other hand, being in state x, as well as quale x seeming a certain way to us, isn’t the end of the story.

On this reading, then, we have an explanation as to why Flanagan concluded with the following words:

“This interpretation is better because it allows us the concept of the way things seem without making seemings atomic, intrinsic, exhaustive, ineffable, and so on.”

Thus, Flanagan’s interpretation is better (to Flanagan at least) because even though there are indeed brute seemings — that’s not the end of the story…

Yet surely that wasn’t the end of the story for Dennett either!

So perhaps Flanagan’s point is that we can accept that there is a way things seem, yet not also take these seemings to be (Flanagan quotes Dennett’s terms) “atomic, intrinsic, exhaustive, ineffable, and so on”.

Flanagan’s conclusion (if I have it right) can be summed up in this way:

(i) Because Dennett believes that qualia are construed as being “atomic”, “intrinsic”, “exhaustive” and “ineffable”,

(ii) then to qualiaphiles, that must be the end of the story.

Does this mean that Dennett is taking the qualiaphiles and anti-physicalists at their word?

Flanagan, on the other hand, isn’t taken them at their word.

Instead, Flanagan’s “alternative interpretation” is that “a quale is a state such that being in it seems a certain way”. Yet that isn’t the end of the the story for Flanagan. Indeed, Flanagan supplies lots of very persuasive and interesting philosophical and scientific detail as to why seemings aren’t — or even can’t be — the end of the story.

A Deflationary View of Information in Physics

This essay tackles the notion of information as it’s used by physicists.

The science writer Philip Ball stresses the importance of what he and others call information. Ball allows the physicist Christopher Fuchs to express his own informationalist view when he writes:

“[Christopher Fuchs’] approach argues that quantum states themselves — the entangled state of two photons, say, or even just the spin state of a single photon — don’t exist as objective realities. Rather, ‘quantum states represent observers’ personal information, expectations and degrees of belief’, he says.”

According to this position, a photon isn’t in both spin up and spin down at one and the same time. Instead, we simply have the “information” that it can be either in spin-state up or spin-state down. In other words, until a measurement is made, we simply don’t know which state it’s in.

One may wonder, then, what point a realist notion of a spin state would serve — since (realist) physicists could never know if they were right about what they say. In other words, what’s the point of stating the following?-

Well, this photon is either in spin-state up or spin-state down, regardless of what we know — or our “information”.

Is it? How could this (or any) physicist know that?

Philip Ball

Since we are discussing the state of a photon, let’s trace all this back to John Wheeler.

John Wheeler on Information

The American theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) once wrote the following words:

“An example of the idea of it from bit: when a photon is absorbed, and thereby ‘measured’ — until its absorption, it had no true reality — an unsplittable bit of information is added to what we know about the world, and, at the same time, that bit of information determines the structure of one small part of the world. It creates the reality of the time and place of that photon’s interaction.”

Wheeler seemed to be arguing that a photon literally gains its “reality” when it’s “absorbed”. Thus, if a particular photon gained its reality only when (or after) it was absorbed, then it mustn’t have had any reality before that absorption…

So can we now conclude that there simply was no photon before the absorption!

Basically, then, Wheeler stressed that the absorption can be seen in informational terms. That is, when the photon was absorbed, then “an unsplittable bit of information is added to what we know about the world”. In other words, only when the photon was absorbed could “we” (i.e., experimental physicists) gain information about it. Before that, the photon had zero reality because such physicists had zero information about it.

In more general terms.

Wheeler believed that everything we discover (at least in science or, perhaps, only physics) is about bits of information. Indeed, Wheeler believed that an object (or what he called an “information-theoretic entity”) is derived from (our?) information. Technically, this is a transformation which Wheeler called “it from bit”.

Thus, we don’t have an “it” (i.e., a physical object) until we firstly have a “bit” (a unit of information).

What Is, and What We Know

Philip Ball also quotes the physicist and philosopher of physics Jeffrey Bub as essentially putting a similar point about information, and quotes him saying:

“[]‘[F]undamentally a theory about the representation and manipulation of information, not a theory about the mechanics of nonclassical waves or particles’ [].”

This means that there’s an important distinction to be made here between what is (i.e., regardless of minds, observations, tests, experiments, etc.), and the information we have about what is.

Fuchs (at least as presented by Ball) also makes it explicit that this stress on information is on a par with philosophical anti-realism when he argues that it isn’t an ontic position. (Neither Fuchs nor Ball ever mention the philosophical position of anti-realism.) It is, instead, an epistemic (i.e., a knowledge-based or information-based) position. In Ball’s words:

“Fuchs sees these insights as a necessary corrective to the way quantum information theory has tended to propagate the notion that information is something objective and real — which is to say, ontic. ‘It is amazing how many people talk about information as if it is simply some new kind of objective quantity in physics, like energy, but measured in bits instead of ergs’, he says. ‘You’ll often hear information spoken of as if it’s a new fluid that physics has only recently taken note of.’ In contrast, he argues, what else can information possibly be except an expression of what we think we know?”

This means that stuff (in a manner of speaking) gives off information, rather than stuff being information in and of itself. In other words, information as seen in the latter way almost seems like a misuse of the word “information”.

[See ‘Quantum Bayesianism’.]

Yet Fuchs’ position conflicts with what other philosophers and physicists see as information.

Such people believe (as Fuchs himself says) that information is in no way mind-dependent. It is “ontic”. [See note.] In other words, they believe that information is information regardless of persons, minds, observers/observations, tests, and experiments.

---

Note:

I’m not really sure about Philip Ball’s use of the word “ontic”, which I find difficult to decipher. That said, perhaps this position best squares with object-oriented ontology:

“Object-oriented ontology holds that objects are independent not only of other objects but also from the qualities they animate at any specific spatiotemporal location. Accordingly, objects cannot be exhausted by their relations with humans or other objects in theory or practice, meaning that the reality of objects is always ready-to-hand.”

 

Bertrand Russell: “The only way to find out what philosophy is, is to do philosophy.”

 The English philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) believed that when it comes to definitions of the word ‘philosophy’ (as well as to descriptions of the actual practice of philosophy), one can’t help but be metaphilosophical about these issues.

In his Wisdom of the West, Bertrand Russell wrote:

“Definitions may be given in this way of any field where a body of definite knowledge exists. But philosophy cannot be so defined. Any definition is controversial and already embodies a philosophic attitude. The only way to find out what philosophy is, is to do philosophy.”

[As far as I know, Russell never used the word ‘metaphilosophy’, or even the words ‘the philosophy of philosophy’.]

Surely it can said that a definition of the word ‘science’ won’t be as problematic as the word ‘philosophy’. That said, one will also need to take a philosophical stance on what science is (if not on the word ‘science’ itself).

What’s more, would all scientists agree on any single definition?

So let’s rewrite a bit of Russell’s quote above:

The only way to find out what science is, is to do science.

Thus, it can’t be the case that simply because the word ‘philosophy’ is about philosophy that all definitions will be more problematic (or controversial) than definitions (or descriptions) of science.

It can now be said that this controversy (or problem) is also the case with the definitions of many other (philosophically-loaded) words and terms… That’s unless one simply stipulates what a word means: This is how this dictionary defines the word x.

Despite saying all that, the analytic approach to philosophy, for example, certainly (to reuse Russell’s words) “embodies a philosophic attitude”, and that attitude is “controversial”. The same can be said of deconstruction, phenomenology, structuralism, etc. — i.e., virtually any way of doing philosophy will induce some controversy. (Here readers must distinguish positions within philosophy from positions on philosophy itself.)

A Priori Philosophy

It’s hard to grasp Russell’s final sentence in the quote above. Namely: “The only way to find out what philosophy is, is to do philosophy.”

Surely there can’t be such a thing as a priori philosophising.

[The term a priori is used loosely, not technically, in what follows.]

What would a philosophical a priori be like? A philosophy untouched by other philosophies — untouched by other philosophical texts?

Yet take the British broadcaster and populariser of philosophy, Bryan Magee, and his account of his very own ex nihilo philosophising:

“Until I went to university it never entered my head to associate any of these [philosophical] questions with the word ‘philosophy’. [] I discovered that this is what they were. [] I had grown up a natural Kantian. [] I discovered [] that I had been immersed in philosophical problems all my life.”

[From Magee’s Confessions of a Philosopher: A Journey Through Western Philosophy.]

What a strange passage that is.

Bryan Magee

Magee wasn’t claiming to be “outside language”: he was claiming to have been outside philosophy. More clearly, he was claiming that all of us — or perhaps only some of us — are born with a quasi-Chomskian Philosophy Faculty. However, if Magee wasn’t claiming something about a universal Philosophy Faculty, then Magee must have been making a claim about himself — and himself alone. That claim must therefore be that Magee was somehow destined to philosophise in the particular manner in which he did in fact philosophise.

Why?

Simply because who Magee was as a human individual.

If the first option is taken (i.e., the quasi-Chomskian Philosophy Faculty), then many — if not all — young children (throughout the world) would be asking the same questions which Magee asked himself when he was a young child.

It’s of course the case that many children do ask philosophical questions.

So which questions was Magee talking about?

As Magee put it, he asked himself questions which he later realised were Kantian, Schopenhauerian, Leibnizian and Wittgensteinian in nature. Yet if that were the case, then why weren’t Kantian and Leibnizian — never mind Wittgensteinian — problems raised years before the birth of these particular philosophers? In addition, if these questions and problems are so natural (Magee himself claimed to be a “natural Kantian”), then why were they certainly not asked in other cultures and at other times?

There may indeed be certain philosophical givens. (The American philosopher Thomas Nagel — in his book The Last Word — believes this to be the case.) Nonetheless, they certainly aren’t, say, Kantian or Wittgensteinian givens. And any any such givens (uncovered by empirical research) tend to be more religious or spiritual in nature, rather than being (strictly speaking) philosophical.

It’s of course possible that Magee was an incredible genius who not only came to Kantian questions and problems without the help of Kant’s own oeuvre, but to Leibnizian and Wittgensteinian problems and questions without their help either!

In the end, it will be empirical and historical research which will determine whether or not Kantian, Leibnizian, etc. problems and questions are really part of the philosophical a priori. From my own knowledge and reflections, I strongly suspect that they aren’t.

If we return to Russell’s opening words.

Firstly, students of philosophy (i.e., not only in universities) read the books of certain philosophers, and only then do they write about the things they too have written about. Such students may even adopt the prose styles of those philosophers. Later, they’ll probably make a self-conscious attempt to write a certain kind of philosophy in a certain kind of way.

However, if such novices didn’t do all that, then isn’t it likely that they’d be doing stream-of-consciousness expressionism rather than philosophy? Unless, again, they’re literally writing (or doing) genuine a priori philosophy.

So in no way will the novice simply discover his own voice the first few times he writes philosophy.

Sure, in order to (as Russell himself put it) “find out” if one can do philosophy, one will need to “do philosophy”. And then one will discover which approach one likes. However, an original position can’t come about simply as a result of doing philosophy.

A Naturalist Account of Phenomenology: Qualia and How Things Seem To Us

This essay is about Owen Flanagan’s naturalist account of phenomenology. More specifically, it tackles various phenomenological accounts of how things seem to us. Flanagan is an American philosopher.

Strictly speaking, Flanagan’s use of the word “phenomenology” doesn’t square too well with many other accounts of phenomenology. Particularly, it doesn’t square with those mainly found — to generalise — in continental philosophy.

Flanagan’s usage, instead, is more in tune with the actual etymology of the word - as in this account:

“The term phenomenology derives from the Greek φαινόμενον, phainómenon (‘that which appears’) and λόγος, lógos (‘study’).”

The relevant words in the above are “that which appears”. Indeed, the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl once used the (Cartesian) words “given in direct ‘self-evidence’” when he referred to what he was studying.

Flanagan’s usage, on the other hand, doesn’t strictly abide by the following definition:

“Phenomenology is the philosophical study of objectivity and reality (more generally) as subjectively lived and experienced.”

In simple terms. Flanagan’s use of the word “phenomenology” seems to factor out (or simply ignore) “objectivity and reality”. More correctly, Flanagan believes that the qualiaphiles and anti-physicalists he’s arguing against factor out objectivity and reality.

So although Flanagan accepts phenomenology, he’s also a naturalist whose writings are full of scientific detail and case studies. This means that he’s certainly not a phenomenologist in the following sense either:

“Phenomenology proceeds systematically, but it does not attempt to study consciousness from the perspective of clinical psychology or neurology. Instead, it seeks to determine the essential properties and structures of experience.”

As already stated, Flanagan’s position is at odds with what many other philosophers (though not all) have taken phenomenology to be. That said, it’s not being said here that Flannagan actually claims to be a phenomenologist (at least not in any strict sense). Instead, his position is that phenomenology is something that naturalists (such as himself) should take note of, and then tackle.

In basic terms, Flanagan believes that phenomenology is (to ironically rewrite Philip Goff’s words) a datum in its own right.

Against Phenomenology?

Flanagan offers his readers a negative appraisal of phenomenology in the following passage:

“One might nonetheless think [i.e., after reading the arguments in favour of phenomenology] that phenomenology does more harm than good when it comes to developing a proper theory of consciousness, since it fosters certain illusions about the nature of consciousness.”

Indeed, Flanagan also tells us that

“[s]ome philosophers think that phenomenology is fundamentally irrelevant”.

Flanagan then tells us why that’s the case:

“Firstly, there is no necessary connection between how things seem and how they are. Second, we are often mistaken in our self-reporting, including in our reporting about how things seem.”

It’s certainly the case that things seem a certain way (in terms of mental states) to certain human subjects at certain times — or even to all subjects at all times!

Not many philosophers or scientists would deny that.

However, isn’t there often a conflation (or confusion) here between seemings and what actually is the case? (Sure, this is an epistemological minefield, which has been frequently discussed.)

For a start, even a hardcore phenomenologist (or qualiaphile) can’t treat all subjective accounts as gospel because they often contradict each other. However, things still seem a certain way even if those seemings are given contradictory descriptions or accounts. In other words, in all these cases, there was still a way that things seemed…

But who’s denying that?

More relevantly, what work does this acknowledgement of seemings do for the science and ontology of consciousness?

Again, there is indeed a “how things seem”. However, how should we theorise and philosophise about how things seem? In addition, how should we scientifically scrutinise such seemings?

Clearly, we can’t believe that if things seem a particular way, then they must be that particular way.

This is a lesson many students of philosophy learned in their first philosophy class.

In detail.

To subject S, the cricket bat in the water seems to be bent. Yet that doesn’t mean that the cricket bat is actually bent — its light is refracted. Similarly, subject S hallucinating a red goblin is “private to [that] person”. However, we wouldn’t conclude that the red goblin actually exists…

Yet aren’t many people doing something similar to that when it comes to their own seemings? Alternatively, does all this mean that we can’t make mistakes about private conscious (or mental) states?

Yes we can.

Indeed, there’s a large literature on this very subject which tells us that we often do. [See here.]

So why should the case be in different when it comes to phenomenology or the reports of our own subjective states?

It is because they’re (as it’s put) purely internal?

Does that really make a difference?

Well, there may well be a difference between looking at a stick in the water and reporting on one’s own mental state of, say, a pain, or the colour of a rose. However, do many people simply assume that no mistakes can be made about the latter, but they can be made about the former?

Isn’t all this an implicit adoption of the idea of Cartesian infallibility about subjects’ mental states?

On Consciousness and Intelligence: Is It Mainly About Definitions?

This essay is on the importance and relevance of definitions when it comes to debates about consciousness and intelligence. (As mainly found in Anil Seth’s book Being You.) More specifically, it focuses on definitions when it comes to the relation of intelligence to consciousness, and vice versa.

Philosophers and laypeople can use the same terms in very different ways. What’s more, not all people define or explain their terms in the first place. Nor do they always explain how and why such terms almost entirely flow from their very particular philosophies.

The British neuroscientist Anil Seth (implicitly) recognises the importance of definitions when he tells us that “[f]or me, there are no knock-down arguments”. That is, they’re no knock-down arguments when it comes to some of the issues around consciousness which he discusses (i.e., in his book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness).

Is that primarily because it partly — or even mainly — depends on definitions?

Moreover, just as definitions are important in this debate, so too is the (to quote Seth again) “theory of consciousness you subscribe to”.

Thus, according to a certain theory of consciousness, certain things will account for what would makes an entity conscious and/or intelligent. With another theory, (completely?) different things will account for what makes an entity conscious and/or intelligent.

It’s (Nearly) All About Definitions

Just one of the very many schematic representations of this issue.

Anil Seth lays his own cards on the table when he states the following:

“[C]onsciousness is not determined by intelligence, and intelligence can exist without consciousness.”

Of course, some theorists and philosophers believe that (high levels of?) intelligence must always come along with a degree of consciousness. Others simply invert this binary relation and argue that consciousness is intrinsically linked to intelligence…

Anil Seth rejects both these positions.

Put simply, Seth argues that computers and robots can be (very) intelligent without ever instantiating consciousness. And ants, viruses, etc. may be conscious without also being intelligent…

But hang on a minute!

All this depends on how we define the words “intelligence” and “consciousness” in the first place!

After all, on many definitions, intelligence does indeed come along with consciousness. And, on other definitions, consciousness doesn’t (necessarily?) come along with intelligence.

This means that in this debate at least, many people may well be talking passed each other.

More concretely, the importance of definitions is — again, implicitly — recognised by Seth when he tells us that

“it could be that all conscious entities are at least a little bit intelligent, if intelligence is defined sufficiently broadly” .

Yet this isn’t just a problem created by the broad definitions of the words “intelligence” and “consciousness” (or “conscious”). It’s also about the different definitions of these two words. That said, some differences between these words may themselves be a result of their very-broad definitions.

In addition, if an entity displays “at least a little bit [of] intelligence”, then some may well argue that it must also be displaying at least a little bit of consciousness.

So, here again, it not only depends on definitions: it also depends on how different words (in this case, “intelligence” and “consciousness”) depend on each other for their meaning. [See note 1 on Ferdinand Saussure.]

David Chalmers on Stipulation

The Australian philosopher David Chalmers often stresses the importance of what he calls “stipulation” when it comes to philosophically-loaded terms. His basic point is that if we stipulate what we mean by a particular word, then the answers to any questions we have about facts, data, what x is, etc. must — at least partly — follow from such prior stipulations.

Of course, there is a problem with over-stressing the importance of stipulation. Indeed, Chalmers himself sums up this problem with a joke. He wrote:

“One might as well define ‘world peace’ as ‘a ham sandwich.’ Achieving world peace becomes much easier, but it is a hollow achievement.”

Clearly, even when someone argues that stipulation is important, he or she won’t also accept that we can define the words “world peace” as “a ham sandwich”. In turn, some philosophers and laypersons will feel just as strongly about claiming that, say, a computer virus is alive (see here) or that bacteria learn (see here).

As it is, Chalmers only applies his joke to a single case: consciousness.

So perhaps it can be applied to other cases too.

The History of the Word “Consciousness”

As a result of all the problems highlighted above, perhaps it would be wise to adopt a deflationary — as well as a stipulational (as with Chalmers)— view of the word “consciousness’”. That’s what the philosopher Kathleen Wilkes did when she wrote that

“perhaps ‘consciousness’ is best seen as a sort of dummy-term like ‘thing’, useful for the flexibility that is assured by its lack of specific content”.

Yet writing at the end of the 19th century, the psychologists James Ward and Alexander Bain took a strong line against the ostensible liberalism (or pluralism) toward the word “consciousness”. They argued that it’s precisely because that word is a dummy-term (as Wilkes put it) that it traps us in the mud. They wrote:

“‘Consciousness’ is the vaguest, most protean, and most treacherous of psychological terms.”

With strong words like that, one can see how it didn’t take long for behaviourism to take up its hegemonic position in psychology and philosophy in the 1920s and beyond.

Conclusion

The problem is that if people engaged in an exchange are using the same term in very different ways, then we can hardly say that there’s any debate occurring in the first place. What’s more, this situation is confounded by the fact that the debaters assume — or simply believe — that his/her opponent is using the same word (or term) in the same way. That’s the case even when it’s clear to some on the outside that this isn’t happening. Thus, again, how can we even say that there is a debate (or dialogue) going on here if the debaters are talking about different things — even when they’re using exactly the same words (or terms)?

More relevantly to this essay, when people use, mention and share the words “consciousness”, “intelligence”, etc., and mean very different things by them, then that situation is far worse than one in which a debater simply makes a statement which is followed by a largely unrelated counter-statement (though not a counter-argument) from his fellow debater. In this former case, there’s the seeming situation that the debaters are talking about the same thing. Yet if they’re using their primary terms in very different ways, and those terms are born of very different philosophies, then that’s even worse than a simple shouting match between two rival debaters. At least in this latter case the debaters are talking about the same thing — even if they strongly disagree with each other.

Finally, it’s of course the case that any given philosopher or layperson might well have defined his terms elsewhere — even in great detail. Moreover, you can’t expect a philosopher or layperson to define his (disputed) terms every time he uses them. All that said, even if he has defined his terms elsewhere, the chances that the reader (or fellow debater) has read those definitions may well be — and usually are — very slim indeed.

---

Note

(1) Take Ferdinand de Saussure’s stress on the (rather obvious?) relation of words to other words, the nature of linguistic “systems”, and the “[system of] differences” set up between words within such systems.

More relevantly, the words “intelligence” and “consciousness” not only need to be defined: they can also be seen to be involved in various negative and positive “binary oppositions”.