The
first thing that many people may say about Daniel Dennett's
definition/s of the word 'consciousness' (or what he takes
consciousness to be) is that he doesn't define the word at
all. He either tells us what it's not or talks about something
else entirely: things like functions, brain
processes, behavior, "verbal reports", evolution, engineering, and the like.
However,
Dennett (as a “scientistic” Rylean) has much support for
his position in neuroscience and science generally.
For
example, here's Alexander Luria
(in Consciousness
and Self-Regulation) also arguably and paradoxically ignoring
what it is he's talking about. Thus:
“Modern views...
regard human conscious activity as consisting of a number of
components. These include the reception and processing (recoding) of
information, with the selection of its most important elements and
retention of the experience thus gained in the memory...”
Of
course if someone argues that Luria is ignoring consciousness in the
above, isn't that simply to beg the
question? The assumption here is that consciousness is
something over and above the “reception and processing
(recoding) of information”, etc. Who says so? There are philosophers and even psychologists who say so. Here's the American
psychologist Ulric Neisser (in his Cognition
and Reality):
“The treatment of
consciousness as a processing stage is unsatisfactory in a still more
fundamental way. It does justice neither to the usages of the word
'consciousness' in ordinary discourse nor to the subtleties of
experience.”
Despite
that, the assumption (if that's what it is) that functions, processing, behaviour, etc.
aren't examples of consciousness (or even consciousness itself)
needs to be defended. Indeed we can indulge in some sceptical
psychologising here and quote
Dennett himself (as found in John Horgan's The
End of Science).
According to Dennett, “mysterians”
really “don't want consciousness to fall to science”. What's
more,
“They like the
idea that this is off-limits to science. Nothing else could explain
why they welcome such slipshod arguments.”
And
here's another definition of 'consciousness' – by the
neuroscientists Robert Thatcher and Erwin Roy John (in their
Foundations
of Cognitive Processes) - which Dennett would approve of.
(Or, at the least, he'd approve of the spirit of the definition, if
not every letter.) Thus:
“Consciousness is
a process in which information about multiple individual modalities
of sensation and perception is combined into a unified
multidimensional representation of the state of the system and its
environment, and integrated with information about memories and the
needs of the organism, generating emotional reactions and programs of
behavior to adjust the organism to its environment. The content of
consciousness is the momentary constellation of these different types
of information.”
Indeed
the thesis that “multiple individual modalities of sensation and
perception” which are “integrated” into a “momentary
constellation” is very much in tandem with Dennett. Consciousness,
to Dennett, is what happens when it “all comes together”. Yes, there's no “place where it all comes together”.
Bernard
Baars (in his A
cognitive theory of consciousness) also argues
that
“consciousness as
a set of messages posted on a large blackboard for all cognitive
subsystems to read”.
It's
true that there are problems with these kinds of definition. For
example, Alvin Goldman (in his
paper 'Consciousness,
Folk Psychology, and Cognitive Science') writes:
“We can easily
conceive of a (nonhuman) system in which informative representations
are distributed to all subsystems yet those representations are
totally devoid of phenomenal awareness.”
We
can also say that this passage doesn't tell us about
consciousness itself either. It does tell us that we could have a
“system” which is functionally very like a human subject, yet
which doesn't have consciousness. It is, in fact, a take on the
question: Why is there consciousness at all? Thus, in our
context, it's beside the point. Indeed we can say that Baars,
Dennett, etc. are simply changing the subject. What's more, they may be evading the issue entirely. Goldman seems to agree with this position. Or, at
the least, he puts this position when
he says that his own
“discussion
strongly suggests that only the phenomenal notion of consciousness is
the one intended in common usage”.
To
get back to Dennett's ostensibly negative definitions of the word
'consciousness'. We can say that defenders of consciousness (or
qualia) also often tell us what consciousness isn't,
not what it is. For example, Thomas
Nagel (in his well-known 'What
Is It Like to Be a Bat?') writes:
“It is not
analyzable in terms of any explanatory system of functional states,
or intentional states, since they could be ascribed to robots or
automata that behaved like people though they experienced nothing.”
A
Dennettian could of course reply:
Who says that
consciousness “is not analyzable in terms of any explanatory system
of functional states, or intentional states”? Indeed I can say that even if I also believe that it's indeed the case that “they could be ascribed
to robots or automata that behaved like people though they
experienced nothing”.
So
is Nagel also begging the question here? Simply because robots or zombies can be
described functionally (also intentionally?), that doesn't
automatically mean that human consciousness can't be so described.
For one, perhaps biological (or human) functionality (as with John
Searle) is simply different to non-biological functionality. And even
if it is the same, the fact that robots or zombies can also be described
functionally doesn't automatically mean that consciousness isn't
a matter of functions, processes, behaviour/action, systems and
whatnot.
George
Rey, along with Nagel, also tells us (in his paper 'A
Question about Consciousness') what consciousness can't be. Thus:
“... whatever
consciousness turns out to be, it will need to be distinguished from
the thought processes we ascribe on the basis of rational
regularities.”
This
seems to be an even more extreme position than the functionalist one
just discussed in that thought itself (i.e., not only “the content
of thought”) is rejected as being a possible component of
consciousness.
Here
again we have a negative take on consciousness when David M.
Rosenthal (in his paper 'A
Theory of Consciousness') tells us that “[w]e
cannot explain consciousness in terms of what is not
mental”. Then he trumps this by concluding that “explaining
consciousness in terms of conscious states will be trivial and
uninformative”! This sounds like another hint at Kantian noumena; or, perhaps, a hint at “intrinsic [phenomenal] properties” - the inexplicable, unanalysable and
primitive!
Alvin
Goldman recognises this problem of defining consciousness in terms of
what it's not. He writes (in
the paper already quoted) about three such positions:
“Each [position]
tries to explain the consciousness of a state in terms of some
relation it bears to other events or states of the system: (1) its
expressibility in verbal behaviour, (2) the transmission of its
content to other states or locations in the system, or (3) a
higher-order state which reflects the target state.”
(1)
to (3) are opposed to
“[o]ur ordinary understanding of awareness or consciousness seems to reside in
features that conscious states have in themselves, not in relations
they bear to other states”.
Indeed
Goldman goes one step further (though he's stating Ned Block's
position here) and says that
“at least one
sense of 'consciousness' refers to an intrinsic (rather than a
relational) property, called phenomenal
consciousness”.
Again,
wouldn't Dennett say that consciousness is (at least partly)
“expressibility in verbal behaviour”, “the transmission of its
content to other states or locations in the system” and so on?
In
addition, what does it mean to talk about the “features” which
“conscious states have in themselves”? This makes such features
sound (again) like noumena. And if they are noumena,
then perhaps a Dennettian may say: No wonder we can't say much - or
anything - about them! What is it for a feature of a
conscious state to be “intrinsic”, rather than “relational”?
Can we so much as grasp that distinction or those terms?
To
get back to Dennett himself.
Take
his well-known and often-repeated claim that “there is no single
central place (a Cartesian Theater) where conscious experience
occurs”. Now, obviously, that's not a definition of consciousness.
It doesn't tell us what consciousness is either. Instead it
tells us where conscious experience doesn't occur. Thus isn't
consciousness simply assumed in this part of Dennett's definition?
An
addition to the “multiple drafts” explanation is more helpful.
Dennett tells us that there are "various events of
content-fixation occurring in various places at various times in the
brain". This may mean that consciousness amounts to these
“various events” whose “content-fixation occurring in various
places at various times in the brain”. However, the question still
remains:
What
are these various events? Are they constitutive of consciousness?
If
so, does that mean that these brain events are consciousness? Or do
they simply underpin consciousness? If this is all about brain
events, processes, functions, behaviour, etc., then many would argue
that Dennett simply isn't talking about consciousness. He's talking
about, well, brain events, functions... Nonetheless, A Dennettian may
simply reply by saying that such people are – again! - simply
begging the question against his position. That is:
Why are you simply
assuming that brain-events, functions, processes, behaviour/action,
etc. can't be – or aren't – constitutive (or examples) of
consciousness?
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