Summary

Uriah Kriegel is a philosopher of mind that subscribes to a representationalist school on consciousness and what and how conscious mental states happen. He argues that each conscious mental state has two components: the qualitative character and subjective character. He believes it is the subjective character that ultimately determines that the mental state is conscious, with the “for-me-ness” character. And what determines this subjective character of the state is that the mental state in some specific way self-represent itself. In other words, each conscious mental state is conscious in virtue of self-representing itself. However, the favourite position of the author is “compresense” of qualitative and subjective character of experience, where quality and subjectivity of the experience forms two aspects of one property and they cannot be easily untangled. So that seeing a bluishness of sky will be effectively “bluishness-for-me-ness” experience.

It differs for example from Rosenthal’s Higher-Order Thought theory (HOT theory) where most conscious mental states are conscious in virtue of another unconscious mental state (= thought) representing the conscious mental state (hence higher-order theory).

1. The Self-Representational Theory of Consciousness

  • Looking at the sky, having a bluish experience
  • This what-it-is-like to have this bluish experience = a phenomenal experience
  • 2 components
    • qualitative = what; defines the identity of the character of experience ⇒ in virtue of representing environmental features of my experience (i.e. representing the external world)
    • subjective = for whom; defines the existence of the experience, for-me-ness ⇒ in virtue of representing the mental state itself

2. The Concept of Phenomenal Consciousness

  • Defining how to study and what to study about consciousness = that which is a kind of mystery for us
  • A theory of phenomenal consciousness as a theory of consciousness where consciousness is such a property that generates mystery for us, in that consciousness cannot be deduced from physical facts
  • This “mystery” in others:
    • Chalmers = Hard problem of consciousness
    • Joseph Levine = explanatory gap

3. The Structure of Phenomenal Character

  • Experience has properties: some uninteresting (= I understand them well), some interesting.
  • Experience has a strong impact on working memory; activation in V4 in the brain; it carries information (e.g. about the sky).
  • Two components of what-it-is-like-for-me:
    • Bluish component = qualitative character of experience
      • Qualitative properties “correspond” to sensible features in the environment.
      • A potential qualitative property for a given creature’s conscious experience for every property in the creature’s environment.
      • Qualitative character = a set (of such qualitative properties).
    • For-me component = subjective character of experience
  • There are 4 central positions about the interrelations between qualitative and subjective character of experience.
    1. Phenomenal character = qualitative character (representationalists).
    2. Phenomenal character = subjective character (higher-order theorists).
    3. Phenomenal character = compresence/conjunction of qualitative and subjective character.
    4. Phenomenal consciousness has no constitutive relation to either.
  • Author’s preference: phenomenal character = subjective character (position 2). Fallback, more plausible but more complicated: phenomenal character = a complex property involving both subjective and qualitative character (position 3).
  • A phenomenally conscious state has:
    • (a) something that makes it the phenomenally conscious state it is
    • (b) something that makes it a phenomenally conscious state at all
  • Author’s conclusion (Division of Conceptual Labor thesis):
    • phenomenally conscious at all ← subjective character
    • the specific conscious state it is ← qualitative character
  • Identity vs. existence conditions:
    • Problem: this completely divorces identity and existence conditions — untenable (normally they relate as determinate to determinable).
    • Solution (author’s favored position, developed further): bluish-for-me-ness = one single property, a “complex compresence” of qualitative and subjective character; qualitative and subjective character are two aspects of it, not separable.
      • bluish-for-me-ness is a determinate of for-me-ness → existence and identity conditions relate as determinable to determinate.

4. A Narrow Representational Account of Qualitative Character

  • Goal of the book: a reductive and (hopefully) physicalist account of phenomenal character.
  • Author defends a representationalist account of qualitative character: a conscious experience’s qualitative character is constituted by (an aspect of) its representational content (p. 12).
  • Only a very specific subset of representational properties is constitutive of qualitative character: the representation of certain response-dependent properties (e.g. of the sky).
    • Name of the view: response-dependent representationalism.
    • The content constitutive of qualitative character is narrow content (fully determined by the subject’s non-relational properties); wide representational properties may exist but aren’t constitutive.

5. A Self-Representational Account of Subjective Character

  • Central thesis: subjective character (phenomenally conscious at all) = a certain kind of self-representation.
    • All and only phenomenally conscious states suitably represent themselves.
  • Historical precedents (Kriegel, p. 14):
    • Brentano (Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, 1874: 153–4; 1973 Eng. trans.): every conscious act includes a consciousness of itself, so it has a double object: a primary object (e.g. the sound heard) and a secondary object (the act itself, the mental phenomenon in which the sound is heard).
    • Aristotle (Metaphysics 1074b35–6, trans. Caston 2002): knowing, perceiving, believing and thinking are always “of something else, but of themselves on the side” (alt. “as a byproduct”).
  • Self-representation is not unintelligible — e.g. the sentence “This very sentence is written in Garamond” is self-representing (true, and itself a constituent of its truthmaker).
    • Not offered as a model of conscious self-representation; only to show the notion is coherent (p. 15).
  • Self-representationalism = the upshot of two claims:
    1. All phenomenally conscious states are conscious in virtue of being represented (in the right way).
    2. No phenomenally conscious state is conscious in virtue of being represented by a numerically distinct state.
    • ∴ they are conscious in virtue of self-representing (in the right way).
  • Master argument (pp. 15–16) — for any phenomenally conscious state C:
    1. C is conscious in virtue of being suitably represented;
    2. it is not the case that C is conscious in virtue of being represented by a numerically distinct state; therefore,
    3. C is conscious in virtue of being suitably represented by itself; that is,
    4. C is conscious in virtue of suitably representing itself.

6. Phenomenal Consciousness and Inner Awareness

  • Two kinds of awareness (p. 16):
    • Outer awareness: awareness of external features and objects in one’s environment or body.
    • Inner awareness: awareness of internal events and states in one’s own mental life.
  • The right kind of inner awareness is both necessary and sufficient for phenomenality.
  • Focus/periphery distinction applies to all awareness, incl. inner awareness (p. 17):
    • Focal awareness
    • Peripheral awareness
    • E.g. experience of the sky = focal outer awareness of the sky + peripheral inner awareness of the experience itself.
  • Representational treatment of awareness: being aware of X just is having the right sort of mental representation of X — for outer and inner awareness alike.
    • E.g. being aware of pain = having the right kind of mental representation of the pain.
    • Combined with the essentiality of inner awareness → conscious states are essentially states of which their subject has a mental representation.
  • Sub-argument for premise 1 of the master argument (p. 18) — for any conscious state C of a subject S:
    1. C is conscious in virtue of S’s being suitably aware of C;
    2. for S to be suitably aware of C is for C to be suitably represented by S; therefore,
    3. C is conscious in virtue of being suitably represented by S; therefore,
    4. C is conscious in virtue of being suitably represented.

7. Inner Awareness and Self-Representation

  • Three possibilities, given that conscious states are conscious in virtue of being represented (p. 18):
    • (a) all conscious states are conscious in virtue of being represented by themselves — self-representationalism;
    • (b) all conscious states are conscious in virtue of being represented by numerically distinct states;
      • (b.1) distinct states are conscious ⇒ infinite regress
      • (b.2) distinct states are unconscious ⇒ against HOT theory ⇒
        • epistemic argument = our awareness of unconscious states would not be first-person/immediate but third-person (can be also thought), yet our awareness of conscious states appears to be first-person
        • targetless HOT representation argument = absurd results from mismatch between a conscious mental state and a HOT unconscious state that targets/represents it incorrectly
    • (c) some conscious states are conscious in virtue of being represented by themselves, some by numerically distinct states.
      • We can dismiss (c) because of the argument from uniformity of natural kinds:
        • Conscious states are probably a natural kind that is uniform at a reasonable degree of abstraction; i.e. one underlying level common to all conscious states.
  • Final structure of the master argument (sections 6 + 7, p. 21) — for any conscious state C of a subject S:
    1. C is conscious in virtue of S’s being suitably aware of C;
    2. for S to be suitably aware of C is for C to be suitably represented by S; therefore,
    3. C is conscious in virtue of being suitably represented by S; therefore,
    4. C is conscious in virtue of being suitably represented;
    5. it is not the case that C is conscious in virtue of being unconsciously represented; and,
    6. it is not the case that C is conscious in virtue of being consciously represented by a numerically distinct state; therefore,
    7. it is not the case that C is conscious in virtue of being represented by a numerically distinct state; therefore,
    8. C is conscious in virtue of being suitably represented by itself; that is,
    9. C is conscious in virtue of suitably representing itself.