DOES CONSCIOUSNESS HAVE ANY ADAPTIVE FUNCTION? (63 P
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BIEGANSKI, BRIAN PIOTR, M.A. MAY 2018 PHILOSOPHY CONSCIOUSNESS RESTRAINED: DOES CONSCIOUSNESS HAVE ANY ADAPTIVE FUNCTION? (63 pgs.) Thesis Advisor: Dr. David Pereplyotchik In this work, I examine the question, “Does consciousness have any necessary known function in our lives?” I look at three specific theories of consciousness: global workspace theory (GWT), attention theory, and higher-order thought (HOT) theory. I look at how each of these theories bear on whether consciousness has any known adaptive utility and I show that, under the strongest theory of consciousness, viz. HOT theory, it does not. CONSCIOUSNESS RESTRAINED: DOES CONSCIOUSNESS HAVE ANY ADAPTIVE FUNCTION? A thesis submitted To Kent State University in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Brian Piotr Bieganski May, 2018 © Copyright All rights reserved Except for previously published materials Thesis written by Brian Piotr Bieganski B.S., Grand Valley State University, 2014 M.A., Kent State University, 2018 Approved by _____David Pereplyotchik______, Advisor _____Deborah Barnbaum_______, Chair, Department of Philosophy _____James L. Blank___________, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences TABLE OF CONTENTS...………………………………………………………………….……iv CHAPTERS I. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...1 Varieties of Consciousness………………………………………………………..1 Theories of Consciousness……………………….………………………………..6 II. THEORIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS…………………………………………….19 Global Workspace Theory…………………………………………………….....19 The Attended Intermediate-Level Representation Theory………………...…….21 The Higher-Order Thought Theory………………………………………….…..26 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….....28 III. PROBLEMS WITH AIR THEORY, GWT, AND HOT THEORY(?)…….……29 Problems with AIR Theory ………………………………………………….…29 Problems with GWT ……………………………………………………………35 Problems with HOT Theory?.................................................................................43 IV. CONSCIOUSNESS AND ADAPTIVE FUNCTION………………………..….47 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………..5 iv Chapter I: Introduction §1. Introduction: Varieties of Consciousness One of the most difficult debates in cognitive science concerns the issue of consciousness. What is consciousness? How do we become conscious? Are there different types or degrees of consciousness? What does it mean to be conscious? Several matters that fall under the umbrella of consciousness research become muddied due to how elusive it is to pin down what consciousness is. Consciousness is something so familiar to us, yet is difficult to give an accurate and complete characterization of. It is when we are aware of things, such as the world around us, or how it feels to be oneself. Yet, this is an incomplete answer, because what it is like to be me and to have my perception and awareness is different from what it is like to be someone else with their perception and awareness. What we are looking for is a complete and accurate depiction of consciousness that would allow us to distinguish between objects who have the ability to be aware, mentally responsive, and receptive to the world around them as well as their own internal states (e.g. human beings) from objects that do not (e.g. tea cups). A panoply of characterizations of consciousness have been offered. Block (1995) draws a controversial distinction between what he calls “access consciousness” and “phenomenal 1 consciousness.” Access consciousness refers to those cases in which information stored in a person’s brain is available to be reported, reflected upon, and rationally acted upon. For example, when I am thinking about what I want for dinner tonight: I can reflect and think about many foods and whether I would get satisfaction and satiation from eating them, but I would also be able to report my mental states—what I am thinking about. As I think about wanting nachos for dinner, I am also able to report that “I want nachos.” On the other hand, by “phenomenal consciousness” Block intends to pick out “what it is like for us” to experience e.g. the taste of coffee, or the visual experience of a work of art, or the way a symphony sounds. Phenomenal consciousness seems to be what we are really interested in, yet seems much more mysterious and puzzling than access consciousness. Many reject this distinction. Prinz (2012) writes “I don’t believe there is any form of access that deserves to be called consciousness without phenomenality. After all, access is cheap.” (p. 5). Rosenthal (2002a) points out that this distinction tacitly favors certain theories of consciousness while disadvantaging others. Rosenthal (2002a) argues that access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness distinction is ultimately untenable, because first, access consciousness does not pick out any property of mental states that we take for their being conscious, and second, it makes ambiguous two types of phenomenality: phenomenal experiences in which we are aware of our being in a mental state, and phenomenal experiences in which we aren’t aware, or even deny our being in particular mental states (see Rosenthal 2002a, p. 655). Despite the influence of Block’s distinction, it is still a controversial one. Rosenthal (2002b) advocates a distinction between three types of consciousness. The first type is “creature consciousness” (which I will call “c-consciousness” for short). We would say that something has c-consciousness when that thing is awake and responsive to stimuli. We 2 might say that if I am knocked out, asleep, or in a coma, I lack c-consciousness, because I am neither awake nor responsive. I would lack c-consciousness, but I would still be alive. C- consciousness is a sort of “bare minimum”; the concepts such as phenomenality and experience do not enter into the notion of c-consciousness. If we wanted to talk about some being as having any type of consciousness, at a minimum, it would require that that being was at least c- conscious. The second type of consciousness Rosenthal distinguishes is transitive consciousness (which I will abbreviate as “t-consciousness”). T-consciousness refers to when a being is conscious of something e.g. by sensing, perceiving, or thinking about it as present. When I am sitting at my desk, I am t-conscious of many things, such as my computer, the words on my screen, my cup of tea, the coaster it rests on, my desk, my keyboard, and so on. Importantly, I am also t-conscious of my mental states, such as my beliefs, desires, and intentions; even if I am not aware of all of them at one time. In cases of being aware of one’s own mental states, those states themselves become the stimuli one is conscious of. In other words, t-consciousness is the mental representation of the stimulus, in a sense that does not imply that the mental representation is itself a conscious state. One can think of t-consciousness in terms of receptivity: we are receptive to stimuli, even if we aren’t always aware, in a higher-order way, that those stimuli are affecting us. The final element of Rosenthal’s distinction is state consciousness (which I’ll shorten to “s-consciousness”). It refers to the property of mental states to which we refer when we say, of some particular mental state, that that state is conscious (note that s-consciousness refers specifically to mental states, not to the person who bears these mental states: a person can be t- conscious of something without his mental states being thereby s-conscious). It is also important 3 to note that when one has a mental state that is s-conscious, then that person is able to report that state. So, for instance, if I am aware that I have a desire for nachos, then I would consequently be able to report that desire by stay, e.g. “I want nachos”—a statement about my desire, which incidentally expresses my awareness of that desire. Rosenthal (2005) goes on to argue that “[a] mental state’s being conscious consists, at least in part, in one’s being conscious of it.” I will rehearse some of his arguments for this claim in later sections, but for now let us use the term “s-consciousness” in a way that doesn’t beg any questions or favor any particular theory. Here’s what everyone can agree on: when I see the objects in my visual field, I am t-conscious of them, but when there’s something that it’s like for me to have particular sensory, perceptual, emotional, and cognitive states from seeing these objects, those states become s-conscious. S-consciousness doesn’t apply only to one’s sensory states—even my own intentional states (such as my beliefs, desires, intentions, appetites, hopes, and so on) can be s-conscious states. One can think of this tripartite distinction as a sort of hierarchy. A creature whose states are s-conscious is necessarily t-conscious of something and a creature who is t-conscious of something is necessarily c-conscious. On the other hand, a creature who merely has c- consciousness doesn’t necessarily have t-consciousness or s-conscious states, and the states of a creature in virtue of which it is t-conscious aren’t necessarily s-conscious. Adopting this tripartite distinction, allows us to ascribe different kinds or levels of consciousness to a creature while remaining agnostic as to whether it has phenomenal consciousness (lobsters and worms, for example, may not have s-conscious states, but they are often c-conscious and t-conscious). This distinction is a useful tool not only for how we reason 4 and talk about consciousness, but also for our psychological and neuroscientific practices, in which we have a more robust notion of consciousness