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IS INTENTIONALITY DEPENDENT UPON CONSCIOUSNESS? the Mental Features Two Remarkable Aspects: Intentionality and Consciousness. In URIAH KRIEGEL IS INTENTIONALITY DEPENDENT UPON CONSCIOUSNESS? (Received in revised version 5 February 2003) ABSTRACT. It is often assumed that consciousness and intentionality are two mutually independent aspects of mental life. When the assumption is denounced, it usually gives way to the claim that consciousness is somehow dependent upon intentionality. The possibility that intentionality may be dependent upon consciousness is rarely entertained. Recently, however, John Searle and Colin McGinn have argued for just such dependence. In this paper, I reconstruct and evaluate their argumentation. I am in sympathy both with their view and with the lines of argument they employ in its defense. Unlike Searle and McGinn, however, I am quite attached to a naturalist approach to intentionality. It will turn out to be somewhat difficult to reconcile naturalism with the notion that intentionality is dependent upon consciousness, although, perhaps surprisingly, I will argue that McGinn’s case for such dependence is compatible with naturalism. 1. INTRODUCTION: DEPENDENCE RELATIONS BETWEEN CONSCIOUSNESS AND INTENTIONALITY The mental features two remarkable aspects: intentionality and consciousness. Intentionality is the property in virtue of which a subject’s mental state is directed at, or is about, something other than itself. Consciousness is the property in virtue of which there issomething it is like for the subject to be in that mental state.1 In the short history of the philosophy of mind, intentionality and consciousness have often been treated as mutually independent. Call this the Independence Assumption. One way to formulate the Independence Assumption is in terms of the following pair of theses: (1) The fact that a mental state M is intentional does not entail any (non-disjunctive, non-necessary) facts regard- ing consciousness. Philosophical Studies 116: 271–307, 2003. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 272 URIAH KRIEGEL (2) The fact that a mental state M is conscious does not entail any (non-disjunctive, non-necessary) facts regard- ing intentionality.2,3,4 The Independence Assumption can be construed as the conjunction of (1) and (2). Support for the Independence Assumption has been eroded in recent years. The erosion of (2) has been especially prominent: many philosophers have argued that a subject’s mental state is conscious when, and only when, the subject instantiates a certain intentional structure. Thus, according to the representational theory of consciousness (defended, e.g., by Dretske and Tye), if a mental state M is conscious, then M must have a certain specific kind of intentional content.5 The representational theory claims, then, that: (3) The fact that M is conscious entails the fact that M has intentional content of kind K. This is incompatible with (2), since the fact that M has inten- tional content of kind K is a (non-disjunctive, non-necessary) fact regarding intentionality. Similarly, according to the higher-order monitoring theory of consciousness (defended, e.g., by Armstrong and Rosenthal), if M is conscious, then M must be itself the intentional object of a higher-order intentional state.6 This theory claims, then, that: (4) The fact that subject x’s mental state M is conscious entails the fact that x has another mental state, M*, such that M* is intentionally directed at M. Which is, again, incompatible with (2), since the fact that x has a mental state M* that is intentionally directed at M is a (non- disjunctive, non-necessary) fact regarding intentionality. Both the representational and higher-order monitoring theories attempt a reductive account of consciousness in terms of intention- ality, and therefore imply the falsity of (2). But a reductive account of consciousness in terms of intentionality is not required in order to falsify (2). It is possible to hold, for instance, that even though M’s consciousness is not exhausted by M’s intentional content, it nonetheless necessarily involves an intentionality.7 Such a view is also incompatible with (2). IS INTENTIONALITY DEPENDENT UPON CONSCIOUSNESS? 273 Although many philosophers accept today the dependence of consciousness on intentionality, few think that, conversely, or inversely, intentionality is dependent on consciousness. At the same time, arguments to this effect have been advanced by a handful of philosophers. In this paper, I reconstruct and evaluate two such arguments, due to John Searle (1992, ch. 7)8 and Colin McGinn (1988).9 These arguments are sometimes quite complex (as in the case of Searle) and sometimes turn on subtle phenomenological observations (as in the case of McGinn). The challenge will be twofold, then: to extricate clear lines of argument from the texts, and to clarify the basic observations and distinctions behind them. On the way, I also want to get clear on just what the dependence of intentionality upon consciousness is suggested to consist in. In §2, I discuss Searle’s line of argument. Since Searle’s argument is fairly complex, I will focus on trying to reconstruct it in a precise manner. In §3, I discuss McGinn’s argument. Since it relies crucially on a certain phenomenological observation, I will mainly try to bring out this observation in a decently vivid way. My conclusions will not be dramatic. My overall impression is that the thesis that intentionality depends upon consciousness merits a more serious consideration than it has been hitherto granted. More specifically, I will suggest that some versions of this thesis are compatible with a naturalistic approach to intentionality, and should therefore be unobjectionable to a naturalist. 2. SEARLE’S ARGUMENT FROM THE ASPECTUALITY OF INTENTIONALITY In The Rediscovery of the Mind, Searle (1992, p. 132) writes: I now want to make a very strong claim ...The claim is this: Only a being that could have conscious intentional states could have intentional states at all, and every unconscious intentional state is at least potentially conscious. This thesis ... has the consequence that a complete theory of intentionality requires an account of consciousness. This passage all but explicitly rejects (1). To reject (1) is to hold: (5) The fact that a mental state M is intentional entails some (non-disjunctive, non-necessary) facts regarding consciousness. 274 URIAH KRIEGEL (5) leaves open what the entailed facts regarding consciousness are. Different entailments of facts define different forms of dependence, and therefore, different dependence theses. The quoted passage contains, in fact, two dependence theses. The first is the thesis that “only a being that could have conscious intentional states could have intentional states at all.”10 We may formulate this thesis as follows: (6) The fact that a mental state M of a subject x is intentional entails that x can have a mental state M*, such that M* is a conscious state. On a liberal enough understanding of “facts,” (6) entails (5).11 Searle’s second thesis is that “every unconscious intentional state is at least potentially conscious,” which we may formulate as follows: (7) Thefact that a mentalstate M is intentionalentails that M is potentially conscious. But what is involved in a mental state being potentially conscious? Potential consciousness means, for Searle, that M is in principle accessible to consciousness, where being accessible to conscious- ness in principle means that it must be “the sort of thing that could be ... conscious” (1992, p. 153; italics mine).12 This elucidation leaves something to be desired, but it appears to imply that M’s being intentional entails that it is possibly conscious. The question is what modal strength should this “possibly” be construed to carry.13 Metaphysical possibility is too weak. Arguably, it is metaphys- ically possible for an ameba to be conscious. So given that what is metaphysically possible is necessarily metaphysically possible (at 14 least in S4 and S5) and that necessary facts are entailed by all other facts, any random fact entails the metaphysical possibility of the ameba being conscious. Thus, the fact that a certain ameba is 7 microns long entails that it is metaphysically possible for this ameba to be conscious. But surely this does not define a genuine dependence of 7 micron length on consciousness.15 More to the point, M’s being metaphysically-possibly conscious appears to be a purely logical property (or perhaps a “metaphysical” property) of it,16 rather than a genuinely psychological property. But what Searle hopes to capture in saying that M must be poten- IS INTENTIONALITY DEPENDENT UPON CONSCIOUSNESS? 275 tially conscious is a psychological property of M. My suggestion is that we construe potential consciousness in terms of possible consciousness consistent with the laws of psychology. To say that M is potentially conscious is to say that M’s not being conscious is not a matter of the laws of psychology, but just happens to be the case. That is, M is potentially conscious iff there is a possible world W, such that the laws of psychology in W are the same as in the actual world, and M is conscious in W. If this condition holds, we may say that it is a psychological possibility that M be conscious. (7) then unpacks into: (8) The fact that M is intentional entails that M is psycho- logically-possibly conscious. That is, the fact that M is intentional entails that it is psychologically possible for M to be conscious.17 Note now two things about the logical strength of (7) and (8). First, they entail (5), since M’s being potentially conscious, or psychologically-possibly conscious, is a (non-disjunctive, non- necessary) fact regarding consciousness.18 But second, they also entail (6): if M’s being intentional entails that M is potentially conscious, or psychologically-possibly conscious, then a fortiori it entails that x can have a conscious state – for then x can have M consciously.
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