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The Structure of Consciousness University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Open Access Dissertations 9-2013 The trS ucture of Consciousness Lowell Keith Friesen University of Massachusetts Amherst, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations Part of the Other Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Psychology Commons Recommended Citation Friesen, Lowell Keith, "The trS ucture of Consciousness" (2013). Open Access Dissertations. 794. https://doi.org/10.7275/5389-r721 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations/794 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE STRUCTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS A Dissertation Presented by LOWELL KEITH FRIESEN Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September 2013 Philosophy c Copyright by Lowell Keith Friesen 2013 All Rights Reserved THE STRUCTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS A Dissertation Presented by LOWELL KEITH FRIESEN Approved as to style and content by: Joseph Levine, Chair Louise Antony, Member Hilary Kornblith, Member Erik Cheries, Member Hilary Kornblith, Department Chair Philosophy To Pam, Lyndon, and Kira. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would, first of all, like to thank the faculty, students, and support staff at the University of Massachusetts philosophy department for creating the positive study environment I had the privilege of being a part of during my time there. Not all graduate students in philosophy have this good fortune. I did not take my experience for granted and I hope that I made as much of a positive contribution to the depart- ment as others did for my benefit. I want to thank my professors for the excellent philosophical education I received. I want to thank Louise Antony, Hilary Kornblith, and Peter Graham for providing me with a positive experience when I was a teaching assistant. I thank Fred Feldman and Beth Grybko for helping me navigate institu- tional regulations and complete the numerous pieces of paperwork that accompany a graduate degree, especially the additional hurdles I had to jump through as an international student. I thank Phillip Bricker, Peter Graham, Joseph Levine, and my fellow students who were a part of the dissertation seminars during my time at UMass. Thank you for your feedback and your suggestions. They were instrumental in moving my dissertation forward. I thank Heidi Buetow and Jim Binkoski for the wonderful memories I have from the years we spent together in our cramped office. And thank you Scott Hill for the many times you listened to me complain about my dissertation. I thank Joseph Levine for supervising my dissertation. I valued your feedback on my work and appreciated the practical guidance, the advice, and the occasional nudge you gave me along the way. Thank you for accommodating the inconveniences brought about by my decision to complete my dissertation from Winnipeg and for v being understanding about the familial responsibilities that competed for my atten- tion during this process. I would like to thank the rest of my committee members, Louise Antony, Hilary Kornblith, and Erik Cheries, for reading my work and providing feedback when I requested it. I would like to thank the many people from outside the UMass community who provided encouragement to me along the way, especially after I moved back to Win- nipeg: Chris Banman, Mark Barber, Keith and Tannis Collins, Randall Holm, Roy Jeal, Graham MacFarlane, Greg Monks, John and Shari Pendergrast, Ryan Rempel, Matthew and Betty-Ann Siebert, Karen Sunabacka, David and Ruth Widdicombe, and Jack Zupko. I would like to thank my extended family. Thank you for always showing interest in my studies and asking about my progress. Thank you for being supportive of our move to Massachusetts even when you would rather have had us nearer to home. Thank you for coming to visit us and for giving us the pleasure of hosting you and being your tour guides. Thank you for putting up with me during the many times I brought my work along with me on visits. Most of all, I would like to thank Pam, Lyndon, and Kira. This dissertation and degree would not have happened, Pam, without the many sacrifices you made along the way. I know this is always said in acknowledgement contexts like this. I don't know how often it has been true when others have said it, but it is certainly true in my case. You agreed to move halfway across the continent when you knew how much you would miss the nearness of friends and family. You endured many days and evenings of isolation in our Northampton apartment, looking after Lyndon and Kira while I was working at the office. You switched countless day shifts to night shifts to accommodate my schedule and teaching responsibilities. You tirelessly kept our household in order while I focused on other things. I will be forever grateful. Thank vi you Lyndon and Kira for putting up with a dad who spent so many evenings and weekends upstairs in his office staring at his computer. I love you all so much. vii ABSTRACT THE STRUCTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS SEPTEMBER 2013 LOWELL KEITH FRIESEN B.F.A., PROVIDENCE COLLEGE B.Mus., UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Joseph Levine In this dissertation, I examine the nature and structure of consciousness. Con- scious experience is often said to be phenomenally unified, and subjects of conscious- ness are often self-conscious. I ask whether these features necessarily accompany conscious experience. Is it necessarily the case, for instance, that all of a conscious subject's experiences at a time are phenomenally unified? And is it necessarily the case that subjects of consciousness are self-conscious whenever they are conscious? I argue that the answer to the former is affirmative and the latter negative. In the first chapter, I set the stage by distinguishing phenomenal unity from other species of conscious unity. A pair of conscious states is phenomenally unified if they are experienced together as part of a single experience that encompasses them both. In this and the next two chapters I defend the thesis that, necessarily, for any subject viii (of conscious mental states) at any time, all of that subject's conscious mental states (at that time) are part of a single, maximal state of consciousness. I call this thesis the \Unity Thesis." I proceed by considering some preliminary questions that might be raised about the Unity Thesis. For instance, the thesis presupposes that it is coherent to talk about parts of mental states. I consider objections by Tye and Searle and argue that the notion of an experiential part is unproblematic. In the remaining pages of the chapter, I present the source of the biggest challenge to the Unity Thesis: the data gathered from split-brain subjects. The Unity Thesis is formulated using the notion of a maximal state of conscious- ness. In the second chapter, I attempt to precisify this notion in a way that does not pre-emptively decide the debate over the Unity Thesis. In informal terms, a maximal state of consciousness is a sum of conscious states that are i) simultaneous, ii) have the same subject, and iii) all have a conjoint phenomenology. I call this the Con- sensus View. I then consider two unorthodox views that the Consensus View does not take off the table: the views that a \collective consciousness" and a \spread con- sciousness" are possible. A collective subject is one that can enjoy the experiences of an indeterminate number of \lesser" subjects of consciousness by sharing them together with those subjects. A spread subject is one that can enjoy the experiences of an indeterminate number of lesser subjects of consciousness, but it does so, not by sharing those experiences with the lesser subjects, but by absorbing the lesser subjects of experience into itself, thereby erasing the traditional boundaries between the entities we intuitively think of as subjects of experience. I argue that, although the Consensus View does not decide against them, these views stretch the bounds of coherence and should not, therefore, be accepted. Having presented an account of what maximal state of consciousness is, I define a stream of consciousness in terms of a maximal states of consciousness. In the rest of chapter two, I consider and argue against a number of different ways of interpreting the split-brain data that are either ix inconsistent with the Unity Thesis or attribute more than one subject of conscious- ness to split-brain subjects. Among the views I consider are Lockwood's partial-unity view and the views, by theorists such as Sperry, Koch, Puccetti, Marks, and Tye, that split-brain subjects have two non-overlapping streams of consciousness. In chapter three, I consider a recent attempt by Bayne to account for the split- brain data in a way that does not attribute two streams of consciousness to them. According to Bayne's Switch Model, the consciousness of split-brain subjects can be likened to that of a ball that is passed back and forth between the two hemispheres of the upper-brain. The hemispheres take turns supporting a single stream of conscious- ness. I consider the empirical data in some detail and argue that the data is not as compatible with the Switch Model as Bayne claims. I close the chapter by presenting the rough outline of an interpretation of the split-brain data that is consistent with both the Unity Thesis and the split-brain data.
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