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How Many Kinds of Consciousness? Consciousness and Cognition Consciousness and Cognition 11 (2002) 653–665 www.academicpress.com How many kinds of consciousness? David M. Rosenthala,b a Program in Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA b Philosophy and Cognitive Science, City University of NewYork Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, NewYork, NY 10016-4309, USA Received 3 July 2002 Abstract Ned BlockÕs influential distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness has become a staple of current discussions of consciousness. It is not often noted, however, that his distinction tacitly embodies unargued theoretical assumptions that favor some theoretical treatments at the expense of others. This is equally so for his less widely discussed distinction between phenomenal consciousness and what he calls reflexive consciousness. I argue that the distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness, as Block draws it, is untenable. Though mental states that have qualitative character plainly differ from those with no mental qualities, a mental stateÕs being conscious is the same property for both kinds of mental state. For one thing, as Block describes access consciousness, that notion does not pick out any property that we intuitively count as a mental stateÕs being conscious. But the deeper problem is that BlockÕs notion of phenomenal consciousness, or phenomenality, is ambiguous as between two very different mental properties. The failure to distin- guish these results in the begging of important theoretical questions. Once the two kinds of phenomenality have been distinguished, the way is clear to explain qualitative consciousness by appeal to a model such as the higher-order-thought hypothesis. Ó 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. E-mail address: [email protected]. 1053-8100/02/$ - see front matter Ó 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. PII: S1053-8100(02)00017-X 654 D.M. Rosenthal / Consciousness and Cognition 11 (2002) 653–665 In important work over the last 10 or so years, Ned Block has forcefully argued that researchers both in philosophy and in psychology apply the term ÔconsciousnessÕ and its cognates to distinct kinds of mental occurrence, with theoretically confusing results. Most of that work has focused on the now well known and widely discussed distinction between what Block calls phenomenal consciousness and access con- sciousness. A state is phenomenally conscious if, roughly, it has qualitative char- acter; IÕll say more about this shortly. By contrast, a state is access conscious if its content is, in BlockÕs words, ‘‘poised to be used as a premise in reasoning,... [and] for [the] rational control of action and... speech.’’1 According to Block, these two types of mental occurrence are conceptually independent; a state can, in principle at least, be conscious in one way without its being conscious in the other. Block has also distinguished a third type of mental occurrence that is also often called consciousness, but which, he argues, is distinct from each of the others. This type of consciousness, which he has variously called reflexive, introspective,or monitoring consciousness, involves the occurrence not just of one mental state, but two. As he has recently put it, ‘‘[a]n experience is conscious in this sense just in case it is the object of another of the subjectÕs states, for example one has a thought to the effect that one has that experience.’’2 ItÕs the contrast between phenomenal con- sciousness and reflexive consciousness that has figured most prominently in BlockÕs recent writing, and IÕll focus mainly on that contrast in what follows. Some commentators on BlockÕs work, myself among them, have raised questions about these distinctions. One challenge has been about whether one or another of the phenomena Block describes is properly speaking a kind of consciousness at all. For this reason among others, Block now proposes to conduct the discussion without using the term ÔconsciousnessÕ or its near synonym, Ôawareness.Õ Forswearing those terms, he now often refers to the three types of mental occurrence simply as phe- nomenality, global access, and reflexivity (202–203).3 But difficulties remain, even apart from whether something should be called consciousness. Most of the following discussion focuses on phenomenality and re- flexivity. But itÕs worth making a few remarks about global access. For one thing, global access, whatever its connection with consciousness, presumably comes in many degrees. So itÕs not clear that such connectivity constitutes a single psycho- logical phenomenon subject to study. Nor, despite its current popularity,4 is it clear 1 ‘‘On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness,’’ The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 18, 2 (June 1995): 227–247, p. 231; emphasis BlockÕs. 2 ‘‘Paradox and Cross Purposes in Recent Work on Consciousness,’’ Cognition, 79, 1–2 (April 2001): 197–219, p. 205. When not otherwise indicated, page references are to this article. 3 Still, he often speaks of phenomenality as consciousness of something, which seems to make ineliminable reference to consciousness, e.g., in describing subjects as being phenom- enally conscious of the letters in the Sperling experiment (209), discussed below. 4 See, e.g., Daniel C. DennettÕs idea that ‘‘[c]onsciousness is cerebral celebrity,’’ ‘‘The Message Is: There Is No Medium,’’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LIII, 4 (December 1993): 919–931, p. 929, echoed in much of Consciousness Explained, Boston: Little, Brown, 1991; and Bernard J. BaarsÕs idea of consciousness as due to a global workspace in, e.g., A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988. D.M. Rosenthal / Consciousness and Cognition 11 (2002) 653–665 655 why global access has anything at all to do with what we intuitively think of as consciousness. Many mental events occur to which the system has relatively global access even though they arenÕt conscious in any way whatever. In typical circum- stances, for example, many mental occurrences that bear on the organismÕs moving about wonÕt be conscious, though the system needs to have fairly global access to them. Conversely, mental states are often conscious despite their lack of global connectivity, as when we have a specific conscious thought or image that has little bearing on the systemÕs overall functioning. Block claims that the relevant kind of access involves a stateÕs being ‘‘poised to be used...for [the] rational control of action and... speech.’’ But control of action can be rational without being conscious. So why think that a stateÕs being poised for rational control has anything to do with whether that state is conscious, in any way whatever? The question is especially pressing given robust experimental findings that the readiness potentials associated with decisions occur measurably in advance of our consciousness of those decisions.5 Doubtless the answer is that our sense of having control of ourselves and indeed of being rational in that control stems from the way we are conscious of our decisions. We are conscious of ourselves as exerting rational control over our actions. But that doesnÕt by itself show that a state must be conscious to exert such rational control. Putting global access to one side, let me turn to phenomenality. Block describes phenomenality in different ways that arguably pick out distinct types of mental occurrence. On one account, ‘‘phenomenality... [is w]hat it is like to have an ex- perience. When you enjoy the taste of wine, you are enjoying gustatory phenome- nality’’ (202). But Block also allows that phenomenality can occur not only without oneÕs knowing it, but in cases in which one would firmly deny its occurrence. For example, in cases of so-called visual extinction, subjects report having no subjective experience of certain visual stimuli on one side of the visual field (198). And Block argues that it is theoretically open to see these subjects as ‘‘really... hav[ing] phenomenal experi- ence of those stimuli without knowing it’’ (203). On this interpretation, he urges, subjects have phenomenal consciousness without access consciousness, phenome- nality without global access. Similarly, the phenomenality Block posits in the striking case of aerodontalgia he describes is evidently phenomenality without reflexivity, 5 See, e.g., Benjamin Libet, Curtis A. Gleason, Elwood W. Wright, and Dennis K. Pearl, ‘‘Time of Conscious Intention to Act in Relation to Onset of Cerebral Activity (Readiness Potential),’’ Brain, 106, Part III (September 1983): 623–642; Patrick Haggard, Chris Newman, and Edna Magno, ‘‘On the Perceived Time of Voluntary Actions,’’ British Journal of Psychology, 90, Part 2 (May 1999): 291–303; and Patrick Haggard and Benjamin Libet, ‘‘Conscious Intention and Brain Activity,’’ Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8, 11 (November 2001): 47–63. See also my ‘‘The Timing of Conscious States,’’ Consciousness and Cognition, 11, 2 (June 2002): 215–220, and additional references there. 656 D.M. Rosenthal / Consciousness and Cognition 11 (2002) 653–665 though the trace laid down in aerodontalgia is very likely no kind of phenomenality at all.6 This does not fit comfortably, however, with the explanation of phenomenality as ‘‘[w]hat it is like to have an experience.’’ ItÕs important to distinguish this somewhat special use of the phrase Ôwhat itÕs likeÕ to describe subjectivity from its more general, nonmental use. There is something itÕs like to be a table, or even to be this very table. What itÕs like to be a table, for example, is roughly somethingÕs having characteristic features of tables. But this is of course not whatÕs involved in talking about what itÕs like to have an experience. As Nagel stressed in the article that launched that phrase, what itÕs like to have an experience is what itÕs like for the individual that has the experience. When a person enjoys the taste of wine, thereby enjoying gustatory phenomenality, there is something itÕs like for that person to experience the taste of the wine.
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