Consciousness and Subjectivity

Consciousness and Subjectivity

According to some, consciousness is the heart of the mind-body problem—specifically the “what-it’s-likeness” of consciousness.[1] This is held to be explained by the fact that we can’t grasp the nature of a conscious state, like a bat’s echolocation experience, except by sharing it, whereas the same thing is not true of the bat’s brain considered as a physical system. Consciousness is “subjective” while brains are “objective”—that is, we can only grasp the former by reference to our own “point of view”, but the latter can be grasped from any point of view. Call this the “subjectivity argument”. I am not here concerned to evaluate this argument; I wish only to point out that it isn’t specifically about consciousness. For the same argument can be given about the unconscious mind: it too possesses subjectivity in the sense defined. Can I grasp the unconscious or preconscious echolocating mind of the bat? Well, how do I grasp the unconscious visual mind in another human? Presumably on the basis of a comparison with my own visual mind, conscious or unconscious: I know what that is and the unconscious visual mind resembles it in important respects (both are visual). But I can’t do that with respect to the bat’s unconscious echolocating mind, because it isn’t like anything in my own mind (allegedly). Yet I can grasp the nature of the brain states that underlie it. So, the nature of these unconscious mental states cannot be reduced to the underlying physical states.

The argument is exactly the same in the unconscious case as in the conscious case; therefore, the mind-body problem is not specifically about consciousness. The unconscious perceptual mind is as subjective as the conscious perceptual mind—that is, only graspable on the basis of knowledge of one’s own mind. Subjectivity in this sense is the root of the mind-body problem, not consciousness as such, according to the subjectivity argument. If there is anything specific about consciousness that is problematic, it hasn’t been captured by the subjectivity account of the problem. Compare the intentionality account of the mind-body problem: this is what generates the problem. Suppose we then said that consciousness is intentional, so that it is consciousness that is at the heart of the mind-body problem. But this is to overlook the fact that the unconscious mind is also intentional: if intentionality is the problem, and the unconscious is intentional too, then the problem has nothing to do with consciousness as such; it isn’t exclusively about consciousness or what-it’s-likeness. Subjectivity is like intentionality in this argument; it isn’t a feature only of the conscious mind. These arguments may well pose problems for reductive physicalism, but they have nothing to do with consciousness as such, since they carry over to the unconscious. The only way to avoid this conclusion is to claim that there is no unconscious mind or that it isn’t subjective (or intentional) or that it is really a species of consciousness (the conscious unconscious). None of these seems very plausible and are clearly ad hoc.

It is the same with the knowledge argument. Mary comes out of her black-and-white room and subliminally sees something red; she thereby learns something new, perhaps unconsciously; therefore, seeing something red can’t be a physical state of her brain. This argument may or may not be a good one, but it clearly has nothing to do with consciousness specifically; it merely says that seeing red, consciously or unconsciously, can’t be reducible to a brain state. True, consciousness also has this problem, but it doesn’t have it uniquely or exclusively. If there is a problem specifically about consciousness, then we have failed to capture it in the subjectivity argument or the intentionality argument or the knowledge argument. So, what is the problem about consciousness in particular? It’s hard to say, though we clearly have a powerful intuition that there is something special about consciousness in this regard: what-it’s-likeness seems physically elusive, a phenomenon of a different order. But we have a hard time articulating what the problem precisely is—beyond formulations that apply equally to the unconscious mind. That is, we can’t really state what the mind-body problem of consciousness actually is, as distinct from the more general problem of the mind as a whole.

This is especially clear with respect to the modal argument: we can conceive of possible worlds in which conscious sensations are pulled apart from their actual physical correlates, so that the two cannot be identical; but we can do the same for unconscious sensations too, if there are any. A subliminal perception of red is as contingently connected to the brain as a conscious perception of red. Consciousness is playing no role in this argument, even though we might have a strong intuition that conscious mental states are particularly independent modally of the brain. But it does seem quite clear that we do have modal intuitions to the effect that unconscious mental states are only contingently connected to their actual-world physical correlates. The modal argument was never really about consciousness as such. So far as we can tell, consciousness plays no essential role in the standard anti-materialist arguments, even though it is touted as central and pivotal in the mind-body problem. Here is yet another puzzle of consciousness: how is it that it has such a powerful tendency to elicit anti-materialist sentiment? Is it that we just have no other viable way to think about the mind in general, erroneous as that way may be?[2]

[1] I am referring, of course, to Thomas Nagel’s famous (but widely misunderstood) paper “What is it Like to be a Bat?”. But I wish to avoid exegetical issues about this paper and deal with the core of the argument itself, as it is commonly understood. I don’t actually think there is much controversy about the structure of the argument among careful students of the paper in question. I have written extensively about this paper elsewhere.

[2] It is quite surprising to me that the mind-body problem hasn’t led to actual insanity in the case of susceptible individuals. It is just so infuriating, so maddening, so demoralizing. It makes a mockery of human intelligence. Mysterianism seems like the best way to avoid the insanity.