Existence, Consciousness, and Skeptical Solutions

Existence, Consciousness, and Skeptical Solutions

There are straight solutions and skeptical solutions, skeptical paradoxes and skeptical arguments. They need not all take the same form; they just need to be cases in which something we uncritically assumed comes into doubt and is rescued by lowering theoretical expectations. X isn’t really the kind of thing you thought it was but this other kind of thing; the skeptical argument is rebuffed (not refuted) by recasting the nature of the problematic phenomenon. I am going to discuss the problems of existence and consciousness in this light; I claim there is an illuminating analogy between them, not so far removed from Hume’s position on causation and induction.[1] We will be proceeding at a high level of generality.

What kind of property is existence? When a thing exists what kind of fact is that? We know what it is for something to be red or square (or we think we do) but what is it to exist? The property seems elusive, peculiar, queer. Perhaps our most naïve idea about it is that existence is the property of being spatial: “X exists” means“X is in space” (not just “in the mind”). To be in space is to be a three-dimensional solid thing you could stub your toe on (see Dr. Johnson on Berkeley). It is a familiar concrete fact—a chunk of physical stuff in space. But this runs into trouble with the mind: it exists but it isn’t in space—or need not be in order to exist (we can’t rule out disembodied minds just by the definition of “exists”). And what about numbers, time, and space itself? Back to the drawing board. Now we start to get worried—what else could it be? It can’t just be being an object of thought, because we can think about non-existent things (e.g., the golden mountain). Nor can it consist in a disposition to be perceived: this is neither necessary nor sufficient (for familiar reasons). Nor can it be a sense-datum: I have impressions of red and square but not of existence per se. Nor can existence be identified with being a part of God’s mind. We then start to wax metaphysical: existence is a primitive sui generis indefinable property that we just have to accept without explanation. It is what it is and not some other thing (like the taste of pineapple, but not sensory). Or we might opt for mysterianism: existence is a real property with a complex real essence but its nature is unknowable by us. These are all straight solutions: they assume that existence is a genuine first-order property of things and then offer answers to the question of what that property is. But it turns out to be more difficult to pinpoint this property than we anticipated; and here is where the skeptic will pounce. There is, he says, no such property as existence (compare the property of being a ghost): nothing really exists (because “exists” is meaningless). The idea of existence is hollow, chimerical, nonsensical. We are thus in the presence of a skeptical paradox: common sense is revealed as common delusion. Existence is a myth. This is hard to accept: surely some things exist and some do not! It is carrying skepticism to absurd lengths—and yet no account of the property of existence has been provided. The alleged property vanishes into thin air.

Here is where a skeptical solution might bring some balm to the proceedings. Maybe it isn’t a regular first-order property at all, yet our talk of existence can be saved, if at a reduced volume, so to speak. We were wrong in our initial assumption of its ontological category: existence is real enough (or just enough) but it isn’t a property at all. Rather, it is a different kind of creature altogether: it is the circumstance of a first-order property having instances—for example, for red things to exist is for the propositional function “x is red” to have at least one instance (to be true for at least one substitution instance of that function). This is a skeptical solution because it questions the commonsense assumption that the predicate “exists” is logically predicative. True, there is no such property, but “exists” still has a meaning (a role in the language game), given by the paraphrase in terms of propositional functions and instantiation. This is a kind of anti-realist answer to the problem of existence: existence is not a real property—it is a humdrum fact about predicates having instances. We know that British mail boxes are red—well, that’s all that existence comes down to (“x is red” is true when “British mail box” is substituted for “x”). It isn’t some weird and wonderful property of objects, but a fact about truth and substitution into predicate expressions. Problem solved, or dissolved. We accept that existence isn’t a genuine property, but we can keep on using the word “exists”. In short, the concept existence is a second-order concept applicable to propositional functions (bits of language).

Much the same can be said about Russell’s treatment of definite descriptions. We start out with the question of the meaning of these expressions and look for what they refer to. Naively, we suppose the meaning is the reference, but then we notice that not all definite descriptions have reference–and yet they have meaning. What to do? We could try saying they refer to the idea corresponding to them, or possibly to themselves, but this runs into trouble as soon as it leaves the gates. So, we cast around for something more esoteric, more metaphysically charged, and we come up with non-existent but subsistent objects (we pull a Meinong). True, this gives us the ontological willies, but what’s a poor boy to do? No ordinary object will do the job. The skeptic jumps into the ring at this point and declares a knockout: definite descriptions are meaningless! Meaning is reference and some descriptions have no reference—thus, they are meaningless. Meinongian objects are just a refusal to accept this. Granted, this is a paradox, but that’s life folks! Now the wily B. Russell steps in to save the day: he proposes a skeptical solution, namely that descriptions are not referring expressions at all, but are short for a quantified conjunction of propositions. The mistake was to suppose that they mean by referring; in reality, they mean by quantifying and predicating. The paradox has been defanged, but it was right up to a point—if descriptions were referring expressions, they would be meaningless when empty. We solve (dissolve) the problem by offering a revised conception of what they are—quantifying expressions (with identity thrown in plus conjunction). We have to change our view about what definite descriptions are, but this is a small price to pay if we want to avoid Meinong and meaninglessness. Skeptical solutions are better than no solution at all. Or so we are told.

All well and good, we are on familiar ground, which I have re-described using the apparatus of skeptical paradoxes and skeptical solutions. But how does consciousness fit in? Surely, I am not going to claim that consciousness is existence! Indeed not (but the panpsychist and neutral monist come close). We have analogy not subsumption. It goes like this: we want to find out what consciousness is—what kind of feature or fact it is. So, we search for a straight solution: is it a sensation or a thought, a feeling or a quale, or intentionality, or what it’s like, or a disposition, or an informational brain state, or an immaterial perturbation? Suppose we come up with no clear answer—no straight solution to our problem. Each of these suggestions runs into trouble. What should we conclude? According to the eliminative skeptic, we should conclude that consciousness does not exist (“I am conscious, therefore I exist” is BS). For we can find nothing with which to identify it—no fact or property or state or event or process. There is nothing it is.  That is a somewhat alarming conclusion (though eliminative behaviorists will welcome it). Are we defenseless against it? No, because we can give up the assumption that consciousness is an intrinsic feature of a mental state: it isn’t like being a pain or a sensation of red or a feeling of panic; it isn’t intrinsic at all. It is second-order, relational, extrinsic to the mental state—as existence is second-order, relational, and extrinsic to the object. Existence is not an intrinsic property of things that have it but consists in a relation between a propositional function and its instances; it is not in the object. Similarly, consciousness is not in the mental state, not constitutive of it, not essential to it. Consciousness arises when, and only when, the subject has a belief about his mental state: for you to consciously think that it’s raining is to believe that you think it’s raining. It is a higher-order property of a mental state (if a property at all). Thus, there is such a thing as consciousness, but it is not what we supposed—a feature of a mental state. There is no such thing as that, so the skeptic is right up to a point; but talk of consciousness can be saved by re-interpreting it as short for the existence of a higher-order thought or belief. This is a skeptical solution because it abandons the naïve assumption that consciousness is a first-order intrinsic property of a conscious state. There is nothing funny going on—no remarkable property that conscious beings have and non-conscious beings lack. We don’t have to postulate wacky witchy facts to accommodate consciousness, as we don’t have to postulate wacky witchy facts to explain existence. Both consist in mundane facts concerning higher-order thoughts and instantiated propositional functions, respectively. Nor do we have to postulate a Meinongian ontology of consciousness, as if consciousness consisted in a special class of immaterial Cartesian objects (golden clouds perhaps) tenuously connected to the real world. We could even be physicalists about existence and consciousness if we could see our way clear to accepting that higher-order beliefs are physical (brain states) and propositional functions are also physical (bits of spoken language).

I have not tried to evaluate these skeptical solutions; I have merely articulated a pattern common to both. Now I want to urge that both share common defects, not in order to refute them, but to underline the commonality. In the case of existence, we have the point that the concept of an instance already embeds the concept of existence, since these have to be existent instances.[2] Also, we have the questions of what a propositional function is and what the relation of instantiation is: is there a straight solution to these questions or must they too receive a skeptical solution? Similarly, in the case of consciousness, we have the question of circularity: doesn’t the concept of a higher-order consciousness-conferring thought presuppose that that thought is conscious? If not, how does it confer consciousness on the first-order thought? Also, what is the relation of aboutness that is being invoked when we say that one thought is about another—can this problem be given a straight solution or must it be a given a skeptical solution? Isn’t this all an elaborate charade to avoid facing difficult problems? In any case, existence and consciousness present similar dialectical patterns. They also illustrate the reach of the argumentative structure initiated by Hume (and extended by Kripke).[3]

[1] There is now a large literature on this, going back to Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. I presuppose this literature and undertake to expand the key concepts.

[2] See my Logical Properties, chapter 2.

[3] Note that skeptical solutions don’t have to include the idea of replacing truth conditions by assertion conditions or bringing in community practices; they can take other forms too.