Why has
consciousness consistently eluded the explanatory net of analytic philosophers
of mind? Paul Livingston’s Philosophical History and the Problem of
Consciousness is a meticulous attempt to diagnose the cause of this
failure by tracing over the historical development of the various analytic
treatments of consciousness. Indeed, in consort with Livingston’s line of
reflections, one may note that titles such as Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness
Explained and Jerry Fodor’s Psychological Explanation are not only
misnomers as consciousness and psychological phenomena still remain outside the
reach of analytic explanatory framework, but also, and more
significantly, the very explanatory framework used by analytic philosophers of
mind has contributed to this elusion and eclipse of the core of consciousness.
The introductory question above, as well as Livingston’s diagnostic approach,
has the unmistakable implication that there can be, if not already existent,
explanatory matrices that not only eschew the debacles of analytic philosophers
of mind but also shed light on the dark corners of consciousness. This review
is, therefore, organized around the twofold examination of Livingston’s
diagnosis and prognosis of the "analytic ailment of mind."

Livingston’s central contention is
that analytic philosophy, since its inception and throughout its historical
vicissitudes, has persistently embraced a specific structure of explanation
that has simultaneously deprived it from delving deeply into the constitution
of consciousness: namely, semantic structuralism. This is how the
story is recounted in Livingston’s historical reconstruction of the analytic
tradition. Characteristically, Livingston claims, analytic philosophy is a linguistic inquiry. ‘In
particular, analytic philosophy typically investigates the conceptual
and logical structure of language in order to understand experience and to
explain its relationship to objective knowledge about the physical world’ (p.
2; original emphasis). Since the turn of the twentieth century, the explanatory
projects that would exemplify analytic philosophy of mind sought to elucidate
the epistemology and ontology of our knowledge of the objective world on the
basis of reasoning about the structure of experience or consciousness, i.e., in terms of the
total pattern of logical or conceptual interrelationships of its basic
elements. A typical trait that looms large in the analytic tradition is its
tendency to entwine its explanatory project with a program of linguistic
analysis, whereby the structure of experience is specified by means
of a clarification of the logical relationships between propositions — propositions
that cover the entire epistemological gamut from those immediately describing
experience at one end of the spectrum to the other end of the continuum
comprising the more highly conceptual and interpretative ones.

Within this program, the analysis
of experience is consistently identified with the analysis of the language of experience: a
semantic analysis that is intended to unravel the logical and conceptual
structure of this language. The fundamental function of this linguistic
analysis is to bring out the network of the syntactic and semantic
interrelationships of the terms and sentences that describe, explain, and
express experience. The goal of analysis is then the identification and
description of this structure of relations. But from the beginning of the
analytic tradition, the basic elements of experience figure as the indefinable relata of this network
of relations, the elements that can be described and explained only by
reference to their semantically and conceptually relevant interrelations, and never in
themselves. This configuration — in which consciousness is constantly
construed as immediate content, and objective language and explanation as
relational — has, despite alterations in detail and emphasis, continued to
characterize the discussion of the problem of consciousness to the present
time, through the various shifts in doctrine and method that analytic inquiry
into experience has undergone over the past century.

The imposition of this structuralist
framework of explanation on mental phenomena is, in Livingston’s view, the crux
of the difficulties that analytic philosophers of mind have been facing since
the naissance of the tradition. In such an explanatory construction, particular
items of consciousness acquire their significance only by being located in a broader structure of relations of
one kind or another. That is, the basic elements or units of the structure fail
to be accorded any intrinsic properties or characteristics. A
structuralist explanation generally operates by first characterizing
the nature of the system of interrelations in which a type of events or objects
stand, and then explaining particular items by locating
them within this system. It, therefore, should not be surprising that analytic
philosophers of mind have had a hard time to cast any light on the intrinsic
nature of consciousness and qualitative aspects of experience.

Physicalism and functionalism, as two of the
most prominent analytic theories of mind, are exemplars of this trend of
thinking. Physicalist theories of mind maintain that every state of
consciousness can be described and explained in terms of basic physics. From an
explanatory point of view, physicalism operates by locating each conscious
experience within the total pattern of relations that physics can capture — a
pattern that typically consists of causal relations that are conceived of as
exhaustive of reality. Similarly from an explanatory perspective, according to
functionalism, mental states, including states of consciousness, are completely
explainable in terms of their functional interrelationships with other mental
states and physical states. On this understanding of mental states in terms of
these interrelationships, states of consciousness acquire their import and
significance only by being situated within a total pattern of relations. Yet,
as it can be seen, both accounts avail themselves of a framework of explanation
that operates at the cost of neglecting the non-structural and intrinsic aspects
of conscious states. Thus, the recalcitrance and intractability of
consciousness to analytic methods of investigation would be an inevitable
outcome of the very explanatory schema adopted by the analytic tradition.   

To generalize the diagnosis, Livingston
remarks that the problems besetting the analytic project, in all its various
promulgations, are in fact ‘problems of the relationship of content to structure.’ (p. 197;
original emphasis) The forms of explanation and analysis characteristic of the
analytic tradition have consistently been structural in that they
have attempted to explain the nature of the referents of the terms for
conscious states of mind in terms of the logical, conceptual, or functional
structure of those terms to the undeniable desert and detriment of the content of those states
as experienced non-relationally and in their own right. Consequently, it is no
wonder that consciousness has relentlessly eluded the explanatory net of
analytic philosophers of mind.

Now, should one decide to defer to
Livingston’s diagnosis of the analytic "ailment" of mind, what should
the "therapy" be? Obviously the use of the words "ailment"
and "therapy" here is intended to be reminiscent of a particular
philosophical predilection that also seems to be in line with Livingston’s own
way of dealing with the conundrum of consciousness. However, before discussing
what philosophical school of thought these words are indicative of, there are a
number of concerns that need to be considered.

First, although Livingston
dwells in great detail on the concept and characterization of
"structural" schema of explanation, there is not much of a definition
or delineation of what a "non-structural" explanation should look
like. Or, more specifically, what exactly a non-structural property or feature
in general, and of consciousness in particular, is. Most of Livingston’s
allusions to non-structural explications are negative and in contrast to
structural explications. Even his evocation of descriptive terms such as "intrinsic"
and "essential" is not very helpful since they still seem to derive
their connotation more from contrastive structural concepts like
"relational" than from non-structural notions. Interestingly enough,
at one point, Livingston himself appears to come close to the same suspicion
when he remarks that the ceaseless controversies about consciousness have led
‘to the frustrating dialectical situation’ in which the debate has degenerated
into ‘the bare existence or non-existence’ of consciousness as conceived in
itself (p. 19). Yet, he overlooks the possibility that these
interminable quarrels may indeed be the result of a more fundamental metaphysical dispute over
what exactly constitute "essential" and "intrinsic" about
consciousness in particular and any object or event in general.

To err on the side of fairness, it
should be said that Livingston does mention, though only en
passant, two other supposedly alternative explanatory frameworks, viz., genetic and narrative explanations.
These allegedly non-structural explanatory schemata are summarized respectively
as explanations in terms of ‘origins and histories of descent’ and ‘situating
particular things or events within a larger narrative story’ (p. 4). Yet, not
only Livingston’s discussion of these explanatory ersatz is too brief and
summary, but also, and more importantly, it is not clear that ultimately such
explanatory constructions are not similarly structural. Indeed, one might argue
that such explanations are effectively parasitic on structural explanations for
their seeming success and pragmatic purchase. Basically, the worry here is that
in dealing with fundamental features of the universe, including consciousness,
there might not be any other explanatory options than structural ones. And, in
support of such an eventuality, one may easily summon philosophical precedents
such as Kantian type of argumentations for cognitive closure and epistemic
inaccessibility. In other words, because of human epistemological limitations,
ultimate explanations are per force structural.

Secondly, Livingston
rightly emphasizes the eminence and considerable contribution of linguistic or
semantic treatment of conscious states of mind in the analytic tradition.
Consequently, on occasions, he is brought to the issue of the priority of
language over mental states and, by extension, to the issue of the relationship
between natural language and consciousness. Specifically, Livingston endorses
the analytic tradition’s idea of ‘the priority of language for
our self-understanding’ (p. 27; original emphasis), as well as the tradition’s
stress on the significance of natural language in the articulation and
apprehension of conscious states of mind for an individual’s self-knowledge —
what Livingston calls ‘human self-image.’ (p. vii) He commends analytic
philosophy of mind for recognizing that ‘our ways of understanding ourselves
are inveterately and irreducibly linguistic, that we are humanly fated to
determine ourselves through the language that we use’ (p. 110).

This theoretical tendency, as
revealed and recommended by Livingston, obviously rules out a reverse and
Gricean-type of reducibility of meaning to mental states, a doctrine that would
clearly confer the priority on conscious states of mind than on language. This
observation patently raises two points: one, albeit a minor point, it betrays
the touted theoretical monolithicity of analytic philosophers of mind. Two, and
a rather major point, Livingston barely argues for the theory of the priority
of language over mental states, a theory which in fact forms the bulwark of his
alternative "therapy" for the "analytic ailment of mind."
The significance of this point lies in the consideration that part of the
reason why analytic philosophers have opted for a structural framework of explanation
is the nature of language itself. That is, language in virtue of its productivity and systematicity, and in general
due to its compositionality, ostensibly demands a structural schema
for its successful explanation. In other words, the inadequacy of analytic
accounts of consciousness might not so much arise from subscribing to
structuralist explanatory strategies with their relational regimentations but
from presuming the priority of meaning over mind. Should one thus accord a more
fundamental status to conscious states of mind than to their linguistic or
semantic representations, one would be in a better position to bestow on, at
least, some mental states a more metaphysically sui generis and
non-relational standing. But, paradoxically enough, this is the very
desideratum for theories of mind that Livingston complains the analytic
tradition misses.

Thirdly, along with the
priority of language thesis, Livingston maintains that the language in question
is ‘the ordinary language of self-description and self-awareness’ (p. 25). The
contention is that reflection on the ordinary language with which we define and
articulate claims about consciousness allows our experience to evince its
intrinsic nature and non-structural constitution. On this understanding, our
objective is to produce ‘recognitions rather than theories’ of ‘the unthought
foundations of our ordinary lives’ (pp. 109 & vii respectively). What is,
however, of consequence about these assertions is Livingston’s underlying
thought that "ordinary language" and naturally, by extension, its
assorted statements about consciousness are atheoretical. But, the
problem here is that at no point does Livingston adduce any arguments to
justify this atheoretical construal of ordinary language. On the contrary, if
nothing else, all the recent disputes about the status of folk
psychology and the attendant contestations over theory-theory and its rival,
the so-called simulation theory, and eliminativism are testimony to
the claim that the ordinary language is not as theory-innocuous as Livingston
innocently intimates. 

Nonetheless, Livingston’s
suggestion about the theory-unladenness of ordinary language conveniently
connects the discussion to his "therapy" for the analytic
"ailment" of mind. As can be readily surmised, the course of
treatment that he prescribes is very much a variation on the late
Wittgensteinian practice. For Livingston, forms of philosophical inquiry that
do not accord linguistic analysis of the ordinary language a privileged status
miss substantial and decisive insights into, among other philosophical
concerns, the problem of consciousness. Approvingly, he paraphrases
Wittgenstein’s view ‘that the philosopher’s task is not to expose unknown facts
or beliefs, but only to clarify what we already know, what
already lies before us insofar as we speak a language’ (pp. 226-7; original
emphasis). In his own words, Livingston’s Wittgensteinian analytic approach is
concisely captured by the following five rubrics:

·       
The method of analytic reflection is a method of
self-reflection.

·       
The method of analytic reflection is not a
"third-person" method.

·       
The method of analytic reflection is not a
"first-person" method.

·       
The method of analytic reflection produces
clarifications, not accounts.

·       
The method of analytic reflection answers to
specific philosophical needs. (pp. 225-32)

However, as indicated above,
Livingston’s approach begs the issue of the atheoretical nature of ordinary
language and thereby misses all the critical connections with the recent
developments in the field of consciousness. Likewise, the inherent ascientific,
if not anti-scientific, and asystematic, if not anti-systematic, elements of
his method of philosophizing endanger, rather than endear, his findings about
mental phenomena. It goes without saying that the philosopher’s function is not
to expose unknown facts, yet, as a cursory glance at the philosophical history
of mind unequivocally shows, philosophers cannot afford standing aloof of facts
either.

In conclusion,
despite some of the foregoing concerns, it would be amiss not to commend Philosophical
History and the Problem of Consciousness for its deft description of the details
and differentiations of the various analytic theories of mind and its adroit
articulation of the methodological and theoretical tenets of analytic accounts
of consciousness.

 

© 2004 Majid Amini

 

Dr Majid Amini is an Associate Professor of
Philosophy at Virginia State University, USA.

Categories: Philosophical