In Naturalizing the Mind, Fred Dretske tries to account for the quality of one’s mental experience ("how it feels" to be the subject of such experience) in purely representational terms. This project involves approaching some very challenging problems regarding the nature of the mental, such as subjectivity and self-knowledge, by appealing to what mental states are about, basically. This constitutes a highly original and interesting approach and Dretske shows it is a very promising one. Naturalizing the Mind is, thus, a study of consciousness definitely worth reading.

Dretske presents the basic ideas of his representational theory of the mind (or, as he calls it, "The Representational Thesis") in the first chapter of his book. Basically, A system S represents a property if and only if S has the function of indicating the occurrence of that property in the objects of a certain domain. Furthermore, S performs that function by occupying different states that correspond to different values of the property, whenever S is in a certain external/causal relation with an object of the given domain. Since S has the function of indicating the occurrence of the property, each of its states can then be said to have the function of providing information about the property in question. This is a function they acquire just in virtue of being a state of S, the type of function that Dretske will call "systemic functions". (Correspondingly, he will call the representations they give rise to "systemic representations") Systemic functions are said to be "natural", in the sense that they are determined by the design of the system.

Dretske tries to account for self-knowledge in terms of his representational thesis in the second chapter of his book. It seems that the cognitive access we have to the mental states we are in, is significantly different from the type of access other subjects have. While you can infer what my beliefs are on the basis of my behavior (including verbal behavior), it is clear we do not need to infer our knowledge of our mental states from anything at all, that it is somehow direct. It is that direct or immediate (for being non-inferential) way of acquiring beliefs that we intuitively call introspection. Dretske’s representational theory of the mind is meant to provide an explanation of that asymmetry.

The beginning point towards that explanation, within a representational theory of the mind, must consist in the realization that for every system S and mental state M, S’s being in M is a mental, and therefore a representational fact. The same goes for S’s belief of being in M. Now, Dretske takes introspective knowledge to be an instance of displaced perception, where displaced perception must be understood according to the scheme that follows. Consider our system S, two different objects k and h and, finally, two properties K and F. When S has a displaced perception of k as having K, S only perceives that h has F, strictly speaking. However, S comes to know that k has K, it believes that h’s having F reliably indicates that k has K, and S’s realization is a result of the just mentioned belief plus S’s perception. Now, what is for S to have introspective knowledge that it is in M? According to Dretske, it is for S to "see" that she is in M by perceiving some fact else and believing something about that fact. S must believe that, if it itself were not in state M, then such fact would not have happened. The fact in question is whatever S’s being in M represents (say that an object k is K). The necessary belief for S to come to know that S itself is in M by perceiving that k is K is the belief that the system itself is in M when an object of k’s sort is K (provided that the relevant perceptual system involving M is working properly).

In chapter three, Dretske tries to account for the phenomenal character of experience in representational terms. For any state S and sense modality M, Dretske identifies the qualia or phenomenal properties of S’s sensory experiences in M with the properties experienced by S in M in each case. These, in turn, are identified with the properties the objects are represented as having by the states of S. (The properties the senses have the function of providing information about within a given sense modality) The representational properties of sensory experiences are taken to be natural, and therefore systemic. By contrast, conceptual states like thought are states whose representational properties are acquired. Thus, given a certain sense modality, qualia of sensory experiences of S are the properties S has the natural and systemic function of providing information about and, according to Dretske, these are the ways objects would be (the properties the object would actually have) if S worked correctly. This is the central result of Dretske’s representational thesis concerning qualia.

There is an intuitive sense of "conscious" according to which, when I perceive, for instance, a tree in front of me, I am conscious of the tree being there. Now, we may speak of the state whereby I am conscious of the tree (that is, my perceptual experience) as a conscious state, in a derived sense of the expression. Thus, being conscious of something (trivially) entails being in a certain conscious state. In chapter four of his book, Dretske opposes a certain picture of consciousness according to which being conscious of something requires being conscious of the fact that one is conscious of it. The source of such counterintuitive picture of consciousness is, Dretske claims, the assumption that being in a certain conscious state requires being conscious of being in such state. We may or may not be aware of occupying certain states whereby we are conscious of certain objects and events. However, being aware of occupying one of such state does not make it conscious, according to Dretske. Not in the sense in which being conscious of a certain object or event entails occupying a certain conscious state, in any case.

There seems to be a problem that the representational thesis must face. Mental facts about the quality of experience are supposed to be representational facts. Furthermore, the fact that a subject’s being in a certain state represents something, does not depend on purely intrinsic properties of the subject in question (the representational thesis is, in this sense, an externalist theory). However, it seems that what is it like for a subject to experience something only depends on the physical constitution of that subject. In the final chapter of Naturalizing the Mind, Dretske tries to challenge this intuition.

Dretske discusses two main assumptions regarding the mental domain that he takes to be grounding the intuition that facts about the qualitative character of one’s experience depend only on one’s intrinsic properties. First of all, one may think that, unless this is so, one could not know about the phenomenal character of one’s own mental states in a privileged way. The account of self-knowledge provided in chapter 2 is meant to challenge, precisely, such view. Secondly, one may argue that thinking of the quality of one’s mental experience in externalist terms makes it causally inefficacious, which would preclude us from explaining a subject’s behavior partly by assuming that it is caused by her mental experience (and, particularly, its qualitative character). According to Dretske, this is a misunderstanding about the explanatory relevance of facts "outside" one’s head that rests on a conflation of the notions of behavior and pure bodily movements. Only explaining the latter by appealing to the causal efficacy of the mental, Dretske claims, is precluded by an externalist theory of the mind.

Jordi Fernandez is a 5th year graduate student in the Philosophy Department at Brown University, working in the Philosophy of Mind and Epistemology.

Categories: Philosophical