The Wonder of Consciousness
Full Title: The Wonder of Consciousness: Understanding the Mind through Philosophical Reflection
Author / Editor: Harold Langsam
Publisher: MIT Press, 2011
Review © Metapsychology Vol. 16, No. 14
Reviewer: Glenn Carruthers, Ph.D.
In his book Langsam sets out a highly specific agenda for the philosophy of mind and then attempts to do some work on that agenda. The Wonder of Consciousness is aimed at professional philosophers as such is unlikely to be accessible to those with no previous study of philosophy. For Langsam the task of philosophy is to make things “intelligible”, in a very specific sense. Something is intelligible in this sense if it is knowable a priori. That is, knowable without doing any specific investigation of the world, without doing any science, for example. Other facts about consciousness can be discovered empirically, but these are treated as independent from what is known based on introspection and reason alone. It is only the latter which are of interest to philosophers (p. 10). Langsam holds that only certain facts about consciousness are “intelligible” in this sense, these are some facts about the relationships between experiences and the relationships between experiences in the world (p. 10-11). So, what are the relationships he claims to have made intelligible?
In chapter 2 Langsam claims that we know by reason alone how experiences relate us to the world. The relationship between oneself and the world is a form of ‘direct realism’, whereby the self can access the world ‘directly’ (not indirectly, through some intermediary). The proposal is used to make sense of what he calls phenomenal ‘simples’. These experiences are not simple in that they are easy to understand, or simple in being common and so familiar. The ‘simples’ are experiences such as an ‘experience of red’ which are not describable. Langsam argues we can understand the simples, and how experiences relate to the world, by holding that an experience and the object represented by that experience possess the same property, but in different ways. The property “redness” is in the red object (e.g. a tomato), whereas ‘phenomenal redness’ or the experience of red is a property of the observer, it is instantiate for me.
Langsam holds that other facts we know by reason alone involve the causal powers of consciousness. In particular we know that the nature of experience explains why they cause what they do (p. 71). It is because experiences appear to us the way they do that we are able to do things like refer to the objects in the world represented by the experiences (p. 86-92). It is because pains feel the way they do that we come to desire that they end (p. 158).
Langsam holds that the causal relationship between one belief and inferences are intelligible in an analogous way (p. 99-103). This, along with some further assumptions, grounds a theory of knowledge in which knowledge is a kind of idealised belief (chapter 4), as well as a description of ideally rational and appropriate desires (chapter 5). I won’t consider this in any detail here, instead I shall focus on consciousness and his methodology. That said it is worth noting that he assumes that knowledge is a well-defined kind (although he fails to give an adequate definition, see e.g. 136) and he takes valid deductive argument as the model for how one ought to obtain beliefs and desires (p. 150-151). Many will find these assumptions questionable.
One might wonder if Langsam’s analysis gives us any more purchase on experience than we had before. The significance of his account is limited by a notable lack of engagement with other analyses or theories of consciousness. But suppose we do think this a helpful analysis, there is a further problem. It is wrong.
Langsam’s analysis is incapable of allowing for well known facts about experience, for example the existence of multi-stable images. To his credit Langsam does note that visual illusions are a challenge for his view (p. 45), but the kind of illusion he considers (a white wall that appears red under red lighting) is not the sort of illusion one would raise to challenge his view. Consider instead the Necker cube:
This picture is what we would call a multi-stable image, in that it can appear to us indifferent ways. For example, the rectangle made of short dashes may appear to be the front side of a ‘wire’ cube, or the rectangle made with longer dashes may appear so. You may find that the shape seems to spontaneously ‘switch’ as you look at it. If the experience of shape (we might call it ‘phenomenal cube-ness’ following Langsam) were just a matter of the shape of the line drawing being instantiated in consciousness then this sort of experience could never happen. There is no ‘front’ of this drawing, it is a flat set of lines, and certainly the picture doesn’t change shape when one’s experience of it ‘switched’.
From this one example of what Langsam proposes is intelligible about consciousness we can see a specific failure of his application of his agenda. At core, however, the short comings of this work are deeper than falsifications. It is in defining the agenda that this work fails to get off the ground. After taking care to note that philosophers ought not ignore knowledge which is obtained empirically Langsam states:
… the philosopher seeks answers to questions that do not seem to require further empirical investigation (p. 6).
I am hesitant to set limits on how people choose to seek knowledge, so I do not wish to deny Langsam the opportunity to seek knowledge by reason alone. But, by stating that philosophical answers don’t require further empirical investigation he excludes the possibility of philosophical conclusions being revised by empirical discovery. This created problems for his attempt to discover what is intelligible about consciousness. Fact’s about multi-stable images ought to lead revisions of Langsam’s analysis of the relationship between experience and the world, but Langsam seems to define himself out of taking these findings seriously. He even finds it difficult to revise his conclusions based on further reasoning. For example, he argues in chapter 1 that some properties of consciousness are neither structural nor causal (p. 17). However, he notes later that phenomenal properties do seem, on reflection, rather like structural properties (p. 39) at least in terms of being a part of the whole system that is you interacting with/observing the world. But, as he has already concluded that phenomenal properties are not structural he states that this relation is only like the apparent part/whole relationship and that the apparent structural property is only a quasi-structural property (p. 39). Although just what a quasi-structure might be is not discussed.
The unwillingness to allow for revision of reasoning in light of empirical findings leads Langsam into a dilemma. Langsam comes to accept certain claims about consciousness based on introspection. When one looks inward at consciousness there just seems to be more there than what can be described in terms of structures and causes (the phenomenal simples above p. 32). Although he considers some objections, the inference from this seeming to it really being the case is more precarious than Langsam recognizes. This inference is only licensed on the assumption that introspection provides a complete and accurate view of consciousness.
Here then is the dilemma for Langsam. On the first horn, this assumption is false. Not everything about consciousness is knowable by introspection. For example, the most saturated red is more saturated than the most saturated orange (Hurvich 1981). Further not everything we would claim based on introspection about consciousness is true. Based on introspection it seems that we have typically accurate colour vision at our periphery. If one were to ask you to fixate on a point, do you think you could identify the colour of an object as it is moved gradually into view? It seems so, but in fact it is extremely difficult.
On the second horn of the dilemma Langsam could drop the assumption that introspection gives an accurate and complete view of consciousness. However, if he were to do so then he must allow that what seems true about consciousness based on reasoning about introspection is revisable in light of further findings. Although this would open Langsam to consider the literature on consciousness which is currently ignored, he could not consistently do so as this would require him to substantially revise his methodology.
Although a thoughtful work in parts on its own terms, Langsam’s unwillingness to allow what we believe about consciousness based on introspection and reasoning to be revised by further empirical discovery, and even further reasoning alone, limits the importance of this work.
Hurvich, L. M. (1981). Color vision, Sinauer Associates. Inc.
© 2012 Glenn Carruthers
Dr. Glenn Carruthers, formally of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, is a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Cognition and its Disorders at Macquarie University, Australia. His work focuses around developing theories of conscious experiences, especially self-consciousness. He is currently developing methods for testing explanations of the rubber hand illusion. He is also working on the hard problem of consciousness (with Dr. Elizabeth Schier, Macquarie) and agency in the crime of filicide. https://sites.google.com/site/glennrjcarruthers/ glenn.rj.carruthers@gmail.com