The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature

Introduction:

The Project

We are substances – animate spatio-temporal continuants, consisting of matter, with active and passive causal powers. We are sentient, self-moving agents, with the ability to act or refrain from acting at will. Being language-using creatures with rational capacities, we adopt and pursue goals for reasons. We have projects and interests, we make choices and decisions, act voluntarily and intentionally, and are responsible for what we do. So we are persons. Our deeds are explained teleologically by reference to our goals and purposes, and by the reasons and motives for which we act. We have a mind and a body. The body we have consists of the somatic features of the body (the animate material substance) that we are. The mind we have is not a substance (a res cogitans) or a part of a substance (the brain). To have a mind is to have and exercise an array of first- and second-order intellectual and volitional abilities. The conceptual network that underlies these categorial observations was described in detail in Human Nature: the Categorial Framework (2007).

That book provided, as it were, the mis-en-scène for the play that will begin to unfold here. But the lighting still had to be put in place. This is the role of the three chapters of the Prolegomena: ‘Consciousness’, ‘Intentionality’ and ‘Mastery of a Language’. Both consciousness and intentionality have been invoked to explain what it is to have a mind, and to characterize the mental. Both concepts are sources of ramifying confusions. Eradicating these confusions is necessary before investigating the nature of our cognitive and cogitative powers. What is distinctive of humanity, what above all distinguishes us from other animals, is that we are language-using creatures. Hence, the nature of language and of linguistic abilities need to be clarified before moving on to the main themes of the investigation.

The subject of consciousness was introduced into philosophy by Descartes, who held (against the Aristotelians) that consciousness is the mark of the mind. Consciousness assumed even greater importance in the writings of Locke, who held it to be the glue binding our past to our present experience, which makes each of us a person. It was assigned supreme importance by Kant, who held it to be the source of the transcendental unity of experience. Over the last decades, consciousness has been variously presented – as the last remaining obstacle to a satisfactory ‘scientific conception of the world’, as a mystery that is beyond the powers of the human mind to resolve, and as the feature (the ‘what-it's-likeness of experience’) that distinguishes us from automata. I shall show that the early modern discussion of the subject from Descartes to Kant was enmired in confusion. There is no mystery about consciousness, and current debates on the subject are no more than the excited buzzing of flies in a fly-bottle. In place of these misconceptions, I shall advance a comprehensive connective analysis of this multi-focal concept. Connective analysis (see Appendix) consists in describing the manifold logical connections between a given expression (and its cognates) and other expressions with which it is associated, or with which it is likely to be confounded. A focal concept (exemplified by Aristotle's analysis of health) is one with a focal point (e.g. the health of a being) around which are clustered a variety of logically related extensions of the concept (e.g. healthy exercise, healthy food, healthy environment). A multi-focal concept is a concept with multiple centres of variation. A centre of variation need not have a focal point. It is more commonly a focus of points.

Brentano revived the medieval concept of intentionality and argued that intentionality is the mark of the mental. This too is mistaken. What is true is that the intentionality of some mental or psychological concepts that characterize our nature is a source of widespread misunderstanding. Intentionality and intentional in-existence require elucidation, and intentional phenomena and their grammar need to be characterized. This I shall try to do. What it is that we believe when we believe falsely is a persistent source of confusion. Do we believe facts, states of affairs, propositions or sentences? How are our beliefs related to what makes them true? And how are they related to what makes them false? How do we know what we believe? The problems of intentionality ramify. How can we believe what is not the case? For if it is not the case, there is nothing to believe. This tangle of problems will be unravelled.

The final chapter of the Prolegomena brings us to the source of all that is distinctive about us and that differentiates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. We are unique in nature in being language-using creatures. In Human Nature: the Categorial Framework I argued that it is because we have a developed language that we are capable of self-consciousness, that we can reason – and think, feel and act for reasons, that we can apprehend truths of mathematics and logic, that we know good and evil and can have a moral conscience, that we have autobiographies and a socio-historical sense of identity. Our nature is the product of our animality qua hominidae, of our mastery of a developed language that endows us with rational powers, and of our histories qua social and cultural beings. Much confusion surrounds the ideas of language and linguistic skills, of speaking and understanding language and of meaning something by words and utterances. The debates on these matters over the last century are polarized between two conceptions of language: (i) as a meaning calculus (e.g. Frege, Russell in Principia, Wittgenstein in the Tractatus, Carnap, Davidson, Dummett), and (ii) conceptions of language as a form of human behaviour (Wittgenstein in the Investigations, Austin, Grice, Strawson). The former conception gives primacy to assertion, truth, truth-conditions of sentences, and to understanding conceived as a computational process or its resultant state. The latter conception gives primacy to the use of words in the stream of life, to the practice of communication conceived intentionally and contextually, and to understanding conceived as akin to an ability rather than to a process or state. We shall investigate the questions that lead to these different conceptions.

With the discussion of these three great themes, the lighting for the stage is prepared, and the play can begin. At stage centre stand knowledge and belief. Neither is a mental state. They are not brain states either. Nor are they attitudes towards propositions. Knowing-how and knowing-that are two different forms knowledge may take. The former is not in general reducible to the latter. Practical knowledge is an essential and irreducible element of our agential nature. Both forms of knowledge have a kinship with ability – hence with potentiality rather than actuality. Knowing things to be so is distinct from knowing things to be true. In so far as knowledge can be said to aim at anything, it aims at reality – at how things are, and only secondarily at what is true. Received analyses of knowledge in terms of truth, belief and justification (or certainty, or a right to be sure) are defective. What is needed is not such a definitional analysis of knowledge, but a connective analysis that displays the place of knowledge in the network of epistemic concepts. An examination of the needs met and purposes satisfied by the uses of ‘know’ and ‘believe’ reinforces the connective analysis. Not only is belief not a mental state, it is not a feeling or a disposition either. Once the doxastic map is drawn, the complex relationship between knowledge and belief falls into place. Although belief is the default position when knowledge fails, knowledge – the possession of information – is not a species or form of belief at all. Since believing is neither an act nor an activity, the question of voluntariness of belief must be addressed and the fact that we are responsible for our beliefs explained. Finally, the epistemology of belief and the nature of self-deception demand clarification.

Without sensibility, there would be no knowledge. With us, but not with other animals, sensation and perception are concept-laden. Concepts (unlike ideas) are creatures of the intellect (or, on Kant's account, of the understanding), and our perceptual experience is unavoidably run through with concepts and judgement. We see the world around us in terms of the concepts we employ in describing it. Both sensation and perception are primary sources of knowledge. Their logical geography needs to be mapped, their relations clarified, their voluntariness investigated and their cognitive potentialities described. The causal theory of perception has long seemed irresistible, or, if resistible, then only at the price of idealism. The familiar flaws of the classical representational causal theory and of its current neuroscientific variants are sketched. The modern Grice/Strawson analytic form of the causal theory is examined and shown to be untenable. That concepts of perception are not causal concepts, and that perceiving something is not an experience caused by what one sensibly seems to perceive, do not imply that scientific investigations into the causal processes that endow us with our perceptual powers and that occur when we perceive things are faulty. The analytic causal theory of perception is a mistaken account of concepts of perception; the neuroscientific theory of perception is an empirical theory of the neural processes involved in perceiving. The latter does not imply the former. However, it is important to avoid the common neuroscientific mistake of reverting to the seventeenth-century representational causal theory of perception, and the equally common neuroscientific incoherence of ascribing perception to the brain. It is the living being as a whole that perceives. It is likewise important to deconstruct the idea of the necessity of a general sense (sensus communis) and its modern neuroscientific equivalent, the binding problem.

Memory is knowledge retained. In the absence of the power to retain knowledge, the horizon of possibilities for thought, affection and action would be very near – as it is with non-language-using animals. Without personal memory, human beings would not enjoy the moral status of persons, and would not be responsible for their deeds. Without the ability to recollect our past, we would lack any sense of our own identity over time. We would have no autobiography. Without personal memory, our social bonds, our loves and friendships, would be reduced to the inchoate forms of affection exhibited by other bonding animals. Without memory of the traditions and subjective history of our social group, we should have no sense of social identity.

The final part of the book deals with our cogitative powers. A connective analysis of thinking clarifies this multi-focal concept. We are naturally inclined to conceive of thinking as an activity of the mind – but that conception obliterates important distinctions. We are equally inclined to suppose that we think in some medium or other – in images, concepts or words. Representations do indeed require a medium. But thoughts are not representations – they are all message and no medium. A cousin of the misconceived idea that we must think in something is the doctrine that there must be a language of thought. That idea, which goes back at least as far as Ockham, was resurrected from its mouldy grave by Chomsky and Fodor. It needs, and will be given, decent burial. The question of whether non-human animals can think has much preoccupied scientists and philosophers in recent years. We shall give this due scrutiny. Finally, the connection between our cogitative powers and the idea of an ‘inner life’ must be explored. For human beings, unlike all other animals, have an inner life of thought and reflection, of daydreaming and recollecting, of hoping and fearing, and of deciding, forming intentions and planning.

Imagination too is a cogitative power. Philosophical reflection on the imagination is marred by the assimilation of our ability to think of novel possibilities to our ability to conjure up mental images. The latter is logically inessential to the creative imagination, but is a rich source of confusion. The relationship between images (drawings, paintings, photographs) and mental images must be clarified; otherwise, we shall wrongly suppose that mental images are a species of image. We must note the intelligibility of imagining something rotating and the unintelligibility of rotating something in the imagination; otherwise, we may be gulled into supposing (as psychologists and cognitive scientists do) that there is such a thing as rotating mental images in mental space. We must investigate the relationship between perceiving and imagining, lest we assign to the imagination impossible and unnecessary synthesizing tasks, as Hume and Kant did. Mental images are not faint perceptions. They may or may not be vivid, but they are not distinguishable from perceptions by their relative vivacity. Rather, the vivacity of mental images and the vivacity of perceptions are categorially different. Finally, the relationship between the imaginable, the conceivable and the possible require investigation.

It has in recent years become fashionable to conceive of ourselves as the helpless products of our genes; free will and responsibility are commonly thought an illusion, to be displaced by genetic and neural determinism; and the theory of evolution is invoked to explain morality and altruism in terms of natural selection. Our affinity with other hominidae has become a subject of extensive research, often aimed at cutting us down to size. The prowess of the great apes is exaggerated, often in order to narrow the perceived gap between animals and us. This development in the Zeitgeist is sadly understandable, but unwarranted. We are, of course, animals – but the only rational ones. We are, to be sure, hominidae – but the only language-using ones. No other creature has eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. We are animals, but the only animals who can aspire to live under the rule of law, and who can achieve happiness (as opposed to mere contentment). It is well that we should bear in mind our rational nature and what is distinctive about us – what makes us ‘darkly wise and rudely great’, ‘a pendulum betwixt smile and tear’, ‘the glory and the shame of the universe’. Accordingly, I have paid considerable attention throughout this book to comparisons between man and beast, to the applicability and reasons for the applicability of many cognitive and cogitative concepts to human beings, and to their inapplicability to all other animals that are neither blessed with, nor cursed by possession of, the powers of reason, thought and understanding.

Such is the project of the current book. Its completion prepares the way for a further study – of the affective life of man, of the place of value in human life and of the moral powers with which we are endowed and the exercise of which gives meaning to our lives.

The methodology of these essays on human nature was explained and defended in Human Nature: the Categorial Framework, chapter 1. Further detailed explanation of the methods here used and a general defence of the venerable Way of Words is to be found in the Appendix. Those who have qualms about the Way of Words, those who cannot see that scrutiny of linguistic usage can clarify concepts and those who cannot grasp how conceptual clarification could shed light upon the nature of things are advised to read the Appendix before proceeding further. Others are invited to eat the pudding before investigating the cooking.

Prolegomena

1

Consciousness as the Mark of the Mental

1. Consciousness as a mark of modernity

The ancients did not characterize the mind in terms of consciousness

Although the ancients raised questions about our own knowledge of our perceptions and thought, and introduced the idea of an inner sense, they had no word for consciousness and they did not characterize the mind as the domain of consciousness. Aristotelians conceived of the mind as the array of powers that distinguish humanity from the rest of animate nature. The powers of self-movement, of perception and sensation and of appetite are shared with other animals. What is distinctive of humanity, and what characterizes the mind, are the powers of the intellect – of reason and of the rational will. Knowledge of these powers is not obtained by ‘consciousness’ or ‘introspection’, but by observing their exercise in our engagement with the world around us. The medievals followed suit. They too lacked a term for consciousness, but they likewise indulged in reflection upon ‘inner senses’, arguably – in the wake of Avicenna's distinguishing five such senses – to excess.

Descartes's introduction of the term and redefinition of the mind

Descartes's innovations with regard to the uses in philosophy of the Latin ‘conscientia’ (which had not hitherto signified consciousness at all), as well as the French ‘la conscience’, were of capital importance.¹ For it was he who introduced the novel use of the term into the philosophical vocabulary. He invoked it in order to account for the indubitable and infallible knowledge which he held we have of our Thoughts (cogitationes) or Operations of the Mind. His reflections reshaped our conception of the mind and redrew the boundaries of the mental. Thenceforth consciousness, as opposed to intellect and sensitivity to reasons in thought, affection, intention and action, was treated as the mark of the mental and the characteristic of the mind.

The expressions ‘conscius’ and the French ‘conscient’, and the attendant conception of consciousness, caught on among his correspondents and successors (Gassendi, Arnauld, La Forge, Malebranche). So too ‘consciousness’ and ‘conscious’ caught on among English philosophers, churchmen and scientists (Stanley, Tillotson, Cumberland, Cudworth and Boyle). But it is to Locke that we must turn to find the most influential, fully fledged, philosophical conception of consciousness that, with some variations, was to dominate reflection on the nature of the human mind thenceforth. This conception was to come to its baroque culmination in the writings of Kant. In the Lockean tradition, consciousness is an inner sense. Unlike outer sense, it is indubitable and infallible. It is limited in its objects to the operations of the mind. The objects of consciousness are private to each subject of experience and thought. What one is thus conscious of in inner sense constitutes the subjective foundation of empirical knowledge. Because consciousness is thus confined to one's own mental operations, it was conceived to be equivalent to self-consciousness – understood as knowledge of how things are ‘subjectively’ (‘privately’, in foro interno) with one's self.

Development of the ordinary use

The ordinary use of the English noun ‘consciousness’ and its cognates originates in the early seventeenth century, a mere three or four decades prior to the Cartesian introduction of a novel sense of ‘conscius’ and ‘conscient’ into philosophy in the 1640s. So it evolved side by side with the philosophical use – but, on the whole, in fortunate independence of it. For the ordinary use developed, over the next three centuries, into a valuable if specialized instrument in our toolkit of cognitive concepts. By contrast, as we shall see, philosophical usage sank deeper and deeper into quagmires of confusion and incoherence from which it has not recovered to this day.

Multiple centres of variation

The ordinary use of ‘conscious’ evolved a number of related centres of variation: being conscious as opposed to unconscious; being perceptually conscious of something, or of some aspect of something, in one's environment; being conscious of one's feelings and inclinations; being conscious that as well as being conscious of; conscious, as opposed to unconscious mental attributes (such as belief or desire); consciously doing something qua agent, as well as being conscious of doing something qua spectator; and being self-conscious. These are not related as species to a genus. Nor are they different senses of ‘consciousness’, if that suggests that they are mere homonyms. Nor is consciousness an Aristotelian ‘focal concept’ (like healthy). Rather, there are multiple centres of variation, with various forms of connection between them (see fig. 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Centres of variation in the normal use of ‘consciousness’

The most important of these centres of variation are far removed from the early modern philosophical idea of an inner sense that discerns ‘operations of the mind’. They are equally far removed from the contemporary philosophical conception of conscious experience as possessing a unique qualitative character, of there being ‘something that it is like’ to enjoy such experience. Being perceptually conscious of something is actually a form of cognitive receptivity (see fig. 1.2). It is not to achieve knowledge, but to receive it (and hence is a cousin of noticing). The concept of being conscious of something belongs to the same family of concepts as being aware of, noticing and realizing, and is bound up with taking cognizance of something known. To become, and then to be, conscious of something or conscious that something is so, is either to receive knowledge as a result of one's attention being caught and held by something, or it is for knowledge already possessed to weigh with one, or on one, in one's deliberations, or for it to colour one's thought and manner of acting. It is not to attain knowledge by one's endeavours (as are discovering, discerning or detecting), but to be given it; or it is for knowledge already possessed to colour one's thoughts, enter into one's deliberations and modulate one's manner of acting. Self-consciousness, as ordinarily used, is far removed from both apperception and consciousness of one's self. ‘Consciousness’ and its cognates, far from signifying the general form, or ubiquitous accompaniment, of the mental, are highly specialized instruments of our language the focus of which is but rarely, and selectively, the operations of the mind.

Figure 1.2 Forms of cognitive receptivity

Purpose of this chapter

The purpose of this chapter is to clarify the ordinary concept of consciousness, and to show that consciousness is not the mark of the mind. Further, I shall show that both the early modern philosophical account of consciousness as an inner sense whereby we know what passes in our minds,² and the contemporary conception of consciousness conceived as a property of experience, namely that there is something which it is like for the subject to have it, are equally incoherent. These philosophical conceptions of consciousness, far from identifying the defining mark of the mental, are themselves a mark of deep and ramifying conceptual confusions.

2. The genealogy of the concept of consciousness

History of the concept: Greek

The ancients had no word that can be translated as ‘consciousness’. The closest the Greeks came to our abstract noun ‘consciousness’ is suneidesis. The corresponding verb derives from conjoining oida (I know) with sun or xun (with) to yield sunoida: ‘I know together with’, ‘I share the knowledge that’ or, if the prefix sun functions merely as an intensifier, ‘I know well’, or ‘I am well aware’.³ Of course, this does not mean that they did not struggle with the same philosophical phantasms as the early moderns did and as we do. Whether that implies that they had our philosophical concept of consciousness, despite lacking a word for it, depends upon whether, after careful analysis, it can be shown that we do have a coherent philosophical concept – or whether it will become clear that we are merely floundering about in incoherent conceptual confusion.

History of the concept: Latin

The Greek pattern is also exhibited by Latin, where the combination of scio (I know) and cum (with) yielded the verb conscio, the noun conscientia, and the adjective conscius. These too could be used in the sense of shared knowledge, or of being privy to information about something or someone (including oneself), as well as in the thin sense of knowing well or awareness. The idea of shared knowledge, or knowledge to which one is privy, drifted into the different idea of unshared knowledge to which one is privy – a drift from being a joint witness to being a single ‘internal’ witness, in particular, a witness against oneself inasmuch as one possesses knowledge of a guilty secret about oneself. Here is the origin of our idea of a guilty conscience. And it is from the idea of an internal witness that the idea of conscience as an internal law-giver was later to evolve. Note, however, that neither suneidesis nor conscientia was employed to signify the manner in which one is (according to the Cartesian and early modern conception) held to know of whatever is ‘passing in one's mind’ or to know (according to the contemporary conception) what it is like to have a given experience. Nor was what one was sunoida or conscius of restricted to operations or states of one's mind.

History of the concept: English

The emergence of the English expressions ‘consciousness’, ‘being conscious of’ and ‘self-conscious’ is surprisingly late.⁴ ‘Conscious’ and its cognates occur nowhere in the writings of Shakespeare. Their earliest occurrences, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, are at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when ‘to be conscious’, like conscius, signified being privy to something or to some secret. It could be applied poetically to inanimate things or abstractions as sharing knowledge of, or being witness to, human actions – as in ‘the conscious time’ (Jonson, 1601), ‘the conscious groves, the scenes of his past triumphs and his loves’ (Denham, 1643), and ‘under conscious Night, Secret they finish'd’ (Milton, 1667). ‘Being conscious’, ascribed to a person, was used in the classical sense to signify sharing a secret, being privy to something with another person, as in Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651): ‘Where two, or more men, know of one and the same fact, they are said to be Conscious of it one to another’, or in South's discussion of friendship (Sermons, 1664): ‘Nothing is to be concealed from the other self. To be a friend and to be conscious are terms equivalent.’

Sharing a secret, however, easily mutated into no more than being privy to or witness to something. This usage is evident already in the 1610s. The objects of being conscious to oneself could be facts about other people or states of affairs, or they could be facts about oneself, for example, one's weakness (1620). One was said to be conscious to the patience and wisdom of another (1649), or conscious to a murder (1658). Gradually the suffix ‘to oneself’ was dropped, and consciousness to something was transformed into consciousness of something. Already in the 1630s we find Massinger writing ‘I am conscious of an offence’, and in the 1660s Milton was writing of ‘consciousness of highest worth’.

Ordinary use evolved independently of philosophical use

In blissful independence of philosophical entanglements from the 1650s onwards, the common notion of consciousness continued to evolve in the public domain. The classical sense of being privy to a secret, of being ‘in the know’, continued into the early nineteenth century. Hence we find Jane Austen writing of Mrs Morland's ‘conscious daughter’, that is, the daughter who shared secret knowledge with another (Northanger Abbey, ch. 30), and of someone who ‘looked conscious’, that is, someone who, being privy to certain information, looked as if he was ‘in the know’ (ch. 18). But by the twentieth century this use had lapsed.

Outside philosophy, one use of ‘to be conscious of’ evolved in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries into a first cousin of ‘to be aware of’. So, unlike the simultaneously evolving philosophical conception of consciousness, that of which one might be said to be conscious was not confined to one's states of mind or mental operations. One could be said to be conscious of the rain clouds on the horizon, of the lateness of the hour, of the merits of a case, of the importance of the issue under consideration. Indeed, one could be said to be conscious of the mental state of another person, as when one is conscious of the irritability of another, or of their rising anger. Even where the object of consciousness was restricted to oneself, what one could be said to be conscious of did not have to be one's mental operations or mental states. It might well be past or present facts about oneself of which one felt ashamed or guilty, hence that one kept privy to oneself, or of which one felt proud and hence was ‘conscious of one's worth’. But even when the objects of consciousness were one's own current mental operations, the range of mental operations of which one could be said to be conscious was, on the whole, limited to things that one could be said to feel – as when one is conscious of butterflies in one's stomach, of one's rising anxiety or of the increasing severity of one's pain. No one (other than philosophers) would have spoken of being conscious of thinking whatever one is thinking, or of perceiving (= being conscious of) one's perceiving (as opposed to sometimes becoming and being conscious of what one perceives), or of being conscious of intending to do whatever one intends to do.

The old link with being privy to something, and the phrases ‘conscious to oneself’ and ‘conscious to something’, slowly faded away. Since one could be said to be conscious of something, one could also be said to become conscious of something. This had important logico-grammatical ramifications with respect to the possible objects of consciousness (by contrast with the possible objects of noticing, realizing and being aware of). These will be examined later.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that the term ‘consciousness’ came to be used to signify wakefulness, as when one speaks of regaining consciousness or losing consciousness (rather than of regaining (or losing) one's senses). Similarly, the common conceptions (as opposed to the philosophical notion) of being self-conscious, that is, being overly concerned with one's appearance and dress, or being aware that the eyes of others are upon one, and being affected thereby, seem likewise to be a nineteenth-century addition. Categories of dispositional consciousness, such as class-consciousness (1903), dress-consciousness (1918), money-consciousness (1933), are twentieth-century innovations.

Deviation of ordinary from philosophical use

The most striking feature of the genealogy of consciousness is the extent to which philosophical use deviated from common usage from its inception. This barely noticed fact should make us examine both with care. The autonomy of the philosophical use bodes ill. For it is not impossible that the philosophical use belongs to the same category of conceptual disasters as seventeenth-century ideas and twentieth-century sense-data. In 1707 Clarke wrote: ‘Consciousness, in the most strict and exact Sense of the Word, signifies … the Reflex Act by which I know that I think and that my Thoughts and Actions are my own and not Another's’ (emphasis added). In 1785 Reid felt confident in writing: ‘Consciousness is a word used by Philosophers, to signify that immediate knowledge we have of our present thoughts and purposes, and, in general, of all the present operations of our minds.’⁵ What philosophers held to be a special philosophical sense of the word may be no more than a special philosophical muddle.

3. The analytic of consciousness

Intransitive consciousness

We must distinguish first between intransitive and transitive consciousness.⁶ Being intransitively conscious is contrasted with various forms of being unconscious, for example, being comatose or anaesthetized. Consciousness is something one may lose (on fainting, when having a high fever, or being knocked out) and regain (on recovering consciousness). Being awake differs from being conscious in so far as it is contrasted with being asleep rather than with being unconscious. ‘Is A unconscious?’ and ‘Has A recovered consciousness?’ belong typically in the hospital, whereas ‘Is A asleep?’ and ‘Has A woken up?’ are more appropriate at home. Responsiveness during sleep is far greater than respon­siveness during periods of unconscious­ness. There are, of course, borderline cases intermediate between intransitive consciousness and unconsciousness for which there is appropriate non-technical terminology (e.g. semi-conscious, barely conscious, groggy, dazed, sleep-walking) as well as technical nomenclature (e.g. hypnotic trance, fugue, epileptic automatism).

Unconsciousness is a state, consciousness a condition

Unconsciousness is a state of a creature, though not a mental one. Consciousness is a condition for being in any occurrent mental state. A conscious state (or state of consciousness) is not a state that is conscious, any more than a happy outcome is an outcome that is happy (as opposed to an outcome that makes someone happy) or a passionate belief is a belief that is passionate (as opposed to someone's believing passionately). Nor is it necessarily a mental state of which one is conscious – a state of intense concentration is a state of consciousness, but not one of which one is conscious (although one may later realize how intensely one had been concentrating, since one did not notice the clock striking twelve). Rather, it is a mental state one is in while one is conscious (e.g. concentrating on one's work, feeling excited or elated) as opposed to a dispositional mental state (e.g. being in a depression, being cheerful, or being anxious about something, for many weeks).

Criteria for intransitive consciousness

The criteria for another person's regaining consciousness and then being conscious are behavioural – namely appropriate forms of responsiveness to perceptual stimuli. We can normally see that a person is conscious (someone can pretend to be unconscious, but not to be conscious). However, there are and could be no criteria for saying ‘I am conscious’ or even ‘I have regained consciousness’. That one is conscious is not evident to one by ‘introspection’. Nor is it information one might acquire by having ‘access’ to one's consciousness (a misuse of the term ‘access’). I may become and then be conscious of your regaining consciousness, but I cannot become and then be conscious of my regaining consciousness. There is no such thing as being conscious of one's consciousness. This is a form of words without sense. My own intransitive consciousness is not an object of possible experience for me, but a precondition for my having any experiences at all.

Transitive consciousness: dispositional and occurrent

Transitive consciousness is consciousness of something. It may be dispositional or occurrent. A person can be said to be class-conscious, that is, conscious of his own and others' social class (or money-conscious, or safety-conscious), if he is disposed to pay attention to the social class of others and frequently adverts to it and to his own (like Jane Austen's Sir Walter Elliot). Someone can be said to be conscious of their ignorance (like Harriet Smith) or superiority (like Mr Darcy) if they are prone to be preoccupied with their ignorance or superiority, if they tend to dwell on it and manifest this in what they do and say.

Occurrent transitive consciousness

Occurrent transitive consciousness is not a disposition. It has different modes (see fig. 1.4 on p. 27):

(i) having one's attention caught and held by something;

(ii) giving one's attention to one's own deliberate action;

(iii) something's weighing with one in one's current deliberation;

(iv) something's occupying one's mind and knowingly colouring one's thoughts, feelings and manner of behaving.

It is these aspects of transitive consciousness that are our concern. Let us first identify the categorial post at which this concept is stationed.⁷

Becoming and being conscious of something are not acts or activities

To become and then to be conscious of something is not to perform an act of any kind. There is no such thing as an act of consciousness or an act of becoming conscious of something. So to become conscious of something is not to pay attention to it or to give one's attention to it. For one cannot voluntarily, deliberately or on purpose become conscious of something – whereas one can voluntarily, deliberately or on purpose pay attention to something. Hence, one cannot decide, or refuse, to be or become conscious of something, and one cannot have a reason for becoming or being conscious of something – whereas one can decide to give one's attention to something and one may have reasons for doing so. That is why, contrary to received philosophical misconceptions, thinking about one's Mental Operations or Thoughts is not to be conscious (or not conscious) of them, since one can voluntarily, intentionally and deliberately think about one's state of mind, and one can be asked or ordered to think about and reflect on one's mental operations. To become conscious of something is an occurrence at a given time, but it is not something one does – it is something that happens to one.

Neither to become nor to be conscious of something is an activity. One cannot be engaged in becoming conscious of something, and one cannot be interrupted in the middle of, and later resume, being conscious of it. One cannot hurry up in being conscious of something and there are no means and methods of becoming conscious of anything.

Being conscious of something is not a mental state

To be conscious of something is not to be in a mental state, although what one is conscious of may, sometimes, be a mental state, as when one is conscious of one's anxiety. The reason for this is perhaps the conceptual link between being conscious of something and knowing something. For to know something to be so is not to be in a mental state of any kind, but to be able to do various things in the light of what one knows, that is, of information one possesses (see chapter 4). To be in receipt of knowledge, or for knowledge already possessed to weigh with one or affect one, is not in itself to be in any particular mental state.

Locus of the concept of consciousness in our conceptual scheme

This gives us a distinct idea of consciousness. But it does not yet give us a clear one. For that we must locate the idea in the web of our conceptual scheme, and examine its reticulations. The concept of transitive consciousness lies at the confluence of the concepts of knowledge, receptivity, realization, awareness, attention caught and held, taking cognizance of and being affected by knowledge already possessed.

Verbs of cognitive receptivity

As remarked, ‘to be conscious of’ belongs to the same family of cognitive verbs as ‘notice’, ‘be aware of’, ‘realize’, which are verbs of cognitive receptivity. These stand in contrast to the family of verbs of cognitive achievement, such as ‘discover’, ‘discern’, ‘detect’, which may signify the successful upshot of an intentional activity, often (but not always) an actual quest for knowledge. One may try to discover, detect and discern, and if one does so successfully, one has achieved knowledge. By contrast, verbs of cognitive receptivity, in particular in their application to modes of perception, signify not forms of achieving knowledge, but the manner in which knowledge is given one – by something's striking one, dawning on one, or catching and holding one's attention. So one can neither try to become conscious of something, nor endeavour to realize or to notice (as opposed to taking note of) something. For these verbs of cognitive receptivity do not signify acts that might be done voluntarily, intentionally or on purpose, since they do not signify acts at all (see fig. 1.3).

Figure 1.3 The locus of the concept of transitive consciousness in the web of cognitive concepts

Each of these verbs has a special role, even though they may sometimes overlap. For example, whatever one is conscious of, one is also aware of, but there is much one is perfectly aware of (since, say, one has been reliably informed) that one is not conscious of (since it is not ‘before one's mind’, and does not occupy one). Roughly speaking, to notice something is to be struck by it, to be aware of something is for it to sink in, to realize something is for it to dawn on one, and to be conscious of something is for it to be before one's mind. Each of these metaphorical characterizations needs to be (and can be) unpacked.

One may notice or realize something, but one may become aware or conscious of something. ‘To be conscious of’ is a result verb, not a success verb. It may signify the cognitive result of becoming perceptually conscious of something, or, in cases of non-perceptual consciousness of facts, the result of something of which one is already aware coming before one's mind.

The idea of becoming conscious of something has immediate logical consequences marking perceptual consciousness off from noticing and realizing something. For one may notice something instantaneous (a flash or a bang), but what one is perceptually conscious of must be something that lasts some time. Otherwise one could not be perceptually conscious of it. Moreover, it must pre-exist one's being conscious of it, otherwise one could not have become conscious of it.

The representational form of transitive consciousness

Realizing is exclusively of facts, since it is the upshot of putting two and two together. Consciousness is also of things (as well as of features, events and states of affairs). We may apprehend and become, and then be, conscious of Jack standing in the corner, of the ticking of the clock, of the smell of cooking, of the heat and humidity. Immediate apprehension is the normal representational form (even when it is not the matter) of transitive consciousness.⁸ That is, we have a marked preference for ‘consciousness of’, as opposed to ‘consciousness that’. This is no coincidence. We speak of being conscious of our ignorance, our weariness or our irritability; we may be conscious of the grief of others, of their vulnerability or of their peril; and we are conscious of impending danger, of the honour being done to us, of the importance of the situation. All these phrases can be transformed into consciousness that phrases: to be conscious of one's ignorance is to be conscious (of the fact) that one is ignorant, to be conscious of the grief of another is to be conscious (of the fact) that they are grieving, and to be conscious of the impending danger is to be conscious (of the fact) that danger is impending. Why then the preference for the abstract objectual form, rather than for the factual or propositional form? Precisely because the objectual abstraction emphasizes the affinity of consciousness of with immediate apprehension. For what one is conscious of is necessarily something ‘present to the mind’, something that holds one's attention, something that currently weighs with one in one's deliberation, or something that colours one's thoughts, feelings and behaviour. You may have to remind me of what I am already aware of, but you cannot remind me of what I am conscious of. Although consciousness is primarily of what is present, one can be conscious of things past too, as when one is conscious of yesterday's victory or of the good luck one had, if these past facts are now ‘present to one's mind’ and are affecting one's thoughts, behaviour and manner of behaving. Moreover, one may be conscious of one's own enduring characteristics – as when one is conscious of one's strength or weakness, of one's knowledge or ignorance. In such cases, one feels strong or weak, knowledgeable or ignorant, and one's feeling is right. One typically feels so when one is exhibiting or is about to exhibit the trait in question and realizes one is, or realizes one should refrain from, so doing.

Consciousness is polymorphous

Consciousness is polymorphous (like obeying, work­ing, practising).⁹ What it is to become conscious of something depends upon what it is that one has become conscious of – a sight, sound or smell, danger, weariness or a feeling of irritation. Being conscious of something may take the various forms of perceiving something – if what one perceives catches and holds one's attention; or it may take the form of dwelling on what one is conscious of – if one is occupied with it and it colours one's thoughts and behaviour. With some exceptions, contrary to the philosophical tradition, what one is conscious of may occur or obtain without one's being conscious of it, that is, without its catching and holding one's attention, and without one's dwelling on it. Of course, perceptual verbs are not polymorphous, and consciousness is not a form of perception. Consciousness can be of objects of sensible perception, but it is not an outer sense. And it is not an inner sense either. This will be made clear below.

Transitive consciousness is generally a form of knowledge of its object

Consciousness of something is generally a form of knowledge of what one is conscious of. It may be knowledge of the presence of someone or something, as when one is conscious of Jack standing in the corner, or of the rain clouds on the horizon. Or it may be knowledge that something is so, as when one is conscious of the boredom of one's audience, that is, conscious that they are bored, or conscious of the honour being done to one, that is, conscious that one is being honoured. Because it is a form of knowledge, what one is conscious of is so – that is, like ‘to know’, ‘to be conscious of’ is factive. One cannot be conscious of what is not the case. So consciousness, unlike belief, expectation, hope and fear, is not intentional, and its objects do not enjoy intentional in-existence.¹⁰ However, ironically, it is precisely when the object of consciousness is a ‘mental operation’ – in particular something one feels – that, contrary to the whole philosophical tradition, consciousness, though factive, is not a form of knowledge at all, any more than forgetting one's troubles is a form of mnemonic deficiency. This singularity will be clarified below.

Differences between knowing and being conscious of something

Although consciousness, unlike mere attention, is generally a form of knowledge, it is a very specific one. Whereas one can know something well, thoroughly, intimately or in detail, one cannot be conscious of something well, thoroughly, intimately or in detail. And while one can be acutely, agreeably or uncomfortably conscious of certain things, one cannot acutely, agreeably or uncomfortably know things. The reason for this is because one form knowledge may take is skill or competence – as when one knows Latin well. Another form of knowledge is expertise – as when one has a thorough and detailed knowledge of Tudor England. A further form knowledge possessed may take is acquaintance – as when one knows Jack or Jill intimately. But to be conscious of something is neither to possess a skill, nor to be an expert in a given domain of knowledge, nor yet to be acquainted with something or someone. One cannot be trained to become conscious of things – only trained in greater receptivity. There is no such thing as being skilful at being conscious of things – only being more sensitive. One can be good at learning, discovering, detecting or finding out that things are thus-and-so, but one cannot be good at becoming or being conscious of things. One can be conscious of someone without being acquainted with him, and acquainted with someone without being conscious of him. One can find out that one knows something (e.g. the dates of the monarchs of England), but one cannot find out that one is conscious of something, because one cannot find out that one's attention is caught by something (as opposed to finding out what has caught one's attention). One may ask ‘How do you know?’ but not ‘How are you conscious of … ?’ Rather one asks ‘What made you conscious of … ?’ For there are sources of knowledge (e.g. perception, reason, testimony), but no sources of what one is conscious of.

Objects of transitive consciousness

Transitive consciousness may take many different kinds of objects (see fig. 1.4). What one is conscious of may be:

(i) What one sees, hears, smells, tastes or feels – both objectually and factually (i.e. both objects (properties and relations of objects) perceived, and things being perceived to be so (as well as events being perceived to occur and processes being perceived to go on)). This I have called ‘perceptual consciousness’.

(ii) Facts that one has previously learnt and that are currently occupying one's mind, weighing with one in one's deliberations, or colouring one's thoughts, behaviour or manner of behaving.

(iii) What one is doing.

(iv) What one is feeling, that is, a subset of traditional Mental Operations, which may be sensations, inclinations, felt dispositions to behave and, in certain circumstances, intimations (as when one feels it would be wrong to …).

Figure 1.4 Modes of occurrent transitive consciousness

Doubtless this crude classification can be refined. But for present purposes these distinctions suffice. Investigating them will bear fruit.

Perceptual consciousness: attention caught and held

The most prominent form of ‘consciousness of something’ in natural language is perceptual consciousness. To become and then be conscious of something in one's field of perception is to have one's attention caught and held by something one perceives. Just as one may perceive something or perceive that something is so, so too one may be conscious of someone or something (e.g. of Jack) or conscious that something is so (e.g. that Jack is standing in the corner). That of which one is conscious is what caught one's attention (a creature, a material thing, a sound or smell, an event or process). Its features are typically what hold one's attention (that it is located there, its movement or manner of movement, its striking appearance and so forth).

The incompatibility of intentional attention and perceptual consciousness

The nexus with attention determines the contours of the concept of perceptual consciousness. One cannot be conscious of many things at the same time, because one cannot attend to many things at the same time.¹¹ One cannot remain conscious of something that no longer holds one's attention (although one may be perfectly aware that things are as one was conscious of them as being). One cannot become and be conscious of something if one is intentionally attending to it, any more than one can involuntarily lie, discover something one already knows or detect something one has already found out. Of course, the fact that one cannot be said to become and be conscious of what one is intentionally attending to (since it has not caught and held one's attention) does not imply that one is not conscious of it, any more than the fact that one cannot be said to recognize one's wife every time one looks at her in the course of a conversation over the breakfast table means that one fails to recognize her. It means that the question of whether one is or is not conscious of what one is intentionally attending to anyway cannot arise.

Perceptual consciousness and peripheral attention

This is obvious once one realizes that perceptual consciousness is commonly a matter of peripheral attention. I cannot be said to be either conscious or not conscious of what you are saying if I am listening attentively to you, but I may become conscious of a buzzing noise in the background. (But not all perceptual consciousness is of what one peripherally perceives. For one may become and remain conscious of a hitherto unnoticed feature of something one is intentionally attending to.)

Perceptual consciousness and cognitive receptivity

Perceptual consciousness is not merely a matter of attention being caught and held. It is also a matter of reception of knowledge. Merely to have one's attention caught by something does not suffice for being conscious of that thing. For one must also realize what it is that has caught one's attention. One may perceive something and have one's attention caught by what one perceives, without being conscious of it – as when one perceives a shadow in the bushes and takes it to be a cat. Here one is neither conscious of a cat nor conscious of a shadow.

Of course, one may perceive something without its catching and holding one's attention at all – and in such cases one cannot be said to be conscious of what one perceives, although one may or may not have noticed it.

To be perceptually conscious of something is not to be conscious of perceiving it, that is, it is not what Locke called ‘perceiving one's perceptions’, nor is it what Leibniz and later Kant called ‘apperception’. It is, rather, to have one's attention caught and held by what one perceives. Hence one cannot remain perceptually conscious of what one no longer perceives, just as one cannot remain conscious of something that no longer holds one's attention. But in both cases, one may remain aware of what one was previously conscious. One can become and then be conscious of the boredom of one's audience, of the friendliness of the company and of the spectators’ eyes upon one. These are cases of becoming conscious (because one comes to perceive) that something is so.

Self-consciousness: 1st sense

Self-consciousness, in one of the senses of the English phrase, is a form of thought or awareness. It is a matter of thinking (rightly or wrongly) that others are looking at one or of being aware that they are, of this causing one to feel embarrassed and affecting the naturalness of one's behaviour and manner. People who are self-conscious before a camera freeze, and cannot assume their normal expression. People who are self-conscious in company exaggerate their behaviour, their laughter is shrill or forced, or their shyness gets the better of them and so forth. In another sense of the phrase, to be self-conscious about one's appearance is to be excessively concerned with how one will look to others, especially with regard to dress.

Consciousness that is knowledge possessed

The cognitive receptivity of perceptual consciousness includes consciousness of perceived fact. As remarked, not all consciousness of fact involves perceiving things to be thus-and-so. Nor, indeed, is it always a case of cognitive receptivity. For it can equally well be a matter of knowledge already possessed coming to mind, occupying one and affecting one's thoughts, deliberations and feelings, as well as one's behaviour and manner of behaving. If one visits a recently widowed friend, well aware that her husband died and that she is grieving, one's consciousness of her grief and of her recent loss does not consist in one's attention being caught and held by something one perceives. Rather, it consists of knowledge one already possesses (things of which one is already well aware) being before one's mind, colouring one's thoughts and feelings, and affecting one's manner of behaving. That of which one is acutely conscious in one's deliberations is something that weighs with one and is a factor one may take into account in one's decision. As noted, it is the immediacy of the influence of antecedently acquired knowledge that inclines us here towards the nominalized form ‘I was conscious of her grief’, rather than the more laboured ‘I was conscious of the fact that she was grieving’, or ‘I was conscious of the honour being done to me’ rather than ‘I was conscious of the fact that I was being honoured’. Note that consciousness of facts incorporates realization or recollection of facts and reflection on things being as one realizes or remembers them to be. It includes a further form of self-consciousness, namely one's consciousness of one's own character traits, virtues and vices, folly or erudition, precisely to the extent that these tend to come to mind and one is prone to reflect on them.

Consciousness of one's action, qua spectator and qua agent

One may be conscious of what one is doing – and this in two ways: qua spectator and qua agent. Qua spectator what one becomes and then is conscious of is typically not something one is intentionally doing. When one realizes with dismay that one is repeating last week's lecture, or boring one's audience, or telling a joke one has already told before, one may become embarrassingly conscious of the fact. One's attention is drawn to what one is unintentionally doing, or to an unintended consequence or side effect of what one is doing. The affinities of this form of consciousness with perceptual consciousness are patent.

One may also be conscious of what one is doing qua agent. One may consciously do something, for example, crack a carefully rehearsed joke at one's lecture. Here the agent knows what he is doing, and is attending to the doing of it. The agent is acting in execution of his intention, and is occupied and absorbed in carrying out his intention – as is made vivid by the common conjunction ‘consciously and deliberately’. Agential consciousness is therefore altogether different from perceptual consciousness. It is not a matter of having one's attention caught and held by something – indeed, it is deliberately giving one's attention to something. It is