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“What Is Consciousness?”
David Armstrong
Australian philosopher at
the University of Sydney.
“Many people would say
David Armstrong is
Australia's greatest living
philosopher, living or
dead.” – Michael
McDermott
Outline
Armstrong is going to outline and analyze
several different things we might mean when we
use the word “consciousness.”
MINIMAL CONSCIOUSNESS
The Mark of the Mental?
Some philosophers have thought that
consciousness is the “mark of the mental”:
• Everything that is mental is conscious.
• Mental states must be conscious, if they exist.
Unconscious
Armstrong points out that
there is one sense of
‘conscious’ in which a
sleeping person who is
not dreaming is
completely unconscious.
Unconscious
But we still think that
sleeping people have
beliefs, knowledge,
memories, and mental
abilities (for example, to
multiply numbers
mentally).
Computer Analogy
Armstrong likens a sleeping person to a
computer that has been turned off partway
through computation, and will proceed in that
computation when turned back on.
The stored values in the computer’s registers are
like our beliefs and desires when we sleep:
they’re there, but they’re not in-use.
Unconscious
There are SOME mental
claims that are never true
of unconscious people:
• Thinking
• Deliberating
• Feeling/ Sensing
States vs. Events
Armstrong thinks this is just the states vs.
events/ processes.
Unconscious people can have mental states. But
they can’t have mental processes (changes in
their mental states). If they had activity in their
minds, they’d be conscious!
Minimal Consciousness
Someone is minimally conscious if there is
something happening in their mind.
More Senses of ‘Consciousness’
Why isn’t that the whole story? Armstrong
points out that there’s a sense in which not all
minimally conscious people are ‘conscious.’
I go to bed at night thinking about some difficult
mathematical problem. I wake up and know the
answer. There has been activity in my mind
when I slept– but I was never conscious.
PERCEPTUAL CONSCIOUSNESS
New Strategy
Armstrong tries the
following strategy: what
could we add to a
minimally conscious
person to make them
conscious in this other
sense?
New Strategy
Obviously not problem
solving activity. And
Armstrong thinks even
dreaming is not really
being conscious, in this
other sense.
Perceptual Consciousness
A person is perceptually conscious if she is
aware of her environment and the things
happening to her and around her.
Perceptual vs. Minimal
Since everyone who perceives their
environment is undergoing mental activity, all
perceptually conscious people are minimally
conscious.
Only some minimally conscious people perceive
their environment, so not all minimally
conscious people are perceptually conscious.
INTROSPECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS
Unconscious Driving
Sometimes people driving for a long period of
time, or driving really familiar roads can do it
automatically or “unconsciously.”
They perceive their environment, follow the
road, watch out for other cars. But when they
“snap out of it” they describe themselves as not
knowing what they were doing/ unable to
remember what they did.
Animal Consciousness
Armstrong suggests that
“many animals… are
continually, or at least
normally, in the state in
[sic] which the longdistance truck driver is in
temporarily.”
What’s the Difference?
The difference, Armstrong says, is selfawareness or introspective awareness.
This is a consciousness of consciousness. An
awareness, knowledge, or inner perception of
one’s own mental states and activities.
Freud & The Unconscious
Armstrong suggests that
introspective
consciousness was what
Sigmund Freud called
“consciousness” and that
lack of introspective
consciousness was his
“unconscious.”
Proprioception
We know a lot about our bodies without using
the “five senses”: seeing, hearing, smelling,
tasting, and touching.
I can tell when I’m off-balance, when I’m falling,
where my limbs are in relation to the rest of my
body, whether I need food or drink, and
whether I’m hot or cold. I know this through
proprioception (self sense).
Inner Sense
Armstrong thinks that in addition to “outer
sense” (perception) and bodily sense
(proprioception) we also have a sense that
detects our inner mental lives, an “inner sense.”
You’re perceptually conscious when you exercise
your outer sense, and you’re introspectionally
conscious when you exercise your inner sense.
Subjectivity
To Armstrong, this way of looking at things “demystifies” the privacy or subjectivity of
experience.
I can sense the position of my limbs without
looking/ hearing/ touching… but if you want to
know where my limbs are, you have to look/
hear/ touch. This is because I have sensors
hooked up to my limbs and you don’t.
Subjectivity
The same is true of my mental states. Only I am
directly aware of my mental states. You have to
infer them from my behavior.
But this is because my inner sense is connected
to my mental states, and yours isn’t. It’s not that
these are things beyond objectivity and science.
Against Epiphenomenalism
Armstrong argues that mental states have to
have causal powers, because perception is a
causal process and inner sense is just perception
of one’s own mental states.
Armstrong, p. 725
“Introspective consciousness seems like a light
switched on, which illuminates utter darkness. It
has seemed to many that with consciousness in
this sense, a wholly new thing enters the world.”
Self-Awareness
The unique thing about introspective awareness
is that it gives us awareness of the self.
But why does perception of our mental states
give us awareness of our selves? We don’t have
an “inner sense” trained on ourselves.
And why do we need/ have self-awareness?
Theory-Laden Perception
When we see that
something is a tomato this
goes beyond what our
immediate evidence tells
us.
Theory-Laden Perception
To be a tomato requires
that it have a back and not
just a front. It requires
that it have certain causes
and effects. If my hand
passes right through an
object, it’s not a tomato.
Theory-Laden Perception
So seeing that something
is a tomato is adding to
the immediate evidence
additional facts about how
the unobserved portions
of the object are and how
it will behave.
Armstrong’s Idea
“Seeing” our mental states is like seeing
different parts of the tomato = our self. We
don’t see the thing directly, and we only see
part of it at any time. But we use theories about
the self to cobble together a coherent picture.
Why Introspective Consciousness?
Armstrong then asks why we have introspective
consciousness (from an evolutionary point of
view).
Why Introspective Consciousness?
His idea is that it plays a role in controlling and
regulating our mental processes: it’s “much
easier to achieve integration of the states and
activities, to get them working together in the
complex and sophisticated ways necessary to
achieve complex and sophisticated ends.
Plasma Equipment Module
Self-Awareness
“If introspective consciousness is the instrument
of mental integration, then it is natural that
what is perceived by that consciousness should
be assumed to be something unitary.” p. 727
Rubber Hand Illusion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxwn1w7M
Jvk
Body Integrity Identity Disorder
BIID sufferers feel that certain limbs that they
have are “not theirs” and desire to have them
amputated to “feel whole.”
Schizophrenia and Integrity
Many cognitive
psychologists think
something like this (but
for inner sense, not
proprioception) is going
on in schizophrenia.
Schizophrenics “hear
voices” – they have
thoughts that they don’t
identify as their own.
Why Introspective Consciousness?
Armstrong notes that introspective
consciousness is required for what he calls
“event memory.” The introspectively
unconscious driver does not remember how he
drove here.
Memory and I.C.
“Unless mental activity is monitored by
introspective consciousness, then it is not
remembered to have occurred, or at least it is
unlikely that it will be remembered.”
Further evidence: dreams are hard to
remember; lots of psychologists think attention
is the gateway to short-term memory.
Why Introspective Consciousness?
“Without introspective consciousness, we would
not be aware that we existed– our self would
not be self to itself. Nor would we be aware of
what the particular history of that self had been,
even its very recent history.” pp. 727-728