Consciousness and representation Flashcards
What is consciousness?
Phenomenal consciousness
Feeling pain, smelling coffee, etc
Whenever you are in these states, there is something it is like to be in these mental states
The basic idea
Conscious things are all mental representations
Mental representations = a representation in the language of thought
Certain further conditions
Conscious representations involve having :
- a particular kind of intentional mode or
- a particular type of functional role
Tim Crane’s view
Conscious mental states = mental representation + perceptual intentional mode (seeing, hearing)
Micheal Tye’s View
Conscious mental state = mental rep + Being poised (being ready and available to make a direct impact on beliefs or desires)
Consciousness : Visual Perceptions
Seeing an apple, conscious experience and in our minds (the apple is not)
See the apple (colour, shape), seeing a colour is attributing a colour to it
Visual perception seems to be unproblematic …
Does the your visual representation actually feel like its in your head?
Explanatory advantages
- Explains Felt Location of Conscious Experience
- Explains Possibility of Conscious Experiences in Phantom Limbs
- Explains “Transparency” of Experience
- Explains Why All the Various Phenomenal Characters General Connected with an Experience are Experienced as Being Tied Up with the Represented Location of the Experience
- Explains the Dependency between Conscious Qualities and Representational Features — Changes in Conscious Qualities Correlate with Changes in Representations
Explanatory advantage : Explains felt location of conscious experience
Burn your hand > pain in hand but pain is a mental state and is in the mind
Where does the pain seem to be?
Powerful intuition
Pain is the conscious state but you don’t have this in your hand, its a state of your mind
It seems like the pain is in your hand
How can we explain this?
We can represent it this way
This is why it seems to us that the pain is in our hand
Pain doesn’t seem like a representation, they are a challenge to this theory ; We can explain why pain seems to located somewhere other than where they are
Explanatory advantage : Explains possibility of conscious experiences in phantom limbs
Phantom limb = Feel something where a limb that was lost would be
Experience some type of conscious state in the piece of body that is not there
Feel you have pain in hand despite not having an arm
Representing there being pain in hand despite there being no hand
Pain is real (in your head) but not in the actual limb
Being able to thing about non-existence hand and the pain in this > there is no other explanation than representationally
Explanatory advantage : Explains transparency of experience
If you look at an object, and remember, you remember how you wanted it to look
You see it how want to see
Wouldn’t be a thing if it was objective
Potential problems
- Consciousness across sense modalities
- What do moods represent?
- Ambiguous figures
- Unconscious perceptions?
- Blurry vision, speckled hens, etc
Potential problem : Consciousness across sense modalities
The same or similar representations are consciously experienced differently in across different sense modalities
Seeing a plane vs hearing a plane > Experienced differently
Try to deny they really are the same representation, try to find some other difference beside the representation
Feeling the roundness of a sphere and seeing it (representing the same property with different sense modality)
Response :
Doesn’t seem to be an issue because you can look at something from a different perspective and they are representing the same thing in different ways, the nature of representation would be different
Just a different perspective
Representing it in a different way
Wearing noise cancelling headphones and looking at something, taking off headphones > will still be the same object
Potential problem : What do moods represent
Can’t have a conscious mental state until you have a mental representation
Are moods mental representations if not what do they represent?
Mendelovici
P1) The affective qualities (fearfulness) involved in moods are involved in corresponding emotions
P2) The affective qualities involved in emotions are represented affective properties
C) The affective qualities involved in moods are represented affective properties
Possible objection to theory
Potential problem : Ambiguous figures
The same content but different consciousness
Pictures are representing the same thing in the same sense modality
Duck/Rabbit picture
One time you are representing it as a duck and another time you are representing it as a rabbit
Conscious experience changes
Square > Diamond = every regular square is a regular diamond
Potential problem : Unconscious perceptions
Doing one thing > thinking about something else and unconsciously do this
Only way to do this without failing you have to be attending to the orientation of plate, etc and taking lots of visual info
You can be unconscious of perceptual info you are taking in
seeing representation different from conscious experience
You do have representation but are unconscious
Responses :
- Deny it happens
- Find to find something different about representation
- Try to alter argument
Potential problem : Blurry vision, speckled hens
Blurry vision
Speckled Hen
Inference to best explanation
Best argument is the best explanation
If we find that we cant ask these problems what can we do?
1) Reject the theory if it cant deal with provided there is a better explanation
2) Adopt a hybrid theory
3) Accept theory still but acknowledge it needs work
