CONSCIOUSNESS AND COGNITION 2, 364-382 (1993) Consciousness, Folk Psychology, and Cognitive Science ALvin 1, GoLDMAN Department of Philosophy. University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721 This paper supports the basic integrity of the folk-psychological conception of con: sciousness and its importance in cognitive theorizing. Section eritically examines some proposed definitions of consciousness and argues that the folk-psychological notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness is not captured by various functional-relational definitions, Section 2 rebuts the arguments of several writers who challenge the very existence of phenomenal consciousness, or the coherence or tenablity of the folk-psychologicil no- tion of awareness. Section 3 defends a significant role for phenomenal consciousness in the execution ofa certain cognitive task, viz..clasifcation of one’s own mental states. Execution of this task, which is part of folk psychologizing. is taken as a datum in scientific psychology. Iti then argued (on theoretical grounds) that the most promising sort of scientific model of the self-ascription of mental states is one that posits the kinds of phenomenal properties invoked by folk psychology. Cognitive science and neuroscience can of course refine and improve upon the folk understanding of conscious- ress, awareness, and mental states generally. But the folk-psychological constructs should not be jettisoned: they have a role to play in cognitive theorizing. «= 19% Academic 1. DEFINING CONSCIOUSNESS What is standardly meant in ordinary usage by the word “‘conscious’? One use of “‘conscious” is applied to a person's total state. A person is conscious, in this sense. if he or she is in a generalized condition of alertness or arousal: being awake rather than asleep or in a coma. This sense of “conscious,” however, may be derivative from a primary or core sense of “conscious” in which it applies to partial psychological states (or perhaps processes or representations), such as individual beliefs, plans, or emotions. A partial psychological state is conscious if and only if it involves phenomenal awareness, i.e., subjective experience or feeling. Given the notion of a conscious partial state, we can say that a person's generalized condition at a given moment is conscious if and only if he possesses at least one conscious partial state at that time. There is also a third sense of “conscious”: consciousness of a particular object or event. This third sense can also be analyzed in terms of the core sense sketched above. To be conscious of an object, x. is to be in some (partial) state of phenomenal awareness which includes a representation of x. In other words, x is the referent or “intentional object” of a conscious state or representation. Let us concentrate on the core sense of ““conscious.”* The definition suggested above seems reasonably accurate but not terribly illuminating. ““Awareness”” is just an approximate synonym of “‘conscious,”” and so is “phenomenal.” Not 364 1033-810093 $5.00 Copyright © 198 by Academic Pres, ne ‘Mi of erection nny frm renervedFOLK PSYCHOLOGY 365 much progress is made by providing these synonyms. Is there a definition that gets outside this circle of unrevealing synonyms, while still confining itself to the ordinary grasp of the concept (rather than shifting to the psychological mecha- nisms of consciousness or its neurological basis)? Attempts at definition might try to define consciousness (semi-) operationally, by reference to the sort of behavior that would provide public or external evi- dence for consciousness. For example, one might try to define a conscious state as a state available for verbal report. This proposal, unfortunately, has many defects. Verbal reportability is not a necessary condition for a state to be con- scious. First, individuals with speech impairments such as global aphasia may be unable to report their inner states, but this does not render those states uncon- scious. Similarly, the right hemisphere of a split-brain patient might have aware- ness although its disconnection from the verbal left hemisphere precludes verbal report. Second, some states of awareness may be too brief, too confused, or too temporally removed from report possibilities to link up with the apparatus of verbal report. Dreams, for example, are episodes of awareness. Yet at the time of dreaming there seems to be no engagement with verbal apparatus. Dreams also commonly suffer from a degree of confusion and evanescence that make them difficult if not impossible to report. Third, no satisfactory definition of con- sciousness should automatically exclude animals from having states of conscious- ness, which the verbal reportability definition does. Although it is not certain that animals are conscious, it is surely an intelligible possibility despite their evident lack of report capability. So report capability cannot be required by consciou! ness. Finally, verbal reportability is not a sufficient condition for consciousness. Machines and robots might be capable of reporting their internal states, but intu- itively this would not suffice to confer awareness on those states. A second approach is to try to define consciousness in terms of its function, .g.. informational accessibility. An example of this approach is the “global work- space” idea of Bernard Baars (1988) and others. A conscious representation, on this view, is one whose message is “broadcast” to the system as a whole, not Just to some local or specialized processors. This idea of global broadcast may accurately describe a notable characteristic of human consciousness as studied by cognitive science, but it is unlikely to capture the ordinary grasp of the con- sciousness concept. Surely ordinary people do not understand consciousness as a set of messages posted on a large blackboard for all cognitive subsystems to read (Baars, 1988, p. 87), since the picture of the mind as a collection of inter- ‘communicating subsystems is not part of our naive conceptual repertoire. A simi lar point holds for other traits of consciousness described by Baars. For example, he notes that consciousness in human beings is typically reserved for messages that are “informative” in the technical sense of reducing uncertainty. When un- certainty is already (close to) zero, messages tend to be removed from conscious- ness; the most obvious example is the loss of awareness of repeated stimuli in stimulus habituation. But clearly this correlation between consciousness and informativeness is not something generally recognized by ordinary people, so it is not part of the naive understanding of consciousness. Moreover, one can readily366 ALVIN 1, GOLDMAN conceive of a system in which uninformative or “redundant” thoughts remain vividly conscious. Thus, informativeness can hardly be viewed as an essen property of consciousness as commonly understood. In similar fashion we may note that the combination of global broadcast and informativeness is not sufficient for consciousness. We can easily conceive of a (nonhuman) system in which informative representations are distributed to all subsystems yet those representa- tions are totally devoid of phenomenal awareness. Baars lists further properties of consciousness, but I doubt that even these, in conjunction with the first two, suffice for phenomenal consciousness. A third general approach is to try to define consciousness in terms of self- knowledge, self-monitoring, or higher-order reflection. For a state S to be cot scious, it might be proposed, the possessor of S must have another state that conscious or aware of S at the time of its occurrence. Observe, however, that this formulation uses the term “conscious” in defining itself, obviously not terribly satisfactory. Such objectionable circularity can be avoided if we substitute “*be- lief,” “thought,” or some other term referring to an informational state. This yields something of the following sort: “State S of a system is conscious if and only if the system possesses a *higher-order’ belief that it is in S:"" or perhaps “... if and only if the system has another informational state that monitors S."" Such proposals are endorsed by philosophers such as David Armstrong (1968), David Rosenthal (1986, 1990, 1993), and William Lycan (1987), as well as psychol- ogists like Philip Johnson-Laird (1988a, 1988b). Does the higher-order belief or monitoring state required by this proposal itself have to be conscious? If the proposal is so intended, then we are still appealing to the consciousness of a higher-order state to confer consciousness on a first- order state, which leaves the circularity unremedied. It also generates an infinite regress, since each nth-level state must be rendered conscious by ann + Ist-level state. Suppose instead that the higher-order belief need not be conscious (it is generally assumed in cognitive science that belief per se, although it requires intentionality or aboutness, need not involve consciousness). Under that con- strual, clearly stated in Rosenthal (1993), the definition does not get things right. Couldn’t there be a robot or “*zombie” that totally lacks phenomenal awareness or subjective feeling but nonetheless has higher-order beliefs about its other inter- nal states? In fact, we need not appeal to thought experiments to make this point. Real human beings have nonconscious representational states that are monitored by other nonconscious states. This objection is lodged by Anthony Marcel (1988, p. 140), who observes that we nonconsciously edit nonconscious speech produc- tion decisions and motor intentions. Since higher-order monitoring takes place in these nonconscious domains of cognition, the monitoring relationship is by no means sufficient for consciousness. In addition to these counterexamples, the underlying idea here is puzzling. How could possession of a meta-state confer subjectivity or feeling on a lower-level state that did not otherwise possess it? Why would being an intentional object or referent of a meta-state confer con- sciousness on a first-order state? A rock does not become conscious when some- one has a belief about it. Why should a first-order psychological state become conscious simply by having a belief about it?