Review of

“CONSCIOUSNESS AND QUALIA CAN BE

REDUCED”

Introduction:
Whether consciousness and qualia can be reduced depends on what is meant
by"consciousness," "qualia," and "reduced." " Consciousness" has been used
to mean nearly anything, and the variety of intellectual structures that have
been called "theories of consciousness" is astonishing. ( Brian Smith once
said of computation that it "is a site, not a subject-matter"; "consciousness" is
a flea market or jumble sale, not even a site.)

Explanation

I shall address just three notions of consciousness, the three that seem to
occupy most theorists in contemporary philosophy of mind: Conscious
awareness, and "conscious states" in the sense of mental states whose
subjects are directly aware of being in them.!2 "Phenomenal consciousness,"
as Block ( 1995) calls it, viz., being in a sensory state that has a distinctive
qualitative or phenomenal character.3 The matter of "what it is like" for the
subject to experience a particular phenomenal property - which many writers
(including Block) fail to distinguish from (2). But the more common use is as
in (3) above: what it is like for the subject to experience a particular
phenomenal property or quale, a higher-order property of the quale itself. Just
as unfortunately, "qualia" and "quale" themselves have been used in the
higher-order sense of (3). is a higher-order property of a quale, it cannot be
the quale itself. Third, a quale can be described in one's public natural
language, while what it is like to experience the quale seems to be ineffable.
J" in the bare sense of the quale, the phenomenal colour that can be described
using ordinary color words, and w.i.l. to experience that phenomenalcolor,
which cannot easily be described in public natural language at all.

Reduction

It may apply to individual entities, to properties, to events, processes, or

states of affairs. Let us further distinguish type reduction from token
reduction. Token reductionis the weaker notion : A's are token-reducible to
B's iff every A is entirely constitutedby some arrangement of B's. Thus, chess
pieces are token-reducible to the microentitiesof physics, because every
individual chess piece is entirely constituted by such entities. But chess
pieces are not type-reducible to physics, because there is nocorrelation
between rooks (or for that matter between chess pieces as such) and
anyparticular type of configuration of subatomic particles described in the
language ofphysics. A's are type-reducible to B's iff every standard type of A
is constituted bya specific type of conflguration described in B language. The
identity of properties as conceived here is a matter of type-reduction of
theirinstances. The property of being salt reduces to the property of being
NaCl, since quantities of salt are type-reducible to quantities of NaCI ; the
property of being cashis that of having been made legal or quasi-legal tender
in a given population; etc.(But type-reduction of instances as defmed above
does not entail property identity,since it may involve only constitution rather
than strict identity.)Consciousness(es) and qualia are even less likely to be
type-reduced to physicsthan are chess pieces, but I will suggest that they are
token-reducible and that theycan be type-reduced to functional and
information-theoretic properties located at varioushigher levels of a creature's
physical organization.
Conscious Awareness and the Conscious States

Again, a "conscious state" in the present sense is a mental state whose subject
isdirectly aware of being in it. Can we type-identifY the awareness property
withanything less problematic?There are several theories of conscious
awareness and conscious states : Dennett's( 1 9 78) Volume Control theory;
and two rival "higher-order representation" (HOR)accounts. The two HOR
accounts are the Lockean "inner sense" or "higher-orderperception" (HOP)
theory offered by Armstrong ( 1 968, 1 9 8 1 ) and Lycan ( 1987, 1 996),and
the "higher-order thought" (HOT) theory defended by Rosenthal ( 1 993 ; see
alsoGennaro, 1 99 5, and Carruthers, 2000).2 According to HOR theories,
which currentlyprevail, a subject's awareness of her/his own mental state
consists in a representingof that state itself. HOP has it that the representing
is done quasi-perceptually, by aset of functionally specified internal attention
mechanisms of some kind that scanor monitor "fIrSt-order" mental/ brain
states. HOT theorists say that merely having athought about the first -order
state will suffICe, provided that the thought was directlycaused by the state
itself or at least not be the result of "ordinary inference" inRosenthal's phrase.
Any version of HOR easily explains the differences between conscious and
nonconsciousfIrst-order states; a state is, or is not, or could not be a conscious
stateaccordingly as it itself is, or is not, or psycho functionally could not be
the object ofa higher-order quasi-perception or thought. And when we
deliberately introspect and thereby becomeaware of a fIrst-order mental state
that we had not realized we were in, the awarenessis quasi-perceptual or at
least takes the form of some mental state itself directedupon the fIrst-order
state ; it feels as though we are "looking at" a particular sectorof our
phenomenal fIeld. If the second-order representationis to confer
consciousness on the fIrst-order state, it must itself be a conscious state ;so
there must be a third-order representation of it, and so on forever. The
higher-order representation need not "confer" consciousnesson the fIrst-order
state in the strong sense of itself fIrst having the property of
consciousnessand then passing on that property. An internal monitor or the
like is a device or mechanismthat scans fIrst-order states, and a higher-order
thought about a flfSt-orderstate is produced causally by that state. Shoemaker
( 1 994b) complains therefore thaton a HaR view, my awareness of a
flfSt-order state is entirely contingent. Rey ( 1 983) objects that if all it takes
to make a flfSt-order state a consciousstate is that the state be the object of a
higher-order representation, then consciousnessis everywhere. To the obvious
rejoinder that no existinglaptop has genuinely psychological states in the flfSt
place, Rey replies that, oncewe had done whatever needs to be done in order
to fashion a being that did havenonconscious fIrst-order intentional and
sensory states, the addition of an internalmonitor or two would be a trifling
afterthought, not the sort of thing that could turna simply nonconscious being
into a conscious being. Carruthers (2000) points out that, given therichness of
a person's conscious experience at a time, the alleged
higher-orderrepresenting agencies would be kept very busy. Lycan ( 1 999a)
maintains, contra Carruthers' premise, that in the present sense of "
conscious," very few of our mental states are conscious states.

Qualia and Phenomena - Character

Qualia in sense (2) above pose a problem for materialist theories of the mind.
Suppose I am having a reddish afterimage,and suppose for the sake of
argument that there is no red physical object inmy visible environment either.
There is one theory of qualia in sense (2) that avoids that outcome: a
representationaltheory (Anscombe, 1 965, and Hintikka, 1 9 6 9 ; followed by
Kraut, 1 982 ; Lewis,1 983 ; Lycan, 1 987, 1 996 ; Harman, 1 990;
Shoemaker, 1 994a; Tye, 1 994, 1 99 5 ; andDretske, 1 995) . I am visually
representing the actual yellowness of the banana,and the yellowness of the
patch is just that of the banana itself.4 But now supposethat I am
hallucinating a similar banana, and there is an exactly similar
bananashapedyellow patch in my visual fIeld just as there was in the veridical
case. As before, there is no real red physical object in the room, my
visualexperience is unveridical. "The main argument in favor of the
representational theory has in effect alreadybeen given: that otherwise our
dilemma succeeds in refuting materialism, and commitsus to actual
Russellian sense-data. Of course that is only grist to the mill ofsomeone who
points to qualia in sense (2) by way of arguing against materialism,but
representationalism is a reductive strategy, and shows that such a refutation
doesnot succeed as it stands, and so contributes to an affIrmative answer to
the question"Can consciousness and qualia be reduced?"A second argument
is Harman's ( 1 990) transparency argument: We normally"see right through"
perceptual states to external objects and do not even notice thatwe are in
perceptual states ; the properties we are aware of in perception areattributed
to the objects perceived. Look at a tree and try to tum your attention to
intrinsic features of your visual experience. I predict you will fmd that the
only features there to tum your attention to willbe features of the presented
tree, including relational features of the tree "from here".(Harman, 1 990, p.
39)Tye ( 1 995) extends this argument to b odily sensations such as pain. I
believe the transparency argument shows that visual experience
representsexternal objects and their apparent properties. Tye ( 1 99 5)requires
that the representation be nonconceptual and "poised, " and he also arguesthat
visual representations of color would differ from other sorts of
representationsin being accompanied by further representational differences.
A mixed view of the latter sort is what Block ( 1 99 6)
calls"quasi-representationism. What sort of real-world property is an
"objective," physical color? Dretske( 1 99 5), Tye ( 1 995), Lycan ( 1 996),
Lewis ( 1 997), and Watkins (2002) each gesture towardone.
Representationalists agree that the relevant representations of colorand other
sensible properties are in some sense "nonconceptual," at least in thatthe
qualitative representations need not be translatable into the subject's
naturallanguage. But some psychosemantics (in Fodor's, 1 987, sense) would
be needed toexplain what it is in virtue of which a brain item represents a
particular shade ofyellow in particular. Dretske ( 1 99 5) offers one, as does
Tye ( 1 99 5); both accounts areteleologized versions of "indicator"
semantics. Block, 1 99 5 and 1 996, also offers some of theformer kind; for
discussion, see Lycan, 1 996.)In Peacocke's flfSt example, you experience
two (actual) trees, at different distancesfrom you but as being of the same
physical height and breadth; " [y]et there is alsosome sense in which the
nearest tree occupies more of your visual fIeld than themore distant tree"
(Peacocke, 1 983, p. 1 2) . In each case, Tye ( 1 99 5) and Lycan ( 1 996) have
rejoined that there are after allidentifIable representational differences
constituting the qualitative differences. The Twin Earthlings'speech sounds
just like English, but their intentional contents in regard to color areinverted
relative to ours: When they say "red," they mean green (if it is green
Twinobjects that correspond to red Earthly objects under the inversion in
question), andgreen things look green to them even though they call those
things "red." Now, anEarthling victim is chosen by the usual mad scientists,
knocked out, fItted with colorinverting lenses, transported to Inverted Earth,
and repainted to match that planet'shuman skin and hair coloring. Block
contends that after some length of time, shortor very long, the victim's word
meanings and propositional-attitude contents and allother intentional contents
would shift to match the Twin E arthlings' contents, but,intuitively, the
victim's qualia would remain the same. The obvious representationalist reply
is to insist that if the intentional contentswould change, so too would the
qualitative contents. Block's nearly explicit argumentto the contrary is that
qualia are "narrow" in that they supervene on head contents(on this view, two
molecularly indistinguishable people could not experiencedifferent qualial,
while the intentional contents shift under environmental pressureprecisely
because they are wide. If qualia are indeed narrow, and all the
intentionalcontents are wide and would shift, then Block's argument
succeeds. ( Stalnaker, 1 996,gives a version of Block's argument that does not
depend on the assumption thatqualia are narrow; Lycan, 1 996, rebuts
it.)Three rejoinders are available. Lycan ( 1 996) argues that we have no
reason to think that visualcontents would shift. The second rejoinder is to
hold that although all the ordinaryintentional contents would shift, there is a
special class of narrow though still representationalcontents underlying the
wide contents ; qualia can be identifIed withthe special narrow contents. That
view has been upheld by Shoemaker ( 1 994a), Tye( 1 994) , and especially
Rey ( 1 998). Rey argues vigorously that qualia are narrow, andthen offers a
narrow representational theory. ( But it turns out that Rey's theory isnot a
theory of qualia in sense (2) ; see beloW.)The third rejoinder is to deny that
qualitative content is narrow and to argue thatit is wide, i.e., that two
molecularly indistinguishable people could indeed experiencedifferent qualia.
This last is the position that Dretske ( 1 99 6) has labeled
"phenomenalexternalism." It is maintained by Dretske, Tye ( 1 995), and
Lycan ( 1 996, 200 1 ) .A number o f people - even Tye himself ( 1 998) -
have since called the originalcontrary assumption that qualia are narrow a
"deep/powerful/compelling intuition,"but it proves to be highly disputable. If
the representational theory is correct, then qualia are determined by
whateverdetermines a perceptual state's intentional content. What determines
a psychological state's intentional content is given by apsychosemantics. Of
course, the representational theory is just what is in question ;but this
argument does not beg that question; it merely points out that the
antirepresentationalistis not entitled to the bare assumption that qualia are
narrow. An Earthling suddenly fItted with inverting lenses and transportedto
Inverted Earth would notice nothing introspectively, despite a change in
representationalcontent; so the qualia must remain unchanged and so are
narrow. Which perhaps is odd.)Modes of presentation (Rey, 1 998). If a quale
is a represented property, then it is representedunder some mode of
presentation, and modes of presentation may be narrow evenwhen the
representational content itself is wide. Reply: Remember, quaJia in sense (2)
are properties like phenomenal yellownessand redness, which according to
the representational theory are representata.

What Is it Like

It is "w.i.l." in sense (3) that fIgures in anti-materialist arguments from

subjects'"knowing what it is like," primarily Nagel's ( 1974) "Bat" argument
and Jackson's ( 1 982)"Knowledge" argument. Jackson's character Mary, a
brilliant color scientist trappedin an entirely black-and-white laboratory,
nonetheless becomes omniscient asregards the physics and chemistry of
color, the neurophysiology of color vision, andevery other public, objective
fact conceivably relevant to human color experience. Yet when she is fmally
released from her captivity and emerges into the outside world,she sees
colored objects for the fIrSt time, and learns something: she learns what itis
like to see red and the other colors. Thus she seems to have learned a new
fact,the fact of w.i.l. By hypothesis, that fact is not a public, objective one,but
is an intrinsically perspectival fact. This is what would refute materialism,
sincematerialism has it that every fact about every human mind is ultimately
a public,objective fact. Upon her release, Mary has done two things: She has
at last hosted a red qualein sense (2), and she has learned what it is like to
experience a red quale. The factshe has learned has the ineffability
characteristic of w.i.l. i n sense (3) ; were Mary totry to pass on her new
knowledge to a still color-deprived colleague, she would notbe able to
express it in English. As there are representational theories of qualia in sense
(2), there are representationaltheories of w.i.l. in sense (3). The most common
answer to the arguments ofNagel and Jackson is what may be called the
"perspectivalist" reply (Horgan, 1 984;Churchland, 1985; Van Gulick, 1 985 ;
Tye, 1986, 1 99 5 ; Lycan, 1 987, 1 996, 2003 ; Loar,1 990; Rey, 1 99 1 ;
Leeds, 1 993). The perspectivalist notes that a knowledge differencedoes not
entail a difference in fact known, for one can know a fact under one
representationor mode of presentation but fail to know one and the same fact
under adifferent mode of presentation. Someone might know that lightning is
flashing butnot know that electrical discharge was taking place in the sky, and
vice versa; someonemight know that person X is much gossiped about
without knowing that she herself is much gossiped about, even if she herself
is in fact person X. So, from Mary'sknowledge difference following her
release, Jackson is not entitled to infer the existence of a new, weird fact, but
at most that of a new way of representing a fact that Mary already knew in a
different guise. She has not learned a new fact but has only acquired a new,
introspective or fIrst-person way of representing one that shealready knew
under its neurophysiological aspect. This response to Nagel and Jackson
requires that the fIrst-order qualitative stateitself be represented (else how
could it be newly known under Mary's new mode ofpresentation?). And that
hypothesis in turn encourages a HOR theory of awarenessand introspection.
Since we have seen that HOR theories of awareness face
signifICantobjections, the perspectivist must either buy into such a theory
despite its drawbacks or find some other way of explicating the idea of an
introspective or first person perspective without appealing to higher-order
representation. But I a happy HOR partisan, and find the idea of an
introspective perspective entirely congenial despite its unfortunate assonance