Exaggerated reports: reply to Block

Extract

        The report of my death is an exaggeration.

(Mark Twain, New York Journal, 2 June 1897)

A state’s being conscious is a matter of mental appearance – of how one’s mental life appears to one. If somebody is in a mental state but doesn’t seem subjectively to be in that state, the state is not conscious. This straightforward test for the consciousness of mental states is deeply entrenched in common sense and experimental work in psychology. Higher-order theories exploit this, arguing that a state is conscious only if one is subjectively aware of oneself as being in that state.

The higher-order-thought (HOT) theory explains that subjective awareness as due to one’s having a thought that one is in the state. And to explain why our awareness of our conscious states seems subjectively unmediated, that HOT must seem subjectively to be independent of inference and observation.

Ned Block¹ sees the theory as harbouring an incoherence. The alleged incoherence builds on the much discussed² possibility of one’s having a HOT without actually being in the state the HOT represents one as being in. Concern about this possibility may seem especially pressing when the state the HOT represents one as being in is qualitative. I’ve argued (e.g. 2005: 217–18) that in such a case one will still be subjectively aware of oneself as being in whatever state the HOT describes one as being in. Such cases are presumably rare; but we can test for them, since the causal role of a HOT will differ to some extent from that of the first-order state it’s about.