Dan Zahavi, Intentionality and Phenomenality:
A Phenomenological Take on the Hard Problem
"In his book
The Conscious Mind David Chalmers introduced a by now familiar distinction between the hard problem and the easy problems of consciousness. The easy problems are those concerned with the question of how the mind can process information, react to environmental stimuli, and exhibit such capacities as discrimination, categorization, and introspection (Chalmers, 1996, 4, 1995, 200). All of these abilities are impressive, but they are, according to Chalmers, not metaphysically baffling, since they can all be tackled by means of the standard repertoire of cognitive science and explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. This task might still be difficult, but it is within reach. In contrast, the hard problem—also known as the problem of consciousness (Chalmers, 1995, 201)—is the problem of explaining why mental states have phenomenal or experiential qualities. Why is it like something to ‘taste coffee’, to ‘touch an ice cube’, to ‘look at a sunset’ etc.? Why does it feel the way it does? Why does it at all feel like anything?
Chalmers’s distinction confronts us with a version of the so-called ‘explanatory gap’. On the one hand, we have certain cognitive functions, which can apparently be explained reductively, and on the other hand, we have a number of experiential qualities, which seem to resist this reductive explanation. We can establish that a certain function is accompanied by a certain experience, but we have no idea why that happens, and regardless of how closely we scrutinize the neural mechanisms we don’t seem to be getting any closer at an answer.
In his book, Chalmers also distinguished two concepts of mind: a phenomenal concept and a psychological concept. The first captures the conscious aspect of mind: Mind is understood in terms of conscious experience. The second concept understands mind in functional terms as the causal or explanatory basis for behavior. According to the phenomenal concept, a state is mental if it ‘feels’ a certain way; according to the psychological concept, a state is mental if it plays an appropriate causal role. The first concept characterizes mind by the way it feels, the second by what it does (Chalmers, 1996, 11-12), and according to Chalmers it is the first concept that is troublesome and which resists standard attempts at explanation. 1
In a later article from 1997 Chalmers seems to have modified, or at least clarified, his position slightly. He now concedes that such notions as attention, memory, intentionality etc. contain both easy and hard aspects (Chalmers, 1997, 10). A full and comprehensive understanding of e.g. intentionality would consequently entail solving the hard problem, or to put it differently, an analysis of thoughts, beliefs, categorization etc. that ignored the experiential side would merely be an analysis of what could be called pseudo-thoughts or pseudo-beliefs (Chalmers, 1997, 20). This clarification fits well with an observation that Chalmers made already in
The Conscious Mind, namely, that one could operate with a deflationary and an inflationary concept of belief, respectively. Whereas the first concept is a purely psychological (functional) concept that does not involve any reference to conscious experience, the second concept entails that conscious experience is required for true 2 intentionality (Chalmers, 1996, 20). In 1997, Chalmers admits that he is torn on the issue, and that he over time has become increasingly sympathetic to the second concept, and to the idea that consciousness is the primary source of meaning, so that intentional content may in fact be grounded in phenomenal content, but he thinks the matter needs further examination (Chalmers, 1997, 21).
I welcome this clarification, but I also find it slightly surprising that Chalmers is prepared to concede this much. As far as I can see, the very distinction between the easy problems and the hard problem of consciousness becomes questionable the moment one opts for the inflationary concept. Given this concept, it seems natural to conclude that there are in fact no easy problems of consciousness. The truly easy problems are all problems about pseudo-thoughts etc., that is, about non-conscious information processing, but a treatment of these issues should not be confused with an explanation of the kind of conscious intentionality that we encounter in human beings. In other words, we will not understand how human beings consciously intend, discriminate, categorize, react, report, and introspect etc. until we understand the role of subjective experience in those processes (cf. Hodgson, 1996).
Chalmers’s discussion of the hard problem has identified and labeled an aspect of consciousness that cannot be ignored. However, his way of defining and distinguishing the hard problem from the easy problems seems in many ways indebted to the very reductionism that he is out to oppose. If one thinks that cognition and intentionality is basically a matter of information processing and causal co-variation that could in principle just as well go on in a mindless computer–or to use Chalmers’ own favored example, in an experienceless zombie– then one is left with the impression that all that is really distinctive about consciousness is its qualitative or phenomenal aspect. But this seems to suggest that with the exception of some evanescent qualia everything about consciousness including intentionality can be explained in reductive (computational or neural) terms; and in this case, epiphenomenalism threatens.
To put it differently, Chalmers’s distinction between the hard and the easy problems of consciousness shares a common feature with many other recent analytical attempts to defend consciousness against the onslaught of reductionism: They all grant far too much to the other side. Reductionism has typicallyproceeded with a classical divide and rule strategy. There are basically two sides to consciousness: Intentionality and phenomenality. We don’t currently know how to reduce the latter aspect, so let us separate the two sides, and concentrate on the first. If we then succeed in explaining intentionality reductively, the aspect of phenomenality cannot be all that significant. Many non-reductive materialists have uncritically adopted the very same strategy. They have marginalized subjectivity by identifying it with epiphenomenal qualia and have then claimed that it is this aspect which eludes reductionism.
But is this partition really acceptable, are we really dealing with two separate problems, or are experience and intentionality on the contrary intimately connected? Is it really possible to investigate intentionality properly without taking experience, the first-person perspective, semantics, etc., into account? And vice versa, is it possible to understand the nature of subjectivity and experience if we ignore intentionality. Or do we not then run the risk of reinstating a Cartesian subject-world dualism that ignores everything captured by the phrase “being-in-the-world”? In the following, I wish to consider some arguments in favor of opposing the separation. I will try to supply some answers to the three following questions:
1. What forms of intentionality possess phenomenal features?
2. Do all experiences possess intentional features?
3. If the intentional and the phenomenal go hand in hand, is the connection then contingent or essential?
All of the three questions call for quite substantial analyses. All I can do in the following is to provide some preliminary reflections; reflections that will incidentally suggest that analytical philosophy in its dealing with these questions might profit from looking at some of the resources found in continental phenomenology. Why? Because many of the problems and questions that analytical philosophy of mind are currently facing are problems and questions that phenomenologists have been struggling with for more than a century. Drawing on their results would not only help avoiding unnecessary repetitions, it might also bring the contemporary debate to a higher level of sophistication.
1.
Is there a ‘what it is like’ to intentional consciousness?
It is relatively uncontroversial that there is a certain (phenomenal) quality of ‘what it is like’ or what it ‘feels’ like to have perceptual experiences, desires, feelings, and moods. There is something it is like to taste an omelette, to touch an ice cube, to crave chocolate, to have stage fright, to feel envious, nervous, depressed, or happy. However, is it really acceptable to limit the phenomenal dimension of experience to sensory or emotional states alone? Is there nothing it is like simply to think of (rather than perceive) a green apple? And what about abstract beliefs, is there nothing it is like to believe that the square root of 9 ‘ 3? Many contemporary philosophers have denied that beliefs are inherently phenomenal (cf. Tye, 1995, 138, Jacob, 1998, O’Shaughnessy, 2000, 39, 41). I think they are mistaken.
Back in the
Logical Investigations (1900-01) Husserl argued that conscious thoughts have experiential qualities, and that episodes of conscious thoughts are experiential episodes. In arguing for this claim, Husserl drew some distinctions that I think are of relevance in this context. According to Husserl, every intentional experience possesses two different, but inseparable moments. Every intentional experience is an experience of a specific type, be it an experience of judging, hoping, desiring, regretting, remembering, affirming, doubting, wondering, fearing, etc. Husserl called this aspect of the experience, the intentional quality of the experience. Every intentional experience is also directed at something, is also about something, be it an experience of a deer, a cat, or a mathematic state of affairs. Husserl called the component that specifies what the experience is about, the intentional matter of the experience (Husserl, 1984, 425-426). Needless to say, the same quality can be combined with different matters, and the same matter can be combined with different qualities. It is possible to doubt that ‘the inflation will continue’, doubt that ‘the election was fair’, or doubt that ‘one’s next book will be an international bestseller’, just as it is possible to deny that ‘the lily is white’, to judge that ‘the lily is white’, or to question whether ‘the lily is white’. Husserl’s distinction between the intentional matter and the intentional quality consequently bears a certain resemblance to the contemporary distinction between propositional content and propositional attitudes (though it is important to emphasize that Husserl by no means took all intentional experiences to be propositional in nature). But, and this is of course the central point, Husserl considered these cognitive differences to be experiential differences. Each of the different intentional qualities has its own phenomenal character. There is an experiential difference between affirming and denying that Hegel was the greatest of the German idealists, just as there is an experiential difference between expecting and doubting that Denmark will win the 2002 FIFA World Cup. What it is like to be in one type of intentional state differs from what it is like to be in another type of intentional state. 2 Similarly, the different intentional matters each have their own phenomenal character. There is an experiential difference between believing that ‘thoughts without content are empty’ and believing that ‘intuitions without concepts are blind’, just as there is an experiential difference between denying that ‘the Eiffel Tower is higher than the Empire State building’ and denying that ‘North Korea has a viable economy’. To put it differently, a change in the intentional matter will entail a change in what it is like to undergo the experience in question. 3 And these experiential differences, these differences in what it is like to think different thoughts, are not simply sensory differences. 4
In the same work, Husserl also called attention to the fact that one and the same object can be given in a variety of different modes. This is not only the case for spatiotemporal objects (one and the same tree can be given from this or that perspective, as perceived or recollected etc.), but also for ideal or categorial objects. There is an experiential difference between thinking of the theorem of Pythagoras in an empty and signitive manner, i.e., without really understanding it, and doing so in an intuitive and fulfilled manner, i.e., by actually thinking it through with comprehension (Husserl, 1984, 73, 667-676). In fact, as Husserl points out, our understanding of signs and verbal expressions can illustrate these differences especially vividly: “Let us imagine that certain arabesques or figures have at first affected us merely aesthetically, and that we then suddenly realize that we are dealing with symbols or verbal signs. In what does this difference consist? Or let us take the case of a man attentively hearing some totally strange word as a sound-complex without even dreaming it is a word, and compare this with the case of the same man afterwards hearing the word, in the course of conversation, and now acquainted with its meaning, but not illustrating it intuitively. What in general is the surplus element distinguishing the understanding of a symbolically functioning expression from the uncomprehended verbal sound? What is the difference between simply looking at a concrete object A, and treating it as a representative of ‘any A whatsoever’? In this and countless similar cases it is the act-characters that differ.”(Husserl, 1984, 398).
More recently, Galen Strawson has argued in a similar fashion, and in his book
Mental Reality he provides the following neat example. Strawson asks us to consider a situation where Jacques (a monoglot Frenchman) and Jack (a monoglot Englishman) are both listening to the same news in French. Jacques and Jack are certainly not experiencing the same, for only Jacques is able to understand what is being said; only Jacques is in possession of what might be called an experience of understanding. To put it differently, there is normally something it is like, experientially, to understand a sentence. There is an experiential difference between hearing something that one does not understand, and hearing and understanding the very same sentence. And this experiential difference is not a sensory difference, but a cognitive one (Strawson, 1994, 5-6). This is why Strawson then concludes as follows: “the apprehension and understanding of cognitive content, considered just as such and independently of any accompaniments in any of the sensory-modality-based modes of imagination or mental representation, is part of experience, part of the flesh or content of experience, and hence, trivially, part of the qualitative character of experience.”(Strawson, 1994, 12). 5
Every conscious state, be it a perception, an emotion, a recollection, an abstract belief etc., has a certain subjective character, a certain phenomenal quality, a certain quality of ‘what it is like’ to live through or undergo that state. This is what makes the mental state in question conscious. In fact, the reason we can be aware of our occurrent mental states (and distinguish them from one another) is exactly because there is something it is like to be in those states. The widespread view that only sensory and emotional states have phenomenal qualities must consequently be rejected. Such a view is not only simply wrong,
phenomenologically speaking. Its attempt to reduce phenomenality to the “raw feel” of sensation marginalizes and trivializes phenomenal consciousness, and is detrimental to a correct understanding of its cognitive significance. 6
2.
An intentionalistic interpretation of phenomenal qualities
........"
Later extract:
". . . The divide and rule strategy, the attempt to separate intentionality and phenomenality, the attempt to deny that intentional states have any intrinsic phenomenal properties, and that phenomenal states have any intrinsic intentional properties, and the attempt to treat each topic as if it could be understood in isolation from the other, does not only very easily lead to a kind of “consciousness inessentialism,” to the view that phenomenal consciousness is cognitively epiphenomenal. As mentioned earlier, the strategy also seems to reinstate a traditional concept of subjectivity that runs foul of everything that has been captured by the phrase 'being-in-the-world’. According to such a traditional (empiricist) concept, phenomenal consciousness has in and of itself no relation to the world. It is like a closed container filled with experiences that have no immediate bearing on the world outside. Typically, this internalist position has then been given a representationalist slant: On its own, our mind cannot reach all the way to the objects themselves. It is therefore necessary to introduce some kind of representational interface between the mind and the world if we are to understand and explain intentionality, i.e., the claim has been that our cognitive access to the world is mediated by mental representations.
In contrast, for the phenomenologists, subjectivity—the experiential dimension—is not a self-enclosed mental realm; rather, subjectivity and world are, as Merleau-Ponty puts it in his
Phénoménologie de la perception, co-dependent and inseparable (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 491-492). Subjectivity is essentially oriented and open toward that which it is not, and it is exactly in this openness that it reveals itself to itself. What is disclosed by the cogito is, consequently, not a self-contained immanence or a pure interior self-presence, but an openness toward alterity, a movement of exteriorization and perpetual self-transcendence. 7 Since the phenomenological theories of intentionality are unfailingly non-representationalist, they also reject the view according to which phenomenal experiences are to be conceived of as some kind of internal movie screen that confronts us with mental representations. We are ‘zunächst und zumeist’ directed at real existing objects, and this directedness is not mediated by any intra-mental objects. The so-called qualitative character of experience, the taste of a lemon, the smell of coffee, the coldness of an ice cube are not at all qualities belonging to some spurious mental objects, but qualities of the presented objects. Rather than saying that we experience representations, it would be better to say that our experiences are presentational, and that they present the world as having certain features. 8 ........"
http://cfs.ku.dk/staff/zahavi-publications/intentionality-experience.pdf
