The Constitution of Consciousness

A Study in Analytic Phenomenology

Wolfgang Huemer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781135875084
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Phenomenology in Philosophy

Through the work of philosophers like Sellars, Davidson, and McDowell, the question of how the mind is related to the world has gained new importance in contemporary analytic philosophy. This book demonstrates that Husserl's phenomenological analyses of the structure of consciousness can provide fruitful insights for developing an original approach to these questions.

Chapter One
Why Do We Need a Theory of Constitution?

In his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint .rentano divides all existing phenomena into the psychological and the physical. In order to distinguish these two kinds of phenomenon, he offers six criteria for psychological phenomena. The most important is undoubtedly the notion of intentionality.¹ “Every mental phenomenon,” Brentano argues,

is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction toward an object (which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. (Brentano 1995, 88)

Brentano was soon criticized for characterizing the intentional object as a mental entity. While this characterization might help to explain cases like hallucinations, imaginations of fictional objects, or dreams, where the corresponding object typically does not exist in the physical world, at least not in the way represented, it runs into problems when we consider the most common cases of perception. When I see a table, for example, it is essential that the actual table, the physical object, is in front of me. In my perception I am directed towards this physical object, and not towards some mental entity. Brentano’s account of intentionality, thus, leads to an unnecessary duplication of the object, as Husserl points out in his Ideas:.

But if, in this .ay, we try to separate the actual Object (in the case of perception of something external, the perceived physical thing pertaining to Nature) and the intentional Object, including the latter as really inherently in the mental process as ‘immanent’ to the perception, we fall into the difficulty that now two .ealities ought to stand over against one another while only one .eality is found to be present and possible. I perceive the physical thing, the Object belonging to Nature, the tree there in the garden; that and nothing else is the actual Object of the perceptual ‘intention.’ A second immanental tree, or even an ‘internal image’ of the actual tree standing out there before me, is in no way given, and to suppose that hypothetically leads to an absurdity. (Husserl 1982, 219 [Hua.III/1, 207f]²)

Because of these problems Brentano eventually changed his account of intentionality. He never succeeded, however, in explaining the problems concerning the ontological status of the intentional object in a satisfactory way.³ Husserl, of course, also cannot provide an easy answer to the problems concerning the relation between the act of perception and the perceived object. With his phenomenological reduction he brackets the realm of physical objects and develops a position that he characterizes as transcendental idealism. I will discuss Husserl’s position in more detail below.

The difficulties in explaining the relation between a perception and the perceived object are not exclusively Brentanian ones. Every philosophical theory of perception that starts out with a distinction between the perceptual experience, which belongs to the realm of the mental, on the one hand, and what is perceived, i.e., the realm of perceivable objects, on the other hand, has to give an account of how the former can be about .r directed towards .he latter. And very often it is in this part of the theory that problems arise. Yet this distinction seems to be a crucial and commonsensical one, the obvious starting point of any theory of perception.

In the remainder of this chapter I will show that a position that puts too much emphasis on this distinction is confronted with serious philosophical problems. Descartes’ characterization of the realm of the mental and the realm of the physical as two different kinds of substance is a good example. By insisting on the ontological difference between res cogitans .nd res extensa, ..e., between the mental and the physical, he is creating a gap that is so big that it becomes very difficult to give a satisfactory account of how these two kinds of substance can interact. From all we can tell now, however, it seems that for Descartes this is not a particularly important problem. He insists that this interaction does take place⁴ and even locates it: mind and body interact, according to Descartes, in a special part of the brain, the pineal gland. Descartes’ primary interest is to distinguish mind and body as two kinds of substance. He is therefore less interested in discussing the particulars of the interaction between the two because this “might have been harmful” (Descartes 1991, 218) for his main goal.

Many interpreters criticize Descartes for his account of the interaction between mind and body. One of the most common arguments is that such an interaction cannot take place because it contradicts the laws of physics, most notably the principle of the conservation of energy. The idea that physical processes in the brain can act on the mind—and vice versa—is incompatible with the idea that the realm of the physical forms a closed system where the total amount of energy always stays the same.

A common strategy for dealing with the problem of interaction is to state that it simply does not take place. We find this strategy—as a direct response to Descartes—in occasionalism, where all causal interaction is explained away by the intervention of an almighty being. We find it also, and more importantly, in various idealistic and materialistic positions that feel no need to explain how the mental and the physical can interact because they concentrate exclusively on one side of the gap, describing the whole picture solely in terms of the mental or the physical, respectively. The main problem that these views have in common, I believe, is that they are a reaction to, or better: an overreaction to Descartes’ distinction between mind and matter. In what follows I will argue that the main motivation for adopting a monistic position is the assumption that we have to choose between offering a unified account in terms of the mental or the physical, respectively, on the one hand, or fall back on Cartesian dualism, on the other; since in contemporary philosophy materialism is much more widespread than idealism, I will concentrate mainly on the former.

The very fact that Descartes’ distinction was so successful shows that it bears some important insights, arguing, as it does, that there is a fundamental difference between the mental and the physical. The problems of Descartes’ position have their root in the fact that he addresses the question from an ontological perspective. In Mind and World .ohn McDowell gives a characterization of the difference between the mental and the physical that can do justice to Descartes’ insights, but avoids the ontological difficulties connected with his distinction. McDowell addresses the problem in terms of Wilfrid Sellars’ notion of the logical space of reasons and that of the logical space of nature, that McDowell coins by analogy with the former.⁵ The concept of knowledge, Sellars argues, belongs to the logical space of reasons. This “space” is different in kind from other logical spaces in that it is constituted by rational relations that are—other than causal relations— intrinsically normative. Any attempt to reduce the logical space of reasons to that of nature “is…a mistake of a piece with the so-called ‘naturalistic fallacy’ in ethics” (Sellars 1997, 19,

5). McDowell characterizes this position in the following way:

Sellars’s thesis is that the conceptual apparatus we employ when we place things in the logical space of reasons is irreducible to any conceptual apparatus that does not serve to place things in the logical space of reasons. (McDowell 1998a, 433)

In the logical space of reasons we place knowledge and other episodes or states that have propositional content; they stand in rational relations to other positions in the same logical space—and only those. In his attack on the Myth of the Given .ellars argues that these episodes or states, including those of empirical knowledge, cannot stand in rational .relations with non-conceptual episodes like sensations, impressions, or sense data. Hence, perceptual judgments cannot be justified by non-conceptual entities. He criticizes various forms of empiricism for having presupposed such a relation. Sellars does not deny that we have such non-conceptual episodes, insisting, rather, that they do not stand in justificatory relations to empirical knowledge; they can only cause certain conceptual episodes.⁶

This short characterization shows that Descartes’ insights can be accounted for without buying into his ontological distinction.⁷ In the first chapter of Mind and World .McDowell points out that Sellars’ characterization of the difference between the mental and the physical can lead to a different kind of problem. If one reduces the relation between non-conceptual sensations and conceptual episodes to causal ones—a position McDowell attributes also to Donald Davidson, who he makes the main target of his critique⁸—one can avoid the Myth of the Given, .ut runs the risk to lose contact to the world: Sellars and Davidson, McDowell argues, cannot explain one of the crucial points of the relation between the mental and the physical, namely that “experience is a rational constraint on thinking” (McDowell 1996a, 18). McDowell holds that theories of perception must satisfy a “rational constraint constraint,” as Brandom dubs it.⁹ He insists on the idea that empirical knowledge has to be justified by the objects we perceive through our senses. If we define the relation between non-conceptual sensory input and conceptual thought as a merely causal one, we pay a high price: we cannot explain how empirical knowledge is justified. In other words, if we buy into Davidson’s idea that “nothing can count as a reason for holding a belief except another belief” (Davidson 1986, 310) we lose contact with the world. Davidson could reply to this critique that on the basis of his theory of interpretation we can conclude that most of our beliefs are veridical. Even if we were brains in a mad scientist’s vat, Davidson argues, our beliefs would be correct, nonetheless. He states that if “anything is systematically causing certain experiences (or verbal responses), that is what the thoughts and utterances are about. This rules out systematic error” (Davidson 1991, 199). He adds that who accepts his position, perceptual externalism, “knows he cannot be systematically deceived about whether there are such things as cows, people, water, stars, and chewing gum” (Davidson 1991, 199).

This reply, McDowell argues, does not properly address the problem:

The response does not calm the fear that our picture leaves our thinking possibly out of touch with the world outside us. It just gives us a dizzying sense that our grip on what it is that we believe is not as firm as we thought. I think the right conclusion is this: whatever credence we give to Davidson’s argument that a body of belief is sure to be mostly true, the argument starts too late to certify Davidson’s position as a genuine escape from the oscillation. (McDowell 1996a, 17)

The problem with Davidson’s reply is, according to McDowell, that he tries to show that one’s beliefs are largely true. Doing so, however, he seems to be taking it for granted that mental episodes have content. But, McDowell argues, “if we do not let intuitions stand in rational relations to them, it is exactly their possession of content that is put in question” (McDowell 1996a, 68); hence, Davidson’s argument starts too late.

McDowell concludes that we are left with an oscillation between two positions that are equally problematic: either we adopt a position that is prone to fall into the Myth of the Given, or we give an account that is based on a causal relation between non-conceptual sensations and conceptual thoughts. But in the latter case, he argues, we cannot explain why mental episodes have content. Thus, we are threatened with losing contact with the real world. According to McDowell, the putative gap between mind and world is a putative gap between conceptual thought (including empirical knowledge) on the one side and the non-conceptual world on the other. The challenge for a theory of perception is to explain at what stage in the process of perception concepts are drawn in and in what relation they stand to the non-conceptual without falling into the Myth of the Given or Davidson’s coherentism.

Davidson’s coherentism. In the remainder of his book McDowell tries to show how we can escape this oscillation between the realm of the conceptual and the realm of the non-conceptual. Using some Kantian shoptalk he states that “we need a conception of experiences as states or occurrences that are passive but reflect conceptual capacities, capacities that belong to spontaneity, in operation” (McDowell 1996a, 23). Rejecting the idea of an interface between the non-conceptual world and conceptual thought he adopts a conception of perceptual experiences that reflect conceptual capacities by extending the realm of the conceptual into nature. Since this move recalls Hegel’s philosophy¹⁰, McDowell expends considerable effort defending his position against the charge of idealism. He tries to give his position a naturalistic spin by taking up Aristotle’s notion of second nature. For my purposes it is not necessary to discuss whether he succeeds in his defense against the charge of idealism. The important aspect of Sellars’ and McDowell’s position is that it provides a characterization of the differences between the realm of the mental and that of the physical based on the normative aspect of the former, which allows them to recognize the value of Descartes’ insights, but avoid the ontological implications of his distinction.

On the basis of the Sellarsian/McDowellian distinction between the logical space of reasons and that of nature we can characterize idealistic and materialistic positions in the following way: a position is materialistic .f and only if it holds either that the logical space of reasons can be reduced to the logical space of nature or that it can be eliminated. It is idealistic .f and only if it holds either that the logical space of nature can be reduced to the logical space of reasons or that it can be eliminated. A logical space can be reduced to another logical space if the laws, regularities, relations, or principles that constitute that logical space can be explained in terms of those that constitute the other logical space.

Let us take a closer look at the two strategies used to argue for a monist position. I will first discuss reductionism, and then turn to eliminativism. In order to argue for reductionism one has to account for all essential particularities of the respective other logical space in terms of the one that one favors. What are the particularities of the two logical spaces? According to McDowell, the logical space of nature is constituted by natural laws. These laws describe physical objects and the relations between them, i.e., causal relations. The logical space of reasons, on the other hand, is constituted by rational relations that hold between conceptual episodes. These rational relations are not based on natural laws, but on the laws of logic, which essentially contain a normative element. The question whether a conclusion actually follows from a certain set of premises is not a question that can be decided by observation or on the basis of laws that describe causal relations. It can be decided only relative to the axioms and derivation rules of a logical system by determining whether they have been applied correctly.

The reductionist strategy of advocating materialism is to show that we can reduce rational relations to the laws of nature, a strategy that Sellars, as we have seen above, equates with the naturalistic fallacy in ethics. One way to perform this reduction is to reduce the laws of logic to the laws of psychology. This position, which was discussed under the title ‘psychologism,’ was defeated successfully by Frege and Husserl a century ago.¹¹

So far, a reduction of the regulations that govern the logical space of reasons to the laws of science has not yet been achieved. Reductionism, however, is based on optimism about the future development of science: if not today, it is argued, some day in the future we will be able to reduce the mental to the physical. This strategy makes it difficult, if not impossible, to show that reductionism is wrong: one would have to show that reducing the space of reasons to that of nature is impossible in principle, .or all conceivable scientific theories that might be developed some time in the future.

It might be helpful, however, to consider where the strong urge to perform such a reduction comes from. In the last few centuries, especially in the twentieth century, science has made enormous progress. In addition, special sciences like chemistry could be reduced to more fundamental disciplines like physics. These achievements have supported the idea that we can develop one general explanatory scheme that can account for everything that can be described as physical. The hope is that eventually we will be able to deduce all scientific laws from a handful of very general formulas and maybe some additional premises. This idea of a unified theory of everything physical nourished the fear that if we acknowledge the need of a special science that is not reducible to physics we would be forced to accept that there is something that cannot be described as physical and that is therefore ontologically different. In other words, we are forced to subscribe to dualism. Thus, the main motivation for reduction of the mental to the physical is the contention that we can choose only between reductionism (or eliminativism) and Cartesian dualism.

This dichotomy, however, seems to be popular only in the context of reductionism of the mental to the physical, but loses much of its appeal if one considers the example of the laws of logic, evolutionary theory, or economics: even if one acknowledges that the laws, rules, or regularities of these disciplines cannot be reduced to the laws of microphysics—as most scientists do, if not explicitly, so at least in their everyday scientific practice—one does not need to conclude that admitting the relative autonomy of these disciplines from microphysics entails ontological dualism or even pluralism.

A reductionist position does not need to be materialistic; we could also imagine a reduction from the physical to the mental. The advocates of such a position would have to show how we can reduce the laws of physics to the rational relations that constitute the logical space of reasons. In a century like ours that is shaped by a strong belief in the natural sciences, such a position seems quite exotic: it betrays the very idea of science, namely that there is a world independent of us, the regularities of which we try to describe with natural laws. The main difficulty faced by this position is to explain the necessity of causal regularities in the physical world in terms of rational relations. In our mental life we can choose to infer a certain belief from a set of other beliefs; we are free to make the move from one position in the space of reasons to another one. In nature, on the other hand, the same events in the same circumstances always have to cause the same effects, and necessarily so. Consequently, the idealistic reductionism would run into the same kind of problems as its materialistic version; it would be difficult to show that the rules that constitute the logical space of reasons can account for all particularities of the logical space of nature.

The other possible strategy used to argue for monism is to eliminate the logical space of reasons or of nature, respectively. Materialistic eliminativists, in general, share the fear of re...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Why Do We Need a Theory of Constitution?
• Chapter Two: The History Of The Notion Of Constitution: Two Case Studies
• Chapter Three: Towards a Theory of Constitution
• Chapter Four: The Social Foundation of the Mind
• Chapter Five: Constitution and Idealism
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography