THE ARCHITECTURE
OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Jonathan Farrell
Postdoctoral Research Associate
My Profile
I did my undergraduate degree (in maths and philosophy) at the University of Glasgow, my masters at the University of Auckland, and my PhD at the Australian National University. My academia page is here: https://manchester.academia.edu/JonathanFarrell
One strand of my work concerns the idea that conscious states are those that there is something it is like for their subjects to be in. The use of this sort of ‘“what it is like” talk’ is ubiquitous in discussions of consciousness, but exactly what is meant by it is unclear. I offer an account of this talk which denies (what some have argued) that it is nonsensical or unhelpful, and rejects the popular view that it involves technical terms. Instead I argue that there is more to the underlying form of ‘what it is like’ sentences than appears on the surface, and that once this is made clear, we can see that it is the presence of a particular word—a ‘phenomenal “for”‘—which allows us to use them to talk about consciousness. I apply my account to improve on the standard definition of conscious states (a state is conscious *iff* there is something it is like for the subject of the state to be in it).
Clarifying how ‘what it is like’ talk works also sheds light on the view that one is in a phenomenally conscious state just when one is aware of the state. One argument offered in support of this view moves from the language we use (‘there is something it is like *for the subject*’) to claims about what makes conscious states conscious (that their subject is aware of them). My account of ‘what it is like’ sentences shows that this argument does not succeed.
A second strand of my research focuses on seemings—those states we are in when things seem some way to us. Seemings are not a unified kind, so one project is to provide a taxonomy of seemings. We can distinguish, for example, epistemic seemings (which concern how we take things to be, given the evidence we have) from experiential seemings (which concern the phenomenal character of our experiences and which include perceptual, and perhaps intellectual, seemings). Distinctions can also be made in how we describe seemings: what we might call *propositional* seemings have the form (where S is a subject and p a proposition) ‘it seems to S that p’ while *predicative* seemings have the form ‘O seems F to S’ (where O is an object and F a property); and there are both comparative (‘O seems the way F-things seem to S’) and non-comparative (‘O seems F’) uses of ‘seem’. What relevance this last group of distinctions has for distinctions in the mental states themselves requires investigation.
I apply this taxonomising work to the debate concerning the contents of perceptual experiences. Some philosophers—*conservatives*—argue that only ‘low-level’ properties such as colours and shapes are perceptually experienced. *Liberals*, on the other hand, argue that some ‘high-level’ properties—such as natural kind or aesthetic properties—are also perceptually experienced. Who is correct, and what distinguishes low- and high-level properties, is a matter of debate. I argue that if we consider this question in terms of how things (perceptually) seem to us, we get an intuitively attractive and informative characterisation of the low level/high level distinction which supports conservatism.
Papers & Presentations
2016 ‘Does consciousness entail awareness?’, European Society for Philosophy & Psychology, St Andrews
2016 ‘“Something it is like” and inner awareness’, Early Career Mind Network, Glasgow
2015 June ‘A taxonomy of seemings’, Towards a Science of Consciousness, University of Helsinki