Kings, Wizards, and Illusionism about Consciousness
The Difference Between Kings and Wizards
In 16th century Europe, many believed that kings ruled by divine mandate and wizards wielded magical powers. With apologies to certain non-secular perspectives, they were wrong. No one ever had divine mandate to rule or powers of the type assumed. Since no one could cast magic spells, we now say there were never any wizards. Since no one had divine mandate to rule, we now say there were never any kings.
Wait, no we don't!
Why the difference? It turns out that able to cast magic spells is an essential property of wizards, but having divine mandate to rule is not an essential property of kings. Denying that anyone has the first property means denying that wizards exist, but denying that anyone has the second property does not mean denying that kings exist. A divine mandate is to kings as pointy hats are to wizards -- stereotypical perhaps, or even universal on a certain way of thinking, but not essential.
Kammerer: "Phenomenally Conscious" Is More Like "Wizard" than "King"
In his recent paper Defining Consciousness and Denying Its Existence: Sailing between Charybdis and Scylla, François Kammerer argues that the relationship between "phenomenal consciousness" and is non-physical and is immediately introspectible (in a certain naturalistically implausible sense) is akin to the relationship between "wizard" and able to cast magic spells. Arguing against my 2016 paper "Phenomenal Consciousness, Defined and Defended as Innocently as I Can Manage", Kammerer contends that non-physicality and immediate introspectibility are implicitly essential to our concept of phenomenal consciousness. Nothing wholly physical could be phenomenally conscious, just like no spellless muggle could be a wizard.
[A wizard (Merlin) carrying a king (Arthur), by N. C. Wyeth]
Can "Phenomenally Conscious" Be Defined Without Problematic Presuppositions?
My approach to defining consciousness aims to be "innocent" in the sense that it doesn't presuppose that phenomenal consciousness is, or isn't, wholly physical or immediately introspectible. Instead, I define it by example:
Notice your visual experience right now.
Close your eyes and thoughtfully consider the best route to grandma's house during rush hour.
Mentally hum the tune of "Happy Birthday".
Pinch yourself and notice the sting of pain.
These events share an obvious common property that distinguishes them from non-conscious mental states such as your knowledge, five minutes ago, that Obama was U.S. President in 2010. That shared property is what I mean by "phenomenally conscious". Actually, I prefer to just say that they are "conscious" or "consciously experienced", in line with ordinary usage; but since the term "conscious" can be ambiguous, the jargony term of art "phenomenally" can help to clarify. ("Phenomenal consciousness" in the intended sense is meant to disambiguate rather than modify the ordinary term "consciousness".)
On Kammerer's view, as I interpret it, my "innocent" definition fails in something like the following way: I point to one purported wizard, then another, then another, then another, and I say by "wizard" I mean the one obvious property shared among those men and absent from these other men (here pointing to several people I assume to be non-wizards). Although this might purport to be an innocent definition by example, I am assuming that the first group casts spells and the second doesn't. If no one casts spells, I've picked out a group of men -- and certainly those men exist. But no wizards exist.
The purported wizards might all have something in common. Maybe they are members of the opposing tribe, or maybe they're all unusually tall. Even if we can thus pick out a real property using them as exemplars, that property wouldn't be the property of being a wizard. Similarly for my definition by example, I assume Kammerer would say. If we accept Global Workspace Theory, for instance, maybe all of the positive examples transpire in the Global Workspace; but if they aren't also non-physical and immediately introspectible, they aren't phenomenally conscious, by Kammerer's lights.
A Test of Essentiality: What Happens If We Remove the Property?
Imagine traveling back to a simplified 16th century Europe and convincingly delivering the news: There is no divine right of kings, and there are no magic spells. How will people react?
"Oh, really, my king doesn't have divine authority?" (Kings still exist.)
"Oh, really, that weirdo from the other town isn't really a wizard?" (Wizards don't exist.)
Likely, most ordinary users of these terms (or, more strictly, the 16th century translations of these terms) will treat divine mandate as inessential to kinghood but spellcasting as essential to wizardry. A few philosophers and theologians might claim that without divine right, kings were never real -- but this would be an unusual stance, and history sided against it.
This method -- removing a property and testing whether the concept still applies -- also works for other terms, regardless of whether the feature is explicitly or only implicitly essential.
Consider the essential conditions for that hoary analytic-philosophy chestnut "S knows that P". Discovering such conditions can require significant philosophical inquiry. Perhaps one such condition is that the true belief that P be non-lucky, in Duncan Pritchard's sense. To test this, we can hypothetically remove the non-luckiness from a case of knowledge. If it was mere luck that you read the showtime in accurate Newspaper A rather than misprinted Newspaper B, then ordinary users (if Pritchard is right) will, or should, deny that you know the showtime. This is just the good old method of imaginative counterexample.
Analogously, we can ask users of the phrase "phenomenally conscious" -- mostly philosophers and consciousness scientists -- the following hypothetical: Suppose that the world is entirely material and introspection is an ordinary, natural, fallible process. Will these ordinary users say (a.) "I guess there would then be no such thing as phenomenal consciousness after all!" or (b.) "I guess phenomenal consciousness would lack these particular properties"?
Those among us who already think that phenomenal consciousness lacks those properties will of course choose option (b). These people would be analogous to 16th century deniers of the divine right of kings.
But also, I speculate, most ordinary users of the term who do think that phenomenal consciousness is non-physical and/or immediately introspectible would also choose option (b). Imagining, hypothetically, themselves to be wrong about non-physicality and/or immediate introspectibility, they'd grant that phenomenal consciousness would still exist. In other words, ordinary users wouldn't treat non-physicality or immediate introspectibility as essential to consciousness in the same way that spellcasting is essential to wizardry (or non-luckiness is, maybe, essential to knowledge).
A few users would presumably choose option (a). But my empirically testable, socio-linguistic guess is that they would be a distinct minority.
Non-physicalists are more convinced that phenomenal consciousness exists than that it is non-physical. Hypothetically imagining the truth of physicalism, they would, and should, still grant the existence of phenomenal consciousness. In contrast, believers in wizards would not and should not be more convinced that there are wizards than that there are people with spellcasting abilities.
Innocence Maintained
Contra Kammerer, even if many people associate phenomenal consciousness with non-physicality and naturalistically implausible introspective processes -- indeed, even if can be established that phenomenal consciousness actually has those two properties -- those properties are non-essential rather than essential.
Kammerer's case against the existence of phenomenal consciousness therefore doesn't succeed. Ultimately, I take this to be a socio-linguistic dispute about the meaning of the phrase "phenomenal consciousness", rather than a disagreement about the existence of (what I call) phenomenal consciousness.
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Related:
"Phenomenal Consciousness, Defined and Defended as Innocently as I Can Manage", Journal of Consciousness Studies (2016), 23, 11-12, 224-235.
"Inflate and Explode", circulating unpublished draft paper, Jan 31, 2020.
"There Are No Chairs, Says the Illusionist, Sitting in One", blog post, Apr 24, 2023.
Along the lines of what Kenny discusses, someone could also define wizards to be anyone with deep knowledge enabling unusual capabilities. By that definition, scientists and engineers would be modern day wizards, or so a wizard-realist could argue. It's also worth noting that we can identify what it is about kings that makes them kings (such as ruler by inheritance, even if only ceremonially). Can we do the same with phenomenal consciousness?
The problem is I don't think the term "phenomenal consciousness" really clarifies. Some people take it to refer to the manifest image of consciousness (channeling Wilfid Sellars), what we might call "manifest consciousness." It seems like that's what you're aiming for with the "innocent" definition. Others take it to refer to the stronger concept, something simple, irreducible, fundamentally private, impossible to describe, yet subjectively apprehensible, what we might call "fundamental consciousness," in essence a theory about manifest consciousness that it's exactly as it seems with no hidden aspects.
The thing is, manifest consciousness, in and of itself, doesn't seem to have a hard problem. The hard problem seems specific to fundamental consciousness. If we say manifest consciousness does have a hard problem, then what about it makes it so? What can be identified that isn't the problematic traits many phenomenal realists are willing to throw overboard?
In any case, I'm an eliminativist toward fundamental consciousness but not manifest consciousness. As to the term "phenomenal consciousness", I take Pete Mandik's advice and mostly avoid it (Qualia Quietism), except when responding to someone else who's using it. (Or talking about its semantic indeterminism.)
I’m thinking of the potential “minimal pair” of “wizard” and “magician”. If you’re watching stage performances that you are convinced are magical, and then learn that they’re tricks or illusions rather than magic, do you stop calling the person a magician? Most of us use the term “magician” for stage performers that we don’t believe are magical, but do manage to do their tricks, so we are happy when we learn there is no magic. But I’m not totally sure this is the only way for a person to go who actually thinks there’s magic! They think they discover that Houdini and Copperfield aren’t really magicians!
Imagine another case - we see Merlin, and he tells people he uses magic to call down fire from the heavens. Then we discover that he’s actually a time traveler from Connecticut, and he’s using a lightning rod and gunpowder. Do people still think he’s a wizard even though it’s not magic in the sense us moderns think?
(Overall though, I don’t think the terminology matters too much, but I think these cases are still interesting for thinking about how people use language.)