What a Pain

Shanahan (p. 228-229) disagrees with Lamme’s suggestion that recurrent processing is sufficient for phenomenal consciousness and introduces an interesting thought experiment to support the view that introspective reporting is very important. Suppose, he suggests, that a company develops a drug to relieve pain only at stage 4. In clinical trials patients report that the medication relieves pain. The FDA, however, refuses to license the drug because it does not affect level 3 processing which means that “pain is still present” (p. 229). This seems absurd. The point is fairly clear—the only relevant form of consciousness is found at stage 4.

Lamme’s reply to this is not very helpful. He wonders how much can be taken away from pain before it is no longer pain (p. 235). He suggests that we could take away the fear associated with pain, or the memories that accompany it, but, he says, “wouldn’t it still be pain?” (p. 235). He allows that when “enough has been stripped away, pain may turn into something categorically different, like an itch” (p. 235). He adds that this will go along with a change in the stage 3 representation (p. 235). He concludes that it is “all about context, about perceptual organization, about combining information” (p. 235). He compares it to viewing 600nm as either orange or red, noting that which color we see is a matter of lighting (p. 235).

This thought experiment is provocative and I do not think that Lamme’s reply fully addresses it. Are you still phenomenally experiencing pain if you are not aware of it? To me, this seems ridiculous. I asked several other people (very scientific methodology) and some of them suggested that, when one is taking a pain killer or Novocain, one is still in pain—it just can’t be felt while the medication is working. This sounds similar to Lamme’s claim. Indeed, anyone who has had dental work knows that one minute you may feel fine and the next you can be in agony which suggests the underlying pain cause is still present. This, to me, does not mean, however, that you are in pain. Pain is a potent phenomenal state that may or may not be causally linked to an underlying pathology. In many cases, the pain can be masked by a drug while the underlying pathology remains. If one is not actually experiencing the pain, though, it would be nonsensical to say one is in pain. In summary, if stage 3 processes register pain but one does not feel it, (this has not been shown but would be an interesting experiment) then it decisively shows that stage 3 processing is not relevant to phenomenal awareness. To suggest that one is in pain without feeling it, I believe, is certainly a case of philosophical chicanery.*


*Lamme could cite the Vuilleumier et al. (2001) experiment to show that in some cases of neglect, visual illusions “coming from the neglected hemifield still “work” to influence the percepts that are reported by the patient from the intact hemifield” (p. 211). This would support the claim that one can have phenomenology without access or reportability. It could be replied,

Not so HOT...

With an incredulous gasp Matthias read the final lines of Rosenthal’s article. He then set to work typing the following hyperbolic blurb all the while referring to himself in the third person… Just kidding, he wouldn’t do that to you. (Sorry for posting on your blog Louie)

In the course of his “Varieties of Higher-Order Theory,” Rosenthal argues that we need to rely on higher-order theories to explain how we can be conscious of conscious states. This consciousness of conscious states refers to our capacity for introspection. We can think about what we are thinking about, we can reflect upon our visual field. Rosenthal seems to think the only explanation for such experiences is a higher-order theory—specifically a higher-order thought (HOT) model. A HOT is essentially attached experiences in which “we are introspectively conscious of a state… in a deliberate attentively focused way” (24). Rosenthal initially characterizes the experience of conscious introspection as very ordinary (who hasn’t felt the sting of self-consciousness at a middle school dance?) but quickly asserts that “introspection involves actually being aware that we are conscious of those [mental] states” (24). Since the mental states themselves are conscious (in the state rather than transitive/introspective sense of consciousness) it sounds as though Rosenthal is embracing a third level of consciousness -awareness of consciously attending to conscious mental states. Though he is quick to recognize the potential for regress in higher-order theories, Rosenthal believes a variant of the HOT model escapes this worry. In doing so, he seems to mystify HOT consciousness, claiming that we aren’t typically conscious of any HOTs (33), and that we “are rarely conscious of that higher-order awareness” (37).
The retreat from the commonness of the experience of introspection seems in part motivated by a phenomenological argument. In an intuitively appealing passage, Rosenthal gives an account of the argument that leads many theorists to reject higher-order theories;

“When a state is conscious, we are conscious of that state. But, except for the
special case of introspective consciousness, we are not also conscious of being
conscious of the state; it seems subjectively that we are conscious of only one
state. So, if one relied on consciousness to reveal mental functioning, one would
conclude that, when a state is conscious, there aren’t two states but only
one” (31)

But Rosenthal claims this argument incorrectly assumes mental functioning is revealed to us by consciousness. The example he uses is that when viewing Warhol’s repetitions of Marilyn Monroe’s portrait, we subjectively seem to see the various portraits with the same degree of clarity, which we know empirically to be false. From Rosenthal’s perspective this proves that consciousness doesn’t accurately reveal mental functioning. The empirical fact that we don’t always consciously represent the world accurately seems irrelevant to the argument. Proving that subjective experience isn’t always accurate does little to advance Rosenthal’s argument. At most it shows that we shouldn’t rely entirely on introspection in our investigation of consciousness. It does not show that we need a higher-order theory to explain the phenomena of introspectable mental states. Through the article, Rosenthal has back-peddled on introspection turning it into a rare experience, partly because a phenomenal investigation of introspection doesn’t reveal a state of consciousness of a state of consciousness. Calling HOTs rare and saying that subjective experience is fallible doesn’t amount to a persuasive argument for the existence of HOT’s.