Commentwn//Velmans: Consciousness

scious experience, whether or not focally attentive, it would be

surprising, to say the least, if the Informational demands of
complex cognitive activity were met by anything other then the
almost infinite capacity (see Hubel 1979) of preconscious brain
mechanisms.
Second, it has been clear since the pioneer studies of Moruzzi
and Magoun (1949) that the primitive brain structures that
provide the wherewithal for the conscious representation of the
end results of preconscious cognitive processing are the least
likely candidates for this antecedent processing. It Is surely the
human cerebral cortex and not the reticular system that sub-
serves cognition! This contention is, incidentally, supported by
the evidence for complex cognitive activity initiated by audio
verbal messages delivered to the ears of patients under deep
anaesthesia (Dixon 1989; Evans & Richardson 1988).
As to the philosophical implications with which Velmans
concludes his paper: Without wishing to trivialise anything as
serious as the role of consciousness in human affairs one cannot
help contrasting Velmans's target article, which could have
been entitled, "Is your mind really necessary?", with Lorber's
(1983) equally provocative monograph, "Is your brain really
necessary?". Lorber's title was inspired by studies of hydro-
cephalics who seem capable of complex cognitive activity de-
spite having very little brain. Under "Cases of special Interest"
Lorber writes:
The most striking is a young man who is now 25 years old. He was an
excellent student of Mathematics and Economics at our University.
He consulted our Professor of Medicine because at 20 years of age he
had problems of endocrine maturation. His maximal head circum-
ference was 62 cm., or 4 cm. above the 98th centile, but this was
never commented on before. He had no motor handicap and no
seizures up to this time. His CT scan at 20 and again at 25 years of age
showed a most extreme degree of hydrocephalus. There was only the
merest rim of tissue present. Some of this shadow represents the
meninges. Something like 99 percent of his supratentorial intra-
cranial content is just fluid. In spite of an apparent absence of visual
cortex his vision, apart from refractive error, is perfect. Photographs
from his family album clearly indicate that he did have hydrocephalus
early in life, but it was not diagnosed and he had no treatment. He
subsequently graduated in Mathematics with First Class Honours.
Our educational psychologist commented as follows: "At 21 years,
the Wechsler adult intelligence scale was used. The verbal scale of IQ
was 143, performance was 99, and the full scale was 126. His
performance on all parts of the verbal scale was superb and his First
Class Degree in Mathematics was very apparent in tests depending
on deductive reasoning. His visual perception is well above average
and he made geometric pictures with blocks and copied other
pictures quite well." Four years later, an independent psychologist
examined him, knowing nothing about past results or the appearance
of his scan. This time his verbal IQ was 140, his performance was 112,
and the global IQ was 130.
In a group of 682 patients with hydrocephalus, Lorber dis-
covered 150 cases of "gross or extreme hydrocephalus" of whom
21% had IQs ranging from 100 to 130 and 31% whose IQs ranged
from 80 to 99. Of particular Interest Is the fact that 67 of his
subjects who had not been treated for the condition had higher
IQs than those treated with a shunt.
The implications of these data for Velmans's position are
somewhat ambiguous. On the one hand, they reflect the enor-
mous redundancy of the normal brain by showing how much can
be done by so little. On the other hand, by sparing a capacity for
consciousness, the effects of hydrocephalus may be taken to
show how consciousness can take over when the usual machine-
ry for complex cognitive activity is grossly Impaired.
It depends which way you want to argue!
There Is one other body of work that needs to be considered
when addressing the question, "Is human information process-
ing conscious?" Studies of "misapplied competence" (Reason &
Mycielska 1982; see also Dixon 1987) more commonly known as
"absent mindedness" suggest that under certain circumstances
consciousness may act as a causal agent to intervene in what
would otherwise be Inappropriate absent minded behaviour.
Whereas "saying thank you to a vending machine" implies an
absence of conscious control and Is, therefore, consistent with
Velmans's thesis, the fact that awareness of the possibility of
such misapplied habitual responding can forestall the faux pas
suggests that consciousness can be causal in cognitive activity.
Conscious aets and their objects
Fred Dretske
Philosophy Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
Electronic mail: dretske@csli.stanford.edu
Velmans's review of the possible functions of consciousness in
human information processing Is most valuable. The disparity
between a first-person perspective - a perspective defined by
conscious awareness - and a third-person point of view - where
It is difficult to determine what (if any) work conscious awareness
does - calls out for a better understanding of what a conscious
process is.
It Is natural enough (and, Indeed, this tendency is evident
throughout the target article) to identify a conscious process
with a process we are conscious of (or the results of which we are
conscious of). This, I think, is a mistake, a mistake that explains
why It is so hard to find a role for consciousness in conscious
systems. If a conscious process Is thought of as a process of which
(or the results of which) we are conscious, then, it Is hard to see
how consciousness could play a role. For a conscious process
then becomes analogous to, say, a perceived ball bearing. Ball
bearings, including the ones we perceive, have a function, but
perceived ones, the ones we are conscious of, have exactly the
same function as the ones that are not perceived. From the point
of view of the machine of which they are parts, then, being
perceived (being conscious in this sense) is epiphenomenal.
This problem, I suggest, is the result of confusing an act with
Its object - our consciousness of X with the X of which we are
conscious. A conscious process Is not a process of which (or the
results of which) we are conscious. It is not an object of
awareness. It is, Instead, the act of awareness, the process by
means of which we are made aware of whatever objects we are
aware of. P is a conscious process (in S) if there is something, X,
that P makes S aware of. (X will not be F itself although there
might be another process in S that makes S aware of P.) And S is
conscious (intransitive use of the verb) in so far as there occur
conscious processes In S - In so far, that is, as there are things of
which S is aware.
We are consciously aware of a great many things that are not
themselves conscious. If seeing, hearing, and smelling count as
forms of conscious awareness, as I assume, then we are con-
scious of such things as shapes and colors, smells and sounds,
voices and music. To pick examples from Velmans, we are
consciously aware of the physical properties of stimuli, of voices,
messages, phrases, words, and sentences. These things are not-
conscious. Nor do they become conscious merely because we
become conscious of them. The objects of consciousness, the X's
of which we are aware, needn't have the properties that our
consciousness of them has. In particular, they needn't have the
property (if this Is indeed a property) of being conscious. In
seeking a functional role for consciousness, then, it would be a
mistake to look for this contribution in the X's of which we are
conscious. For that Isn't (or may not be) where consciousness
Itself resides.
It may be thought, nonetheless, that when the X's of which we
are conscious are (unlike voices and ball bearings) internal
events and processes, then our consciousness of them makes
them (as well as our consciousness of them) conscious. A con-
676 BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (1991) 14:4
scions process Is an internal process of which we are consciously
aware, an internal object of conscious awareness. Is this really
true? We can merely stipulate that it is true, and for some
purposes this may be a useful way of proceeding. In the present
Instance, though, I do not think it Is. For, to begin with, we are
aware of a great many Internal events, processes, and things that
are not themselves conscious in any relevant sense of that word.
After strenuous exercise, I am aware of my heart pounding
wildly. Is a pounding heart, the object of which I am aware (not
to be confused with my act of being aware of it) conscious? One is
aware of objects and happenings In the eyes, mouth, throat, and
nose. Are such things (the cinder in the eye, the food In the
throat, the tongue in the mouth) to be regarded as conscious for
this reason? Of course not.
It is certainly true that some internal events and processes are
conscious in a relevant sense of that word: pains, visual and
auditory sensations, thoughts and feelings. The question to ask
about these things, however, Is this: What makes them con-
scious? Are sensations and thoughts conscious because they are
the objects of consciousness, because they are among the X's we
are conscious of? Or are they conscious because they are acts of
awareness, awareness of an X (a ball bearing, a noise, a voice, a
smell, or a fact) that may or may not itself be conscious?
If we adopt this second way of thinking about a conscious
process, then auditory sensations (say) turn out to be conscious,
not because we are conscious of them (although we may, in fact,
be conscious of them), but because they are (they constitute) our
(auditory) awareness of things. Visual sensations are different
from auditory sensations - different conscious experiences - but
not because sensations are internal events (colored in the one
case, noisy in the other) of which we are aware. No, they are
different, and consciously so, because they constitute our (inter-
nal) awareness o/much different (external) things: light in the
one case, sound in the other. To identify an awareness of sound
with an auditory sensation or experience is not to say that we
cannot become aware of conscious sensations and experiences.
It Is only to say that it is not our awareness of them that makes
them conscious. To become aware of a visual sensation would be
to become consciously aware of a visual act of awareness - aware
of one's (visual) awareness of X (or, perhaps, aware that one was
visually aware of X). Blindsight phenomena suggest that one
can, in some sense, be aware of X (an external stimulus) without
being aware that one is aware of it. People can be conscious of
the external thing they identify without being conscious of the
Internal processes that make them aware of it. [See Campion et
al.: "Blindsight" BBS 6(3) 1986.]
I do not make these remarks for the purpose of developing (in
the space of this short commentary) a philosophical theory of
consciousness. I do so, rather, for the purpose of suggesting that
to find a functional role for consciousness in the business of
information processing one has to look in the right place. And if
the account suggested here is on the right track, the place to look
for consciousness is not in the objects (including the internal
objects) of which we are conscious. For they don't (necessarily)
have it. They are not (or need not be) themselves conscious. The
place to look for consciousness is, rather, in the processes that
underlie and constitute our consciousness of things (sound,
light, pressure, etc.). And though we may not be conscious of
these processes when they occur in us (as we surely are not for
most of the early stages of information processing), this fact in no
way undermines the functional contribution of consciousness to
human information processing. For a conscious process, accord-
ing to the present conception, is an act, not an object of
awareness, and we cannot remove these acts of awareness (nor
the processes underlying them) without removing perception
itself. If the usefulness of perception (of both external and
internal objects) Is obvious, then the functional role of con-
sciousness should be equally obvious. For consciousness is our
perceptual awareness of things, and a conscious process is
whatever process is needed to make us so aware.
Commentary/Velmmis: Consciousness
Obserwing protocol
Judith Economos
2 Edgemont Road, Scarsdale, NY 10583
1. This Is a philosophy piece. I liked It very much once it got
down to business. The empirical stuff showing you don't need
consciousness to pass various experimental tasks Is simply
sheep's clothing. I'll stipulate that you can explain all the
phenomena obtainable by psychological experiment without
mentioning consciousness. That's a restatement of the mind-
body problem. Anyway, after Libet (1985) it's clear that Lee
lacocca doesn't work on the assembly line. (Otherwise, I would
complain a lot about not having a decent definition of
"conscious.")
2. Complementarity, the idea being suggested as an alter-
native to the scientists' usual dumb epiphenomenalism, Is a
double-aspect theory. Double-aspect theories are intuitively
attractive, but they need work in the ontology department. Yes,
ontology. You let the wolf in the door, you deal with his teeth. I
am trying to figure out whether or not any of the usual double-
aspect theories fit. There is probably not enough wolf showing to
tell exactly what color he is. (Fermat used the same dodge, by
the way.) It appears that "events" are what has two aspects.
3. How can we work out the notion of consciousness as
"complementary" to whatever the experimental procedures are
measuring? Velmans explicitly rejects an identity theory, so
"two descriptions of the same thing" (which is the extreme left of
the range of double-aspect theories) does not suit him.
4. The next theory over is "two ways of knowing the same
thing" - but careful here: For Velmans, it is the experimenter
who has the two ways of knowing (experimental Inference plus
protocol), not, as Is traditional, the subject (by description plus
direct access).
5. A weakness of this is that protocols are inadequate If
interpreted in what I had thought was the legitimate experimen-
tal way (as barks and grunts perhaps resembling one's own
language but not to be interpreted anthropomorphically); for an
experimenter to interpret protocols as intentional speech refer-
ring to something Is (I'd have thought) loudly Illegitimate. Or, if
it is legitimate, then psychology is not at all like other sciences,
which do not ever deal in intentional matters. So we more or less
substitute a psychology-science problem for the mind-body
problem.
(Er, when did protocols interpreted as speech with unobser-
vable meaning become acceptable, anyway? And who has built a
foundation for it? I think this foundation must be a close
approximation to a solution to the problem of intentionality, if
not to the whole mind-body problem. Protocols are a sneaky
way of trying to third-personalize, "publish," first-person stuff.
If you programmed a computer to type out first-person sen-
tences in response to stimuli, your attitude toward such "pro-
tocols" would be different, wouldn't It? You would treat them as
behavioral manifestations, not as true or false statements about
something. What justifies treating any experimental object
differently?)
6. In summary, without protocols interpreted as mean-
ingful/intentional just-like-me statements, psychologists have
no speakable access at all to consciousness admitted to be such.
The "complementarity" of what protocols are about with what
experimentally descriptive statements are (ultimately) about,
relies on protocols being about. I don't know how to justify this.
A justification would be very welcome. (The complementarity
reference of one's own private introspections with the experi-
menter's etc. Is undercut by Libet (1985), at least as long as the
experiments stay on the assembly-line level.)
7. Please elucidate. If complementarity has a chance of work-
Ing, It's well worth developing. If protocols can be both observ-
able and refer to conscious states for the observer, I want to
know all about it.
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