Abstract
What is the connection between having a phenomenal property and knowing that one has that property? A traditional view on the matter takes the connection to be quite intimate. Whenever one has a phenomenal property, one knows that one does. Recently most authors have denied this traditional view. The goal of this paper is to defend the traditional view. In fact, I will defend something much stronger: I will argue that what it is for a property to be phenomenal is for it to be a (consistent) property one must know oneself to have when on has it. As we will see, this theory has a number of surprising and welcome upshots, suggesting that the traditional view has been unjustly maligned.
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Notes
Here is a partial list of works defending first-order theories: Seigel (2010), Speaks (2015), Byrne (2001), Pautz (2010), Dretske (2000), Dretske (2003), Tye (1995), and Chalmers (2004). And here is a partial list of texts defending higher order theories: Rosenthal (2004), Rosenthal (2005), Carruthers (2005), Carruthers (2016), Lycan (1996), and Armstrong (1968).
The term ‘luminous’ was introduced by Williamson (2000). Williamson talks of luminous conditions (triples of worlds, times and subjects), I talk of luminous properties. This is because the subject of the paper is phenomenal properties. One could approach phenomenal properties via luminous conditions in a roundabout way (somewhat similarly to the way in which Williamson approaches narrow and broad states in terms of narrow and broad conditions). But I see no reason in particular to do this. The focus on properties instead of conditions also helps avoid potential counterexamples to the thesis I will defend.
This paper takes property entailment as primitive. I will suppose that if F entails G then necessarily everything is necessarily G if F but remain, for the most part, agnostic on the converse. In various places in what follows I will make assumptions about what entailment is like. I will flag these assumptions when made. I will also remain agnostic on what properties are. My preferred framework is to treat property talk as shorthand for sentences that involve quantification into predicate position. So regimented ‘being phenomenal’ is properly treated as a higher-order predicate: a ‘predicate’ that combines with a predicate to give a sentence. But these issues are mostly orthogonal to the subject of this paper.
When I say that F entails knowing that one is F, I do not mean that necessarily any person who is F knows that they are F. Rather I mean that necessarily anything whatsoever that is F knows that it is F. This avoids possible counterexamples like existing or being self identical. Perhaps all persons automatically count as knowing that they are identical to themselves. But self identity does not entail knowledge of such identity: ordinary objects like rocks and trees are self identical but do not know anything. I should also note that the thesis LC could be true without being knowable a priori.Thus LC does not automatically face the ‘distinct existence argument’ which turns on the claim that one can conceive of having a phenomenal property without the corresponding knowledge (see Stoljar 2016.) All that this argument establishes is that LC is not a priori true. Without substantial assumptions connecting conceivability and metaphysical possibility, it does not refute LC.
Let \(\ulcorner C(F)\urcorner \) abbreviate \(\ulcorner \)F is consistent\(\urcorner \) and \(\ulcorner K(x, p)\urcorner \) abbreviate \(\ulcorner x\) knows that \(p\urcorner \). Define \(K^*\) to be the relation that obtains between oneself and a property if one knows oneself to have that property:
$$\begin{aligned} K^*{:}{=}\,\lambda F x K(x,(Fx)) \end{aligned}$$Then idea is that the phenomenal properties are precisely the consistent fixed points of \(K^*\):
$$\begin{aligned} \mathsf {Phenomenal} = \lambda F(C(F)\wedge K^*(F) = F) \end{aligned}$$(Note that on a coarse grained conception of properties the property of sitting and not sitting may well be identical to the property of knowing that one is sitting and not sitting since both are impossible to have. Thus the requirement that the properties in question be consistent is crucial to avoid such counterexamples.)
Williamson (2016).
More generally, this thesis has implausible consequences when combined with any view according to which, for some dispositional mental state F, being F requires knowing that one is F. My own view is that no such thesis is plausible enough on its own to rule out LC, and for the purposes of this paper I will suppose that one can always fail to know that one is in some dispositional mental state.
See Wittgenstein (1953, section 246).
The thesis LC may of course be incompatible with some specific analyses of knowledge, for example it may be incompatible with certain tracking accounts of knowledge. On my view, knowledge is a factive mental state of some kind that is familiar enough to reason about absent any specific analysis. See Williamson (2000) for this conception of knowledge.
Sometimes I’ll use talk of awareness in place of talk of knowledge when it seems natural to do so. The official formulation though is in terms of knowledge. LC can be brought closer to traditional HOT theories if we combine it with the thesis that knowing p is a mental state for any p. My own view is that the application of any stative propositional attitude to a proposition (in its “second” argument place) should result in a mental state, but this is not required to accept LC. See Williamson (1995), Williamson (2000, ch. 1) and Nagel (2013). Since the notion of awareness at issue in this paper is always relational, this also distinguishes the view defended here from a somewhat similar thesis defended by Montague (2016) according to which awareness entails awareness of awareness.
As mentioned above one reason not to take this route is that that it does not respect the standard HOT claim that some properties can have the property of being phenomenal contingently, at least not given some standard and plausible assumptions. Suppose that F is phenomenal and so consistent and such that \(F = K^*(F)\). Since, plausibly, F is necessarily consistent if consistent and necessarily identical to \(K^*(F)\) if identical to \(K^*(F)\) it follows that necessarily F is consistent and such that \(F= K^*(F)\). Given the further claim that metaphysical analyses are metaphysically necessary it follows that necessarily F is phenomenal.
It is consistent to hold that a believes that a is F when a is not F even if being F is luminous.
Of course one might give up one of these principles for different reasons. Bacon (2014), for instance, shows that there is a tension between Evidentialism and E = K given an anti-skeptical epistemology together with a probabilistic analysis of support. These worries do not effect my overall case since the hard cases are those concerning knowledge of the future, not knowledge of one’s own present phenomenal state.
Suppose that properties form a complete lattice with respect to the ordering of entailment. This would be guaranteed by the theory that properties are functions from worlds to extensions, though is also compatible with more fine grained accounts of properties. Where P is the set of all phenomenal properties, the proposal is then that the property of being conscious is the join \(\bigvee P\). Given LC, the set P has an “intrinsic” description in non-phenomenal terms. The notion of a join is also defined non-phenomenally. Thus given LC, being conscious can be singled out by an intrinsic, non-phenomenal description.
Note that if being F and being G are consistent and luminous it does not automatically follow that being F or being G is consistent and luminous. If one is F then one knows one is F and is F or G. But in order to know one is F or G requires another inference. Thus this proposal is compatible with those who want to exclude the property of being conscious from the phenomenal.
One further motivation I’ll briefly mention concerns the relation between experience and vagueness. Many authors have expressed sympathy for the thesis that it can never be borderline whether something is conscious (see e.g., Antony 2006, 2008; Simon 2017). The principle of LC, together with standard principles governing the relationship between borderliness and knowledge, explain why this would be so. For suppose that knowledge precludes borderlineness: if one knows that p then it is not borderline whether p. Then if being conscious is a phenomenal property, LC entails that whenever one is conscious, it is not borderline whether one is conscious. Say that it is determinate that p if and only if p and it is not borderline whether p. Then we can put this conclusion as follows: if one is conscious, it is determinate that one is conscious.
And hence LC should be construed as the thesis that F is phenomenal if it is consistent and implicitly knowing one is F is being F. Explicit knowledge is something like attending to the fact that something is the case, implicit knowledge is simply knowledge, which may be present without one attending to the fact to what one knows.
For a response see Rose and Schaffer (2013).
The reason is that they are prepared to assert that in that particular case, the proposition is known. But plausibly one should not assert that which is indeterminate.
In what follows I work with a rather simplified version of the argument that more closely resembles a version presented by Srinivasan (2015). Ultimately I would need to respond to the more sophisticated versions given in terms of confidence, but to do so would require more space than can be provided here.
We can suppose for the sake of argument that feeling cold is phenomenal, though I suspect that it is better thought of as derivative from one’s phenomenal properties rather than a phenomenal property in the strict sense.
Note that even if \(\alpha _1,\dots , \alpha _n\) lacked property (4) it would suffice to swap out any \(\alpha _{i+1}\) with a \(\beta _{i+1}\) that was phenomenal indiscriminable from \(\alpha _{i+1}\) but is such that, if one knows in\(\alpha _i\), one believes in \(\beta _{i+1}\) (provided of course there is such a \(\beta _{i+1})\). Note though that it is a substantive claim that \(\beta _{i+1}\) must thereby be nearby. For further discussion see the principle (BEL\(^*\)) in Srinivasan (2015)
Note that if one points out that it is at least possible that in a scenario like this, there is belief at the next moment, then that is certainly true. But in order for the two cases to be near, it has to be that the belief at the next moment is “similarly based.” For instance a person who irrationally always believed the chip was red would continue to belief the chip was red even as it turned blue. But this doesn’t immediately entail that they cannot see that the chip is red, and so does not entail that they cannot know that the chip is red (provided that knowledge is the most general factive attitude).
Srinivasan (2015) grants that someone who accepts a tight connection between the phenomenal and the doxastic avoids Williamson’s argument as it is formulated above. However there is a more sophisticated version of the argument that is closer to Williamson’s original formulation that she takes to avoid the pitfalls of the simpler version. Unfortunately responding to Srinivasan’s formulation of the argument will have to wait.
I want to briefly respond to one further objection here that has been raised by an anonymous reviewer. Consider the property of being such that, if one has that property, one knows that one has it. Call that property ‘P’. Thus if P exists, then
\(P = \) being such that if one has P, one knows that one has P.
Clearly if such a property exists, it is luminous. For suppose that one has P. Then one is such that if one has P, one knows that one has P. And so one knows that one has P. But I don’t think there is any such property. Here is why: there is at least one thing that doesn’t know anything. The table that my computer is sitting on, for example, does not know anything. Call this table ‘t’. Now if t does not have P, then t is not such that if t has P, t knows that t has P. Since the negation of a conditional is equivalent to the conjunction of its antecedent with the negation of its consequent, it follows that t has P and t does not know that t has P. In particular, t has P. So if t does not have P, t has P. This (classically) implies that t has P. So t is such that if t has P, t knows that t has P. So t knows that t has P. So t knows something. But surely it doesn’t!
Basically since phenomenal properties play a very distinctive role on this theory, there is potential application of the theory in any area where knowledge itself plays a distinctive role.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Brian Cutter, Curtis Franks and Jeff Speaks for reading and providing feedback on earlier drafts of this paper, and also the anonymous reviewers who provided numerous helpful comments and suggestions.
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Hall, G. Phenomenal properties are luminous properties. Synthese 199, 11001–11022 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03277-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03277-3