Phenomenal qualities are the qualitative features that we are presented with in conscious sensory experience. However, phenomenal qualities are not necessarily conscious
qualities—they can and do occur unconsciously. (Indeed, as Rosenthal (2010) points out, it’s important to note that the construction of a quality space relies solely upon a subject’s awareness of the stimuli, and not on their conscious awareness of the phenomenal quality of the experience.)
Indeed, quality space theory will often outrun conscious access to phenomenal qualities: for example, a subject might not be conscious of the difference between two colour stimuli (in the sense that they report that the two stimuli are introspectively
indistinguishable), while their forced-choice sorting behavior nevertheless demonstrates that they can and do reliably distinguish between them. In other words, our discriminative
capacities often exceed our conscious awareness of the qualities by which we make those discriminations.
This suggests that our conscious awareness of phenomenal qualities is often not as of discrete points in a quality space, but rather as regions or volumes with fuzzy boundaries. Through training we can learn to distinguish points more finely – consider, for example, the sophisticated wine taster versus the novice to whom it all ‘tastes the same’. Likewise, we probably discriminate locations in quality spaces more finely when attentional
processes are involved.
However, it is important to note that there is a sense in which quality space theory does not solve Chalmer’s “Hard Problem”, nor can it give a complete answer to Nagel’s question “what is it like to be a bat?”; in order to do so requires a theory of
consciousness, as described in section 1.3. However, QST (at least as I’m presenting it) makes no claims to provide such a theory. QST is a theory of phenomenal qualities; it is not a theory of phenomenal consciousness.85 Recall the distinction made in section 1.3 between “phenomenology” and “consciousness”. The former is a “first-order” (Lycan, 2000) property of sensory states, that of possessing a phenomenal quality. The latter is a “higher-order” property of such states, and describes the conscious awareness/expereince of being in a sensory state that has a particular phenomenal quality.
This is why in order to fully explain ‘what it’s like’ to undergo a conscious sensory experience, quality space theory would ultimately need to be supplemented by a theory of consciousness, as described in chapter 1. Rosenthal (2010) argues for a similar role for consciousness in his analysis of quality space theory. According to his HOR theory of consciousness, “If one is not in any way aware of a [phenomenal] quality, there is nothing
85 Thus, I actually agree with Chalmers when he says that QST “is useful for many purposes, but it tells us
nothing about why there should be experience in the first place.” (1995, p.10) Indeed, QST by itself does not even qualify as an explanation of the “Hard Problem” in Lycan’s ‘first-order’ sense described in section 1.3, because although it defines phenomenal qualities as certain structural properties of sensory states (those by virtue of which we make the perceptual discrimination that we do), it is technically neutral with regard to the question of what kind of properties they are. Thus, QST can only explain the existence of phenomenology given some additional metaphysical claim, such as, e.g., representationalism, identity theory, or functionalism.
it’s like for one to be in a state that exhibits that [phenomenal] quality. There being something it’s like for one to be in a qualitative state is due to the HOA in virtue of which one is aware of that state.” (p.383)86
Indeed, it seems perfectly obvious that there is nothing ‘that it’s like’ (in the conscious, higher-order sense described in section 1.3) for a sensory experience to have a particular phenomenal quality in the absence of consciousness of the quality of that experience. However, this is nevertheless compatible with the claim that the subject is undergoing a phenomenal experience in Lycan’s first-order sense—i.e., being in a sensory state that has a qualitative phenomenology.
Nonetheless, given this distinction between consciousness and phenomenology, some might wonder about whether or not we are justified in calling phenomenal qualities “phenomenal” at all. However, there are at least two reasons that we should consider these features as ‘phenomenal’ despite the fact that they can occur unconsciously: the first follows directly from quality space theory, the second comes from Block (2007), who has argued that the neural basis of phenomenology does not constitutively include the neural basis of consciousness.
First of all, as described above, in QST phenomenal qualities are identified in part by the role they play within a system, and that role is one which is strongly correlated with phenomenology. To be sure, they cannot play this role without the rest of the system; nor do they even ‘count’ as phenomenal qualities in the absence of the rest of the system. For example, Palmer (1999) objects to quality space theory using the example of a “color machine”: a device that processes light in a way that is functionally equivalent to the human opponent processing channels. A machine of this kind could certainly be constructed (Palmer’s hypothetical machine uses only prisms, cardboard masks, photocells, and electronic circuits), and could even be designed to output color terms, make comparisons of similarity and difference between inputs, and so forth. However,
86 Note that Rosenthal’s invocation of the expression “[what] it’s like” here should obviously be understood
Palmer rightly judges that it would be absurd to think that the machine’s internal states are phenomenal states, or that they possess phenomenal qualities.
As Viger (1999) points out, the proper response to this objection is simply to note that Palmer’s color machine vastly underestimates the complexity of the functional role required for producing phenomenally conscious experiences.
“It is only by various mechanisms playing a functional role within a very complex system that experience can arise at all, and in such cases it is the entire system that is the experiencer. […] Once we expose the requisite complexity for a system to be experientially isomorphic to humans vis-à-vis color experience, the force of Palmer’s thought experiment evaporates.” (p.975)
Indeed, it is only by virtue of being embedded within a larger system that a mechanism can even be identified as playing a particular role; for example, recall that QST identifies phenomenal qualities as the properties of sensory states by virtue of which we make perceptual discrimination. What’s more, mechanistic explanation is inherently multi- level, insofar as it must not only model the internal organization of a mechanism’s component parts (and their causal interactions), but moreover it must take into account the organization of the system in which the mechanism is embedded, including how the mechanism causally interacts with other parts.
However, it’s important to realized that—as Block (2007, 2011) argues—although the rest of the system is causally necessary for sensory states to possess phenomenal qualities, it does not play a constitutive role in generating the phenomenology of the experience. (In fact, the conclusion that Block seeks to establish is substantially stronger than the claim that low-level sensory states simply have phenomenal qualities. Rather, he argues that such states are in fact phenomenally consciousstates, and denies that
cognitive accessibility or reportability is necessary to produce phenomenal
consciousness. (In short, Block argues for the existence of phenomenally conscious experiences of which the subject is unaware.) However, I am using Block’s general argument here merely to illustrate a weaker claim—that the sensory states in question
possess a qualitative character. This claim is certainly less contentious, as even Rosenthal (2005, 2010) endorses a limited version of it despite his insistence that only sensory states that are target of a HOT are phenomenally conscious. Thus, the following
discussion of Block’s argument is greatly oversimplified, as it is intended to be a mostly exegetical explanation of why we should treat low-level sensory states as genuinely phenomenal states, rather than a persuasive argument for Block’s preferred conclusion.) Block’s argument comes in two parts: the overflow argument and the mesh argument. The overflow argument attempts to establish that informational/representational storage capacity of phenomenology (or at least “the visual phenomenal memory system”) is greater than that of the working memory system that underlies conscious access (or more accurately, reportability). The mesh argument attempts to show that the best
neuroscientific explanation of phenomenological overflow is that the neural basis of phenomenal states does not include the neural machinery required for conscious awareness (or rather, for cognitive accessibility).
Block’s overflow argument is based the classic Sperling (1960) experiments, in which subjects are presented with a 3x4 grid of letters, flashed very briefly. Subjects report having a visual experience of all the letters, yet can only identify a few of the letters if asked to recall them after the grid has disappeared. However, if cued by a tone that indicates the subject should report on a particular row of letters, the subjects are typically able to identify at least 3 of the letters in that row, even if the tone occurs after the grid of letters has disappeared. Thus, it would seem that the subject has detailed, low-level sensory representations that not only persist after the stimulus has disappeared, but whose specific contents also can exist without conscious awareness of them.87
Importantly however, the overflow argument by itself is not sufficient to establish the existence of un-accessed, unconscious phenomenal states (as Block himself
acknowledges).That is, it could still be the case that the neural basis of phenomenology constitutively includes being cognitively accessible and available to consciousness.
87 Indeed, it would seem almost ludicrous to claim that there was specific phenomenology only after the
However, Block argues that the neuroscientific explanation for phenomenological overflow necessitates that we should treat the respective neural bases of phenomenology and conscious accessibility as distinct. (This is the crux of the “mesh” argument— showing how results from neuroscience ‘mesh’ with results from psychology.)
Specifically, Block argues that the type of cognitive accessibility required for conscious awareness of the contents of a sensory state is mediated by connections between
prefrontal areas and areas dedicated to lower-level sensory processing. Empirical evidence appears to show that ensembles of neural activation in these sensory areas compete for dominance, such that the ensembles which “succeed” in those competitions are those that manage to activate the prefrontal areas, thereby triggering a synchronized feedback loop between prefrontal areas and the sensory state itself. It is the existence of this recurrent connection that causes sensory states to become conscious. Moreover, these recurrent connections are thus the informational ‘bottleneck’ between low-level sensory representations and the working memory system that underlies conscious access. What’s particularly important to the “mesh” argument, however, is that there are also neural ensembles in the sensory cortices that narrowly ‘lose’ the competition for dominance by only a small amount, and fail to establish the recurrent connection with prefrontal areas. As Block (2007) puts it,
“If we assume that the strong but still losing coalitions in the back of the head are the neural basis of phenomenal states…then we have a neural mechanism which explains why phenomenology has a higher capacity than [the working memory system that underlies conscious access]. If, on the contrary, we assume that the neural basis of phenomenology includes workspace activation, then we do not have such a mechanism. That gives us reason to make the former assumption.” (p.498)
What’s more, to argue that these ‘losing’ sensory states aren’t phenomenal because they don’t trigger prefrontal activity is simply to beg the question – it assumes conscious awareness is necessary for phenomenology without argument. Of course, to reiterate, this
is nevertheless compatible with the claim that phenomenology requires the causal influence of prefrontal areas—and indeed, one of the main factors which influences which sensory ensembles ‘win’ the competition is feedback from the prefrontal cortex. However, Block’s arguments seem to demonstrate that such prefrontal activation is not constitutively necessary for phenomenology.
Thus, there are good reasons to hold that sensory states possess phenomenal qualities, and do so regardless of whether or not those states are phenomenally conscious. Moreover, as the rest of the chapter laboured to demonstrate, these phenomenal qualities are exhausted by their relational structure, which in turn can be reductively characterized and explained in terms of quality space theory. Finally, although there is a sense in which such an explanation inevitably seems to ‘leave something out’, such concerns can be explained away as a matter of different epistemic routes of access to the same set of objective facts, and do not imply that there is some aspect of phenomenal qualities that fails to be
Chapter 5
5
Spatial Representation
In this chapter, I provide an account of the representation of spatial relations in sensory experience. I first describe the importance of providing an account of sensory spatial representation for a theory of sensory phenomenology. I then describe how
psychophysics can discover the topographic structure of represented spatial relations in different sensory modalities, and I provide a basic description of the neural mechanisms that (i) underlie our ability to represent space and (ii) which explain the structure
discovered by psychophysics: feature maps. Then, I examine the need for sensory systems to coordinate different maps in various ways, and provide some empirical examples in terms of the sensorimotor integration of auditory and visual spatial information. Finally, I argue that the spatial content of our sensory experiences is the product of such coordinations, and I attempt to provide the outlines of a theory of the (Fregean) spatial content of sensory experience based on this view.