Nini PraetoriusCommentary on Daniel Hutto's book, "Beyond Physicalism"

SWIF Philosophy of Mind, 31 December 2001 http://www.swif.uniba.it/lei/mind/forums/praetorious.htm

Forums Forum 1 Hutto's reply

Why Non-conceptualism is non-viable

Commentary on Daniel D., HUTTO, Beyond Physicalism, (Advances in Consciousness Research), John Benjamins: Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 2000.

Nini Praetorius
Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, (Denmark).
Email: nini.praetorius@psy.ku.dk

Hutto starts his book by pointing out that there are at least two "hard" problems about consciousness. The first, the phenomenological problem, is how to characterise the nature of consciousness; the other, the metaphysical problem, is how to understand and explain its relation to the physical. Although clearly distinguishable, it would seem that these problems are not unrelated - for how could we ever expect to reach an understanding, let alone an explanation of how consciousness relate to the physical without first understanding the nature of consciousness itself? And yet, it could well be argued that the neglect of an independent understanding of the latter is the very rationale of physicalism and its attempts to position consciousness within the so-called natural order of things. According to the doctrine underlying physicalism everything which exists objectively in the universe, including consciousness in virtue of being part of what goes on in the universe, is of a physical nature. Consequently, for physicalism the problems about the nature of consciousness and of understanding its relation to the physical conflate into one and the same problem, i.e. that of showing how consciousness, its content and properties, translate into the conceptual framework of the natural sciences.

In part II of the book (cf. Author's Précis), which for the most part may be read independently of the arguments and points developed in the remainder of the book, Hutto examines and discusses the full range of physicalist attempts currently on offer to explain the metaphysical problem about the relation between the experiential and the physical. In my view, he convincingly argues that they all, whether "strong" or "mild", reductive or non-reductive, fail to provide an adequate metaphysical basis for consciousness. Furthermore, during these discussions Hutto shows compellingly that any explanatory physicalism inevitably ends up either in "reducing experience to something that it is not", or in insoluble intelligibility problems arising as a result of any attempt - strong or mild - to model consciousness in physical terms. I totally agree, and I have no further comments on his arguments to this effect.

However, concerning the arguments and views developed in Part I to account for the phenomenological problem I am far less convinced. Indeed, I have serious difficulties in following Hutto's development of assumptions about the nature of consciousness which, as it turns out, are part of a proposal, elaborated in Part III, for an alternative unified metaphysics by which to avoid the "intelligibility" problems encountered by physicalism. Although strong arguments could be mounted against this proposed unified metaphysics, and in particular against the assumption of Absolute Idealism being part of it, I have chosen to confine my commentary here to a discussion of the views and assumption about consciousness and conscious experiences that Hutto develops in Part I. Here first, is a brief summary of my understanding of the main points.

By viewing the need for a theory of the nature of consciousness as synonymous with the need to understand how consciousness fits into the world order, the physicalist, according to Hutto, ignore the fact that consciousness and conscious experiences have a qualitative and subjective residue, which are at the bottom non-conceptual and, hence, elude being captured under a description of physical capacities - indeed, elude being conceptually schematised "after the fashion of theoretical posits". The aim of Part I is twofold: Firstly, it is to show, by means of examples, that such basic non-conceptual experiences do indeed exist, which "cannot be equated with linguistic or conceptual reports". Secondly, it is to give reasons for why the capacity to develop concepts, and indeed conceptual points of view, presupposes basic non-conceptual capacities to respond to a common world and to recognise that other have similar responses. The argument for this view is that simulative capabilities are required for "joint attention", and hence for recognising the situations in which others are engaged and for others to recognise the situations in which we ourselves are engaged. And yet such simulative capacities, according to Hutto's, do not presuppose any conceptual abilities. If, furthermore, it is accepted that our concepts of experience are not themselves innate, then, "it is possible" so Hutto contends, "to mount an argument, distinct from mere appeals to introspection, in order to establish that causally efficacious, but non-cognitive experiences exist".

Now, the "non-conceptualist" view that Hutto sets out to defend may seem clear enough. It is the view that basic experience is non-conceptual rather than conceptual, and hence does not require explicit categorisation on the part of the experiencing subject. Clearly formulated as well, so it would seem, is the view that "we can be conscious of colours, pains (in certain bodily parts), sounds, faces, people and the like without necessarily being conscious of these items in an intellectual or conceptual fashion" (p. 15).

One of the reasons why I find it difficult to follow Hutto's defence for this view is that, despite the wealth of examples, it is never really made clear what precisely makes non-conceptual experiences distinctly non-conceptual, nor what distinguishes non-conceptual experiences or sensations from those experiences that are conceptual. One of the examples he gives early on in Part I (p. 15) to highlight "intuitively" the divide between the conceptual and the non-conceptual seems to suggest that non-conceptual experiences are the sort of experiences we may have when we do not "pay detailed attention", say, to the colours, noises, smells and the feel of the thing and events around us. Yet, it would "be wrong to suppose that you are unaware of them on these grounds". This, in Hutto's view is prima facie evidence of the fact that "our capacity to sense and monitor things appears to operate independently from our capacity to form thoughts" - and hence that this "non-detailed-attending" sensing and monitoring of colours, noises, smells, etc., are non-conceptual. In another example in the same section he asks us "to consider the fact that a conceptual content, such as "there is an Aeroplane overhead", might be prompted by auditory or visual experiences of the appropriate kind and these would have very different qualitative characters". What this shows, according to Hutto, is that "it is plausible to think that one might have these experiences even if one did not stop to think what might be causing them" (p. 15).

These examples do not convince me that experiences may be had of any of those "items" or "qualities" which are purely non-conceptual, nor that our capacity of having such experiences are basic to our capacity (subsequently) to develop conceptual experiences of things. This is not to deny that, in every situation in which we find ourselves, we may have all kinds of fleeting, transitory and non-specific apprehensions occurring antecedent to conceptual sensory experiences of, say, the colours, noises and smells of things as well as of the things themselves - nor is it to deny that such apprehensions may occur independently of any consequent conceptual sensory experiences of them. Imagine that I am preoccupied with reading a passage of Hutto's book - and in the background I "monitor" an increasing though non-distinct, rumbling noise and maybe also a non-distinct smell. It might well be said that whilst not attending to either the noise or smell I am still aware of them. What, in my view, could not be said, however, is that the rumbling sound I monitor and am aware of, has the quality of 'the-sound-of-an-Aeroplane', (i.e. the one which happen to fly overhead), prior to my experience of the aeroplane - nor prior to my capacity of having notions or concept of aeroplanes. Nor could it be said of the non-distinct smell I monitor and am aware of that it has the quality of 'the-smell-of-a-rose' (i.e. the one in the vase at the table in front of me), prior to my experience of the rose, and hence prior to my capacity to have notions or concepts of roses. Indeed, what would an experience of the smell of a rose be like without roses, or the experience of the sound of an Aeroplane without Aeroplanes, or the taste of a banana without bananas, or the experience of pain (in some bodily parts) without bodies ? Contrary to what Hutto seems to suggest, it could well be argued that these examples show that our experience of smell, sounds and tastes only get significance as distinct qualities which may be detected and discriminated from one another when associated with something which is already conceptually structured and categorised in our conscious experience of them.

However, Hutto presents other reasons why we have to think that experiences must be fundamentally non-conceptual and non-discursive - even in cases where we do pay detailed attention to them. Thus, the claim by Peacocke that …."Our perceptual experience is always of a more determinate character than our observational concepts which we might use in characterising it. A normal person does not, and possibly could not, have observational concepts of every possible colour [that he or she could in fact discriminate]" (p. 27), … is taken by Hutto to mean that conceptual theorists cannot accommodate the fine-grainedness of experiences. Very well, but the fact that we have more fine-grained and distinct perceptions of colours than observational concepts by which to characterise them linguistically, does not necessarily imply that perception of colours are generally non-conceptual. It only means that we do not have linguistic concepts to match all the possible shades or exemplars of colours that we may (come to learn to) discriminate perceptually, but not that such discrimination rely on perception of colours which are non-conceptual or non-categorical. On the contrary. Given that our perception of colours - however fine-grained - were non-conceptual or non-categorical, we may well ask how we could ever develop any observational concepts which did match with any of our experiences of colours, or claim that any of our observational concepts of colours may be used correctly to characterise or describe our experiences of them.

At least two issues are involved in this question. The first, as quite rightly pointed out by Hutto, is that "we must distinguish between our ability to index our experiences and our ability to indefinitely finesse such descriptions". The other is how non-conceptual experiences could ever be indexed and conceptually schematised or accounted for at all, unless it is assumed that the conceptual schemes and categories being used for such accounts matched with those of the experiences being accounted for - and hence unless it is assumed that those experiences are themselves conceptual in nature. How, for example could it be claimed, as Hutto rightly does, that "in describing how things appear to us we are giving descriptions of our experiences", or be claimed that when I say "…'I see an olive green boat in the harbour and it has a pail white sail', this utterance tells you what I see" (p. 30) - if what I see is not seen or experienced in precisely those terms or concepts?

Now, this is not of course to deny that, generally, it is perfectly possible conceptually to schematise or linguistically to account for phenomena which are themselves non-conceptual or non-discursive. Unless we are badly afflicted with scepticism, most of us would willingly agree that we are quite good at accounting for and describing in normal everyday conceptual language the non-conceptual properties and aspects of things which exist in our normal everyday material reality, just as physics has been tremendously successful in capturing, within highly developed conceptual frameworks and theories, the non-conceptual properties and capacities of physical matter. But nor is it to deny that not only things and events in material reality, but even "phenomenal qualities" such as 'red', 'pain' and 'taste' are themselves non-conceptual and non-discursive. - Thus, I think we can agree that there is nothing conceptual or discursive about bread rolls or red patchs or toothache, that is, about the things or phenomena that our experiences concern. However, it is to deny that our experiences of either things or phenomena could be non-conceptual and non-discursive - and yet be experiences that could be indexed, conceptually characterised and accounted for. It is vital to acknowledge this distinction, and hence to acknowledge that the conditions for indexing, characterising or accounting for our experiences, for example the kind of experiences on which rest the description "I see an olive green boats with pale white sails", are special: For, if we did assume that such experiences and such seeing were basically non-conceptual and non-discursive, they would also be basically non-expressible - and the above description of them would quite simply make no sense. That is, if it were true, as Hutto contends, that fundamentally our conscious experiences are non-conceptual, and hence that "there can be experiences even if the subject lacks the appropriate concepts and even if the subject has no conceptual access to such experiences" (p.41), we would be for ever debarred from indexing such experiences, let alone from describing and accounting for them. If so, we would also be debarred from talking sensibly about the existence of such experiences. And this, as far as I can see, presents the most damaging threat to Hutto's project of giving intelligible reasons for the existence of a irreducible qualitative residue of conscious experiences, and hence to make credible his reasons to this effect for discrediting the physicalist solution of the metaphysical problem.

My comments on other of Hutto's example of so-called non-conceptual experiences and of his arguments that "causally efficacious, but non-cognitive experiences exist" which are fundamental for cognitive development, would just be variations on the same theme. However, these issues cannot be left completely untouched since they have implications for his arguments further on in Part I for the existence of "a irreducible subjective residue of consciousness", i.e. knowing what-it-is-like to undergo an experience. Given Hutto's general assumption of the basic non-conceptual and non-expressible nature of experiences, this cannot be captured by knowledge. Strictly speaking, there can be no knowing of what-it-is-like for someone to undergo an experience, according to Hutto - however, it may be grasped by "simulation", that is, provided our experiences are similar enough to be shareable. Now, this ability to simulate or share the experiences of others - itself, so Hutto contends, of a non-conceptual nature and acquired prior to having a conceptual point of view - is a necessity in general for the joint attention involved in triangulation - without which, needless to say, there could be no communication or co-action between people, nor any exchange, verbal or non-verbal, of experiences.

The argument for this assumption takes its point of departure in Davidson's analysis of the necessary conditions for interpretation. According to this analysis it is absolutely crucial that we make a charitable assumptions which, "prompts the interpreter to take the speaker to be responding to the same features of the world that he (the interpreter) would be responding to under similar circumstances" (p. 31). As Hutto quite rightly points out, the notion of 'responding' in this assumption implies not only that the prerequisite for genuine triangulation is that subjects are capable of being directed at common features of the world, but also that they be capable of responding to the distal stimulus in roughly the same way. Equally importantly, it also requires that we assume the existence of "a common ground between ourselves and the other in what we see and how we see it" (p.32). However, this is not enough. Simple forms of triangulation not only require that subjects are capable, in some sense of sharing their experiences, that is, that they have "simulative abilities", but also that they are capable of non-conceptual experiences. According to Hutto, speculation on "issues concerning the dynamics of cognitive development […] gives us the strongest reason to suppose that we need to appeal to issues of non-conceptual experiences in order to understand genuine cases of triangulation" (p. 34). Indeed, "It is precisely when we try to identify the key aspects of such development that postulation of nonconceptual experiences becomes crucial" (p. 43).

Now, the speculations on developmental matters, which lead Hutto to postulate that, "at bottom" , joint attention depends on simulative abilities which are "achieved prior to having a conceptual point of view" (p. 35), may be condensed as follows: Let it be granted that the conditions for developing a conceptual point of view are the same as those which apply generally for genuine cases of triangulation (cf. above and p. 43). Following Bermúdez's Acquisition Constrain, let it be granted, furthermore, that "If a given cognitive capacity is psychologically real, then there must be an explanation of how it is possible for an individual in the normal course of human development to acquire that cognitive capacity" (p. 43). If, lastly, "we suppose that the concepts of experience are not innate or a priori ", then, according to Hutto, "nonconceptual capabilities must exist to enable us to acquire concepts" (p. 43).

Well, the point is well taken that concepts of experience cannot be innate or a priori. (To spell out the point taken: we cannot suppose acquisition of concepts about the world which require experience, in the sense: active encounter with the world, to be innate or a priori.). Still, I cannot see what is gained by postulating the existence of such nonconceptual, yet causally efficacious capabilities, nor see how they could possibly be part of any serious explanation of cognitive development, i.e. given that such capabilities are fundamentally non-expressible, and hence are capabilities which cannot be talk sensibly about or accounted for. More importantly though, I find it very hard to see how such non-conceptual simulative capabilities, which allegedly underpin triangulation, could occur or exist prior to the development of - at least some rudimentary - notions of things in the world and other people, as well as a notion about oneself vìs a vìs other people, with whom such triangulation could take place. Or, is it indeed reasonable to assume that sharing other peoples' experiences of things in the world could exist independently of the existence of notions and concepts of other people, and of things in the world that oneself and other people may experience, act with or talk about, and hence without a notion of oneself being a person different from other people and from the things that we may experience, act with and talk about?

Let me summarise my arguments so far. First, I do not find at all convincing Hutto's defence of the view that our experiences are essentially non-conceptual, nor that non-cognitive capabilities of simulation exist which are basic to the acquisition of conceptual point of view, and hence to conceptual development. Worse still, it seems that the price to be paid for taking this line of defence, primarily against the physicalists' reductionist solution of the metaphysical problem, is to render impossible any intelligible solution of the phenomenological problem as well of characterising the nature of consciousness. For how could this problem ever be sorted out in any sensible manner if conscious experiences were basically non-conceptual and hence basically non-expressible? (cf. p. 41.) It seems all the more surprising, therefore, that the following criticism against materialism should come from Hutto: …"Experience cannot simply be explained away. If one admits that experiences appear to exist […] then they must be accounted for. We are owed an explanation of what accounts for the fact that experiences appear to be as they are. Specifically, we must account for their apparent qualitative aspects. Thus […] to say that experiences are mere appearances hence not real does not reduce the materialist's explanatory burden (Author's Precís, p.5). For, granted Hutto's scheme of things, who could ever be asked to carry that burden?

As said earlier, I am very sympathetic to Hutto's arguments that a comprehensive theory of consciousness and conscious experiences eludes being captured under the conceptual framework of physical theory, whether present or future, just as I think that most of the reasons he presents to this effect are irrefutable. However, I see no need to posit in-expressible, and hence in-explicable qualitative and subjective features of conscious experiences in order to drive home the point that "talk about physical capacities cannot be equated to talk about conscious experiences". This ought not to be too difficult to appreciate if we consider that not only experiences of qualia, but also other forms of conceptual experiences and knowledge we may have, and descriptions we may put forward about things in the world - whether in scientific or in ordinary everyday situations - have properties that uniquely distinguishes knowledge, conscious experiences and description from physical matter and their features, and which cannot be reduced to, nor be explained in terms of such physical matter or features. Among these properties are referentiality (i.e. "aboutness") and truth functionality. Now, this is a review of Hutto's ideas and not mine, but let me just give this quick hint of how it may be argued that these properties defy naturalisation, (for a more thorough development of this argument, see Praetorius, 2000.)

First, I think we shall have to agree that referentiality and truth functionality are logical properties of knowledge and linguistic propositions, but not of physical and biological states or processes - by any definition of physics or biology. Physical and biological processes and states may or may not exist, and it may be true or false that they exist or that they do not; indeed, the existence of such states and processes, for example in our brain, may be necessary conditions for conscious experiences, cognition and linguistic propositions to occur, including experiences, cognition and propositions about such physical and biological processes and states of our brain. However, such physical and biological processes and states cannot be about, nor be true or false in the sense that knowledge and propositions about them may be. But nor is there any way in which the logical properties of referentiality and truth of knowledge and propositions may be accounted for in terms of more elementary or fundamental physical and biological processes and states. Indeed, reasons of principle exist why referentiality and truth, which cognition and language share with logic and mathematics, cannot be reduced to, deduced from or explained in terms of processes and states which are more fundamental than, and hence do not presuppose the existence of referentiality and truth. Among these reasons is the impossibility of accounting for such more fundamental processes and states without describing them, and therefore without implying the existence of referentiality and truth. To assume otherwise would be just as nonsensical as assuming that logic and its principles, on which par excellence the language of science relies, could be reduced to or explained in terms of something more fundamental or elementary - without using logic.

Granted the validity of these arguments, it is not difficult to appreciate why it is impossible in principle to explain consciousness or conscious experience in terms of any of the physical and biological processes and states that we may come to experience, know of and put forward true or false propositions about - including the processes and states in our brain which are necessary for conscious experiences and this knowledge to occur - and hence, impossible to translate consciousness into the same conceptual framework as that of the natural sciences.

However regrettable this ontological incompatibility between conscious experiences and the physical might be, I see no virtue - "aesthetic" or otherwise - in Hutto's proposal of a unified metaphysics in which human consciousness - in the guise of postulated basically non-conceptual and hence inexpressible conscious experiences - is getting "anchored" to a postulated and just as inexpressible and unknowable Bradleyan ideal reality. That is, The Absolute, realm of Absolute Truth, existing beyond the mere apparent, "contradictory" and only "relatively" true world as conceptually experienced by us in everyday and scientific situations alike. I do not want to deny the possibility of the existence of a conceptually un-veiled, undivided Absolute Reality, nor of the Absolute Truth which goes with it (e.g. as witnessed in the teaching of various spiritual schools, which notoriously has been an inspiration for the Hegelian Idealism which underlie Bradley's) - for who could? However, for obvious reasons, I do deny that either could have any causal, let alone explanatory role in a rational scientific metaphysics about the development of conscious conceptual experiences and cognition.

Reference

Praetorius, N. (2000). Principles of Cognition, Language and Action. Essays on the Foundation of a Science of Psychology. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

© 2002 Nini Praetorius