Consciousness Live! with Kenneth Williford (S8 E9)

0:00 are live. Uh joining me today is an extra special guest, Kenneth Willifford. Uh Ken, can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do for those who might not know you? So I'm a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington in the department of philosophy and humanities and I work on phenomenology and philosophy of mind and uh history of modern philosophy and I've been working on consciousness uh pretty d and self-consciousness

0:35 pretty directly since well that's what what my dissertation was on back in 2003. Um, and I've kind of, you know, worked been a a an advocate of self-representationalism for for some time, which kind of morphed into self-acquaintance theory.

1:10 with David Rudra and other um collaborators uh to sort of relate those two projects that sort of but what really has always driven me about consciousness was the really the same intuitions that are behind higher order thought theory but kind of taking it in a

2:18 for for quite a long time and as you've said taking this kind of self-representational approach but sort of start uh initially well I mean uh um so at a certain point I I kind of came to the conclusion that I don't I really think representation is the wrong sort of category.

3:25 as representation. You could think of it as acquaintance. And then I was kind of driven away from thinking of it as representational by you know those kind of objections to higher order thought theory like the the non-existent lower order thought problem and the

4:00 this, are you familiar with the kind of higher order acquaintance view that you get from Benji? Uh, have you seen that kind of view?

4:33 some sense. Not that I agree with him but still this is the kind of picture and the other which starts with this kind of high order acquaintance view where you are kind of more directly acquainted with the first order quality in some way. And that sounds more of like the style that you're doing, but

5:07 view like that, but I I I'm not like I've I know of his work, but I haven't like engaged with it.

5:42 view over that kind of acquaintance view? So what I'm guess I'm asking is even if you liked acquaintance why selfacquaintance which seems like a real heavy kind of burden.

6:17 there seems to be an intuition that consciousness is um aware of itself or acquainted with itself. He doesn't use the word acquainted but and then he goes on to say well but it can't be like that. it's it's got to be this relation between two states or you know

6:49 have um generally aduced like so for example Gilbert

7:22 Riyle's famous book about the mind um

9:03 against this view do not work

9:36 detail. I mean ba basic I mean in in general an a nomal founded set is a set this is where it gets can get misleading um an infinitely descending membership chain

10:40 itself and so on. Right.

11:12 by the foundation axiom or the axiom of foundation But it's been demonstrated that you can get rid of that axiom and have an axiom that allows for such sets. And that if the one is consistent, so is the other.

11:45 non-class logic you might want to adopt in the face of some of these issues we're discussing.

12:19 about your your idea which I think is a an an interesting and important contribution to say look here's a formal um apparatus which allows us to capture the thing that we're saying in a way that makes sense of it so it's not you know you you can say it's wrong but you can't say it's like you can't make sense of it Right. And a lot of people do try to say that or they say so, you know, somehow leads to a contradiction or which is how they don't make sense of it.

12:51 curious to hear what you might say about was whether this nonwelled set theory, this kind of circularity of membership captures the notion of awareness or the so it may capture something structurally about it, but does it capture like what we what the thing we're trying to talk about when we talk about this kind of self-awareness? Because it does seem to me that you might have other things that might have formerly that structure that aren't this.

13:25 Johannes Kleiner.

14:01 and tons of examples of all kinds of things from computer science from you know logic from um study of paradoxes uh and so on where you get this kind of cyclic or nonfounded structure and you can use those sets to to model Even something as simple as like a cycle like the days of the week

15:07 just kind of using it as a as a facade of parlay like

15:40 kind of inclined to think that maybe if you sort of like what is the entire structure of consciousness,

16:16 things. And there are people who like say things along these lines,

16:50 like contrasting the master key idea versus the kind of patchwork?

17:22 Rosenthal has a different way that might look and so forth and so on. And you're saying here's a third or another way that things might look. from a different point of view emphasizing self-consciousness and p uh projective geometry but really making sense of all of these other um theories or it could just be that no it's just one part of it and IIT does one part of it so it could kind of be either you could be on either side of that fence.

19:00 Rudro very critical of IIT

19:33 figure out how it could when I was younger. I had all sorts of theories about how like the moon's gravity might affect like neurotransmitters in in the in the brain. So, they have certain ratios at certain times. And I had like I was like, I don't know. [laughter] Once I found out that that um all that stuff about full moons meaning more like uh insane people was like a myth, I was like ah there goes my theory. But you know

20:07 early to be calling calling people pseudocientists versus

20:40 evidence that's presented for it isn't really strong evidence for it.

21:13 read IIIT as at least in terms of how it re might relate to consciousness as a theory of the synchronic unity of consciousness where you have like a lot of different modalities and a lot of different

21:47 quality types and so on you know. Okay.

22:22 binding,

22:56 to it and then you get the right view or more the more towards the correct view. Is that basically the idea?

23:30 derable from some other like for example in our paper on projective geometry and pre-reflective self-consciousness, we we try anyway to s to to at least we let's put it in a more like continental sort of way. We explore

24:03 the origin points outside of the projective space or like which aspect of it is

24:38 the the space.

25:13 built into the

25:48 of

28:00 semantics.

28:34 homeomorphism or uh topological equivalence between the representation and the represented um and that there all these homeomorphisms might just be out there and then what the uh the tio the evolutionary story does is it picks out the right and then we sort of define the right one. So it means actually that there's all kinds of representation going on all over the place.

29:10 evolutionary teological story selects the right one the the one and what makes it the right one well you know it plays the role in the selection of and the evolutionary success of the bees or whatever the bee dance

29:46 fought against other similarities and won because it served the certain purpose. So yeah just that

30:20 could really be anything that gets that gets picked to play this role by by the system. Yeah, I mean that's that's how you but then all that is just like so Milicanin herself would say yeah the intentionality is this similarity but then like the tio semantic part is like this sort of apparatus that evolutionary apparatus that picks

30:53 which some people are as you're saying um but uh

31:25 So the brain can represent but it's like not what is really important for consciousness. That's the view.

32:00 then I think that's inappropriate for thinking about selfacqu self-awareness you know fundamental self pre-reflective self-consciousness.

33:06 having any states and not existing.

34:13 its object might or might not exist right across the board.

35:19 quantified uh statement not one that um picks out an object that doesn't exist.

37:00 because it's a thought that a certain fact does not obtain or certain state of affairs does not obtain.

37:34 false because that's not a horned horse over there. But that's not a non-existent object. That's just

39:13 versus you know thinking of Santa or construed mayong in a mayongian way. So my tendency to think that representation isn't a real relation is probably from you know my nongian influence like yeah I can think about Santa but Santa doesn't exist so I can't really relate to Santa in a real way um you know to so so whatever the analysis of that representation is it can't involve Santa

39:46 you go yeah it involves non-existent Yeah. No, I we don't want that. But but yes, because uh I just don't know what else there is besides representation because this thing you're calling acquaintance seems very mysterious and um

40:21 kind of representation that goes on in basic self suppose you agree for the moment that we have some kind of basic selfawareness.

40:54 like this it's is a it is relational in some way

42:00 matter of thought?

42:34 think about something you don't have a phenomenal experience of the thing that you're thinking about. You can if you can kind of simulate it if you imagine it. But that that's thought. Thought is like, you know, can be totally abstract. It doesn't, you know, I can talk about and think about the Eiffel Tower even without having to imagine it, but I can imagine or remember it. Um where whereas perception involves a kind of content that is over and above just the

43:08 conceptual thought in invol conceptual content involved in thought.

43:41 should should lead us to to think otherwise. But but I thought that because what what I'm really trying to challenge or not challenge but try to understand is what acquaintance is.

44:14 that her arm wasn't her arm but in fact was her niece's arm. And if you said I'm going to touch your arm and touch her arm, she says I don't feel anything. But if you say, "I'mma touch your niece's arm and then touch your arm." She she feels it, she says, or at least.

44:46 think about these kind of empirical cases? Okay. So I have a so my sort of view about the nature of perceptual intentionality is a two is a a two component view or two layer view. Mhm.

45:20 thinking it's one thing and then oh no it's not it's something else that's that's the kind of thing I have in mind here where the intentional

47:31 it perceptual? Is it representational? Is it acquaint? And the these have these categories have some like logical structure to them and some and then and then we kind of do like okay, how do we fit this into the world? We I think no matter what you say, we all have a kind of um the same sort of issue like how do we fit it into our

48:04 don't think that acquaintance

48:36 because you just rejected every account of representation that is like physically kosher.

49:09 look, my my way of like staving off the um collapse into dualism or pansychism or god forbid idealism.

50:13 addition to this kind of like knee-jerk reaction to pansychism.

51:20 but they also it's it's also way too non-specific right

51:52 and so on gives you

52:58 And it has these other functional features too if it gets put in. But it could just, you know, be in theory like devoid of much other content. I kind of think like at a certain level there's going to be some content that just comes from embodiment. It comes from real being a real concrete entity.

53:31 is one this I'm glad that you said that because as someone who meditates

54:38 lose point of view.

55:13 to

55:48 And we're not going to settle it by thought experiments either. So we need empirical means. I totally agree with you on that.

56:20 consciousness and then that disappeared.

56:55 I thought you to mean which is phenomenal consciousness that there's something that it's like for you there's a point of view on the world. Um so uh now you want to analyze this in terms of subjective and uh qualitative character. I like those terms as well. I you I use them in my analysis of these things. I say though subjective character is what's in common between all my conscious experiences and qualitative character which distinguishes them. So the experiences are for me. That's what's in common to them all that I I kind of have a a sense of their mindnessness or meanness or whatever

57:28 that that way of putting things is. Um so now all of that stuff I take as kind of phenomenological. Um

58:00 well, let me just put it this way. I was kind of pushed towards the direction of acquaintance because I don't think that it's possible for the phenomenal manifold at some level to be merely an object of representation where why what I mean by that is that it might not exist. So for any particular objects in that you animate [laughter] that you see as being this or that that may not exist

58:34 but there's some manifold. So abstracting from all that content the idea is just that consciousness is a relational matter. Yeah, but it may so so this is where like I disagree with traditional high order theorists

59:09 think is kind of the thought behind what you're saying here because I like I'm a representationalist or at least I I'm you know I'm not one but that's the view that I think is most plausible if you're going to have a a theory of consciousness which is a third question I was going to ask you which is like I don't really think you're interested in a theory of consciousness maybe that's why it's a model as opposed to a theory but we we'll get to that later but I'm interested [clears throat] like in a theory of consciousness um

59:42 and be like, "Oh, so that like the way it seems is a direct route to the structure that must be there." But it seems like the view that you take and the view that I take and what they have in common in a way is that they do that.

1:00:14 illusionism? Like Keith Frankish style?

1:01:53 correspondences with him and and uh I was like trying to convince him that he really has a theory of phenomenal consciousness and he was like, "No, I don't have a theory of why you won't leave me alone about phenomenal consciousness." Basically, [laughter]

1:04:34 before we I know I can't keep you forever and it's fun to talk to you but uh anyway so uh I have a million things I want to bring

1:05:08 anything about exactly what the nature of the relation is.

1:06:14 the brain

1:06:48 bad, but thinking makes it so Anyway, don't go there. [laughter] Right. So it could turn out. So just think about like

1:07:22 a a assumption for now is that some kind of materialism is true.

1:07:55 then there was a subsequent I actually don't know about Uriah because uh anyway

1:08:29 that's if you're looking at stuff like that you're going oh yeah that's not going to really be like acquaintance though because it's like a really complicated physical state um involving

1:09:03 appears to and what is the nature of that? We don't know. And it doesn't reveal. It doesn't wear its ontology on its sleeve.

1:09:35 direct realism or uh direct representationalism or I don't know some view whereby you have like this direct relation to the external environment but then you also like represented a certain way. Um

1:10:09 the phenomenal, you know, basis if you like, and then you see it as you represent it in different ways.

1:10:45 like what kind of thing would that be? And um

1:11:51 structure do all the work.

1:12:25 really the thing that I care about. I would like to know like in which way to tweak the dials of the brain and to produce certain phenomenological states and vice versa. Um and you know I do view a lot of these uh as an open empirical questions and that we've made some some progress on. So so I am that's what I'm interested in a theory that allows us to explain that. Um so your kind of account doesn't seem like it's really so for example like higher order theories what makes them a higher

1:12:59 order theory on the way I think of things is that they see this kind of higher order awareness or inner awareness an awareness of of some kind of mental um state as an important explanatory part of of consciousness by which I mean if you locate the higher order representations then you'll find consciousness Um, and if you tweak them in this way so that their representational content changes in that way, then consciousness will change in this predictable way and in that predictable way. So that to me

1:13:33 looks like you're looking for an explanation because you're finding the thing which if you could tweak it like this, it changes that. And if you could predict, aha, if I do this, it'll do that. Um, and that's the important thing is if it's a higher order theory, then you're looking for inner awareness. First order theories say, well, look, inner awareness may play some role. It could be hanging around there. There are people um who we know, you know, who who take these kinds of views. They call it the higher what the ascending road, you know, um where there's always a kind of awareness of the conscious state, but

1:14:07 it's not the explanatory relevant thing. It's produced after the fact or simultaneously or somehow independently. So, so I do think that there's lots of like saying that there's kind of a self-awareness around and saying that's what explains consciousness. Those are independent of each other. Um, and the higher order theories are the ones that that so for example Dave Chomemers is friendly to a kind of self-representational view, but he doesn't have a higher order theory of consciousness. He has like a pansyus theory of consciousness with this higher order element or that's how I would see

1:14:40 things. So yeah, I'm curious about like how you think about that way of um divvying up the landscape.

1:15:46 it's too primitive.

1:16:52 conscious for people listening along that aren't

1:17:59 whole lot of advantages over systems that process it only using the ukitian group.

1:18:31 is that there's something about the first person perspective or the pre-reflective part of consciousness that can't be simulated um that you don't reproduce computationally or

1:19:06 and whatever global workspace theory targets and so on. Is it the is it the case that like all of those have to be conjoined to then it would be like oh you just kind of simulated like a part of consciousness but

1:20:47 essence or the uh what consciousness is then realizing a PCM agent would be to realize a consciousness even if it's you know you just did it in a

1:21:20 GPT takes over. [laughter]

1:22:25 bracketing of our everyday experience just bracket. I don't not aelian whatever. But if you just somehow just take this and be like, "What if this is experience right now?" Um, and just take it at face value and read off what appears to be the structure of it kind of as naively and flatfootedly as possible. Could you patch together some mathematics that would like capture that structure?

1:22:58 and it's great. Um but it doesn't explain consciousness uh in the sense that you might have wanted to at the thought of at the beginning where you're going oh okay so this is what consciousness is and when you have this property or feature or process or whatever then consciousness shows up and it's this way and we know it because it's coming from that place and you don't get like that at the end of this you kind of just get like a mathematical structure which is

1:23:30 hormopric to what you take the structure of experience to be.

1:24:02 kind of imagining you could take that whole thing and then be like I'm a global workspace theorist and by the way it's being globally broadcast that's doing all the work or you could take your point of view and be like no that whole thing. So so you still need to explain consciousness even after you get all the structure there.

1:24:37 just realizing the structure is just what it is to be conscious and if you want to explain explain consciousness further you just all that's left to explain is how you realize such a structure and what it is for such a structure to be realized

1:25:11 I'm right because that would so that would be cool and they gave us millions of dollars to find out if I'm right so I'm going to pretend that we did find out that I'm right about this and that consciousness is a higher order representation and that it's a certain kind of pattern of neural activity what you might find distributed in the prefrontal and parietal cortices under certain conditions. Let's just poof it is thus so okay. Um then if since that's the case then the view simply predicts tweaking that state in the right way to produce the content as of seeing red

1:25:43 means you see red. Tweaking it the other way means you don't.

1:26:17 kind of so so in other words that would be sort of in the perfect world no like the theory being true

1:26:50 just the higher order part of it, but just that way of like reality turning out.

1:27:22 piety as [laughter]

1:28:31 about your view of consciousness is that in the sort of multiverse of sets consciousness is like a this one grouping of sets, this set of sets that's kind of unique and interesting and grouping these um you know like IIIT and nonwellounded and projective geometry and these kind of grouping them in in that way over there.

1:29:03 anyway,

1:29:35 thinking to myself, well, which one is like the one that there's something that it's like for you to to to instantiate or realize?

1:30:41 engineering

1:31:12 can kind of collect together some stuff which collectively describes what we sort of say about our own experience.

1:31:45 a homophenomenologist, [laughter] I guess,

1:32:19 person experience, but then you're going to model it in a objective way with mathematics.

1:32:51 is true. Um so illusionism is the zombie world on my way of thinking of things. Now suppose you show up there, but you're conscious. Maybe you're the you're the only one in this diluted world that's conscious.

1:33:27 exists on this world but it doesn't exist on that world and

1:35:08 mysteriously self-related to each other

1:35:40 qualities. They they their apparent simplicity is just apparent.

1:36:47 So, uh I kind of think that our what we map out when we kind of map out a quality space using you know whatever you can use some psychophysical means too like just noticeable differences and all that, right?

1:37:20 acquainted with it, blah, blah, blah. But, but re but what is that? It's it's a, as linets would say, it's a confused idea.

1:37:53 explains why quality space divides into different um what I'm sorry to quote him again, but what Husel called hilletic fields.

1:38:25 are like they have their they have their qual their own kind of quality spaces but like look at it bigger they branch

1:38:57 I'm good for a little bit longer if you

1:39:31 yesterday I took uh,

1:40:37 Oh, really? You think so? Thank you for that wise piece of advice. Study consciousness. Don't make math, guys. Endorsement. Um, yes, I agree. Uh, although Breaking Bad was a great dram fictional dramatization of someone who might have chosen that path.

1:41:08 all of those things.

1:42:14 phenomenology. I agree. But it doesn't look like it explains anything. It looks like it called out for explanation which is really what your work is aiming to try to do which is the reversing it in the direction you would want a theory to go.

1:42:50 right empirically and then just explaining how that is realized. So then it just becomes like an engineering problem.

1:43:23 consciousness and its on its ontology, including its sort of real, if that's what it is, its real material ontology.

1:43:57 must be fundamental you are also saying it is just so

1:45:07 how they show up and like how they are related to each other and what you're saying is they might not have any explanation or relation to each other. They might just be different mathematical techniques that get patched together.

1:45:43 It's why I kind of like all this mathematics of consciousness stuff. Yeah. But um

1:46:17 structure. Um so in fact you would want to go huh this is the way things appear. Are they really that way? And then many people would say well things seem very different from that point of view. Like maybe consciousness isn't as unified as it seems. Maybe, you know, all of these things that you were talking about. Um,

1:47:55 accus case that there's no self there. I'm saying that there's a representation with the content that says there's no self and that would go along with the experience and it would make sense of like depersonalization and all sorts of things

1:48:29 people have ways of either accommodating what you're talking about or if when they have to explain it away. And everybody does that. that's like just part of

1:49:05 [clears throat] It's just a matter of of degree. But the kinds of the kinds of predictions I think are more that we that are going to be like more um you know deter decisive are going to be more like psycho things that we do by psychophysics and things in other words we have like a body of data like okay people say a lot of things about their experience

1:50:42 are in the mirror or something like that

1:51:49 in the same way as you but uh talked about protective geometry being important

1:52:21 acquaintance with yourself. So, it seems that way to me. Um,

1:52:57 can you in a in a acquaintance context, if it's a real religion, you can quantify in. Right. This is where you remember the old they accused sensat theorists of holding the sense datim fallacy.

1:54:01 know, it's it's reddish. [laughter]

1:54:32 you're thinking that an acquaintance theorist would have to be committed to revelation about acquaintance itself and about the objects of acquaintance."

1:55:08 there. Where's this revelation stuff coming back all of a sudden?

1:56:47 luck, but let me try one last thing. So, look, if really consciousness just is this kind of structure, then there's got to be a solution to the hard problem because

1:57:19 hard problem according to

1:58:25 it leaves this kind of the aosterior part.

1:58:57 to be the ones we want to look at and then also be able to then explain in this grander scheme that fully if we understood it

1:59:31 computational and um God can be a type C [laughter]

2:00:38 deduce or something like that. But what you're saying is that's not really important for your view.

2:01:10 rationalism wouldn't be true, but I like rationalism, I guess." Like, [laughter] cool, dude. Must be nice to like have the universe conform to your likes. But yeah, it is it rational. I mean, I also am friendly to on certain days friendly to kind of, you know, um, a priori knowledge, rationalist based stuff because

2:01:41 be going on. It's very mysterious that people are so willing to take that stuff so seriously, I would say.

2:03:20 sense. Um,

2:03:52 Exactly.

2:04:58 like impossible worlds and contradictory worlds as well. I think that those are conceivable in some sense.

2:05:32 sort of like well if you say this then like if it's consciousness is this physical then no and if it's not then it's like it doesn't go those arriori arguments don't get they're they're playing with concepts

2:06:05 need to be co-instantiated in order for consciousness to be around. Um, and you say we shouldn't worry about like what in the brain is doing that. We should get the structure right and then do some experiments, see if we're right, and then could we not be led to the view that this is not a physical component of the world? Um, and wouldn't you be led by to that view by sort of conceivability constraints um, at that point? Because what else would do it? I mean, it's a possibility, right? Or is this

2:06:37 rule out magic [laughter]

2:07:10 It's like a possibility.

2:07:43 non-physicalist theories too.

2:08:16 that conceptually between like saying okay there's the field the the hyo whatever crazy thing you call it the the field out there has these qualities or whatever and well when we think about pixels on a screen paint on a canvas we can decompose it to elements maybe the elements are similar colors and maybe we can tell a story about how they combine

2:08:48 somehow this other thing so isn't there

2:09:22 problem is like, well, why is consciousness appear like that to us if it's not really that way?

2:10:58 and that it would be kind of you know churchland has a whole story about this too about the need for kind of like phenomenal primitives for

2:11:33 because Yeah. But I I but I have I think I I think I have come to understand your view more today. So, I appreciate this conversation. Um and and even though I still am, you know, I'm not against it or anything. Um, I still, yeah, I still have questions. So, I'll have to ask you back someday to to talk about this. And I would because I didn't really even get to talk about the predictions which I really wanted to to bring up and the kind of empirical work that would push the results one way or the other. So, someday if you're bored enough, I'll have you back on. Um but as

2:12:07 a final like harrah um I always like to ask at the end if there was anything which you wanted to have come up or thought might come up which didn't and by now the answer can be no and I know you know there's you have that interesting stuff about animals and suffering and how to make sense of it from that that that perspective if

2:12:40 think I understand my own view [laughter] a little better after being uh I mean, this was good for me, honestly.

2:13:12 travelers that are thinking about this as deeply but from different perspectives and so that's what I've always appre I mean you know I've known you for a long time and we were just remarking like how long it's been since we've seen each other, but still I've known you for a while and I've always appreciated your work and you know sometimes I've like I remember have the feeling of reading your work and just being like this stuff is very strange. Um, and in a in a good way though, like in a challenging you have to really like think from a different point of view to make sense of what they're arguing for. And I don't mean that like in a bad way. I mean, and that's what I value in philosophy is when you encounter

2:13:46 something that that makes you go, like you just said, outside of your normal brain roots and go, "Wait a minute. No, I need to put some tracks over here because I haven't seen it from that side of things yet." So, I I really did appreciate and value your work for that. So, I just wanted you to know that's critical or as much as I'm saying I don't understand it, it's from a a deep actual trying to engage with the work that I value.

2:14:20 and forth with you.