a creature to entertain the HOT, ‘I am perceiving a green surface’, then
probably few other creatures, if any, would qualify as subjects of such a
state. There is intense debate about whether even chimpanzees have a
conception of perceptual states as such (see Povinelli, 1996, for example);
in which case it seems very unlikely that any non-apes will have one. So the
upshot might be that state-consciousness is restricted to apes, if not
exclusively to human beings.
This is a consequence which Gennaro is keen to resist. He tries to argue
that much less conceptual sophistication than the above is required. In
order for M to count as conscious one does not have to be capable of
entertaining a thought about Mqua M. It might be enough, he thinks, if
one were capable of thinking of M asdistinct fromsome other state N.
Perhaps the relevant HOT takes the form, ‘Thisis distinct fromthat’. This
certainly appears to be a good deal less sophisticated. But appearances can
be deceptive – and in this case we believe that they are.
What would be required in order for a creature to think, of an experience
of green, that it is distinct from a concurrent experience of red? More than
is required for the creature to thinkof greenthat it is distinct from red,
plainly – this would not be a HOT at all, but rather aWrst-order thought
about the distinctness of two perceptually presented colours. So if the
subject thinks, ‘Thisis distinct fromthat’, and thinks something higher-
order thereby,somethingmust make it the case that the relevantthisand
thatare colourexperiencesas opposed to just colours. What could this be?
There would seem to be just two possibilities. Either, on the one hand,
thethisandthatare picked out as experiences by virtue of the subject
deploying – at least covertly – a concept ofexperience, or some near
equivalent (such as a concept ofseeming,orsensation, or some narrower
versions thereof, such asseeming colourorseeming red). This would be like
theWrst-order case where I entertain the thought, ‘Thatis dangerous’, in
fact thinking about a particular perceptually presented cat, by virtue of a
covert employment of the conceptcat,oranimal,orliving thing. But this
Wrst option just returns us to the view that HOTs (and so phenomenal
consciousness) require possession of concepts which it would be im-
plausible to ascribe to most species of animal.
On the other hand, the subject’s indexical thought about their experi-
ence might be grounded in a non-conceptualdiscrimination ofthat experi-
ence as such. We might model this on the sort ofWrst-order case where
someone – perhaps a young child – thinks, ‘Thatis interesting’, of what is
in fact a coloured marble (but without possessing the conceptsmarble,
sphere, or evenphysical object) by virtue of their experience presenting
them with a non-conceptual array of surfaces and shapes in space, in which
the marble is picked out as one region-of-Wlled-space amongst others.
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