- seCtIon tHRee: BoDY AnD WoRLD
making things like actions conscious), they do not cause actions but are more like a
commentary on them. Indeed, an HOP/HOT may take time to construct and so may
happen after an action that is experienced as performed consciously, which seems
to fit with evidence discussed below and in Chapter 9. On these theories, zombies,
though conceivable, are not possible, because anything behaviourally identical to
us (in being able to report HOPs/HOTs) would by definition be conscious.
However, such theories face difficulties, such as deciding what counts as the
content of an HOP/HOT (e.g. what sort of ideas about redness are involved in
the thought?). They also mean denying consciousness to creatures incapable of
HOTs, and have trouble dealing with states which seem to be conscious without
thought or an observer of any kind (Seager, 2016), especially mystical experiences
and deep states of meditation (Blackmore, 2011).
In the end, though, we return to our familiar question: why should the posited
extra ingredient (here, targeting a mental state with a HOP/HOT) cause that state
to be conscious? Can we imagine zombies with lots of higher-order thoughts but
no consciousness? Or is having an HOT about your experience like asking ‘am
I conscious now?’ and always getting the answer yes, like the fridge light that is
always on when you open the door to look?
FUNCTIONALISM
Functionalism, like so many other words to do with consciousness, is used in
many different and sometimes contradictory ways. Within the philosophy of
mind, it is the view that mental states are functional states. So, for example, if
someone is in pain, the pain is understood in terms of the input from the dam-
age done, the output of behaviours such as crying or rubbing the wound, and
other mental states such as the desire for the pain to go away, which can also
be specified functionally. This means that any system which executed exactly the
same functions as a human being in pain would also be in pain, so zombies are
impossible. Functionalism is often opposed to physicalism because it emphasises
the functions a system carries out rather than what it is physically made of, and to
behaviourism because it considers internal functions and not only behaviour. But
the implications for subjective experience are not obvious. A common view is that
functionalism works well for explaining some mental states but is much less clear
in accounting for phenomenal consciousness or qualia (Van Gulick, 2007) – but
note that philosophers take ‘mental states’ to include such things as desires and
beliefs, which other disciplines do not.The term is also used, especially by psychologists and in discussions of artificial
intelligence (Chapter 12), to mean that any system which could carry out exactly
the same functions as a conscious system would also, necessarily, be conscious.
This is the idea of multiple realisability: the same conscious state could be realised
in multiple ways as long as the same functions were carried out. If we ask what
the difference is between actions carried out consciously and those carried out
unconsciously, the functionalist will answer in terms of the different functions
involved; there is no separate consciousness to play a causal role. Although many
of the theories in this book are, broadly speaking, functionalist, including repre-
sentationalist theories such as HOP and HOT theories (Kobes, 2007), they strug-
gle to explain how or why functions can be phenomenal consciousness, and to
explain (or explain away) qualia.‘Animals have plenty
of access to their
experiences, but
probably little in the way
of higher order thought
about them’
(Block, 2005, p. 50)