On Conscious Experience, by Fred Dretske

1. “[S]uppose S sees a speckled hen on which there are (on the facing side) 27 speckles. Each speckle is clearly visible. Not troubling to count, S does not realize that (hence, is not aware that) there are 27 speckles. Nonetheless, we assume that S looked long enough, and carefully enough, to see each speckle. In such a case, although S is aware of all 27 speckles (things), he is not aware of the number of speckles because [that] requires being aware that there is that number of speckles (a fact), and S is not aware of this fact.”

2. This passage is talking about the possibility that we can be conscious (that is, aware—for Dretske the terms are interchangeable) of things in a way that is fundamentally different than our awareness of facts. When S looks at this visible side of the hen, his attention is not directed toward the fact that there are twenty-seven speckles on this particular hen; but he is nevertheless aware of all of the speckles simultaneously—aware of their existence as things to be perceived. This becomes a crucial distinction for Dretske in his argument against higher-order thought processes—i.e., introspection—as being meaningfully explanatory of consciousness.

3. In order to understand what Dretske is trying to do with this article, it is important to know what he is arguing against. He objects to the idea that consciousness can be explained by a higher-order mental state that is directed at lower states: it is this theory of introspection as constitutive of consciousness that leads, e.g., Rosenthal, to argue that conscious states are those of which we are conscious. Dretske insists this is not the case, and sets up his argument in the following way.

In the introduction to the article, Dretske argues that while it sounds odd to the aforementioned higher-order theorists of consciousness to say that it is possible to have a conscious experience that one is not conscious of having, there is nothing contradictory about this claim. The first distinction he draws in fleshing out this conclusion is that distinction between awareness of facts and awareness of things. For Dretske, awareness of things is that which occurs in us when we become perceptually aware of items in our environment: the stereo, the computer, the music; and awareness of facts is a kind of “awareness that”—taking the form of my being aware that the computer is playing music through the stereo. This kind of awareness takes form in the statement, (1) “S sees (hears, etc.) x (or that P) => S is conscious of x (that P),” but goes on to differentiate between awareness of facts and of things, such that in the case of awareness of facts, one is by definition able to speak about that thing in one’s awareness. Thus in the above quotation, S sees (becomes perceptually aware of) the speckles on the hen, but is not aware that there are 27 speckles. It is for this reason Dretske introduces statement (2), such that for all concrete objects x, “S is conscious of x =/> S is conscious that x is F.” From this foundation, Dretske goes on to argue that the intransitive sense of “consciousness” is implied by, and indeed given rise by the transitive sense—that is, for any x and P, (3) “S is conscious of x or that P => S is conscious (a conscious being)” and therefore, (4) this means S is in a conscious state. Consciousness, then, is not directed toward things, or toward our awareness of our perception of things; rather, our perception of things makes us conscious of the world around us. Furthermore, Dretske uses a couple of examples from the realm of visual perception to illustrate the point: in looking at two slightly different pictures or objects, he says, people are thing-aware that there is a difference; but they are not aware of the fact that actually makes two objects or pictures differ. From this point, he says, we can deduce that one can be conscious of a thing without having transitive (metacognitive, introspective) consciousness of it. After two visual examples, he argues this point from experimentation with monkeys, in which they were thing-aware of different sized boxes, but only fact-aware of the abstraction “INTERMEDIATE IN SIZE” after learning to discriminate more carefully between the boxes. After tying up some loose ends in the fourth and final section of his article, Dretske concludes that fact-awareness (belief) is conscious not because the person is metacognitively aware of that fact, but because the belief is “a representation that makes one conscious of the fact (that P) that it is a belief about.”

On Conscious Experience, by Fred Dretske

1. “[S]uppose S sees a speckled hen on which there are (on the facing side) 27 speckles. Each speckle is clearly visible. Not troubling to count, S does not realize that (hence, is not aware that) there are 27 speckles. Nonetheless, we assume that S looked long enough, and carefully enough, to see each speckle. In such a case, although S is aware of all 27 speckles (things), he is not aware of the number of speckles because [that] requires being aware that there is that number of speckles (a fact), and S is not aware of this fact.”

2. This passage is talking about the possibility that we can be conscious (that is, aware—for Dretske the terms are interchangeable) of things in a way that is fundamentally different than our awareness of facts. When S looks at this visible side of the hen, his attention is not directed toward the fact that there are twenty-seven speckles on this particular hen; but he is nevertheless aware of all of the speckles simultaneously—aware of their existence as things to be perceived. This becomes a crucial distinction for Dretske in his argument against higher-order thought processes—i.e., introspection—as being meaningfully explanatory of consciousness.

3. In order to understand what Dretske is trying to do with this article, it is important to know what he is arguing against. He objects to the idea that consciousness can be explained by a higher-order mental state that is directed at lower states: it is this theory of introspection as constitutive of consciousness that leads, e.g., Rosenthal, to argue that conscious states are those of which we are conscious. Dretske insists this is not the case, and sets up his argument in the following way.

In the introduction to the article, Dretske argues that while it sounds odd to the aforementioned higher-order theorists of consciousness to say that it is possible to have a conscious experience that one is not conscious of having, there is nothing contradictory about this claim. The first distinction he draws in fleshing out this conclusion is that distinction between awareness of facts and awareness of things. For Dretske, awareness of things is that which occurs in us when we become perceptually aware of items in our environment: the stereo, the computer, the music; and awareness of facts is a kind of “awareness that”—taking the form of my being aware that the computer is playing music through the stereo. This kind of awareness takes form in the statement, (1) “S sees (hears, etc.) x (or that P) => S is conscious of x (that P),” but goes on to differentiate between awareness of facts and of things, such that in the case of awareness of facts, one is by definition able to speak about that thing in one’s awareness. Thus in the above quotation, S sees (becomes perceptually aware of) the speckles on the hen, but is not aware that there are 27 speckles. It is for this reason Dretske introduces statement (2), such that for all concrete objects x, “S is conscious of x =/> S is conscious that x is F.” From this foundation, Dretske goes on to argue that the intransitive sense of “consciousness” is implied by, and indeed given rise by the transitive sense—that is, for any x and P, (3) “S is conscious of x or that P => S is conscious (a conscious being)” and therefore, (4) this means S is in a conscious state. Consciousness, then, is not directed toward things, or toward our awareness of our perception of things; rather, our perception of things makes us conscious of the world around us. Furthermore, Dretske uses a couple of examples from the realm of visual perception to illustrate the point: in looking at two slightly different pictures or objects, he says, people are thing-aware that there is a difference; but they are not aware of the fact that actually makes two objects or pictures differ. From this point, he says, we can deduce that one can be conscious of a thing without having transitive (metacognitive, introspective) consciousness of it. After two visual examples, he argues this point from experimentation with monkeys, in which they were thing-aware of different sized boxes, but only fact-aware of the abstraction “INTERMEDIATE IN SIZE” after learning to discriminate more carefully between the boxes. After tying up some loose ends in the fourth and final section of his article, Dretske concludes that fact-awareness (belief) is conscious not because the person is metacognitively aware of that fact, but because the belief is “a representation that makes one conscious of the fact (that P) that it is a belief about.”