Durand of St.-Pourçain on Reflex Acts and State Consciousness

Some of my mental states are conscious and some of them are not. Sometimes I am so focused on the wine in front of me that I am unaware that I am thinking about it. But sometimes, of course, I take a reflexive step back and become aware of my thinking about the wine in front of me. What marks the difference between a conscious mental state and an unconscious one? In this article, the author focuses on Durand of St.-Pourçain’s rejection of the higher-order theory of state consciousness, according to which a mental act is conscious when there is another, suitably related, mental (reflex) act that exists at the same time with it. Durand rejects such higher-order theories on the grounds that they violate the thesis that a given mental power can have or elicit only one mental act at a given time. The author first goes over some of Durand’s general arguments for this thesis. He then turns to Durand’s application of the thesis to the issue of state consciousness and reflex acts. He closes by considering the objection that Durand’s same-order theory of state consciousness makes consciousness ubiquitous.

Cotard syndrome, self-awareness, and I-concepts

Various psychopathologies of self-awareness, such as somatoparaphrenia and thought insertion in schizophrenia, might seem to threaten the viability of the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness since it requires a HOT about one’s own mental state to accompany every conscious state. The HOT theory of consciousness says that what makes a mental state a conscious mental state is that there is a HOT to the effect that “I am in mental state M.” I have argued in previous work that a HOT theorist can adequately respond to this concern with respect to somatoparaphrenia and thought insertion. There is also Cotard syndrome which is a rare neuropsychiatric disorder in which people hold the delusional belief that they are dead, do not exist, or have lost their blood or internal organs. In this paper, I argue that HOT theory has nothing to fear from it either and can consistently account for what happens in such unusual cases. I analyze Cotard syndrome in light of my previous discussion of somatoparaphrenia and thought insertion, and argue that HOT theory can provide a somewhat analogous account without the worry of inconsistency. It is crucial to recognize that there are multiple “self-concepts” and levels of HOTs which can help to provide a more nuanced explanation. With regard to the connection between consciousness and self-consciousness, it is proposed that Cotard patients are indeed capable of having some “I-thoughts” about their bodies and mental states.

Higher–Order Thought and the Problem of Shifting Subjectivity

In this paper, we argue that the two versions of the higher–order thought theory of consciousness, viz. Rosenthal’s extrinsic higher–order thought and Gennaro’s intrinsic higher–order thought, fail to explain the subjective character of a conscious mental state. Both these theories face what we call the problem of shifting subjectivity. Since these theories explain the consciousness of mental states in terms of a representational relation between two unconscious mental states with the help of a two–tiered representational structure divided into a higher–order thought and a lower–order mental state (which is the target of the higher–order thought), they fail to explain the subjective character of conscious mental states, which is intrinsic to them. In their account, the subjective character intrinsic to conscious mental states seems to shift from the target state to the higher–order mental state, which is separate from the target state. The objection is strong against Rosenthal’s extrinsic higher–order thought theory, which clearly makes a distinction between a world–directed mental state and the higher–order thought representing it. However, although Gennaro’s intrinsic higher–order thought theory is an attempt to preserve the intuition that consciousness is intrinsic to conscious mental states, it faces the problem of shifting subjectivity in the case of introspective consciousness.

Unconscious Omissions, Reasonable Expectations, and Responsibility

Unconscious omissions involve failures to act that occur without an agent’s awareness. How, then, do we determine when an agent has “committed” an unconscious omission? The puzzle is to give an account of how an unconscious nondoing can nevertheless be genuinely reflective of a person’s agency, given the apparent absence of any conscious mental state linking the person to that nondoing. Patricia Smith has argued that the key to resolving this puzzle lies in the fact that unconscious omissions involve violations of or deviations from reasonable expectations within a context, and that such violations or deviations are, by definition, “doings” on the part of agents (and thus reflective of their agency). The aim of this chapter is to critically evaluate Smith’s “reasonable expectation” account of unconscious omissions, and to defend an alternative account that locates the agency involved in unconscious omissions in exercises of evaluative judgment.