Strategy for Dualism

STRATEGY FOR DUALISTS

HAROLD LANGSAM

ABSTRACT : Dualists need to change their argumentative strategies if they wishto make a plausible case for dualism. In particular, dualists should not merely reactand respond to physicalist views and arguments; they need to develop their ownpositive agenda. But neither should they focus their energies on constructing apriori arguments for dualism. Rather, dualists should acknowledge that whatsupports their view that consciousness exists and is a nonphysical phenomenon isobservation, not argumentation. What is needed is a positive account of the natureof consciousness and the indispensable role that it plays in our lives, for it is onlyby showing the explanatory utility of the nonphysical that dualists can begin todiscredit those who would deny its existence. In this paper, I try to give some ideaof what such a positive theory of consciousness would look like. In particular, Iargue for a theory of consciousness that contains a priori synthetic truths about theontological nature and causal powers of consciousness.

Keywords: consciousness, dualism, physicalism, materialism, rationality,synthetic a priori.

I

One might be skeptical about the very idea of a philosopher needing astrategy. Strategy is for generals and politicians, not philosophers. Thephilosopher argues for her positions and against those of her opponents;that is the sum of any strategy she could have or needs to have. But surelythere are a variety of argumentative strategies that one might employ inattempting to render a philosophical position plausible. And it must beconceded that the argumentative strategies of the dualist have not beensuccessful. At best, the dualist has fought the physicalist to a standstill. Atworst, she is marginalized as unscientific and anti-naturalistic, and even asan annoying, useless person who tiresomely repeats her dualist intuitionwhile physicalists do the real work of advancing our knowledge of themind.

If the dualist sometimes seems to do nothing but endlessly repeat herdualist intuition, it is because she too often lets the physicalist set theagenda regarding the philosophy of mind. The debate between dualists andphysicalists is not just one among many debates about various aspects of

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the mind—it is the central debate in the philosophy of mind.1 It is centralbecause it determines what about the mind merits philosophical study.According to the dualist, the physicalist denies the existence of the veryessence of the mind. And the dualist gets incensed about this denialbecause she finds this essential feature of the mind to be so interesting, inthat it is inextricably intertwined in all kinds of surprising and fascinatingways with almost everything that makes human life interesting and worth-while.2 If dualism is correct, what philosophy of mind should be about isexplaining how and why the mind is intertwined with these other impor-tant aspects of human life. But typically the dualist has failed to pursue thisconstructive agenda. She has let herself be cowed by the physicalist intobeing merely reactive, boringly insisting on the dualist intuition even in theface of every new version of physicalism. In failing to pursue a construc-tive agenda, the dualist marginalizes herself. She insists that the physical-ist is missing a certain phenomenon but, by failing to tell us why thisphenomenon is interesting, she neglects to explain why we should careabout its existence. Given the dualist’s silence on the nature of thisphenomenon, we are inclined to think that it is of little importance whetherthe dualist is right. The dualist needs to change the agenda in the philoso-phy of mind; she needs to stop worrying about responding to every lasttwist in the physicalist saga and instead start concerning herself withshowing the indispensability of the mind (as the dualist understands it) toso many of the important features of human life. Such a demonstration ofthe explanatory utility of dualist mind would surely be the best possiblerefutation of physicalism.

My aim in this paper is to provide the dualist with some advice as tohow to begin changing the philosophical agenda. In particular, I hope toexplain why the dualist is perfectly justified in ignoring the physicalist andpursuing her own constructive agenda. I also hope to provide someconcrete recommendations as to how the dualist might begin pursuing thisagenda, despite the notorious difficulties dualists have faced in attemptingto say anything positive about the nature of the mind.

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1 The debate I am concerned with here is over whether the mind is physical and so,strictly speaking, I should characterize the debate as being not between physicalists anddualists, but between physicalists and those who deny physicalism (where those who denyphysicalism would include both dualists and idealists). Nevertheless, given that we lack afamiliar word to characterize those who oppose physicalism, and given that most of thosewho oppose physicalism today are dualists and not idealists, I will continue to speak some-what loosely and to refer to all those who deny that the mind is physical as dualists.

2 Examples of dualist frustration with physicalism include Searle (1992, 9), who claimsthat “if you are tempted to functionalism . . . you do not need refutation, you need help,” andStrawson (1994), who claims both that reductive physicalism “seems to be one of the mostamazing manifestations of human irrationality on record” (53), and that eliminativists “seemto be out of their minds” (101). I should note that neither Searle nor Strawson characterizeshimself as a dualist; see Section II for why I believe that they should nonetheless be classi-fied as dualists.

II

Although the dualist needs to do more than merely repeat her dualist intu-ition, she does need to be very clear about what the content of this intuitionis. For example, she needs to make clear that the dualist intuition is an intu-ition about the nature of a certain property, namely consciousness—it isnot an intuition about the nature of the substance that can instantiate thisproperty. The dualist intuition is one that directly supports propertydual-ism, not substancedualism.3 The dualist should embrace Hume’s claimthat we are not acquainted in any direct way with the intrinsic nature of theself (TreatiseI.iv.6). But she should insist that we are acquainted in a directway with the nature of consciousness, for it is on the basis of this purportedacquaintance that she puts forward her dualist intuition.

And what is the content of this dualist intuition about consciousness?Insofar as the dualist is opposing physicalism, she may be understood tobe saying that consciousness is not a physical property. But such a formu-lation is not clear enough for our purposes, for it employs the notion of thephysical—a notion which needs to be explained, for it is unclear whatconditions a phenomenon must meet if it is to count as physical. We canfind a clearer formulation of the dualist intuition if we keep in mind herconcerns. Remember, the dualist opposes physicalism because she takesthe physicalist to be denying the existence of consciousness. The dualistsees no difference between eliminativists and other physicalists in thisregard. Why is the dualist so sure that the physicalist is denying the exis-tence of consciousness? The dualist purports to be acquainted with thenature of consciousness, and as a result believes that consciousness is asimple property.4 The dualist will thus oppose any physicalist who takesconsciousness to be a complex and/or causal property, for she takes such aphysicalist to be denying the existence of the simple property in which thedualist is so interested. More generally, the dualist will oppose any reduc-tive account of the mental; she denies that the essences of mental proper-ties can be described with nonmental terminology. She will oppose notonly type-type identity theorists, who identify mental properties withcomplex neurochemical properties, but also functionalists who identifymental properties with causal and/or teleological properties. The dualistintuition is that consciousness is a simple property, not a complex or causalproperty.

Whether the dualist intuition is equivalent to the claim that conscious-ness is not a physical property will depend on how the concept of the phys-ical is understood. There are philosophers who affirm the dualist intuition

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3 I remain neutral on the question of whether property dualism entails substance dual-ism. For an argument that property dualism does entail substance dualism, see Foster 1991,ch. 7.

4 Where I talk of a simple property, other philosophers might prefer to talk of a primi-tive, basic, or fundamental property.

as just described, but nevertheless take themselves to be physicalists—because although they hold that the property of consciousness is distinctfrom certain complex properties that are understood to be physical, theyalso hold that the property of consciousness is related to those complexphysical properties in ways that render consciousness itself a physicalproperty.5 I do not wish to deny the intrinsic philosophical interest of thequestions of how the simple property of consciousness is related to certaincomplex physical properties, and how these relations bear on the issue ofwhether consciousness is physical. (It is in relation to these questions thatissues about supervenience may become relevant.) Nevertheless, I doinsist that these questions are peripheral to what the dualist should beconcerned about, namely, pursuing her own constructive agenda of show-ing the interest and explanatory utility of the simple property of conscious-ness.

What typically divides dualists and physicalists is their opposinganswers to the question of whether there exists a simple property ofconsciousness, for, as I noted at the beginning of this paper, it is the answerto this question that determines what it is about the mind that merits philo-sophical study. So I will continue to refer to those who affirm the existenceof the simple property of consciousness as dualists, and those who denythe existence of this property as physicalists, even though some of those inthe former category might prefer to ally themselves with the physicalistcamp. In other words, I shall say that those who affirm the dualist intuitionare dualists, and those who deny it are physicalists. In accordance with thisusage, I will assume (as is traditional) that the simple property ofconsciousness with which dualists purport to be acquainted is not a physi-cal property, and I will also assume that the complex and causal propertieswith which physicalists identify mental properties are indeed physicalproperties.

III

In the previous section, I claimed that the dualist needs to be very clearabout the content of her dualist intuition. This is necessary because thedebate between dualists and physicalists is over whether this intuition iscorrect. But the dualist intuition also has importance for another reason.For although physicalists do not agree with the dualist intuition, thereseems to be a sense in which they—and perhaps all of us, for that matter—share the dualist intuition. The intuition that consciousness is a simpleproperty and not a complex physical property is often more looselyexpressed as the idea that mind and body are different sorts of things. Andalthough the physicalist denies that mind and body are different sorts of

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5 Such nonreductive physicalists include McGinn (1991), Searle (1992), Strawson(1994), and perhaps Nagel (1974).

things, I think that most physicalists would at least acknowledge that themind seemsto be something different from the body. For even the physi-calist must acknowledge that there at least seemsto be a mind-body prob-lem, a problem about how mind and body are related, and the reason thatthere seems to be a problem about how mind and body are related isbecause mind and body seemto be so different from each other. The phys-icalist ultimately solves this apparent problem by denying that it is actuallya problem at all—she denies that mind and body are different from eachother, and thus denies that there is any difficulty in explaining how they arerelated. But insofar as the physicalist acknowledges that there is at least anapparent problem here to be solved, she acknowledges that mind and bodyseem to be different from each other. We all share the dualist intuition, inthat it seemsto us to be true. The dualist intuition has an initial naturalplausibility for us.

The plausibility of the dualist intuition is relevant here because it bearson the soundness of arguments that purport to show that this intuition isfalse. I am recommending to the dualist that she ignore the physicalist andpursue her own constructive agenda. In particular, I am suggesting that thedualist has more important things to do than respond to arguments forphysicalism that claim that the dualist intuition is false, for there are goodreasons to believe that such arguments will not be persuasive. They will beconvincing only insofar as each of their premises is more plausible than thedualist intuition; given the natural plausibility of the dualist intuition, itseems most unlikely that physicalists will be able to come up with theneeded premises. For example, some arguments for physicalism employthe premise that “all physical effects have sufficient physical causes”(Papineau 1998, 375).6 This physical causal closure principle is neverargued for by physicalists; with a clear conscience, they simply take itsplausibility for granted. Now perhaps it would be a nice thing in somesense if the physical causal closure principle were true—its truth wouldbestow on the world a kind of simple organizational structure which somemight regard as aesthetically pleasing. But can anyone seriously maintainthat the physical causal closure principle is more plausible to us than thedualist intuition itself? I submit not. The dualist intuition that conscious-ness is a simple property seems to us to be such an obvious truth becauseit seems to us that we are directly acquainted with the nature of conscious-ness. In other words, the dualist intuition purports to be an observationalclaim about one particular phenomenon, whereas the physical causalclosure principle is a theoretical claim that concerns all physical effects,both known and unknown. I fail to see how such a large-scale theoreticalclaim can be more plausible than a single observational claim.7



6 Both Lewis (1966) and Papineau (1998) give arguments for physicalism that requirethis premise.

7 Further criticism of the acceptability of the physical causal closure principle can befound in Crane (1991) and Foster (1991, 198–201).

I grant that if a purported observation cannot be repeated, then we mightconclude that what purported to be an observation is not a genuine observa-tion at all. But the dualist intuition does not claim to be based on some long-ago, one-time observation that has never been repeated. On the contrary, wetake ourselves to have a continual acquaintance with consciousness, and wetake ourselves to be constantly observing its simple nature. Of course evengenuine observations can be misleading and nonveridical, and the existenceof hallucinations perhaps shows that it is possible for it to seem to me that Iam observing something when in fact I am not observing anything at all.Thus it is possible for a proposition to seem to me to be true when it is not.I am as confident about the truth of the dualist intuition as I am aboutanything, but nevertheless I am modest enough to acknowledge the possi-bility that I am mistaken here. On the other hand, I am not going to take thispossibility seriously unless the physicalist produces a plausible explanationfor how I could have been led to make such a mistake. It is not enough forthe physicalist to set forth arguments against the dualist intuition, for someof the premises of these arguments will always strike us as less plausiblethan the dualist intuition itself. If the physicalist wants the dualist to take herseriously, she needs to undermine the natural plausibility that the dualistintuition has for us, by showing how even a physicalist who denies the truthof the dualist intuition can nonetheless explain why we are naturally inclinedto find this proposition to be true.

Note that it is not enough for the physicalist to come up with just anystory as to why so many have come to believe the dualist intuition; rather,she needs to come up with a plausiblestory. In particular, the story shouldnot attribute gross stupidity to the believers in the dualist intuition, formany of the believers in the dualist intuition (myself included) are notgrossly stupid. For example, David Papineau—one of the few physicaliststo realize the importance of explaining the widespread belief in the dualistintuition—claims that the belief arises as the result of fallacious reasoning;specifically, he claims that the believer in the dualist intuition “succumbsto a species of the use-mention confusion” (1993, 177). I must rejectPapineau’s explanation, for I am not so grossly stupid as to have commit-ted the fallacious reasoning that he describes. In fact, I will go so far as tosay that I have never, at any period of my life, been so stupid as to havecommitted the fallacy described by Papineau. For Papineau is not describ-ing some subtle species of the use-mention confusion in which the distinc-tion between use and mention is somehow hidden within the recesses of acomplicated chain of reasoning and is thus likely to be confused. On thecontrary, the fallacious reasoning he describes is a very straightforwardexample of a use-mention confusion.8 So not only do I find Papineau’sexplanation of why people believe in the dualist intuition to be incredible,

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8 Specifically, Papineau distinguishes between two kinds of mental acts that can be usedto refer to conscious experiences: “first-person” acts, and “third-person” acts (1993, 176).

I find it to be insulting, since it implies that my fellow dualists and I aregrossly stupid. Until the physicalists come up with a better account of whyso many of us are so sure that the dualist intuition is true, the dualist isperfectly justified in ignoring the physicalist and her arguments for physi-calism.9

IV

Not only should the dualist not waste her time responding to physicalistarguments that purport to show that consciousness is a physical property,she should also not waste time constructing a priori arguments that purportto prove to the physicalist that consciousness is not a physical property.For just as the dualist will not be persuaded by the physicalist’s arguments,so the physicalist will not be persuaded by the dualist’s arguments. Thatthe simple property of consciousness is instantiated in the (actual) world isa contingent claim that can only be known empirically; it cannot be provenby a priori philosophical arguments. The dualist needs to remember thatthe reason why she feels so confident that the dualist intuition is true isbecause she takes herself to have observedcountless instances of her ownconsciousness. If the physicalist is committed to denying that she observesthe simple property that the dualist claims to observe, there is nothing thatthe dualist can say that is going to convince her otherwise.



First-person acts include imagining and remembering; to employ a first-person act to referto an experience is to “be in a state which is similar to the state constituting the . . . experi-ence” (1993, 171). The subject somehow employs this “internal recreation of the originalexperience” (1993, 176) to refer to the original experience; first-person acts “refer by simu-lating their referents” (1998, 384). By contrast, third-person acts do not use copies of theexperience to refer to it. Third-person acts refer to the experience by employing identifyingdescriptions of the experience, which contain only physical predicates. Papineau speculatesthat we fallaciously reason as follows: (1) since first-person acts do and third-person acts donot use copies of experiences, therefore first-person acts do and third-person acts do notsucceed in mentioning(i.e., referring to) experiences; (2) since third-person acts usephysi-cal predicates, therefore third person acts refer to something physical; (3) therefore, theexperiences referred to by first-person acts are not identical to the physical entities referredto by third-person acts. In Papineau’s words, “we slide from (a) third-person thoughts,unlike first-person thoughts, do not use(secondary versions) of conscious experiences toportray conscious experiences to (b) third-person thoughts, unlike first-person thoughts, donot mentionconscious experiences. There is no reason, however, why third-person thoughtsabout experiences, like nearly all other thoughts about anything, should not succeed in refer-ring to items they do not use” (1993, 178). I agree with Papineau that there is no reason toconclude that third-person thoughts about experiences do not succeed in referring to experi-ences, which is why I think it absurd for Papineau to suggest that dualists and others falla-ciously draw this conclusion. I fail to see why Papineau thinks that the fallacious reasoninghe describes is “seductive” (1993, 178), and therefore also fail to see why he thinks it plau-sible that dualists would succumb to such reasoning.

9 Other physicalists who seem to be committed to the view that it is fallacious reasoningof the most obvious kind that is responsible for the popularity of the dualist intuition includeArmstrong (1973) and Lycan (1987, 42–44, 77–78).

The dualist might be willing to acknowledge that one will not be ableto prove to the eliminative physicalist that the dualist intuition is true, butmight insist that one can prove this claim to other kinds of physicalists. Forphysicalists who are not eliminativists are at least willing to affirm thecontingent truth that consciousness exists. So what divides the dualist andthese kinds of physicalists is the question of whether consciousness is asimple property. The dualist may insist that it is a necessary truth thatconsciousness is a simple property, and therefore one will be able toprovide a priori proofs for this claim. But the dualist will be no moresuccessful in these attempts to convince noneliminative physicalists of thetruth of dualism than she will be in her attempts to convince eliminativephysicalists. Insofar as it is a necessary truth that consciousness is a simpleproperty, it is because the concept of consciousness just is the concept ofthat simple property whose instances dualists claim to observe. So thedualist may insist that it is an analytic necessary truth that consciousnessis a simple property, but she must acknowledge that the concept ofconsciousness is an empirical concept—that is, it is a concept of a certainobserved phenomenon. Since the noneliminative physicalist claims not tobe able to observe this phenomenon, she will not share the dualist’sconcept of consciousness. Any argument that the dualist comes up with toprove that consciousness is a simple property will assume a concept ofconsciousness that the noneliminative physicalist does not share, and sothe noneliminative physicalist will naturally (and justifiedly, from herpoint of view) reject any such argument. She will find no difficulty inrejecting one or more of the premises of any such argument, given that shedoes not share the dualist concept of consciousness.

Of course the dualist will find such denials to be implausible, but surelythey are no more implausible than the physicalist’s denial of the dualistintuition itself. From the dualist point of view, there is nothing more obvi-ous than the dualist intuition; the dualist should not be surprised that thephysicalist who is willing to deny the dualist intuition will also be willingto deny premises of valid arguments for the truth of this intuition. Thedualist will not be able to find premises for her arguments that she can ingood conscience take to be more obvious than the dualist intuition itself.

Given that the physicalist will not and should not be persuaded by thedualist’s arguments, the dualist should stop spending her time constructingsuch arguments. For not only are such arguments pointless—in that theywill not and should not persuade anyone who does not already accept thedualist intuition—but they are also positively harmful, in that they conveya misleading impression as to what the support for the dualist position is.They convey the impression that what supports the dualist position arethese very arguments themselves. But in fact what supports dualism isobservation, not argumentation. Consider the kinds of arguments that havebeen employed in recent years to support dualism. Such arguments includeSaul Kripke’s modal argument, absent and inverted qualia arguments, and

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Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument.10 All of these arguments have asimilar structure: their premises all affirm various possibilities relating tohow conscious states (and/or knowledge of conscious states) can exist orfail to exist; from these premises about how it is possible for consciousnessto exist or not exist, these arguments offer conclusions about the actualnature of consciousness. But dualists do not reason from unsupported intu-itions about the modal features of consciousness to conclusions about theactual features of consciousness. On the contrary, their reasoning proceedsin the opposite direction—they begin with beliefs about the actual natureof consciousness, beliefs which they take to be supported by observationsof instances of consciousness, and on the basis of these, they form beliefsabout possible ways that conscious states can exist or fail to exist.11

Dualists do not just happen to find themselves with modal intuitions aboutconsciousness which they uncritically embrace; rather, their modal intu-itions are derived from the dualist intuition itself, which is supposed to besupported by observation.

The dualist needs to be more honest and open with regard to why shebelieves in the dualist intuition. My impression is that some dualists aretoo embarrassed to admit openly that they think they can observe certainfeatures of consciousness; they are worried about what physicalists willthink of them if they make such a blatantly Cartesian admission. But dual-ists need to stop worrying about what physicalists think of them; they muststart pursuing their own constructive agenda of providing a positiveaccount of the nature of consciousness and of the indispensable role that itplays in our lives.

V

We should not be surprised that the dualist has failed to pursue her ownconstructive agenda. It is not obvious how one might go about sayinganything positive about the nature of consciousness. After all, the dualisttakes consciousness to be a simple property, and there seems to be astraightforward sense in which there is nothing to say about what a simpleproperty intrinsically and essentially is. What I wish to do in the remain-der of the paper is to show the dualist how she can pursue her constructiveagenda despite the impossibility of saying what the simple property ofconsciousness is.

Remember that what the dualist needs to do is to explain how the prop-erty of consciousness is related to various interesting and importantfeatures of our lives. And if the dualist’s explanations are to be understood,



10 For Kripke’s modal argument, see Kripke 1980. For the absent and inverted qualiaarguments, see, for example, Block and Fodor 1972 and Chalmers 1996. For Jackson’sknowledge argument, see Jackson 1982, 1986.

11 That dualists reason in this manner is suggested by Lewis’s discussion of what herefers to as the “folk-psychological concept of qualia” (1995, 141).

she has to make sure that her audience understands which property she istalking about when she refers to the property of consciousness. As we haveseen, there is a sense in which she cannot saywhich property she is talk-ing about. But she can showher audience which property she is talkingabout. The dualist purports to know which property she is talking aboutbecause she claims to have observed instances of this property; she is talk-ing about a certain property which she has perceived. If the dualist’s audi-ence is to understand her when she talks about consciousness, she also hasto make sure that they are perceiving the property of consciousness. Andif they are to succeed in perceiving consciousness, they need to be lookingin the right direction, so to speak. If I claim to be looking at some inter-esting phenomenon, and my companion claims to be unable to see it, thenI tell her whereto look, with the hope that she will then be able to discernit. What applies to external observation also applies to introspective obser-vation. So the first task for the dualist is to somehow get her audience tofocus on the phenomenon of consciousness. Of course, the professionalphysicalist will never admit to being able to perceive the simple propertyof consciousness, no matter how diligently the dualist attempts to point itout to her. But as I have repeatedly said, the dualist needs to stop respond-ing to what the physicalist says. The dualist’s audience is not the physical-ist, but rather the open-minded person who is willing to listen to what thedualist has to say about why consciousness is such an interesting phenom-enon.

I submit that the dualist has not done a very good job in pointing out thephenomenon of consciousness. In particular, dualists often fail toadequately distinguish between the things we are conscious of, andconsciousness itself. Consider David Chalmers, for instance. Unlike somedualists, Chalmers does take some time to try to describe various examplesof conscious experiences, in an effort “to help focus attention on thesubject matter at hand” (1996, 7). His examples include (sensory) smells,tastes, and colors. The smells include “the musty smell of an old wardrobe,the stench of rotting garbage, the whiff of newly mown grass, the warmaroma of freshly baked bread” (8). The tastes include “the taste of TurkishDelight, of curried black-eyed pea salad, of a peppermint Lifesaver, of aripe peach” (9). But as Chalmers’ own descriptions show, we take thesesmells and tastes to be properties of physical objects, rather than of themind. Smells, tastes, and colors are examples of things we are consciousof; they do not themselves count as instances of consciousness. Consideralso Chalmers’ discussion of an auditory experience. He writes of the“almost magical” experience of “hear[ing] a ring”, and notes that “nothingabout the quality of the ring seems to correspond directly to any structurein the world” (7). I agree with Chalmers about the quality of the ring, butnevertheless his emphasis is in the wrong place. The ring considered initself, sensory though it may be, is not itself a kind of consciousness; it isthe hearingof the ring that qualifies as a way of being conscious.

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It may be objected that although common sense takes sensory smells,tastes, and colors to be properties of physical objects, science has shownus that in fact they are types of consciousness. But this is a tendentiousway to describe the difference, if any, between the commonsense andscientific views of the status of sensory properties.12 At best, sciencesuggests that smells, tastes, and colors cease to exist when we are notconscious of them. So science does recognize the commonsense distinc-tion between consciousness and the things we are conscious of, and main-tains the commonsense view that sensory properties are things we areconscious of, rather than types of consciousness. Science does not showthat sensory properties are properties of the mind; instead, it (perhaps)shows that the instantiation of these properties is dependent on their beingperceived by the mind.

Common sense takes sensory properties to be properties of physicalobjects, and so must have a way to think about the nature of the mind inde-pendent of these sensory properties. The way that it thinks of the mind isas the substance that instantiates the property of consciousness (i.e., theproperty of being conscious of things). The discoveries of natural sciencecertainly give us no basis on which to think about the mind in any otherway. Insofar as science moves sensory properties from the physical realminto the “mental” realm, it is because it suggests that sensory propertiesexist only when the mind is conscious of them. Science can place sensoryproperties into the mental realm only because it already has a way to thinkof the mental realm independently of these properties. It is only philoso-phy, not common sense or science, that often fails to maintain the clarityof the distinction between the things we are conscious of, and conscious-ness itself.13 And insofar as the dualist succumbs to this philosophical



12 Of course philosophers disagree as to whether there is a difference between thecommonsense and scientific views of the status of the sensory properties. Those who holdthat there is a difference here include Sellars (1963) and Mackie (1976); those who deny thatthere is a difference include McGinn (1983) and McDowell (1985). My concern here is notto resolve this dispute, but rather to argue that, however this dispute is resolved, neithercommon sense nor science holds that sensory properties are types of consciousness.

13 Moore goes so far as to claim that all philosophers have made the “self-contradictoryerror” of holding that “what is experiencedis . . . identical with the experience of it” (1903,445). Today, philosophers blur this distinction by employing theoretical terms such as “whatit is like,” “qualia,” “qualitative character,” “subjective character,” and “phenomenal char-acter” to refer to the distinctively mental aspect of mental states. The problem with suchterms is that it is often difficult to tell whether the philosophers who employ them mean torefer to instances of consciousness or to the sensory properties we are conscious of. Suchterminology bypasses the commonsense distinction between consciousness and the thingswe are conscious of without putting anything in its place, and so is particularly unhelpful forthe purpose of identifying the mental. I should note that consciousness and sensory proper-ties are similar in that they both are simple properties. And insofar as consciousness isnonphysical by virtue of being simple, sensory properties will also count as nonphysical. Butthe fact that sensory properties are nonphysical does not make them mental. Consciousnessis the essence of mentality, and insofar as sensory properties are not types of consciousness,they are not mental properties either. Here I agree with McGinn, who claims that “colors

tendency, she will not succeed in getting her audience to focus on thephenomenon at issue—the phenomenon of consciousness.

Of course I am not denying that sensory properties may have some roleto play in getting someone to focus on the phenomenon of consciousness.In attempting to point her audience in the right direction, the dualist mightbegin by providing some examples of things that we can be conscious of,such as sensory properties. But she then needs to emphasize to her audiencethat they are consciousof these sensory properties, and it is the conscious-ness that she is interested in, not (or not only) the sensory properties. Insofaras the dualist reminds her listeners of the distinction between consciousnessand the things we are conscious of, they will presumably be able to switchtheir focus from the sensory properties to consciousness itself. They willbecome conscious of consciousness, so to speak.14

VI

The dualist now has her audience focused on the phenomenon ofconsciousness, and is therefore ready to present a positive account ofconsciousness. The dualist’s account purports to be supported by herobservational acquaintance with the property of consciousness and so, ifothers are to understand and verify this account, they need to be acquaintedwith this property also. But given that consciousness is a simple property,what will the elements of such an account be? The dualist account willhave nothing to say about what consciousness is composedof, forconsciousness, being simple, is not composed of anything. But there ismore to a property than its compositional elements or lack thereof. Inparticular, the dualist will need to describe the ontological nature ofconsciousness, and will also need to describe some of the causal powersthat flow from consciousness.

Let us begin with ontology. The dualist needs to specify the ontological

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. . . constitute a third category, just as real as, but distinct from, mental and physical proper-ties” (1996, 548). Nevertheless, given that I am not concerned in this paper with the natureof sensory properties, I will continue to describe myself as providing advice for dualists, nottriadists.

14 See Brentano 1973, 101–37, for a discussion of how a subject is able to be consciousof his own consciousness. Moore (1903, 446, 450) emphasizes the difficulty of becomingconscious of consciousness, but insists that it can be done: “When we refer to introspectionand try to discover what the sensation of blue is, it is very easy to suppose that we havebefore us only a single term. The term ‘blue’ is easy enough to distinguish, but the otherelement which I have called ‘consciousness’—that which the sensation of blue has incommon with the sensation of green—is extremely difficult to fix. That many people fail todistinguish it at all is sufficiently shown by the fact that there are materialists. . . . Themoment we try to fix our attention upon consciousness and to see what, distinctly, it is, itseems to vanish: it seems as if we had before us a mere emptiness. When we try to intro-spect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue: the other element is as if it werediaphanous. Yet it canbe distinguished if we look attentively enough, and if we know thatthere is something to look for.”

category to which consciousness belongs. So far I have claimed thatconsciousness is a property as opposed to a substance, in that it is some-thing that can be exemplified by different substances. But I have not yetsaid anything about the kind of property that consciousness is. The tradi-tional dualist view is that consciousness is a relation, and if we keep inmind the aforementioned distinction between consciousness and the thingswe are conscious of, we can see the plausibility of this view.Consciousness is a relation in that instances of consciousness relate asubject of consciousness (i.e., a mind) to an object of consciousness.Consciousness is essentially relational in that it is impossible for (an act of)consciousness to exist without the existence of a subject and object of thatconsciousness—a subject and object that are related to each other via thatact of consciousness. A subject cannot be conscious without beingconscious of something, and that something is the objectof the subject’sconsciousness. Insofar as consciousness is a property of mind, it is a rela-tional property of mind; it relates the mind, in a certain special way, toobjects of consciousness.15

If the dualist is going to succeed in explaining why consciousness issuch an important phenomenon in our lives, she is going to have to eluci-date the nature of this special way that consciousness relates us to objectsof consciousness. I shall say something in a moment about how the dual-ist might go about accomplishing this task. But first it is worth pausing fora moment to reflect on the mere fact that consciousness is a relation ofsome kind for, if we do so, we can already begin to see ways in whichconsciousness is a special and even unique phenomenon.

Consider, for example, how the dualist purports to know thatconsciousness is relational. Although I began this section by noting that thedualist’s account claims to be supported by observation, nevertheless the



15 This traditional view that consciousness is a relation is generally referred to as the act-objectconception of mental states, the idea being that a mental state consists in a subject’sact of consciousness directed towards an objectof consciousness. Consciousness is charac-terized here as an act insofar as an act is “something which cannot exist by itself, but canonly exist as a constituent in a complex, whose other constituent is its object” (Broad 1923,252). Broad immediately goes on to note that the act “is, of course, the characteristicallymental factor in such a complex” (ibid.). Broad argues for the distinction between the act ofconsciousness (the “act of sensing”) and the object of consciousness (the “sensum”) asfollows: “It does seem clear that, when I have a sensation of a red triangle patch, some thingsare true of the patch itself (e.g., that it is red and triangular) which it is very difficult tobelieve to be true of my sensation of the red patch. If so, it seems necessary to hold that thesensation and the sensum are not identical; that the sensum is an objective constituent of thesensation; and that there is another constituent which is not objective and may be called ‘theact of sensing’ ” (ibid., 257). See also Moore 1903, 444: “We have then in every sensationtwo distinct elements, one which I call consciousness, and another which I call the object ofconsciousness. This must be so if the sensation of blue and the sensation of green, thoughdifferent in one respect, are alike in another: blue is one object of sensation and green isanother, and consciousness, which both sensations have in common, is different fromeither.”

particular claim that consciousness is relational should be understood to bea necessary synthetic truth that can be known a priori. One might say thatwhat observation of consciousness reveals to us in the first instance is thequalityof consciousness. Compare our observations of consciousness withour observations of colors—observation reveals to us the nature of thecolor qualities and, by reflecting on these observations, we learn variousfacts about these qualities, such as that the quality of orange is more simi-lar to the quality of red than it is to the quality of blue. Whereas it is acontingent truth known by observation that orange things exist in the world(i.e., that there exist things with that quality characteristic of orange things),it is a necessary truth known by a priori reflection on certain observationsthat orange is more similar to red than it is to blue. Similarly, it is one thingto know that a certain kind of quality is instantiated in the world, and it issomething else to know the ontological category to which that qualitybelongs. So it will be a synthetic truth that consciousness (i.e., the phenom-enon with that quality revealed to us when we perceive instances ofconsciousness) is relational. Moreover, it will be a necessary truth: theclaim is that it is impossible for consciousness to exist in the absence of asubject and object of the consciousness. This necessary truth cannot beknown solely on the basis of observations of particular instances ofconsciousness. Rather the idea is that observation reveals to us the nature ofthe quality of consciousness, and a priori reflection on this quality tells usthat it is impossible for it to exist otherwise than as relating a subject to anobject of consciousness. Reflection tells us that it is the nature of this qual-ity to “reach out,” so to speak, to an object of consciousness.16 So we cansee how observation is relevant to the claim that consciousness is a relation,even though the claim itself is known a priori. It is a contingent, empiricaltruth that the quality of consciousness exists in the world, but it is a neces-sary synthetic truth that can be known a priori that this quality is a relation.

Thus one way in which consciousness is special, if not unique, is thatthere are a priori synthetic truths to be known about consciousness. Theclaim that consciousness is a relation is only one such truth; I will subse-quently describe other synthetic a priori truths that can be known aboutconsciousness. It is because there are synthetic a priori truths to be knownabout consciousness that the philosopher, even without the help of thescientist, can provide a positive account of the nature of consciousness andits role in our lives.

But of course what makes consciousness a truly unique and perhaps evenstrange phenomenon is not the mere existence of a priori synthetic truthspertaining to its nature, but rather the content of these truths. It is the intrinsicnature of consciousness that is strange and unique. Consider, for example,

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16 Compare Yourgrau 1990, 109: “To refer to something is to strike it, wherever in theuniverse it might be, with the arrow of the mind . . . It is an extraordinary feature of the mindthat it can somehow, ‘without traveling’, reach out and strike at any conceivable corner ofreality.”

how strange it is that consciousness should be a relation, as opposed to, say,a monadic property. Consciousness is a simple property, and one might natu-rally assume that simple properties would be monadic. Sensory properties,for example, are simple properties, and most philosophers take sensory prop-erties to be monadic properties. It seems strange to construe a simple qual-ity as relational, for to do so is, in effect, to say that one can understand howthis quality can exist only in terms of the existence of other entities that arerelated to each other by means of this quality. But given the simplicity of thequality, whyshould it require the existence of these other entities in order toexist itself? How can these other entities help us to understand how the qual-ity itself can exist? An act of consciousness and an object of consciousnessare distinct existences—why, then, should there be a necessary connectionbetween them? Despite the strangeness of construing the quality ofconsciousness as relational, reflection on this quality shows that indeed it isrelational. Reflection shows that despite its simplicity, the nature ofconsciousness is to reach out toward a distinct object. The dualist should notdownplay the strange and unique nature of consciousness; she shouldemphasize it. The dualist wants to show that consciousness is a phenomenonwe should care about, because of the indispensable role it plays in our lives.But if she is to make the case that consciousness plays an indispensable rolein our lives, the dualist must emphasize the special and unique qualities ofconsciousness, so as to make plausible the view that other phenomena wouldnot be able to play the role in our lives that consciousness does.

The dualist’s task is to show the indispensability of consciousness byexplaining the special ways in which consciousness is related to the thingsthat make human life interesting and worthwhile. Here of course the onto-logical nature of consciousness is directly relevant: it is because the qual-ity of consciousness is a relation that consciousness can relate us in specialways to the objects of our consciousness. And consciousness can relate usin special ways to objects of consciousness because of the unique proper-ties of the quality of consciousness. In the next section, I say somethingabout how the dualist can elucidate these special ways in which conscious-ness relates us to objects of consciousness.

VII

Given the simplicity of consciousness, it may not be obvious how the dual-ist is to elucidate these special ways in which consciousness relates us toobjects of consciousness. But although the dualist cannot say anythingabout what consciousness is, she can say something about what conscious-ness does, and that the special nature of consciousness will be manifestedin what consciousness can do. In other words, the dualist can describesome of the causal powers of consciousness, such causal powers beingdemonstrations of the special ways in which acts of consciousness relatetheir subjects to objects of consciousness.



The casual powers of consciousness will be manifestations of whatconsciousness is intrinsically, insofar as these causal powers flow from theintrinsic nature of the quality of consciousness. My claim here is thatconsciousness does have causal powers that flow from its intrinsic nature.Consciousness is a simple property; it is not itself a causal property of themind. It is, however, the underlying categorical basis of certain causalpowers of the mind. Moreover, some of these causal powers flow from theintrinsic nature of the quality of consciousness, in that it is not somecontingent law of nature that these casual powers are conjoined with thequality of consciousness but, rather, there is something about the intrinsicnature of the quality of consciousness that confers upon it the causalpowers in question—therefore it will be a necessary truth that conscious-ness possesses these causal powers. So although we cannot directlydescribe the special intrinsic nature of the quality of consciousness, we candescribe the causal powers that flow from its intrinsic nature and, by doingso, we describe its intrinsic nature in an indirect manner.

Suppose that some causal power P of consciousness flows from its nature.As already noted, the claim that consciousness has this causal power will bea necessary truth. Moreover, it will also be a synthetic truth, for the claim isthat consciousness, as a simple, noncausalproperty, is the basis of a certaincausalpower. Finally, I submit that this necessary synthetic truth can beknown a priori. I am claiming not only that there are causal powers that flowfrom the nature of consciousness, but also that these causal powers flow fromconsciousness in an intelligible way, in a way that makes sense, so to speak,and therefore in a way that enables reason to know about them a priori. Tosay that causal power P flows from consciousness is to say that there is some-thing about the intrinsic nature of consciousness that necessitates thatconsciousness has P. Given that P flows from consciousness in an intelligibleway, if reason reflects sufficiently on the intrinsic nature of consciousness(with which it is acquainted through observation), it will be able to detect thissubstantive necessary connection between the intrinsic nature of conscious-ness and P. (Reason just isthe capacity to detect intelligible necessary connec-tions.) Reason will be able to apprehend how the causal power flows from theintrinsic nature of consciousness. Whereas contingent causal laws can beknown only on the basis of observations of constant conjunction, an intelligi-ble necessary connection between a causal power and its underlying categor-ical basis can be known a priori. Earlier I noted that it is a synthetic a prioritruth that consciousness is relational, and that there are also other synthetic apriori truths to be known about consciousness. These other synthetic a prioritruths include truths about some of the causal powers of consciousness. Agood portion of the dualist’s work in developing a positive account of thenature of consciousness will involve setting forth these synthetic a prioritruths about the causal powers of consciousness.

Given that the existence of synthetic a priori truths is controversial, whydo I wish to saddle the dualist with the task of providing us with such

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truths? Because I have reflected on the nature of consciousness, and I seemto have discovered such truths—in particular, I seem to have discoveredthat the intrinsic nature of consciousness is such that it can be the basis ofcertain kinds of causal powers. (I shall give examples of such truthspresently.) Since I find nothing problematic about the idea of synthetic apriori knowledge, I take these apparent discoveries at face value.17 If aphilosopher insists that there is no synthetic a priori knowledge aboutconsciousness to be had, my first response is that such philosopher has notreflected sufficiently or carefully on the nature of consciousness.

My second response is that our possession of a priori synthetic knowl-edge about consciousness can explain some of our strongest intuitionsabout the nature of consciousness. Earlier, in Section III, I noted that weall share the dualist intuition that consciousness is a simple phenomenon.But I have suggested throughout this paper that many of us also stronglybelieve that consciousness is an important, indispensable, special, andeven unique phenomenon. I submit that it is because of our a priorisynthetic knowledge about consciousness that we have these additionalbeliefs about consciousness. Consciousness is unique in that it is the onlyphenomenon of which we can have a priori knowledge of some of thecausal powers that flow from its nature. (We cannot have a priori knowl-edge of any of the causal laws of physical nature.) And as I shall explainin more detail in Section VIII, it is the causal powers that flow from thenature of consciousness that make it important and indispensable. We takeconsciousness to be important because of the important things thatconsciousness can do. We understand it to be indispensable because wecan see (a priori) that consciousness is of a nature that enables it to do theseimportant things, and we have difficulty seeing how anything else couldhave a nature that would enable it to do such things.

Another strong intuition that we have about consciousness is thatepiphenomenalists are mistaken. Thus Chalmers, who has some sympathyfor epiphenomenalism, nevertheless acknowledges that “many people findit [epiphenomenalism] counterintuitive and repugnant” (1996, 150). Thatwe have a priori knowledge of some of the causal powers of consciousnessexplains nicely why so many of us find epiphenomenalism to be counter-intuitive and repugnant.18 Epiphenomenalists typically attempt to explain



17 Chisholm (1977, ch. 3) and BonJour (1998) are two philosophers who argue both forthe existence and the intelligibility of synthetic a priori knowledge.

18 Note that I am not claiming that we find epiphenomenalism to be logically contradic-tory. Although I am claiming that we have a priori knowledge of some of the causal powersof consciousness, the knowledge at issue is synthetic, not analytic, and so it is not a conse-quence of my view that epiphenomenalism is a logical contradiction. By contrast, analyticfunctionalism holds that we have a priori analyticknowledge of some of the causal powersof consciousness, and therefore it is a consequence of analytic functionalism that epiphe-nomenalism is a logical contradiction. But epiphenomenalism does not seem to us to be alogical contradiction, and so analytic functionalism faces an objection which my own viewavoids. I discuss analytic functionalism further below.

away our intuitions against epiphenomenalism by suggesting that wemistakenly infer from the constant conjunctionof certain kinds ofconscious states and other states that these conscious states are the causesof the other states.19 Such an account of our intuitions is unpersuasive: ifour only evidence against epiphenomenalism were observations ofconstant conjunction, then epiphenomenalism would not seem so repug-nant to us, for there are all sorts of cases where we are happy to acknowl-edge that As and Bs are constantly conjoined without there being a causalrelation between them. Rather, I claim, we feel so strongly that conscious-ness is causally efficacious because we know a priori that the intrinsicnature of consciousness is such as to make it causally efficacious.20

Perhaps it will be objected that Hume has already shown that we cannothave a priori knowledge of the causal powers of anything. Although Humecertainly claimsthat we cannot have a priori knowledge of the causal powersof anything, he has by no means shownthis claim to be true.21 Hume is tryingto “prove a negative”—his strategy is to consider a wide variety ofnoncausal properties, to insist that we can obtain no a priori knowledge ofcausal powers that flow from those particular noncausal properties, and thento argue that the representative nature of those noncausal properties providesgood inductive evidence for the general claim that we have no a prioriknowledge of the causal powers of anything.22 But in fact Hume’s choices ofnoncausal properties are not sufficiently representative: he does not considerthe noncausal (relational) property of consciousness. He does not considerthis property because he denies its existence. Hume, of course, is notoriousfor denying the existence of a self that is distinct from and conscious of“perceptions”; for Hume, all there is to the mind is a series of successive

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19 See, for example, Jackson 1982, 133, and Chalmers 1996, 151–52, 159. Note thatalthough Chalmers expresses sympathy with epiphenomenalism, he does not subscribe tothe view himself.

20 I should also note here that I find arguments for epiphenomenalistic dualism no morepersuasive than arguments for physicalism. All the arguments for epiphenomenalism withwhich I am familiar assume the premise that the “physical world is causally closed”; see, forexample, Chalmers 1996, 150. I have already explained why I need not accept this premiseif doing so commits me to rejecting the dualist intuition (Section III). I would similarly arguethat I have no reason to accept this premise if doing so commits me to rejecting my anti-epiphenomenalist intuition.

21 Hume “affirm[s], as a general proposition, which admits of no exception, that theknowledge of this relation [of cause and effect] is not, in any instance, attained by reason-ings a priori; but arises entirely from experience, when we find that any particular objectsare constantly conjoined with each other” (Enquiry IV.i, 27).

22 Hume also purports to have a direct a priori argument that shows that we can have noa priori knowledge of casual powers; see Treatise, 86–87 (I.iii.6): “There is no object, whichimplies the existence of any other if we consider these objects in themselves, and never lookbeyond the ideas which we form of them. Such an inference wou’d amount to knowledge,and wou’d imply the absolute contradiction and impossibility of conceiving any thingdifferent. But as all distinct ideas are separable, ’tis evident there can be no impossibility ofthat kind.” See also Enquiry, 29–30 (IV.i). For decisive criticism of this “separability ofdistinct ideas” argument, see Stroud 1977, 47–52.

perceptions that are related by resemblance and causation (TreatiseI.iv.6).Although Hume explicitly denies only the existence of a substance that isconscious of perceptions and not consciousness itself, it is clear that he iscommitted to denying both; if he were to admit the existence of acts ofconsciousness, he would need what are, in effect, substances to be thesubjects of those acts (Shoemaker 1986, 105). Note that, for Hume, thebundles of perceptions that constitute minds are related only by resemblanceand causation, not by consciousness; in fact, nowhere does Hume recognizea relation of consciousness. Hume’s experiential perceptions are such thingsas colors, tastes, smells, pains, emotions, and desires; they do not includestates of consciousness of colors, tastes, smells, or anything else. So weshould not be misled by Hume’s talk of “perceptions” into thinking that herecognizes the existence of a relation of perception or consciousness. Inshort, Hume says nothing to challenge my claim that we can have a prioriknowledge of some of the causal powers of consciousness.

Let me provide an example of a causal power of consciousness that wecan know about a priori. A sensory experience is a state in which a subjectis conscious of an object instantiating one or more sensory properties. It isa familiar idea that an experience has the causal power to produce truedemonstrative beliefs, to the effect that the object of experience has thesensory properties in question. My claim is that it is not merely a contin-gent law of nature that experiences can cause such beliefs, but that thiscausal power of experience intelligibly flows from the intrinsic nature ofthe consciousness that is part of the experience. Philosophers have tradi-tionally attempted to explain this causal power of experiences in terms ofthe subject of the experience being acquaintedwith, presentedwith, orgiven the object of experience. But what does such talk of acquaintance,presentation, and givenness really mean—what does it add to the mereclaim that the experiencer is conscious of the object of experience? Isuspect that the traditional philosopher is trying to get across the idea thatthere is something about the intrinsic nature of being conscious of an expe-riential object that necessitatesthat the experiencer will have the causalpower to form certain kinds of true beliefs about the experiential object.The traditional philosopher is also trying to get across the idea that thissubstantive necessary connection between consciousness and the causalpower in question is an intelligible connection, and can therefore bedetected a priori by reason—by reflection on the intrinsic nature of expe-riential consciousness, reason can just see that such consciousness is suitedto give rise to certain kinds of true beliefs about the experiential object. Sothe view that we can have a priori knowledge of necessary synthetic truthsabout some of the causal powers of consciousness turns out to be part of avery familiar and traditional way of thinking about the mind.23



23 The notion of acquaintance is most closely associated with Russell; see, for example,Russell 1911. For a more recent defense of a Russellian notion of acquaintance, seeMcDowell 1986.

Of course the view that there are necessary truths about the causalpowers of consciousness should be familiar even to contemporaryphilosophers, for it is a principal tenet of analytic functionalism thatcertain truths about the causal powers of mental states are necessarytruths. The functionalist errs in attempting to explain the necessity ofthese truths in terms of their supposed analyticity. In doing so, the func-tionalist ends up defining mental states in terms of their causal powers,and thus ignores what the dualist takes to be the essence of the mind: thesimple, noncausal property of consciousness. But the functionalist shouldbe credited with the insight that there are necessary truths to be knownabout the causal powers of mental states—an insight that is too oftenignored by dualists, despite its importance for the dualist account ofconsciousness. The dualist should agree with the functionalist's claim thatit is necessary that, for example, experiences can cause beliefs of certainkinds, but she should dispute the functionalist’s account of this necessity.The dualist should insist that the necessity at issue is a substantive neces-sary connection between the noncausal property of being conscious of asensory object and the causal power of producing certain kinds of beliefsabout that object. It is an important part of the dualist’s task to discernthose causal powers of consciousness that flow in a necessary way fromits intrinsic nature; in searching for these causal powers, the dualist wouldprobably do well to begin with those causal powers employed by thefunctionalists in their definitions.

There is of course more to the dualist’s task than merely listingsynthetic a priori truths about consciousness, whether these truths beabout the ontological nature of consciousness or about its causal powers.Ultimately, the dualist wants to demonstrate the importance of conscious-ness by showing how it is indispensably connected with features ofhuman life that give it interest and meaning. The dualist needs to employthe a priori synthetic truths about the ontological nature and causalpowers of consciousness to elucidate these connections betweenconsciousness and these other features of human life. In the next andconcluding section of the paper, I wish to give some idea of how the dual-ist might go about doing this. I will consider an important feature ofhuman life with which consciousness is connected, and briefly sketchhow synthetic a priori truths about consciousness can be employed todescribe the indispensable role that consciousness plays in relating us tothis feature of human life.

VIII

The feature of human life on which I want to focus is rationality. Humanbeings are rational beings, and certainly a good portion of the interest andvalue of human life comes from the role that rationality plays. As noted,the dualist’s project is to explain how consciousness is related to various

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important features of human life and, as part of this project, she needs toexplain how consciousness is related to rationality. In particular, the dual-ist needs to show that rationality presupposes consciousness: humans canbe rational in the ways that they are only because they are minds, that is,beings capable of instantiating the simple property of consciousness.

There are various aspects to our status as rational beings. On the onehand, we are rational in that we can reason—we can construct and evalu-ate arguments. An argument can be thought of as a series of propositions;a valid argument is one in which the proposition that is the conclusionlogically follows from the propositions that are the premises. When aperson reasons to a valid conclusion, she has a series of successivethoughts, the propositional contents of which constitute successive stepsin a valid argument. But of course there is more to valid reasoning thanhaving thoughts that mirror valid arguments in this way. It is not supposedto be some inexplicably lucky accident that our thought processes happento track logical relations between propositions. Rather, the person who isreasoning to a valid conclusion is supposed to be doing something thatintelligibly explains why she reaches that conclusion. In particular, theidea is that the thinker becomes conscious of some logical consequenceof the propositional contents of certain beliefs that she already has, andtherefore judges and forms the belief that such logical consequence istrue. So reasoning seems to require consciousness. The paradigm instanceof reasoning is conscious reasoning, that is, reasoning in which thesuccessive thoughts are conscious thoughts. A conscious thought is amental event in which the subject is related to a proposition via the simplequality of consciousness. The nature of consciousness is such that asubject that is related to a proposition in this way will intelligibly have thecausal power to become conscious of logical consequences of that propo-sition, and will therefore be able to reason to conclusions that logicallyfollow from that proposition. (In other words, it is a necessary synthetictruth that can be known a priori that a subject conscious of a propositionhas the causal power to become conscious of logical consequences of thatproposition.) It is only through consciousness that we become related topropositions in ways that enable us to reason about them.24

Our rationality is not exhausted by our capacity to reason; we are alsorational in that we can have mental states that are rational. For example,we can have beliefs that are rational or, equivalently, beliefs that are justi-



24 I wish to remain neutral on the question of whether there is such a thing as unconsciousreasoning. In particular, a process may count as an instance of unconscious reasoning if it isanalogous in relevant ways to conscious reasoning. My position here basically followsStich’s (1978), who argues that whether the unconscious processes described by cognitivescientists should count as inference depends upon whether these processes “are in importantways similar to more standard cases of inference” (513), where the more standard cases ofinference are those which relate beliefs, and beliefs are such that one has “an ability tobecome aware of or to be consciousof the contents of one’s beliefs” (504, emphasis mine).

fied, and insofar as beliefs that constitute knowledge are justified beliefs,our rationality makes it possible for us to possess knowledge. Here I willsimply state, and not defend, my view that a mental state is rational if andonly if it is caused in a rational way, and something is caused in a ratio-nal way if and only if it is the result of the exercise of a rational causalpower. And a causal power is rational if and only if there is a necessaryconnection between it and its categorical basis that can be detected apriori by reason. In the preceding section, I argued that consciousness hasrational casual powers, in that it has causal powers that intelligibly (i.e.,rationally) flow from its nature. Moreover, it seems plausible to hold thatphysical properties do not possess rational causal powers, for it does notseem that the laws of physical nature can be known a priori. The tradi-tional foundationalist view of justification is that only experiences andother beliefs can justify beliefs. Let us see how my claim that rationalmental states are mental states caused in a rational way can make sense ofthis traditional foundationalist view. We have seen how (conscious)beliefs can cause other beliefs in a rational way through the process ofreasoning. We have also seen how experiences can be rational causes ofbeliefs. Moreover, given that physical properties do not have rationalcausal powers, it seems reasonable to conclude, with the traditional foun-dationalists, that experiences and other beliefs are the only entities thatcan cause beliefs in a rational way. More generally, given that conscious-ness has rational causal powers, it follows that the mental states producedby the exercise of these powers will be rational mental states. And giventhat consciousness is the only property that has rational causal powers, itfollows that we must be conscious beings if we are to have the capacityto have rational mental states.

Beliefs may not be the only mental states that can be rational. Forexample, insofar as there is such a thing as practical reasoning, it will bepossible for conative states (such as desires) to be rational. And once weallow for the possibility of rational desires, we must also allow for thepossibility of things that have value, for presumably a thing has value ifit is rational to want it. So just as there are connections betweenconsciousness and rationality that the dualist needs to elucidate, so alsowill there be connections between consciousness and value that the dual-ist will need to explain.

I hope that I have said enough to give a sense of what the dualist’sconstructive agenda should be, and how she can proceed to carry it out.The dualist shouldcarry out the agenda I have set out for her becausedoing so is the best way to combat physicalism. We are all familiar withthe ways in which rationality and value contribute to the richness of ourlives. Once the dualist succeeds in showing that we can understand howthese and other matters contribute to the richness of our lives by tracingthe relations that these items bear to the simple, nonphysical property ofconsciousness, we shall also understand how consciousness itself indis-

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pensably contributes to the richness of our lives. And once we understandthat, we shall stop paying attention to those who wish to deny the exis-tence of this simple, wonderful property.

Corcoran Department of Philosophy512 Cabell Hall, University of VirginiaCharlottesville, VA 22904–4780, [email protected]

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Documents

Strategy for Dualism