Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LXIV, No. 2, March 2002

Reply to Fumerton

KEITH LEHRER

University of Arizona

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to reply to such a distinguished critic as Richard Fumerton and to clarify both my position and why I am reluctant to accept the alternative account of direct awareness Fumerton offers to us. Here are my replies. First of all, Fumerton says that the problem of represen- tation is the problem of accounting for the security from error of self-present- ing states. That is not the problem of representation I was concerned with in my paper, though what I said had some relevance to that problem. What I said is the following:

The first problem is that the experience of conscious states fails to include the representation of them. The representation of such states is left over as a kind of residue of representation. I call this the representation problem.

The problem of representation I was concerned with rests on the assump- tion, one that I ultimately reject, that self-presenting states, conscious states, must be represented by states that are distinct from them. The problem of representation is that, given the assumption, we must always be left with a residue of another state because every state must be represented by another state. So the assumption on which problem of representation is based threat- ens us with a dilemma forcing us to choose between unrepresented conscious states or an infinite regress of representations. The assumption is rejected ad the problem solved with the doctrine of exemplarization which has the result that the self-presenting state represents itself. Exemplarization involves a form of representation that, as a contingent matter of fact (contingent on the success of the process of exemplarization) will insure the truth of the repre sentation.

This form of representation by exemplarization does not preclude other forms of representation, other beliefs concerning our conscious states, which may be in error. That there are some forms of representation of states that cannot be in error does not preclude other forms of representation that can be in error. I have argued for a quarter of a century that we can have beliefs about conscious states that can be in error, and I still hold that view. One possibil- ity of error arises from the fact that we can believe that we are in conscious

436 KEITH LEHRER

states by inference from false premises rather than by the exemplarization which would insure the truth of the belief. Successful exemplarization yields truth, but that is a contingent fact only, and not all beliefs about conscious states involve the exemplarization of them.

It is useful to consider the alternative view offered by Fumerton, direct awareness. Why not explain the character of self-presenting states in terms of direct awareness? Direct awareness seems to me to leave us with an unex- plained surd. I have a pain. Fumerton says that I am directly aware of the pain. I am, of course, aware of it and, perhaps, in the way he uses the word “directly”, Fumerton is correct in saying that it is direct. But here I side with Reid who would say that to be directly aware of a pain is another way, and a grammatically misleading way, of saying that I am pained. Fumerton says direct awareness is a sui generis relation. I think it is a will-of-the wisp rela- tion, that is, no real relation at all. To say it is sui generis is, I assume, to say we must accept that we have such a relationship to our sensations with- out asking for any explanation of the relation.

However, I know that I have the pain only when I have some conception of the pain. So we need an explanation of the conception. That is what I have attempted to explain with exemplarization. In short, direct awareness is a kind of surd, something that does not admit of explanation, and, to be candid, the surd is something I eschew as a philosopher. I think everything admits of explanation. That will lead us to an explanatory loop. The choice is between a loop, a regress and a surd. The advantage of the loop over the surd is it suits the philosophical methodology of explaining everything that we can and leav- ing as little unexplained as must. I do not think we need to leave anything unexplained if we notice the advantage and the necessity of the loop.

A congenitally blind person can only indirectly think of color sensation Fumerton affirms. When a person has the sensation, on the other hand, he can think about it directly. So says Fumerton, and there is something to i t . But I want to know how he can think about the pain directly once he has i t . The answer, “By being directly aware of it,” seems no more informative than the answer, “By having it.” The latter leaves me wanting an explanation of how having the sensation enables us to think about it, to conceive of it. My answer is by exemplarizing the pain and making it conceptual.

Fumerton speaks of the intrinsic nature of the pain. He says that we can think of a sensations without thinking of them indirectly through some prop- erties they have. If our thinking about the sensation, a pain, is the thought that is required for us to know that it is pain, then we must think of a prop- erty of it, for we must think of it as being a pain. The question that remains is how. The answer that we are think of it by being directly aware of it seems to me to amount to nothing more than the claim that we think of the pain by having it. No doubt that is true. But the question that remains is-how do we

SYMPOSIUM 437

think about the pain by being directly aware of it, or, as I prefer, by having it. My answer is exemplarization.

Let me briefly consider the question about Hume. Hume says that particu- lar ideas, which are faded impressions, are used to stand for other ideas. So, strictly speaking what Hume says is that particular ideas stand for other ideas and become general in that way. The quote Fumerton gives is an interesting one. Some impressions do not represent the world or other ideas. An impres- sion is not by itself an idea. But once impressions are exemplarized, they become ideas. It is agreement of ideas to other ideas or to matters of fact that gives rise to truth or falsity. An idea is not just an impression, and it is ideas that have intentionality that gives rise to the possibility of truth or falsity. How do impressions become ideas? By becoming conceptual, by being used to fulfill a certain functional role. The exemplarization of the impression, of the conscious state, turns it into an idea, something conceptual and inten- tional, as a result of acquiring a functional role in inference. I propose this as an interpretation of how particular impressions become ideas which possess intentionality in Hume’s philosophy.

Now exemplarization can occur by convention, but my proposal, as Fumerton rightly discerns, is that the exemplarization of our conscious states occurs by nature. This is a psychological hypothesis and an explanation. It is intended to explain how we come to have an immediate conception or repre sentation of our conscious states. At a certain stage of conceptual develop- ment we automatically exemplarize our conscious states. I have not said as much as would be useful about exemplarization. I can say this much. Gener- alization is a necessary but not sufficient condition of exemplarization. The functional role in inference must supplement generalization to achieve exem- plarization. Is functionalism adequate to give us an account of intentionality? I will put it this way. Hume, if I am right, thought the functional role of the impression converted it to an idea. Do we have a better account? Chisholm would not have accepted functionalism, I am confident. Maybe there is a better account of intentionality, but I do not know what it is. I remain open to alternative theories. But if the choice is between functionalism and the surd, my philosophical preference for explanation leads me to side with Hume and functionalism.

438 KEITH LEHRER