scholarly journals Higher-order awareness, misrepresentation and function

2012 ◽  
Vol 367 (1594) ◽  
pp. 1424-1438 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Striking Difference ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
First Order ◽  
Cognitive States ◽  
Considerable Benefit ◽  
And Function ◽  
Psychological Processing ◽  
In Virtue Of

Conscious mental states are states we are in some way aware of. I compare higher-order theories of consciousness, which explain consciousness by appeal to such higher-order awareness (HOA), and first-order theories, which do not, and I argue that higher-order theories have substantial explanatory advantages. The higher-order nature of our awareness of our conscious states suggests an analogy with the metacognition that figures in the regulation of psychological processes and behaviour. I argue that, although both consciousness and metacognition involve higher-order psychological states, they have little more in common. One thing they do share is the possibility of misrepresentation; just as metacognitive processing can misrepresent one's cognitive states and abilities, so the HOA in virtue of which one's mental states are conscious can, and sometimes does, misdescribe those states. A striking difference between the two, however, has to do with utility for psychological processing. Metacognition has considerable benefit for psychological processing; in contrast, it is unlikely that there is much, if any, utility to mental states' being conscious over and above the utility those states have when they are not conscious.

Seeming to Seem

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Order Theory ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Psychological State ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
First Person ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Higher Order Theory ◽  
The Third Person

Dennett’s account of consciousness starts from third-person considerations. I argue this is wise, since beginning with first-person access precludes accommodating the third-person access we have to others’ mental states. But Dennett’s first-person operationalism, which seeks to save the first person in third-person, operationalist terms, denies the occurrence of folk-psychological states that one doesn’t believe oneself to be in, and so the occurrence of folk-psychological states that aren’t conscious. This conflicts with Dennett’s intentional-stance approach to the mental, on which we discern others’ mental states independently of those states’ being conscious. We can avoid this conflict with a higher-order theory of consciousness, which saves the spirit of Dennett’s approach, but enables us to distinguish conscious folk-psychological states from nonconscious ones. The intentional stance by itself can’t do this, since it can’t discern a higher-order awareness of a psychological state. But we can supplement the intentional stance with the higher-order theoretical apparatus.

Self-Representationalist Theories of Consciousness

2020 ◽  
pp. 457-481
Author(s):  
Tom McClelland
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Lower Order ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Conscious State ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Order Component ◽  
Intimate Contact ◽  
In Virtue Of

Self-Representationalists hold that conscious mental states are conscious in virtue of suitably representing themselves, and that awareness of a mental state is achieved by representing oneself as being in that state. Where Higher-Order Representationalists claim that awareness of a mental state is conferred by a distinct mental state that represents it, Self-Representationalists instead argue that conscious mental states represent themselves. This chapter explores why Self-Representationalists make this move away from Higher-Order Representationalists and describes the internal divisions among Self-Representationalist theories. These divisions concern: whether conscious states have distinguishable components corresponding to their lower-order and higher-order content; whether the higher-order component of a conscious state (if such there is) is itself represented by that state. The challenges faced by Self-Representationalist include: the threat of collapsing into a Higher-Order Representationalist theory; the worry that the proposed self-representing states resist naturalization; and the danger of failing to accommodate the intimate contact we have with our own conscious states.

scholarly journals Expressivism, self-knowledge, and rational agency

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Blackwood
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Rational Agency ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
First Order ◽  
Special Character ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Present Tense

Abstract One family of thought about self-knowledge has argued that authoritative self-ascriptions express a form of higher-order knowledge whose special character is explained by the role that knowledge plays in rational agency. In contrast to this “regulative model”, according to Wittgenstein’s treatment of self-knowledge authoritative self-ascription of one’s present-tense mental states is explained by the fact that sincere self-ascriptions express the very states they self-ascribe. The Wittgensteinian account is epistemologically deflationary, and it makes no use of higher-order thought to account for the distinctive features of self-ascriptions. It is argued that the regulative model faces difficulties that both undermine it and reinforce the Wittgensteinian explanation. Making use of ideas from Donald Davidson and Richard Moran, an alternative first-order sketch of rational agency consistent with the expressivist view is offered.

scholarly journals More of me! Less of me!: Reflexive Imperativism about Affective Phenomenal Character

Mind ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 128 (512) ◽  
pp. 1013-1044 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Barlassina ◽  
Max Khan Hayward
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Intentional Content ◽  
First Order ◽  
The Right ◽  
In Virtue Of

AbstractExperiences like pains, pleasures, and emotions have affective phenomenal character: they feel pleasant or unpleasant. Imperativism proposes to explain affective phenomenal character by appeal to imperative content, a kind of intentional content that directs rather than describes. We argue that imperativism is on the right track, but has been developed in the wrong way. There are two varieties of imperativism on the market: first-order and higher-order. We show that neither is successful, and offer in their place a new theory: reflexive imperativism. Our proposal is that an experience P feels pleasant in virtue of being (at least partly) constituted by a Command with reflexive imperative content (1), while an experience U feels unpleasant in virtue of being (at least partly) constituted by a Command with reflexive imperative content (2): More of P!Less of U!If you need a slogan: experiences have affective phenomenal character in virtue of commanding us Get more of me! Get less of me!

scholarly journals Conceptualizing Consciousness

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Berger ◽  
Richard Brown
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Begging The Question ◽  
In Virtue Of

One of the most promising theories of consciousness currently available is higher-order thought (“HOT”) theory, according to which consciousness consists in having suitable HOTs regarding one’s mental life. But critiques of HOT theory abound. We explore here three recent objections to the theory, which we argue at bottom founder for the same reason. While many theorists today assume that consciousness is a feature of the actually existing mental states in virtue of which one has experiences, this assumption is in tension with the underlying motivations for HOT theory and arguably false. We urge that these objections, though sophisticated, trade on this questionable conception of consciousness, thereby begging the question against HOT theory. We then explain how HOT theory might instead understand consciousness.

scholarly journals The Misunderstood Higher-Order Approach to Consciousness

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Brown ◽  
Hakwan Lau ◽  
Joseph LeDoux
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Functions ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Order Theory ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Intermediate Position ◽  
First Order ◽  
Global Workspace ◽  
Episodic Memories ◽  
Higher Order Theory

Critics have often misunderstood the higher-order theory (HOT) of consciousness. Here we clarify its position on several issues, and distinguish it from other views such as the global workspace theory (GWT) and early sensory models, such as first-order local recurrency theory. The criticism that HOT overintellectualizes conscious experience is inaccurate because in reality the theory assumes minimal cognitive functions for consciousness; in this sense it is an intermediate position between GWT and early sensory views, and plausibly accounts for shortcomings of both. Further, compared to other existing theories, HOT can more readily account for complex everyday experiences, such as of emotions and episodic memories, and make HOT potentially useful as a framework for conceptualizing pathological mental states.

scholarly journals Can Comparative Psychology Crack its Toughest Nut?

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 589-652
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Povinelli
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Psychology ◽  
Higher Order Thinking ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Step Method ◽  
Folk Physics ◽  
First Order ◽  
Experimental Approaches ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient ◽  
Current Paradigm

What is the likelihood that humans will ever determine if other animals engage in higher-order thinking? In examining what has happened in the twenty years since the publication of our book, Folk Physics for Apes, I conclude that comparative psychologists, the academic stalwarts charged with making progress on this front, are stuck in a series of intractable, and largely unacknowledged, conceptual problems. Because higher-order mental states depend on the existence of first-order, perceptually-based representations of objects and events, and because those first-order representations are necessary and sufficient to explain current experimental and observational results, the approaches deployed by comparative psychologists are doomed to failure. I examine this Asymmetric Dependency Problem in detail and show how the failure to confront its implications leads to viciously circular arguments that cannot be fixed within the current paradigm of research. Next, I offer a seven-step method for isolating the common structural flaw in any given experiment, and work through several examples. Finally, I examine the central claims that my colleagues and I made in Folk Physics through the lens of the Asymmetric Dependency Problem and current research trends. Although the optimism we expressed that experimental approaches could implicate the presence of higher-order thinking in animals requires considerable dampening, the challenges we isolated remain as vital today as they were twenty years ago.

Dual systems for all: Higher-order, role-based relational reasoning as a uniquely derived feature of human cognition

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Povinelli ◽  
Gabrielle C. Glorioso ◽  
Shannon L. Kuznar ◽  
Mateja Pavlic
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Reasoning ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Important Case ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Relational Reasoning ◽  
Dual Systems ◽  
First Order ◽  
Reasoning System ◽  
Role Based

Abstract Hoerl and McCormack demonstrate that although animals possess a sophisticated temporal updating system, there is no evidence that they also possess a temporal reasoning system. This important case study is directly related to the broader claim that although animals are manifestly capable of first-order (perceptually-based) relational reasoning, they lack the capacity for higher-order, role-based relational reasoning. We argue this distinction applies to all domains of cognition.

Challenging the Multidimensional Conception of Perceived Person-Environment Fit

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Julian M. Etzel ◽  
Gabriel Nagy
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
University Students ◽  
Educational Outcomes ◽  
Factor Model ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Substantial Proportion ◽  
Unique Variance ◽  
First Order ◽  
Person Environment Fit ◽  
Order Factor

Abstract. In the current study, we examined the viability of a multidimensional conception of perceived person-environment (P-E) fit in higher education. We introduce an optimized 12-item measure that distinguishes between four content dimensions of perceived P-E fit: interest-contents (I-C) fit, needs-supplies (N-S) fit, demands-abilities (D-A) fit, and values-culture (V-C) fit. The central aim of our study was to examine whether the relationships between different P-E fit dimensions and educational outcomes can be accounted for by a higher-order factor that captures the shared features of the four fit dimensions. Relying on a large sample of university students in Germany, we found that students distinguish between the proposed fit dimensions. The respective first-order factors shared a substantial proportion of variance and conformed to a higher-order factor model. Using a newly developed factor extension procedure, we found that the relationships between the first-order factors and most outcomes were not fully accounted for by the higher-order factor. Rather, with the exception of V-C fit, all specific P-E fit factors that represent the first-order factors’ unique variance showed reliable and theoretically plausible relationships with different outcomes. These findings support the viability of a multidimensional conceptualization of P-E fit and the validity of our adapted instrument.

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