Analysis Advance Access published December 3, 2012

BOOK REVIEW
The Consciousness Paradox: Consciousness, Concepts and Higher-Order Thoughts
By ROCCO J. GENNARO MIT, 2012. x 378 pp. 27.95
In this ambitious book Gennaro refines his earlier version of the Higher-Order Thought theory of consciousness and attempts to see off opponents. The paradox consists of the seeming inconsistency of the following theses, which he finds independently plausible: that a version of the HOT theory is true; that the hard problem (what is phenomenal consciousness?) can be solved; that infants and most animals have conscious mental states; that the contents of all conscious experiences are covered by the subjects own concepts; that most concepts are acquired (although there is a core of innate concepts); and that there is a plausible account of how HOT theory might be realized in the brain and can lead to an informative neurophysiological research agenda (2). He argues that these theses are not only mutually consistent but true, and persuasively rebuts numerous objections, although for me (a sceptic about HOT theories) fundamental difficulties remain. According to the standard HOT theory, defended most notably by Rosenthal, what makes a persons mental state conscious is that it is the object of an appropriate higher-order mental state which is itself unconscious. Suppose I see a red traffic light. Then if I also have an unconscious thought with the content, I am now seeing a red light, this higher-order thought ensures that my experience is conscious. Gennaros wide intrinsicality view (WIV) differs from the standard view in maintaining that what is conscious is not the lower-order visual experience but a complex: the-experiences-being-the-object-of-the-unconscious-HOT. You might object that this merely redescribes what the standard HOT theory specifies, so that the two are ontologically equivalent. Gennaro replies that the requirement that the two states form a complex must be taken seriously: there has to be a psychologically real integration between the mental state and the higher-order metapsychological state which targets it. Some well-known objections appealing to the possibility of misrepresentation are thereby avoided. HOT theory says that when one has a conscious mental state M, it is accompanied by a HOT that I am in M (61). This Kantian claim means that the subject must have the concepts involved in such higher-order thoughts, and a common objection is that although infants and some animals are surely conscious, they lack the necessary cognitive sophistication. While a few HOT theorists (notably Carruthers) grit their teeth and deny consciousness to infants and animals, Gennaro does not. Yet he still defends conceptualism, according to which the content of a subjects perceptual experience is
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Analysis Reviews Vol 0 | Number 0 | 2012 | pp. 13 doi:10.1093/analys/ans154 The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

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fully specifiable in terms of that subjects own concepts (136). One challenge to this view is the priority argument. How could I have come by my concept RED without first having had the right sort of experience? But how could I have had such an experience if it depended on having that very concept already? This reasoning is a serious threat to Gennaros position; he suggests that concept acquisition may be the real hard problem (185). His response exploits two plausible theses: that conceptpossession is a matter of degree, and that we all infants and some animals included possess a stock of innate core concepts such as OBJECT, SPACE, CAUSE, together with demonstrative concepts and an I-concept. He shows ingenuity in bringing these theses to bear on objections, attacking Carrutherss denial of consciousness to infants and animals and arguing that in any case the WIV does not entail that non-linguistic creatures cannot be conscious. But why should the fact that a higher-order unconscious state is directed at a lower-order unconscious state result in a conscious state? Why shouldnt there be unconscious states with that structure? Gennaros response to this familiar challenge depends on the Transitivity Principle: (TP) A conscious state is a state whose subject is, in some way, aware of being in it (28).

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He comments, the idea that I could be having a conscious state while totally unaware of being in that state seems very odd (if not an outright contradiction). A mental state of which the subject is completely unaware is clearly an unconscious state. Such considerations lead him to regard (TP) as an a priori or conceptual truth about the nature of conscious states (28), hence as a solid foundation for HOT theories. But his reasoning hereabouts is hard to pin down. Two senses of being aware of a conscious state seem to be in play. In one of these the assumption is that being aware of (for example) a pain is just having it, and the point is that: (A) If someone supposedly in pain is completely unaware of the pain, then the pain is not conscious.

On that basis denying (TP) would indeed involve a contradiction. The trouble is that (A) provides no support for the view that what makes the pain conscious is that it is the object of a higher-order state. However, Gennaro may have in mind a different sense of being aware of a conscious state, in which the point is that: (B) If someone supposedly in pain is unaware of the fact that he or she is in pain, then the pain is not conscious.

(B) entails that a subject cannot be in pain unless they conceptualize it as pain. Read in that way (TP) does seem to support the HOT thesis. The trouble now is that it also ensures that (TP) is contentious and question-begging, and still doesnt help to explain why the targeting of a lower-order unconscious state by a higher-order unconscious state should result in a conscious state. Given (TP)s vital role in the overall argument, I was surprised to find it so shakily defended. So although there is much that I admire in this book, I am not persuaded by its defence of the HOT theory and the associated

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claim that a version of the theory solves the hard problem. However, Gennaro makes a good case for the mutual consistency of the theses supposed to constitute the paradox. ROBERT KIRK University of Nottingham Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK robert.kirk@nottingham.ac.uk
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