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\title{Theories of Mind Report \\ Consciousness and Emotions}
\author{Samantha Lam \\
        s$0790004$ \\
        School of Informatics \\
        University of Edinburgh \\\\
        Instructor: Dr Paul Schweizer}
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\begin{center}\textbf{Abstract}
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This paper examines three key concepts of consciousness - \phe, \intent\;and \intro; how they relate to each other and how they relate to emotional processes.  Furthermore, I relate them all together to support the possible existence of unconscious \emt s along with some well-founded criticisms.  I finally proceed to conclude that we need to further fine-tune the differences between feelings and \emt s, and between \uncs\;and \intent\;to be able to get a solution to uniting some of the presented conflicting views.

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\section{Introduction}
``For many people understanding the place of mind in nature is the greatest philosophical problem.  Mind is often thought to be the last domain that stubbornly resists scientific understanding, and philosophers differ over whether they find that a cause for celebration or scandal. \cite{dict}''  This is the definition of the mind-body problem according to the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy.  The history of the dominating view has see-sawed between philosophers and psychologists arguing in favour and against dualism and monism.  Today it seems that the most popular view is physicalistic monism which asserts that the only existing substance is physical.  Emotions, similarly has been a subject of debate in the more experimentally scientific, psychology community and has been drawn closer to this materialist realm of \cs\;thanks to recent advances in neurophysiology.  

In this paper I first look at Norton Nelkin's paper, ``What Is Consciousness?'', to define three key concepts which are often debated and therefore somewhat important.  He argues against the overly emphasised relationship between the three but more importantly, for the purpose of this paper, that \phe\;is distinct from \intro.  Next, I present York Gunther's position who argues that phenomenality and intentionality are closely linked with regards to emotion and who likens feelings' phenomenology to shades of colour (as a metaphor to show their uniqueness).  

I then proceed to draw upon the sometimes controversial topic of unconscious emotions with the chapter entitled ``Emotional Consciousness'' from Jesse Prinz's book ``Gut Reactions'' \cite{prinz2004grp}.  Here, we get some conflicting views, in particular for Prinz's experimental evidence \emph{for} the case of unconscious \emt s, he is attacked with criticisms from Ned Block.  However, it is at this point that I begin to lose faith in Prinz's arguments as I report them as weak defences against such criticisms.  Finally, I conclude with the observation that as good as each individual argument I had discussed through on their own, there is one aspect of fine-tuning that has been overlooked - the need to make the distinction between feelings and emotions themselves, amongst others.

\section{Emotional Consciousness}
\subsection{Aspects of Consciousness and Emotion}
We begin by looking at Nelkin's paper \cite{nelkin1993c} where he gives us three common aspects of consciousness that are often discussed in the philosophical field - \phe\;(qualia), \intent\;and \intro.  Nelkin argues that the three are disassociated but that this is often overlooked because of their frequent co-occurrence in human experiences - ``rather than being three features of a single, non composite state, these three features characterize \emph{different} states of human beings.''  Nelkin then uses the common experience of looking at our watch when someone asks what time it is to demonstrate the three notions.
\begin{enumerate}
\item Nelkin's definition of \phe\;is also known as qualia.  \Phe\;is essentially the \emph{experience} of \emph{feeling} something, or simply the \emph{`feel'} of something.  Looking at the clock on the kitchen wall is qualitatively different from looking at your own wristwatch.  Reference is made to Nagel \cite{nagel1974lb} to further illustrate the point that even if we knew a bat's neurophysiology, we would still not be able to know what it feels like to be a bat, what a bat's sonar experience would be \emph{like}.
\item Next, the word \intent\;is more or less used to describe that experiences are \emph{of} something, the \emph{meaning} of an experience.  Again, in Nelkin's example, we take our experience of looking at the watch to be \emph{of} the watch.  The watch itself is \emph{outside}, i.e. independent, of our experience of it.  Nelkin's apt reference to Descartes is that in dreams we can dream of looking at a watch and experiencing the concept of the watch without having the actual, physical watch present.  So, in a way, \intent\;is knowing what an object is, knowing its properties without having to attend to `thinking about it'.  Nelkin likens \intent\;to a first-order linguistic-like representation and \intro\;as the second-order equivalent.  
\item Thus, \intro\;is akin to the notion of belief but on a less `practical' scale.  To be introspective is to be aware of the \phe\;and \intent\;of an experience.  In terms of the watch-looking experience, Nelkin uses the example such that if we were to be asked whether we saw what time it was, we would reply that we saw the watch, even though our attention was focussed on the watch and not on our actual \emph{seeing} of it.  This `believing' that we saw the watch is what we call introspection.  Further awareness of our representation of the watch is also introspection.  Simply, it can be loosely thought of as meta-cognition, `thinking about our thoughts'.
\end{enumerate}

Nelkin's aim is to show that these three features don't just belong to a single state, but rather \emph{can} exist (or co-exist) independently from each other (or another).  Moreover, he does so by counteracting arguments which have been used to show that \intent\;is tied in an \emph{essential} way to \phe\;and \intro\;(\`{a} la opposing to Searle \cite{searle3rmb,searle1983iep,searle1991cua,searle1990cei}).  According to Nelkin, Searle has four claims that are significant to his discussion:
\begin{enumerate}
\item A feature that characterizes \intent\;is the displaying of an aspectual character; all intentional states are a point of view.
\item Ordinary, familiar perceptual states are intentional states.
\item \Intent\;is essentially connected to \cs.
\item Unconscious states are intentional only because, and insofar as, they could become conscious. 
\end{enumerate}
Nelkin uses the occurrent, visual example of blindsightedness\footnote{This occurs when people who have suffered from brain damage lose their capacity for conscious vision.} to demonstrate his point.  In particular, the example where Torjussen (Weiskrantz 1986, 133--134) conducted experiments where blindsight patients were shown a semi-circle in either their preserved, introspectible fields, their `blind' field, or both.  The following table (Figure 1) shows the results succinctly:

\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
\includegraphics[scale = 0.7]{blindsight.png}
\caption{Results from Torjussen's experiment.}
\end{figure}

Thus, presentation of the semi-circle in their `blind' field and nothing in their sighted field resulted in the patients stating that they saw nothing; presentation of the semi-circle in their sighted field only then resulted in patients seeing the semi-circle (as one would expect).  However, when Torjussen showed a semi-circle in both of the patients' visual fields, it yielded the response of `seeing' a (complete) circle.  Nelkin proceeds to conclude that ``...it is reasonable to believe that the subjects see the circle, in part, because they \emph{see} a semi-circle in their blind fields''.  Thus, it would appear that introspection here didn't have access to the \phe\;of the semi-circle seen in the blind field yet \intent\;is found to retrieve the `seeing'.

Nelkin refers to further blindsight experiments which also establish this possibility of unintrospected \intent.  Similarly, these experiments also allude to the distinction between \phe\;and \intro, in particular where blindsight subjects were able to make colour discriminations even though they denied seeing any colours when asked \cite{stoerig1989wsb}. Despite these evidence, Nelkin notes that Searle still maintains to preserve the essential tie between the two states even though Searle recognises the existence of unintrospected \intent; he claims that unintrospected intentional states are intentional only if they are \emph{potentially} introspectable.  That is, the fourth claim by Searle that unconscious states are intentional only because they could become conscious.  We shall return to this theme in Section 2.2 but for now we retrace the fact that Nelkin is using occurrent, visual experiments as opposed to dispositional ones whereas York Gunther \cite{gunther2004pai} argues that \phe\;and \intent\;are closely linked with regards to emotions.

In his paper entitled `The \Phe\;and \Intent\;of \Emt', he argues that \emt s differ from higher cognitive states in that their phenomenology (analogous to Nelkin's definition of \phe; I use these terms interchangeably) is an indistinguishable aspect of their intentionality \cite{gunther2004pai}.  I further note that Nelkin does not tackle dispositional states such as emotions head on; or rather, he just notes that Searle mostly cites dispositional states to support his claims, transferring the conclusions to and ignoring the occurrent cases.  However, Nelkin himself appears to have done the same - he uses occurrent cases to show the distinctions he claims yet uses little dispositional evidence.  That aside, we return to Gunther's first claim of his paper, that each emotional attitude type is accompanied in experience by a distinctive feeling type.

Gunther supports this claim with reference to what philosophers have dubbed the `Feeling Theory'.  ``In identifying emotions with feelings, the theory presupposed that all there is to anger, say, is the feeling of anger'' (Gunther, 2004, 44).  Gunther further states that although this is a rather over-simplification to the theory of emotions, it is reasonable to assume the underlying claim: that \emt al attitudes have distinctive phenomenological types, i.e. \emt s are (associated with) distinct phenomenologies.  Naturally, challenges to this rather simplistic viewpoint arose and Gunther addresses William Lyons' \cite{lyons1980e} criticisms.  Lyons' first observation is where he claims that words like `throb' and `twinge' are associated with specific feelings, and that they can be connected to an emotion by phrases such as `a throb \emph{of}...' or `a twinge \emph{of}...', where the blank is filled in with the name of a specific emotion type (as phrased by Gunther).  Lyons' conclusion is that feelings such as throbs and twinges are thus not distinctly associated with any specific emotions.  Gunther simply answers that this implication is redundant by likening feelings to the familiar concept of colour, that it has different `shades' - ``Feelings, like colors, are more fine-grained than the nouns most of us have at our disposal.'' 

Gunther's answer to Lyons' second criticism is not as strong, however, which is ``based on the evidence we use to identify emotional experiences.''  Lyons' argument is, loosely put, that we cannot know what we are feeling just by thinking about it.  That is, he supposes that we are able to isolate an emotion's feeling from its cognitive preconditions, but Gunther states that this is misguided, whereby he then refers to his claim about the intimacy between \emt al phenomenology and \intent.  However, there is no need to go into detail about Gunther's claims as he gives Lyon the benefit of the doubt, assuming the position of the possibility of emotional feelings being isolated.  He reiterates his previous argument of different `shades' of feeling, that one may not be able to classify something felt to its appropriate emotion because one may not have grasped the appropriate notion or due to a classification error.  The example Gunther uses is the case where one may unintentially mistake grief for fear or anger.  He reuses this argument of misattribution when his claims of the intimacy between phenomenology and \intent\;are under attack from the concept of \uncs.  It is this weak argument of misattribution (he uses the example of a man who is in love with a woman for years without knowing it and rather than attributing to unconscious emotion, he speculates it's because of the failure of the man to master the concept of love, some kind of irrationality such as wishful thinking, or again, the classification error of platonic love, say), and his assumption of the traditional denial of unconscious \emt\;that makes his theory less convincing.  

Gunther's concluding claim is essentially that emotions have different contents if and only if they have different phenomenologies. He uses perceptual experiences as an analogy to consciousness to drive home his claim which is akin to Jesse Prinz's arguments for unconscious emotion \cite{prinz2004grp}.  However, since Prinz addresses the role of unconscious \emt\;in greater detail, we proceed to discuss his arguments (for it).

\subsection{Unconscious Emotions}
Prinz sets the frame for unconscious \emt s by appealing to those who are outright against it (Clore and LeDoux, \cite{ekman1994nef} under the chapter `Question 8: Can Emotions Be Nonconscious?'), and those who \emph{appear} to be for it yet their arguments seem to allude to the fact that \emph{something} must be conscious when we have an emotion (Greenspan, 1988; Zajonc, again from \cite{ekman1994nef}).  Moreover Prinz makes the important distinguishment between unconscious emotion, and unconscious processes leading to an \emt\;the idea of which he borrows from Freud.  It is Clore's argument which, rather than assuming \emt s are conscious\;by definition, says that \emt s must be conscious\;in order to serve their primary function in our mental lives; they alert us to things.  Prinz agrees that this may seem plausible at first, however, he notes that this `primary function of alerting' is not an obvious feature of \emt, and furthermore, that even if it were, it still doesn't mean that they must alert us in every instance.

Prinz notes that Clore's position is as with Freud, he agrees that we can be unconscious of the conditions that elicit our emotions.  Moreover, Prinz says that the most reasonable interpretation of Clore's argument is that \emt s have the function of making us focus on the elicitor:
``According to that argument, emotions must be conscious, because they cannot serve their proper function unconsciously.  At the same time, he (Clore) admits that we can repress knowledge of emotion elicitors.  If it is the function of emotions to cause us to focus on elicitors, then \emt s fail to serve their function when elicitors are repressed...he has no reason for denying that emotions can occur unconsciously'' (Prinz, 2004, 201).

A second flaw of Clore's argument is highlighted by Prinz - the premise that \emt s grab our attention which leads to the conclusion that they must be conscious.  Prinz notes that in order for this result to follow Clore must show that a mental state can grab our attention only if it is conscious.  Prinz shows that this needn't be the case as one can `imagine an unconscious warning system that detects problems and alerts us to them'.  The outcome of the warning system may be a conscious state but the warning itself can occur unconsciously.  

Prinz furthers his point with reference to Rosanthal's \cite{rosenthal1991ica} headache example (if one had a headache and was momentarily distracted from the pain, is the pain still there?) and by applying it to an emotive case.  Suppose you have a fear of flying and on board a flight that is about to take off, you start showing the physical motions of this fear (gripping the sides of the seats, perspiration etc.).  However, you have a good friend who tries to alleviate your fear by telling you an anecdote about going to a bald-headed barber.  You are momentarily captured by the story and even find it amusing enough to chuckle about it.  Afterwards, you realise that all this time your hands were clutching to the sides of the seat with equal vigour as before.  It is difficult to say whether the fear temporarily subsided or that you simply endured it unconsciously, and moreover, that the latter doesn't seem implausible.

More scientifically-based, Prinz appeals to laboratory experiments for more concrete evidence.  Reports from \cite{arntz1993esa,foltin1992sac} show that patients in both studies behave as though they were unaware of their `true feelings'.  The first was administering either an opioid antagonist drug or a placebo to women with spider phobia and reporting their behaviour and subjective experiences when confronted with a spider.  The latter were cocaine addicts who were subjected to two intravenous lines, one of saline and the other of varying dosages of cocaine and given control over a button which released an infusion from whichever line they choose.  As suggested, the results were such that the subjective experiences between the women with the spider were equally fearful and that the cocaine addicts claimed indifference to the two lines.  However, their behaviour showed otherwise; the women who'd taken the opioid antagonist drug were less able to complete given tasks with the spider in the room, i.e. their behaviour appeared to be `more afraid' than the women who'd taken the placebo, and the cocaine addicts unknowingly pressed the button for the line containing cocaine more often than not.

Naturally, such `experimental evidence' is open to scrutiny and Prinz addresses Ned Block's \cite{block1995cfc} criticisms of such. In particular, Prinz admits to assume that two experiences (or conscious states) are the same if the participants verbally claimed they were, e.g., rated them the same on a numerical scale.  This aspect alone is alarming.  It is not far-fetched to note that each people's personal measure of fear is different, in a similar way that each person has a different pain threshold.  Prinz acknowledges: ``Block argues that there is more than one kind of \cs.  He distinguishes between our conscious access to information (`access \cs') and our conscious qualitative experiences (`phenomenal \cs')...Block believes that there can be states that are phenomenally conscious but not access conscious (and conversely).''  As discussed by Nelkin earlier on, this concept is analogous to \phe\;existing independent of \intro, that introspection may not have access to a phenomenal experience.  I agree with this viewpoint in the occurrent experiences, and because Prinz uses such occurrent experiments to `prove the existence' of unconscious \emt s, I am sceptical of Prinz's premise.  Prinz's objection is that it `proves too much' - ``If verbal reports cannot be trusted, then phenomenal \cs\;is exquisitely hard to measure''.  Is this not rather obviously true given the definition of phenomenal \cs, i.e. qualia.  It is an individual's `feel' of something, how could one quantify this `feel'?  At best, those experiment quantitative results are guided approximations.

Thus, rather than denying Block's argument, Prinz simply claims (plausibly) that there is no way of checking the validity of either, gives himself the benefit of the doubt and proceeds.  I find it furtherly ironic that he uses Block's very same argument (access/phenomenal distinction) to assist in his endorsement of William James' presumption that \emt al \cs\;is \cs\;of changes in bodily states, moreover, that one cannot experience an \emt\;without a change in bodily states (c.f. (Prinz, 2004, 207) for example(s)).  However, this is just a side note; more importantly we continue to quote Prinz's ultimate goal:

``To find a unified theory of \cs, I recommend the following strategy.  We should begin by investigating the best understood sensory modality, vision.  If we can arrive at a theory of how visual \cs\;arises, we can then look to see whether other sense modalities obey the same principles.  If they do, we will have a unified theory of \cs'', (Prinz, 2004, 208).

Apart from the optimistic assumption that it would be possible to carry over visual \cs\;to other senses, there are also a couple of major flaws with his prelude to this theory.  I shall therefore proceed to expose these shortcomings and thus conclude that his `unified theory of \cs' is also ultimately flawed.  Prinz's alleged four commonalities between forms of \cs\;(again, quoted directly from (Prinz, 2004, 208):
\begin{enumerate}
\item All conscious states can be reported, if we try, barring brain injury or other impediments.
\item All and only conscious states seem to be candidates for entering episodic memory.  If you have a memory of a specific event from the past, it will be a memory of an event that was experienced consciously.
\item All conscious states can be affected by attention.  If you get distracted by one thing, you may lose your conscious awareness of another.
\item All conscious states \emph{feel} like something.
\end{enumerate}
Starting with Prinz's first claim, I still maintain that this is not defended enough against Nelkin and Block's access/phenomenal distinction which could debunk this claim.  So already, Prinz has a weak initial claim.  Secondly, although the claim itself \emph{seems} plausible, it is very vague.  He makes no discussion for the case of false memory, the misattribution theory he uses so fondly to defend his arguments.  Surely, a false memory is a candidate for entering episodic memory yet it isn't truly a conscious state.  Rather, it is a misrepresentation of a conscious state, it was not actually experienced, never mind consciously.  The third claim is reasonable, both conscious and unconscious states can indeed be affected by attention.  The fourth claim is again rather vague.  His only statement referring to it is that ``the very fact that different states have phenomenology cries out for explanation''.  He doesn't make any distinction of whether these conscious states are accompanied by a distinct phenomenal experience which, in the case of emotions, seems to be the case (as we had discussed viz. Gunther).  

Moreover, his `theory' is based on the insights of Ray Jackendoff \cite{jackendoff1987cac} combined with Olshausen et al.'s \cite{olshausen1994nmv} theory of attention.  Jackendoff's insights being that our sensory systems, which are either conscious or unconscious, are hierarchically organised.  With this, Prinz suspects that the missing link to Jackendoff's theory is Olshausen et al.'s study of attention - that it serves as a process which modulates how information flows within the brain.  Unfortunately, using these approaches, it appears that Prinz uses \emt s as a medium for his theory of \cs\;which is actually based on our senses, and overall, he takes a rather practical, physicalist approach.  Even though he does proceed to analogise the \cs\;of his visual model with the \cs\;of \emt s, it is his overall failure to address his four assumptions of consciousness in terms of emotions that causes me to feel that what he outlines is more of an architecture of \cs\;rather than a `unified' theory.

\section{Conclusion}
As I have stated at the end of the previous section, I do not regard Prinz's proposal for a unified theory of \cs\;enlightening.  Rather, that it is a superficial architecture of cognition than a sound theory of \cs.  The source of this discontent arises from his inadequate defence of the assumptions made for his conjecture.  Out of the four `commonalities of \cs', I found fault with three - two are rather vague statements roughly equivalent to qualia and \intro, but with no context, and the remaining claim is restricting \cs\;to memory, and moreover, to neurophysiology.  In addition, his selective usage of Block's second criticism (access/phenomenal distinction) gives an inconsistent impression; on one hand, he argues that there is no way of proving or disproving its validity and thus takes the latter assumption to support his claim of the existence of unconscious emotions.  Then on the other hand, he assumes the former assumption that one may have the \cs\;of fear without \phe\;to undermine the possibility that one may not have a corresponding physical perturbation to an emotion.  This straddling on the fence quality in one of his arguments consequently makes one wary of his other arguments.  

However, Prinz's dispositional arguments coupled with Nelkin's less quantitatively-based mentioned blindsight experiments provide a convincing reason to believe either in the existence of unconscious \emt s and/or that a phenomenal experience is distinct from accessing a phenomenal experience.  The possibility of the former draws upon Searle's alleged fourth claim from Nelkin's paper \cite{nelkin1993c}; Unconscious states are intentional only because, and insofar as, they could become conscious.  The unconscious process manifests itself as a conscious state.  Similarly, the possibility of the latter draws upon Block's theory and Nelkin's blindsight patient evidence.  An important distinguishing factor here that hasn't been stressed enough is only mentioned by Nelkin as part of an argument against Searle - that Searle tends to use dispositional examples as support, neglecting occurrent ones.  However, Nelkin has done essentially the equivalent with occurrent ones and neglecting dispositional ones with reference to the non-dependency of \intro/\intent\;and \phe\;(he does, however, make use of dispositional examples for distinguishing between \intent\;and \intro\;viz. the phenomenon of problem-solving).  It seems that there isn't enough distinction between these two types of states.

What I therefore propose is that one should look as these states themselves as independent from each other.  The main motivator for this kind of approach is because of the subtle difference between feeling and emotion.  Taking from online dictionaries, they are as close to being accurately defined as follows ([1] being \footnote{http://www.askoxford.com/dictionaries/?view=uk} and [2]= being \footnote{http://dictionary.reference.com/}):\\
\textbf{Emotion:} 
\begin{enumerate}
\item An affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness [2].
\item A strong feeling, such as joy or anger [1]. 
\item Instinctive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge[1].
\end{enumerate}
\textbf{Feeling:}
\begin{enumerate}
\item The general state of consciousness considered independently of particular sensations, thoughts, etc. [2]
\item An emotion or emotional perception or attitude [2].
\item An emotional state or reaction [1].
\end{enumerate}
Now that one can see their more definitive differences, it is not implausible to, say, attribute occurrent experiences to feelings and dispositional ones to emotions (or vice-versa,e.g in terms of feelings to occurrent experiences).  Either way, it is this type of correspondence that appears to be overlooked throughout the papers discussed.  Nelkin, Gunther and Prinz all seem to assume that feeling and emotion are essentially the same, which they are \emph{essentially}, but not so much when theories are so fine-tuned to the subtle differences, e.g. between \intent\;and \intro.  Therefore, my conclusion is that the existence of unconscious \emt s corresponds to dispositional states and that phenomenal experience is distinct from accessing a phenomenal experience when it is applied to occurrent experiences.
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