Please can someone tell me/(tell me where to learn) what is meant by ‘first order’ and ‘higher order’ in this context? I am familiar with the terms from logic but I don’t think this is what the terms mean here.
Higher-order theories of consciousness try to explain the distinctive properties of consciousness in terms of some relation obtaining between the conscious state in question and a higher-order representation of some sort (either a higher-order perception of that state, or a higher-order thought or belief about it).
From The Higher-Order Model of Consciousness I gather the following terms: mental state seems to be synonymous with thought, I am treating this term as an roughly undefined and trying to fill it in as I read. The first order thoughts are those direct from sensory modalities whereas higher order thoughts are those which observe thoughts. The example of being hungry is given: this is a first order thought but the observation that you are hungry is a second order thought and so on.
Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness goes into more depth about the historic context of the idea of HOTs (higher order thoughts) and how they relate to three subtle definitions centered around the notion of consciousness. Creature consciousness is defined as simply being awake, sentient and/or aware (presumably it simply means one is interpreting first order thoughts) and transitive consciousness is being conscious of something by thinking of it. The central question is posed: which mental states are state-conscious (to say that a mental state is “conscious” means that one is immediately transitive-conscious of it). The example is given: subliminal perception is not a conscious state, even though one is conscious of what they are perceiving.
The transitivity principle is introduced which states: a mental state is conscious if one is conscious of it in some suitable way. He claims this definition is not circular. The conclusion is:
Higher-order theories of consciousness capture the compelling folk-psychological idea that conscious states are those we are conscious of in some suitable way, and they fit well with results in experimental psychology. It is likely that some version of a higher-order theory will prove to be correct.
In Explaining Consciousness a rough approach to the problem of state-consciousness is sketched: starting with the true statement “if one is not aware of a state, it is not a conscious one”, we get “a state is conscious if one is aware of it”—but this is too strong a statement to be true (subliminal awareness is one counter-example) so eliminating all counter-examples should lead to a necessary and sufficient criteria for which mental states are conscious. The apparent circularity from before is clarified, he says “my strategy is to explain a state’s being a [state-]conscious state in terms of our being [creature-]conscious of that state in some particular way”.
He asks what is special about the way we are transitively conscious of our mental states when they are conscious states. He rejects the idea of an inner-sense or higher-order perception that observes thoughts as a modality, then poses the “only alternative” that we are conscious of our conscious states by virtue of having thoughts about them. It is immediately concluded that a conscious HOT must have content roughly describing that one is in a mental state. It is also argued that a a mental state is conscious when accompanied by a noninferential, nondispositional and assertoric higher order thought that one is in that mental state. He goes on to analyze this hypothesis.
The next section mentions that “when a mental state is not conscious we do not experience any of its qualitative properties”, I don’t know what “qualitative” means in this context. Apparently “there is nothing like it’s like to be in that state” but that doesn’t make sense.
Please can someone tell me/(tell me where to learn) what is meant by ‘first order’ and ‘higher order’ in this context? I am familiar with the terms from logic but I don’t think this is what the terms mean here.
The definition from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-higher is too circular for me to understand:
edit: I think the background material necessary is all here http://davidrosenthal.jottit.com/ I will update this after reading it.
edit: Here are my notes so far:
From The Higher-Order Model of Consciousness I gather the following terms: mental state seems to be synonymous with thought, I am treating this term as an roughly undefined and trying to fill it in as I read. The first order thoughts are those direct from sensory modalities whereas higher order thoughts are those which observe thoughts. The example of being hungry is given: this is a first order thought but the observation that you are hungry is a second order thought and so on.
Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness goes into more depth about the historic context of the idea of HOTs (higher order thoughts) and how they relate to three subtle definitions centered around the notion of consciousness. Creature consciousness is defined as simply being awake, sentient and/or aware (presumably it simply means one is interpreting first order thoughts) and transitive consciousness is being conscious of something by thinking of it. The central question is posed: which mental states are state-conscious (to say that a mental state is “conscious” means that one is immediately transitive-conscious of it). The example is given: subliminal perception is not a conscious state, even though one is conscious of what they are perceiving.
The transitivity principle is introduced which states: a mental state is conscious if one is conscious of it in some suitable way. He claims this definition is not circular. The conclusion is:
In Explaining Consciousness a rough approach to the problem of state-consciousness is sketched: starting with the true statement “if one is not aware of a state, it is not a conscious one”, we get “a state is conscious if one is aware of it”—but this is too strong a statement to be true (subliminal awareness is one counter-example) so eliminating all counter-examples should lead to a necessary and sufficient criteria for which mental states are conscious. The apparent circularity from before is clarified, he says “my strategy is to explain a state’s being a [state-]conscious state in terms of our being [creature-]conscious of that state in some particular way”.
He asks what is special about the way we are transitively conscious of our mental states when they are conscious states. He rejects the idea of an inner-sense or higher-order perception that observes thoughts as a modality, then poses the “only alternative” that we are conscious of our conscious states by virtue of having thoughts about them. It is immediately concluded that a conscious HOT must have content roughly describing that one is in a mental state. It is also argued that a a mental state is conscious when accompanied by a noninferential, nondispositional and assertoric higher order thought that one is in that mental state. He goes on to analyze this hypothesis.
The next section mentions that “when a mental state is not conscious we do not experience any of its qualitative properties”, I don’t know what “qualitative” means in this context. Apparently “there is nothing like it’s like to be in that state” but that doesn’t make sense.