Inference and consciousness

301 Pages·2020·1.762 MB·English

by  Anders Nes (editor), Timothy Hoo Wai Chan

Inference and Consciousness
Inference has long been a central concern in epistemology, as an essential
means by which we extend our knowledge and test our beliefs. Inference
is also a key notion in influential psychological accounts of mental
capacities, ranging from problem-solving to perception. Consciousness,
on the other hand, has arguably been the defining interest of philosophy
of mind over recent decades. Comparatively little attention, however,
has been devoted to the significance of consciousness for the proper
understanding of the nature and role of inference. It is commonly
suggested that inference may be either conscious or unconscious. Yet how
unified are these various supposed instances of inference? Does either
enjoy explanatory priority in relation to the other? In what way, or ways,
can an inference be conscious, or fail to be conscious, and how does
this matter? This book brings together original essays from established
scholars and emerging theorists that showcase how several current
debates in epistemology, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of
mind can benefit from more reflections on these and related questions
about the significance of consciousness for inference.
Anders Nes is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Norwegian
University of Science and Technology. He has written on cognitive
phenomenology, inference, and perception in various journals and edited
collections. He has previously been a Researcher at the CSMN, University
of Oslo, and a Career Development Fellow at Oxford University.
Timothy Chan was Researcher at the CSMN, University of Oslo. He
had been a lecturer at the University of East Anglia and taught at several
other universities. He edited The Aim of Belief (2013) and published
research articles in journals including Canadian Journal of Philosophy,
Philosophical Studies, and Synthese.
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Inference and Consciousness
Edited by Anders Nes with Timothy Chan
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Studies-in-Contemporary-Philosophy/book-series/SE0720
Inference and Consciousness
Edited by
Anders Nes with Timothy Chan
First published 2020
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Contents
Introduction: Inference and Consciousness 1
ANDERS NES
PART I
Unconscious Inference in Cognitive Science and
Psychiatry 13
1 Unconscious Inference Theories of Cognitive
Achievement 15
KIRK LUDWIG AND WADE MUNROE
2 A Realist Perspective on Bayesian Cognitive Science 40
MICHAEL RESCORLA
3 The Role of Unconscious Inference in Models of
Delusion Formation 74
FEDERICO BONGIORNO AND LISA BORTOLOTTI
PART II
Inference in Speech Comprehension 97
4 Seeing and Hearing Meanings: A Non-Inferential
Approach to Speech Comprehension 99
BERIT BROGAARD
5 Metacognition and Inferential Accounts of
Communication 125
NICHOLAS ALLOTT
vi Contents
PART III
Inference, Structure, and Generality 149
6 Non-Inferential Transitions: Imagery and Association 151
JAKE QUILTY-DUNN AND ERIC MANDELBAUM
7 Knowledge of Logical Generality and the Possibility
of Deductive Reasoning 172
CORINE BESSON
PART IV
Conscious Non-Demonstrative Inference 197
8 Fore- and Background in Conscious Non-Demonstrative
Inference 199
ANDERS NES
9 Morphological Content and Chromatic Illumination
in Belief Fixation 229
DAVID HENDERSON, TERRY HORGAN, AND MATJAŽ POTRČ
PART V
Inference and Perceptual and Introspective Knowledge 253
10 Experience and Epistemic Structure: Can Cognitive
Penetration Result in Epistemic Downgrade? 255
ELIJAH CHUDNOFF
11 The Transparency of Inference 275
RAM NETA
Contributors 290
Index 291
Introduction
Inference and Consciousness
Anders Nes
Inference seems to be central to the life of thought. It allows old thoughts
to give birth to new ones, in a way answering to logical and evidential
relations legitimizing the offspring. It extends the scope of knowledge,
broadening it beyond what is registered by the senses. It makes our minds
non-accidentally sensitive to relations of coherence and consistency. To be
sure, thoughts can interact also non-inferentially, for instance by associa-
tion. Nevertheless, it is tempting to think that inference is of basic impor-
tance to how thoughts qua thoughts can matter. At least, this is so in so
far as thoughts are more or less fully fledged, having conceptual struc-
ture, and bearing a range of logical or evidential relations to each other.
One might, indeed, doubt to what extent it would make sense to attribute
thought to a creature without assigning it a capacity for inference.
Still, the nature of inference as a mental phenomenon has received
comparatively little attention in philosophy.1 Much industry has of
course been devoted to articulating the standards for valid, rational, jus-
tified, coherent, or otherwise appropriate inference, of various types. Yet
the nature, or natures, of the inferential mental acts, events, structures,
or processes to which these standards apply have not been explored in
comparable depth and detail. It is interesting to compare, here, with the
situation for such notions of truth and justification, on the one hand, ver-
sus those of propositions and beliefs, on the other. Philosophical logicians
and epistemologists have, respectively, explored truth and justification at
length. Yet this has not been to the neglect of inquiries into the nature of
the propositions or beliefs that bear these features. Philosophical work
on inference seems in comparison more lopsided towards the standards.2
The question of the psychological nature of inference is complicated
by the varied ways in which inference has been supposed to play out in
mind. Many different types of inference have been distinguished: theo-
retical versus practical, deductive versus non-deductive, and formal ver-
sus material, to name but three. In this collection, however, the nature of
inference will be approached via another notable distinction among its
manifestations, viz. that between conscious and unconscious inference.
2 Anders Nes
The class of conscious inferences seems to have comparatively clear
instances. They would presumably include inferences drawn by a person,
who is aware of whatever is inferred as something that follows from or
is supported by such-and-such considerations, from which it is inferred,
and who has a disposition to give voice to the inference, marking its status
as such with words such as ‘so’, ‘therefore’, or ‘then’. In the philosophical
tradition, inference has often been understood in broadly this vein. At
least, inferences have been viewed as intellectual acts within the power
of humans only. They have been taken to be the preserve of distinctively
rational, discursive creatures. Thus, Aristotle and, following him, Aqui-
nas viewed inference as one of the characteristics of our rational soul, as
opposed to the appetitive and perceiving soul shared with animals.3 Kant,
following a traditional view of early modern logic, identified the ‘highest’
cognitive or intellectual ability, reason, as the ‘faculty of inference’.4
The category of unconscious inference may not have equally clear or
uncontroversial instances. A historically influential candidate case, how-
ever, are inferential processes hypothesized to underlie and explain per-
ceptual states, such as states of seeing the shapes of nearby objects.5 Such
inferences are not, or not clearly, attributable to the subject of conscious-
ness who ends up seeing the shapes in question – they are perhaps more
aptly assigned to some subpersonal part of the perceiver. Awareness of
the inferences is to be had only via, in effect, reverse engineering the
perceptual capacities in question. The perceiver need not have the words
or, arguably, concepts to articulate grounds or conclusion in such a way
to make it intelligible how the former could be supposed to support the
latter.
These respective examples of conscious and unconscious inference
seem, then, to differ psychologically in important ways: personal-level
status, awareness, conceptual articulation, and possibly in other respects.
This encourages the question to what extent is there an interesting cat-
egory of inference in common between these examples. More generally:
to what extent is there such a category in common between supposed
cases of inference that differ in ways relevant to their classification as
conscious or otherwise? Relatedly, may talk of ‘inferences’ in accounts
of perceptual or other psychological states that seem not to arise from
conscious reasoning be understood strictly and literally? To answer these
questions is to take a stand, implicitly if not explicitly, on the significance
of consciousness for inference.
In approaching the question of the significance of consciousness for
inference, it would be useful, if only as a preliminary, to have a nuanced
overview of the various ways or senses in which inferences might be sup-
posed to be conscious or unconscious. When the distinction between
conscious and unconscious inference is brought up in philosophical con-
texts, there is a tendency to have in mind extreme representatives of each
group: e.g., self-conscious, fully explicit deductions, on the one hand;
Introduction 3
subpersonal processes underlying vision, on the other. Yet there are puta-
tive inferences that seem to lie somewhere between these extremes on
dimensions relevant to consciousness. They include inferences in fluent
speech comprehension – including pragmatic comprehension – as well
as abductive inferences, more or less fluently drawn, in other domains of
daily life. How does consciousness figure in these ‘middling’ cases?
The chapters of this collection cast light on inference from diverse
angles. They do so, moreover, by variously bearing on the question how
consciousness may or may not be of significance to or figure in inference.
Some contributors articulate skepticism about the coherence or explana-
tory value of positing inferences far removed from consciousness. Such
doubts are set out by Kirk Ludwig and Wade Munroe in their chapter, and
are also voiced by Berit Brogaard in hers. Michael Rescorla meanwhile
defends the value of invoking unconscious inference, notably within the
context of Bayesian cognitive science, advocating a realistic construal of
such accounts. Federico Bongiorno and Lisa Bortolotti, in their contribu-
tion, also affirm the value of appeals to unconscious inference, specifi-
cally in accounts of delusions. The chapter by Jake Quilty-Dunn and Eric
Mandelbaum offers support for unconscious inference from a slightly
different angle, in as much as they defend a proposal on the nature of
inference on which consciousness plays no essential role.
Other chapters in the collections focus on the contents or structure of
consciousness in inferences that are, at least, not entirely unconscious
or subpersonal. Corine Besson addresses conscious deductive reasoning,
examining what forms of personal-level propositional knowledge of logic
that may be implicated in, or required for, such inference. Nicholas Allott
considers inferences in pragmatic comprehension of speech. He proposes
that such inferences should be seen to have a metacognitive aspect. He
argues, however, that this is consistent with their being executed with
little awareness. The chapters by Anders Nes and by David Henderson,
Terry Horgan, and Matjaž Potrč, like that by Allott, also look at infer-
ences that inhabit roughly the ‘middling’ territory hinted at earlier. Spe-
cifically, these chapters consider abductive or other non-demonstrative
inferences at the personal level (of which pragmatic inferences arguably is
a special case). In particular, they address how consciousness may extend
over the rich stocks of information to which such inferences seem to be
sensitive.
The two final chapters of the collection bear on how inference relates
to two forms of knowledge with which it often has been contrasted, viz.,
respectively, perception and our reflective access to our own mind. Elijah
Chudnoff defends the claim that perceptual experience, as a source of
justification for belief, is epistemically unlike inferentially acquired belief,
and that this is so even if experience is subject to cognitive penetration
(arguably a form of unconscious inference); at least, this difference holds,
he argues, for the basic, ‘presentational’ aspects of experience. Ram Neta,