I did a search for Livingston and came across a very impressive {and I think more recent} paper by him entitled "Presentation and the Ontology of Consciousness," available at this link:
Presentation and the Ontology of Consciousness
I copied out and pasted a considerable portion of the end of the paper in Word and will c&p it here:
“…Given this structural identity, however, it is still possible, as Chalmers argues, for a type-B materialist to hold that W does not contain consciousness: she can do so by holding that, whereas W is identical to the actual world structurally , it differs with respect to the intrinsic characters or natures of what is structurally related. If this difference is sufficient for W to lack consciousness, it follows that consciousness (as it is in the actual world) is not necessitated by the structural facts, but rather by the underlying intrinsic properties. These might be thought of, Chalmers suggests, as the intrinsic categorial bases for the structural relations of physics, and they would be, on this view, themselves responsible for the qualitative characters of consciousness. This sort of position–the position that consciousness is founded upon the underlying intrinsic properties of matter rather than their structural relationships-- is the position that Chalmers terms“type-F”(or “Russellian) monism.
Since, as Chalmers agrees, this possibility cannot be ruled out on the two-dimensional argument, it is necessary to modify the conclusion of the argument slightly: it does not fully establish the conclusion that materialism is false (and dualism or some other non-materialist position is true), but rather only a disjunctive claim: materialism is false, or type-F monism is true. As Chalmers points out, it is not in fact obvious whether or not the type-F monist position should be considered to be a physicalist one. If one holds that physical terms, as we already use them, already refer to the underlying intrinsic bases, then the type-F monist position has a good claim to be considered a physicalist rather than a dualist one.
On the other hand, it essentially introduces at least a conceptual and explanatory dualism between structural-dispositional properties, on the one hand, and their hidden categorial bases, on the other. More generally, the considerations that come to bear in this argument are just a local version of the more general ones captured in the broader argument for an explanatory gap between the physical – if this is understood in terms of the totality of structural/dispositional facts -- and the phenomenal.
These considerations turn centrally on the relationship of the totality of structural and functional relations and explanations to what is outside or beyond them, or to what might be considered to vary while all structural and functional relations are held fixed. As Chalmers’ argument effectively points out, one such aspect of potential variation is indeed in the intrinsic or categorial bases of structural facts and relations. Indeed, the core of the argument for the possibility of type-F monism is the consideration that the specification of the totality of structural facts does not suffice to specify or determine the “intrinsic” natures of what is thereby structurally related. However, without gainsaying this consideration, we can reasonably ask whether this is in fact (as Chalmers suggests it is) the only relevant possible dimension of variation beyond what is specified by a specification of total structure.
And indeed, in light of considerations we have already explored, it appears likely that there is another dimension of potential variation that is even more directly relevant to the question of the limits of structural explanation. This is variation in the total presentational aspects of the structure, or the position from which the total structure can itself be presented. What, then, if we saw the root of both the conceivability of a structurally described world without consciousness, and the actual existence of consciousness in our world, as turning not on the presence or absence of “intrinsic” properties of a mysterious sort, but rather on the question of the presence or absence of conscious presentation itself?
On the one hand, it is evidently conceivable for there to be a world in which all physical facts – in the sense of structural and functional facts – are as they actually are, but there is no conscious presentation: no actual conscious availability or accessibility of anything As anything. There is nothing evidently contradictory about such a possibility, since the specification of any physical, structural or functional fact within a world is compatible with the assumption that it is not in any sense consciously presented by anything or anyone in that world.
On the other hand, on this sort of view, the dimension of variation embodied by the presence or absence of consciousness would not primarily or exclusively characterize the “intrinsic” properties of (actual-world) physical entities, but rather the total variation between worlds in which there is, and worlds in which there is not, conscious presentation. Since, as we have seen, the individuation of entities by means of conscious presentation both cannot be reduced to the (actual or modal) properties of individual real-world entities and, in the most characteristic cases, cross-cuts the individuation of entities in terms of their “metaphysical”profiles, there is no necessity here for the relevant presentational “properties” to be identified with the intrinsic or categorial properties of just those entities. Since it is determined not by the individual properties of (actual-world or metaphysically defined) entities but rather by the individuating functions from worlds to their inhabitants, the relevant dimension of variation operates, so to speak, on the level of worlds as wholes rather than simply on the level of these individual entities themselves. That is, in order to determine the presence or absence of the presentational properties in a world, we cannot simply look at the “intrinsic” properties of that world’s entities and facts – indeed, it must be insufficient to do so -- but instead we have to look at whether and how these entities and facts are presented to inhabitants of that world. To do this, as we have seen, we will typically have to consider how this presentation individuates entities in ways that cross-classify individuals, across possible worlds, with respect to their “metaphysical” identities.
But it is just here that the close connection we have seen between primary intensions – in the sense of what is primarily presented in consciousness – and the metaphysics of phenomenal consciousness itself, as plausibly constituted by just that presentation, comes directly to bear. Whereas this bearing is obscure on Type-F monism itself – which requires that we posit otherwise unknown categorial bases for the familiar structural and relational properties of physical matter, and then stipulate their identity (in our world) with phenomenal properties – on the kind of position recommended here, it is immediately and readily accounted for on simultaneously logical, metaphysical, and phenomenological grounds. We can illustrate this position more vividly by means of a line of argument that Chalmers develops in “The Two-Dimensional Argument Against Physicalism.” As he argues there, it is not in fact necessary,in order to establish the conclusion of the general 2-dimensional argument, to assume that primary and secondary intensions must coincide with respect to Q. It is sufficient to add a “that’s all” clause or fact to P: a fact saying that P includes all the facts true at the world under consideration. Then we can readily argue (from the conceivability of P & ~Q) that there is a minimal world – a world which includes all the positive facts in P, and nothing else – that (at least) verifies P but in which the primary intension of Q is false. Then, if P’s primary and secondary intensions coincide, there is a minimal P-world (a minimal world satisfying P) in which Q is false, and thus physicalism is false about our world (where Q is true).
As Chalmers says, on this alternative, it is possible that P necessitates Q, so that physicalism is actually true of the facts in Q, but given the existence of a minimal P world which fails to verify Q, physicalism is then (at any rate) false about the modes of presentation of these facts. Alternatively, if the primary and secondary intensions of P fail to coincide (as on the Type-F monist position), then the existence of a minimal world which verifies P but not Q leaves open the possibility that P necessitates Q, but this necessitation depends on both the structural and non-structural (Chalmers says ‘intrinsic’) profiles of P. In this case, as Chalmers says, we have a variety of monism in which the non-structural aspects of physical facts “are crucial for constituting the properties associated with the modes of presentation of consciousness.” Chalmers characterizes these non-structural aspects as the “intrinsic properties” of physics; but with these considerations in place, it is clear that the reference to “intrinsic properties” is largely vestigial. What is essential to the case at hand – in which we are essentially considering the epistemic and metaphysical implications of the claim that the physical facts are all the facts (this is the result of adding the “that’s all” claim to P) – is rather just that we cannot thereby make room for some modes of presentation, in particular those that actually present phenomenal facts (in our world). This conclusion is already accessible, as soon as we consider the implications of adding the claim of totality with respect to the physical facts, and thereby considering the question of the position from which this totality can be presented, and it suffices to establish the disjunctive conclusion that dualism or some variety of non-structural monism is true.
If we do take the monist alternative, however, it now becomes particularly clear that what is left out of the physical facts as structurally described is essentially related to – or perhaps identical to – the presentational aspects of consciousness themselves. Despite the essential appeal to presentational aspects which are not inherently aspects of any “physical” or “material” object, this kind of position remains a monism rather than a dualism. Indeed, adopting it provides an important additional kind of motivation for monism, and thus for interpreting the general two-dimensional argument as supporting a monist position rather than any form of dualism. For as we have seen in the course of the discussion of Hintikka’s “individuating” functions, the temptation to assume that these functions introduce ontologically peculiar kinds of entities – for example sense-data, or indeed any kind of non-physical or non-material object – is readily countered by observing that the actual referents of the functions, across possible worlds, are just familiar entities of an ontologically single type. Thus the temptation to “reify” senses or other special intentional objects is shown to be simply an artifact of the way in which presentational individuation cross-cuts otherwise identified objects across possible worlds.
If correctly analyzed, the phenomena of presentation thus suggest no reason, even fully granting the soundness of Chalmers’ two-dimensional argument, to adopt a dualism of substances or entities. It is true that the argument, as it stands, leaves open either dualism or monism; but given the availability of the monist alternative here suggested and the plausibility of the claim that it suffices to account for the presentational properties of consciousness, dualism now has no evident motivation. Something similar apparently holds, as well, with respect to property dualism. Just as there is no need to introduce an ontologically distinct kind of object if the presentational “properties”and “entities” work as suggested, there is also no need to introduce any ontologically exotic types of properties of ordinary entities. The entities referred to in each of the worlds across which the individuating functions are defined, after all, just are the familiar ones, with their ordinary types of properties and relations. This importantly makes it evident that upholding the monist disjunct of Chalmers’ disjunctive conclusion need not in any sense involve a property dualism, or anything resembling such a position on the level of global ontology.
Independently of this, there are other reasons to prefer the kind of presentational monism I am presenting here over type-F or “intrinsic” monism as an answer to the problem posed by absence of consciousness from a total structural and functional description of the world. One is the question that inevitably arises, if type-F monism is adopted, about the “intrinsic” natures themselves. If these“intrinsic” natures do indeed have determinate characteristics, such that their presence or absence could determine the presence or absence of consciousness from the world, then why should these characteristics themselves not be describable within a general objective description of the world? But if they were so describable, then Mary could apparently be given full knowledge of them, even before her release from the room, and we would again face the problem that this provision would apparently not give her knowledge of phenomenal properties.
Conversely, moreover, type-F monism arguably does not help to account for the knowledge she does gain when she leaves the room: why should her visual perception present to her the (hitherto unknown) intrinsic categorial bases of the relevant structural properties, when presenting those structural properties in other ways does not? In both cases, the relevant phenomena are better accounted for by reference to the presence, or absence, of actual presentational properties, or of the actual occurrence or non-occurrence of an actual presentation of the relevant phenomenon.
Finally, and for related reasons, type-F monism faces a difficult “combination” problem: how do the “proto-phenomenal” intrinsic properties that (on the view) actually underlie the physical structures “add up” to experienced phenomena? By contrast, the account in terms of presentational aspects does not involve any problem of composition or combination, since the possibility of a (phenomenal) presentation of a phenomenon is already seen as involved in the essential structure of a presentational perspective as such.
For all of these reasons, it appears that attention to the presentational aspects of consciousness motivates the novel kind of monist ontology I have argued for. On this ontology, though there is (as Hintikka emphasizes) only one ontological type of entities, there would nevertheless be a crucial irreducibility of consciousness to the purely extensional description of entities; and this explanatory irreducibility would be seen as producing an actual ontological irreducibility of consciousness, in the sense of presentation, to “physical” (or, indeed, other purely extensionally described) facts.
This irreducibility of consciousness would then be seen as an aspect, or ontological reflection, of its inherently first-personal or perspectival character, such that it picks out its referents, as classical phenomenology emphasizes, always from a specific position or point of view. Despite this essential invocation of a perspective or point of view, however, the recommended position is not an idealism; for the claim is not that the mind or subjectivity constitutes or produces the (actual or possible world) phenomena it refers to, or even their sense. With respect to these entities and, indeed, “subjectivity” itself, it involves only the same ontological commitments to which standard possible-world semantics already makes recourse.
In closing, however, it must be admitted that given only these ontological commitments, it is not immediately obvious why consciousness should be irreducible in this sense. I have argued that there is reason to think this irreducibility can be connected to the irreducibility of the perspective from which primary intensions, or presentational individuating functions, are necessarily deployed across possible worlds. But we have not really seen why these functions, understood as such, must be essentially and irreducibly “non-extensional”: what, that is, that essentially prevents them from being cashed out as “functions in extension,” or in other words as (purely extensional) sets of ordered pairs of worlds and entities? After all, they are just functions: why could not any one, or all, of these functions just be given by means of finitely stated rules that are themselves accessible in principle from any point of view?
Though I will not develop these arguments here, however, I do think there are two broad ways in which one can argue for this irreducibility on principled grounds connected to what is plausibly the structure of these functions themselves. The first way would be to argue that because the presentational phenomena are, just as such, “semantic” in the sense first used by Tarski to characterize truth, the functions that characterize them exhibit an essential “meta-logical” irreducibility to (first-order) “syntactic” structures or systems. On this sort of position, just as Tarski demonstrated that truth must be irreducible to the syntax of an extensional language, so, and for essentially similar reasons, the presentational phenomena might actually be seen as irreducible to the extensional description of facts. Monism on the level of these facts themselves could, however, naturally be preserved; and the metalogical implications of “diagonalization” (in the sense in which Tarski’s theorem applies it) would themselves suffice to guarantee the real irreducibility of consciousness as presentation. The analogy considered here – between the irreducibility of the mental to the physical, on the one hand, and the irreducibility of semantics to syntax, on the other – is actually offered by Davidson in his original defense of anomalous monism, in “Mental Events.” But rather than applying it, as Davidson does, to considerations about law and causation, the present considerations appear to suggest its use to establish the actually ontological conclusion of the irreducibility of presentation to the totality of what is presented, while monism is nevertheless preserved.
The second way might be to appeal to broadly “Kripkensteinian” considerations about the application of the “content” of a presentation across cases, including (as we have seen) the variety of possible worlds, considered as actual. If, as Kripke interprets Wittgenstein as arguing, any attempt to capture this application by means of a finitely stated rule leaves open the skeptical possibility of a (purportedly) “non-standard” application in a new case, then the actual pattern of application that is embodied in this content cannot in general be reduced to such a finite statement. This is perhaps why Wittgenstein says that, although any provision of a rule appears to demand another rule for interpreting that one, there is nevertheless a way of “grasping a rule” which is “not an interpretation” but rather turns on “what we” call following or going against the rule as we proceed from case to case. As I have suggested in connection with primary intensions and individuating functions, the collective first-personal “we” here may indeed be essential: it is not possible in general to account comprehensively for what is involved in a conscious presentation – that is, to account exhaustively for what it in fact determines, across possible worlds considered as actual – purely in third-person or indeed in simply extensional terms, and the irreducibility of presentational content as such to these terms would then once more be vindicated. It would be a further and welcome exegetical consequence of this that, far from repudiating or rejecting the idea of the essentiality of “inner” or consciously presented contents of thought,Wittgenstein’s considerations would rather be seen as pointing out, in a profound way, their real ontological character.”
