The metaphysically significant results cited previously hinge upon the prior establishment of a thesis regarding the constitutive nature of experience, which will ultimately be established as a consequence of Robust Realism without appealing to any particular characteristics of consciousness:
The Constitution Thesis – The constitutive nature of any phenomenal property instance is exhausted by its phenomenal nature qua instance of said property, and, qua its experienced manner of instancing.
It is the business of this chapter to establish that the Constitution Thesis is entailed by the core commitments of Robust Realism.76 The above formulation is a little awkward, on account of the two qualifications, each prefaced with the term ‘qua’, that have been added so as to decisively rule out certain peculiar accounts of the constitution of phenomenal property instances which do in fact appear in the literature and which might otherwise be thought to be in keeping with the thesis. The ‘qua instance of said property’ qualification is added so as to disallow experiences or their properties having phenomenal constituents they don’t
themselves comprise the experiencing of. Some philosophers, Galen Strawson (2006b p. 261) for instance, reject the possibility of anything experiential being constituted by something altogether non-experiential, but allow that “experiential realities may be said to … function as non-experiential but experience-constituting realities for other experiential realities”. The Constitution Thesis rules against this possibility just as decisively as it does the possibility of experiences having non-phenomenal constituents. The ‘qua its experienced manner of
instancing’ qualification is invoked to disallow any constitutive account of consciousness that
76 Though to avoid confusion, I should mention that some intermediate arguments that do involve direct
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appeals, say, to phenomenal properties qua abstract universals, or to the phenomenal property
instances existing in some capacity other than that in which experience finds them. Gregg Rosenberg’s (2004 pp. 165, 168, 246) account of the ‘becoming’ of phenomenal states, if I understand it correctly, has it that complexes of phenomenal properties which manifest in experience as constitutively interdependent and inseparable, like phenomenal shape and colour properties, are in fact the constitutive product of the bonding of pure ‘context
independent’ instances of such properties located, not in actuality, but in an abstract realm of possibility. The Constitution Thesis, as formulated above, rules out such an account.
The Constitution Thesis isn’t entirely without precedent. Philosophy was first bequeathed a phenomenally constitutive conception of consciousness by Descartes. Strawson (2006b p. 204) writes, “His root – radical – idea about the nature of the subject of experience or soul is that it is somehow wholly and literally constituted of experience”. Identification of the being and appearing of experiences went on to become a definitive feature of classical empiricism. Hume (1969 pp. 240, 241) claimed that, “all actions and sensations of the mind ... must necessarily appear in every particular what they are, and be what they appear”. But historical precedence alone doesn’t suffice for justification. Arguments for the Constitution Thesis are relatively thin on the ground. Some, like Strawson (2006a p. 21), are happy to let their rejection of certain possibilities that are at odds with the Constitution Thesis, in his case, the constitution of phenomenal properties by non-phenomenal properties, rest upon “unargued intuition”, while allowing other possibilities that are equally at odds with it, like the constitution of experiences by other altogether different experiences.
One might be under the impression that a conceptual connection between Robust Realism and the Constitution Thesis has already been established, as Robust Realism has already been characterized as the view that experiences are exactly as they are experienced to be. This is not the case. To say that experiences are exactly as they are experienced to be is not to say
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that they are only as they are experienced to be, that their phenomenal nature exhausts their constitutive nature. It remains open for a robust realist to maintain that experiences are possessive of the very phenomenal nature they are experienced to possess, but that their constitutive nature isn’t exhausted by it. David Chalmers, for one, thinks the possibility of phenomenal properties being constituted by non-phenomenal “protophenomenal” properties “cannot be ruled out a priori” (Chalmers 1996 pp. 154, 298). The only account of the
constitutive nature of experience that has been ruled out at this early stage is one according to which it is wholly constituted by physical properties. Whether or not Robust Realism is ultimately compatible with consciousness being more than it appears to be, it definitely has it that consciousness is at least as it appears to be, and its topic-specificity and intrinsicality
jointly serve to rule out both conceptions of physical properties that have currency in the literature. All other prospective constitutive accounts of experience remain on the table until reason is found for dismissing them, or for favouring some particular account.
There are several such prospective accounts to be found in the literature. Some, as we have seen, think experiences can be constituted by altogether different experiences, others that they can be constituted by different ontological modes of the properties they instantiate, by the very same phenomenal properties qua universals or the very same property instances qua
‘pure’ context independent possibilia. Others, like Chalmers, postulate non-phenomenal intrinsic natures capable of constitutively yielding phenomenal intrinsic natures. Another possibility is constitution by altogether different mental properties. Robust Realism rejects Dennettian Dissolution, the explaining away of phenomenal properties by way of appeal to mistaken judgements, but we are yet to rule out an intellectualist account of the constitution
of phenomenal properties. In defence of the view, held by some idealists, to the effect that all mentality consists solely in judgement, Ayer (1959 p. 100) writes, “It is open to the idealists to [maintain] that the making of a judgement is a necessary part of what constitutes the
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object’s being given”. 77 Of course, this won’t work if one endorses a physically constitutive account of judgement, as physical properties simply cannot constitutively yield phenomenal properties as Robust Realism characterises them. But at this stage, it remains open for those that endorse a non-physical constitutive account of judgement to endorse an intellectually constitutive account of experience.