Williford’s aim is to characterize the subjective character of consciousness in a way that accounts “for both the Humean intuition that the subject-relatum is, in some sense, invisible and that, nevertheless, consciousness has a subject-object relational structure that is phenomenally manifest and non-inferentially knowable” (this collection, pp. 10-11). There are three constraints on an account of subjective character, according to Williford: (a) conscious experiences are relational in having both a subject- and an object-pole; (b) the subject-pole is not constituted by some additional, irreducible, or otherwise special entity; (c) the subject-pole must be something that is nevertheless manifest in consciousness, not hidden from it.
Note that it is not an option for someone taking subjective character seriously to agree that phenomenal consciousness is relational, involving a subject-pole, but at the same time holding that this pole is forever “hidden” (p. 11). This does not work because such an account could not explain subjective character. After all, we consider subjective character as real only because it supposedly shows up phenomenally: I experience my conscious states as mine.[2]
Williford’s commitment to a subject (subject-pole) rules out the possibility that experiences may be free-floating entities, not being enjoyed by anyone. Phenomenal consciousness is supposed to be relational through-and-through, directed at some object and existing for some subject: “anything that phenomenally appears, appears to someone or something” (p. 9).[3] In general, Williford attempts to capture both the intentionality and the subjectivity of consciousness in the slogan that every experience involves the “appearance of something to something” (p. 9), where the latter refers to subjectivity. He leaves the notion of “appearing or of phenomenally manifesting undefined” (p. 10), but in order for what he says to make sense we have to take it to be just another way of saying that something is phenomenally conscious: it is “just the appearance to/in consciousness of something” (p. 10).
In order to meet the constraints he set for himself, Williford identifies the subject with the stream of consciousness or with (some complex or rich) episode of consciousness (p. 10). This identity claim then leads to the situation that the subject-pole of the consciousness-relation appearing (or being manifest) in the conscious episode is the episode itself. The subject-pole is thereby manifest, i.e., consciously experienced, but not separable as an entity from the conscious episode in question, and thus it is—in a sense—invisible. But it is only invisible in the sense that there is no additional entity that accounts for the subject-pole. In order to meet the constraints mentioned above, Williford therefore defends “the view that consciousness is self-manifesting” (p. 10), i.e., an episode or stream of consciousness appears to itself no matter what else is manifest to consciousness (some perceived object, say).
Partly because Williford subscribes to the Humean intuition that we do not find a self, or a “self-entity, me-haecceity, me-ish quale, or subject-relatum” (p. 10) if we turn to our stream of conscious experiences, he is led to the identification of the subject-relatum with the stream of consciousness itself. Although the conscious episode appears itself in the episode, consciousness is self-reflexive, yet not self-representing. The relevant difference between an unconscious and a conscious episode is not due to some form of representation. Rather, the conscious episode contains an internal relational (intrinsic) property that is responsible for the episode’s being acquainted with itself.[4] Subjective character is thus supposedly “the self-acquaintance of every instance of consciousness” (p. 1), which these instances exhibit in virtue of “some internal relational property” (p. 1). The subject of experience, being identical to the episode of consciousness, is self-acquainted. But although consciousness is self-reflexive, the claim is not that a mental episode becomes conscious through an act of reflection directed at it (p. 10). This is an impossible path when it comes to explaining subjective character, since an act of reflection presupposes that what it reflects upon is already mine in the relevant sense to be explained (Frank 2007; Zahavi 1999). Reflection can discover but not bring into being a self-referential conscious state.
Now, the stream (or episode) of consciousness exhibits subjective character in the sense that the stream itself is manifest within the stream so that the relationality constraint is met, although no additional entity need be introduced in order to play the subject-role. Therefore, the Humean invisibility-constraint is met as well. This is more or less the positive story as far as I have understood it. The main philosophical problem for Williford’s account is to formulate criteria as to how to individuate an episode. This problem leads to a dilemma for his account that is spelled out in more detail below.
If we follow Williford and identify the subject with complex conscious episodes (or even the whole stream of consciousness), then subjective character only seems to arise for complex episodes, and not for any of the episode’s parts or elements: “[t]he episode is a unified whole, the differentiated qualities and objects appearing in/to it are like its parts […]”(pp. 10-11). Since he emphasizes that all episodes have parts (ibid.), I take it that a single sensation of red, say, consequently does not count as an episode, because it can hardly be separated into parts; then it can instead always appear only as an element of an episode which is in turn a “unified whole”. On the other hand, Williford also emphasizes that, trivially, everything always also is an improper part of itself. On this reading, a single sensation of red could be an episode. This gives rise to the following options regarding the individuation of episodes that can be put in terms of a dilemma:
If a single sensation of red is too simple to count as an episode, then all that Williford’s theory can explain is why the complex episode as an emergent whole (having single experiences as its parts or elements) is conscious. It cannot explain what makes an individual element of this whole episode (or stream), a sensation of red say, conscious. But the varieties of representationalism (which he criticizes) aim to explain exactly this feature of consciousness. A problem with this first horn of the dilemma is thus that we need to answer the question whether or not such single sensations can be conscious independently of being an element of a larger episode.
If individual sensations can be conscious independently, then the question arises as to whether they can be conscious without thereby exhibiting subjective character (given subjective character only arises on the level of whole episodes). This is not what Williford should accept since he takes subjective character to be a defining feature of consciousness; there is no consciousness without subjective character. So if an individual sensation of red could be conscious then it could be so only by exhibiting subjective character. This seems to lead us to Zeki’s theory of “micro-consciousness” (Zeki & Bartels 1998; Zeki 2007) according to which every individual node of a perceptual system (visual, auditory etc.) can generate an “atom” of consciousness independently. This is an extreme version of what Bayne (2010) calls an “atomistic” approach to consciousness, standing in contrast to more “holistic” approaches:
"Theorists that adopt an atomistic orientation assume that the phenomenal field is composed of ‘atoms of consciousness’—states that are independently conscious. Holists, by contrast, hold that the components of the phenomenal field are conscious only as the components of that field. Holists deny that there are any independent conscious states that need to be bound together to form a phenomenal field. Holists can allow that the phenomenal field can be formally decomposed into discrete experiences, but they will deny that these elements are independent atoms or units of consciousness." (Bayne 2010, pp. 225-226)
The problem with such atomistic approaches is really the phenomenon of the unity of consciousness, i.e., that such individually conscious units would need to be bound together to a much larger all-encompassing unified “phenomenal field”, as Bayne puts it, in order to account for what we actually experience. But then we should expect there to be a mechanism responsible for such phenomenal binding, a mechanism that we also should expect to break down occasionally under certain circumstances; but there is no evidence for such a mechanism. The phenomenal unity of consciousness seems to be a deep feature of consciousness just like subjective character, in the sense that it cannot break down and that phenomenal consciousness cannot occur without it. I agree with Bayne’s point here (cf. Schlicht 2007), and I think that Williford would not be prepared to take Zeki’s route either. At least there is no indication in the text that would support this reading. Alas, Williford also sets aside the important issue of the unity of consciousness, which arises given the unresolved problem of providing criteria for the individuation of episodes.
So we are left with the alternative that individual sensations cannot be conscious independently. For an individual element to become conscious (and to exhibit subjective character) it must then be integrated into a larger (cumulative) episode. What’s needed then is a theory (and a mechanism) explaining how such integration into an episode takes place. However, then we are left with an alternative view regarding the question of what is responsible for a representation’s being conscious, namely some kind of integration-theory. In fact, that is the path I will recommend (and elaborate in more detail) below in section 3. The general idea is that phenomenally-conscious representations are those that are adequately integrated into a global state (we may call it an episode). My worry with regard to Williford’s account is simply that once we have such an integration-account, there is no need for his additional story in terms of self-reflexivity in order to explain subjective character. Since subjective character is (taken to be) a defining feature of conscious experience, an account that informs us about how individual sensations become conscious will also inform us about how they acquire subjective character: through integration.
But that’s not the end of the story. Williford simply could say that a sensation of red may be a conscious episode. So far, we have discussed the problem of individuating episodes on the assumption that a single sensation of red cannot count as an episode. Now we have to discuss the consequences of the assumption that a single sensation of red may count as an episode. This leads to two further possibilities.
One could accept such minimal episodes despite the fact that this concession gives rise to a multiplicity of (streams and consequently) conscious subjects. Although it’s metaphysically (somewhat) extravagant, this is a perfectly coherent position to take. Indeed, it seems to be akin to Strawson’s theory of the self, according to which a self lasts only as long as an individual state (or episode) of consciousness (Strawson 1997). But this view flies in the face of experience. For one thing, it is inadequate to explain an important aspect of consciousness, namely what we may call, following Kant, the (empirical) consciousness of the identity of oneself as subject: “I am […] conscious of the identical self in regard to the manifold of the representations that are given to me in an intuition because I call them all together my representations, which constitute one” (B134). What he means is that, at least in non-pathological cases, I can become conscious of myself as the single, (synchronically as well as diachronically) identical subject vis-à-vis my diverse experiences. I never identify myself with one or many of my conscious representations (or episodes for that matter). Rather, I distinguish myself from them as the subject who has them when I self-ascribe them. And this empirical consciousness of an identical subject is possible, according to Kant, because all my conscious experiences are already self-related. I can already call them mine because they exhibit subjective character simply by being phenomenally conscious. Kant, famously and notoriously, tried to account for this consciousness of self by simply postulating a transcendental unity of apperception in which this is supposed to originate. If Strawson’s view were correct, then Kant would presumably reply by pointing to a natural, yet implausible consequence: “I would have as multicoloured, diverse a self as I have representations of which I am conscious” (CpR B134). Accepting this horn of the dilemma therefore has the consequence that we would now need a story that helps us make sense of how the subject of the sensation of red is related to the subject that is identified with an auditory sensation of a loud sound, etc. In effect, this would lead to a binding problem for the multitudinous “subjects” of experience, since in my view, we cannot be content with a multiplicity of conscious subjects. I also think that Williford might not be satisfied with such an outcome, since he never entertains the possibility of multiple subjects in his essay.
Therefore—again, on the hypothesis that a single sensation of red counts as an episode—one could argue that the multiplicity of conscious episodes has to be overcome in favor of one (unified) stream of consciousness. This calls, again, for an integration mechanism that produces such a unity. Though I can understand why one would now identify this resulting integrated single stream of consciousness with the subject of experience, I don’t see any motivation to identify the episode “single sensation of red” with a subject of experience, if a more complex combination of episodes is needed anyway.
I conclude that the problem of individuating episodes either leads to the acceptance of implausible views like Zeki or Strawson’s theories of consciousness and self or to the need for an integration account that explains how individual elements are combined into the one global conscious experience. The claim I would like to put forward is that once we have such an integration account, Williford’s proposal becomes superfluous, because what it is intended to explain is then already explained by the integration account.