Head to head
Higher-Order Thought Theory vs Sam Harris
Rosenthal’s Higher-Order Thought and S. Harris’s Mystery of Consciousness, compared field by field from their entries in the Atlas.
At a glance
- Higher-Order Thought Theory belongs to the Materialism family in Kuhn's Landscape of Consciousness, Sam Harris to Challenge.
- They give the same kind of answer on life after death and meaning and purpose.
- On AI consciousness, Higher-Order Thought Theory says “Possible” and Sam Harris says “No”.
- On mind uploading, Higher-Order Thought Theory says “Possible” and Sam Harris says “No”.
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The claim
In brief
Higher-Order Thought TheoryDavid Rosenthal holds that a mental state is conscious when its subject has a higher-order thought that he or she is in that state, a thought that need not itself be conscious and does not seem to rest on inference. Mental qualities such as the redness of a sensation exist whether or not they are conscious; Rosenthal explains them separately, by how they map the perceptible properties we can discriminate.
Sam HarrisThis perspective, offered as a challenge rather than a prescriptive theory, frames consciousness as an unbridgeable mystery that cannot be solved by purely physical means. Harris argues that physical descriptions are 'mute' regarding subjective experience; the only thing attesting to sentience is consciousness itself, creating a fundamental explanatory gap. He remains pessimistic that science can dispel this mystery.
What consciousness is
Higher-Order Thought TheoryA state’s being conscious consists in the subject being aware of it by way of a suitable higher-order thought that one is in that state.
Sam HarrisConsciousness is identified as subjectivity or sentience, which is fundamentally mysterious and unexplainable by purely physical processes.
Big questions
Can AI be conscious?Differ
Higher-Order Thought TheoryPossibleSince consciousness depends on having suitable higher-order thoughts about one’s own states, a system able to form such thoughts would meet the condition in principle.
Sam HarrisNoIf consciousness is irreducible subjectivity missing from physical descriptions, then advanced computation (AI, which is purely physical complexity) will fail to generate genuine sentience.
Does consciousness survive death?Both agree
Higher-Order Thought TheoryNoConscious states are natural states of an organism, so nothing remains conscious once those states stop occurring.
Sam HarrisNoAs a naturalist, Harris implicitly aligns with the view that consciousness is tied to the physical organism, meaning its termination results in permanent non-existence, despite the mystery of its nature while alive.
Higher-Order Thought TheoryPossibleIf the relevant first-order states and higher-order thoughts were reproduced, the view gives no principled reason the copy would lack consciousness.
Sam HarrisNoIf consciousness cannot be explained by purely physical processes, then duplication or uploading of the physical substrate will fail to capture or recreate the essential subjective self.
Does it give life meaning?Both agree
Higher-Order Thought TheoryHumanistic onlyThe theory is a naturalistic account of mental states and carries no cosmic purpose.
Sam HarrisHumanistic onlyThe mystery does not imply cosmic purpose, but Harris advocates finding personal truths through introspection, aligning with self-discovered (naturalized) spirituality and meaning.
Nature of mind
Ontology
Higher-Order Thought TheoryPhysicalism (naturalistic functionalism)
Sam HarrisSkeptical/Mysterianism (Justified: The view asserts the philosophical intractability and unbridgeable nature of the mind-body problem, aligning with core tenets of mysterianism, though without adopting a specific alternative ontology.)
Mind and body
Higher-Order Thought TheoryMental states, their qualities, and the higher-order thoughts that make them conscious are all natural states of the organism; Rosenthal expects neural correlates of consciousness to be whatever mechanism produces the higher-order awareness.
Sam HarrisUnbridgeable Gap / Non-reductive Correlation (Justified: Harris asserts that while physical processes correlate with consciousness, no analysis of these processes can logically yield a picture of consciousness, leaving an unbridgeable gap.)
Fundamental or emergent
Higher-Order Thought TheoryEmergent
Sam HarrisMystery (Justified: Harris declines to fully endorse emergence, stating that while consciousness may be the lawful product of unconscious processing, he does not find that sentence meaningful in explaining sentience.)
Qualia
Higher-Order Thought TheoryMental qualities are fixed by their role in perceptual discrimination and occupy a ‘quality space’ that mirrors the similarities among perceptible properties. Because these qualities do not depend on consciousness, a sensation can have qualitative character without being conscious, as in subliminal perception.
Sam HarrisQualia (what it is 'like something' to be) are the phenomenon that physical events are 'mute' about, thus creating the unbridgeable mystery.
How it works
Mechanism
Higher-Order Thought TheoryA non-inferential higher-order thought that one is in a given state, which makes that first-order state conscious even when the thought itself is unconscious.
Sam HarrisNone (Justified: The core premise is the failure of all current and foreseeable physical/mechanistic principles to explain subjectivity.)
Where it is
Higher-Order Thought TheoryNot stated
Sam HarrisUnknown/Mysterious (Justified: While consciousness correlates with the brain, the theory explicitly rejects confining the explanation of consciousness to physical location or distribution because the physical world yields no evidence of consciousness.)
What it does
Higher-Order Thought TheoryNot stated
Sam HarrisUnknown/Irreducible (Justified: Causal power is not explained by unconscious complexity. The presence of sentience is an ultimate mystery rather than a functional adaptation that can be described reductively.)
Evidence and criticism
Testability
Higher-Order Thought TheoryConceptually testable
Sam HarrisConceptually Untestable (Justified: If the gap is unbridgeable, as Harris claims, the mystery cannot be dispelled by empirical science as currently practiced.)
Tests so far
Higher-Order Thought TheoryNot stated
Sam HarrisNone (Justified: The framework is a diagnosis of science's failure to address the hard problem and does not propose empirical tests for the mystery itself.)
Criticisms
Higher-Order Thought TheoryFirst-order theorists argue that higher-order awareness is an unneeded extra ingredient, and deflationists say being aware of a conscious state is like ‘smiling a smile’. Rosenthal replies that a deflated awareness cannot explain the contrast between conscious and unconscious states.
Sam HarrisIt functions primarily as a critique against reductionism and scientific optimism regarding consciousness, classifying the issue as an ultimate mystery, which reductionists reject as pessimism (mysterianism).
Sources
Key sources
Higher-Order Thought Theory
- Rosenthal’s Higher-Order Thought, Landscape of Consciousness, David Rosenthal (2005)
Sam Harris
- The mystery of consciousness (Part I & II), Sam Harris (2011)
- Explorations in Consciousness: Death Psychedelics and Mystical Experience (2023)