Abstract
Disputes about what is phenomenologically manifest in conscious experience have a way of leading to deadlocks with remarkable immediacy. Disputants reach the foot-stomping stage of the dialectic more or less right after declaring their discordant views. It is this fact, I believe, that leads some to heterophenomenology and the like attempts to found Consciousness Studies on purely third-person grounds. In this paper, I explore the other possible reaction to this fact, namely, the articulation of methods for addressing phenomenological disputes. I suggest two viable methods, of complementary value, which I call “the method of contrast” and “the method of knowability.”
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Notes
This was most probably the view of the sense datum theorists.
Here, and in the sequel, I ignore the question of whether we should understand the phenomenologically manifest as pertaining to the content of experiences or as vehicular properties. I do so mainly because the view one takes on the matter should not affect the issues raised in the paper, but partly also because I hold that phenomenology is inherently intentional (Kriegel, 2002, Ms; see also Siewert, 1998, Horgan & Tienson, 2002).
With some vigilance, we may call phenomenological empiricism the view that only the ellipticality is phenomenologically manifest, and phenomenological rationalism the view that only the roundness is.
In terms of the terminology hesitantly suggested in note 5, we may say that the phenomenological empiricist claims it is bluishness, the phenomenological rationalist it is whiteness.
I am here presupposing a quasi-intuitive distinction between low- and high-level properties. The distinction has been widely appealed to in philosophy, even though it is not entirely obvious how to draw it. In discussing the question whether perception represents high-level properties, Siegel (2006) takes the approach of simply listing properties to be treated as high-level. If all else fails, we could make recourse to her list.
Or bluish expanse, perhaps....
For the view that they are, see Noë and O’Regan (2001), O’Regan and Noë (2001), and Noë (2004). It is possible to read Noë (and O’Regan) as holding only that the expectancies are inherent to perception but not in a phenomenologically manifest way. But I believe the spirit of his view is that they are phenomenologically manifest. Siegel (in press) argues not for a manifold of expectancies, as Noë does, but for two specific ones as phenomenologically manifest.
I use the phrase “judicative phenomenology” where others often use “cognitive phenomenology,” because I do not mean to restrict to cognitive judgments (in case there are non-cognitive judgments, as – say – moral non-cognitivists maintain moral judgments are).
I imagine it is coherent to hold that the content is phenomenologically manifest while the attitude is not.
This question arises, of course, only for those who think that consciousness is in fact unified. Some have argued that while there is a unity of consciousness, it must itself be a sub-personal feature, not a phenomenologically manifest one. Among those who develop accounts of phenomenal unity are Bayne and Chalmers (2003), Tye (2003), and Masrour (2007).
This question arises, again, only for those who think that there is in fact a for-me-ness built into conscious experiences.
The point made in the interlude is intended to illuminate the nature of the tension between phenomenological deflationism and inflationism, and in that sense is important to the paper’s line of inquiry. But the paper would be a self-contained piece without it, which is why I designate this discussion an “interlude.”
So non-sensory phenomenology is phenomenology not exhausted by sensuous quality.
I intend the citation of the sensorium’s stimulation as evidence for, rather than as constitutive of, the claim about what is sensorily given.
Strawson calls that thing “understanding-experience.”
I raise this in Kriegel (2003a, p. 8).
In the terminology used, we can say that the phenomenological rationalist is committed to the existence of sensorily given features that are not phenomenologically manifest.
This is not the only way to interpret the view that both roundness and ellipticality are phenomenologically manifest, and may not be assented to by all who hold this position. In particular, I do not know whether Noë (2004) would subscribe to this interpretation.
I use the pejorative term “overreaction” unfairly, as I will not directly argue against them. Nonetheless I will allow myself this indulgence.
It is important to note that the view is not tantamount to eliminativism about phenomenology. According to eliminativism, there is a very determinate fact of the matter regarding such disputes. Thus, it is a fact of the matter that neither roundness nor ellipticality – nor anything else – is (ever) phenomenologically manifest.
This view is defended, in the case of moral phenomenology, by Gill (2007). I am not aware of it being defended in print in the case of perceptual phenomenology.
Thus, in addressing the debate over the existence of judicative phenomenology, a verbalist would declare that there is no substantial issue here, and the best way to settle the matter is simply to distinguish two senses of “phenomenology” and allow that there is such a thing as judicative phenomenology in one sense but not in the other.
It might be objected that we are unimpressed with falsehood because it is neurophysiologically unmotivated: If four perceptual modalities are associated with the existence of phenomenology, it would be odd and unnatural for the last modality to stand out. But this seems like the wrong diagnosis: A neurophysiological ignoramus would be just as unimpressed with falsehood. Furthermore, we could concoct a view somewhat more natural. Touch and smell are, unlike the other three, mechanical senses. The molecular basis for their operation is known to be distinctive. Yet the conjunction of falsehood and the thesis that tactile perception has no phenomenology would be just as absurd, however “natural” in the sense of carving nature at real joints.
To be sure, this argument works only if one accepts that there is a phenomenological difference between Aesop’s and Prosop’s experiences, or that the case of Aesop and Prosop is indeed imaginable. But in every argument one can reject the premises. The strength of the form of argument we are considering is in the fact that one’s judgments about such claims as that there is a phenomenological difference between the two experiences considered is not dictated – at least it need not be – by one’s prior theoretical commitments regarding the nature of phenomenology.
At a third pass, we add to the method the traditional resources of philosophical disputes about very fundamental issues: elucidation and disambiguation of key terms, assessment of the validity of reasonings on both sides, etc.
In passing, Siegel (2005) also nicely articulates a Husserlian case for the thesis that diachronic unity of consciousness is sometimes phenomenologically manifest by appealing to what she calls “phenomenal contrasts”: “Suppose you hear a series of five notes at times t1 through t5 that form of a melody: C-E-G-E-C. Compare this series to another one in which you hear a series of five sounds, each sounding at the same moment as the corresponding note in the melody (the first one sounds at t1, the second at t2, etc.) These sounds are the clink of a cup against a saucer, the groan of an accelerating bus, a creak from a chair, a snippet of a loud voice, and the honk of a car’s horn. Now, we experience the notes of the melody as unified in a way that we need not experience the five sounds as unified – even if at each moment we remember the sound at the previous moment.”
I argue this way in Kriegel (2003a, p. 7).
In other words, if there are indeed phenomenologically manifest features that are necessary for the presence of any phenomenality, we are bound to fail to imagine the contrasting S*, but only because it will be impossible to imagine an S* that satisfies (1). Thus the failure of contrast would be failure to generate a test, not failure to pass a test.
It might be claimed that in such twofold claims, only (a) is a genuinely phenomenological claim, while (b) is a modal rather than phenomenological claim. I am actually sympathetic to this view, but it makes no difference to the issue at hand. The issue is whether someone committed to both (a) and (b) can make use of the method of contrast in establishing her phenomenological claim (a). The answer to that question is negative, regardless of whether (b) is also a phenomenological claim.
Back then I used the term “intellectual qualia.” I have since ceased using the term “qualia” in public altogether (mention is a different thing).
This is in effect how Pitt (2004) proceeds. A large segment of his article is dedicated to developing at length a subtle and plausible account of first-person knowledge.
Nor does one need imply that mine is more secure, more reliable, more certain, or anything else. I find it plausible that some of these epistemic virtues will in the end prove to be correct. But one does not claim that they are just by asserting the existence of first-person knowledge.
I happen to think that the claim, or rather something close to it, is true: I have argued elsewhere that first-person knowability fixes the reference (or denotation) of “conscious” as used in everyday discourse (Kriegel, 2004).
We must let Person retain her understanding of concepts and (perhaps) language, so that her inability to know certain things will not be confused with a mere inability to classify or name them.
This is not to say that the phenomenology is proprietary. More plausibly, the phenomenology of calculating is just a combination of agential and judicative phenomenologies.
For comments on earlier drafts, I would like to thank Stephen Biggs, Mike Bruno, David Chalmers, Alva Noë, Eric Schwitzgebel, and especially Susanna Siegel and Charles Siewert. I have also benefited from conversations with Terry Horgan, Farid Masrour, and David Pitt.
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Kriegel, U. The phenomenologically manifest. Phenom Cogn Sci 6, 115–136 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-006-9029-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-006-9029-8