Abstract
We argue that heterophenomenology both over- and under-populates the intentional realm. For example, when one is involved in coping, one’s mind does not contain beliefs. Since the heterophenomenologist interprets all intentional commitment as belief, he necessarily overgenerates the belief contents of the mind. Since beliefs cannot capture the normative aspect of coping and perceiving, any method, such as heterophenomenology, that allows for only beliefs is guaranteed not only to overgenerate beliefs but also to undergenerate other kinds of intentional phenomena.
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Notes
The Gestalt psychologists, in effect, were practicing heterophenomenology all along without a name for it. The Gestaltists, like Dennett’s heterophenomenologist, didn’t introspect; they asked their subjects to report on their experiences, and took these reports as their data.
Perhaps it’s enough to doubt that or wonder whether I am having an experience, or to have some other attitude towards it. But even this would be enough for Dennett to be justified in turning the purely qualitative into the intentional.
Gibson himself did not emphasize the phenomenology of affordances, and indeed explicitly denied that affordances are defined in terms of their phenomenology in his arguments with the Gestaltists. There he claims that it is an objective fact that food affords nourishment even when I’m satiated and so not drawn to it. It is important to emphasize that for us, in contrast with Gibson, an affordance is defined in terms of its phenomenology.
See Kelly (2004) for further discussion of this point.
Note that with this claim Sartre denies the importance of the phenomenological observation he made earlier, that experienced objects have attractive and repellant qualities.
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Dreyfus, H., Kelly, S.D. Heterophenomenology: Heavy-handed sleight-of-hand. Phenom Cogn Sci 6, 45–55 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-006-9042-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-006-9042-y