Abstract
Plain phenomenology explains theoretically salient mental or psychological distinctions with an appeal to their first-person applications. But it does not assume (as does heterophenomenology) that warrant for such first-person judgment is derived from an explanatory theory constructed from the third-person perspective. Discussions in historical phenomenology can be treated as plain phenomenology. This is illustrated by a critical consideration of Brentano’s account of consciousness, drawing on some ideas in early Husserl. Dennett’s advocacy of heterophenomenology on the grounds of its supposed “neutrality” does not show it is preferable to plain phenomenology. In fact the latter is more neutral in ways we ought to want, and permits a desirable (and desirably critical) use of first-person reflection that finds no place in the former.
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Notes
Though it is interesting that Ryle was in fact conversant with and in some way influenced by the phenomenologies of Husserl and Heidegger. See Thomasson (2002).
Thomasson (2005) proposes an interpretation of Husserl’s views on self-knowledge that would distance him more from Brentano than I have here, and arguably free him from the objection I suggest. The picture is complicated further by Husserl’s scattered and elusive remarks, in work after the Logical Investigations on which I’ve been drawing, about the nature of the “givenness” of experience: we are, he thinks, in some sense always conscious of our experience in a manner that gives evidence to our (not always present) reflective judgments about our experience, though this non-reflective sort of consciousness does not “posit” what it is “of” as object. For a detailed discussion, see Zahavi (1999).
The assertion of the “transparency of consciousness” has tended, as in Dretske’s (1995) and Tye’s (1995, 2002) discussions, to go together with arguments against an inner sense account of how we know our own minds. And an affirmation of attention to one’s own experience (as in Lycan’s (1996, 2001, 2004) treatment of these matters) has been urged in support of an inner sense, higher order perception view. However, it is a striking feature of Brentano’s discussion that he combines a denial of attention to one’s own experience with advocacy of a robustly perceptual model of consciousness. How could Brentano have thought this?
My own conjecture is that he did not appreciate something that still has not, it seems to me, received due notice – the nature of the common root of doubt about inner perception and doubt about attention to one’s own experience. What we need to describe clearly is how the character of the appearance of a red ball, for example – unlike that of the red ball itself – won’t, so to speak, “hold still,” won’t remain discernibly invariant or unchanging, while one shifts one’s attention around on it. This, I think, is an aspect of the unavailability of something like perceptual constancy at the “higher order level” – the level of reflection. Brentano perhaps did not appreciate the importance of such constancy phenomena, both in drawing the distinction between sensory appearance and judgment, and in the distinctive operations of sensory attention. And so perhaps he failed to connect worries about the feasibility of attending to your own experience with worries about inner presentation.
Recently philosophers of mind have displayed interest in trying to characterize the distinctively “phenomenal” or “subjective” concepts we have of our experience, and it is said that there is something “demonstrative” or “recognitional” about these concepts. These ideas play a role in recent work by Loar (2002), Papineau (2002), Tye (2002), and others. I hope to be opening a slightly novel way into this territory, however, which might link up with Chalmers’ (2003) discussion of phenomenal belief, and Levine’s (2001) efforts to get at what is peculiarly “intimate” about the “acquaintance” we have with our own experience. Thus perhaps plain phenomenology will bear not only on our conception of psychological self-knowledge, but on the question of just how (or whether) we can reconcile the concepts we have of our own experience with a conviction in its underlying physical nature.
I should note other, evidently distinct, questions on which Dennett alleges heterophenomenology is laudably neutral. Does plain phenomenology fare worse with these? One is the “zombie question”; the other has to do with whether consciousness can be “accounted for” or is “accessible” from an “objective” point of view.
The zombie question, as it appears in Dennett (1991, pp. 72–73), seems to be the question: Do we have conscious experience in some sense in which other beings, indiscernible from us in their patterns of bodily movement and verbal utterance, might not have it? We are told that heterophenomenology wisely assumes neither a ‘yes’ nor a ‘no’ to this question. (Thus Dennett sometimes seems to be using ‘zombies’ not in Chalmers’ (1996) sense (in which the imagined beings are particle for particle type identical to conscious beings), but in this less restrictive sense, which would allow for zombies to be internally physically quite different from us conscious beings.)
Now plain phenomenology does not presuppose an answer to this zombie question. So if it is desirable to be neutral on this question, plain phenomenology does not suffer on this account. However, one might, starting from a plain phenomenological perspective, introduce the notion of a zombie. First, one identifies through first-person reflection a range of mental phenomena – sensory appearances, imagery and episodic thought. Then one says something like: conscious experience is what these all are, and what may conceivably be entirely lacking in the case of some being who is, nonetheless, in shape and outward behavior no different from ourselves. Such an entity would be a zombie. One cannot, it seems, introduce the notion of a zombie in this way if one sticks to heterophenomenology. But then, I have to say, it’s hard for me to see how I could grasp the notion at all. And if one can’t even grasp the notion of a zombie from a heterophenomenological perspective, then heterophenomenology can hardly be said to be neutral about whether there might be zombies: it would preclude a positive answer.
The second question on which heterophenomenology is supposed to be happily neutral is a little obscure. I take it to be the question of whether in some way one has to share the type of experience that some subject has in order to account for that type of experience or understand it properly. This question needs to be made more precise, but again, it seems to me that if it’s desirable to start with neutrality on this question, then that would give heterophenomenology no advantage over plain phenomenology. I do agree that we should start off neutral to this extent at least: this question should be up for clarification and discussion.
The phrase “grand illusion” was introduced in this context by Noë, Pessoa, and Thompson (2000).
This illusory impression that people are said to have about vision has been expressed in various ways. Blackmore et al. put it by saying that “We believe that we see a complete dynamic picture of a stable, uniformly detailed, and colourful world” (Blackmore, Brelstaff, Nelson, & Troscianko, 1995, p. 1075). Rensink (2000) assumes that “we feel that somewhere in our brain is a complete coherent representation of the entire scene.” Dennett (1991, p. 68) suggests that when you introspect you may be inclined to think that your “subjective visual field is basically an inner picture composed of colored shapes.” He also says that people think that “their visual fields are approximately as detailed and fine-grained all the way out.” (Dennett, 2005, p. 45)
I should make it clear that my criticism of Dennett is not that he requires us to give up all rational entitlement to affirm things about our experience. As I understand his view, he allows we do (or can) have some such entitlement – but he and I differ in what we think about the nature of such entitlement. Dennett, as I understand him, would say our assertions about our experience can sometimes be shown to be regularly correct in some respect – at least with a little re-interpretation – by third-person evidence. So, presumably, the observational evidence legitimizes one’s first-person reports that one sees various colors and shapes. But this is so, only inasmuch as these reports are not taken to be about experiential episodes – visual appearings of shape and color (“real seemings”) as distinct from judgments that things are thus and so (which are basically no different – other than in their causes – from “presentiments” generally). So first-person beliefs about experience may enjoy a distinctive sort of warrant from this quarter, on Dennett’s view. Moreover, he thinks we are rationally entitled to affirmations about our experience in this sense as well: we enjoy “total dictatorial authority”(Dennett, 1991, p. 96) in saying what we believe about our experience. That is, (as I interpret Dennett) your sincere assertion that you believe this or that regarding your experience is to be accepted as true without challenge. But then we should try to explain why you believe what you thus unquestionably believe; and in doing this, neither you nor anyone else is entitled to some presumption in favor of the truth of these beliefs.
My criticisms here challenge this picture. First, there’s no good reason to claim that our first-person judgments about experience enjoy what warrant they do only by having it conferred on them as a consequence of some observation-based theory. And I don’t think any good reason has been offered for regarding as mistaken a distinction between your making judgments about visible things and these things’ visually appearing or seeming (i.e., looking) somehow to you. (One way the distinction can be made clear, would be to proceed as I’ve done here, by appeal to first-person reflection on facts of perceptual constancy. If heterophenomenology forbids this use of first-person reflection, so much the worse for heterophenomenology.) Finally, I think Dennett is mistaken to grant dictatorial authority to first-person reports of beliefs about experience. For I think we can mistakenly report what we believe about our experience, recognize and correct our mistakes through first-person reflection. For instance: one may rashly assent, when asked if one believes that ordinarily, in seeing, one is aware of a visual image or picture that is more or less equally detailed “all the way out” to the periphery of one’s visual field. However, by posing further questions, and reflecting on examples of one’s own experience, one can come to realize this is not really what one believes about one’s experience. This kind of critical revision to one’s expression of first-person beliefs about experience would appear not to make sense if one really enjoyed dictatorial authority regarding such belief reports: one’s first word on the matter would then be the final word. Curiously, by granting such authority to one’s (third-order) beliefs about one’s beliefs regarding experience, Dennett actually weakens the authority of (second-order) first-person experiential beliefs, by rendering their errors irremediable by critical first-person reflection. Against all this, I aim to strengthen the epistemic status of first-person reflection, by recognizing its powers of self-correction. (Thanks to Alva Noë for pressing on me the need for this clarification.)
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Acknowledgments
For their comments, criticisms and suggestions, I would like to thank John Campbell, Dave Chalmers, Michelle Montague, Alva Noë, David Pitt, Eric Schwitzgebel, David W. Smith, and Amie Thomasson, and audiences at meetings of the California Phenomenological Circle, and the 2005 Pacific APA, and at talks given at the University of California at Irvine, California State University of Los Angeles, and the SPAWN 2005 conference on consciousness.
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Siewert, C. In favor of (plain) phenomenology. Phenom Cogn Sci 6, 201–220 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-006-9035-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-006-9035-x