Hetero phenomenology definition in philosophy

[Mentat]

Dennett's own explanation of heterophenomenology.

Tell me what you think.

 

[loseyourname]

Hey, I just read that the other day. It actually got me thinking of Sleeth, to be honest. Dennett's major defense of heterophenomenology is that no philosopher that opposes it has ever been able to propose an experiment that couldn't be conducted using its methodology. It made me think of that Empirical Inductionist Panexperientialism thread from a while back. Of course, I never read that thread in detail, so I have idea whether or not it even proposes an experimental technique that could not be conducted using heterophenomenology. I know that Les believes it is best to trust as accurate the impressions he gets when he conducts his meditations, but I personally wouldn't be so trusting.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Instead, they have objected ‘in
principle’, perhaps playing a little gorgeous Bach for the audience and then asking
the rhetorical question, ‘Can anybody seriously believe that the wonders of
human consciousness can be exhaustively plumbed by third-person methods??’

How true! How familiar!

 

[Mentat]

Hey, I just read that the other day. It actually got me thinking of Sleeth, to be honest. Dennett's major defense of heterophenomenology is that no philosopher that opposes it has ever been able to propose an experiment that couldn't be conducted using its methodology. It made me think of that Empirical Inductionist Panexperientialism thread from a while back. Of course, I never read that thread in detail, so I have idea whether or not it even proposes an experimental technique that could not be conducted using heterophenomenology. I know that Les believes it is best to trust as accurate the impressions he gets when he conducts his meditations, but I personally wouldn't be so trusting.

Forgive me...what exactly is the relation?

 

[loseyourname]

Forgive me...what exactly is the relation?

Well, as stated, I never actually read Sleeth's method, but I get the impression that he was advocating a first-person scientific method that he believes could not be conducted using heterophenomenology, which would be a taking up of Dennett's challenge, at least if he were to present Dennett with his method.

Forgive me, but wasn't that obvious?

 

[StatusX]

All he's basically saying is that we should assume no more about what a person is saying than "that is how it seems to them." Of course, the obvious application of this is that when people say things like "Isn't it amazing how roses smell the way they do?" or "I am a conscious being", once we have a neurocognitive explanation of why these things are said, we will have nothing more to explain.

Although I disagree with him, there is clearly nothing anyone can say to argue against such a stance (except the standard appeals to your own experience), since we can only give the kind of third person evidence he can explain away. However, I will say that until we do have a theory of why we make such second and third order judgements about conscisouness, the two ideologies (eg, Dennett's and Chalmers') will happily coexist, as far as experiments are concerned. The distinction comes when we finally reach this point, and concerns whether or not we'll say "OK, we're done." But once we're there, where we know the exact neural mechanisms responsible for the words "intrinsic properties of color", I think the choice will become much clearer.

Still, we'll have to reconcile the paradoxes each view seems to carry along with it, at least at present. In the Dennett view, we are denying what in a very important sense is the only thing we know is real. And in the Chalmers view, we have to face the fact that any theory we can possibly come up with will only be able to explain the "third person consciousness" Dennett already concedes to. Again, these are both only how it seems, and for that matter, only how it seems to me, which may be enough for Dennett, but please correct me if I'm missing something. The more I think about it, the more I wonder about mysterianism (we'll never know) and the possibility of a godellian type proof that it's beyond our reasoning abilities.

 

[selfAdjoint]

How disappointing that you would fall to your knees for such a strawman account of the antiphysicalist argument.

0.

Strawman? I was recalling just that very same argument about music, directed at me in these forums a month or two ago. And fall on my knees? How insulting!

 

[hypnagogue]

Strawman? I was recalling just that very same argument about music, directed at me in these forums a month or two ago. And fall on my knees? How insulting!

In the text you quoted, Dennett paints antiphysicalists as impassioned dolts who sacrifice reason for the sake of emotion. In actuality, antiphysicalist arguments typically use rather bland and uninspiring perceptual experiences as case studies, e.g. a pain or a shade of red. The substance of their arguments proceeds from careful reasoning about observations of the properties of these experiences and the properties of physical phenomena, not from some overblown emotional response. I apologize if my words were insulting, but hopefully you can appreciate my consternation at your enthusiasm for Dennett's insulting and derisive characterization. (If anyone is a master of arrogance and derision, it is Dennett.)

I don't necessarily expect you to be swayed by the antiphysicalist stance, but can we at least recognize that there is more substance to the arguments than the naive wonderment of some emotional sop? If you truly believe that someone presented you with an argument along the lines of the one Dennett cites in your quoted text, then either a) this person did not understand the substance of the antiphysicalist argument, or b) you did not understand the substance of this person's argument.

 

[selfAdjoint]

I don't necessarily expect you to be swayed by the antiphysicalist stance, but can we at least recognize that there is more substance to the arguments than the naive wonderment of some emotional sop? If you truly believe that someone presented you with an argument along the lines of the one Dennett cites in your quoted text, then either a) this person did not understand the substance of the antiphysicalist argument, or b) you did not understand the substance of this person's argument.

The antiphysicalist arguments all take off from taking our inner perceptions as not only real (which I agree they are), but realer than any outside investigation could show. I say that our inner perceptions are inter alia caused by a long and variable chain of physical reactions, and that these separate us from the outside world, so that we have to use special equipment and comparison of different third party views, to achieve any reliable understanding of that world. Inner thought fom Plato to Husserl to Sartre has yielded nothing certain or reproducable. By reproducable I do not mean imitative. Dennett's epiphenomenalism is simply a careful description of the techniques we have to use if we are going to arrive at reproducable, falsifiable conclusions about consciousness.

 

[Mentat]

Well, as stated, I never actually read Sleeth's method, but I get the impression that he was advocating a first-person scientific method that he believes could not be conducted using heterophenomenology, which would be a taking up of Dennett's challenge, at least if he were to present Dennett with his method.

Forgive me, but wasn't that obvious?

I'm a little slow, bear with me .

Anyway, I don't know that we could ever test a first-person scientific method, nor that such a thing could really exist. After all, the current scientific method (post-Popper) is quite dependent on disprovability. What would be the criteria for "disproof" (or "consensus", for that matter; "consensus" being another important aspect of scientific method) in a first-person, meditative method?

Note: I'm not asking you to defend it, I know it's not a position that you were holding. I'm just curious to see if this idea could be developed further.

 

[loseyourname]

I'm a little slow, bear with me .

Anyway, I don't know that we could ever test a first-person scientific method, nor that such a thing could really exist. After all, the current scientific method (post-Popper) is quite dependent on disprovability. What would be the criteria for "disproof" (or "consensus", for that matter; "consensus" being another important aspect of scientific method) in a first-person, meditative method?

Note: I'm not asking you to defend it, I know it's not a position that you were holding. I'm just curious to see if this idea could be developed further.

Well, claims that anyone using the right techniques to turn their attention inward and still all thought will have the same experience and come to the same conclusions. If he were being intellectually honest, then I suppose he would have to admit that a person having a different experience or coming to a different conclusion would be a falsifying instance. He doesn't seem to think it's ever happened, though.

 

[Mentat]

Hypnagogue, if you have something to say about (specifically) Dennett's approach, as explained in my link, then go ahead. As it is, you are countering "naive anti-physicalist arguments" in general, and that is not the purpose of this thread.

 

[Mentat]

Well, claims that anyone using the right techniques to turn their attention inward and still all thought will have the same experience and come to the same conclusions. If he were being intellectually honest, then I suppose he would have to admit that a person having a different experience or coming to a different conclusion would be a falsifying instance. He doesn't seem to think it's ever happened, though.

Which would mean that subjective experiences, found through meditation, are unfalsifiable, and thus unscientific. Dennett's heterophenomenology, on the other hand, is scientific specifically because it itself is falsifiable, and it makes our reports falsifiable (thus eliminating any concept of an aspect of cosnciousness that is "beyond" science).

 

[hypnagogue]

Hypnagogue, if you have something to say about (specifically) Dennett's approach, as explained in my link, then go ahead. As it is, you are countering "naive anti-physicalist arguments" in general, and that is not the purpose of this thread.

Nonetheless, naive arguments were introduced, and their naivete needed to be pointed out.

In any case, I read this piece by Dennett some time ago, and my reaction is basically similar to StatusX's. On the face of it, it looks as though heterophenomenology may be as much of an account of consciousness as an objective scientific method could afford. However, I do not think that this implies that heterophenomenology is a complete account of consciousness. If we commit ourselves a priori to the notion that all that is knowable is knowable via third person methods, then it would indeed logically follow that HP tells us all there is to know. But I believe there are good reasons for thinking that phenomenal consciousness is an instance of something that cannot be known from the third person, and I prefer to abandon a commitment to the completeness of third person methods rather than abandon what is apparent to me from first person observation.

 

[Nereid]

Hmm, let's not be too hasty here, re 'falsifiability'; in the 'post-Popper' world, that's not at all the shiboleth! So what is? Probably extent to which it's a part of a 'research program' (Lakatos); falsifiability may be a helpful heuristic, but it hasn't stopped vast numbers of person-years of effort being devoted, for example, to String Theory/M-Theory (pray tell, is it 'falsifiable'?)

 

[Mentat]

Nonetheless, naive arguments were introduced, and their naivete needed to be pointed out.

SelfAdjoint was simply making the (accurate) point that many Chalmerean, qualia-thumpin' philosophers of mind do indeed make such statements as echoed by Dennett in his quote.

In any case, I read this piece by Dennett some time ago, and my reaction is basically similar to StatusX's. On the face of it, it looks as though heterophenomenology may be as much of an account of consciousness as an objective scientific method could afford. However, I do not think that this implies that heterophenomenology is a complete account of consciousness. If we commit ourselves a priori to the notion that all that is knowable is knowable via third person methods, then it would indeed logically follow that HP tells us all there is to know. But I believe there are good reasons for thinking that phenomenal consciousness is an instance of something that cannot be known from the third person, and I prefer to abandon a commitment to the completeness of third person methods rather than abandon what is apparent to me from first person observation.

So your saying that you couldn't possibly be wrong about your consciousness, and so there's no point in listening to someone who tells you that you might be?

 

[Mentat]

Hmm, let's not be too hasty here, re 'falsifiability'; in the 'post-Popper' world, that's not at all the shiboleth!

I was just reading that account yesterday, so it's particularly funny to me.

So what is? Probably extent to which it's a part of a 'research program' (Lakatos); falsifiability may be a helpful heuristic, but it hasn't stopped vast numbers of person-years of effort being devoted, for example, to String Theory/M-Theory (pray tell, is it 'falsifiable'?)

First off, I didn't mean to say that falsifiability is an ultimate proof of something being scientific (though I guess that's how it came off). It's more that something that isn't falsifiable is clearly not worth testing, and thus doesn't fall into the realm of the scientific method.

And, yes, I think M-theory is somewhat falsifiable...After all, if we could see a fundamental particle, and it weren't a string...well, I guess it'd be disproven...or, maybe, if we could disprove supersymmetry...or, maybe, I just really like the theory :shy:.

 

[loseyourname]

Hmm, let's not be too hasty here, re 'falsifiability'; in the 'post-Popper' world, that's not at all the shiboleth! So what is? Probably extent to which it's a part of a 'research program' (Lakatos); falsifiability may be a helpful heuristic, but it hasn't stopped vast numbers of person-years of effort being devoted, for example, to String Theory/M-Theory (pray tell, is it 'falsifiable'?)

Is string theory science though? Any theoretic undertaking shouldn't qualify as science simply because it's done by scientists. It's certainly mathematical, but if it produces no predictions that can be tested that might falsify its hypotheses, then I'd say string theory is very elaborate and rigorous philosophy. Many scientists agree with me on that.

 

[StatusX]

Falsifiability is the standard for traditional, objective science, but it is clear that this kind of science won't be able to account for subjective experience. So yes, we may need to adopt a method that isn't necessarily falsifiable. Perhaps it's only evidence will be it's compelling simplicity or symmetry with the physical.

 

[Canute]

Perhaps the only answer is to find evidence that is unfalsifiable because it is self-evident.

If one read's Dennett's book carefully and dispassionately it soon becomes clear that his main arguments don't hold water. That doesn't in itself make heterophenomenology wrong, but he fails to make a good case for it.

"The challenge is to construct a theory of mental events, using the data that scientific method permits"(p. 71)

I pick this because it shows the way in which Dennett tries to have his cake and eat it. It is true that this is the challenge. However one wonders what scientific data he refers to. So far scientists have been unable to prove that mental events exists, so the data is a little thin on the ground. In order to collect such data we would have to show first that mental events exist. If they exist, as distinct from brain-events, then consciousness is not brain.

Someone equated heterophenomenology with epiphenominalism earlier. This seems incorrect. Dennett says -

" ince heterophenomenology is a way of interpreting behaviour (including the internal behaviour of brains, etc.), it will arrive at exactly the same heterophenomenological world for Zoe and for Zombie-Zoe, her unconscious twin." (95)

As zombies do not have consciousness we can see that heterophenomenology works as a theory whether or not mental events exist. It is therefore more akin to eliminativism than epiphenomenalism.

This statement asserts that hetero-phenomenology is not an explanation of consciousness but rather of behaviour, and that it is therefore just as useful for explaining zombie behaviour as it is for explaining human behaviour. Thus it is made clear that his theory does not acknowledge the existence of mental events, and is not a theory of consciousness so much as a theory of non-consciousness. To me it seems no more than a rehash of Lyle in the spirit of Watson and Skinner with added sophistry and longer words.

 

[Mentat]

Falsifiability is the standard for traditional, objective science, but it is clear that this kind of science won't be able to account for subjective experience.

How can that be "clear" in light of heterophenomenology? The whole point of the endeavor is that it is not clear that subjectivity is outside of traditional science.

 

[selfAdjoint]

If one read's Dennett's book carefully and dispassionately it soon becomes clear that his main arguments don't hold water. That doesn't in itself make heterophenomenology wrong, but he fails to make a good case for it.

Maybe we should start a thread on this assertion. I'll get a copy of Consciousness Explained and you do too, and point out where you think the arguments fail and why. And I'll try to respond. And anyone who wants to play along can do so.

 

[Mentat]

Perhaps the only answer is to find evidence that is unfalsifiable because it is self-evident.

Descartes tried that, it doesn't work.

If one read's Dennett's book carefully and dispassionately it soon becomes clear that his main arguments don't hold water. That doesn't in itself make heterophenomenology wrong, but he fails to make a good case for it.

I agree with selfAdjoint on this, we should have a separate thread on Dennett's book (I assume you were referring to Consciousness Explained). I already have the book, and have read it twice.

"The challenge is to construct a theory of mental events, using the data that scientific method permits"(p. 71)

I pick this because it shows the way in which Dennett tries to have his cake and eat it. It is true that this is the challenge. However one wonders what scientific data he refers to. So far scientists have been unable to prove that mental events exists, so the data is a little thin on the ground. In order to collect such data we would have to show first that mental events exist. If they exist, as distinct from brain-events, then consciousness is not brain.

This is too early in the book. He is still accustoming the lay-reader to the problems of consciousness as they currently stand in philosophy of mind. Later, he speaks in a much more eliminativist way.

If you have read the book, you should also recall that he tackled mind-body dichotomies (and homunculi) very early in the book. He explained that, for there to be mental events there would need to be something "in there" to perceive them. Since "perception" is what is being explained in terms of mental events and inner observers, then that inner observer must also have an inner observer, et cetera ad infinitum.

Someone equated heterophenomenology with epiphenominalism earlier. This seems incorrect. Dennett says -

" ince heterophenomenology is a way of interpreting behaviour (including the internal behaviour of brains, etc.), it will arrive at exactly the same heterophenomenological world for Zoe and for Zombie-Zoe, her unconscious twin." (95)

As zombies do not have consciousness we can see that heterophenomenology works as a theory whether or not mental events exist. It is therefore more akin to eliminativism than epiphenomenalism.

That is not perfectly accurate. First off, "zombies" (pace Chalmers and co.) do indeed have consciousness, just not "p-consciousness". However, I will grant you that Dennett's approach is not epiphenomenalist, in that he sees no need to try and explain "mental events" (in terms of brain events or otherwise), merely the reports thereof. As explained in my link, heterophenomenology treats the report as the raw data.

This statement asserts that hetero-phenomenology is not an explanation of consciousness but rather of behaviour, and that it is therefore just as useful for explaining zombie behaviour as it is for explaining human behaviour. Thus it is made clear that his theory does not acknowledge the existence of mental events, and is not a theory of consciousness so much as a theory of non-consciousness.

You are assuming that there is something to consciousness besides behavior. This may not be warranted, as a definition of consciousness, in terms of eliminativism and heterophenomenology has nothing at all to do with mental events, but is nonetheless a definition of consciousness.

 

[Philocrat]

Dennett's own explanation of heterophenomenology.

Tell me what you think.

(http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/JCSarticle.pdf )Most of the method is so obvious and uncontroversial that some scientists are baffled that I would even call it a method: basically, you have to take the vocal sounds emanating from the subjects’ mouths (and your own mouth) and interpret them! Well of course. What else could you do? Those sounds aren’t just belches and moans; they’re speech acts, reporting, questioning, correcting, requesting, and so forth. Using such standard speech acts, other events such as button presses can be set up to be interpreted as speech acts as well, with highly specific meanings and fine temporal resolution. What this interpersonal communication enables you, the investigator, to do is to compose a catalogue of what the subject believes to be true about his or her conscious experience. This catalogue of beliefs fleshes out the subject’s heterophenomenological world, the world according to S—the subjective world of one subject—not to be confused with
the real world. The total set of details of heterophenomenology, plus all the data we can gather about concurrent events in the brains of subjects and in the surrounding environment, comprise the total data set for a theory of human consciousness. It leaves out no objective phenomena and no subjective phenomena of consciousness.

This is substantially true, at least as far as the notion of ‘COMMUNICATION AND UNDERSTANDING’ each other is concerned. Unless I am misunderstanding what he means here, this suggests substantially that the visual contents of what we explain to each other by means of physical noises, corporeal interactions, oral and written communications do to some degree of measure approximate to something ‘Subjective’. It is subjectively objective! Subjectively, ‘What it is like’ is objectively ‘What it is like’!

Just what kinds of things does this methodology commit us to? Beyond the unproblematic things all of science is committed to (neurons and electrons, clocks and microscopes, . . . ) just to beliefs—the beliefs expressed by subjects and deemed constitutive of their subjectivity. And what kind of things are beliefs? Are they sentences in the head written in brain writing? Are they nonphysical states of dualist ectoplasm? Are they structures composed of proteins or neural assemblies or electrical fields? We may stay maximally noncommittal about this by adopting, at least for the time being (I recommend: for ever), the position I have defended (Dennett, 1971; 1987; 1991) that treats beliefs from the intentional stance as theorists’ fictions similar to centres of mass, the Equator, and parallelograms of forces. In short, we may treat beliefs as abstractions that measure or describe the complex cognitive state of a subject rather the way horsepower indirectly but accurately measures the power of engines (don’t look in the engine for the horses). As Churchland (1979) has pointed out, physics already has hundreds of well-understood measure predicates, such as x has weight-in-grams n, or x is moving up at n meters per second, which describe a physical property of x by relating it to a number. Statements that attribute beliefs using the standard propositional attitude format, x believes that p, describe x’s internal state by relating it to a proposition, another kind of useful abstraction, systematized in logic, not arithmetic. We need beliefs anyway for the rest of social science, which is almost entirely conducted in terms of the intentional stance, so this is a conservative exploitation of already quite well-behaved and well-understood methods.

Well, Churchland actually called these ‘Numerical Attitudes’ and declared them analogically equivalent to ‘Propositional Attitudes’ (Matter and Consciousness’, 1997, pp 63-66. He grounded this with the maxim: “Where folk psychology displays propositional attitudes, mathematical physics displays numerical attitudes.” (p. 64) Dennett dose have a point here in observing that these numerical and propositional attitudes ought to convey not only visual data that are objective but also those that are subjective in scope and in substance.

Third-Person Science connected to ‘First-Person Science’ via Reports.

But is this a hindrance or a blessing? I think it’s more a blessing than hindrance even though reports do not necessarily capture in it entirety the visual contents of subjective experience in the First-person’s heterophenomenological world. It does predict substantially a great deal of things otherwise it would be completely impossible for us humans to understand each other at all, let alone react to each other’s utterances and noises in an intelligent and rewarding way.

Why not live by the heterophenomenological rules?

Yes, these rules maybe neutral and substantially viable as Dennett claims, but does he also accept that other competing rules or theories may have certain senses or angles of view in which they are equally viable? I am not in anyway trying to play down this heterophenomenological methodology at all. People, including myself, would live by this method, provided there is enough researched data and information to warrant this, and provided there are no ‘EXPLANATORY DEFICITS by other competing methodologies to counterbalance what the ‘H-Rules’ or ‘H-Methodology’ throws at us.

 

[loseyourname]

This statement asserts that hetero-phenomenology is not an explanation of consciousness but rather of behaviour, and that it is therefore just as useful for explaining zombie behaviour as it is for explaining human behaviour. Thus it is made clear that his theory does not acknowledge the existence of mental events, and is not a theory of consciousness so much as a theory of non-consciousness. To me it seems no more than a rehash of Lyle in the spirit of Watson and Skinner with added sophistry and longer words.

So can you think of an experiment or line of research that cannot be conducted using heterophenomenology, or that would better be conducted by treating one's own reports as incorrigible? Try us first, and if we agree with you, you can e-mail Dennett. I know from experience that he responds rather quickly.

 

[StatusX]

How can that be "clear" in light of heterophenomenology? The whole point of the endeavor is that it is not clear that subjectivity is outside of traditional science.

It is clear those methods will never be able to answer questions like "Why does orange look the way it does?" and "Why is there any inner experience at all - that is, why isn't it all black inside, with all the same observed behavior?" Because of this, Dennett would deny that these are meaningful questions, essentially making him an eliminativist (there is no hard problem of consciousness).

 

[loseyourname]

It is clear those methods will never be able to answer questions like "Why does orange look the way it does?" and "Why is there any inner experience at all - that is, why isn't it all black inside, with all the same observed behavior?"

That would only matter to Dennett if you could propose a way that one could answer those questions. He only seems interested in questions that can be answered, and if you think you have shown that those particular questions cannot be answered using heterophenomenology, then propose a way in which they can be answered. If you can do this, e-mail Dennett, because he will have been proven wrong.

 

[StatusX]

That would only matter to Dennett if you could propose a way that one could answer those questions. He only seems interested in questions that can be answered, and if you think you have shown that those particular questions cannot be answered using heterophenomenology, then propose a way in which they can be answered. If you can do this, e-mail Dennett, because he will have been proven wrong.

I don't pretend to have answers, or even vague ideas of what the answers might look like. In fact, any answer or guess I could give you could be easily accounted for by heterophenomenolgy. But would you deny those are meaningful questions? And is there any way in principle they could be answered by third person observations? (the second one, in particular, was worded so as to make this clear)

While we're on the subject, let me try to precisely phrase the problem with Chalmers view (the Dennett view's problems are probably intuitive rather than logical). Let's say we use heterophenomenology or some similar method for the next 500 years and we come to a complete theory of the brain. Assume for simplicity a deterministic universe. This theory is capable of taking the current brain state of an individual and his sensory input and determining all future states, at least in principle. This theory is actually even more amazing than it sounds, because it contains every other human theory as a subset, from economics to particle physics to number theory. Because all we have to do is feed it the right input and any idea we could ever have might turn up. In particular, it contatins any theory of consciousness we could ever come to. The most vivid possible description of the color orange, the most logical, simple, elegant explanation of why we are conscious, this theory can produce them all. So what good are those theories? They sort of hang out there, like epiphenomenal consciousness.

In fact, this illustrates the entire problem with these dualist views. If the physical world is explanatorily closed, any theories that go beyond it (and could be written down on paper, for example) will be extraneous. And yet, there must be more, I'm staring at it right now. I'll wait until I finish the Rosenberg book before I give up completely.

 

[loseyourname]

I don't pretend to have answers, or even vague ideas of what the answers might look like. In fact, any answer or guess I could give you could be easily accounted for by heterophenomenolgy. But would you deny those are meaningful questions? And is there any way in principle they could be answered by third person observations? (the second one, in particular, was worded so as to make this clear)

Well, that's just it. For all of his brashness, Dennett doesn't have answers either. He's only provided a framework and a method. You don't need to provide answers to meet his challenge, you just need to propose a method by which the questions might be answered that cannot be answered using heterophenomenology. If you can't so much as conceive of an alternative method, why criticize the one that science currently uses? I'm not saying that you are criticizing his method, but there are clearly those in the antiphysicalist camp that feel Dennett is in the wrong.

 

[Canute]

On the basis of some of the arguments here it seems to me that we ought to believe in God, since there is no question that cannot be answered by using a theological methodology, in principle at least. Of course to many people this contradicts common sense, but as Dennett himself says, so does does his theory.

Btw it's worth reading Gibert Lyle's earlier book on consciousness as well as Dennett's (Lyle was Dennett's tutor) because it shows the origins of many of D's arguments.

As StatusX points out earlier, the reason that it is difficult to ask questions that heterophenomenology cannot answer is because all questions that it cannot answer are presumed to be non-questions. It's a neat trick, but its success depends on abandoning common-sense and having an uncritical faith in Dennett's assertion that consciousness is made out of reports and brain-states.

Loseyourname - So can you think of an experiment or line of research that cannot be conducted using heterophenomenology, or that would better be conducted by treating one's own reports as incorrigible?

It seems that research into consciousness would become impossible, since C does not exist. It seems also that it would become impossible to explain experiences in terms of neural correlates, since experiences do not exist. What Dennett is really saying is that because the only things that science can study are brain-states and first-person reports then these must be all that exist. Unfortunately the conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. It's the sort or assertion that leads Chalmer's (and me) to wonder if some philosophers of consciousness are conscious in the way the rest of us are.

I don't think anybody argues that their reports are incorrigible. However what is inevitably true is that one cannot be misled as to the state of ones consciousness at any moment. This is true however innacurately we report those states. (Quite how we can be conscious of what it feels like to taste a peach while being quite unable to report what it tastes like I don't know).

Some off-the-cuff questions come to mind.

a) If consciousness is no more or less than what can be reported then how is it possible that we can experience more than we can report?

b) If consciousness is identical with what is reported about consciousness then it would be impossible for a person to give a false report, so why do scientists distrust first-person reports?

c) If, as Dennett argues, consciousness is just reports of what a subject believes they have experienced together with their brain-states then what is it that the subject is reporting? It cannot be brain-states, since we have no idea about our brain-states. Do we just report our reports?

d) If we report an experience innacurately does that mean that we had a different experience to the one we thought we had?

 

[Philocrat]

On the basis of some of the arguments here it seems to me that we ought to believe in God, since there is no question that cannot be answered by using a theological methodology, in principle at least. Of course to many people this contradicts common sense, but as Dennett himself says, so does does his theory.

Btw it's worth reading Gibert Lyle's earlier book on consciousness as well as Dennett's (Lyle was Dennett's tutor) because it shows the origins of many of D's arguments.

As StatusX points out earlier, the reason that it is difficult to ask questions that heterophenomenology cannot answer is because all questions that it cannot answer are presumed to be non-questions. It's a neat trick, but its success depends on abandoning common-sense and having an uncritical faith in Dennett's assertion that consciousness is made out of reports and brain-states.


It seems that research into consciousness would become impossible, since C does not exist. It seems also that it would become impossible to explain experiences in terms of neural correlates, since experiences do not exist. What Dennett is really saying is that because the only things that science can study are brain-states and first-person reports then these must be all that exist. Unfortunately the conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. It's the sort or assertion that leads Chalmer's (and me) to wonder if some philosophers of consciousness are conscious in the way the rest of us are.

I don't think anybody argues that their reports are incorrigible. However what is inevitably true is that one cannot be misled as to the state of ones consciousness at any moment. This is true however innacurately we report those states. (Quite how we can be conscious of what it feels like to taste a peach while being quite unable to report what it tastes like I don't know).

Some off-the-cuff questions come to mind.

a) If consciousness is no more or less than what can be reported then how is it possible that we can experience more than we can report?

b) If consciousness is identical with what is reported about consciousness then it would be impossible for a person to give a false report, so why do scientists distrust first-person reports?

c) If, as Dennett argues, consciousness is just reports of what a subject believes they have experienced together with their brain-states then what is it that the subject is reporting? It cannot be brain-states, since we have no idea about our brain-states. Do we just report our reports?

d) If we report an experience innacurately does that mean that we had a different experience to the one we thought we had?

The fundamental question to ask is this:

Does our inability to report 'What it is like to taste a peach or describe the coluor red to each otther endanger the life of the speaker or the life of any bystanding listener?'

If the answer is yes, then that nature excludes this possibility from the sum totality of the cognitive value of the human existence must imply that we are inherently severely visually disadvantaged. Interpreting all this PURPOSIVELY forces the investigator to explain whether Non-reportable visual data such as qualia are substantially LIFE-CRITICAL such that it renders the human race severely visually disadvantaged.

As I have argued in many places on this PF, Purposive Appraoch to the Interpretation of conciousness would force whosoever takes upon him or herself to investigate it to distinguish between the followings:

1) LIFE-CRITICAL VISUAL DATA that if naturally deprived renders the human perceiver wholly viusally redundant. It grinds the entire human perceiver to a halt.

2) NON-LIFE-CRITICAL VISUA DATA that if naturally deprived renders the perceiver only merely visually disadvantaged.

3) REDUNDANT VISUAL DATA that though may be present and perhaps plays some very visually limited role in the perceiver but nevertheless is visually redundant or merely visually insignificant.

My fundmental suspicion is that Qualia and any other forms of visual information that reports cannot reliably convey from one perceiver to the next belong to one of the above three classes of visual data. The Trillion dollar question now is which of them is it? Under which of the three can qualia be classed?

Ok, let me give you guys a few clues;

INSTANCE I

You are in a TV studio. In front of you is a big TV screen with four square boxes coloured BLUE, RED, GREEN and YELLOW. The TV presenter picks you from the audience and asks you to walk to the screen and point at the box with colour Green. You did this and correctly chose the box with green. The TV presenter asks all the members of the audience to each do the same and every single one in the audience correctly pointed at the same box with green, meaning in pure quantitative terms that 100% of the Audience members have successfully done so. The question now is: Did all the members see, identify, recognise and understand colour green in the same way?

INSTANCE II

You and four of your freinds are trying to cross the street. A GREEN car is fast approaching. The five of you saw the green car and successfully crossed the street without being hit and wounded or killd by it. The question that I always ask is this: Did you and your four friends see, recognise and understand not only that it was a car and green in colour speeding towards you but also that it was a danger that had to be avoided at all costs? Did you all see, recognise and understand it in the same way?

My argument is that even if you and your friends did not see and understand colour green in the same way, and regardless of whether you and your friends could describe colour green to each other or not, so long as by balance of probability you all successfully recogised and understood it as a car and a potential danger to be visually and jointly physically avoided, then the colour green, the qualia element of the visually driven incident, seems to me to be insignificant, if not completely irrelevant. Nature must have a reason for excluding non-reportable visual data from the Life-Critical Class of visual data? Perhaps this is an ephemral set back. Or maybe nature will never include it. Well, I leave the rest to you guys' imagination!
----------------------------------------------
Save our Planet...Stay Green! May the 'Book of Nature' serve you well and bring you all that is Good!

 

[StatusX]

Well, that's just it. For all of his brashness, Dennett doesn't have answers either. He's only provided a framework and a method. You don't need to provide answers to meet his challenge, you just need to propose a method by which the questions might be answered that cannot be answered using heterophenomenology. If you can't so much as conceive of an alternative method, why criticize the one that science currently uses? I'm not saying that you are criticizing his method, but there are clearly those in the antiphysicalist camp that feel Dennett is in the wrong.

I don't need to have another method in mind to criticize his. He claims that all the important questions can be answered by heterophenomenology, and I'm simply disagreeing with that notion. I've already given examples of questions his method clearly can't answer, so the only way to preserve his thesis is to deny they are meaningful questions.

It is true there is no method I can think of to answer them (in fact, "method" itself implies an investigation into extrinsic, causal properties, which is clearly not appropriate here). But does that mean they don't have answers? What about the question of why the universe exists? Has anyone proposed a method to answer this? If not, do you take that to mean it has no answer?

 

[loseyourname]

I don't need to have another method in mind to criticize his. He claims that all the important questions can be answered by heterophenomenology, and I'm simply disagreeing with that notion. I've already given examples of questions his method clearly can't answer, so the only way to preserve his thesis is to deny they are meaningful questions.

I'm pretty sure that what he is saying is that all questions about human consciousness that can be answered can be answered using heterophenomenology. I'm going to post his own description of the method and see what it is that you guys find so controversial.

• Most of the method is so obvious and uncontroversial that some scientists are baffled that I would even call it a method: basically, you have to take the vocal sounds emanating from the subjects’ mouths (and your own mouth) and interpret them!

Let me give my reading on that. Take the report of whoever it is you are studying (this can include your own mental reports if you prefer to study by introspection) and remain neutral about them until you can find a way to devise a certain answer. That is, do not treat your own impressions or the impressions of your subjects as incorrigible. Don't go in assuming that they are either right or wrong. Just keep an open mind and test them against data obtained through other methods. What exactly is the criticism of this?

It is true there is no method I can think of to answer them (in fact, "method" itself implies an investigation into extrinsic, causal properties, which is clearly not appropriate here). But does that mean they don't have answers? What about the question of why the universe exists? Has anyone proposed a method to answer this? If not, do you take that to mean it has no answer?

That's a bad example because, to be honest, I do think that there is no answer to that question. A priori purpose is an artifact of conscious beings. The only way you can answer a question such as "Why does the universe exist?" Is to postulate the existence of a conscious entity that created the universe with some purpose in mind, a reason why. After that, we can simply go back and ask why that creator exists. Does he have a creator? Why does that second creator exist? The buck has to stop somewhere with something that exists for no reason whatsoever; it simply exists. For the sake of simplicity, I'd prefer sticking with the assumption (open for revision should I ever receive evidence to the contrary) that the universe itself is that thing that simply exists, for no apparent reason.

To return to your initial question, I don't know whether the questions you've asked about consciousness have an answer. It is certainly intuitive to suggest that there must be a definite reason that some event occurs. However, if you are going to call these events intrinsic and cut off from the extrinsic causal chain of the investigable world, does there still have to be a reason? I know that Rosenberg has proposed a way to make intrinsic properties play a role in causality, but I'll hold off on that radical departure until we get there.

More from Dennett:

• What this interpersonal communication enables you, the investigator, to do is to compose a catalogue of what the subject believes to be true about his or her conscious experience. This catalogue of beliefs fleshes out the subject’s heterophenomenological world, the world according to S—the subjective world of one subject—not to be confused with the real world. The total set of details of heterophenomenology, plus all the data we can gather about concurrent events in the brains of subjects and in the surrounding
  environment, comprise the total data set for a theory of human consciousness. It leaves out no objective phenomena and no subjective phenomena of consciousness.

Now how exactly do you propose that Dennett is wrong about this? What else is there that should be studied? He is proposing an inventory of all of the physical facts about a subject's brain and environment, plus an inventory of the subject's own beliefs about his consciousness obtained through introspection. What else is there to be looked at? The only alternative I can think of is to take this same inventory, but treat the subject's impressions as incorrigible. I really can't see why any person would suggest this is a better method, given the long history of subjects being incorrect regarding their own 'facts of introspection.'

Hang with me here. I'm really just trying to understand what your objection to this is. Let's review here. We have physical data and we have introspective data. Can we agree that these are the only data? Let's return to Dennett again:

• We can see the problem most clearly
  in terms of a nesting of proximal sources that are presupposed as we work our
  way up from raw data to heterophenomenological worlds:
  (a) ‘conscious experiences themselves’
  (b) beliefs about these experiences
  (c) ‘verbal judgments’ expressing those beliefs
  (d) utterances of one sort or another

These are the only four things that we can possibly explain, according to Dennett. I'm going to assume that this included everything that you think needs explaining. If there is anything else, feel free to add it to the list. The question to be answered now is how far up the consciousness researcher should go in constructing the subject's heterophenomenological world (if you are studying yourself, this will be simply your phenomenological world).

• But before we get to theory, we can interpret these data, carrying us via (c) speech acts to (b) beliefs about experiences. These are the primary interpreted data, the pretheoretical data, the quod erat explicatum (as organized into heterophenomenological worlds), for a science of consciousness.

You might bring the objection at this point that we should go farther. Instead of constructing a world of pretheoretical data from the subjects beliefs about his experiences, we should catalogue the experiences themselves. Dennett addresses this objection:

• In the quest for primary data, Levine wants to go all the
  way to (a) conscious experiences themselves, instead of stopping with (b) subjects’ beliefs about their experiences, but this is not a good idea. If (a) outruns (b)—if you have conscious experiences you don’t believe you have—those extra conscious experiences are just as inaccessible to you as to the external observers. So Levine’s proposed alternative garners you no more usable data than heterophenomenology does. Moreover, if (b) outruns (a) — if you believe you have conscious experiences that you don’t in fact have—then it is your beliefs that we need to explain, not the non-existent experiences!

Can you see the problem with trying to go this far? By saying that we should treat experiences themselves as the primary pretheoretical data, you are assuming incorrigibility on the part of your subject (again, be it yourself or another person). Heterophenomenology takes no such stand. The subject's beliefs might be correct, they might not be. It should be obvious from clinical studies, in particular of blindsight, blindness denial, and hemispheric separation, that subject's beliefs about their experiences can indeed be incorrect.

You seem to have another objection, not to heterophenomenology, but to Dennett's position on qualia. Putting aside the fact that heterophenomenology can be practiced without any committment to either the existence or non-existence of qualia, I'm going to address this concern of yours. Dennett tackles it in a debate with Chalmers, a written version of which appears
here:

• A week ago, I heard James Conant give a talk at Tufts, entitled “Two Varieties of Skepticism” in which he distinguished two oft-confounded questions:
  
  Descartes: How is it possible for me to tell whether a thought of mine is true or false, perception or dream?
  
  Kant: How is it possible for something even to be a thought (of mine)? What are the conditions for the possibility of experience (veridical or illusory) at all?
  
  Conant’s excellent point was that in the history of philosophy, up to this very day, we often find philosophers talking past each other because they don’t see the difference between the Cartesian question (or family of questions) and the Kantian question (or family of questions), or because they try to merge the questions. I want to add a third version of the question:
  
  Turing: How could we make a robot that had thoughts, that learned from “experience” (interacting with the world) and used what it learned the way we can do?
  
  There are two main reactions to Turing’s proposal to trade in Kant’s question for his.
  
  (A) Cool! Turing has found a way to actually answer Kant’s question!
  (B) Aaaargh! Don’t fall for it! You’re leaving out . . . experience!

You seem to fall into camp B and object to anyone that falls into A, including Dennett. I'm not going to address the merits of arguments for and against the existence of qualia, because that would be off-topic, but I will take a look at Dennett's response regarding how heterophenomenology deals with this question. First, let's deal with your assertion that Dennett denies that any question that cannot be answered by heterophenomenology has no answer:

• I will not contest the existence of first-person facts that are unstudiable by heterophenomology and other 3rd-person approaches. As Steve White has reminded me, these would be like the humdrum “inert historical facts” I have spoken of elsewhere–like the fact that some of the gold in my teeth once belonged to Julius Caesar, or the fact that none of it did. One of those is a fact, and I daresay no possible extension of science will ever be able to say which is the truth. But if 1st-person facts are like inert historical facts, they are no challenge to the claim that heterophenomenology is the maximally inclusive science of consciousness, because they are unknowable even to the 1st person they are about!

It seems to me, in light of the above passage, that Dennett is not committed to the metaphysical belief that there are no facts beyond what can be explained by heterophenomenology. He is simply saying that any fact of consciousness that can be explained can be explained using heterophenomenology. Returning to your contention that he is denying the existence of subjective experience as an event that needs to be explained, let's see what he says about that:

• As a good heterophenomenologist, I must grant Chalmers full license to his deeply held, sincerely expressed convictions and the heterophenomenological world they constitute. And then I must undertake the task of explaining the etiology of his beliefs. Perhaps Chalmers’ beliefs about his experiences will turn out to be true, though how that prospect could emerge eludes me at this time. But I will remain neutral. Certainly we shouldn’t give them incorrigible status. (He’s not the Pope.) The fact that some subjects have the Zombic Hunch shouldn’t be considered grounds for revolutionizing the science of consciousness.
  
  . . .
  
  I have argued, to the contrary, that subjects’ beliefs about their subjective experiences are the central data. I’ve reviewed these arguments here today. So, is Chalmers rejecting my arguments? If so, what is wrong with them? I agree with him that a correlation or identity–or indeed, the veracity of a subject’s beliefs--“can’t be stipulated at the beginning of the day.” That is the neutrality of heterophenomenology. It is Chalmers who is holding out for an opening stipulation in his insistence that the Zombic Hunch be granted privileged status. As he says, he “takes it for granted that there are first-person data.” I don’t. Not in Chalmers’ charged sense of that term. I don’t stipulate at the beginning of the day that our subjective beliefs about our first-person experiences are “phenomenological” beliefs in a sense that requires them somehow to depend on (but not causally depend on) experiences that zombies don’t have! I just stipulate that the contents of those beliefs exhaustively constitute each person’s (or zombie’s) subjectivity.

So to review again, what is it that you object to exactly? Do you think we should grant Chalmers' Zombic Hunch incorrigible status as an item that needs to be explained? Or do you agree with Dennett that it is best for a science of consciousness to remain open-minded about this and simply aim to explain why certain people have this belief, without making a committment just yet as to whether or not the belief is true?

 

[loseyourname]

a) If consciousness is no more or less than what can be reported then how is it possible that we can experience more than we can report?

b) If consciousness is identical with what is reported about consciousness then it would be impossible for a person to give a false report, so why do scientists distrust first-person reports?

c) If, as Dennett argues, consciousness is just reports of what a subject believes they have experienced together with their brain-states then what is it that the subject is reporting? It cannot be brain-states, since we have no idea about our brain-states. Do we just report our reports?

d) If we report an experience innacurately does that mean that we had a different experience to the one we thought we had?

Given these questions, I really think you've misunderstood Dennett. Please read his article again, along with the debate with Chalmers and my analysis of the two above and see if you can find answers for these questions. If you still can't, I'll do my best to answer them myself.

 

[StatusX]

I'm pretty sure that what he is saying is that all questions about human consciousness that can be answered can be answered using heterophenomenology. I'm going to post his own description of the method and see what it is that you guys find so controversial.

I have no problem with the method itself. But I disagree that it is capable of answering every question about consciousness. Since there are questions we can ask that this method can't answer, we have three options:

1. The method is incomplete.
2. It can answer any question that could conceivably be answered, but these questions could not be answered, even in principle.
3. It is complete, and those questions are not meaningful.

You seem to be characterizing Dennett as falling into the second group, when I think it's more likely he falls into the third. I dismiss the third option as blatantly ignoring data to preserve an ideology, so the choice comes down to the first and second. I doubt that it's possible to prove those questions can't be answered, so I think we should remain optimistic for the time being and look for another way.

That's a bad example because, to be honest, I do think that there is no answer to that question. A priori purpose is an artifact of conscious beings. The only way you can answer a question such as "Why does the universe exist?" Is to postulate the existence of a conscious entity that created the universe with some purpose in mind, a reason why. After that, we can simply go back and ask why that creator exists. Does he have a creator? Why does that second creator exist? The buck has to stop somewhere with something that exists for no reason whatsoever; it simply exists. For the sake of simplicity, I'd prefer sticking with the assumption (open for revision should I ever receive evidence to the contrary) that the universe itself is that thing that simply exists, for no apparent reason.

I don't mean an anthropomorphic "purpose," I mean why does it exist as opposed to not existing. A more concrete example might be "why are the laws of physics what they are?" We should be able to either answer this question or explain precisely why we can't answer it, and I know of no proposed methods to do either.

To return to your initial question, I don't know whether the questions you've asked about consciousness have an answer. It is certainly intuitive to suggest that there must be a definite reason that some event occurs. However, if you are going to call these events intrinsic and cut off from the extrinsic causal chain of the investigable world, does there still have to be a reason? I know that Rosenberg has proposed a way to make intrinsic properties play a role in causality, but I'll hold off on that radical departure until we get there.

More from Dennett:

• What this interpersonal communication enables you, the investigator, to do is to compose a catalogue of what the subject believes to be true about his or her conscious experience. This catalogue of beliefs fleshes out the subject’s heterophenomenological world, the world according to S—the subjective world of one subject—not to be confused with the real world. The total set of details of heterophenomenology, plus all the data we can gather about concurrent events in the brains of subjects and in the surrounding
  environment, comprise the total data set for a theory of human consciousness. It leaves out no objective phenomena and no subjective phenomena of consciousness.

Now how exactly do you propose that Dennett is wrong about this? What else is there that should be studied? He is proposing an inventory of all of the physical facts about a subject's brain and environment, plus an inventory of the subject's own beliefs about his consciousness obtained through introspection. What else is there to be looked at? The only alternative I can think of is to take this same inventory, but treat the subject's impressions as incorrigible. I really can't see why any person would suggest this is a better method, given the long history of subjects being incorrect regarding their own 'facts of introspection.'

The problem is subtle, and complicated by the fact that we're talking about an investigation into the very tool we do investigation with. But it essentially comes down to this: Does explaining why a person asks a certain question explain all there is to be explained about that question, or even answer it? I don't think it does.

For example, say you hook someone up to a brain scanning device and ask them to look at a color and reflect on it's intriniscness. As they do, from inside their subjective world, they are experiencing the color directly and these experiences cause them to say things like "I wonder if that color looks different to other people?" But to the experimenter, these "experiences" are identified with brain activity. They play the exact same causal role as the experiences do to the person, and so they can be substituted in for them in a theory without problem. The experimenter can explain completely why the person asked that question. It would seem irrelevant to go any farther.

But inside that persons subjective world, it was the intrinsic color that caused him to say those things. Even if these are just the same thing looked at from two different angles, heterophenomenology can only account for one of these angles. And it cannot answer the person's question.

Think of it this way: Heterophenomenolgy can explain why Dennett believes it is complete. So should we dismiss that belief, tossing it into the "explained" pile? But then how do we know the method really works, and that we've really explained that belief?

Can you see the problem with trying to go this far? By saying that we should treat experiences themselves as the primary pretheoretical data, you are assuming incorrigibility on the part of your subject (again, be it yourself or another person). Heterophenomenology takes no such stand. The subject's beliefs might be correct, they might not be. It should be obvious from clinical studies, in particular of blindsight, blindness denial, and hemispheric separation, that subject's beliefs about their experiences can indeed be incorrect.

The fact that beliefs are isomorphic to experiences may be true, but why does that isomorphism exist? And why is there a fourth tier to that ladder at all?

• A week ago, I heard James Conant give a talk at Tufts, entitled “Two Varieties of Skepticism” in which he distinguished two oft-confounded questions:
  
  Descartes: How is it possible for me to tell whether a thought of mine is true or false, perception or dream?
  
  Kant: How is it possible for something even to be a thought (of mine)? What are the conditions for the possibility of experience (veridical or illusory) at all?
  
  Conant’s excellent point was that in the history of philosophy, up to this very day, we often find philosophers talking past each other because they don’t see the difference between the Cartesian question (or family of questions) and the Kantian question (or family of questions), or because they try to merge the questions. I want to add a third version of the question:
  
  Turing: How could we make a robot that had thoughts, that learned from “experience” (interacting with the world) and used what it learned the way we can do?
  
  There are two main reactions to Turing’s proposal to trade in Kant’s question for his.
  
  (A) Cool! Turing has found a way to actually answer Kant’s question!
  (B) Aaaargh! Don’t fall for it! You’re leaving out . . . experience!

You seem to fall into camp B and object to anyone that falls into A, including Dennett.

I'm sorry, I haven't read much about traditional philosophy, and I don't understand the distinction Dennett refers to. If you could explain it to me I'll try to answer your question.

So to review again, what is it that you object to exactly? Do you think we should grant Chalmers' Zombic Hunch incorrigible status as an item that needs to be explained? Or do you agree with Dennett that it is best for a science of consciousness to remain open-minded about this and simply aim to explain why certain people have this belief, without making a committment just yet as to whether or not the belief is true?

No it is not incorrigible. But this is exactly the problem. How will heterophenomenolgy ever be able to determine whether or not Chalmers beliefs are true? Explain why he has them all you want, but that doesn't answer the question.

As a final rough analogy, say we design a simple digital circuit that can add two numbers. We have a theory of digital electronics that is capable of explaining what the circuit will do, but nothing more. Now we input two numbers, and get an output. This theory will explain to us why the ouput was what it was. But no matter how accurate the theory is, it will never be able to answer the simple question of whether it gave the correct sum. And this is the question we really want to answer.