Hetero phenomenology definition in philosophy

[selfAdjoint]

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.

Fine, but we shouldn't pretend that we have found that way. In particular we shouldn't dignify autophenomenology as scientific.

 

[loseyourname]

I'm sorry. I guess I just agree with Dennett that to come to the conclusion that there are question about consciousness that in principle cannot be answered using the methods of heterophenomenology presupposes the incorrigibility of the zombic hunch. You are taking for granted (or at least convinced by the arguments claiming to show) that Chalmers' conclusions are true. That isn't a step that I'm willing to take, whereas you are. I prefer the method laid out by Dennett - maintaining neutrality, even with respect to our most cherished presuppositions about our own experience. Granted, Dennett does not actually maintain this neutrality, but keep in mind that Dennett is not a scientist. The works of his that you have read are largely speculative in nature, whereas the paper on heterophenomenology is not. This is where I believe that you and Canute are coming into conflict with me. You are taking the whole of Dennett's philosophical works and arguing against them. Heterophenomenology, however, does not require that one agree with either Dennett's A team or Chalmers' B team. It is simply a method of maintaining neutrality until the conclusions of one side can be demonstrated. Should it turn out that Chalmers is correct, then the good heterophenomenologist must conclude that his techniques are indeed limited, though how this could lead to anything but mysterianism or at best unempirical speculation is still beyond me. Dennett addresses this problem as well in the second paper I linked to:

• That leaves the B Team in a bit of a predicament. Chalmers would like to fulfil the Philosopher’s Dream:
  
  To prove a priori, from one’s ivory tower, a metaphysical fact that forces a revolution in the sciences.
  
  It is not an impossible dream. (That is, it is not logically impossible.) Einstein’s great insight into relativity comes tantalizingly close to having been a purely philosophical argument, something a philosopher might have come up with just from first principles. And Patrick Matthew could claim with some justice in 1860 to have scooped Darwin’s theory of natural selection in 1831 by an act of pure reason:
  
  "it was by a general glance at the scheme of Nature that I estimated this select production of species as an a priori recognizable fact–an axiom, requiring only to be pointed out to be admitted by unprejudiced minds of sufficient grasp."[see DDI, p49]
  
  The Zombic Hunch is accompanied by arguments designed to show that it is logically possible (however physically impossible) for there to be a zombie. This logical possibility is declared by Chalmers to have momentous implications for the scientific study of consciousness, but as a candidate for the Philosopher’s Dream it has one failing not shared with either Einstein’s or Matthew’s great ideas: it prescribes no research program. Suppose you are convinced that Chalmers is right. Now what? What experiments would you do (or do differently) that you are not already doing? What models would you discard or revise, and what would you replace them with? And why?

Do you know of any answers to these questions? Furthermore, can you devise a method of proof that heterophenomenology cannot answer them that does not presuppose the Zombic Hunch? Again, presumably you think that Chalmers' and others' arguments have proven the Zombic Hunch. I've argued at length in other threads why I do not think that is the case, and, in fact, at least hypnagogue seems to have acknowledged that the arguments really don't prove anything unless you accept as incorrigible certain beliefs about one's own experience, which is exactly what we're trying to avoid.

 

[Canute]

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.

I feel Dennett makes his position very clear. I may have misunderstood him but I don't think so.

Dennett argues that the state of a subject's brain, whether that's the state of the neurons, axions and synapses and so on or perhaps its quantum mechanical state, taken together with the first-person verbal reports of what the subject believes about their state of consciousness, constitutes all there is to consciousness, or, if you like, this constitutes all the data required for a theory of consciousness.

There are clearly problems with this idea. I'll mention just one. What is the subject reporting? Certainly nothing about their brain-states, since they know nothing about them. All that's left is the subject's verbal reports. In this case all the subject can verbally report on is their verbal report. There isn't anything else. There cannot be a subject of those reports, since that would mean that the report is not the experience and Dennett is wrong.

As the basis for a scientific methodology Dennett's approach seems fine to me. After all, it's pretty obvious that when it comes to consciousness science can only study first-person reports second-hand or look at brains, in other words can only study subjects as objects. We didn't need a complicated book to tell us that. Scientists as individuals can of course do much more than this, but such activity is not intra-subjective, so at the moment is excluded from being science on the grounds of what Alan Watts calls the 'taboo of subjectivity'. I have no problem with that. It seems a little like refusing to look down Galileo's telescope, but scientists have the right to define science as they wish.

However to argue from this to the idea that conscious experiences are no more than brain-states and verbal reports seems to me to be an act of lunacy. We all know that what we report about our experiences is nothing like the experiences that we are reporting. Even Dennett must know this.

We cannot convey 'what it is like' to have our experiences to another person. This is something we can all quite easily confirm for ourselves. It's not quite so difficult to report what we believe about our experiences, because our beliefs usually have a significant verbally reportable component. We think about our beliefs, and as we tend to think in words beliefs are to a reasonable extent reportable. But a report about a belief about an experience is not the experience that is being reported. That experience is what needs explaining, the very thing that heterophenomenology expressly states does not exist.

 

[StatusX]

Should it turn out that Chalmers is correct, then the good heterophenomenologist must conclude that his techniques are indeed limited...

Yes, but as I said, how could heterophenomenolgy ever determine whether Chalmers or Dennett is correct? What mechanism does it have to determine the truth or falsehood of the Zombie hunch, or any belief for that matter?

 

[loseyourname]

I've read all that stuff so I'm afraid you'll have to answer them. Good luck.

If you insist. Here goes:

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?

a) Dennett never says that consciousness is nothing more than we can report. In fact, he says quite the opposite:

• 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! Sticking to the heterophenomenological standard, then, and treating (b) as the maximal set of primary data, is the way to avoid any commitment to spurious data.

In light of the bold-faced type, it is clear that Dennett feels it is possible for a person to have a conscious experience but not believe that he does, and hence not be able to report it. It should also be noted, however, that Dennett does not limit the word "report" to what we can verbally report (this is from the second paper):

• I guess I should take some of the blame for the misapprehension, in some quarters, that heterophenomenology restricts itself to verbal reports. Nothing could be further from the truth.
  
  . . .
  
  But all other such data, all behavioral reactions, visceral reactions, hormonal reactions, and other changes in physically detectable state are included within heterophenomenology. I thought that went without saying, but apparently these additional data are often conveniently overlooked by critics of heterophenomenology.

Perhaps you are referring to the experiences that Dennett would refer to as "ineffable" and you think pose a problem. If so, you misposed the question, as you clearly can report the fact that you believe you had an ineffable experience and heterophenomenology must take this into account as something that must be explained. Dennett admits as much. I again get the feeling that you are arguing against heterophenomenology because of the position Dennett takes elsewhere, in which he states his belief that these ineffable experiences are illusory or don't exist. Well, heterophenomenology does not require that one agree with Dennett on that, a key point that I am trying my best to get across.

b) Consciousness is not identical to what is reported about consciousness. Dennett also states this pretty clearly. I've already cited it in this thread, but I'll go ahead and put it in this post:

• But how, in advance of theory, could we catalogue the experiences themselves? 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
  
  What are the ‘primary data’? For heterophenomenologists, the primary data are the utterances, the raw, uninterpreted data. 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.

If Dennett believed that consciousness was identical to the reports subjects gave about their consciousness, then he would have no problem moving to (a) as the primary pretheoretical data of the heterophenomenologist. However, he clearly feels that the reports can be incorrect and that they must be interpreted in light of non-verbal reports and whatever other data can possibly be obtained through experimentation. This question in particular is what lead me to believe that you either hadn't read these papers in their entirety or you badly misunderstood them. Just to be clear one more time Dennett states on page 96 of Consciousness Explained (and cites in the pdf file) "You are not authoritative about what is happening in you, but only about what seems to be happening in you . . ." It should be clear by now that Dennett does not feel that your reports about your experience are identical to the experiences themselves.

c) I don't know how to answer c. You are still presupposing that Dennett believes that consciousness is nothing more than what a subject reports. I hope that I have shown that to be false, so perhaps in light of that you can rephrase the question. As of right now, I'm not entirely what you're asking besides.

d) Dennett explains that it is important for the heterophenomenologist to maintain neutrality for the time being on this question, until a theory can be devised that might answer it. In fact, in CE he goes into length about the two possibilities (Orwellian and Stalinistic revision) and seems to conclude that it may very well not be possible to tell the two apart. Perhaps you had an experience but your subsequent report from memory is false in that your memory has been altered, or perhaps you actually had an illusory experience. Because the memory-forming process takes place before you even have the ability to give a report, there is no way he sees to answer the question. In the debate with Chalmers, he says this:

• Let’s look at a few cases of heterophenomenology in action. . . See next Rensink’s change blindness. [Demo] (By the way, this is an effect I predicted in CE, much to the disbelief of many readers.)
  
  Were your qualia changing before you noticed the flashing white cupboard door? You saw each picture several dozen times, and eventually you saw a change that was “swift and enormous” (Dennett, 1999, Palmer, 1999) but that swift, enormous change was going on for a dozen times and more before you noticed it. Does it count as a change in color qualia?
  
  The possible answers:
  
  • Yes.
  • No.
  • I don’t know
    1. because I now realize I never knew quite what I meant by ‘qualia” all along.
    2. because although I know just what I have always meant by “qualia”, I have no first-person access to my own qualia in this case and 3rd-person science can’t get access to qualia either!

Now Dennett doesn't take a stand on which answer is the correct answer. He does, however, propose an investigation that might determine which answer is correct. This is the essence of heterophenomenology. Instead of taking a stand on what is going on and then explaining all empirical data in light of your pre-existing biases, you simply inventory the data available while maintaining a neutrality about what they mean until you can answer with certainty.

 

[loseyourname]

Yes, but as I said, how could heterophenomenolgy ever determine whether Chalmers or Dennett is correct? What mechanism does it have to determine the truth or falsehood of the Zombie hunch, or any belief for that matter?

Heterophenomenology can use as a mechanism any mechanism available to either the philosopher or the scientist. Heterophenomenology does not, in fact, specify any particular mechanisms or methods of experimentation to be used in investigation. You can use any method you'd like. Heterophenomenology is only the stance you take (a stance of neutrality regarding whether or not the reports made by conscious subjects are correct) while conducting the investigation.

 

[StatusX]

Fine, but that doesn't answer the question about determining whether the zombie hunch is true. Heterophenomenolgy cannot make this judgement. (I don't know if any objective method can). This wouldn't be a problem for other beliefs, like the belief in free will, for example, because whether free will is true or not does not significantly affect the method's accuracy. But if the zombie hunch is correct, it directly attacks the completeness of heterophenomenolgy. You can't coherently adopt neutrality and the notion of completeness, because completenesss inherently assumes certain beliefs are 100% false (eg, Chalmers'). And as I mentioned before, how can Dennett trust his own belief that heterophenomenolgy works?

 

[loseyourname]

Fine, but that doesn't answer the question about determining whether the zombie hunch is true. Heterophenomenolgy cannot make this judgement. (I don't know if any objective method can).

What exactly are you saying? That it is impossible to evaluate the Zombic Hunch while maintaining a priori neutrality as to whether or not it is true? Why is it that you think this?

This wouldn't be a problem for other beliefs, like the belief in free will, for example, because whether free will is true or not does not significantly affect the method's accuracy. But if the zombie hunch is correct, it directly attacks the completeness of heterophenomenolgy.

We still have The Problem though, and I'm not talking about the hard problem. If you are indeed correct that the Zombic Hunch presents us with a question that cannot be answered using the heterophenomenological stance, is there another way to answer it? Heterophenomenology says only one thing - that we cannot treat our subjects' or our own beliefs about our experiences as incorrigible. As such, the only option to heterophenomenology is to do the opposite, that is, treat at least some of your beliefs regarding your own experiences as incorrigible. Do you feel that doing so will allow us to evaluate the Zombic Hunch in a way that the neutrality of heterophenomenology cannot? How? Because if not, then you haven't so much uncovered a limit to what we can learn using the heterophenomenological stance, but rather you have uncovered a limit to what we can know, period. It hardly seems fair to criticize a method that cannot reveal to us data that is unknowable through any technique.

You can't coherently adopt neutrality and the notion of completeness, because completenesss inherently assumes certain beliefs are 100% false (eg, Chalmers'). And as I mentioned before, how can Dennett trust his own belief that heterophenomenolgy works?

Dennett's belief that heterophenomenology works is not a belief about his or any experimental subjects' experiences. As such, heterophenomenology is not itself subject to heterophenomenology. You might as well ask how we can know that special relativity is true, as it says all things are relative. Well, it doesn't say that. It just says that certain measurable quantities are relative. Heterophenomenology, by analogy, does not say that we must maintain neutrality as to the methodological stance we use while conducting research. That would indeed be question-begging.

 

[StatusX]

What exactly are you saying? That it is impossible to evaluate the Zombic Hunch while maintaining a priori neutrality as to whether or not it is true? Why is it that you think this?

Because the third person observations are identical in the two cases.

We still have The Problem though, and I'm not talking about the hard problem. If you are indeed correct that the Zombic Hunch presents us with a question that cannot be answered using the heterophenomenological stance, is there another way to answer it? Heterophenomenology says only one thing - that we cannot treat our subjects' or our own beliefs about our experiences as incorrigible. As such, the only option to heterophenomenology is to do the opposite, that is, treat at least some of your beliefs regarding your own experiences as incorrigible. Do you feel that doing so will allow us to evaluate the Zombic Hunch in a way that the neutrality of heterophenomenology cannot? How? Because if not, then you haven't so much uncovered a limit to what we can learn using the heterophenomenological stance, but rather you have uncovered a limit to what we can know, period. It hardly seems fair to criticize a method that cannot reveal to us data that is unknowable through any technique.

I disagree that we cannot justify our own beliefs about experience. Even if there is no way I can get you to believe me, I know I am an experiencing being.

Dennett's belief that heterophenomenology works is not a belief about his or any experimental subjects' experiences. As such, heterophenomenology is not itself subject to heterophenomenology. You might as well ask how we can know that special relativity is true, as it says all things are relative. Well, it doesn't say that. It just says that certain measurable quantities are relative. Heterophenomenology, by analogy, does not say that we must maintain neutrality as to the methodological stance we use while conducting research. That would indeed be question-begging.

I assumed he meant all beliefs. If not, why are beliefs about experience more susceptible to delusions than beliefs about scientific methodology? Is it because we can objectively verify science makes accurate predictions but not that experience exists? That hardly seems fair, since the beliefs themselves presumably come about by roughly the same mechanism.

 

[loseyourname]

Because the third person observations are identical in the two cases.

As are the first-person observations. So I ask again what you think the alternative is?

I disagree that we cannot justify our own beliefs about experience. Even if there is no way I can get you to believe me, I know I am an experiencing being.

I know you are an experiencing being as well. That isn't the belief in question. Any explanation of consciousness (including a heterophenomenological explanation) has no choice but to presuppose the existence of the phenomenon it hopes to explain.

I assumed he meant all beliefs. If not, why are beliefs about experience more susceptible to delusions than beliefs about scientific methodology? Is it because we can objectively verify science makes accurate predictions but not that experience exists? That hardly seems fair, since the beliefs themselves presumably come about by roughly the same mechanism.

It is because we have mountains of experimental evidence that shows that a subjects' beliefs about his own experience may not be accurate. The very simplest example is rotating the figure in your head. That is exactly what you say you are doing, but in fact it is not. There is no literal figure sitting in your head being rotated. There are many other examples of beliefs about experience that are incorrect. Dennett spends the entire first half of CE cataloguing some of these. If you want to question the very basis of scientific methodology, go ahead and do so, but don't claim that that is what Dennett is doing and then put those words in his mouth to create an inconsistency. It isn't there.

 

[Canute]

If you insist. Here goes:

a) Dennett never says that consciousness is nothing more than we can report. In fact, he says quite the opposite:

• 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! Sticking to the heterophenomenological standard, then, and treating (b) as the maximal set of primary data, is the way to avoid any commitment to spurious data.

So, I can have conscious experiences I do not believe I have, and not have conscious experiences that I do believe I had. Am I supposed to take this suggestion seriously? Have you ever asked yourself whether this idea makes any sense?

What it means is that for Dennett when we study consciousness we must study either the report of a belief in an experience that the subject had, a report of a belief in an experience that he didn't have, or a report of a belief he doesn't hold, (or a non-report of an unconscious conscious experience that he cannot report). How does this contradict my proposition that for Dennett consciousness is just reports?

In light of the bold-faced type, it is clear that Dennett feels it is possible for a person to have a conscious experience but not believe that he does, and hence not be able to report it.

So experiences do not necessarily give rise to beliefs or reports. In this case it follows that consciousness (for the subject) is something other that beliefs and reports. (If you could explain how how one can have an unconscious experience it might help me see more of your point of view).

• I guess I should take some of the blame for the misapprehension, in some quarters, that heterophenomenology restricts itself to verbal reports. Nothing could be further from the truth.

• 
  It's ok, I know his book.
  
  

  But all other such data, all behavioral reactions, visceral reactions, hormonal reactions, and other changes in physically detectable state are included within heterophenomenology. I thought that went without saying, but apparently these additional data are often conveniently overlooked by critics of heterophenomenology.

They're probably overlooked because they're a side issue. The issue is consciousness. In a nutshell D denies that the fact that our being conscious has any effect on our behaviour. As we know from consciousness studies, and in particular the ongoing discussion about volition, this is an ad hoc conjecture.

Perhaps you are referring to the experiences that Dennett would refer to as "ineffable" and you think pose a problem. If so, you misposed the question, as you clearly can report the fact that you believe you had an ineffable experience and heterophenomenology must take this into account as something that must be explained. Dennett admits as much. I again get the feeling that you are arguing against heterophenomenology because of the position Dennett takes elsewhere, in which he states his belief that these ineffable experiences are illusory or don't exist. Well, heterophenomenology does not require that one agree with Dennett on that, a key point that I am trying my best to get across.

That's a good point. But if you think that it is possible to have ineffable experiences (in my view the only sort that there are) then you must accept that experiences are something other than brain-states, reports and beliefs. If so then how can they be explained by heterophenomenology?

b) Consciousness is not identical to what is reported about consciousness. Dennett also states this pretty clearly. I've already cited it in this thread, but I'll go ahead and put it in this post:

• But how, in advance of theory, could we catalogue the experiences themselves? 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
  
  What are the ‘primary data’? For heterophenomenologists, the primary data are the utterances, the raw, uninterpreted data. 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.

Fine. No problem with that as a scientific approach to studying the reports of experiences that subjects believe they have had inasmuch as they can report them. But what about the experiences? I thought that they were the things that we were supposed to be explaining.

If Dennett believed that consciousness was identical to the reports subjects gave about their consciousness, then he would have no problem moving to (a) as the primary pretheoretical data of the heterophenomenologist. However, he clearly feels that the reports can be incorrect and that they must be interpreted in light of non-verbal reports and whatever other data can possibly be obtained through experimentation. This question in particular is what lead me to believe that you either hadn't read these papers in their entirety or you badly misunderstood them. Just to be clear one more time Dennett states on page 96 of Consciousness Explained (and cites in the pdf file) "You are not authoritative about what is happening in you, but only about what seems to be happening in you . . ." It should be clear by now that Dennett does not feel that your reports about your experience are identical to the experiences themselves.

Your extract seems to have no bearing on what I wrote. Whether we are authoritative or not it is the reports that heterophenomenology takes as its explananda, not experiences.

As for the idea that we are not authoritative about 'what it is like' it directly contradicts the widespread agreement that we should define consciousness as 'what it is like'. Dennett has to do this because otherwise he'd have to explain it. What he is saying is that sometimes consciousness is 'what it is like', sometimes it is 'not what it is like', and sometimes it is not like anything at all, and the subject does not not necessarily know which.

b]c)[/b] I don't know how to answer c. You are still presupposing that Dennett believes that consciousness is nothing more than what a subject reports. I hope that I have shown that to be false, so perhaps in light of that you can rephrase the question. As of right now, I'm not entirely what you're asking besides.

That's to slightly misunderstand my question. To put it another way, if experiences are not reports then how is heterophenology going to explain consciousness? By studying what it is not?

d) Dennett explains that it is important for the heterophenomenologist to maintain neutrality for the time being on this question, until a theory can be devised that might answer it. In fact, in CE he goes into length about the two possibilities (Orwellian and Stalinistic revision) and seems to conclude that it may very well not be possible to tell the two apart. Perhaps you had an experience but your subsequent report from memory is false in that your memory has been altered, or perhaps you actually had an illusory experience. Because the memory-forming process takes place before you even have the ability to give a report, there is no way he sees to answer the question.

At the time we have an experience it is not yet in our memory. In this case it doesn't matter how well or badly we remember an experience, it is irrelevant to anything except the accuracy of the report, and what we are concerned with is the experience, not the report of it. Nobody will ever know whether the report of an experience is accurate or not except the person giving the report, and they will always know that it is innacurate, since experiences are obviously unreportable except in inaccurate terms.

[*]Let’s look at a few cases of heterophenomenology in action. .

Was this bit supposed to have a link to a demo?

Now Dennett doesn't take a stand on which answer is the correct answer. He does, however, propose an investigation that might determine which answer is correct. This is the essence of heterophenomenology. Instead of taking a stand on what is going on and then explaining all empirical data in light of your pre-existing biases, you simply inventory the data available while maintaining a neutrality about what they mean until you can answer with certainty.

It really doesn't matter what the answer is. If I had an experience the occurence of that experience needs explaining. Whether I had this or that experience is a non-issue.

Heterophenomenology is predicated on the existence of experiences but is incapable, by its own choice of methodology, of showing that experiences exist. It therefore does not need to explain them, and makes no attempt to do so. This is why Dennett says that his methodology works just as well for zombie behaviour as for human behaviour. He states that it makes no difference to the effectiveness of his proposed method of study of consciousness whether the subject is conscious or not. He is clear on this. Doesn't that strike you as just a little odd?

 

[StatusX]

As are the first-person observations. So I ask again what you think the alternative is?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the zombic hunch. Is it the belief that there is a distinction between us and hypothetical zombies? If so, there clearly is a first person consequence based on whether this is true or false.

I know you are an experiencing being as well. That isn't the belief in question. Any explanation of consciousness (including a heterophenomenological explanation) has no choice but to presuppose the existence of the phenomenon it hopes to explain.

I don't mean that there exists a set of subjective data one could collect about me, I mean experience as it appears in the hard problem of consciousness. I'm sure Dennett denies a hard problem, so his method does not attempt to explain the meaning of experience I'm using here.

It is because we have mountains of experimental evidence that shows that a subjects' beliefs about his own experience may not be accurate. The very simplest example is rotating the figure in your head. That is exactly what you say you are doing, but in fact it is not. There is no literal figure sitting in your head being rotated. There are many other examples of beliefs about experience that are incorrect. Dennett spends the entire first half of CE cataloguing some of these.

Of course we know there isn't literally a figure in our head, that's why we talk of a distinction between the mental and physical. And in any case, that isn't a belief about an experience, it's a belief about the physical world (in our head). How could you possibly say someone believed they had an experience they didn't really have? You said yourself belief was as high as we should go, since an experience we don't believe we have is not a meaningful concept. Are we not talking about the same kind of experience here?

If you want to question the very basis of scientific methodology, go ahead and do so, but don't claim that that is what Dennett is doing and then put those words in his mouth to create an inconsistency. It isn't there.

I don't claim his method is unscientific or inconsistent (except for the completeness claim), it just fails to answer all possible questions about consciousness. It does what it's supposed to do well, but it is not equipped to tackle the hard problem of conscisouness (or for that matter, decide whether or not there is a hard problem of consciousness).

 

[loseyourname]

So, I can have conscious experiences I do not believe I have, and not have conscious experiences that I do believe I had. Am I supposed to take this suggestion seriously? Have you ever asked yourself whether this idea makes any sense?

You believe the Zombic Hunch, do you not? So obviously you don't think it is absurd to suggest that an entity can believe it is having an experience that it is actually not having. Why is it absurd when Dennett suggests it, especially given the mountains of experimental data he has to back up his claim. You can't just dismiss it because it's counterintuitive. Where's the intellectual integrity there? Do you care to provide a refutation of every clinical case cited that gives examples of these two types of phenomena? Let's just start with blindsight. The person can see, yet he believes that he cannot. Then we can move to hemispheric separation. All evidence indicates that each hemisphere can perceive different types of things separately, without the other knowing about it. The hemisphere responsible for verbal reports will verbally report the experiences of that hemisphere. Meanwhile, the hemisphere responsible for different kinds of reports will report other experiences that are verbally denied to have ever happened.

What it means is that for Dennett when we study consciousness we must study either the report of a belief in an experience that the subject had, a report of a belief in an experience that he didn't have, or a report of a belief he doesn't hold, (or a non-report of an unconscious conscious experience that he cannot report). How does this contradict my proposition that for Dennett consciousness is just reports?

I apologize for being so blunt, but you've completely misunderstood Dennett's entire point. He never says that consciousness is just reports. In fact, I've cited numerous passages in which he says the exact opposite and I'm not going to do so again. What he does say is that the primary pretheoretical data of the heterophenomenologist is the beliefs, which are extrapolated from reports. The reports aren't even the pretheoretical data - they are simply the raw data. What else do you suggest we take in as data?

So experiences do not necessarily give rise to beliefs or reports. In this case it follows that consciousness (for the subject) is something other that beliefs and reports. (If you could explain how how one can have an unconscious experience it might help me see more of your point of view).

The Orwellian form of revision can result in experiences that are never reported because they are immediately forgotten or replaced with false memories. Think about it. Even if you are practicing autophenomenology, you cannot inventory your experiences. All you can inventory is your memories of them. If the memories are altered a split second after the experience takes place, you will never know the difference.

That's a good point. But if you think that it is possible to have ineffable experiences (in my view the only sort that there are) then you must accept that experiences are something other than brain-states, reports and beliefs.

Why? Is there any reason that an event taking place in the brain cannot be "ineffable?" And for the last time, Dennett never says that experiences are nothing more than reports and beliefs. This is simply our data set that we study to get at the actual experiences. This is so because there is nothing else for us to study. Even your own experiences come to you as reports - memories. You cannot go back into the past to apprehend direct experience. All you can do is remember what happened. You aren't going to complete an investigation without any time passing. If that was possible, then maybe heterophenomenology would not be necessary.

Fine. No problem with that as a scientific approach to studying the reports of experiences that subjects believe they have had inasmuch as they can report them. But what about the experiences? I thought that they were the things that we were supposed to be explaining.

They are. The heterophenomenological stance does not say otherwise. It only says that our data set cannot include the experiences themselves. Why? Because there is no way for us to catalogue actual experiences. The best we can do is catalogue our reports about them, and interpret these reports to get at a subjects beliefs. Are you in possession of an 'experience recording device' that can help us here?

Your extract seems to have no bearing on what I wrote. Whether we are authoritative or not it is the reports that heterophenomenology takes as its explananda, not experiences.

They must be explained in light of other evidence that gives hints about what the actual experience may have been. Ultimately, it is the experience itself that we are trying to explain.

As for the idea that we are not authoritative about 'what it is like' it directly contradicts the widespread agreement that we should define consciousness as 'what it is like'.

No it doesn't. How does defining a term as an event that we cannot directly apprehend result in contradiction?

Dennett has to do this because otherwise he'd have to explain it. What he is saying is that sometimes consciousness is 'what it is like', sometimes it is 'not what it is like', and sometimes it is not like anything at all, and the subject does not not necessarily know which.

Actually, what he is saying is that sometimes what you report is actually 'what it is like' and sometimes it isn't. Reports are the only data we can catalogue because we do not have experience recording machines. Since these reports can be wrong, we should remain neutral as to whether or not they are correct. That is heterophenomenology in a nutshell right there.

To put it another way, if experiences are not reports then how is heterophenology going to explain consciousness? By studying what it is not?

What else is it supposed to study? I think I've shown at decent length that we cannot catalogue the experiences themselves. What else do you want us to do?

At the time we have an experience it is not yet in our memory. In this case it doesn't matter how well or badly we remember an experience, it is irrelevant to anything except the accuracy of the report, and what we are concerned with is the experience, not the report of it.

When the memory is changed before you are even able to say that the experience occured, it certainly matters, unless you have the strange ability to go into the past and confirm your memories. At this moment right now, everything you know about your experience is from memory. Your memory is just another form of report.

Nobody will ever know whether the report of an experience is accurate or not except the person giving the report, and they will always know that it is innacurate, since experiences are obviously unreportable except in inaccurate terms.

No! That is exactly not the case! You do not have incorrigibility regarding your own experiences. It is as simple as that. Even the person giving the report does not know whether the report is accurate or not.

Furthermore, where do you get this idea that all experiences are obviously unreportable except in inaccurate terms? When you see a triangle on a page, is it inaccurate to say that you saw a triangle on a page? Can you not explain the angles you see? When the heterophenomenologist asks me what I am experiencing right now and I say that I see letters typed out on a screen shortly after my fingers hit the keys, is that inaccurate? This can certainly be confirmed to the extent that another person can confirm that I am indeed typing and that words are indeed appearing on the screen. Presumably, we can even examine my visual cortex to confirm that the parts responsible for processing verbal information are active. What else would you have us do?

Was this bit supposed to have a link to a demo?

No. He gave a demo at the debate. It says elsewhere that he is trying to get a streaming video of the demo onto the website of the Center for Cognitive Studies, but I don't know if it's there yet. I can look for it if you want me to.

It really doesn't matter what the answer is. If I had an experience the occurence of that experience needs explaining. Whether I had this or that experience is a non-issue.

Well, jeez, you sure don't want a very in-depth explanation of how it is that conscious moments are formed in your mind then, do you? And it does matter, quite a bit, even philosophically, if we are ever to have a good definition of what exactly the word 'qualia' means.

Heterophenomenology is predicated on the existence of experiences but is incapable, by its own choice of methodology, of showing that experiences exist.

Can you think of any methodology that can demonstrate that experiences exist?

It therefore does not need to explain them, and makes no attempt to do so.

What the heck are you talking about? Can you find me one line of writing in any of Dennett's works where he says it is not the aim of consciousness studies to explain experiences? And please, do not cite more lines saying that experiences cannot be the primary data set that we work with to build an explanation.

This is why Dennett says that his methodology works just as well for zombie behaviour as for human behaviour. He states that it makes no difference to the effectiveness of his proposed method of study of consciousness whether the subject is conscious or not. He is clear on this. Doesn't that strike you as just a little odd?

What method would show a difference? It is clear from these thought experiments that zombies believe they have experiences. Even if they studied themselves, they would presumably come to the same conclusions about their consciousness that you do about yours, even though they don't have any.

 

[loseyourname]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the zombic hunch. Is it the belief that there is a distinction between us and hypothetical zombies? If so, there clearly is a first person consequence based on whether this is true or false.

No, there isn't. A zombie believes he has the same experiences you do. From his point of view, he is just as conscious as you. If he were to conduct an autophenomenological investigation, he would come to the same conclusions you do. Otherwise, he would able to tell that he was a zombie and so wouldn't qualify as a zombie.

I don't mean that there exists a set of subjective data one could collect about me, I mean experience as it appears in the hard problem of consciousness. I'm sure Dennett denies a hard problem, so his method does not attempt to explain the meaning of experience I'm using here.

That's incorrect. Whether or not Dennett personally feels there is a hard problem is immaterial to the matter of whether or not heterophenomenology is the best method we have by which to investigate consciousness. This isn't a question of Mr. Dennett's personal beliefs.

Of course we know there isn't literally a figure in our head, that's why we talk of a distinction between the mental and physical.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Do you mean to imply that there is a figure somewhere in mental space?

And in any case, that isn't a belief about an experience, it's a belief about the physical world (in our head).

So you're going to presuppose that our experiences are non-physical and don't take place in our heads? Or do you honestly think that's been proven and the heterophenomenologist should use that fact as a starting point?

How could you possibly say someone believed they had an experience they didn't really have?

That's what your Zombic Hunch says, isn't it? That it's possible for there to be entities physically identical to us that believe they have experiences, but don't?

You said yourself belief was as high as we should go, since an experience we don't believe we have is not a meaningful concept.

When did I say that? I said that belief is all we can confirm pretheoretically.

Are we not talking about the same kind of experience here?

I suppose it's possible, but I think we're talking about the same thing.

I don't claim his method is unscientific or inconsistent (except for the completeness claim), it just fails to answer all possible questions about consciousness. It does what it's supposed to do well, but it is not equipped to tackle the hard problem of conscisouness (or for that matter, decide whether or not there is a hard problem of consciousness).

So what do you think is equipped to handle that 'hard problem?' How would you revise the methodology and stance?

 

[Canute]

You believe the Zombic Hunch, do you not? So obviously you don't think it is absurd to suggest that an entity can believe it is having an experience that it is actually not having.

In my view it is utterly oxymoronic to say that we can believe that we are having an experiences we are not having. If you think that this is possible then we do not mean the same thing by term 'experience' or 'believe'. On zombies, I believe that it is possible to hypothesise the existence of beings who act like us but are not conscious, and that it is a useful thought experiment since it shows that we are not zombies. However I do not believe any such thing can actually exist.

Why is it absurd when Dennett suggests it, especially given the mountains of experimental data he has to back up his claim. You can't just dismiss it because it's counterintuitive. Where's the intellectual integrity there?

My intellectual integrity is precisely what Dennett threatens. Where is this evidence you mention. None is given in D's book. If we cannot know that an experience exists unless it is reported, and an unconscious experience cannot be reported, then how can we claim that we have experiences that we do not experience? It makes no sense at all.

Do you care to provide a refutation of every clinical case cited that gives examples of these two types of phenomena? Let's just start with blindsight. The person can see, yet he believes that he cannot.

If the person did not experience seeing something then they did not experience seeing something. How can this not be true? The fact that some inputs from our senses are received subliminally has no bearing on anything. The fact is that the person did not have the experience of seeing. Quite obviously it is impossible to have an experience that we are not having.

Then we can move to hemispheric separation. All evidence indicates that each hemisphere can perceive different types of things separately, without the other knowing about it. The hemisphere responsible for verbal reports will verbally report the experiences of that hemisphere. Meanwhile, the hemisphere responsible for different kinds of reports will report other experiences that are verbally denied to have ever happened.

Fine. What follows from this?

I apologize for being so blunt, but you've completely misunderstood Dennett's entire point. He never says that consciousness is just reports. In fact, I've cited numerous passages in which he says the exact opposite and I'm not going to do so again. What he does say is that the primary pretheoretical data of the heterophenomenologist is the beliefs, which are extrapolated from reports. The reports aren't even the pretheoretical data - they are simply the raw data. What else do you suggest we take in as data?

The experiences are the data, the things that we are supposed to be explaining. (Naturally from my perspective the misunderstanding is yours).

The Orwellian form of revision can result in experiences that are never reported because they are immediately forgotten or replaced with false memories.

That makes sense. These are experiences that nobody will ever know occured.

Why? Is there any reason that an event taking place in the brain cannot be "ineffable?"

I've never thought about that. It seems hard to imagine why any such event should be ineffable, but perhaps. It would piss off neuroscientists, but it may be possible. I can't see the relevance of this point though.

And for the last time, Dennett never says that experiences are nothing more than reports and beliefs. This is simply our data set that we study to get at the actual experiences. This is so because there is nothing else for us to study. Even your own experiences come to you as reports - memories. You cannot go back into the past to apprehend direct experience. All you can do is remember what happened. You aren't going to complete an investigation without any time passing. If that was possible, then maybe heterophenomenology would not be necessary.

The fact that we have experiences at the time that we have them is one of the main reasons that heterophenomenology is useless as a means of studying experiences. All it can study is post-event reports on beliefs. Is watching a foorball game the same as having someone report the game to you?

Have you ever tried studying the experiences themselves, as they happen? It can be quite rewarding. The alternative is akin to trying to find out about the nature of stars by examing the way telescopes work.

They are. The heterophenomenological stance does not say otherwise. It only says that our data set cannot include the experiences themselves. Why? Because there is no way for us to catalogue actual experiences. The best we can do is catalogue our reports about them, and interpret these reports to get at a subjects beliefs.

Quite so. From a scientific perspective this is true. However it is not true. It is perfectly possible to study experiences, despite the fact that it is not possible to do it scientifically. This is known by everyone. After all, if this were not possible then science would have no reason to conclude that there is any such thing as experiences.

They must be explained in light of other evidence that gives hints about what the actual experience may have been. Ultimately, it is the experience itself that we are trying to explain.

Ultimately it should be the experience we are trying to explain. However, as you say in the previous para., we cannot study experiences unless they are our own. The 'other minds' problem shows this clearly. Heterophenomenology therefore cannot study experiences, only reports and beliefs.

No it doesn't. How does defining a term as an event that we cannot directly apprehend result in contradiction?

If we define consciousness as 'what it is like' then whatever an experience is like is what the experience is. So Dennett cannot argue that we are not an authority on what an experience is like, since what it is like is all that the experience is. This seems obvious.

Actually, what he is saying is that sometimes what you report is actually 'what it is like' and sometimes it isn't.

It is impossible in principle to report what it is like. This is well known. If I say 'I am experiencing seeing green' you have no idea what I'm seeing or what that experience is like. All you can do is assume that it's something like the experience you have when you see what you call green.

Reports are the only data we can catalogue because we do not have experience recording machines. Since these reports can be wrong, we should remain neutral as to whether or not they are correct. That is heterophenomenology in a nutshell right there.

I agree. That is why so many people argue that it useless as a means studying consciousness.

What else is it supposed to study? I think I've shown at decent length that we cannot catalogue the experiences themselves. What else do you want us to do?

We are forced to admit that to study consciousness we must study consciousness, and that this cannot be done by third-person observational methods. By those methods we cannot be sure that consciousness exists.

When the memory is changed before you are even able to say that the experience occured, it certainly matters, unless you have the strange ability to go into the past and confirm your memories. At this moment right now, everything you know about your experience is from memory. Your memory is just another form of report.

You must have a strange sense of existence if your experiences are all in the past. Do you have none in the present? If not then how do they find their way into your memory? My experiences are not reported, they are experienced. When I remember an experience I am having the experience of remembering it, not having the original experience.

No! That is exactly not the case! You do not have incorrigibility regarding your own experiences. It is as simple as that. Even the person giving the report does not know whether the report is accurate or not.

It is not possible to accurately report an experience. As for incorrigibilty it is clear that I know precisely at any moment what experience I am having. The idea that one can have an experience that one doesn't know one is having is either absurd, or entails redefining 'experience' in an absurd way.

When you see a triangle on a page, is it inaccurate to say that you saw a triangle on a page? Can you not explain the angles you see?

Of course not. I would have to include information on the precise inclination of the triangle in all planes, the precise relation between the colour of the page and the colour of the triangle, the precise size of it, how far it was away from me when I saw it, what the page was resting on, the itch in my foot that I was experiencing at the same time etc. The list is endless. Perhaps I was often locked in a triangular room as a child and hate triangles. My experience of a triangle would be partly defined by this hatred. Can this be reported? In the end it is impossible to report a moment of experience. This is why we cannot be sure that we all see the same thing when we see 'green'. This seems obvious and uncontentious.

When the heterophenomenologist asks me what I am experiencing right now and I say that I see letters typed out on a screen shortly after my fingers hit the keys, is that inaccurate?

Not innacurate, just inadequate. You are seeing a thousand times more things than the numbers on the screen. What colour screen? How big? What font? What is it resting on? What sort of room are you in? If you are you short-sighted or long-sighted this will affect your experience. What if you are colour blind? What if the researcher is colour blind? What if you are lying? What if you are not seeing the letters but merely have a false belief that you are?

This can certainly be confirmed to the extent that another person can confirm that I am indeed typing and that words are indeed appearing on the screen. Presumably, we can even examine my visual cortex to confirm that the parts responsible for processing verbal information are active. What else would you have us do?

You are describing the limits to our knowledge of what someone else is experiencing. I agree that these limits exist. All we can do is the best we can with what we've got. However this does not mean that we should not study experiences, for we can study our own. It's no good just giving up and saying we cannot do this because they are not inter-subjective. It's a refusal to face the facts.

Well, jeez, you sure don't want a very in-depth explanation of how it is that conscious moments are formed in your mind then, do you? And it does matter, quite a bit, even philosophically, if we are ever to have a good definition of what exactly the word 'qualia' means.

I rather think it is you that does not want an explanation, since heterophenomenlogy cannot address the question of how conscious moments arise. If you want an in depth explanation I'd suggest reading 'Abhidhamma Studies' by the Venerable Nyananponika Thera. It's heavy going but if you can handle Rosenberg's book then you'll catch the gist of it. It is an explanation of the nature of consciousness and a detailed analysis of its causes and constituents, without a single mention of beliefs and reports.

As to qualia I feel that we already have a perfectly good definition, which is why the term is widely used.

Can you think of any methodology that can demonstrate that experiences exist?

Lol. To get started I'd suggest the one that Descartes used. Or stick a pin in your foot.

What the heck are you talking about? Can you find me one line of writing in any of Dennett's works where he says it is not the aim of consciousness studies to explain experiences?

I did not say this. I said that it was not the aim of heterophenomenology to explain experiences. Which is why Dennett makes no attempt to explain them.

And please, do not cite more lines saying that experiences cannot be the primary data set that we work with to build an explanation.

Well, Dennett does say this. He says we must start from reports and work backwards from there to beliefs. It's not my fault if he leaves out the primary data.

What method would show a difference? It is clear from these thought experiments that zombies believe they have experiences. Even if they studied themselves, they would presumably come to the same conclusions about their consciousness that you do about yours, even though they don't have any.

Zombies do not believe anything, or, to be picky, if they do they'll never know it. This is part of their definition. How they can reach a conclusion about their consciousness when they don't have any beats me. Perhaps you could explain this. If a method for studying consciousness works for zombies then obviously it's a useless method, since the data it produces cannot be trusted.

Perhaps also you might explain why a zombie would report experiences that by definition it has never had, and what sort of form these reports might take. Btw the zombie argument should not be used as if zombies can exist, that is to misunderstand their legitimate use in certain thought experiments and arguments.

 

[Tournesol]

Ultimately it should be the experience we are trying to explain. However, as you say in the previous para., we cannot study experiences unless they are our own. The 'other minds' problem shows this clearly. Heterophenomenology therefore cannot study experiences, only reports and beliefs.

We can study other people's experiences only indirectly via their reports.
But if we tak their reports at face value, by default, we have no reason to
doubt that they have experiences at all, and the Other Minds so-called problem does not arise.

[ heterophenomenology ] only says that our data set cannot include the experiences themselves. Why? Because there is no way for us to catalogue actual experiences.

Our data set cannot include other people's expriences. However, we can only
make sense of their reports in terms of our experiences. If you have never banged your own elbow, you arenot going ot understand your experimental
subject's report about banging her elbow. We have to go on other people's
reports when studying other peoples' experience, and we have to go on
our own experience as well, or we could not make sense of it.

 

[Mentat]

In my view it is utterly oxymoronic to say that we can believe that we are having an experiences we are not having. If you think that this is possible then we do not mean the same thing by term 'experience' or 'believe'. On zombies, I believe that it is possible to hypothesise the existence of beings who act like us but are not conscious, and that it is a useful thought experiment since it shows that we are not zombies. However I do not believe any such thing can actually exist.

But, if a zombie did exist, and if "belief" were simply a disposition to hold to a certain point more strongly than others (clearly explanable within a neurological framework (read William H. Calvin, Joseph LeDoux, Gerald Edelman, etc)), then the zombie would be able to believe that he had conscious experiences. He would hold to that side of the argument with intensity and incorrigibility. He would be you.

In short: belief is a neural action sometimes expressed in verbal reports; zombies have "action-consciousness", pace Chalmers; therefore a zombie can believe that he has conscious experience.

 

[StatusX]

loseyourname,

I'm not sure exactly what we're arguing here. Are you claiming that:

1. There is no hard problem of consciousness
2. It can be solved by heterophenomenolgy
3. It can't be solved by any method, but heterophenomenolgy will get us as close as we'll ever get.
​

I think you probably fall into the third category, where as Dennett is in either the first or second. I would put myself in the fourth category:

4. It is impossible to know whether a given question can be answered or not, and we should not give up just because we can't think of a way right now.
​

Obviously no one's going to give up on trying to solve the hard problem just because Dennett is saying we should, so this debate isn't very significant. If another method can be found, it will be, and this will all be put to rest.

So why are people giving up now? Because it certainly seems such a method is impossible, and we'd like to think we can explain everything. Are they right? Well, again, there are a few possible alternatives:

1. Mysterianism - Intrinsic subjective experience (consciousness) is real, and it is what we talk about when we discuss things like the hard problem of consciousness (as opposed to the epiphenomenalist view). But it's existence defies human reason, and maybe even logic, and we will never be able to wrap it up in a neat little explanation like we can for almost everything else.

2. Physical world isn't causally closed - I'm starting to consider this possibiliiy, even though it makes me look a little quacky. Because the other option that takes consciousness seriously, epiphenomenalism, is not just ugly, it's paradoxical. These people suggest consciousness cannot cause. Wait, a second what can't cause? It's absurd. But the physical world not being causally closed is certainly controversial.

3. Epiphenomenalism - I already explained the problems with this view, but it's out there. Maybe I'm missing something about it.

4. Other - this is basically "present day" mysterianism. That is, it is completely beyond our reach now, including even a vage idea how to tackle the problem, but one day we'll have an epiphany. We'll discover that whether the physical world is causally closed is not a yes or no question, or something strange like that.​

Then there's Rosenberg. I honestly can't imagine how his view could maintain physical closure and avoid epiphenomenalism, but I'll have to finish his book and see.

So Dennett denies a natural phenomenon to make his life easier. Chalmers cannot reconcile his views with the rest of science. Neither of them are in enviable positions, but at least Chalmers is being faithful to his duty of finding the truth.

Heterophenomenology itself is fine. You continue to say we aren't arguing Dennett's views when clearly we are. Otherwise, what are we arguing? That we shouldn't accept subjects reports as infallible? That's obvious. That we shouldn't accept our own beliefs? Less obvious, but ok, there are clearly ways we can delude ourselves. But do you really think the entire world is in a mass delusion about consciousness? When you look at the color red, can you really be comfortable saying you're deluding yourself into thinking it has intrinsicness, when it's really just bare differences? Why? Because facing the facts is too hard?

 

[Tournesol]

statusX

To add to your list:

5. There is one world made out of one kind of stuff.
There is a way of describing the world in general, and brains in particual in quantitive structural terms, which we call "physical".
There is a way brains represent theri own activities to themselves
which we call "consciousness".
The physical way of talking is not good at capturing the flavour of consciousness.
But both descriptions overlap; they are not talking about two different
things (no dualism).
Consciousness is a real feature of brains (no eliminativism).
Since the consciousness description and the physical description
overlap, what is happening causally in the physical description is
not happening *instead* of what is happening causally in the consciousness
description -- it is just another way of describing it (no epiphenomenalism).
The two descriptions do not overlap entirely; one brings out things the other
does not (no identity theory).

 

[selfAdjoint]

Here's a question about consciousness and causality. I am conscious of wanting to raise my arm. My arm does rise. Did my consciousness cause that? Or did some preconscious physical occurrence cause BOTH the want and the rise? Notice the latter explanation would account for the measured gap between the start of the physical chain of events to the rise and the becoming of aware of the desire. This experimental finding has not been refuted, although it has certainly been vigorously attacked.

 

[StatusX]

Here's a question about consciousness and causality. I am conscious of wanting to raise my arm. My arm does rise. Did my consciousness cause that? Or did some preconscious physical occurrence cause BOTH the want and the rise? Notice the latter explanation would account for the measured gap between the start of the physical chain of events to the rise and the becoming of aware of the desire. This experimental finding has not been refuted, although it has certainly been vigorously attacked.

That's true, it is very likely physical processes in the brain caused both. However, this interpretation becomes troublesome when applied to judgements about consciousness itself. Was it the experiences that caused me to believe I had experiences, or was it brain states? Dennett looks at this question and says "obviously the brain states, and that explains everything." The problem for those who take the hard problem seriously is this: If consciousness can't cause, how do we know about it? And if the physical world is causally closed, how can consciousness cause? I don't pretend to have the answers to these questions. The reason I believe in the hard problem is nothing I can convince anyone of with words, but it's something I know subjectively, and I'm sure all of you and even Dennett himself know it as well.

The real difficult point (arguably for humanity as a whole, not just philosophers) will be if and when we come to a reductive physical explanation for why we believe in qualia. This explanation will presumably depend on physical reactions among neurons and not require the actual existence of qualia at all. Indeed, it would mean they don't exist. Will we accept this explanation, despite it's deep counterintuitiveness? Or will we reject it, and possibly question the scientific method itself?

 

[StatusX]

statusX

To add to your list:

5. There is one world made out of one kind of stuff.
There is a way of describing the world in general, and brains in particual in quantitive structural terms, which we call "physical".
There is a way brains represent theri own activities to themselves
which we call "consciousness".
The physical way of talking is not good at capturing the flavour of consciousness.
But both descriptions overlap; they are not talking about two different
things (no dualism).
Consciousness is a real feature of brains (no eliminativism).
Since the consciousness description and the physical description
overlap, what is happening causally in the physical description is
not happening *instead* of what is happening causally in the consciousness
description -- it is just another way of describing it (no epiphenomenalism).
The two descriptions do not overlap entirely; one brings out things the other
does not (no identity theory).

That doesn't explain why we believe we are conscious. If the physical brain does all the causing and consciousness is just another "aspect" of that (I'm not really sure what you mean here), then our thoughts about consciousnes, including everything you say here, are caused by our physical brain, and there is no need to refer to anything else, including other "aspects". I think your view is basically epiphenomenalism with some differences in terms.

 

[loseyourname]

This is starting to degrade and we're talking about too many things at once. I'm going to see if we can focus on a few points and move from there.

In my view it is utterly oxymoronic to say that we can believe that we are having an experiences we are not having. If you think that this is possible then we do not mean the same thing by term 'experience' or 'believe'. On zombies, I believe that it is possible to hypothesise the existence of beings who act like us but are not conscious, and that it is a useful thought experiment since it shows that we are not zombies. However I do not believe any such thing can actually exist.

Then you don't believe the Zombic Hunch. If you don't think it's possible for an entity to believe it is having experiences when in fact it is not, the whole zombie argument should be utterly useless to you. Since it is this argument that underpins the objections to heterophenomenology typically given by contemporary philosophers, I'm just going to assume that you don't fall into their camp and you're coming at this from a different angle.

If we cannot know that an experience exists unless it is reported, and an unconscious experience cannot be reported, then how can we claim that we have experiences that we do not experience? It makes no sense at all.

I know it doesn't make any sense. You've studied modern science to some extent. A good deal of it doesn't make a whole lot of sense; fortunately, the threshold conditions for whether or not a given hypothesis can be true does not include it making sense to Canute. Let's go back to the demo that Dennett gave at the debate. The colors changed with each flash, but the audience didn't begin to notice the change until (I don't remember this exactly, but for the sake of argument let's just say) the 12th flash. So the question was raised as the whether or not they experienced the other 11 flashes? According to their reports, they did not, but we know the visual information was there and received by their eyes. So we have two competing hypotheses that might explain this. The Stalinistic hypothesis says that they did not experience the first 11 flashes. In fact, the visual information was altered somewhere along the route from the retinae to the visual cortex. The Orwellian hypothesis says that they did in fact experience the flashes, but the information was altered somewhere along the route from the visual cortex to the memory center in the hippocampus. To the first-person observer, these two situations would be indistinguishable and there is no way of knowing which hypothesis is correct. Fortunately, you are wrong to say that the heterophenomenologist can only study reports - reports are quite useless at this point. In fact, the heterophenomenologist has all the tools of science available to him. This includes the potential ability to track the visual signals as they move from the retinae to the visual cortex and then to the memory-center. As of right now, there exists no way to test these hypotheses and they will have to remain equally probable, but the heterophenomenologist will be able to determine which is correct once he has the proper tools.

Of course, as Dennett points out, a good feature of any scientific conjecture is the ability to predict certain effects. In fact, his multiple drafts model did predict this very effect (Rensink's change blindness) before it was ever found to occur.

If the person did not experience seeing something then they did not experience seeing something. How can this not be true? The fact that some inputs from our senses are received subliminally has no bearing on anything. The fact is that the person did not have the experience of seeing. Quite obviously it is impossible to have an experience that we are not having.

Well, jeez, you just solved one of the great mysteries of neurology. Would you care to submit your findings to the New England Journal of Medicine?

Fine. What follows from this?

It's not entirely certain what follows from this. Just so you're clear on what I'm talking about, this is regarding hemispheric separation. There are actually two hypotheses that can explain this as well. The first would say that the left hemisphere, the hemisphere responsible for verbal reports, is the only hemisphere that actually experiences anything. The reason for guessing this is that the subject speaks using the left hemisphere, so when the subject what he experienced, he will answer that he experienced all of the information that was processed by the left hemisphere. The other hypothesis is that both hemispheres experience equally, but that their experiences are separate from one another; that is, neither hemisphere has access to the experiences of the other. The evidence for this is that the right hemisphere reports all of the information processed by it just as well as the left hemisphere; it just doesn't report it verbally. It seems rather arbitrary to suggest that your true 'self' is simply the part of you that can give verbal reports and that the other 'self' is simply a subliminal zombie.

As of right now, I can't even think of any way to test which of these two hypotheses is correct, so by default it seems that we must grant status to the second, simply because it seems intellectually dishonest to grant privileged status to the part of our brain responsible for verbal reports. I know this is highly counterintuitive and suggests that we may not be a 'self' at all, but rather a collection of separate experiencing parts that simply share information with one another. It's kind of like the double-slit experiment. Is the electron a particle or a wave? There is no way to know. Perhaps the question is absurd and our ideas of "particle" and "wave" are simply not equipped to describe reality. Perhaps our idea of "self" is similar.

I've never thought about that. It seems hard to imagine why any such event should be ineffable, but perhaps. It would piss off neuroscientists, but it may be possible. I can't see the relevance of this point though.

Why would it piss off neuroscientists? There are plenty of objects that are the subject of study by science but which cannot be given a qualitative description. The aforementioned electron, for example. The relevance of this point is that you seemed to be saying if an experience is ineffable, then it cannot be a brain event. I wasn't sure how the consequent followed from the antecendent, so I asked why and you replied that maybe a brain event could be ineffable. Am I to conclude that you take back your earlier conclusion?

The fact that we have experiences at the time that we have them is one of the main reasons that heterophenomenology is useless as a means of studying experiences. All it can study is post-event reports on beliefs. Is watching a foorball game the same as having someone report the game to you?

It just might very well be, if we accept the second hypothesis to explain the hemispheric separation. It might very well be that watching a football game is simply the equivalent of my retinae sharing its reports with my visual cortex, which shares its reports with my memory banks and with the various faculties of my brain responsible for forming different reports, which can then be shared with other brains, either through visual or auditory receptors.

Have you ever tried studying the experiences themselves, as they happen? It can be quite rewarding.

How do you know? As soon as have the experience, it is gone, and you are left with memory. Given that this occurs in a split microsecond, unless you are capable of stopping time, I'm not sure what you mean when you refer to study the "experiences themselves" rather than your memory. In fact, the multiple drafts model (which has made correct predictions, might I add one more time) suggests that it is meaningless to even speak of experiences as discrete, unitary events, that what we term "experiences" are in fact constantly changing and evolving, both in the memory and in other parts of the brain.

Quite so. From a scientific perspective this is true. However it is not true. It is perfectly possible to study experiences, despite the fact that it is not possible to do it scientifically. This is known by everyone. After all, if this were not possible then science would have no reason to conclude that there is any such thing as experiences.

I'm not entirely certain science (and I'm completely certain that not "everyone") has come to the conclusion that there is such a thing as experiences in the sense that you seem to be using the term. If by "experience," you mean a discrete quanta of qualitative content that can be taken out of the river of time and looked at distinctly and clearly, then no, I'm not certain such a thing does exist.

Heterophenomenology therefore cannot study experiences, only reports and beliefs.

You seem to misunderstand the concept of what it means to study something. Let's go back to the quantum physicist example, the double slit experiment. The physicist is studying the electron. His data, however, does not include the electron itself, as it is not possible to directly view an electron with any equipment that he has available to him. His data instead includes such things as diffraction patterns on radiosensitive film and such. But he is still studying the experience. By the same token, the heterophenomenologist cannot directly record "experiences," because there is no such device that is capable of doing that. He has as his raw the reports, both verbal and otherwise, along with any neural information he can get from the subject at the time of the report-making. Using this data, he can indirectly study the experiences themselves, which is ultimately what he hopes to explain.

If we define consciousness as 'what it is like' then whatever an experience is like is what the experience is. So Dennett cannot argue that we are not an authority on what an experience is like, since what it is like is all that the experience is.

Actually, Dennett grants full authority over 'what it is like' and says as much in the debate with Chalmers (which you again seem to have misread - his exact words are that he will grant dictatorial authority over 'what it is like'). He is just not so quick to give that simplistic and quite probably incorrect definition of what consciousness is. After all, if all we can say that we experience is 'what it is like' for the verbal reporting part of our brain, what about the other parts? What about the right hemisphere? Are you so quick to arbitrarily declare that there is no such thing as 'what it is like' to be the separated right hemisphere? Why? What about the other parts of your brain that you now call "subliminal?" Are they not conscious simply because they cannot tell us 'what it is like?' If by 'what it is like,' you in fact mean 'what it is like' for every part of your brain, whether you consider it a part of your self or not, how do you then study that, when the part of you that you call "you" apparently doesn't have access to all of the information? What about when what you call "you" becomes two parts, as in the case of hemispheric separation? Was the right hemisphere previously a part of the subject's 'self' and now is not? Is it possible that maybe there never was a self? And perhaps there is no such thing as 'what it is like' to be Canute? Let me guess: none of this makes sense to you, so it must be incorrect.

You must have a strange sense of existence if your experiences are all in the past. Do you have none in the present?

What exactly is the present? I'm not able to quantize and isolate discrete moments in time to analyze them, if that's what you mean.

As for incorrigibilty it is clear that I know precisely at any moment what experience I am having.

This is another example of:

Vast amounts of experimental and clinical data suggest x.
y, however, makes more sense to Canute.
Therefore, y must be correct.

Are you still under the impression that this is a valid argument form? Does it even make a difference to you?

This is why we cannot be sure that we all see the same thing when we see 'green'. This seems obvious and uncontentious.

Perhaps with 'green,' but with 'triangle,' I think the opposite is true. It is quite uncontentious that when you say you experience seeing a triangle, you are having exactly the same experience as me. Perhaps you cannot describe the surroundings equally well, but you can very well describe the triangle. There is nothing ineffable about 'triangleness.' It is simply any three-sided figure, the interior angles of which add up to 180.

It's no good just giving up and saying we cannot do this because they are not inter-subjective. It's a refusal to face the facts.

Nobody says don't study x because it isn't intersubjective. We say don't study x because x cannot be directly apprehended. My guess is that, in most cases, our beliefs about our experiences are mostly correct. We should, however, reserve judgement because we cannot know for certain, especially in light of all the data that suggests we use many illusory concepts when we communicate and think about our consciousness. In light of the fact that you seem completely unwilling to accept any experimental or clinical data that runs counter to your intuition, is it really fair for you to suggest that heterophenomenologists are the ones refusing to face the facts?

If you want an in depth explanation I'd suggest reading 'Abhidhamma Studies' by the Venerable Nyananponika Thera. It's heavy going but if you can handle Rosenberg's book then you'll catch the gist of it. It is an explanation of the nature of consciousness and a detailed analysis of its causes and constituents, without a single mention of beliefs and reports.

Does the Venerable tackle any of the issues raised by the experimental and clinical data that has been brought to light by the heterophenomenologists or such models as the tensor network and multiple drafts?

As to qualia I feel that we already have a perfectly good definition, which is why the term is widely used.

What is the definition you use, then? When you use the term "qualia," what is it that you referring to?

To get started I'd suggest the one that Descartes used. Or stick a pin in your foot.

That isn't exactly what I meant by demonstration. What I meant was is there any way you think of to demonstrate to me that you are conscious. I don't question that fact, but still. Although, given that you think zombies are impossible, and could not believe they were having experiences unless they actually were, then the fact that you believe and report to me that you have experiences should suffice as proof for you.

I did not say this. I said that it was not the aim of heterophenomenology to explain experiences.

This is a blatantly, factually incorrect statement. In light of the many quotations I have provided in which Dennett says that it is his aim (and the aim of heterophenomenology) to explain experiences, why do you insist that the opposite is true? I can see how you might claim that the heterophenomenologist cannot explain experiences, but to continue to say at this point that such a pursuit is not his aim is to just flat out lie.

Well, Dennett does say this. He says we must start from reports and work backwards from there to beliefs.

God, Canute, do you read these passages at all? Dennett says that we work to beliefs as the primary pretheoretical data. The ultimate knowledge sought, the post-theoretical data, are the experiences themselves. If you don't think he can get there, fine. But don't lie to us and pretend that he makes no attempt.

Perhaps also you might explain why a zombie would report experiences that by definition it has never had, and what sort of form these reports might take. Btw the zombie argument should not be used as if zombies can exist, that is to misunderstand their legitimate use in certain thought experiments and arguments.

Oh god. Is this another "It's logically possible but not empirically possible" deals? Kind of like 'Last Thursdayism' is logically possible, so evolution by natural selection has some serious explaining to do. Or what about this one: It is logically possible that no human being but me has a head. I could, in fact, be deceived by all of my senses into believing that other humans have heads, but in fact, they do not. Therefore, human anatomy as we know it is an imcomplete science because it cannot demonstrate that humans actually do have heads.

Let's be clear on this. If you think it is empirically impossible for an entity to be physically indentical to you, and behave in exactly the same way, express all of the same beliefs, but not have experiences, then you think there is nothing to experience but physicality.

 

[loseyourname]

Was it the experiences that caused me to believe I had experiences, or was it brain states? Dennett looks at this question and says "obviously the brain states, and that explains everything."

Actually, what Dennet would say is that you haven't asked a question at all. He believes that experiences are brain states, and so you just essentially asked "Was it the brain-states that casued me to believe I had a brain-state, or was it the brain-states?" A rather absurd question if you take that as a possibility. It seems that you don't.

 

[StatusX]

Actually, what Dennet would say is that you haven't asked a question at all. He believes that experiences are brain states, and so you just essentially asked "Was it the brain-states that casued me to believe I had a brain-state, or was it the brain-states?" A rather absurd question if you take that as a possibility. It seems that you don't.

Experiences and brain states are certainly not a priori identical. So the question "Are experiences nothing more than brain states?" is very meaningful, it's just that Dennett feels he has already answered it.

Would you agree that a neurological explanation of experience, like one heterophenomenology could give us, would consist of nothing more than bare differences? That is, there would be slots in the theory for "the subjective experience of green" and "the subjective experience of red", but these would consist only of their causal roles and the fact that they're different from each other. If so, the question is, does that cover everything there is to know about experience? I don't think it does.

We know more than "red is different than green, and it causes me to say different things." We know what red looks like and what green looks like. The theory might mention that we believe they look a certain way, but that hardly tells us what they look like or why they look like anything at all. The only way out would be to assume the beliefs are false, but how could the theory ever demonstrate that? Are you saying the theory will never be able to answer such question, but neither will any other, or are you saying such questions are meaningless because that beliefs are false?

 

[loseyourname]

loseyourname,

I'm not sure exactly what we're arguing here. Are you claiming that:

1. There is no hard problem of consciousness
2. It can be solved by heterophenomenolgy
3. It can't be solved by any method, but heterophenomenolgy will get us as close as we'll ever get.
​

I think you probably fall into the third category, where as Dennett is in either the first or second. I would put myself in the fourth category:

4. It is impossible to know whether a given question can be answered or not, and we should not give up just because we can't think of a way right now.
​

As a good heterophenomenologist, I'm not taking a stand on this matter. I will remain neutral until I can be convinced that one of those is true. That I do believe is the correct stance to take. I'm not entirely certain that Dennett falls into the 1st or 2nd categories either. What exactly is meant by the 'hard problem?' Because, as I've seen it formulated, it is basically the question of why there should be experiences at all, correct? This is a question that can in principle be answered through computer science, with AI. If we ever manage to develop a non-organic entity that can experience, we can then determine the threshold conditions. If it becomes obvious that this cannot be done, then we will need to conclude that there is indeed a non-physical aspect that we just cannot recreate.

There is a slight quagmire, however. If we assume that Rosenberg's model is true, then an exact physical replica of the human brain in computer form would experience in the same way we do, but there would still be non-physicality involved. The thing is, his theory is purely rational. There is no empirical basis whatsoever and so no way of evaluating it except to say that it seems elegant and answers my questions so 'what the heck?' If such a theory is the only way to answer the question "Why is there experience at all?" Then yes, I don't think the question can be answered, because let's face it, that isn't an answer. It's conjecture that seems to make sense and nothing more. Aristotle might accept it, but I will not.

So why are people giving up now? Because it certainly seems such a method is impossible, and we'd like to think we can explain everything. Are they right?

I think it's wrong to say that people are "giving up." Heterophenomenology is simply a method for scientists, and it lays out the proper stance that a scientist should take, because - as I think Dennett demonstrates - it is the only stance he can take that guarantees he won't end up with spurious data. Philosophers, on the other hand, are free to use rationalism as they always have and attempt to demonstrate true thought experiment the truth of a given hypothesis. As he says, Einstein's theory of relativity came very close to being pure philosophical speculation. Maybe someone even more brilliant than Einstein will be able to do it. Chalmers is not that man, however.

Well, again, there are a few possible alternatives:

1. Mysterianism - Intrinsic subjective experience (consciousness) is real, and it is what we talk about when we discuss things like the hard problem of consciousness (as opposed to the epiphenomenalist view). But it's existence defies human reason, and maybe even logic, and we will never be able to wrap it up in a neat little explanation like we can for almost everything else.

2. Physical world isn't causally closed - I'm starting to consider this possibiliiy, even though it makes me look a little quacky. Because the other option that takes consciousness seriously, epiphenomenalism, is not just ugly, it's paradoxical. These people suggest consciousness cannot cause. Wait, a second what can't cause? It's absurd. But the physical world not being causally closed is certainly controversial.

3. Epiphenomenalism - I already explained the problems with this view, but it's out there. Maybe I'm missing something about it.

4. Other - this is basically "present day" mysterianism. That is, it is completely beyond our reach now, including even a vage idea how to tackle the problem, but one day we'll have an epiphany. We'll discover that whether the physical world is causally closed is not a yes or no question, or something strange like that.​

Then there's Rosenberg. I honestly can't imagine how his view could maintain physical closure and avoid epiphenomenalism, but I'll have to finish his book and see.

All of these are options, but why exactly is it that you think an empirical investigation using the heterophenomenological stance cannot give us any useful information to steer us in the right direction?

So Dennett denies a natural phenomenon to make his life easier. Chalmers cannot reconcile his views with the rest of science. Neither of them are in enviable positions, but at least Chalmers is being faithful to his duty of finding the truth.

What is it that you think Dennett has denied? His attempt seems to me to be an attempt at reduction, not elimination. I suppose I could be wrong (although I e-mailed him and he told me I was faithfully representing his views), but why does that matter when this thread is about heterophenomenology? The stance itself certainly doesn't deny or confirm any phenomena.

Heterophenomenology itself is fine. You continue to say we aren't arguing Dennett's views when clearly we are. Otherwise, what are we arguing? That we shouldn't accept subjects reports as infallible? That's obvious.

Well, gee, I guess we aren't arguing then. This thread is about heterophenomenology. Just because the term was coined by Dennett doesn't mean we need to include his personal views in an examination of the stance. Dennett isn't even a scientist. He just interprets work that is being done by others. He saw that they were using a certain neutral stance and he defended it and invented a name for it.

That we shouldn't accept our own beliefs? Less obvious, but ok, there are clearly ways we can delude ourselves. But do you really think the entire world is in a mass delusion about consciousness? When you look at the color red, can you really be comfortable saying you're deluding yourself into thinking it has intrinsicness, when it's really just bare differences? Why? Because facing the facts is too hard?

I have no clue what the difference would be between observing something that is intrinsic and observing something that is built of bare differences. I certainly won't call either a fact of my experience. It's been chronicled in some depth here exactly why we should give incorrigible status to our own beliefs about our experiences. This doesn't mean that they are all incorrect, however. The ideas of self and of quantized discrete percepts seem illusory, plus there is the practical impossibility of being able to tell first-person the difference between Orwellian and Stalinistic revision. Obviously, we can observe first-person that we do experience and that we can be certain of, but that's about it. You can't seriously try to tell me that you can look at an object of a certain color and know just from looking at it that what you are looking at is not the result of any extrinsic property of the object. What is your perception of green then? Is it an intrinsic propery of leaf matter? Is it an intrinsic property of photons of a certain wavelength? (Does that one even make sense? If the difference between a photon of one color and a photon of another is the wavelength, but intrinsically they are both the same, does that make sense?) Is it an intrinsic property of something in your neurons? Why do you feel that it must be intrinsic?

 

[Tournesol]

5. There is one world made out of one kind of stuff.
There is a way of describing the world in general, and brains in particual in quantitive structural terms, which we call "physical".
There is a way brains represent theri own activities to themselves
which we call "consciousness".
The physical way of talking is not good at capturing the flavour of consciousness.
But both descriptions overlap; they are not talking about two different
things (no dualism).
Consciousness is a real feature of brains (no eliminativism).
Since the consciousness description and the physical description
overlap, what is happening causally in the physical description is
not happening *instead* of what is happening causally in the consciousness
description -- it is just another way of describing it (no epiphenomenalism).
The two descriptions do not overlap entirely; one brings out things the other
does not (no identity theory).

That doesn't explain why we believe we are conscious.

We believe we are because we are; "consc. is a real feature of brains".

If the physical brain does all the causing

There is not a physical brain and a separate non-physical mind.
There is a third person physical description and a 1st person
subjective apprehension which are both of the same
ultimately real entity. The trick is not to equate take 'physical'
to mean 'ultimately real'.

and consciousness is just another "aspect" of that (I'm not really sure what you mean here), then our thoughts about consciousnes, including everything you say here, are caused by our physical brain, and there is no need to refer to anything else, including other "aspects". I think your view is basically epiphenomenalism with some differences in terms.

That would again be because you are taking "physical" to mean "really real".
The brain does what it does causally and we can explain it in
subjective or neruological terms, and both explanations will work.

"what is happening causally in the physical description is
not happening *instead* of what is happening causally in the consciousness
description -- it is just another way of describing it (no epiphenomenalism)."

 

[StatusX]

We believe we are because we are; "consc. is a real feature of brains".

Well that's hardly an answer. I could just rephrase the question to ask why you said that.

"what is happening causally in the physical description is
not happening *instead* of what is happening causally in the consciousness
description -- it is just another way of describing it (no epiphenomenalism)."

The problem is, we believe there is more to consciousness than just "what is happening causally," otherwise there wouldn't be a problem. How does your model explain the fact that we have been made to believe in something that cannot cause? I realized this was the argument we were getting to in this thread, which is pretty off topic from heterophenomenology, so I started a new thread in the metaphysics forum. I explain the problem in more detail there.

 

[Tournesol]

As a good heterophenomenologist, I'm not taking a stand on this matter. I will remain neutral until I can be convinced that one of those is true. That I do believe is the correct stance to take. I'm not entirely certain that Dennett falls into the 1st or 2nd categories either. What exactly is meant by the 'hard problem?' Because, as I've seen it formulated, it is basically the question of why there should be experiences at all, correct?

Well, it is to do with the experiential aspect of consciousness ratehr than the functional, "doing" aspect.

This is a question that can in principle be answered through computer science, with AI.

Huh?? Given that we know we have expriences, why shouldn't we just figure out what
we use them for.

If we ever manage to develop a non-organic entity that can experience,

How would we know it is experiencing ? AFAICS -- you would have to solve
the HP first -- ie understand how material processes generate experience.

 

[StatusX]

All of these are options, but why exactly is it that you think an empirical investigation using the heterophenomenological stance cannot give us any useful information to steer us in the right direction?

I think this is the main point we're arguing, and it doesn't necessarily concern heterophenomenology itself.

Any theory has two parts: a formalism and an interpretation. The formalism is the extrinsic, mathematical model, and the interpretation relates certain aspects of the formalism to reality. Heterophenomenology will be fine for producing a formal theory of consciousness, but we are still free to decide how to interpret it. This choice is based on such factors as internal consistency and elegance.

The question of which of these options to pick is, at least partly, an interpretational issue. For example, we can't pick an option where we believe in something that cannot affect our beliefs, because that isn't consistent. But if we can find an interpretation that is consistent, and rides well with both the formalism we get from heterophenomenology and our first person experience, we will probably have done as much as we can do. Which interpretation is correct and why is philosophy, not science.

 

[Tournesol]

Well that's hardly an answer.

Why not ? I believe there is a computer in front of me because there
is. I suppose there are some other condintions -- my eyes are open,
I can see, etc. Consciousness is self-awareness, I am aware of myself,
so I am conscious. If you are into eliminativism, you are going to
have to give a convoluted answer to that kind of question, but I am not,
so I can stick with the kind of simple answer that is good for most things.

The problem is, we believe there is more to consciousness than just "what is happening causally," otherwise there wouldn't be a problem. How does your model explain the fact that we have been made to believe in something that cannot cause?

I don't believe that consciousness "cannot cause"; I am giving an explanation of why it can. Epiphenomenalists believe consc. cannot cause because
they think physical explanations exclude mental ones; I don't.

I notice that in both of these comments you seem to assume that the
only thing to explain is the belief in consciousness and that it needs to be explained as some kind of myth. somewhat question begging, perhaps ?

 

[StatusX]

I don't believe that consciousness "cannot cause"; I am giving an explanation of why it can. Epiphenomenalists believe consc. cannot cause because
they think physical explanations exclude mental ones; I don't.

You're missing the point. If the causal nature of consciousness was all there was, there would be no problem. And there wouldn't be two aspects to it, there would just be it's causal role. The reason we make the first person distinction is that there is more to experiences then what they cause us to do. There is "something it is like" to have an experience. Staring at a color, it actually looks like something. It isn't just defined by what it causes you to say or think. Do you see the diffference? If you really do intend to say consciousness is nothing more than it's causal role, you in fact are an eliminativist.

 

[Canute]

This Then you don't believe the Zombic Hunch. If you don't think it's possible for an entity to believe it is having experiences when in fact it is not, the whole zombie argument should be utterly useless to you. Since it is this argument that underpins the objections to heterophenomenology typically given by contemporary philosophers, I'm just going to assume that you don't fall into their camp and you're coming at this from a different angle.

Zombie do not believe anything. Believing requires consiousness, just as knowing does. By your presentation of the argument zombies are no different to human beings. This is a misunderstanding of zombies as used by Chalmers etc. Zombies are defined as behaving like us, but they are not conscious. If they are able to believe things and to believe that they are having experiences then human beings are zombies and we don't have to argue about whether they can exist or not, we know they do.

The Orwellian hypothesis says that they did in fact experience the flashes, but the information was altered somewhere along the route from the visual cortex to the memory center in the hippocampus. To the first-person observer, these two situations would be indistinguishable and there is no way of knowing which hypothesis is correct. Fortunately, you are wrong to say that the heterophenomenologist can only study reports - reports are quite useless at this point. In fact, the heterophenomenologist has all the tools of science available to him. This includes the potential ability to track the visual signals as they move from the retinae to the visual cortex and then to the memory-center. As of right now, there exists no way to test these hypotheses and they will have to remain equally probable, but the heterophenomenologist will be able to determine which is correct once he has the proper tools.

This is all irrelevant. There's no need for an Orwellian hypothesis. Some flashes were experienced and some weren't. I suppose some people would like to know why this happens, but it has no bearing an this discussion. We are disussing how to explain why or how subjects experience things, not why they sometimes don't. Clearly if they don't experience something then it was not an experience, and we are supposed to talking about experiences not non-experiences.

Of course, as Dennett points out, a good feature of any scientific conjecture is the ability to predict certain effects. In fact, his multiple drafts model did predict this very effect (Rensink's change blindness) before it was ever found to occur.

An important result. When we don't pay attention to something we tend not to notice it. I could have predicted that given two minutes to think about it.

Well, jeez, you just solved one of the great mysteries of neurology. Would you care to submit your findings to the New England Journal of Medicine?

I haven't solved anything. I am talking about the definition of an experience. I define it as something we experience. If you wish to define an 'experience' as something that we may or may not experience then I can't stop you. However as far as I'm concerned an experience is an experience, and until somebody shows that we can have experiences that we don't experience I'm sticking to this definition. Do you define zombies as creatures who don't have experiences, or as creatures who have experiences that they don't experience? How would one tell the difference?

Just so you're clear on what I'm talking about, this is regarding hemispheric separation. There are actually two hypotheses that can explain this as well. The first would say that the left hemisphere, the hemisphere responsible for verbal reports, is the only hemisphere that actually experiences anything. The reason for guessing this is that the subject speaks using the left hemisphere, so when the subject what he experienced, he will answer that he experienced all of the information that was processed by the left hemisphere. The other hypothesis is that both hemispheres experience equally, but that their experiences are separate from one another; that is, neither hemisphere has access to the experiences of the other. The evidence for this is that the right hemisphere reports all of the information processed by it just as well as the left hemisphere; it just doesn't report it verbally.

What's the relevance of this? You haven't yet shown that experiences exist in a manner consistent with heterophenomenology, so it's a bit premature to start talking about where they occur. As yet there is no scientific evidence to help us decide where in the brain experiences occur, no scientific evidence that shows that they occur in the brain, and no scientific evidence that they occur at all. Like Dennett you take an enormous amount for granted.

It seems rather arbitrary to suggest that your true 'self' is simply the part of you that can give verbal reports and that the other 'self' is simply a subliminal zombie.

I'd say it was absurd, which is why I didn't say it.

As of right now, I can't even think of any way to test which of these two hypotheses is correct, so by default it seems that we must grant status to the second, simply because it seems intellectually dishonest to grant privileged status to the part of our brain responsible for verbal reports.

As we cannot and will never observe experiences happening in brains then according to heterophenomenology we must simply ask the subject where there experiences occur. Do you not see that heterophenomenology cannot address these questions precisely because as a method it can tell us nothing about experiences? Online somewhere is an email discussion between Dennett and John Searle, where Searle argues that Dennett's approach leaves out what it is supposed to explain. Dennett's answers are inneffectual.

I know this is highly counterintuitive and suggests that we may not be a 'self' at all, but rather a collection of separate experiencing parts that simply share information with one another.

We now that consciousness is experienced as unified. Hence the binding problem.

It's kind of like the double-slit experiment. Is the electron a particle or a wave? There is no way to know. Perhaps the question is absurd and our ideas of "particle" and "wave" are simply not equipped to describe reality. Perhaps our idea of "self" is similar.

I'd say you are right on this point.

Why would it piss off neuroscientists? There are plenty of objects that are the subject of study by science but which cannot be given a qualitative description.The aforementioned electron, for example. The relevance of this point is that you seemed to be saying if an experience is ineffable, then it cannot be a brain event. I wasn't sure how the consequent followed from the antecendent, so I asked why and you replied that maybe a brain event could be ineffable. Am I to conclude that you take back your earlier conclusion?

Science does not give qualitative descriptions, which is Rosenberg's point, so I'm not sure what you're saying here.

I didn't mean to suggest that an ineffable experience cannot be a brain-state because it is inneffable, but because it is an experience. If an experience was a brain-state then we'd call it a brain-state and not an experience. In the end all experiences are inneffable to a greater or lesser degree. Try describing what green looks like to a blind man, or better still to a zombie.

It just might very well be, if we accept the second hypothesis to explain the hemispheric separation. It might very well be that watching a football game is simply the equivalent of my retinae sharing its reports with my visual cortex, which shares its reports with my memory banks and with the various faculties of my brain responsible for forming different reports, which can then be shared with other brains, either through visual or auditory receptors.

No offence, but if you don't mind I'll drop out of this discussion before it becomes any more surreal.

 

[Tournesol]

There is "something it is like" to have an experience. Staring at a color, it actually looks like something. It isn't just defined by what it causes you to say or think. Do you see the diffference? If you really do intend to say consciousness is nothing more than it's causal role, you in fact are an eliminativist.

I didn't say that. Consciousness can cause does not mean "there is nothing
more to consciousness than its causal role". And "consciousness can cause" includes qualia.

 

[StatusX]

I didn't say that. Consciousness can cause does not mean "there is nothing
more to consciousness than its causal role". And "consciousness can cause" includes qualia.

It seems silly to have the same argument in two different threads, so I'll respond to this point in the other thread.