Re: Our direct knowledge of subjective experiences stems from our first‑person access to them. And subjective experiences are arguably the central data that we want a science of consciousness to explain. [emphases added] I also take it that the first‑person data can't be expressed wholly in terms of third‑person data about brain processes and the like. There may be a deep connection between the two ‑ a correlation or even an identity ‑ but if there is, the connection will emerge through a lot of investigation, and can't be stipulated at the beginning of the day [emphasis added]. That's to say, no purely third‑person description of brain processes and behavior will express precisely the data we want to explain, though they may play a central role in the explanation. So as data, the first‑person data are irreducible to third‑person data.
I have mixed feelings about the views presented in this paper, as well as the quote above in particular. I do agree with Chalmers in the sense that there may be a deep connection between our subjective experiences and brain processes, but studying the objective third-person perspectives of these brain processes and behavior won’t fully explain our conscious experiences. I do, however, think that the third-person perspectives could provide us with more knowledge, which brain imaging and lesion studies have done, but since these don’t explain the hard problem they haven’t been able to explain why and how we are actually able to experience consciousness. In regards to that, I do believe Dennett has oversimplified this issue, as it seems like he believes this third-person data would be able to explain much more than it actually would. I also believe that arises because he doesn’t recognize the hard problem. However, I don’t entirely agree with Chalmers because, as I mentioned, I believe third-person data, i.e. studying brain behavior linked with subjective experience, could enhance our understanding of consciousness but it just wouldn’t answer the full question. Therefore, I disagree with Chalmers’ final statement above that first-person data are irreducible to third-person data. The reason I disagree is because I don’t believe first-person data will explain the hard problem either. I believe that if this phenomenon will every be explained, the brain, and thus more than just first-person data, will have to be investigated.
“……some--just some--of your beliefs (or verbal judgments) about your conscious experiences might be wrong. In all such cases, however rare they are, what has to be explained by theory is not the conscious experience, but your belief in it (or your sincere verbal judgment, etc). So heterophenomenology doesn't include any spurious "primary data" either, but plays it safe in a way you should approve.”
So if we are conscious of something but our belief of this conscious feeling is incorrect, are we feeling what we aware of or what we believe?
I didn’t really understand the point of the Zombie Hunch argument. What is the purpose of considering a zombie that’s just like us in all respects without conscious feeling because there is no way for us to ever even know if these can exist. For example, even if there was a T3 that passed the test and didn’t have feelings, we would still not be able to determine whether it was a zombie or not. Subjective report would not tell us anything, because a zombie could still reproduce subjective reports same to that of feeling people and we would not only not be able to tell the difference, but we would still not be any closer to understanding how feelings accompany anything that we do. So in fact, I think the zombie or even the idea of a zombie does not tell us much about how to get closer to understanding consciousness, because in reality, there wouldn’t be a difference between a zombie or feeling person observable to us. Therefore, phrasing the question of consciousness as figuring out what is the difference between the zombie and the feeling person seems futile.
An issue with Dennett’s heterophenomenlogy I had when reading the article is when he claims that they will “bracket for neutrality” and would have to decide “which states to declare to be qualia and why.” By obtaining support of 3rd person science to either get rid of false positives or false negatives, or to confirm that a person’s qualia does in fact fit the concept heterephenomenologists have outlined as the criteria for qualia, isn’t this a contradiction? Isn’t the whole reason feelings are hard to define and explain is because they are subjective experiences? How are you going to tell someone they are wrong about their qualia just based on the correlates you have obtained? Since we have not been able to establish a causal relation between feelings and 3rd person scientific correlates that have been observed to accompany feelings, how can you impose a criteria that’s not necessarily any more correct than the person’s own subjective reports? Both are vulnerable to many confounds and in either case don’t seem to explain how the qualia came about in the first place.
Heterophenomenology attempts to solve the problem of 1st person subjective report and qualia that may be inaccurately reported, or may not reflect physical or psychological realities, due to a participant’s “beliefs”. My understanding is that it hopes to compare these reports with other 3rd person measures of physiological and other correlates that can be measured by scientific methodologies.
But I don’t necessarily think beliefs are a problem with verbal report (which seems commonly used in heterophenomenological research anyway) because really what we should be interested in is how or why a person feels a particular way about something. We are back the hard problem, which Heterophenomenology would solve…if that’s what we were actually investigating with this methodology. Instead, it seems that Dennett is proposing we look at correlations between certain behaviours (including verbal what he calls 1st-person data) and measurable data (which he calls 3rd-person data).
Belief seems to be more of a problem with introspection; obviously biases and subjective beliefs are not useful in trying to understand how the brain works if your only methodology is introspection. But the types of verbal responses people elicit (which are subjective and thus felt) do give us insight into what may be going on, even if all they can describe is what they feel they are experiencing. Defining heterophenomenology doesn’t seem to be giving us anything new, unless I’ve missed something….
“Now faced with these failures of overlap—people who believe they are conscious of more than is in fact going on in them, and people who do not believe they are conscious of things that are in fact going on in them—heterophenomenology maintains a nice neutrality…”
I find this claim to be very problematic since throughout this course, we have equated consciousness with feeling. Dennett essentially seems to be suggesting that the feeler is misguided in his/her own experience of feeling. By attempting to incorporate an "objective", third-person approach into the mix, heterophenomenologists fails to recognize the first-person perspectives/feelings that they themselves are indirectly bringing to the so-called “neutral” interpretation of first-person data. Also, describing empirical correlates of phenomenological experience is of little use when it comes to addressing questions of what/why we actually feel, which is the question at the root of consciousness.
I agree with other commentators that the Zombie experiment does no seem very fruitful, as it tries to tackle the notion of identity and there is no way such a Zombie will ever exist anyway, for the simple reason that it is not Chalmer (does not occupy the same physical space, etc). And the most likely reason why such zombies presumably do not exists is because they (creatures identical to us except they have no feelings) can't exist (what i mean is that our physical properties are more likely than not to cause our feelings). Regarding Denett's argument, I quite like his reminder that eve first person experience is never absolute and "clean", much less the report of first person experience. It is much better to remain aware of such bias than to try to dissimulate it. Moreover, pragmatically, the article by Harnad reminds us that virtually none of our behaviour would towards a person would change if we became aware that maybe this person does not feel like we do, so it makes it even harder for me to focus on the improbable existence of such a zombie.
Honestly I found Dennett’s piece to be confusing. From what I understood, though, heterophenomonology seems like a useful scientific method to explain the contents of a person’s subjective experience and what may contribute to it, but I think that’s all it is — a method of attempting to explain what’s going on and how someone may arrive at a belief from the content of their experience. But it doesn’t explain why someone believes/ experiences in the first place. Also, in my understanding Dennet is saying there is nothing more to understanding ‘qualia' than judgements based on the (internal and external) contents of a moment, but I don’t think his method can fully describe a subject's ‘qualia’ because in my opinion the ‘qualia’ that is felt is how a person uniquely combines and experiences all aspects of the content together, at once. Constructing the subject’s ‘heterophenological world’ by combining verbal reports and internal conditions objectively may be able to allow a scientist to explore the components of a person’s experience, but doesn't allow the scientist to understand what that moment is truly like, because to me, the crux of feeling is what comes with the subjective perception of all the parts together. Basically I just felt like he described a useful way to explore what goes into a person’s experience, but the method can’t tell us what it was actually like for the person or explain why consciousness happens.
Re: Our direct knowledge of subjective experiences stems from our first‑person access to them. And subjective experiences are arguably the central data that we want a science of consciousness to explain. [emphases added] I also take it that the first‑person data can't be expressed wholly in terms of third‑person data about brain processes and the like. There may be a deep connection between the two ‑ a correlation or even an identity ‑ but if there is, the connection will emerge through a lot of investigation, and can't be stipulated at the beginning of the day [emphasis added]. That's to say, no purely third‑person description of brain processes and behavior will express precisely the data we want to explain, though they may play a central role in the explanation. So as data, the first‑person data are irreducible to third‑person data.
ReplyDeleteI have mixed feelings about the views presented in this paper, as well as the quote above in particular. I do agree with Chalmers in the sense that there may be a deep connection between our subjective experiences and brain processes, but studying the objective third-person perspectives of these brain processes and behavior won’t fully explain our conscious experiences. I do, however, think that the third-person perspectives could provide us with more knowledge, which brain imaging and lesion studies have done, but since these don’t explain the hard problem they haven’t been able to explain why and how we are actually able to experience consciousness. In regards to that, I do believe Dennett has oversimplified this issue, as it seems like he believes this third-person data would be able to explain much more than it actually would. I also believe that arises because he doesn’t recognize the hard problem. However, I don’t entirely agree with Chalmers because, as I mentioned, I believe third-person data, i.e. studying brain behavior linked with subjective experience, could enhance our understanding of consciousness but it just wouldn’t answer the full question. Therefore, I disagree with Chalmers’ final statement above that first-person data are irreducible to third-person data. The reason I disagree is because I don’t believe first-person data will explain the hard problem either. I believe that if this phenomenon will every be explained, the brain, and thus more than just first-person data, will have to be investigated.
“……some--just some--of your beliefs (or verbal judgments) about your conscious experiences might be wrong. In all such cases, however rare they are, what has to be explained by theory is not the conscious experience, but your belief in it (or your sincere verbal judgment, etc). So heterophenomenology doesn't include any spurious "primary data" either, but plays it safe in a way you should approve.”
ReplyDeleteSo if we are conscious of something but our belief of this conscious feeling is incorrect, are we feeling what we aware of or what we believe?
I didn’t really understand the point of the Zombie Hunch argument. What is the purpose of considering a zombie that’s just like us in all respects without conscious feeling because there is no way for us to ever even know if these can exist. For example, even if there was a T3 that passed the test and didn’t have feelings, we would still not be able to determine whether it was a zombie or not. Subjective report would not tell us anything, because a zombie could still reproduce subjective reports same to that of feeling people and we would not only not be able to tell the difference, but we would still not be any closer to understanding how feelings accompany anything that we do. So in fact, I think the zombie or even the idea of a zombie does not tell us much about how to get closer to understanding consciousness, because in reality, there wouldn’t be a difference between a zombie or feeling person observable to us. Therefore, phrasing the question of consciousness as figuring out what is the difference between the zombie and the feeling person seems futile.
ReplyDeleteAn issue with Dennett’s heterophenomenlogy I had when reading the article is when he claims that they will “bracket for neutrality” and would have to decide “which states to declare to be qualia and why.” By obtaining support of 3rd person science to either get rid of false positives or false negatives, or to confirm that a person’s qualia does in fact fit the concept heterephenomenologists have outlined as the criteria for qualia, isn’t this a contradiction? Isn’t the whole reason feelings are hard to define and explain is because they are subjective experiences? How are you going to tell someone they are wrong about their qualia just based on the correlates you have obtained? Since we have not been able to establish a causal relation between feelings and 3rd person scientific correlates that have been observed to accompany feelings, how can you impose a criteria that’s not necessarily any more correct than the person’s own subjective reports? Both are vulnerable to many confounds and in either case don’t seem to explain how the qualia came about in the first place.
ReplyDeleteHeterophenomenology attempts to solve the problem of 1st person subjective report and qualia that may be inaccurately reported, or may not reflect physical or psychological realities, due to a participant’s “beliefs”. My understanding is that it hopes to compare these reports with other 3rd person measures of physiological and other correlates that can be measured by scientific methodologies.
ReplyDeleteBut I don’t necessarily think beliefs are a problem with verbal report (which seems commonly used in heterophenomenological research anyway) because really what we should be interested in is how or why a person feels a particular way about something. We are back the hard problem, which Heterophenomenology would solve…if that’s what we were actually investigating with this methodology. Instead, it seems that Dennett is proposing we look at correlations between certain behaviours (including verbal what he calls 1st-person data) and measurable data (which he calls 3rd-person data).
Belief seems to be more of a problem with introspection; obviously biases and subjective beliefs are not useful in trying to understand how the brain works if your only methodology is introspection. But the types of verbal responses people elicit (which are subjective and thus felt) do give us insight into what may be going on, even if all they can describe is what they feel they are experiencing. Defining heterophenomenology doesn’t seem to be giving us anything new, unless I’ve missed something….
“Now faced with these failures of overlap—people who believe they are conscious of more than is in fact going on in them, and people who do not believe they are conscious of things that are in fact going on in them—heterophenomenology maintains a nice neutrality…”
ReplyDeleteI find this claim to be very problematic since throughout this course, we have equated consciousness with feeling. Dennett essentially seems to be suggesting that the feeler is misguided in his/her own experience of feeling. By attempting to incorporate an "objective", third-person approach into the mix, heterophenomenologists fails to recognize the first-person perspectives/feelings that they themselves are indirectly bringing to the so-called “neutral” interpretation of first-person data. Also, describing empirical correlates of phenomenological experience is of little use when it comes to addressing questions of what/why we actually feel, which is the question at the root of consciousness.
I agree with other commentators that the Zombie experiment does no seem very fruitful, as it tries to tackle the notion of identity and there is no way such a Zombie will ever exist anyway, for the simple reason that it is not Chalmer (does not occupy the same physical space, etc). And the most likely reason why such zombies presumably do not exists is because they (creatures identical to us except they have no feelings) can't exist (what i mean is that our physical properties are more likely than not to cause our feelings). Regarding Denett's argument, I quite like his reminder that eve first person experience is never absolute and "clean", much less the report of first person experience. It is much better to remain aware of such bias than to try to dissimulate it. Moreover, pragmatically, the article by Harnad reminds us that virtually none of our behaviour would towards a person would change if we became aware that maybe this person does not feel like we do, so it makes it even harder for me to focus on the improbable existence of such a zombie.
ReplyDeleteHonestly I found Dennett’s piece to be confusing. From what I understood, though, heterophenomonology seems like a useful scientific method to explain the contents of a person’s subjective experience and what may contribute to it, but I think that’s all it is — a method of attempting to explain what’s going on and how someone may arrive at a belief from the content of their experience. But it doesn’t explain why someone believes/ experiences in the first place. Also, in my understanding Dennet is saying there is nothing more to understanding ‘qualia' than judgements based on the (internal and external) contents of a moment, but I don’t think his method can fully describe a subject's ‘qualia’ because in my opinion the ‘qualia’ that is felt is how a person uniquely combines and experiences all aspects of the content together, at once. Constructing the subject’s ‘heterophenological world’ by combining verbal reports and internal conditions objectively may be able to allow a scientist to explore the components of a person’s experience, but doesn't allow the scientist to understand what that moment is truly like, because to me, the crux of feeling is what comes with the subjective perception of all the parts together. Basically I just felt like he described a useful way to explore what goes into a person’s experience, but the method can’t tell us what it was actually like for the person or explain why consciousness happens.
ReplyDelete** the crux of experience is the feeling that
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