The Cognitive is Phenomenal Too
Lecture 6
Critique of Tye & Wright
Charles Siewert
Rice University
siewert@rice.edu
Siewert: framing the issue
Conceptual Activity: is or can be expressed in language,
requires capacities for voluntarily making person-level
inferences, classifications and analogies.
Sensory features: found in the activity of various standardly
recognized perceptual modalities, along with bodily
feelings of pain and pleasure, cold and warmth and kindred
sensations along with whatever analogs of these there
might be in imagery.
Merely sensory features: sensory features whose possession
at a time is insufficient for the occurrence of conceptual
activity at that time.
My issue: Does phenomenal consciousness
include more than what is merely sensory?
• Another possible issue. Does consciousness include “non-sensory”
features?
• These are not the same issues, because there could be sensory features
that are not merely sensory.
• I’m interested in my issue, because I think the basic question is:
how richly cognitive is phenomenal consciousness?
• I also suspect that the exercise of human intelligence normally involves
experience that is significantly both sensory and conceptual.
• If so, it is a waste of time to focus on alleged “non-sensory” phenomenal
features. But that does not mean that consciousness is exhausted by nonconceptual or representationally primitive sensory states.
Reducibility and Variation
Is what it’s like to occurrently think and understand
entirely derivative from what it’s like to have
concomittant merely sensory features? The question of
Reducibility?
Do subjectively discernible differences in ways of thinking
and understanding constitute differences in what it is
like for us to have the experience we do? Variation.
Irreducibility + Variation  Thought is phenomenal;
there is “cognitive” and “not merely sensory”
phenomenology.
Yesterday’s Argument #1: Re-reading (“the elusive
duplicate”)
Contrast experience of reading a passage without
comprehension, reading it with– what that’s like for
you, how it is experienced by you.
Can you in thought identify a hypothetical sensory
duplicate, whose experience would be subjectively
the same as yours if the interpretive/conceptual
activity actually present were stripped away?
Two similar arguments – drawing on the experience
of understanding.
Similar Arguments
#2. Delayed understanding. Not getting, then suddenly getting what
someone just meant (without re-reading).
Is there always merely sensory feature you can identify, that will yield for
you relevant judgment of phenomenal sameness?
If not, then Irreducibility.
And then:
Is what it’s like for you just the same regardless of how you understood the
utterance?
Can you account for why knowledge of meaning would go away if Variation is
denied?
If no to one or both, then Variation.
Similar Arguments
#3. Interpretive switch. Suddenly changing what you take someone to be
saying: what that’s like for you.
Is there always merely sensory feature you can identify, that will yield for
you relevant judgment of phenomenal (experiential, “what it’s like”)
sameness?
No? Irreducibility.
And: is what it’s like for you the same regardless of how your
understanding switches and in what order?
Can you account for why knowledge of meaning would go away if Variation
is denied?
No to one or both? Then Variation.
An example of “switch”
• Distractedly, I heard on the radio the
ambiguous phrase “Assad’s killers”:
interpretive switch.
• There was a change in what it was like for
me—to hear the phrase one way, then to
realize it had a different meaning.
Prinz’s reply—you haven’t ruled out the possibility
of introspectively hidden imagery experience
• Prinz would say (?)—”As this switch happened,
Siewert, unbeknownst to himself, may have first very
quickly visually imagined some people killing a man,
and then: a man ordering others to go kill someone.
• Or else, as Siewert heard the phrase ‘Assad’s killers’, he
may have—unintrospectibly—quickly imagined
whispering to himself the words: ‘People who killed
Assad’ and then immediately likewise imagined the
words, ‘People Assad had kill for him’.”
My response to Prinz
• He imposes an absurd burden of proof. I should not be required to “rule
out the possibility” that I formed such images, while introspectively
oblivious to their occurrence
• No—I just need lack of a good reason to think both:
(a)
That when I introspectively deny such imagery experience I am in fact
mistaken, and
(b)
That, if I had formed the hypothesized images meaninglessly, with the
interpretation stripped off, what that would have been like for me is just
what it was actually like for me to experience the radio report.
• What Prinz needs is a good reason to think both (a) and (b) are true. As far
as I can see, there isn’t one.
One more argument strategy:
An “argument from boredom.”
Consider the opening of
“The Jabberwocky”
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
An argument from boredom
1.
How interesting it is to read depends on the character of the experience
one has while reading.
1.
“Jabberized reading”: this is what is approximated in an English speaker’s
reading of the opening stanza of “Jabberwocky”—typographical forms,
syntactical structures recognized, sometimes accompanied by visual and
auditory imagery—without understanding a meaning in what you are
reading.
2.
If Inclusivism is false, then what it’s actually like for us to have our
experiences of reading actually never (essentially and nonderivatively)
differs from what it would be like for us to have nothing but experiences
of Jabberized reading.
1.
If that’s what our reading experiences were always like for us, then
reading would often be much more boring to us than it actually is.
1.
Therefore, Inclusivism is true.
Tye and Wright’s attack on
“cognitive phenomenolology”
Specifically on David Pitt’s views (in “The Phenomenology of Cognition”
(2004)).
Proprietary: “what it’s like consciously to think a particular thought is
different from what it is like consciously to be in any other sort of mental
state” (327)
Distinctive: what it’s like consciously to think a particular thought is “different
from what it’s like to think any other thought”
Individuative/Unique: Pitt says the phenomenology of a thought “constitutes
its representational content.” Tye glosses this as “any [conscious]
thoughts with the same content must have the same phenomenology”
(331)
From this last Tye infers Pitt is committed to saying that what it’s like to think
a thought expressed in English must be the same as what it’s like to think
the thought a Mandarin speaker expresses in a sentence which
translates the English one)
Tye’s “prima facie” case against
The quintet: perceptual experiences; bodily sensations; non-linguistic
imagery; linguistic imagery; emotional experience (conceived of as
not essentially involving anything cognitive/conceptual)
“the alleged cognitive phenomenology of thought is to be accounted
for in terms of the phenomenology of our quintet” (329)
“the only phenomenology that is to be found when a thought is
introspected is the phenomenology of these and other such states”
[the quintet]
“introspection just does not make readily available any phenomenal
character that conforms to the phenomenology of thought thesis”
Against Hurlburt’s evidence
Subjects report they were just thinking something, but can
offer no consistent description of the content of the
thought.
T&W: they really didn’t think the thought they claim—just
subsequently say they did because this explains their
behavior (it’s “confabulation”)
Or else the beeper sound masks their verbal imagery from
recollection.
Or else they had nonverbal imagery they’ve forgotten.
“Put up or shut up” and the
“incredulous request”
• “If the experience of thinking a certain thought
has a phenomenology of the special kind charted
above, then what is it? Put up or shut up!”
• ‘Time flies’ example. “Take away all associated
images, all the relevant perceptual experiences,
all the experienced bodily reactions, all the
emotional responses. Do you really think that
there is any phenomenal difference left?” (337)
Tye and Wright’s temporal argument
1. Thinking the thought that claret is delightful does not
unfold over time. (“…it’s not as though one first
grasps the noun ‘claret’ and then the copula ‘is’ and
finally the adjective ‘delightful’ as a successive
process.” (342)
1. If thinking that claret is delightful has its own
distinctive phenomenal character then the thinking
does unfold over time.
1. Thinking that claret is delightful does not have its own
distinctive phenomenal character
My responses. First,
• The uniqueness/individuative claim, as Tye interprets it, is nonessential to the core thesis, a distraction.
• It’s no consequence of “Irreducibility and Variation” that (eg) there
is some separable identifiable bit of phenomenal character
common to English and Mandarin expressions of the thought that
p. (It is also unnecessary to read it as an implication of Pitt’s 2004
statement of the thesis.)
• Maybe what it’s like to think a verbally expressed thought is
experientially “fused with” its expression and/or inseparable from
the surrounding context of one’s thought experience.
• That’s compatible with irreducibility + variation.
For still (in the Mandarin/English case):
– the phenomenal character of neither speaker’s experience is reducible
to (eg) that of sound experience that could occur in the absence of
thought/understanding, and
– the phenomenal character of each speaker’s experience would be
sufficient to make it the case that they were exercising conceptual
capacities sufficient for thought.
• However, it is open that we should concede something to
externalism: phenomenal character yields the thought content
(sometimes? usually? always?) that is expressed in ordinary
language, only in conjunction with context. (Maybe: A “two factor”
view of thought content is advisable)
The key idea
• It’s NOT (as Tye seems to think): take away everything
sensory from an experience of verbally expressed
thought—then you will find a conceptual thought
component that is experienced in just the same same
way, no matter how it’s expressed, or whether it’s
expressed at all. No.
• Rather the idea is: if you take away everything
conceptual/interpretive from an experience of verbally
expressed thought, you won’t find a merely sensory
component that is experienced in the same way all on
its own.
Tye’s “Put up or shut up!” demand
• This demand is either reasonable but easy to
meet, or impossible but unreasonable.
• And it is a demand that can be turned with
greater justice on Tye.
Response to a reasonable but easy demand
What it’s like to think a certain thought is, for example:
•
what it’s like for me to think on an occasion that
claret is delightful…
•
when what this is like for me is irreducible to merely
sensory features…
•
and is sufficient to make it the case that I then and
there understand ‘claret is delightful’ as I do—distinct
from the way I would understand expressions of other
thoughts—eg., ‘Riesling is wretched’.
What is it like for one to think claret is delightful?
– An impossible but unreasonable demand:
“Say what that is like which will convey it to me even if
I myself don’t entertain the thought that claret is
delightful.”
This is an absurd request: you could frame it only if you
already grasped the thought the claret is delightful,
and hence knew what it was like to think it. Much
more unreasonable that asking me to try to convey to
you what it’s like to taste pineapple, if you haven’t
ever tried it.
Tye’s “prima facie case” against “cognitive phenomenology”
Really is not a “case”: just consists in asserting that the experiential
character of thought is exhausted by that of his quintet.
There is no attempt to confirm this by considering what it’s like for him
to understand, and then trying to find some merely sensory
features such that having just these in the complete absence of
understanding would be experientially just the same.
But without finding these, there’s no reason to accept Tye’s claim. To
put it less politely: the reductionist needs to “put up or shut up!”
When I try to discover the sensory features to which my experience of
thought is reducible, I find (to again borrow a phrase from Tye) that
“introspection just does not make readily available any phenomenal
character that conforms” to his Reducibility thesis.
Tye’s temporal argument is fallacious
• It can take (a little) time to think that claret is delightful
(that can be a temporally extended episode) even if
one does not successively think bits of the content.
• Why not say this? The content clause characterizes a
temporally extended experiential episode, but is not
partitioned among its temporal parts in series of
events.
• Plus, no reason to think that instantaneous, temporally
unextended occurrences can’t have phenomenal
character.
Conclusion
• Examination of Tye confirms what was said about Prinz: lack of
agreement over “cognitive phenomenology” is NOT due to the fact
that introspection returns conflicting answers to the very same
questions.
• It’s not even due only to differing proposed explanations of agreedupon data.
• It has a lot to do with a significant lack of shared assumptions
about:
– what each side is committed to,
– what questions are crucial to addressing the issues, and
– what the burdens of proof are.
(Common in philosophical disagreements?)
Conclusion
• A strong case can be made in favor of including the experience of
thinking/understanding irreducibly and variably in what it’s like for
you to have experience
• This case is based on phenomenological arguments + a clarification
and defense of my assumptions + a critique of those of Prinz, Tye,
et al.
• Professional consensus may be unlikely here– but what do you
expect? It’s philosophy.
• And why assume philosophy stands or falls with institutionalized
consensus building? It’s enough for it to be provide rational selfunderstanding. Consensus is a bonus.