Indeterminacy and Reportability of Phenomenology
Ryoji Satothe University of Tokyo/JSPSSuppose you are driving seaside with your loved one around the time of sunset.
The sun is slowly melting into the sea, it is getting darker gradually. Meanwhile, yousuddenly notice all street lightings along the driveway are on. You are not sure when it
turned on, you only know it’s sometime before you notice. Then, you are suddenly struck
with a philosophical question, “Have I seen those lights before I notice it? I didn’t know
they have been on, but I might have seen them .”This kind of question has become popular after this sort of phenomenon isscientifically demonstrated in psychology lab: change-blindness. Some philosophers say
yes to the question while others say no. A prominent figure of the former position, Ned
Block (2007), gives an argument to prove we see more than we can report. He exploits theresult of George Sperling’s experiment (1960). In the experiment, even though subjects
could identify only half of briefly presented alphanumeric characters, they could identify
almost all characters in any designated row when cued shortly “after” the stimuli weregone. It suggests that subjects actually possessed information of all the characters in thescene in a fleeting memory system but only part of it was sent to working memory forreporting due to the constraint of memory capacity. Block argues this existence of
information of all characters and subjects’ testimony to the effect that they saw every
character justifies thinking the physical basis of phenomenology is the fleeting memory,hence we see more than we can report.
However, there is another way to incorporate Sperling’s result from theviewpoint of the latter position. Our phenomenology might be indeterminate. Subjects’
report can be right, but subjects might have seen characters in more indeterminate way,
namely as alphanumeric characters in general not as characters with their specificidentities. When cued, subjects’ attention is drawn to the designated row, and changes theindeterminate phenomenology more determinate. The altered phenomenology enables
subjects to report their specific identities. This is why subjects could make correct answers,
it is not because they had seen all characters with their specific identities. If thisinterpretation is correct, our phenomenology matches we can report: we just see what wecan report. James Stazicker (forthcoming) is one of philosophers who thinks this way, andgives a detailed account how attention affects determinacy of phenomenology based onfunctional architecture of vision and psychophysical evidence (Yeshurun and Carrasco1998).
On the face of this interpretation, it seems to me several objections can be given
from Block’s position. He can say indeterminacy only resides in representational content ofperception but not in phenomenology (Block 2008), and he can still keep his claim that thephysical basis of phenomenology is distinct from that of reporting by saying the effect ofattention is merely causal and attention does not constitute phenomenology. Actually,another psychophysical experiment by Carrasco, Ling and Read (2004), I think, suggeststhat attention doesn’t constitute phenomenology.
Here, it might seem as though the discussion is in the state of stalemate, but it is
not actually so. There are conceptual and empirical requirements for the alleged
explanations to be correct, and along with trying to satisfy requirements it would be settled
that which side is correct. I will argue the current status of discussion doesn’t favor Block’sposition and the future of it isn’t also so bright.
References
Block, N. (2007). Consciousness, accessibility, and the mesh between psychology andneuroscience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 30, 481–548.
Block, N. (2010). Attention and Mental Paint. Philosophical Issues, 20, Philosophy of Mind,
23-63.
Carrasco, M., Ling, S., & Read, S. (2004). Attention alters appearance. Nature Neuroscience,7, 308–313.
Sperling, G. (1960). The information available in brief visual presentations. PsychologicalMonographs: General and Applied, 74 (11, Whole No. 498), 1–29.
Stazicker, J. (2011). Attention, Visual Consciousness, and Indeterminacy. Mind & Language,Vol. 26, No. 2, 156-184.
Yeshurun, Y. and Carrasco, M. 1998. Attention improves or impairs visual performance byenhancing spatial resolution. Nature, 396, 72-75.