9.3—
Phenomenology and the Mental

Our first aim, then, is to examine phenomenological content and the phenomenologically rich properties of consciousness, perspective, aspect, and subjective "feel." In what follows, I wish to separate three major sorts of issues concerning phenomenologically typed mental states. First, we shall examine the legitimacy of the phenomenological approach: whether the phenomenological features are real , whether they are essential to intentional states (or particular kinds of intentional states), and whether they make for a viable classification of mental states. Second, we shall examine the question of whether phenomenological properties, however legitimate or real they might be, are likely to play much of a role in the formation of a scientific psychology. Finally, we shall consider

whether phenomenological properties are the sorts of things that can be strongly naturalized.

9.3.1—
The Legitimacy of the Phenomenological Approach

It is one of the strange turns of twentieth-century philosophy that the phenomenological properties that provided the epistemic bedrock of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy are now thought by many to be in need of legitimation. There are really a number of separate issues here. One important issue is that of the connection between phenomenology and science. That will be considered in a later section. In this section we shall consider the following questions:

(1) Are phenomenological properties

—real as opposed to unreal?

—observational as opposed to theoretical?

—accurately described as opposed to inaccurately described?

—fundamental as opposed to nonfundamental?

(2) Are phenomenological features such as subjectivity, perspective, and "feel" essential to the occurrent conscious states to which they attach themselves, and more particularly, are they essential to the intentionality of those states?

(3) Does the phenomenological approach provide the basis for a classification of mental states (especially a classification according to "phenomenological content")?

9.3.2—
The Reality of Phenomenological Features

First, let us consider whether phenomenological features are real features. But "real" as opposed to what? They are certainly not unreal in the sense that fictions are unreal. I suppose that it is possible that there are people who do not have the kinds of phenomenological properties that I have, or that they do not have any at all, in much the way that it appears likely that some people do not experience any mental imagery while others do so very vividly. But for those of us who do report phenomenological properties, it seems as clear as anything could be that there is a what-it's-like to, say, seeing a dog in the yard, and that it's different from the "feel" of imagining the same scene or seeing something different. Likewise, subjectivity and perspective seem to be indubitably legitimate features to

attribute to my experience. For those of us who report a phenomenology, the claim that phenomenological features fail to be real the way fictions fail to be real is clearly a nonstarter.

It is quite another matter, however, if the issue is one of whether particular claims about phenomenology, or even particular descriptions of it, are as accurate as they might be. People who complain about phenomenology are often really concerned only about claims of special access that imply incorrigibility . But this is a red herring. I do not know any major philosopher in the phenomenological camp who has claimed that phenomenology was easy, or that we could not be mistaken about it, especially at the level of abstract characterization. Husserl was continually stressing the difficulty of phenomenological description to the point of describing himself as a "perpetual beginner" at it; and contrary to the common libel, Descartes acknowledged that we could be quite mistaken about our mental states, even in such seemingly straightforward cases as pain (see Principles 1.67 [AT VIIIA.32-33]). I am not aware of anyone who seriously thought that a thoroughgoing phenomenological account could be naively "read off" from introspection of one's own experience. (Though British empiricists and common sense philosophers sometimes spoke this way.) If the existence of phenomenological features is indisputable, it is equally clear that we have no definitive word on the topography of phenomenological space, nor even firm evidence that such a definitive description might be forthcoming.

I think, however, that there is an important sense in which this implies that our talk about phenomenology is "theory-laden," but also an important sense in which phenomenological properties are not "theoretical." There is a weak sense of "theory-ladenness" which implies only that the way we describe a thing (any thing) is set against a set of background assumptions about the world and a network of interrelated concepts or words. If this kind of network theory of meaning is true of language generally, it is surely true of our language for describing our own minds as well (unless, perhaps, one embraces the kind of phenomenalist atomism that Russell espoused at one point). But there is also a stronger sense of "theory" that implies retroduction , and this has implications about the kind of epistemic access we have to a thing. An entity or property that is "theoretical" in this strong sense is one supposed to exist just because this supposition explains something else. Pluto was "theoretical" in this sense until it was observed with a telescope. Protons are still "theoretical" in this sense. But it seems clear to me that phe-

nomenological properties are almost by definition not "theoretical" in this strong sense (unless perhaps to someone who has heard about them but not experienced them, if that is indeed possible). If you experience phenomenological properties, it cannot be the case that your only access to them is inferential. You may, of course, hold some theory-laden beliefs about them (especially if you are a philosopher), just as we may still hold many theory-laden beliefs about Pluto (or, for that matter, about rocks and rabbits). But they are not retroductive in origin or warrant.

Finally, questions about the "legitimacy" of phenomenological categories are sometimes questions about whether such categories "cut nature at the joints." In particular, one might wonder if they are (a ) fundamental as opposed to derivative properties, and (b ) relevant to the systematic description of the world characteristic of science or merely epiphenomenal. Now I think that raising the question of whether phenomenological properties are fundamental is important and appropriate at some point. But it is surely a ridiculous issue to bring up early in the game as an attempt to discredit phenomenology. Cartesian physics taught that light, magnetism, and gravitation were derivative from mechanical collision. Newtonian physics treated gravitation, light, and mechanical force as separate fundamental forces. Many people objected to the Newtonian view on the grounds that it seemed to involve action at a distance. And perhaps they were right and perhaps they were wrong to do so. But no one (at least no one whom we remember) suggested that the irreducibility of gravitation to contact interactions would undercut the legitimacy of the phenomenon (as opposed to the theory) of gravitation. To do so would have been sheer madness, not to mention bad scientific practice. Science aims at being systematic and universal, but it does so by integrating discourses that are initially local and particular. If we should arrive at a unified field theory in physics, it will be because we first had serious theories of mechanics, gravitation, electromagnetism, and strong and weak force. We reduced chemistry to physics because we first had a serious chemistry. Likewise, if phenomenology is reducible to something else, the only way we will discover this is by taking phenomenological properties seriously in their own right, and this means countenancing the possibility that they might be fundamental in the sense of not being derivable from nonphenomenological properties. A posteriori arguments on this subject are for the endgame, not the outset. I have never heard a vaguely plausible a priori argument to the effect that mental properties must not be fundamental.

9.3.3—
Is Phenomenology Essential to Some Mental States?

Next, let us consider whether phenomenological properties are essential to certain kinds of intentional states. Questions of essentiality are always difficult, but we might approach the issue by considering some examples of conscious mental episodes and then ask whether they could remain the same kind of episode if deprived of their phenomenology. Consider first a simple kind of perceptual experience, such as having a perceptual experience of a square, where the expression 'perceptual experience of a square' is interpreted in that distinctively intentionalistic way that does not imply a relation to an actual square. Of course, one never simply has perceptual experiences; they are always perceptual experiences in some particular modality—a tactile experience, say, or a visual experience. So let us say the experience in question is one of VISUAL PRESENTATION [square]. Normally, such an experience has a particular kind of phenomenology, both in terms of its qualitative elements (not just any configuration of qualia can be constituted as a square) and its conceptual ones (squares have a different "feel" from circles or triangles).^[7] Normally, such experiences have very complicated relations to environmental and behavioral counterfactuals as well. Our natural-language attributions tend to be based on assumptions about such normal cases. But suppose that a being were to have states that were very similar to ours in its relations to the environment and behavior, but a radically different phenomenology or no phenomenology at all. We might well say that it was in some kind of perceptual state, but would we want to say that that state was VISUAL PRESENTATION ? The answer, I think, is not easy.

Consider first that we can ourselves have perceptions of the same things, and behave in similar ways, on the basis of several perceptual modalities. We can feel squares as well as see them, and blind humans can form most of the same concepts and negotiate most of the same environments as sighted humans. It is just that none of their perceptual states is visual in nature. The same goes for echolocation in bats: presumably, echolocation plays a very similar role in bat navigation that sight plays in human navigation, but it is a different modality and presumably has a different phenomenology.

But to make the point more clearly, Sur, Garraghty, and Roe (1988) performed experiments with ferrets in which the optic nerve was severed and reconnected to nonvisual tissue in the brain. The ferrets were able to respond to visual stimuli in a striking display of equipotentiality. Sup-

pose that the same thing could be done with human beings: the evil Dr. No rewires your nervous system so that your optical signals do not go to the visual cortex, but somewhere else. Now the human brain is probably significantly more specialized than are ferret brains, which lessens the probability that the special-purpose functions of the human visual cortex could be duplicated by other tissue; but it is at least worth entertaining the possibility (a ) that visual stimuli would produce, say, auditory qualia, and (b ) that you could be conditioned to distinguish some kinds of objects on the basis of these stimuli, thus forming a new kind of perceptual gestalt. Your experience might have the content [square], but would be accompanied by acoustical rather than visual qualia. Now ordinary language might well describe such an experience as "hearing shapes" or the like, but a more sober assessment would probably be that the victim of such rewiring was in fact experiencing a new kind of perceptual experience. Even if the process could be done so seamlessly that the patient could respond to the full panoply of visual stimuli that normal humans do with the same range of behaviors, I think most of us should be loath to call his experiences VISUAL PRESENTATION , precisely because of the differences in qualia. Indeed, even if someone's brain were wired like a normal human brain, I should be disinclined to call his states VISUAL PRESENTATIONS if I somehow came to believe that their phenomenology was acoustical.

Likewise with other intentional states. Suppose I have a recollection of my first day at college. This may or may not be accompanied with visual or auditory imagery; but in order to be a RECOLLECTION it must be presented as something that happened to me in the past . This is really a bit tricky, though. It is possible to become so engaged in memories, imagination, and particularly dreams that one mistakes them for current experiences. However, it is important to distinguish two different issues here. Sometimes, calling something a "memory" reports its causal history. Memories are experiences whose contents are dredged up out of previous experiences, whereas, say, perceptions are caused by one's environment. Thus the distinction between memory and perception can be a distinction of the source of the experience. But one might also use the same words to mark a distinction in the kind of experience involved: that is, a difference in intentional character —and more specifically in modality. In the ordinary cases, experiences that are dredged up from memory have the modality of RECOLLECTION and those caused by our environments have the modality of PERCEPTUAL PRESENTATION . In pathological cases and in dreams, however, this need not be so. We may take an image

from memory in a dream and have it presented under the modality of PERCEPTUAL PRESENTATION . (That is, we mistakenly believe that we are having veridical perceptions when in fact we are replaying old imagery under the modality of PERCEPTUAL PRESENTATION .) Likewise it is possible for imagination to cause states with the modality of PERCEPTUAL PRESENTATION . And of course it is possible to have states of RECOLLECTION that are false memories, or episodes presented as FREE FANCY that are in fact images that are remembered, and so on. So when I say that, say, states of recollection have a distinctive phenomenology, I mean precisely that states that present themselves as recollections do so, and not that states that in fact draw upon memory share a phenomenology.

The same may be said for many other intentional states. Some, for example, have a particular emotional phenomenology. I cannot experience remorse about some action of mine, for example, without having certain experiences, regardless of how I act. A sociopath might fake remorse even if he cannot feel it. Likewise, I cannot feel remorse over an action unless I represent it as my action, and so on. The point here is that if we take away the experiential character of such states, or change it too drastically, we are no longer left with the same kind of state. Let me hasten to caution the reader, however, about several things that are not implied by this.

(1) The phenomenological properties of such states need not be noticed or attended to . One can, for example, see features of a scene that one does not actively notice . One sign of this is the ability to notice later things about a previous experience that were not noticed at the time. One notices a square and later realizes that it was set against a lighter background.

(2) Not all psychological distinctions need be reflected in phenomenological distinctions. It is not clear, for example, that different kinds of judgment—judgment with certainty, conjecture, scientific hypothesis—are distinguishable by phenomenological features for everyone.

(3) Phenomenological typing need not be the only valid typing of psychological states, and states that differ with respect to phenomenology may be grouped together under a different typing. For example, there are undoubtedly typings that group together psychological mechanisms we share with other species regardless of whether animals are experiencing subjects. There is nothing particularly out of the ordinary for two objects or events to share one typing and diverge with respect to another, nor for two divergent typings each to be useful for a different kind of inquiry.

9.3.4—
Does Phenomenology Yield a Classification of the Mental?

There are really a variety of questions here. It certainly seems true that at a certain level of granularity of description, our natural distinctions between conscious mental states (e.g., between judgments and perceptual gestalts and imaginings) are accompanied by corresponding phenomenological differences. Likewise, it seems clear that we are in a significantly different epistemic position with respect to states that have a phenomenology and those that do not, such as beliefs and desires. If the latter are truly dispositional in nature, there is arguably a significant ontological difference there as well. It is far less clear that all meaningful psychological distinctions, even between states that have a phenomenology, are reflected in phenomenological differences. For the ordinary language classification of mental states is likely to prove as much a mixed bag of phenomenological, behavioral, and theoretical features as is the ordinary language classification of speech acts, which includes lots of cognitive, social, and emotional features as well as distinctions in illocutionary force. The project of taxonomizing speech act verbs turned out to be a mare's nest because of this (see Austin 1962, McCawley 1973, Vendler 1972, Fraser 1981, Bach and Harnish 1979, and Searle 1969 and 1971), and the same may hold true of the commonsense list of mental states. The difference between, say, speculating and hypothesizing may not consist in something that has a phenomenology, but upon something like our social conventions about kinds of thinking.

The really vital question for our purposes, however, concerns the typing of intentional attitudes and contents according to experiential invariants. Now, whatever experiential invariants there are, it seems clear that they will yield some partition of possible worlds: for example, between those in which I (or my counterpart) have exactly the same phenomenological properties that I actually have and all the rest. The issue is not whether phenomenology yields some classification, but whether the classification it yields is a good one. But good for what? It is certainly a good one for describing the mental from a first-person viewpoint. (What kind of classification could be better for that?) And if you think that phenomenology is crucial to the mental, this is itself good reason for liking this classification. But there is also another reason for liking it: it seems really crucial to all the other ways we have of classifying the mental.

It seems to me that all of the talk about "functional classification of

the mental" is deeply misleading at best. People speak of functional classification of intentional modalities and even of contents. But you never see such a characterization produced. I think this is quite ironic, as one of the stock arguments against the behaviorists turns upon exactly the same inability actually to produce a single definition of the sort their theory depends upon. When characterizing intentional modalities, rather, writers like Fodor appeal to the kind of mental state we are in when we think, as it were, "Lo! a horse!" But this is clearly an appeal to something on the model of a conscious occurrent state. We all know what kind of mental state is meant, but only because we associate the description with a kind of state we have experienced. It might be the case that an ideal psychology could produce a psychological Turing table from which one could derive characterizations of each kind of mental state holding the rest as constant. But this is surely not how we actually go about classifying the mental—probably not even in the case of beliefs and desires, and certainly not in the case of perceptual gestalts and judgments and imaginings. Rather, phenomenology gives us at least a rough initial classification to start with, and we test this against observations of people's behavior and try to systematize and refine it through rigorous modeling (including computer modeling). It is not as though the "functional classification" of the mind implied by some discussions of narrow content was carried out in isolation from a phenomenologically based starting point. (Indeed, it is not as though such a classification has ever actually been carried out at all—a point that is missed with shocking regularity.) Any functional classification of the mental there might be is a distillation of a classification that started out in phenomenology—and which, I shall argue in the next section, must answer to phenomenology as well. The notion of "narrow content" is really a kind of theory-laden abstraction from phenomenological content. (And, I expect, the functional notion of belief is ultimately a theory-laden abstraction from conscious judgments as well.)

As for broad content, that certainly goes beyond what is present, strictly speaking, in phenomenology (that is, in intentional character). But, first, it contains implications of intentional character: a veridical perception is, among other things, a perceptual gestalt. And, second, it seems to me that writers like Husserl have been correct in saying that intentional states in some sense carry with them their own "conditions of satisfaction." Having a veridical perception of a dog requires us to be in the right causal relationship with a dog. Why? Because that is built into the notion of the intentional modality of PERCEPTUAL PRESENTION . This

is no great empirical discovery. It is simply an explication of what is implicit in the phenomenology of this particular intentional modality. Likewise, if the broad content of "water" is fixed by something in the environment, it is because the intentional character of the state implies that it should be so. So in short it seems to me that it is simply bootless to deride phenomenological classification in favor of some other kind of classification, since the other kinds of classification that have been proposed turn out to depend heavily upon our prior phenomenological understanding.