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Saturday, June 19, 2004
Indeterminacy and Fine-grained Perception
Posted by Tiger Roholt on June 19, 2004 at 06:17 PM in mind/phenomenology | Permalink
An accurate description of a perception of certain colors or sounds in a psychology experiment will often be different from an accurate description of these same colors and sounds in an aesthetic experience (I wonder how obvious this is). And this becomes especially interesting regarding perceptual fineness of grain.
Our ability to perceive more finely than we can categorize is a topic that has been aired in many areas of philosophy, from the nonconceptual content writing of, say, Michael Tye, to Diana Raffman's rich monograph on musical nuance, Language, Music, and Mind.
In these writings, the fineness of grain of a perception of red, or the perception of a time-value (e.g. an eighth-note), is treated from psychology's perspective in one sense at least: these perceptions are treated as determinate: I mean that the shade or time-value in the perception is construed as specific. This determinacy is suggested by the frequent use of terms such as "Red17," "Red16," etc. Such terms are employed primarily in order to convey the notion that we see many shades of red that we do not experience categorially (the point is, perhaps, better expressed by using terms like "pumpkin51" and "turquoise32").
The problem, as I see it, in applying this psychological approach to describing aesthetic experience, is that it covers-over an important aspect of aesthetic experience. A time-value too subtle to perceive categorially can occupy different roles in different aesthetic experiences. If I am focused on a given time-value in an aesthetic experience, then perhaps construing it determinately is constructive to giving an accurate account of the experience. But if the fine-grained time-value is operating as a background feature in an aesthetic experience, then the role of that fine-grained time-value cannot be accurately described in determinate terms. Perceptual properties that are nonconceptual can be either determinate or indeterminate in this sense.
See related ideas in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, and Sean Kelly's forthcoming "Seeing Things in Merleau-Ponty."
Does anyone have illuminating comments or reading suggestions? I develop these ideas further in my dissertation and in my "Groove (Qualia and Musical Nuances)."
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Comments
Posted by: Jonathan Neufeld | Jul 25, 2004 2:44:05 PM :
Hi Tiger. Big topic! I am not sure that I see the your problem clearly, yet. By "indeterminate," you seem to mean properties that the experiencing subject cannot subsume under a “category.” This, as I understand it, would still allow a researcher to say something like “the subject distinguishes several colors (red1, red2,…redn) without being able to say anything more than ‘they are different.’” In this case, the researcher would be able to (determinately) name properties of an object or event that cause the subject to say ‘different.’ That is, the researcher simply describes the situation—a color at such and such a wavelength elicits such and such behavior (and we call this behavior ‘aesthetic experience’).” Those properties (scientifically determined color or note duration) are not indeterminate, are they?
If you driving toward a phenomenological perspective, you would presumably respond that those are not the properties you are talking about. You are talking about aesthetic properties that are penetrated through and through by subjectivity. So the scientist, by describing the properties from a purely external point of view is simply changing the subject and not describing the properties relevant to aesthetic experience. This seems to be what you want at the end when you suggest that the same property might have different roles in different situations (and so, properly speaking, not be the same aesthetic property at all). You write,
A time-value too subtle to perceive categorially can occupy different roles in different aesthetic experiences. If I am focused on a given time-value in an aesthetic experience, then perhaps construing it determinately is constructive to giving an accurate account of the experience. But if the fine-grained time-value is operating as a background feature in an aesthetic experience, then the role of that fine-grained time-value cannot be accurately described in determinate terms.Isn’t this is a problem with all properties, determinate or indeterminate? If a determinate property is in the background, it does not capture aesthetic experience to describe it as though it was explicitly noticed, or of central relevance. This is drifting toward tautology, though. If a property is background, it is inappropriate to describe it as foreground. Here is where phenomenology seems important to you. If it is an aesthetic property we are talking about, then two instances of the scientist’s “red12” might constitute two different aesthetic properties depending on the aesthetic context, and it would be inappropriate to describe the aesthetic experience as if it were the same. (Or, two scientifically distinguishable properties might play the same role and it would be inappropriate to describe them as different.) If this is all more or less on the mark, (again) I am not sure what determinacy has to do with anything, unless by determinacy you mean something like subject-independence, or invariance from context to context.
Setting determinacy aside, there seem to be two mistakes that you see being made by those of a psychological bent. The first is to take properties of the scientifically perceived and described world as relevant to the description of aesthetic experience. This, if true, results in bad descriptions of aesthetic experience. The second mistake is to take those properties as relevant to aesthetic experience. This mistake, if adopted, would make aesthetic experiences themselves change for the worse with the introduction of inappropriate content. One way of being inappropriate is to fix a property across contexts by taking a (certain sort of) scientific perspective. This is most clearly right to me in music (for biographical reasons). Imagine playing two different pieces that happen to have the same tempo, one that has a legato song-like character, another that is a minuet. It is hard to imagine a case where it would be aesthetically illuminating to call attention to the identical time intervals between notes, in those terms. If this were central to a listener’s experience, it is hard to imagine that the listener got the pieces. This second bit is quite compelling to me.
I hope I'll be less wordy in the future as I get used to blogging.
Jonathan
Posted by: Tiger Roholt | Aug 23, 2004 10:58:11 PM :
JN, Thanks for the deep comment (and for prodding me by email to respond). We might agree on some large points in the end, but I won't get to those yet in this reply; I've decided to respond to your comment in more than one go. (You might comment between my replies, wait for more than one reply from me--or...)
The first thing I want to do is clarify some distinctions and terminology. In order to pin-down (or be critical of) my position, it might be something of a red herring to invoke primary qualities at all (wavelengths, an object's light reflectance properties and whatnot). We can take note of the distinction between a color-shade itself, on the one hand (wavelengths etc.), and on the other, the way the shade is experienced; we can remain focused on the latter.[*]
*[[FYI, in addition to Continental Phenomenology, I'm thinking of two-thirds of a distinction appealed to in the nonconceptual content literature, forged by Peacocke: (1) a particular shape itself, (2) the way the shape is given in experience, and (3) demonstrative concepts made available through #2, e.g., "that shape." (Peacocke, Christopher. "Nonconceptual Content Defended." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LVIII, no. 2 (1998): 381-88.)]]
With others, by the term "fine-grained," I mean a shade that is not subsumable under perceptual concepts/categories. The distinction I am trying to cultivate between determinate and indeterminate color-shades, pitches, etc., is a distinction between ways of experiencing a given shade that cannot be thus categorized--a fine-grained shade can be experienced determinately or indeterminately. So, in contrast to your construal of my position in your first paragraph, I don't equate "indeterminate" with "fine-grained".
Stay tuned for the introduction of...INTRINSIC QUALIA! [I hope others feel free to jump in the middle of all of these discussions on the weblog.]
