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Sunday, August 29, 2004
The Relevance of Aesthetic Experience to the Examination of Phenomenal Consciousness
Posted by Tiger Roholt on August 29, 2004 at 04:44 PM in mind/phenomenology | Permalink
In this post I would like to suggest one way to argue that aesthetic experience is relevant to the philosophy of consciousness--more specifically, to what philosophers of mind call "phenomenal consciousness."
For the person undergoing them, various mental states, especially sensory states, have a distinctive quality--they are "like" something (see Nagel 1974). This subjective quality is at the very center of the philosophy and science of consciousness; it is the explanandum of what David Chalmers calls "the hard problem of consciousness" (see Chalmers 1997).
...we can say that a mental state is conscious if it has a qualitative feel--an associated quality of experience. These qualitative feels are also known as phenomenal qualities, or qualia for short. The problem of explaining these phenomenal qualities is just the problem of explaining consciousness (Chalmers 1996, 4).
Ned Block and Chalmers both mark-off this "phenomenal consciousness," which is qualitative, from other meanings of the word "consciousness," such as being awake, having non-qualitative access to perceptions and thoughts, etc. (see Block 2002). Ultimately, a solution to "the hard problem of consciousness" must offer an explanation of how it is that this subjective quality arises from gray matter. But what is required in advance of any such theory is an accurate phenomenological specification of this subjective quality itself; i.e., we need to draw a bead on the subjective quality of experience before we can employ it usefully as an explanandum.
To clarify phenomenal consciousness phenomenologically would be to show what is different (in experience) between experiences that have a subjective quality and those that do not. In doing so, we should require that this clarification amount to more than simply the statement that phenomenally conscious mental states are "like" something, that they have a subjective quality. But typically, phenomenal consciousness is defined in just this simple way. In fleshing this out, philosophers of mind typically rely upon the reader's imaginative grasp of simple subjective qualities, such as "what it is like" to see red or feel pain. I believe that focusing upon such basic experiences is what leaves the door ajar for phenomenologically deflationary views of phenomenal consciousness to make their entrance. As phenomenal consciousness is typically invoked, there is no phenomenological leverage by means of which to show why deflationary accounts of phenomenal consciousness are deflationary.
The kind of deflationary view I have in mind goes like this: the subjective quality of experience is merely the appearing of the secondary quality (the perceiving of red, an A-sharp, or an E guitar string's sound), rather than a qualitative property (felt property) of that appearing--this latter is Block's manner of construing qualia (see Block 1996).
It is surprising that relying upon simple experiences is accepted even by non-deflationists. Chalmers, for example, who seems to aim at a rich notion of subjective quality, seems satisfied considering very basic experiences:
In addressing the philosophical mysteries associated with conscious experience, a simple color sensation raises the problems as deeply as one's experience of a Bach Chorale" (Chalmers 1996, 11).
Why, more specifically now, is it problematic to operate with a notion of phenomenal consciousness shaped by such basic examples? The reason is that one of these examples can be construed both in a deflationary and a non-deflationary way. A given secondary quality (the perception of red, etc.) can be experienced in more than one way; (to simplify for this post) one way of perceiving a secondary quality involves phenomenal consciousness, another does not. This second way is just the mere perception of a secondary quality. That these two ways of experiencing secondary qualities exist is just what examinations of aesthetic experiences can show, because some aesthetic properties only arise when certain secondary qualities operate qualitatively in experience. An example of such an aesthetic property is groove (see my "Groove; Qualia and Musical Nunaces"); an example of a perceptual role that can only be inhabited by qualia (i.e., and not mental content) is a background feature (see my "Mental Paint in the Background").
Philosophers who disagree with (say) Chalmers or Frank Jackson (see his 1982) about the richness of a perception of red imagine (I believe) the simple examples unsympathetically, as not experienced in the way Chalmers or Jackson intend (we might say that they imagine a mere or austere perceptual appearing of red); philosophers who agree with Chalmers or Jackson, on the other hand, imagine the perception of red, sympathetically, in the way Chalmers intends, where the subjective quality of red is the felt property of the appearing of the secondary quality. From the perspective of Block's notion of qualia (setting aside qualia's intrinsicness here), I mean to claim that one can imagine a perception of red with or without the felt quality of the secondary quality's appearing. And this "quality of the secondary quality" is what we need to lay our hands on phenomenologically; this is phenomenal consciousness.
As long as the dialogue is limited to simple perceptual experiences, ones that can be interpreted in either way, there is no leverage by means of which to point to phenomenal consciousness. The way to win this leverage is to specify the various ways that felt qualities operate in experience. Aesthetic experience delivers to us fruitful means of specifying these ways in which a felt quality, phenomenal consciousness, operates in experience.
I will go into specifics in future posts, but here, I want instead to attempt to block two objections to this general approach of arguing for the relevance of aesthetic experience in an examination of phenomenal consciousness.
An obvious way to pre-empt this move to aesthetic experience is to assert that the extra qualitative richness found in aesthetic perceptions should be explained by aesthetics, via aesthetic principles, and not by philosophy of mind via accounts of phenomenal consciousness. This is superficially true but misses my point, which is transcendental: given that certain rich, aesthetic, perceptual qualities exist, then there are certain requirements that an account of phenomenal consciousness must meet. The specification of phenomenal consciousness that a philosopher of mind settles upon, in other words, had better be able to accommodate the conscious experience of art.
Another possible pre-emption: one might claim that considering basic perceptual experiences, such as perceptions of red apples, gives us the subjective quality "atoms," as it were, and it is the business of aesthetics to discover how these "atoms" combine to generate the richer sort of subjective qualities we find in aesthetic experience. This pre-emption fails, I believe, because, in describing aesthetic properties, we must grasp the roles played by various subjective qualities, and in some of these roles, subjective qualities do indeterminate work; in other words, certain aesthetic properties are only properly describable if we take certain components to be indeterminate, and this means that an atomistic parsing of the constituents of aesthetic properties often lead to a misdescription. (Regarding my construal of indeterminacy, see my post "Indeterminacy and Fine-Grained Perception.")
Bibliography
Block, Ned (2002) "Concepts of Consciousness." In Philosophy of Mind; Classical and Contemporary Readings, edited by David J. Chalmers, 206-18: Oxford University Press.
Block, Ned (1996) "Qualia." In A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, edited by Samuel Guttenplan, 514-20: Blackwell.
Chalmers, David J. (1996) The Conscious Mind: Oxford University Press.
Chalmers, David J. (1997) "Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness." In Explaining Consciousness, edited by Jonathan Shear, 10-30: MIT Press.
Jackson, Frank (1982) "Epiphenomenal Qualia." Philosophical Quarterly 32, no. 127: 127-36.
Nagel, Thomas (1974) "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" Philosophical Review, no. 83: 435-50.
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Comments
Posted by: Derek Allan | Aug 29, 2004 8:36:18 PM :
No doubt this comment will be quickly deleted, but before it does can I simply say that I am struck by the fact that there is no definition of the term 'aesthetic' in the above. How can one speak of (eg) 'aesthetic properties', 'aesthetic experience' etc if the term is not defined? Does it mean 'relating to beauty', 'relating to art', 'relating to "the sensuous"'? (These are just three of the meanings the word is often given - sometimes all at once! - and they are obviously very different.)
Posted by: Austen Morris | Aug 31, 2004 11:12:12 AM :
I've a hard time relating this divide between what you're calling deflationary and nondeflationary accounts of perception to anything in my phenomenal experience. I can't remember an instance in which red has entered my perceptual consciousness but failed to provide an experience of qualitative redness. It may be that some times we have richer or fuller qualia than other times, or that we modulate levels of attention to different aspects of consciousness depending on context, or that we somehow "take in" information which doesn't show up in our phenomenal purview at the time but which bubbles up from the soup later on. But insofar as the perceived object is present, isn't it to some extent felt?
Instead of running from simple perceptual qualities to complex aesthetic ones, to avoid the deflationist, one could just argue against deflationary accounts of simple perceptual qualities. Either way we can all agree that studying aesthetic experience sheds light on the workings of consciousness. But by debunking this type of deflationism (which I take it isn't at all an "examine-the-brain," "scientific image" type of deflationism), we can say this by appeal to how interesting and informative aesthetic experience is - not by appeal to how intractable it is to deflationary interpretation.
Posted by: Tiger Roholt | Sep 12, 2004 11:27:06 AM :
Austen, thanks for the good comment.
Try this: isn't there a difference between just NOTICING that, say, the car I just walked by is red, on the one hand, and on the other, basking in the red? The first seems to be a kind of "mere appearing" of a secondary quality; I don't believe there is any subjective quality in that experience.
My point about aesthetic experience, is that some aesthetic properties (of the perceptually emergent/gestalt variety, e.g. groove in music) arise in experience only when we perceive certain elements of artworks in the basking way. By examining the phenomenology of such aesthetic experiences, we have some leverage by means of which to explain the difference between the mere appearing of an eighth-note (e.g.) and experiences that involve the subjective quality of that eighth-note.
Posted by: Derek Allan | Sep 18, 2004 9:58:21 PM :
‘Basking’ in sunlight makes sense to me. 'Basking' in red does not.
If taken literally, it seems to imply that we are irradiated and made warm by red. Whether we are irradiated by colours I leave to scientists, but I seriously doubt if a mere colour (red or any other) ever physically warms us.
Perhaps a kind of ‘psychological’ warmth is meant? But surely red is linked as readily with (eg) danger, or stop, or blood, as it is with warmth. And then there are reds and reds. Crimson might suggest a rich satin fabric; another red might suggest rubies. What do the reds in Titian’s skies suggest? The same as the reds in a Miro or a Picasso?
Perhaps the idea of ‘basking in red’ is intended as a metaphor? But metaphors are notoriously tricky territory in philosophy, so one would then need to ask what it implies exactly.
Moreover, even if we sorted out these problems, how would we get from ‘basking in red’ to a clarification of the nature ('phenomenology') of 'aesthetic' experience? Assuming for argument’s sake that ‘aesthetic’ experience means experience in response to a work of art (of course it has other, quite different, meanings, but that’s another story…), would we then ‘bask’ in (say) Goya’s 'Saturn devouring his children' (!) or a Dogon mask (!) in the same way we ‘bask’ in a colour (whatever that means exactly)?
In short, I'm not at all sure how the idea of 'basking' helps clarify perception of colour. And I’m even less sure how it helps with the vexed notion of aesthetic experience (or ‘aesthetic’ anything).
