El pensamiento consciente y los limites del restrictivismo.
| Autor | Jorba, Marta |
RESUMEN: ?Como debemos caracterizar la naturaleza del pensamiento consciente ocurrente? Recientemente en filosofia de la mente ha surgido un tema muy poco explorado: la fenomenologia cognitiva o el caracter fenomenico de los episodios mentales cognitivos. En este articulo presento en primer lugar la motivacion de los defensores de la fenomenologia cognitiva a traves de casos de contraste fenomenico que se pueden considerar un reto para sus oponentes. En segundo lugar exploro la posicion en contra de la fenomenologia cognitiva que el restrictivismo defiende clasificandolo en dos estrategias: restrictivismo sensorial y estados acompanantes. Por un lado problematizo el papel de la atencion que adopta el restrictivismo sensorial y presento y discuto en detalle un argumento que defiende los limites de la fenomenologia sensorial para explicar la distincion entre los episodios visuales y cognitivos sobre la base de la experiencia inmediata. Por otro, discuto la estrategia de estados acompanantes a traves de los estudios empiricos de Hurlburt et al. (2006, 2008) que defienden la existencia del "pensamiento no simbolico". Muestro como estos estudios pueden ser evidencia para la fenomenologia cognitiva y disipo algunos problemas que se han planteado contra su aceptacion. Concluyo finalmente que los defensores de la fenomenologia cognitiva se encuentran en una buena posicion frente a las visiones restrictivistas consideradas.
PALABRAS CLAVE: fenomenologia cognitiva, fenomenologia sensorial, conciencia fenomenica, experiencia, pensamiento no simbolico
SUMMARY: How should we characterize the nature of conscious occurrent thought? In the last few years, a rather unexplored topic has appeared in philosophy of mind: cognitive phenomenology or the phenomenal character of cognitive mental episodes. In this paper I firstly present the motivation for cognitive phenomenology views through phenomenal contrast cases, taken as a challenge for their opponents. Secondly, I explore the stance against cognitive phenomenology views proposed by Restrictivism, classifying it in two strategies, sensory restrictivism and accompanying states. On the one hand, I problematize the role of attention adopted by sensory restrictivism and I present and discuss in detail an argument that defends the limitation of sensory phenomenology so as to explain the distinction between visual and cognitive mental episodes on the basis of immediate experience. On the other hand, I address accompanying states views by discussing the empirical studies of Hurlburt et al. (2006, 2008) that defend the existence of "unsymbolized thinking". I present how they can be construed as evidence for cognitive phenomenology views and I dispel some problems that have been raised against its acceptance. I thus conclude that cognitive phenomenology views hold up well against the restrictivist positions considered.
KEY WORDS: cognitive phenomenology, sensory phenomenology, phenomenal consciousness, experience, unsymbolized thinking
Conscious thought and the limits of restrictivism
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Introduction
The nature of occurrent conscious thought is an issue that has occupied philosophers since ancient times. In the past recent years and in the context of a growing interest in consciousness studies, a rather unexplored topic has appeared in philosophy of mind: cognitive phenomenology or the phenomenal character of cognitive mental episodes (1) (Bayne and Montague 2011b). This question focuses on whether thought is or can be phenomenally conscious, that is, whether there is something it is like to think, drawing on Nagel's (1974) characterization of what-it-is-likeness or phenomenal character. We can adopt different positions towards this question. On the one hand, there is a family of views that defend the idea that conscious thought has a specific phenomenal character, namely, something that we can call the cognitive phenomenology (Strawson 1994/2010; Siewert 1998; Horgan and Tienson 2002; Pitt 2004, 2009; Chudnoff 2011; Smith 2011; Kriegel 2015; Jorba forthcoming, Jorba and Vicente 2014, among others). I will refer to such views as cognitive phenomenology views. On the other hand, we find cognitive phenomenology eliminativists, which deny the existence of cognitive phenomenology and therefore give a negative answer to our question. The general claim behind views within the latter option is that noncognitive kinds of phenomenal character, like sensory or emotional phenomenology, are sufficient to explain the nature of the phenomenal character of thought, so we do not need to posit a cognitive kind of phenomenology (Carruthers and Veillet 2011; Jackendoff 1987; Lormand 1996; Prinz 2011; Robinson 2005; Tye and Wright 2011, among others).
This question is closely related to that of the reach of phenomenal consciousness (Bayne 2009), which can be cashed out in terms of which kinds of mental episodes possess specific phenomenal character and which do not. As general views regarding the reach question, we can distinguish between expansionist and restrictivist views (Prinz 2011). These labels normally include different views and characterizations, (2) but in a broad way, restrictivists limit the extension of phenomenally conscious states to sensory and perceptual experiences, or even the emotional domain, while expansionists tend to include other kinds of mental states (such as high level perceptual states, emotions and affects, etc.) as phenomenally conscious by themselves, and thus they normally also include thought. The two views presented above are thus related to the question of the reach of phenomenal consciousness in the following way: cognitive phenomenology views are instances of expansionism, whereas phenomenal eliminativist views are instances of restrictivist views. From now on I will adopt the "restrictivist" label as covering positions against cognitive phenomenology views. The result of the debate around cognitive phenomenology, thus, has bearings on the issue of the extension of phenomenal consciousness, and, therefore, opens the door at least to the consideration of whether cognitive mental episodes should also be taken into account when addressing the problems of phenomenal consciousness. (3)
In this paper I address the cognitive phenomenology debate, first, by presenting the motivation for cognitive phenomenology views and the main cases in favour of such views, taken as a challenge for restrictivism. Second, I critically examine two restrictivist positions: sensory restrictivism and accompanying states. I will then argue that neither position is successful in meeting the presented challenge and therefore cognitive phenomenology views hold up well against them.
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Cognitive Experiences: Motivation
Examples of cognitive mental episodes abound: we normally entertain certain thoughts, such as the thought that doing philosophy is fun or the thought that two plus two equals four. And we also understand many written and heard sentences, which enable us to communicate. The case of understanding has been extensively used to motivate the idea of cognitive phenomenology, through the argumentative strategy of the phenomenal contrast argument (Husserl 1900-1901/1970; Peacocke 1998; Siewert 1998; Strawson 1994/2010; Horgan and Tienson 2002; Kriegel 2015; Chudnoff 2014). Strawson (1994/2010) offers a version of this argument: imagine two people listening to the news on a French radio program. One of them, Jacques, speaks French, while the other, Jack, only speaks English. We can ask whether Jacques, who understands what the news speaker is saying, has an experience of a different sort from Jack, who merely hears the French- sounding words without grasping their meaning. The issue is that their cognitive experiences are different although they have the same sensory experience (they hear the same chain of sounds). Jacques has an experience of understanding while Jack doesn't. As it can be seen from this example, phenomenal contrast arguments for cognitive phenomenology normally present two scenarios where there is a phenomenal difference from one to another and nevertheless the non-cognitive components (mainly sensory and perceptual aspects) remain the same. Since, it is argued, the only difference between the two scenarios is cognitive, the phenomenal contrast should be accounted for by appealing to cognitive phenomenology. At this stage it becomes clear that the kind of thought I am talking about and focusing on is occurrent conscious thought, thereby excluding from the focus dispositional cognitive mental episodes such as certain states of belief, for instance.
The crucial point in this argument is to know what accounts for the phenomenal change between understanding what someone tells you and not understanding it. (4) Strawson argues for this understanding-experience over and above visual and auditory experience. The understanding case can be construed with many different contents, but an appealing one is the understanding or grasping of a mathematical proof, for which it seems clear that when there is a phenomenal contrast between "getting" the proof and not getting it, the contrast is not due to any changes in the sensory inputs, precisely because no change occurs in the sensory material (see Chudnoff 2015b for the case of intuiting a mathematical proof).
Besides the experience of understanding, there are other interesting cases to motivate the view of cognitive phenomenology and that pose a challenge for restrictivism. One such case is the phenomenal contrast of the experience of counting in a certain familiar currency and counting in a foreign currency: the experience of getting the cost of familiar items, such as a lunch menu or a cup of tea, in our own currency, say Euros, compared to the experience of getting the cost of these same items in dollars, for instance. Another example may be a variation of the case applied to the counting experience in some countries before...
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