A Method for the Study of Consciousness

2. THE THIRD PERSON PERSPECTIVE

Recognizing this problem, the behaviorism movement emphasized a change of focus in the science of mind—from relying on introspection, to only counting objectively measurable data subject to third person verification. Reports by subjects about what is going on in their minds cannot be so measured or verified, so must be approached with some skepticism.

Now here Dennett makes a very important point about what he is and isn’t saying:

This methodological scruple, which is the ruling principle of all experimental psychology and neuroscience today (not just ‘behaviorist’ research), has too often been elevated into one or another ideological principle, such as:

Mental events don’t exist. (Period!—this has been well called ‘barefoot behaviorism.’)

Mental events exist, but they have no effects whatever, so science can’t study them (epiphenomenalism—see chapter 12, section 5).

Mental events exist, and have effects, but those effects can’t be studied by science, which will have to content itself with theories of the ‘peripheral’ or ‘lower’ effects and processes in the brain. (This view is quite common among neuroscientists, especially those who are dubious of ‘theorizers.’ It is actually dualism; these researchers apparently agree with Descartes that the mind is not the brain, and they are prepared to settle for having a theory of the brain alone.

These views all jump to one unwarranted conclusion or anther.” (pp 70-71)

So much for the view that Dennett doesn’t think we’re conscious—right here he distances himself from that very position, and from “barefoot behaviorism” by name. It’s also worth noting once again that Dennett is using the term “dualism” to refer not just to the traditional Cartesian substance, but to any view which makes something non-physical the focal point of consciousness.

The point of this chapter is that a scientific approach to the mind must be conducted from the third person perspective, but in doing so we must steer clear of certain ideological excesses—described above.

3. THE METHOD OF HETEROPHENOMENOLOGY

Dennett proposes heterophenomenology as a theoretically neutral way to collect data about people’s inner experiences that sticks to the standard methodologies of science. What he is trying to be neutral about is, among other things, the zombie argument. That is, this method does not assume that its subjects must necessarily be conscious—if it did, it would beg the question against zombie-philes and outright eliminativists, and we don’t want to do that. But if any class of entities was ever thought to be consciousness, it would have to be normal, adult human beings, and so this is the class heterophenomenology is for.

The raw data that must be used by any science of consciousness is varied—we can measure physical events in a human body and record them with all kinds of devices, we can film the experiment, and collect an audio feed as well. One thing we might have to do with our subjects, something which doesn’t often matter or would never occur in other domains of science, is interpret some of their physical actions as speech acts.

This involves two steps—a) some of the physical things a subject does can be translated as text in the subject’s native language (which involves converting the raw data—mere sounds—into something abstract: words); and b) those texts are further interpreted as: “not mere pronunciations or recitations but assertions, questions, answers, promises, comments, requests for clarification, out-loud musings, self-admonitions. . .we must treat the noise-emitter as an agent, indeed a rational agent, who harbors beliefs and desires and other mental states that exhibit intentionality or ‘aboutness,’ and whose actions can be explained (or predicted) on the basis of the content of these states.”(p. 76). This is what it means to take the intentional stance.

Dennett has written at length about what is going on with the intentional stance, but the most important thing to stress here is that taking the intentional stance towards an entity is utterly neutral with regards to what is actually going on inside that entity. For instance, we can justifiably take the intentional stance towards a zombie or the latest A.I., because the only justification in either case is the pragmatic or predictive pay off for doing so.

4. FICTIONAL WORLDS AND HETEROPHENOMENOLOGICAL WORLDS

Isn’t the very neutrality of the heterophenomenological method regarding zombies and intelligent computers a problem?

The fact that there is a single, coherent interpretation of a sequence of behaviors doesn’t establish that the interpretation is true; it might be only as if the ‘subject’ were conscious; we risk being taken in by a zombie with no inner life at all. . .We can’t be sure that the speech acts we observe express real beliefs about actual experiences; perhaps they express only apparent beliefs about nonexistent experiences.(p.78)

The way out of this problem is to compare the task of interpreting the text of subjects’ speech acts to the task of interpreting a work of fiction. By so doing, we are “canceling or postponing difficult questions about sincerity, truth, and reference.”(p.79) The text is about a heterophenomenological world the way a novel is about a fictional world. The subject has the last word about everything that is in his or her heterophenomenological world, just as Doyle had the last word about the world of Sherlock Holmes, which has exactly the same metaphysical status.

“This permits theorists to agree in detail about just what a subject’s heterophenomenological world is, while offering entirely different accounts of how heterophenomenological worlds map onto events in the brain (or soul, for that matter).”(p. 81)

Note how very different this is from the claim that mental states themselves are fictitious entities like Holmes and Watson. That is not what is being claimed. What Dennett is urging us to do here is adopt a view towards the text produced in experiments that is neutral about what the text refers to. We are temporarily suspending judgment, giving heterophenomenological worlds the status of fiction, while holding out for the both the possibility that elements in that world are about real things, or that elements in that world are about some kind of illusion or other. Holmes is an element of Doyle’s created world that does not refer to anything real in our world; the London he inhabits does.

5. THE DISCRETE CHARM OF THE ANTHROPOLOGIST

This neutrality is compared in section five to the neutrality of an anthropologist researching the religious beliefs of a native tribe, who believe in a forest god called “Feenoman.” We take in everything the locals say about Feenoman and write it in our journals, and this text comprises a catalog of all the things people want to say about Feenoman. Some of what they say may be contradictory, and if so, we note this as well, remaining properly agnostic about what Feenoman “really” refers to.

True believers in Feenoman may object that really, Feenoman truly exists and possesses all the powers and abilities they attribute to him. This also gets noted, but we aren’t ready to pass judgment about that—yet.

Since one cannot rely on introspection to test the theory of what's going on in one's own mind, this would mean that one is actually only an observer. So as an observer, couldn't one be their own third person perspective?

So as an observer, couldn't one be their own third person perspective?

If I understand what you are implying (and maybe I don't!), one would have a third person's perspective towards the machinations of one's own mind when, say, studying a brain scan of one's own brain.

I think that maybe I am the one not understanding :(
But I do plan to look at this a little more so thank you for the information :)

Consciousness can only be experienced directly. So how can you study it from a third person perspective?