Phenomenology of Thinking

Philosophical Investigations into the Character of Cognitive Experiences

Thiemo Breyer, Christopher Gutland, Thiemo Breyer, Christopher Gutland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138901704
• eBook ISBN: 9781317450733
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Mente y cuerpo en filosofía

This book draws connections between recent advances in analytic philosophy of mind and insights from the rich phenomenological tradition concerning the nature of thinking. By combining both analytic and continental approaches, the volume arrives at a more comprehensive understanding of the mental process of "thinking" and the experience and manipulation of objects of thought. Contributors scrutinize aspects of thinking that have a common grounding in both the phenomenological and analytic tradition: perception, language, logic, embodiment and situatedness due to individual history or current experience. This collection serves to broaden and enrich the current debate over "cognitive phenomenology, " and lays the foundations for further dialogue between analytic and continental approaches to the phenomenal character of thinking.

1 The Character of Cognitive Phenomenology

Uriah Kriegel

Recent discussions of phenomenal consciousness have taken increased interest in the existence and scope of non-sensory types of phenomenology, notably so-called cognitive phenomenology. These discussions have been largely restricted, however, to the question of the existence of such a phenomenology. Little attention has been given to the character of cognitive phenomenology: what in fact is it like to engage in conscious cognitive activity? This paper offers an approach to this question. Focusing on the prototypical cognitive activity of making a judgment that p, it proposes a characterization in terms of a Ramsey sentence comprised of twenty-three phenomenological platitudes about what it is like to make a judgment.

1 Background: The Existence and Character of Cognitive Phenomenology

It is uncontroversial that visual experiences, such as seeing purple velvet in the wind, and bodily sensations, such as feeling the relaxed exhaustion following a good exercise, exhibit a phenomenal character. As long as philosophers’ main concern about phenomenal consciousness revolved around the question of its reducibility to physical properties, focusing on such uncontroversial types of phenomenology was natural. But once one develops an a-reductive interest in phenomenal consciousness, one might wonder whether there might also exist subtler and more controversial types of phenomenology. In particular, one might wonder whether there is also a phenomenal character characteristic of cognition. In the recent literature, there are two main lines of argument in favor of the existence of such a distinctive ‘cognitive phenomenology.’

One type of argument is from phenomenal contrast. Here two conscious episodes are presented, such that (i) it is intuitively clear that the overall phenomenology of the episodes is different, and (ii) it seems that the best explanation of the difference is that one of the two episodes exhibits cognitive phenomenology whereas the other does not (crucially, this is a better explanation than any that appeals solely to sensory phenomenology). Perhaps the most widely discussed instance of this argumentative strategy is what may be called the Moore-Strawson argument (Strawson, 1994, pp. 5–13). We are enjoined to contrast the conscious experiences of a French speaker and a non-French speaker when they listen to the news in French. The claim is that there is a phenomenal difference between their overall phenomenologies, and that the difference is best accounted for in terms of an element of ‘understanding-experience’ present only in the French speaker’s stream of consciousness. This understanding-experience is one kind of cognitive phenomenology.

The second type of argument is from first-person knowability. Here the strategy is to argue that the knowledge we have of (some of) our cognitive states is the kind of first-person knowledge characteristic of our phenomenally conscious states. Perhaps the best-known instance of this is what may be called the Goldman-Pitt argument (Goldman, 1993; Pitt, 2004). The argument proceeds as follows: 1) it is possible to consciously, introspectively, and non-inferentially identify (i.e., to know-by-acquaintance) one’s conscious occurrent thoughts; 2) this would not be possible if conscious occurrent thoughts did not have a distinctive phenomenal character; therefore, 3) conscious occurrent thoughts have a distinctive phenomenal character (Pitt, 2004, p. 8).

Both types of argument have found both adherents and critics (see Bayne & Montague, 2011). My concern in this paper is to explore the actual phenomenal character of conscious cognitive states, so I will take it as assumed that there is a distinctive cognitive phenomenology, regardless of whether these arguments are successful in showing that. For my part, I am convinced of the existence of cognitive phenomenology by a simple observation, which may be summarized as follows: if there were no cognitive phenomenology, life would be boring—more boring than it actually is, at least. In particular, it would be quite irrational to engage in philosophical reflection if none of it ‘showed up’ in consciousness. (Surely the accompanying imagery cannot explain how interesting it is to do philosophy.)¹

(It is not immediately obvious how to turn this ‘life would be boring’ observation into an argument. Perhaps we could start by unpacking ‘life’ and ‘boring,’ to first approximations, as follows: a person’s ‘life,’ in this metaphorical sense, is the sum of all contents of her phenomenal awareness from birth [or rather: from onset of phenomenal consciousness] to death [sunset of consciousness]; a thing is boring iff it is disposed to elicit differential feelings of boredom towards it in normal [boredom-capable] subjects under normal conditions, or better, iff it is not disposed to elicit differential feelings of interestedness in normal [interest-capable] subjects under normal conditions. Then the ‘life would be boring’ argument could be formulated as follows: 1) If we did not have cognitive phenomenology, the contents of our phenomenal awareness from onset to sunset of phenomenal consciousness would not be disposed to elicit differential feelings of interestedness in us; but 2) they do; so, 3) we do have cognitive phenomenology. There might be better ways to dress the ‘life would be boring’ observation as an argument, but in any case it is the observation itself that convinces me, more than anything, that there is such a thing as cognitive phenomenology.²)

There are many sources of resistance to cognitive phenomenology. One of them, arguably, is the feeling that nothing informative can be said about it. Once we have accepted that it exists, it is not clear what we are supposed to do next. No potentially fecund avenues of research open up before us. To some extent, this is an unfair accusation. According to its proponents, cognitive phenomenology is a simple, unstructured, phenomenally primitive quality instantiated by some of our conscious episodes and not others. It is a general truth about such unstructured properties that they cannot be accounted for through decomposition into more basic constituents (compare Moore, 1903, on goodness). We grasp their nature through some kind of direct acquaintance with them—however that works. At the same time, if nothing really could be said about cognitive phenomenology (beyond that it exists), it might not be worth debating as much as it has been in recent years. Furthermore, if nothing could be said by way of characterizing cognitive phenomenology, proponents and opponents can never be sure that they are talking about the same thing. I know what I am directly acquainted with when I grasp the nature of cognitive phenomenology, but I can never be sure that you are directly acquainted with the same feature.³

To address this set of worries, I propose in this paper to make first steps toward a characterization of cognitive phenomenology.⁴ In this endeavor, the first order of business is to take a brief tour through the garden of cognitive phenomena.

2 The Variety of Cognitive Phenomenology

Cognition, like other kinds of mentation, involves (i) cognitive processes, (ii) accomplishments of such processes, in the form of cognitive acts, and (iii) products of such process, in the form of cognitive states.⁵ Here is a representative subset of (ii) and (iii):

• Judging that p
• Thinking that p
• Believing that p
• Realizing that p
• Remembering that p
• Predicting that p
• It occurring to one that p
• Being confident that p
• Being convinced that p
• Being sure (certain) that p
• Taking it that p
• Expecting that p
• Speculating that p
• Deeming that p
• Suspecting that p
• Surmising that p
• Conjecturing that p
• Hypothesizing that p
• Assuming that p

Several questions arise immediately in the face of this list. First, is there any feature common to all items on it (as well as to other acts/states that should intuitively belong on it)? Secondly, is there a feature peculiar to those items (and others belonging on the list)? Thirdly, might there be more specifically a phenomenal feature common to all these acts and states, and fourthly, might there be a phenomenal feature peculiar to them? If there is a phenomenal feature both common and peculiar to all the relevant acts/states, that feature would constitute a sort of phenomenal signature of cognition. We might refer to that feature as cognitive phenomenology per se.

The most direct way to characterize cognitive phenomenology would be to identify such a phenomenal signature of cognition and characterize it. Short of that, we might also attempt to characterize the phenomenology involved in several individual items on the list, in particular the more prototypical or paradigmatic items. I propose to make a contribution to this latter project. I will focus on one type of cognitive act that I take to be particularly paradigmatic of cognition. This is the act of making the judgment that p, say after considering evidence for and against p, doing some reasoning and ‘intellectual exploring,’ and finally coming down on the issue of whether p. What I just described is a process, but one whose accomplishment is what I refer to as ‘making a judgment,’ and it is this phenomenon, the making of a judgment, that I wish to characterize phenomenologically. If it is possible for judgments to just occur to us (as when it suddenly occurs to me that I have yet to pay this month’s phone bill), making a judgment should be distinguished from that.⁶ In the latter, the subject acts as an epistemic agent.⁷

If nothing else, a phenomenal characterization of making a judgment would provide us with a descriptive account of the phenomenology of one particularly salient type of cognitive act. But it might also provide us with more. For even if there is no phenomenal signature of cognition—no phenomenal commonality and peculiarity of cognitive states and acts—there might still be some looser unity among cognitive acts/states. Consider the concept of furniture. It would be somewhat surprising if there was some single property common and peculiar to all pieces of furniture. Instead, it has been argued (Rosch, 1975), the concept of furniture behaves like a prototype concept: there are certain prototypes of furniture—tables and chairs, as it turns out—and other things qualify as furniture just if they sufficiently resemble these prototypes in relevant respects. One might imagine that the folk concept (or even a more refined, scientific or philosophical, concept) of cognition behaves the same way. If so, it would be natural to think that making a judgment is at least one prototype of cognition, so other items on the above list qualify as cognitive at least partly in virtue of resembling (sufficiently and relevantly) the act of making a judgment. Suppose now, just for the sake of argument, that making a judgment is the only prototype of cognition, so that other items on the list qualify solely in virtue of resembling it. Then a descriptive account of the phenomenology of making a judgment would in effect constitute an account of cognitive phenomenology simpliciter: to have a cognitive phenomenology would just be to have a phenomenology that resembles (sufficiently, relevantly) the phenomenology of making a judgment.

To my mind, it is not entirely implausible that making a judgment is indeed the prototype of cognition. But even if it is just a prototype, a characterization of its phenomenal character would be of great significance to understanding the character of cognitive phenomenology. The pressing question is how to characterize such a basic, elemental quality as the phenomenology of making a judgment. For a fruitful angle on this, it might be useful to consider a discussion by the nineteenth-century Bohemian mathematician and philosopher Bernard Bolzano.

3 Bolzano on Judgment

Bolzano’s magnum opus, Theory of Science, is an early attempt at a systematic, quasi-axiomatic ‘rational reconstruction’ of the foundations of logic and scientific methodology (Bolzano, 1837). In this context, Bolzano frequently pauses to offer explicit and precise definitions of central terms. Rather conspicuously, although judgment (Urteil) is a fundamental notion in Bolzano’s reconstruction, at no point does he offer a clean definition of it. Instead, he characterizes judgment only informally, by citing ten typical characteristics of it (ibid., §34). Paraphrased for modern ears, they are:

• Every judgment either does or does not conform to the truth
• Judgment is psychologically real
• Judgment exists only in the mind
• There is an essential difference between judging that p and merely representing (or entertaining) that p
• In God’s infinite intellect all true propositions are judged to be so
• Human judgment depends on taking into consideration prior representations and depends only indirectly on the will
• Judgments vary with respect to a certain force—‘confidence’—that depends on the considerations that preceded ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The Character of Cognitive Phenomenology
• 2 Empty Intentions and Phenomenological Character: A Defense of Inclusivism
• 3 Phenomenally Thinking About This Individual
• 4 Attitudinal Cognitive Phenomenology and the Horizon of Possibilities
• 5 The Sense of Natural Meaning in Conscious Inference
• 6 The “As-Structure” of Intentional Experience in Husserl and Heidegger
• 7 The Practice of Thinking: Between Dreyfus and McDowell
• 8 The Limits of Conceptual Thinking
• 9 Non-Linguistic Thinking and Communication—Its Semantics and Some Applications
• 10 What Is It to Think?
• 11 Moral Perception: High-Level Perception or Low-Level Intuition?
• Index