Phenomenological
Fallacies
By:
Chris Cochran
Fall 2004, PHI3320
Professor:
Dr. Mason Cash
This
paper will be a discourse on phenomenological fallacies. I will give
Let me begin by first defining what a Phenomenological
fallacy is. According to Place:
A phenomenological fallacy is the mistake of supposing that when the subject describes
his experience, when he describes how things look, sound, smell, taste, or feel to him, he
is describing the literal properties of objects and events on a peculiar
sort of internal cinema
or television screen, usually referred to in the modern psychological literature as the
“phenomenal field.” (p. 82, I – II)
What this means is
that we often describe objects from after images in our memories as being real,
with all its real properties associated with it. When in actuality, the object we are
describing is an after image that is nothing more than a collection of
characteristics we remember the object as having and that we have given it. i.e.
I remember eating a very sweet and juicy green apple one time.
When
I recall the information about the apple, I am recalling the experiences I had
with that apple and the after images associated with the apple like the sights,
smells, taste, and feel of the apple.
Also, since I have already eaten the apple, there remains nothing left
but my memories and after images of the apple.
Place
also points out that, “…our ability to describe things in our environment
depends on our consciousness of them.” (p. 82,
II) For Place, consciousness
plays a key role in understanding and describing things in our
environment. Before we can describe our
awareness of an object, we must first learn how to communicate and describe the
objects in our environment.
When
I said earlier that I had and after image of eating a very sweet and juicy
green apple, I wasn’t just saying that I had an after image of the apple, what
I was saying was that I was having the same sort of experience I normally have every time I eat a very sweet
and juicy green apple. I associate this
experience with all my other past experiences of eating an apple and then form
a memory based on my consciousness of all my previous experiences with apples.
Here’s
another good example. Sometimes after
dinner, I like to eat a piece of chocolate.
When I eat the chocolate, I begin to recall all the past experiences
I’ve had when I ate chocolate. I recall
the taste and the sweetness of the chocolate on my tongue and the smell of the
chocolate in my nose, and the texture and feel of it in my mouth. All of these sensations help me recall my
past feelings and sensations associated with the chocolate.
All
of these sensations and feelings are tied directly to my past experiences of
eating chocolate. It is not the
chocolate itself that I am recalling, but rather, it is the collection of all
my previous experiences and after images with chocolate that I am recalling,
and I am translating those experiences into this after image of the chocolate I
am eating now. Thereby adding to future
experiences with the one I just had when I ate the chocolate. Even just looking at a piece of chocolate can
stimulate my feelings and experiences and make me feel like I did when I
actually ate a piece of chocolate. I
don’t even have to eat the chocolate to get the same experiences. A look or even a smell can trigger my past
experiences.
Sir
Charles Scott Sherrington (1857-1952) wrote The Integrative Action of the
Nervous System back in 1947. The mistake
Sherrington makes is in the middle of one of his short passages. In it, he says, “The self “sees” the sun; it
senses a two-dimensional object in the “sky,” this last field of lesser
brightness.” And also at the end when he says, “…it would seem two continuous
series of events, one physicochemical, the other psychical, and at times
interaction between them.”[1] Sherrington is referring to the process by
which a person undertakes when recalling an experience such as the sun’s
radiation entering the eye and how this event affects their consciousness of
the event.
He
claims that there are two things going on inside a person’s brain when this
event occurs. The first thing that
happens is the physicochemical causation (physical), this occurs when the sun’s
rays hit the eye causing electrical disturbances inside the brain cortex. This is nothing more than the brain process
reacting to stimulus.
The
second thing that happens is the actual consciousness (non-physical), or
awareness, of the event in our mind called the psychical. This psychical allows us to see a projection
of the image of the sun’s rays inside our minds allowing us to become conscious
of the experience. Like when I ate my
juicy green apple, I first had to eat the apple to experience the taste of it. I was conscious of the experience, but only
after I had eaten the apple and had recalled the memory of that experience.
A
better way for Sherrington to rephrase his sun analogy would be to say that the
self does not “see” the sun; is simply,
according to place, “…having the sort of
experience which we normally have when, and which we have learned to describe
as, looking at” the sun (p.83, I). It
all comes down to our own experiences and how we have decided to handle objects
in the past.
I
think Sherrington’s ideas about physicochemical and psychical events are correct
in the sense that they describe the two different states of observing an object
(the sun). The first event is the
physicochemical (physical), or the stimulus of the brain-cortex, which causes
us to think about what we are observing.
The second event is the psychical (mental/non-physical) which is
consciousness of the object or event we are observing. This is the process that we go through when
new events happen or we try and describe a new object. We are not trying to describe the event or
object itself, merely our interpretation of that event or object as it
was. Of course, this is the dualistic
approach and a lot of people have problems with separating the mind and the
body. Especially Place.
Place
would disagree with my assessment of Sherrington’s argument and the two part
process of the physical and mental ways we describe objects. Place’s main argument would be a physicalist’s point of view (non-dualism) and against the
psychical part which is purely non physical and takes place only in our minds.
For
Place, there is no separation between the mind and body and consciousness is
simply a by-product of our brain processes.
This is not to say that there can be nothing non-physical that we can
experience in our minds, because that would be manifestly false. Rather, consciousness is merely a process
that happens in our brains.
Put
simply, we can imagine things in our brains, even things that don’t exist in
reality except to us, but what we are imagining in our brain is the result of
our brain process. Synapses are firing
and providing us with information that we construe as real images or
experiences kind of like watching a movie in the cinema. What we see on the screen in the cinema is
only what was projected by the film projector.
The end result of a process. Like
our brains, the experiences and consciousness we perceive is the end result of
a brain process. Albeit, a very complex
process.
This
brings us to Place’s “is” argument. The
“is’ of definition and the “is” of composition.
Place is trying to define what “is” is when we use it in our language to
describe an object or experience. Place
writes:
The distinction I have in mind here
is the difference between the word “is” in statements like “A square is an
equilateral rectangle,” “Red is a color.”
…These two types of “is” statements have one thing in common. In both cases it makes sense to add the
qualification “and nothing else” (p. 79, I)
i.e. “A square is an equilateral
rectangle, and nothing else” or “Red is a color, and nothing else.”
By
definition alone you can see how these “is” statements are true. A square by definition is a plane figure
having four equal sides.[2] Red is, in fact, a color. But now, if you throw in a statement that
can’t be so narrowly defined by the predication of the “is,” and if it doesn’t
relate to the meaning of the expression forming the grammatical subject, then
you have the potential to make a fallacy.
i.e. “My car is a mode of transportation and nothing else” or “Sally is
a hairdresser and nothing else,” for example, are nonsense. Cars are more than just modes of
transportation and Sally is more than just a hairdresser. It all comes down to the proper use of language
when describing objects and/or consciousness.
It’s not to say that all things can be reduced down to vocabulary, but
if something is to be explained, then language is needed to convey whatever
message you want to get across.
I
tried to adequately define what a phenomenological fallacy is and gave a few
examples like the sweet and juicy green apple and the chocolate. I pointed out where Sherrington made a
phenomenological fallacy in one of his short passages and I tried to give an
example of how he could fix this fallacy by describing his experiences for the
event. I explained why I thought
Sherrington’s ideas about physicochemical (physical) and psychical
(non-physical) events were correct and why Place would disagree with my
assessment of Sherrington’s ideas. And
finally, I talked a little about Place’s “is” argument and how it should be
used in our language when describing objects or experiences. In the end, I would have to say that
consciousness is a by product of processes in the brain, but that these
processes are by far, the most complex thing that we have ever gone about to
understand.
[1] Sherrington, Sir Charles Scott (1857-1952), The
Integrative Action of the Nervous System