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From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Objective access to the subjective 
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References: <3bd8s0$1q2@pobox.csc.fi> <jqbD0Dx14.156@netcom.com> <D0EMIy.AL6@spss.com> <D0GLGt.Gqr@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 1994 17:38:57 GMT
Lines: 26

In article <D0GLGt.Gqr@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>,
Andrzej Pindor <pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>In article <D0EMIy.AL6@spss.com>, Mark Rosenfelder <markrose@spss.com> wrote:
>>As recounted in _Color for Philosophers_, color scientists do
>>study peoples' subjective impressions (e.g. reports on whether they've seen
>>a light or not; whether two color samples match; what primary colors a light
>>consists of; what the prototypical example of a particular color term is);
>>and they've made progress in linking such judgments to physiological
>>facts about the brain.  Why shouldn't such methods eventually be applicable 
>>to consciousness or thought as well?
>
>Isn't this what Dennett calls "heterophenomenology" in "Consciousness
>Explained"? That is investigating verbal reports of mental events? Surely
>this is not the same as investigating the mental events themselves, is it?

If nothing else, the kind of sensory experiences being investigated are
too simple to require much theoretical modelling of the type Dennett
discusses.  An example: dim lights or no lights at all are shown to a
subject, who is asked to say whether they've seen a light or not, and if
so what color it is.  The intention is to investigate perception; the verbal 
report is of interest only insofar as it makes manifest the sensory 
impression.  Other experiments do not involve verbal reports at all; 
one common experiment is to have subjects twiddle knobs controlling the
spectral composition of one light till it matches another light,
an operation which can proceed in complete silence, and which is aimed
at understanding visual response, not knob-twiddling behavior.
