Abstract
Three commitments guide Dennett’s approach to the study of consciousness. First, an ontological commitment to materialist monism. Second, a methodological commitment to what he calls ‘heterophenomenology.’ Third, a ‘doxological’ commitment that can be expressed as the view that there is no room for a distinction between a subject’s beliefs about how things seem to her and what things actually seem to her, or, to put it otherwise, as the view that there is no room for a reality/appearance distinction for consciousness. We investigate how Dennett’s third doxological commitment relates to his first two commitments and whether its acceptance should be seen as a mere logical consequence of acceptance of the first two. We will argue that this is not the case, that Dennett’s doxological commitment is in need of independent motivation, and that this independent motivation is not forthcoming.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Here and in the remainder of this paper, we use the phrase ‘phenomenal beliefs’ to refer to the subjective beliefs a subject has about how things seem to her.
Note though that this dualism is more limited in scope than classical Cartesian dualism as it applies only to the phenomenal aspects of mental life.
However, see Noë (2004, Ch. 2) for reservations about whether people really have such a belief.
Here we are grateful to an anonymous referee for pointing out these last two readings of Dennett’s position.
One reason this distinction is often overlooked is that the same phrase, namely ‘the analog character of perceptual content,’ is sometimes used to refer to the fineness of grain of perceptual content, sometimes to its richness. Thus, while Peacocke (1992) uses the phrase to refer to fineness of grain, Dretske (1981) uses it to refer to richness.
See Noë (2002) for an in-depth investigation of this issue.
Some of the arguments in what follows are adapted from Dokic and Pacherie (2001).
Persons with absolute pitch may constitute an exception. Yet, it is estimated about 3% of the general population in Europe have absolute pitch and this figure only increases to about 8% in professional or semi-professional musicians. Furthermore, it seems that the ability exists either from early childhood or not at all. Although with considerable effort and extensive training an adult can acquire perform at a level that is close to that of persons with absolute pitch, this painfully acquired skill turns out to be quite fragile, i.e., it gets rapidly lost when practicing on tone recognition is terminated (Terhardt, 2000).
References
Brewer, B. (1999). Perception and reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burns, E. M., & Ward, W. D. (1977). Categorical perception – Phenomenon or epiphenomenon: Evidence from experiments in the perception of musical intervals. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 63, 456–468.
Chalmers, D. J. (1996). The conscious mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
Crane, T. (1992). The non-conceptual content of experience. In T. Crane (Ed.), The Contents of Experience (pp. 136–157). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Dennett, D. C. (1991). Consciousness explained. Boston, MA: Little Brown.
Dennett, D. C. (2001). The fantasy of first-person science. http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/chalmersdeb3dft.htm.
Dennett, D. C. (2003). Who’s on first? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10(9–10), 19–30.
Dennett, D. C. (2005). Sweet dreams. Philosophical obstacles to a science of consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Dokic, J., & Pacherie E. (2001). Shades and concepts. Analysis, 61/3, 193–201.
Dretske, F. (1981). Knowledge and the flow of information. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Dretske, F. (1995). Naturalizing the mind – The Jean Nicod Lectures – 1994. Cambridge, MA: MIT (Paris: Editions du CNRS).
Halsey, R. M., & Chapanis, A. (1951). Number of absolute identifiable hues. Optical Society of America, 41, 1057–1058.
Hardin, C. L. (1988). Color for philosophers. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Hurvich, L. M. (1981). Color vision. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer.
Marcel, A. J. (2003). Introspective report. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10(9–10), 167–186.
McDowell, J. (1994). Mind and world (2nd edn). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1996).
McGinn, C. (1989). Can we solve the mind–body problem? Mind, 98, 349–366.
Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review, 4, 435–450.
Noë, A. (Ed.) (2002). Is the Visual World a Grand Illusion? Special Issue on Journal of Consciousness Studies, 9, 5–6.
Noë, A. (2004). Action in Perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Noë, A., Pessoa, L., & Thompson, E. (2000). Beyond the grand illusion: What change blindness really teaches us about vision. Visual Cognition, 7, 93–106.
Peacocke, C. (1992). A study of concepts. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Raffman, D. (1995). On the persistence of phenomenology. In T. Metzinger (Ed.), Conscious Experience (pp. 292–308). Thorverton: Imprint.
Stich, S. (1983). From folk psychology to cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Schwitzgebel, E. No unchangeable epistemistic authority, of any sort, regarding our own conscious experience - contra Denett? Journal of Phenemology and Cognitive Sciences (this issue).
Terhardt, E. (2000). Absolute pitch. http://www.mmk.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de/persons/ter/top/absolute.html.
Tye, M. (1995). Ten problems of consciousness: A representational theory of the phenomenal mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dokic, J., Pacherie, E. Too much ado about belief. Phenom Cogn Sci 6, 185–200 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-006-9036-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-006-9036-9