```todoist name: Today filter: "Today | Overdue" ``` # Handout for Dancing with Qualia ## 1. Introduction ### A. [[The idea]] of aesthetically appreciating consciousness - [[Conscious experience]] comes up in aesthetics quite a lot, but often just as [[aesthetic experience]]: an experience involved in [[the appreciation]] *of something* - However, the phenomenal character of experience seems inherently valuable and worthy of appreciation, beyond its practical or epistemic roles. - No one would want to be a (proper) philosophical zombie, a case can be made for this being for aesthetic reasons - This can be fleshed out by the following thought experiment: we would not want to be turned into a philosophical zombie –note that Dennett in sweet dreams makes it clear that one could still have thoughts, perceptions, desires etc. but simply with the ‘lights turned out’ ### B. [[The question]] of how we can aesthetically appreciate consciousness - If we appreciate consciousness, how do we appreciate it? - The standard perceptual model of [[aesthetic appreciation]], which focuses on external objects presented to the senses, seems ill-suited for consciousness itself - Various [[alternative models]] might be considered, such as those derived from the [[aesthetic appreciation]] of nature (e.g., object model, landscape model, environment model) - Various models for the [[aesthetic appreciation]] of consciousness might be considered, analogous to models for the [[aesthetic appreciation]] of nature - In "[[Aesthetics and the Environment]]" (2000), Carlson discusses different models for [[appreciating nature]], such as [[the object]] model, landscape model, and [[environmental model]] - These models differ in how they frame [[the appreciation]] of nature - as discrete objects, as scenic views, or as encompassing environments - Similarly, different models could be considered for the appreciation of consciousness, such as appreciating specific conscious states, the overall "landscape" of consciousness, or the encompassing "environment" of subjective experience - I'll come back to a particular idea of Carlson's later ### C. The role of transparency/opacity and agency in this appreciation - The degree of transparency/opacity of conscious states, i.e., the extent to which we can attend to the representational processes underlying experience, may significantly affect how we can appreciate them aesthetically - Our ability to actively modulate the transparency/opacity of experience through attentional control introduces an agentive dimension to the aesthetic appreciation of consciousness - Metzinger's attentional analysis of transparency/opacity and the associated idea of "immersed opacification" through agentive attention will be central to the proposed model ### D. Main Aim/Structure - The paper aims to argue that the aesthetic appreciation of consciousness involves an interplay of passive opacity and active "opacification" through attentional control - It will first introduce Metzinger's theory of transparency/opacity and its relevance to the aesthetic dimension of consciousness - It will then explore how this enables an appreciation of representational structure similar to appreciating design properties in art - The "immersion challenge" from environmental aesthetics will be considered and addressed through the idea of agentive attention enabling "immersed opacification" - Finally, broader implications for debates in philosophy of mind and aesthetics will be discussed, along with future directions for research ## 2. Metzinger's Theory of Transparency/Opacity ### A. Traditional conceptions of transparency - Moore (1903): When perceiving, we are not aware of any intrinsic features of our experience, only features of the external objects (this isn't quite right) - Harman (1990): In perceptual experience, we are not aware of the "mental paint" by which the experience represents the world, only the world itself Strong Perceptual Transparency: - Direct, unmediated access to the external world - No awareness of intermediary mental representations or sensory processing - Experience feels like directly perceiving the external world itself Weak Perceptual Transparency: - Perceptual experiences may involve mental representation or processing - These intermediary stages are not typically accessible to introspection - Experience is primarily characterized by the apparent external objects and properties ### B. Key aspects of Metzinger's theory >phenomenally _opaque_ states do exist, and second, that they are interestingly related to phenomenally transparent states (namely within one and the same “vehicle”). My more general aim in this paper is to draw attention to the fact that the concepts of “phenomenal opacity” and “phenomenal transparency” are interesting instruments for analyzing conscious, self-representational content... (Metzinger p. 354) 1. Transparency/opacity as a graded property linked to attention - Core claim: "For every phenomenal state, the degree of phenomenal transparency is inversely proportional to the introspective degree of attentional availability of earlier processing stages." (Metzinger, p. 356) - Transparency: When earlier processing stages are attentionally unavailable, experience seems to directly present external objects/properties - Opacity: When earlier processing stages become attentionally available, experience is revealed as a representational process - Transparency/opacity exists on a continuum, depending on the degree of attentional availability of earlier processing stages 2. Rejection of a clear vehicle/content distinction - Traditional view: Transparency arises from access to content but not vehicle properties - Metzinger's view: Attentional availability of earlier stages blurs the vehicle/content distinction, making both accessible - "A representationalist analysis of the phenomenology of visual experience can therefore not simply claim that we are only aware of the content properties of visual representations, but never of vehicle properties." (Metzinger, p. 358) 3. Transparency/opacity as a feature of all mental state types - Traditional views associate transparency primarily with perceptual states - Metzinger extends the transparency/opacity framework to cognitive and emotional states as well >_opaque_ phenomenal representations do exist as well. Here are some preliminary examples of opaque state-classes: Most notably consciously experienced thoughts, but also some types of emotions, pseudo-hallucinations or lucid dreams are subjectively experienced _as representational processes_. Such processes sometimes appear to us as deliberately initiated cognitive or representational processes, and sometimes as spontaneously occurring, limited or even global phenomenal simulations, frequently not under the experiential subject’s control. 1. Examples illustrating graded transparency/opacity 1. Metacognitive case: Attending to the process of thinking - The ability to notice the arising, development, and passing of thoughts, or the effortful nature of certain kinds of cognition, suggests that we can make opaque the usually transparent processes that generate and sustain our thought contents - This attentional access to earlier stages of cognitive processing allows us to appreciate the constructive nature of thinking itself 2. Perceptual case: Necker cube - The gestalt shift involves a change in the perceived 3D structure of the cube, which results from a change in the processing and interpretation of the ambiguous sensory input - The brief experience of the shift suggests that we can sometimes attend to the earlier processing stages that construct our coherent perceptual experience from ambiguous data 3. Cognitive case: Inner speech - Attending to the auditory-verbal qualities of inner speech, rather than just the semantic content, suggests that we can access earlier stages in the cognitive processing that generates inner speech - These earlier stages involve the construction of the "verbal images" that constitute the representational vehicles of inner speech, which are usually transparent as we focus only on the conveyed meaning ## 3. Aesthetic implications of Metzinger's view ### A Opacity enables the appreciation of mental states as mental states - formal properties? ### B Partially Transparent States and appreciating *realisation* (hands waving) >"For every phenomenal state, the degree of phenomenal transparency is inversely proportional to the introspective degree of attentional availability of earlier processing stages." >phenomenally _opaque_ states do exist, and second, that they are interestingly related to phenomenally transparent states (namely within one and the same “vehicle”). - attending to 'earlier processing stages' as 'earlier processing stages' suggests that we can appreciate how vehicle properties *realise* content properties, or are at least aware of some relation. - Consider Metacognitive Awareness again. ## 4. Agentive Awareness ### A. The objection from environmental aesthetics 1. Carlson's critique of approaches that ignore immersive experience - Frames and static viewpoints fail to capture the dynamic, multi-sensory engagement with environments - Aesthetics of nature should focus on the immersive, interactive character of environmental appreciation 2. Analogous worry for the "opacified" approach to consciousness - Does focusing on the representational processes underlying experience neglect the immersive phenomenology of consciousness? - Might "stepping back" to appreciate experiential dynamics disrupt the engaged, first-person character of conscious experience? ### B. Response: Agentive attention enables "immersed opacification" 1. Attentional control as a form of immersive interaction with consciousness - Actively modulating the focus and structure of experience is a way of engaging with consciousness from within - Phenomenology of attentional control: Fluidly shifting between different aspects and levels of experience - Analogy to active exploration of an environment: Attentional modulation as a kind of "mental navigation" 2. "Immersed opacification": Appreciating representational dynamics while preserving phenomenal immersion - Attentional shifts can highlight representational processes without fully disrupting immersion - Opacity and immersion are not mutually exclusive: We can appreciate experiential dynamics while remaining engaged - Key is the interplay of passive opacity and active attentional control, enabling a fluid and integrated appreciation ## To Read - MEDITATION AND CONSCIOUSNESS Can We Experience Experience as Broken? By Davies 1.1. The Rationalist Position - Descartes, Leibniz: Beauty judgments are intuitive judgments of perfection - For functional objects, perfection = perfect adaptation to function - Assumes functionality is perceptually manifest 1.2. Empiricist Doubts - Beauty and perfection are not equivalent - Perfection is a conceptual matter, beauty is perceptual - So can perfect functionality be perceived? - Empiricists like Hume, Burke, and Hutcheson raise this challenge 2. Burke's Counter-Examples 2.1. Against the Strong Beauty-as-Fitness View - Strong view: Fitness for function is necessary and sufficient for beauty - Burke: Peacock's tail is beautiful despite being unfit for flying - Burke: Features like a "well-fashioned mouth" are beautiful regardless of apparent fitness for eating - Suggests fitness is not necessary for beauty 2.2. Against the Weak Beauty-as-Fitness View - Weak view: Fitness for function is one kind of beauty among others - Burke: A pig's snout is well-adapted for rooting but not beautiful - "On that principle, the wedge-like snout of a swine, with its tough cartilage at the end, the little sunk eyes, and the whole make of the head, so well adapted to its offices of digging and rooting, would be extremely beautiful." - Suggests fitness is not sufficient for beauty 2.3. Significance of the Counter-Examples - Present a serious prima facie challenge to both strong and weak beauty-as-fitness views - Seem to show clear cases where fitness and beauty come apart - Undermine the idea of a logically necessary connection between the two Here is my attempt at a detailed summary of the text, with bullet points under each chapter and section heading: <answer> Introduction - The book aims to defend a theory of evaluating pictures based on the idea that evaluating a picture as a picture requires considering the experiences of seeing the picture itself and the scene it depicts (the "pictorial evaluation thesis") - The "mimesis thesis" states that pictures typically elicit experiences resembling face-to-face experiences of the depicted scenes, but differences between the two kinds of experiences allow pictures to be worth looking at even when the depicted scenes are not worth seeing face-to-face, which presents a "puzzle of mimesis" - The book will argue there are logical connections between aesthetic evaluations of pictures and cognitive/moral evaluations (an "interactionist" view), focusing on representational not abstract pictures - It will characterize seeing-in, distinguish aesthetic from other kinds of evaluation, and argue that some cognitive and moral evaluations of pictures as vehicles for seeing-in imply aesthetic evaluations - The book does not offer a full theory of pictorial art evaluation, only a partial account of evaluating pictures as vehicles for seeing-in 1\. The Puzzle of Mimesis Content, Design, and Subject - A picture's design is its visible surface properties responsible for its depicting what it does, distinct from the picture's subject (what it depicts) and its content (the properties it represents its subject as having) - The mimesis thesis does not entail that a picture's design resembles its subject, only that the experiences a picture elicits resemble face-to-face experiences of the depicted scene Seeing Divided, Seeing Double - Design seeing is a visual experience of a picture as a configuration of marks responsible for depicting a scene, which the duck-rabbit figure shows can occur simultaneously with content seeing - The "illusion theory" that seeing-in phenomenally resembles face-to-face seeing and cannot occur simultaneously with design seeing is false, as naturalistic pictures elicit twofold experiences of design and depicted scene - "Trompe l'oeil" requires not just division of seeing-in from design seeing but also from surface seeing - In pseudo-twofold seeing-in, design-like features (e.g. subjective contours) are seen that actually depend on seeing the depicted object, so are not genuine design properties - "Actualist" pictures like Jasper Johns' targets may depict just what they are, allowing illusionistic seeing-in to be doubled with design seeing - Most pictures exhibit a mix of illusionistic, naturalistic, twofold, and pseudo-twofold seeing-in for different visible properties Recognition and Recruitment - Seeing X in a picture, even if not phenomenally identical to seeing X face-to-face, involves recognizing X by applying a visual concept of X, an ability to identify X under different conditions - "Picture makers use the resources of the medium—a flat surface that can be marked and coloured—to extend and elaborate recognition ... not to show the look of the world as previously known, but to extend the thread of recognition" (Podro) - Solving the "puzzle of mimesis" requires explaining how seeing-in both resembles and differs from face-to-face seeing by involving recognition of objects under expanded conditions 2\. The 'Air' of Pictures Conceptions and Cases - Expression theory associates expression in art with an artist's act of making the work, not necessarily with emotions - Leonardo influentially treated figure expression as the depiction of figures' "passions of the mind" via their facial and bodily movements, which narrative can make intelligible as intentional action - Later theorists emphasized scene expression, the expressiveness of an entire depicted scene not attributable to any depicted figure, especially through use of color - Expression in abstract art is design expression attributable to a picture's composition not anything depicted - Any given picture may combine figure, scene, and design expression in complex ways The Missing Person Problem - If Zombies Cannot Smile - Personalism attributes scene-expressed emotions to a picture's actual or implied creator, but states involved in creation may conflict with expressed emotions - Actual intentional expressions like a doodle's happy face show depicting an expression does not require the creator to feel the emotion - Hypothetical personalism attributes scene-expressed emotions to an implied persona in the picture, but this seems trivial without the explanatory power or additional implications the device has for understanding pure music - Arousalism constitutes pictorial expression partly through the emotions a picture arouses in viewers, but the same emotion aroused by different expressions cannot comprise their differences in expressive content - If Dogs Can Smile - Doggy "smiles" and the like show expressive behaviors are not necessarily tied to underlying emotions - A contour theory can model natural and pictorial expression as configurations having, in context, the function of indicating emotions, regardless of whether they are caused by or attributed to actual emotions Seeing Expressions - Seeing a figure or scene expressing an emotion in a picture is an experience as of an expressive configuration which satisfies the "connection condition" insofar as the configuration is seen as having the function of indicating the emotion - It is an open question whether expressive content not already represented in face-to-face experience can enter into seeing-in, pending a theory of visual content Arousal and Evaluation - Contra normative arousalism, evoking an emotion is not always an aesthetic merit in a picture and may sometimes be an aesthetic flaw 3\. Good Looking How Good, Good How - Evaluating a picture as a picture means evaluating it as a vehicle for seeing-in, either directly or by implication - Super-essentialism and exclusivism fail to show only formal features are relevant to aesthetic evaluation of pictures as pictures - Lessing's strong mimeticism, on which aesthetic merits of pictures track merits of depicted scenes, ignores the aesthetic relevance of picture's designs Aesthetic Evaluation - Aesthetic Evaluation as Art Evaluation - Defining aesthetic evaluation as evaluation of works as art reduces it to a subset of art evaluation, but many non-art items receive aesthetic evaluation - Apparent non-aesthetic art evaluations may be excluded by insisting they are really aesthetic, but this imperils any claim of interaction between the two - Evaluation and Value - Defining aesthetic evaluations as attributions of aesthetic value requires but lacks an informative account of distinctively aesthetic merits/demerits - Sibleyan accounts distinguish "substantive" aesthetic evaluations employing thick evaluative concepts from verdictive ones employing thin evaluative concepts - Using substantive aesthetic concepts' implications of verdictive ones to define the former as aesthetic fails without an independent account of the thin aesthetic concepts in verdictive judgments - Evaluation and Experience - Aesthetic empiricism ties the aesthetic value of works to the intrinsic value of the experiences they afford, but a work's aesthetic value may be response-dependent without being response-determined Experiential Internalism - An internalist conjecture: an evaluation of P as F is aesthetic iff, were it accurate, (1) P's being F would be a merit/demerit in it, (2) an experience as of P as F by a suitable observer is partly constitutive of this, and (3) the evaluation is identical to or warranted by this experience - This captures the tie between aesthetic evaluation and experience without reducing the former to the latter or implying all aesthetically relevant experiential states are intrinsically valuable - It allows but does not require that aesthetic value is subjective or response-dependent rather than objective or response-independent - It is consistent with but does not entail aesthetic empiricism or imply an aesthetic/non-aesthetic distinction among experiential states themselves Not the Whole Aesthetic Enchilada - The conjecture does not disambiguate all uses of 'aesthetic', decide all debates about aesthetic value/experience/properties, or define key aesthetic concepts, but provides a framework for further research A Puzzle Reprised - Formalism - Strong formalism, restricting aesthetically relevant features of pictures to non-depicting ones, fails as pictures are essentially vehicles for seeing-in - Moderate formalism, allowing formal features both of picture designs and depicted scenes to be aesthetically relevant, still arbitrarily ignores the aesthetic relevance of many depicted features - Weakest formalism, which simply denies any systematic dependence of a picture's aesthetic value on the value of face-to-face experience of its subject, ignores interactions between design and depicted scene within twofold seeing-in - Mimetic Merit - Pictures are aesthetically valuable as pictures insofar as they are valuable as vehicles for the kinds of seeing-in they elicit - The conjecture explains direct and indirect dependence of a picture's aesthetic value on the value of seeing-in it affords 4\. Drawing Lessons Cognitivism - "Cognitivism" names the thesis that some aesthetic evaluations of pictures imply or are implied by some cognitive ones - Radical cognitivism identifies aesthetic with cognitive evaluation, autonomism denies any non-accidental coincidence of cognitive and aesthetic merits, while moderate cognitivism allows some of each to imply the other Knowing Pictures - "Knowledge-in" a picture is knowledge conveyed by a picture's content, as opposed to knowledge-about the picture itself as an object or knowledge-through it about its creator and context - Pictures that warrant knowledge-in claims or enable knowledge-in can have cognitive merits as knowledge sources Knowing in, Through, and About - Pictures afford "knowledge-about" their own properties, "knowledge-through" them about their creators and contexts of creation, and "knowledge-in" them of truths they convey - Pictures convey "knowledge-in" insofar as they prompt warranted true beliefs about their depicted subjects Knowledge and Warrant - Whether beliefs derived from pictures can be warranted depends on general norms for warrant (e.g. reliability, justification), not a special skepticism about pictures as knowledge sources Beyond Truth and Warrant - Pictures may have special cognitive value not reducible to their functioning as sources of knowledge VirtuousVision - Pictures can have cognitive merit by promoting intellectually virtuous traits or skills and cognitive demerit by reinforcing intellectual vice Fine Observation - Pictures characteristically elicit and cultivate skills of visual discernment, accurate depiction, and adaptability of visual recognition to new cases Aesthetic Ascent - Pictures have "ground-level" cognitive merit by enabling fine observation, but also "step-up" cognitive merit when seeing them as eliciting fine observation is part of what makes eliciting fine observation their cognitive merit - Pictures of the latter kind are cognitively and aesthetically meritorious because aiding appreciation of what makes for cognitively meritorious seeing is itself an aesthetic merit in them Cognitivist Criticism - Pictures that are cognitively meritorious as "revelatory" or "true to life" may be aesthetically meritorious insofar as these cognitive merits inhere in the qualities of the seeing-in they afford 5\. Moral Vision Content and Evaluation - Pictures can be morally evaluated regarding the consequences of their production and use, like other artifacts - They can also be morally evaluated for their representational contents' fulfilling a cognitive role, as can other representations Mimesis and Moral Vision - Narrative Morality - Stories are apt for moral education because they represent not only sequences of events, but actions of agents and how circumstances appear from those agents' points of view - Pictures may lack such aptness if limited to presenting non-narrative scenes rather than depicting actions - Moral Space - Depicting subjects within a perspectival space enables pictures to depict bodily movements, figure placements, and facial expressions as intentional actions - As physical objects, pictures also relate to viewers' own bodily action possibilities by the real spaces in which the pictures are encountered BeyondMimesis - Moral content in some pictures does not reduce to the moral value of face-to-face experience of their depictedscenes - Illustrations of Dante's Inferno can depict the damned as physically manifesting their vices, teaching moral ideas in distinctively pictorial rather than narrative form Moralism - Moral evaluations of pictures for their content imply aesthetic (de)merit insofar as appreciating their moral content is an aesthetically relevant way of seeing-in them Just Looking - Some feminist critiques allege pictures characteristically invite a "male gaze" that is inherently oppressive to women - "The orthodox account" alleges all pictorial experience replicates the objectifying stance of gazing at women due to shared conventions of depicting/viewing - More moderate "moralist feminism" allows oppressive ways of looking to be invited by some pictures' depictions/designs without holding that the "male gaze" is implicit in pictorial experience per se Degas' Nudes - Degas' bather drawings have been seen by some feminists as complicit in the "male gaze," by others as subverting it by departing from straightforward objectification - On a "moralist" rather than "autonomist" view, such critical debate about the works' relation to oppressive ways of seeing is directly relevant to their aesthetic (de)merits as vehicles for complex/reflective moral vision Afterword </answer>