# Cognitive Phenomenology (ch.1 The Varieties of Consciousness)  ## Metadata - Author: [[Uriah Kriegel]] - Full Title: Cognitive Phenomenology (ch.1 The Varieties of Consciousness) - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: The text argues that there is a unique cognitive phenomenology that is distinct from sensory, emotional, and conative experiences. It claims that cognitive states have a property of "presenting-as-true" that cannot be reduced to other types of phenomenology. A thought experiment supports the idea that this cognitive phenomenology is irreducible and essential for understanding conscious cognition. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/224964171 - Source File: The Varieties of Consciousness by Uriah Kriegel .pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > Imagine that, due to some cerebral malfunction, a person is born blindsighted. She is incapable of any visual perception, and in addition, incapable of visual *imagery*. She is, in Horgan’s (2011) phrase, a *partial zombie*—specifically, a *visual zombie*. At the same time, the underlying visual machinery is sufficiently preserved that *some* visual information processing survives. How much? Here I need the individual reader’s cooperation: please accord this person as much visual processing power as you can consistently with imagining her lacking any visual phenomenology. Some philosophers seem able to imagine a person without visual experience but with *the same* visual processing power as you and me—a person whose visual states are functionally indistinguishable from yours and mine but lacking in visual phenomenology. Most philosophers are unable to imagine this, but are able to imagine the person having considerably more visual information processing than actual blindsight patients. Please conceive of a person without visual phenomenology but with as much visual processing power as you feel comfortable according them. In every other respect, imagine this person is just like you and me. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j9xh8rpwc2pjf318pavnxake)) > she spends her days formulating various mathematical problems and attempting to solve them. When the solution is too cumbersome for short-term memory to sustain, the exercise is frustrated; but Zoe is good at recognizing that she is unlikely to solve this or that problem and moving on to others. This is not to say that Zoe gives up easily. Often she struggles to find the solution of some problem—she feels stuck, if you will. But sometimes a nice thing happens next: suddenly “the coin drops” and she can *see*, so to speak, how the solution must go. Often on those occasions, a sudden intellectual gestalt shift makes Zoe realize what the missing element is, which results in a sort of affectively neu- tral upheaval of thought—a greater vivacity in her thinking ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j9xhd1ytnkq3ckatypr8nmqp)) > this life is exhausted entirely by intel- lectual or *cognitive* activities: thinking, considering, judging, realizing, intuiting, remembering, and so on. Importantly, they do *not* involve phenomenal experi- ences of satisfaction or frustration, though *some* underlying satisfaction- and frustration-characteristic processing does take place. Indeed, we may suppose that enough such processing takes place to produce the motivational impetus, at a purely functional (unfelt) level, to trigger later rounds of intellectual activity. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j9xhey0xma53c6p8ekh6dq6p)) - Note: this is supposed to make it the equivalent of blindsight right? > We can appreciate the explanatory gap here by recalling the more specific construal of the explanatory gap from §3. Imagine that an ideal epistemic agent constructs a perfect computer simulation of Zoe’s reasoning. This does not seem to capture, for example, the different levels of alertness or vivacity characterizing Zoe’s different episodes of realizing how some proof must go. The computer simulation *functionalizes* the relevant episodes, but appears to leave something out. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j9xk5hmgxerd2d650erfbf0t)) > It is very natural to describe such features of Zoe’s mental life in terms of *phenomenal intensity*: the realization is *experienced more vividly* than the more mundane goings-on in Zoe’s stream of consciousness. This phenomenal inten- sity, or vivacity, or alertness, and the variation therein within Zoe’s stream of consciousness, represent an interesting commonality with perceptual experi- ence, where phenomenal vivacity often varies independently of the physical properties of the perceptual stimulus (for example, independently of brightness in color experience). I can look at a red surface in a sleepy state of mind and experience its redness with one level of intensity, and a few moments later look at it again in a much more alert state of mind, perhaps after a shot of espresso or a bite of raw chocolate, and experience the same redness with different > phenomenal intensity—yet as equally *bright*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j9xkbd4b1dds1bh772hd7cmd)) > Another apparent commonality is naturally described in terms of what Chudnoff (2011b) calls *presentational phenomenology*. When the “coin drops,” and Zoe can *see*, as it were, how a proof must go, the way forward with the proof is suddenly present to her mind in much the same way that the aroma of freshly brewed coffee is present to the mind when one has olfactory experience of it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j9xkdt987bvejjsa0q8zydrh)) > They *seem*, that is, to evade func- tionalizability. To be sure, they may be ultimately functionalizable. Nonetheless, there is a *rationally warranted appearance* of non-functionalizability here. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j9xkmtspb1q56nfyfr6n3m9y)) > Crucially, given that Zoe lacks any sensory, algedonic, and emotional phe- nomenology, we cannot understand the relevant (appearance of) explanatory gap as pertaining merely to the accidental accompaniments of cognition. For the thought-experiment is set up so that *there are no accompaniments*. In a way, this is the whole point of the thought-experiment. So the phenomenology indicated by the explanatory-gap-able episode of realization must be an irreducible, *sui generis* cognitive phenomenology. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j9xm0sr5tg1nnn9s43c7dtmf)) > First, we claim that Zoe’s relevant episode of suddenly realizing that some mathemati- cal proposition *p* is true qualifies as cognitive (on the grounds that it nonsenso- rily represents-as-true). Secondly, we claim that it qualifies as phenomenal (on the grounds that there is a warranted appearance of an explanatory gap between the property of undergoing it and physical properties). Thirdly, we claim that, by the nature of the thought-experiment, it is irreducible to sensory, algedonic, and emotional phenomenology (since Zoe has none of those). We conclude that there is a cognitive-phenomenal property irreducible to sensory, algedonic, and emotional phenomenology. More fully: ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j9xm1js4p4sak9mscrq8fjnb)) > One option is to adduce certain phenomenal contrasts, with the goal not of arguing for the existence of the relevant primitive quality, but of bringing into sharper introspective relief its special character (see Koksvik 2011). We can certainly use this device to illuminate the feature of nonsensory presenting-as- true. The presenting-as-true component can be appreciated when we contrast what it is like to judge that the table is brown (say) with what it is like to merely *entertain* that the table is brown. The nonsensory component can be appreciated when we contrast what it is like to judge that the Eiffel Tower is tall with what it is like to *see* that the Eiffel Tower is tall. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j9xmc5f7bex8vpm5w5ew8gfj)) > There may also be no phenomenal signature of cognition. There may be no nat- ural category of cognitive states, or it may not have sharp boundaries, or there may not be any phenomenal feature common and peculiar to conscious occurrences of such a category. None of this would settle the question of cognitive phenomenol- ogy. For there to be primitive cognitive phenomenology, only the following needs to hold: there is a phenomenal property P, such that (i) P is instantiated by (con- scious tokens of) *some* mental state that unquestionably belongs on the above list, > (ii) no mental state that does not belong on the list instantiates P, and (iii) P is irre- ducible to any other phenomenal properties. Note that this does not require that P be instantiated by (conscious tokens of) *all* mental states belonging on the list. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j9vffz6657fc135p99vfaerh))