# the character of cognitive phenomenology
## Metadata
- Author: [[Uriah Kriegel]]
- Full Title: the character of cognitive phenomenology
- Category: #articles
- Summary: insert summary
- My notes:
- Document Tags: [[favorite]]
- Summary: This paper explores the character of cognitive phenomenology, specifically focusing on the phenomenology of making a judgment. It proposes a characterization of cognitive phenomenology through a Ramsey sentence comprised of twenty-three phenomenological platitudes about what it is like to make a judgment. The paper discusses the existence and character of cognitive phenomenology, highlighting arguments from phenomenal contrast and first-person knowability. It also explores the variety of cognitive phenomenology, including different cognitive processes and acts. The paper concludes by discussing the flexibility of Ramsey sentences and presenting several platitudes related to the phenomenology of making a judgment, such as truth-related and epistemic platitudes.
- URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/141121899
- Source File: Inner awareness- the argument from attention by Anna Giustina1 Uriah Kriegel.pdf
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## Highlights
> We are enjoined to contrast the conscious experiences of a French speaker and a non-‐French-‐speaker when they listen to the news in French. The claim is that there is a phenomenal difference between their overall phenomenologies, and that the difference is best accounted for in terms of an element of ‘understanding-experience’ present only in the French speaker’s stream of consciousness. This understanding-‐experience is one kind of cognitive phenomenology. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpgq5x9h5y81by11439w2fy7))
> The second type of argument is from first-person knowability. Here the strategy is to
> argue that the knowledge we have of (some of) our cognitive states is the kind of first-person knowledge characteristic of our phenomenally conscious states. Perhaps the best-known instance of this is what may be called the Goldman-‐Pitt argument (Goldman, 1993; Pitt, 2004). The argument proceeds as follows: 1) It is possible to consciously, introspectively, and non-‐inferentially identify (i.e., to know-‐by-‐acquaintance) one’s conscious occurrent thoughts; 2) This would not be possible if conscious occurrent thoughts did not have a distinctive phenomenal character; therefore, 3) Conscious occurrent thoughts have a distinctive phenomenal character (Pitt, 2004, p. 8). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpgq70nynw4rzfva0n9td7na))
> I am convinced of the existence of cognitive phenomenology by a simple observation, which may be summarized as follows: if there were no cognitive phenomenology, life would be boring—more boring than it actually is, at least. In particular, it would be quite irrational to engage in philosophical reflection if none of it ‘showed up’ in consciousness (surely the accompanying imagery cannot explain how interesting it is to do philosophy). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpgq86x37cfph7y8fcdf19c5))
> cognitive processes, (ii) accomplishments of such processes, in the form cognitive acts, and (iii) products of such process, in the form of cognitive states.5 Here is a representative subset of (ii) and (iii): ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpgqesxn6xkg2vk9efx4888q))
> This is the act of making the judgment that p, say after considering evidence for and against p, doing some reasoning and ‘intellectual exploring’ and finally coming down on the issue of whether p. What I just described is a process, but one whose accomplishment is what I refer to as ‘making a judgment’, and it is this phenomenon, the making of a judgment, that I wish to characterize phenomenologically. If it is possible for judgments to just occur to us (as when it suddenly occurs to me that I have yet to pay this month’s phone bill), making a judgment should be distinguished from that.6 In the latter, the subject acts as an epistemic agent.7 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpgqkj8ek4d4ra4h8gce9a2g))
> Why does Bolzano offer only this informal list of characteristics, as opposed to a
> more rigorous proper definition, of the sort he provides for so many other notions central to his project? In this he seems to me to proceed as mathematicians working in axiomatics typically do, considering that the concepts invoked in a system’s axioms are primitive and can only be grasped intuitively, primarily via appreciation of their interrelations within the set of axioms. This suggests that Bolzano takes the concept of judgment to be primitive: unlike the concept of bachelor, say, it cannot be elucidated by decomposition into conceptual constituents. It can be grasped only intuitively. Still, a list of central characteristics can be used to aid us in intuitively grasping the right concept. It helps zeroing in, so to speak, on that which Bolzano has in mind—it attempts to ensure that we align our acts of intuitive grasping as closely as possible. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpgr1y1aghp6sy74btjs7rc5))
> Given the nature of the exercise, the individual characteristics in Bolzano’s list are not intended to function as severally necessary and conjointly sufficient for the applicability of ‘judgment’. Instead, we might think of Bolzano’s list as a proto-‐Ramsey-sentence (see Ramsey, 1931; Lewis, 1966; 1972). A Ramsey sentence is produced by collecting a large number of ‘platitudes’ about that which one wishes to elucidate, stringing them into a long conjunction, replacing occurrences of the elucidantum with a free variable, and prefixing the whole thing with the existential quantifier. (Importantly, ‘platitude’ here need not mean an obvious or pedestrian statement; it only means a statement about surface features of the elucidantum’s referent.) The result is a complex description which may be satisfied better or worse by different eligible referents of the elucidantum. In Bolzano’s case, we might say that his informal characterization of judgment amounts to the following Ramsey sentence: ‘there is an x, such that x either conforms to the truth or does not, x is real, x is mental, there is a difference between x-‐ing and merely entertaining, …’ and so on. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpgr30btbzhx1w1bkrerncj8))
- Note: Huh?
> Probably the most important phenomenological platitude about making a judgment is that it involves a feeling of taking a stand on the question of the truth or falsity of the content judged. This is what J.L. Cohen (1992, p. 11) calls a ‘credal feeling’: “All credal feelings, whether weak or strong, share the distinctive feature of constituting some kind of orientation on the ‘True or false?’ question.” We may formulate this first platitude as follows:
> 1) Making a judgment that p involves a credal feeling, that is, a feeling of committing to the truth or falsity of p. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpgra1493mw46tmxrbbq3atz))
> Accordingly, the fundamental platitude is connected with another, which relates to Bolzano’s fourth proposition, concerning the difference between judging and merely entertaining. Each of us has first-‐person acquaintance with the experiential difference between the two acts, a difference consisting precisely in the lack of any truth-‐commitment in mere entertaining. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpgrdyg7x4t4ecxjw926rpk1))
> Note that according to the second platitude, judging and merely entertaining can
> share the exact same content. Yet they differ in respect of truth-‐commitment. This suggests that truth-‐commitment cannot be an aspect of the content of judgment; it must be an aspect of the attitude the subject takes toward the content. One could signal the difference by distinguishing (i) presenting p-‐as-‐true and (ii) presenting-‐as-‐true p. My claim is that the credal feeling involved in making a judgment is a feeling of type (ii) rather than (i). We may put this economically as follows:
> 3) Credal feelings are attitudinal phenomenal features of making a judgment. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpgrfeta0rejjxa495jmshpb))
> Either a conscious act exhibits the additional attitudinal phenomenal feature of presenting-‐as-‐true or it does not, and iff it does is it a judgment. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpgrggqby1vdnb9stfb771ss))
> Perhaps the most salient epistemic platitude about making a judgment is that it feels rationally compelled. Horgan and Timmons write that making a judgment is ‘experienced as grounded in considerations that serve as sufficient reasons for the [judgment] in question’ (Horgan & Timmons 2007, p. 216). This is what I call the feeling of rational compulsion:
> 7) Making the judgment that p involves a feeling of being rationally compelled to do so. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpgrpxx16xdedfjfvdptr7w2))
> mental states: a judgment with the content <p> and a confidence state with the content <my judgment that p is very likely true>. The judgment is characterized by absoluteness, the confidence by gradation.
> To capture this complex picture, we must cite various platitudes, the first of which is:
> 13) Making the judgment that p involves a feeling of coming down on the question of whether p.15
> Next we must capture:
> 14) There is a feeling of absoluteness about the coming-‐down aspect of making the judgment that p. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpgs1y7vevd4z6pctpb41y66))
> Even if my degree of confidence in my judgment that Spain will win the next World Cup is in fact rationally compelled by the evidence, it is not clear that its being rationally compelled by the evidence shows up in the phenomenology of making that judgment.17 Still, we may wish to formulate a cautious version of this platitude, and consider it a fairly marginal one: ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hph9qyn7hzmbah5nz63z4rnd))
> 20) Making a judgment always involves the feeling of mobilizing a concept.
> This could give way to a more precise platitude if a phenomenological analysis of the ‘feeling of concept-‐mobilization’ were forthcoming. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpgsd1wzqsn3dr3q2rz8rpyv))
> Finally, we may comment on the experienced temporal dimension of making a
> judgment. It is noteworthy that the process leading up to the making of a judgment may vary in duration, but that the judgment-‐making itself seems to lack any duration. Still, two views are possible here. One is that making a judgment feels completely duration-‐less—it is instantaneous. The other is that making a judgment has an extremely short duration— never longer than the so-‐called specious present (generally believed to last 2–3 seconds). My own sense is that making a judgment typically fits the former model but occasionally (perhaps rarely) fits the latter.20 We may put this as follows:
> 23) At least typically, making the judgment that p feels instantaneous. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpgsh6nrfa85md3pzb2ca386))
> In constructing a Ramsey sentence out of the above platitudes, we can proceed in one of two ways: (i) letting the variable replace ‘phenomenology of making a judgment’, with the rest of each platitude usually containing no phenomenological terms; (ii) letting the variable replace ‘making a judgment’, with the rest of each platitude always containing at least one phenomenological term. We may say that (i) offers a characterization of the phenomenology of making a judgment, while (ii) offers a phenomenological characterization of making a judgment. As far as I can see, there is no substantive difference here—these are two different techniques for producing essentially the same description of the same phenomenon. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpgsjxt3dcf6p7jbpvtj3kvt))