#pinned # Presentation Plan: Dancing with Qualia. ## 1. Introduction 1. How do we make sense of [[the idea]] of aesthetically appreciating consciousness? - Experience is often talked about in aesthetics but most often as a *means* by which a subject aesthetically appreciates something out there in the world, rather than an object in its own right - There are of course exceptions to this. - But we have at least some prime facia reason for thinking that consciousness is something we aesthetically appreciate. - Nobody would want to be a philosophical zombie, and this is as least suggestive of [[the idea]] that our appreciation of consciousness is [[more than]] merely practical - I know this is far from watertight, but perhaps it inflates intuitions enough so that you can at least see that they are intuitive. > [!Question] > - [[The question becomes]]: ‘how can we aesthetically appreciate [[conscious experience]]?’ ## 2. Transparent/Opaque Experience - [[Traditional Views]] - More recently [[the idea]] that there can be different levels of opacity in different sorts of conscious experiences ([[not just]] perceptual but cognitive). - some illustrative quotes go here - [and some more description?] – Levels of transparency suggests that when mindful we experience both vehicle and content properties, - it would also seem that these two sorts of properties have to be intwined in some way. - if properties are experienced as intwined in some way, then this might allow for what I am going to call ‘[[design appreciation]]’ –[is this what lopes would call it?] - let’s leave [[the question]] of twofold [[mental states]] for a moment and explain what Lopes’ [[design appreciation]] is. ## 3. Lopes on Design Seeing ### Key Distinction: Design Seeing vs. Seeing-In - Design seeing: awareness of a picture's intrinsic [[vehicle properties]] (properties of the marked surface) - Seeing-in: awareness of [[the objects]] and properties represented by the picture (the depicted scene) EXAMPLE ## Design Seeing as Necessary for Pictorial Experience - For Lopes, design seeing is a necessary component of pictorial experience and [[aesthetic appreciation]] of pictures - Not just an optional add-on or a distraction from seeing-in - Seeing a picture as a picture (rather than as a mere surface or a pure illusion) requires being aware of both its design properties and its depicted content ## Contrast with Illusionistic Theories (e.g., Gombrich) - Illusionism holds that the aim of pictorial representation is to create an experience phenomenally indistinguishable from seeing the depicted scene in person - On this view, awareness of design is a kind of failure or breakdown in illusion - Lopes argues that this fails to capture key features of typical pictorial experience and appreciation ## Contrast with Pure Seeing-In Theory - A pure seeing-in theory holds that only the depicted content matters for understanding pictures qua pictures - Neglects the role of medium-specific design features in shaping pictorial content and enabling different styles of depiction - Risks treating pictures as mere vehicles for content rather than appreciable artifacts in their own right ## Recognizing Design as Design - For Lopes, recognizing design as design is not just a matter of being aware of the picture's intrinsic properties, but of being aware of how those properties contribute to the experience of seeing-in - Design features are experienced as "recruited" into the depicted scene, shaping how it appears - This is key to the "twofold" experience Lopes highlights: simultaneously being aware of the designs as designs (surface properties) and as contributing to the experience of the depicted scene ## Pictorial Competence and Perceptual Learning - Recognizing design in this way requires a kind of pictorial competence or fluency - Ability to pick up on the specific techniques and methods of depiction employed, often relative to background knowledge of pictorial styles and conventions - Development of design seeing involves a kind of perceptual learning, attuning to the relation between surface properties and depicted content ## Diversity of Design/Seeing-In Relations - Lopes emphasizes the diversity of possible relations between design seeing and seeing-in across different pictures and pictorial styles - Design can be highly salient (think Picasso) or "disappear" into vivid illusionistic content (trompe l'oeil) - Many cases lie somewhere in between, with design and content both present in experience but integrated to varying degrees - No single model of the design/content relation fits all cases; each rewards a specific kind of pictorial attention and appreciation ## Design Seeing and Artistic Appreciation - Lopes connects design seeing to artistic appreciation and the recognition of pictures as artifacts - Seeing a picture as a picture means not just seeing a depicted scene in it, but seeing how that scene has been intentionally crafted by the artist's manipulation of the pictorial surface - Requires fluency in discerning the specific techniques and choices behind the picture's mode of depiction - Design seeing thus underwrites a kind of communication between artist and viewer, mediated by the mutual recognition of the picture as an intentionally designed artifact ## The Possibility of an Analog of Design Seeing Appreciation for Conscious Experience: A Detailed Analytical Argument ### The Key Idea - Just as aesthetic appreciation of pictures involves "design seeing" that appreciates how vehicle properties enable and shape depicted scenes... - Aesthetic appreciation of consciousness might involve an analogous appreciation of how intrinsic properties of consciousness enable and shape representational content ### The Notion of Twofoldness - For pictures, twofoldness is simultaneous awareness of design properties and depicted content - For consciousness, twofoldness would be simultaneous awareness of intrinsic vehicle properties (qualia, felt qualities, etc.) and representational content - Mindfulness texts suggest such twofold awareness is possible for consciousness - Enabling breakdown of perceptual gestalts into component features, revealing constructive processes - Enabling awareness of vehicle properties like intrinsic feel of emotions/sensations, not just objects/contents ### Conscious Twofoldness - Conscious experiences may exhibit a kind of twofoldness analogous to that of pictures - Simultaneously awareness of intrinsic qualitative properties (qualia, subjective feels) and representational contents - This contrasts with the common intuition of consciousness as transparent - In normal experience we seem to attend only to represented objects/properties, not intrinsic qualities of experiences themselves ### Mindfulness and the Breakdown of Transparency - Certain contexts like mindfulness meditation may allow for twofold awareness of both content and experiential qualities - Anger example: By taking detached, mindful stance, one can become aware of anger as an experience in its own right with its own qualities, not just a representation of an angering situation - Mindfulness enables "stepping back" from complete absorption in contents to observe qualities and dynamics of experiences themselves ### The Shaping of Content by Vehicle Properties - For analogy to design seeing to hold, vehicle properties must actively shape/enable representational contents, not just be "noise" - Possible ways this could work: - Perceptual experiences: Basic sensations as "building blocks" actively synthesized into coherent representational contents, shaping/constraining those contents - Emotions: Specific combination of bodily feelings, thoughts, impulses, etc. giving rise to emotion's overall intentional content (e.g. representing something as fearsome) - General idea: Decomposing experiences into "vehicle" components allows appreciation of how those components compose into representational contents, analogous to how design features compose into depicted scenes ### The Skill of Twofold Experiential Awareness - Stepping back from transparency to appreciate underlying experiential structures is a cultivated meta-cognitive skill - Involves re-training attention and potentially re-shaping experiences themselves - Hence mindfulness emphasis on disciplined practice - Analogous to skill involved in design seeing for pictures ### Aesthetic Appreciation and "Consciousness Artistry" - While acknowledging dis-analogy of consciousness not being external artifact, a more compositional awareness of consciousness could ground a kind of "aesthetic" appreciation - Not appreciation of artistic design, but appreciation of intrinsic richness and structure of experiences, how that structure supports and shapes contents - Potentially even a kind of "consciousness artistry" in using meta-cognitive skill to intentionally shape one's overall state of consciousness - Not exactly equivalent to external production of artifacts, but an interesting parallel ### Open Questions and Further Directions - The exact nature of vehicle-content shaping in different types of conscious states - The limits and possibilities of meta-cognitive reshaping of consciousness - The phenomenology of twofold experiential awareness and how it develops through practice - Potential applications of "consciousness artistry" for emotional regulation, creativity, self-understanding, etc. </answer> ### Consciousness Exhibiting Opacity/Twofoldness Analogous to Pictures - If above claims are right, consciousness can exhibit opacity/twofoldness broadly analogous to pictures - Not pure transparency where we only see through to contents, but awareness encompassing both contents and enabling vehicles/processes - Question is whether this twofold awareness could be a source of aesthetic appreciation analogous to design seeing appreciation ### Argument 1: Appreciating How Vehicle Properties Shape and Enable Contents - Aesthetic appreciation of pictures involves appreciating how design properties intentionally shape and enable depicted contents - Seeing how artist has worked with medium to achieve depictive effect - Analogously, aesthetic appreciation of consciousness could involve appreciating how vehicle properties shape and enable representational contents - Seeing how "medium" of consciousness (neural underpinnings, cognitive architecture, phenomenal field) enables and constrains contents - In both cases, appreciating relation between medium and content, not just content alone ### Argument 2: Developing Medium-Sensitivity as a Skill - Developing appreciation of medium-content relations is a skill analogous to pictorial fluency in design seeing - For pictures, design appreciation is learned ability to discern how pictures are put together to achieve depictive effects - For consciousness, would be meta-cognitive skill of discerning how contents arise from interactions of more basic elements (sensations, neural processes, etc.) - In both cases, fluency as "connoisseurship" of medium-content relations and how they can be skillfully manipulated ### Key Difference: Consciousness as Non-Designed Phenomenon - Pictures are artifacts designed for depictive effects, consciousness is not (always) intentionally designed - So appreciation of vehicle-content relations in consciousness wouldn't be appreciation of artistic/communicative intentions in same way ### Possible Response: Appreciating Processes Shaping Consciousness as Aesthetically Relevant - Even if processes shaping consciousness are not intentionally designed, they may still be appreciable for how they give rise to "contents" of experience - Analogous to aesthetic appreciation of natural phenomena for qualitative/structural features without treating them as artifacts - Mindfulness notion of "opacifying" consciousness to reveal constructive processes could be seen as appreciating those processes in aesthetic mode Here is my attempt to address your requests, following the specified format: 1. Detailed description of how perceptual gestalts might figure in a conscious analog to twofoldness, with examples: <answer> Perceptual gestalts could play a key role in conscious twofoldness by allowing for a shift between a holistic, content-focused mode of awareness and a more deconstructive, vehicle-focused mode of awareness. Consider the example of a meditator noticing an occurrent thought. In ordinary consciousness, the thought would be experienced transparently, with awareness focused on the content of the thought (what it is about, what it means, etc.). The thought is given as a coherent, meaningful whole - a gestalt. However, suppose the meditator applies a mindful, deconstructive form of attention to the thought. They might start to notice how the thought is actually composed of a sequence of more basic mental phenomena - inner images, inner speech fragments, bodily sensations, felt senses of meaning, etc. These components co-occur in a specific pattern that gives rise to the holistic "thought gestalt", but they can also be experienced individually. By shifting between the gestalt mode and the deconstructive mode, the meditator can appreciate the twofold nature of the thought - how it appears as a meaningful content, but is actually enabled by an underlying vehicle structure. They can observe how different configurations of the vehicle components give rise to different contents. As another example, consider the classic "aspect shift" experience of observing an ambiguous figure, like the Necker cube or the duck-rabbit. Ordinarily, we perceive such figures in terms of coherent, unified gestalts - we see "the cube" or "the duck". The content of the experience is the holistic object. However, by exerting a degree of voluntary control over our attention, we can induce a kind of gestalt shift. We can start to "see the figure as" something else, flipping between different gestalts (e.g. cube vs. two overlaid rectangles, duck vs. rabbit). In doing so, we gain a meta-cognitive appreciation of how the same underlying sensory vehicle (the lines on the page) can support different holistic contents depending on how it's perceptually organized. By practicing this kind of gestalt shifting, we can develop a more general twofold awareness of how our perceptual contents are always enabled by underlying vehicles, even if those vehicles are usually transparent to us. We start to appreciate the active, compositional nature of perception, and how different modes of organization of the perceptual field give rise to different experienced contents. In both the thought example and the ambiguous figure example, there's a key interplay between holistic content-awareness and deconstructive vehicle-awareness. Gestalt shifts and gestalt decomposition allow us to appreciate the twofold, "pictorial" nature of consciousness - how vehicles and contents are distinct but interdependent. Of course, the analogy with pictorial twofoldness has limits. Perceptual gestalts are more dynamic and multi-modal than static pictorial designs, and their relation to "represented" contents is more intimate and complex. But the examples suggest how a kind of conscious design stance can emerge from practices of attentional refocusing and phenomenological deconstruction. </answer> ## Expanded Explanation of Design Seeing and Its Conscious Analog ### Key Features of Pictorial Design Seeing - Twofold awareness of vehicle properties (brushstrokes, colors, lines, etc.) and represented content (depicted scene) - Not just awareness of vehicle properties in isolation, but of how they compose into and enable holistic represented content - Appreciation of relation between design and content, vehicle and meaning ### Illustrative Examples of Conscious "Design Seeing" 1. Meditator deconstructing a thought: - By attending to more basic components of thought (images, speech fragments, felt senses), meditator can appreciate how those components are "designed" to give rise to thought as meaningful whole - Can observe dependencies between content and vehicle, and explore how variations in vehicle composition affect content 2. Aspect shifts in ambiguous figures: - By voluntarily shifting gestalts, perceiver can directly appreciate how same vehicle (lines of figure) can be organized differently to yield different holistic contents (duck vs. rabbit) - Striking demonstration of "compositional" nature of perceptual content, and how content depends on vehicle organization ### Analogies and Dis-Analogies - Key analogy: Relational awareness of how vehicle features enable and shape representational contents - Just as artist uses design features to enable and shape depicted scenes, minds use organizational principles to enable and shape contents of consciousness from more basic experiential vehicles - Skill analogy: Conscious design appreciation, like pictorial design appreciation, requires training attention to move fluidly between content and vehicle, gestalt and component - Learning to "see through" experiential contents to composing vehicles, just as skilled picture viewer learns to see through depicted scenes to composing designs - Content/vehicle difference: Vehicles of consciousness (in these examples) seem to be other conscious states, not external physical marks; contents of consciousness often more abstract and complex than depicted scenes of pictures - Conscious design stance may be analogous to, rather than identical with, pictorial design stance ### Grounding the Idea of Conscious Design Seeing - Examples of gestalt shifting and decomposition illustrate concretely how we can take up a "design stance" on our own experiences - Appreciate twofold, compositional nature of consciousness in a way both similar to and interestingly different from appreciation of twofold, compositional nature of pictures - Powerful way to ground idea of conscious analog to pictorial design seeing, while acknowledging key differences between the domains </answer> ### Aesthetic Appreciation of Experience –Plans, scraps and Brainstorms ## 1. Introduction ### A. The idea of aesthetically appreciating consciousness - Intuitively, we think of consciousness as worthy of aesthetic appreciation - The phenomenal character of experience seems valuable in itself, beyond its practical or epistemic role - We would not want to be turned into philosophical zombies, even if they are functional duplicates, suggesting we value consciousness for its own sake - If consciousness is valuable for its own sake, this suggests our appreciation of it is aesthetic rather than merely pragmatic ### B. The question of how we can aesthetically appreciate consciousness - If we can aesthetically appreciate conscious experience, we need to explain how we do this - Typically, we aesthetically appreciate things in the world via perception - It is not obvious that this perceptual model can be straightforwardly applied to the appreciation of consciousness itself - This leads to the question: How can we aesthetically appreciate consciousness? - 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 - However, this paper will focus on a specific approach based on the interplay of transparency/opacity and agency ### C. The role of transparency/opacity and agency in this appreciation - The degree of transparency/opacity of conscious states may affect how we can appreciate them aesthetically - Our ability to actively modulate the transparency/opacity of our experience through attentional control may also be relevant - While the appreciation of consciousness could potentially be modeled on various approaches, including those derived from environmental aesthetics, this paper will pursue a specific approach focusing on the interplay of transparency/opacity and agency ### D. Main Aim/Structure - The central aim of this paper is to argue that the aesthetic appreciation of consciousness involves an interplay of passive opacity and active "opacification" through attentional control - The paper will first introduce key aspects of Metzinger's theory of transparency/opacity and its relevance to the aesthetic dimension of consciousness - It will then explore the role of attention in appreciating vehicle properties and the agentive dimension of aesthetic experience - The interplay of passive opacity and active opacification will be examined, leading to a model of the aesthetic appreciation of consciousness that involves both passive and active elements - Finally, broader implications and future directions for this approach will be considered, situating it within the wider context of issues in philosophy of mind and aesthetics ## 2. Degrees of Opacity in Conscious Experience ### 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 - Harman (1990): In perceptual experience, we are not aware of the "mental paint" by which the experience represents the world, only the world itself ### B. Key aspects of Metzinger's theory 1. Transparency and opacity come in degrees based on attention - Definition: "For every phenomenal state, the degree of phenomenal transparency is inversely proportional to the introspective degree of attentional availability of earlier processing stages." (p. 356) - Transparency results from the attentional unavailability of earlier processing stages, while opacity results from increased attentional availability of these stages - Example: In consciously experienced thoughts, such as inner speech, the degree of transparency depends on how much attention is allocated to the representational process itself (the "verbal" quality of the thoughts) vs. the represented content (what the thoughts are about) 2. Rejection of a clear vehicle/content distinction - Traditional view: Transparency is explained by access to content but not vehicle properties - However, Metzinger rejects a sharp vehicle/content distinction: "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." (p. 358) - He argues that the traditional view is phenomenologically inadequate: "Transparency is not a necessary condition for phenomenality, because opaque forms of phenomenal content do exist. [...] Transparency is a gradual property of phenomenal states, because the distribution of transparency/opacity in phenomenal space possesses variance." (p. 359) - On the attention-based view, the distinction between vehicle and content becomes blurred, as both are aspects of an ongoing representational process that can be more or less available to attention - Example: In inner speech, as attention is shifted towards the representational process, the "vehicular" properties (the auditory-verbal qualities) become increasingly salient, blurring the line between vehicle and content 3. Transparency and opacity are not limited to perceptual states - Traditional views focus on transparency in perceptual states, but Metzinger extends the transparency/opacity framework to non-perceptual states - Metzinger: "Opaque phenomenal representations do exist as well. Here are some preliminary examples of opaque state-classes: Most notably consciously experienced thoughts [...]" (p. 360) - Example: Just as perceptual states can vary in transparency/opacity based on attentional allocation, so can cognitive states like inner speech or abstract reasoning ### C. The aesthetic significance of opacity 1. Opacity as revealing the representational process behind conscious contents 2. Appreciating the interplay of vehicle and content ## 3. Attention and the Appreciation of Vehicle Properties ### A. Metzinger's attentional model and vehicle properties 1. Attention as providing access to earlier processing stages 2. Attending to the "construction process" underlying conscious experience ### B. Examples of appreciating vehicle properties through attention 1. Perceptual case: attending to the "graininess" of blurry vision, the "flickering" of afterimages 2. Cognitive case: attending to the "verbal" quality of inner speech, the "pictorial" nature of mental imagery ### C. Comparison to the aesthetic appreciation of pictures 1. Appreciating how the material properties of the medium (brushstrokes, pixels) realize the depicted content 2. Attention as a means of "seeing through" the depicted content to the underlying medium ### D. The aesthetic significance of appreciating vehicle properties 1. Experiencing the "artifactual" nature of consciousness 2. Appreciating the creative process of conscious representation ## 4. The Agentive Dimension of Aesthetic Appreciation ### A. Passive vs. active appreciation of conscious vehicles 1. Passive cases: blurriness, afterimages, spontaneous imagery 2. Active cases: controlled attention, mental rotation, etc. ### B. Attention as a mechanism of active "opacification" 1. Metzinger's attentional model of transparency 2. Allocating attention as a form of "mental action" ### C. The aesthetic significance of agentive opacification 1. Appreciating our role in shaping the character of our experience 2. The sense of "mental agency" in modulating transparency/opacity ## 5. The Interplay of Opacity and Agency ### A. Passive opacity as enabling active opacification 1. Opacity "opens the door" to appreciating representational processes 2. Passive cases provide the "material" for active attentional control ### B. Active opacification as enhancing and transforming passive opacity 1. Attention amplifies and sustains opacity, allowing for deeper appreciation 2. Agentive control allows for "playing" with degrees of transparency/opacity ### C. The combined aesthetic effect 1. A multi-layered appreciation of consciousness involving both passive and active elements 2. An appreciation of both the representational "depth" of consciousness and our agentive role in navigating this depth - #thought unless our experience is at least somewhat opaque. Can we aesthetically appreciate consciousness? - #thought When we introspect our conscious experiences are we aware of something like design properties? - "Of course, pictures are objects in the world, too. They have physical properties that vary with their physical composition, size, age, and the like. Among these is a privileged set of visual properties, those by means of which pictures represent their subjects. I shall speak of these properties as making up pictures’ ‘designs’. An incomplete list of pic- torial design properties would include marks, directions, boundaries, contours, shapes, colours, hues, relative contrasts between light and dark, and also textures, such as smoothness of surface or invisibility of brushwork. Design properties are typically laid down in paint, ink, charcoal, or some other substance, on a flat surface. (However, the image of a slide projected on a screen shows that pictorial colours and shapes need not be comprised of any pigmented substance.). " from Understanding Pictures - Others make manifest features of the process of their production, as a Pollock drip painting manifests the direction and force of the artist’s movements, the liquidity and stickiness of the paint, and the effects of gravity.4 Expression and manifestation are species of representation in so far as they draw our attention to features of the world— subjective mental states in one case and processes of making in the other. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hq876339f07w7hxbm2q2p2tm)) from Understanding Pictures - Metzinger describes transparency/opacity in terms of the attentional availability of earlier processing stages see Phenomenal Transparency and Cognitive Self-Reference -What would it be like if all of our mental states, including thoughts, were entirely transparent? - from Metzinger: - *There are, however, examples of sensory opacity, for instance, during extremely short transition phases in bistable phenomena, e.g., if a con- sciously experienced Necker cube switches from one interpretation to the next and back, or during the phenomenon of binocular rivalry (see, e.g., Leopold and Logothetis 1999). * - # Plan? ## 1. Introduction ### A. The idea of aesthetically appreciating consciousness - The aesthetic appreciation of consciousness has been a neglected topic in both philosophical aesthetics and philosophy of mind - Consciousness is often seen as a mere means to appreciating external objects, not as an aesthetic object in its own right - However, the phenomenal character of experience seems inherently valuable and worthy of appreciation, beyond its practical or epistemic roles ### B. The question of how we can aesthetically appreciate consciousness - Explaining how we can aesthetically appreciate consciousness is a significant philosophical challenge - 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) - This paper will focus on an approach based on the interplay of transparency/opacity and agentive attention, drawing on Thomas Metzinger's work ### 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. Key aspects of Metzinger's theory 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 - "Phenomenally opaque representations do exist as well. Here are some preliminary examples of opaque state-classes: Most notably consciously experienced thoughts [...]" (Metzinger, p. 360) 4. Examples illustrating graded transparency/opacity - Perceptual: Necker cube - brief opacity during gestalt shifts may reveal constructive processes - Cognitive: Inner speech - attending to auditory-verbal qualities can make the representational vehicles salient - Emotional: Emotional states fluctuate between transparency and opacity based on attentional focus ### B. Aesthetic implications of Metzinger's view 1. Opacity enables the appreciation of representational structure - Attending to earlier processing stages makes the representational vehicles and dynamics available - Allows for appreciating how the "medium" of experience shapes and constrains the "message" - Analogous to appreciating the design properties of an artwork, not just the depicted content 2. Challenges the perceptual model of aesthetic appreciation - Metzinger's analysis undermines the idea of experience as a transparent window onto content - Shifts focus to the multilevel interplay of representational processes and products - Enables an aesthetics of process, transformation, and realization, not just of static content - "Phenomenally opaque 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." (Metzinger, p. 360) ## 3. The Immersion Challenge ### 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 - ## 1. Introduction ### A. The idea of aesthetically appreciating consciousness - Intuitively, we think of consciousness as worthy of aesthetic appreciation - The phenomenal character of experience seems valuable in itself, beyond its practical or epistemic role - We would not want to be turned into philosophical zombies, even if they are functional duplicates, suggesting we value consciousness for its own sake - If consciousness is valuable for its own sake, this suggests our appreciation of it is aesthetic rather than merely pragmatic ### B. The question of how we can aesthetically appreciate consciousness - If we can aesthetically appreciate conscious experience, we need to explain how we do this - Typically, we aesthetically appreciate things in the world via perception - It is not obvious that this perceptual model can be straightforwardly applied to the appreciation of consciousness itself - This leads to the question: How can we aesthetically appreciate consciousness? - 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 - However, this paper will focus on a specific approach based on the interplay of transparency/opacity and agency ### C. The role of transparency/opacity and agency in this appreciation - The degree of transparency/opacity of conscious states may affect how we can appreciate them aesthetically - Our ability to actively modulate the transparency/opacity of our experience through attentional control may also be relevant - While the appreciation of consciousness could potentially be modeled on various approaches, including those derived from environmental aesthetics, this paper will pursue a specific approach focusing on the interplay of transparency/opacity and agency ### D. Main Aim/Structure - The central aim of this paper is to argue that the aesthetic appreciation of consciousness involves an interplay of passive opacity and active "opacification" through attentional control - The paper will first introduce key aspects of Metzinger's theory of transparency/opacity and its relevance to the aesthetic dimension of consciousness - It will then explore the role of attention in appreciating vehicle properties and the agentive dimension of aesthetic experience - The interplay of passive opacity and active opacification will be examined, leading to a model of the aesthetic appreciation of consciousness that involves both passive and active elements - Finally, broader implications and future directions for this approach will be considered, situating it within the wider context of issues in philosophy of mind and aesthetics ## 2. Degrees of Opacity in Conscious Experience ### 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 - Harman (1990): In perceptual experience, we are not aware of the "mental paint" by which the experience represents the world, only the world itself ### B. Key aspects of Metzinger's theory 1. Transparency and opacity come in degrees based on attention - Definition: "For every phenomenal state, the degree of phenomenal transparency is inversely proportional to the introspective degree of attentional availability of earlier processing stages." (p. 356) - Transparency results from the attentional unavailability of earlier processing stages, while opacity results from increased attentional availability of these stages - Example: In consciously experienced thoughts, such as inner speech, the degree of transparency depends on how much attention is allocated to the representational process itself (the "verbal" quality of the thoughts) vs. the represented content (what the thoughts are about) 2. Rejection of a clear vehicle/content distinction - Traditional view: Transparency is explained by access to content but not vehicle properties - However, Metzinger rejects a sharp vehicle/content distinction: "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." (p. 358) - He argues that the traditional view is phenomenologically inadequate: "Transparency is not a necessary condition for phenomenality, because opaque forms of phenomenal content do exist. [...] Transparency is a gradual property of phenomenal states, because the distribution of transparency/opacity in phenomenal space possesses variance." (p. 359) - On the attention-based view, the distinction between vehicle and content becomes blurred, as both are aspects of an ongoing representational process that can be more or less available to attention - Example: In inner speech, as attention is shifted towards the representational process, the "vehicular" properties (the auditory-verbal qualities) become increasingly salient, blurring the line between vehicle and content 3. Transparency and opacity are not limited to perceptual states - Traditional views focus on transparency in perceptual states, but Metzinger extends the transparency/opacity framework to non-perceptual states - Metzinger: "Opaque phenomenal representations do exist as well. Here are some preliminary examples of opaque state-classes: Most notably consciously experienced thoughts [...]" (p. 360) - Example: Just as perceptual states can vary in transparency/opacity based on attentional allocation, so can cognitive states like inner speech or abstract reasoning ### C. The aesthetic significance of opacity 1. Opacity as revealing the representational process behind conscious contents 2. Appreciating the interplay of vehicle and content ## 3. Attention and the Appreciation of Vehicle Properties ### A. Metzinger's attentional model and vehicle properties 1. Attention as providing access to earlier processing stages 2. Attending to the "construction process" underlying conscious experience ### B. Examples of appreciating vehicle properties through attention 1. Perceptual case: attending to the "graininess" of blurry vision, the "flickering" of afterimages 2. Cognitive case: attending to the "verbal" quality of inner speech, the "pictorial" nature of mental imagery ### C. Comparison to the aesthetic appreciation of pictures 1. Appreciating how the material properties of the medium (brushstrokes, pixels) realize the depicted content 2. Attention as a means of "seeing through" the depicted content to the underlying medium ### D. The aesthetic significance of appreciating vehicle properties 1. Experiencing the "artifactual" nature of consciousness 2. Appreciating the creative process of conscious representation ## 4. The Agentive Dimension of Aesthetic Appreciation ### A. Passive vs. active appreciation of conscious vehicles 1. Passive cases: blurriness, afterimages, spontaneous imagery 2. Active cases: controlled attention, mental rotation, etc. ### B. Attention as a mechanism of active "opacification" 1. Metzinger's attentional model of transparency 2. Allocating attention as a form of "mental action" ### C. The aesthetic significance of agentive opacification 1. Appreciating our role in shaping the character of our experience 2. The sense of "mental agency" in modulating transparency/opacity ## 5. The Interplay of Opacity and Agency ### A. Passive opacity as enabling active opacification 1. Opacity "opens the door" to appreciating representational processes 2. Passive cases provide the "material" for active attentional control ### B. Active opacification as enhancing and transforming passive opacity 1. Attention amplifies and sustains opacity, allowing for deeper appreciation 2. Agentive control allows for "playing" with degrees of transparency/opacity ### C. The combined aesthetic effect 1. A multi-layered appreciation of consciousness involving both passive and active elements 2. An appreciation of both the representational "depth" of consciousness and our agentive role in navigating this depth - #thought unless our experience is at least somewhat opaque. Can we aesthetically appreciate consciousness? - #thought When we introspect our conscious experiences are we aware of something like design properties? - "Of course, pictures are objects in the world, too. They have physical properties that vary with their physical composition, size, age, and the like. Among these is a privileged set of visual properties, those by means of which pictures represent their subjects. I shall speak of these properties as making up pictures’ ‘designs’. An incomplete list of pic- torial design properties would include marks, directions, boundaries, contours, shapes, colours, hues, relative contrasts between light and dark, and also textures, such as smoothness of surface or invisibility of brushwork. Design properties are typically laid down in paint, ink, charcoal, or some other substance, on a flat surface. (However, the image of a slide projected on a screen shows that pictorial colours and shapes need not be comprised of any pigmented substance.). " from Understanding Pictures - Others make manifest features of the process of their production, as a Pollock drip painting manifests the direction and force of the artist’s movements, the liquidity and stickiness of the paint, and the effects of gravity.4 Expression and manifestation are species of representation in so far as they draw our attention to features of the world— subjective mental states in one case and processes of making in the other. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hq876339f07w7hxbm2q2p2tm)) from Understanding Pictures - Metzinger describes transparency/opacity in terms of the attentional availability of earlier processing stages see Phenomenal Transparency and Cognitive Self-Reference -What would it be like if all of our mental states, including thoughts, were entirely transparent? - from Metzinger: - *There are, however, examples of sensory opacity, for instance, during extremely short transition phases in bistable phenomena, e.g., if a con- sciously experienced Necker cube switches from one interpretation to the next and back, or during the phenomenon of binocular rivalry (see, e.g., Leopold and Logothetis 1999). * - ## To Read - MEDITATION AND CONSCIOUSNESS Can We Experience Experience as Broken? By Davies 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 ## 1. Introduction ### A. The idea of aesthetically appreciating consciousness - Intuitively, we think of consciousness as worthy of aesthetic appreciation - The phenomenal character of experience seems valuable in itself, beyond its practical or epistemic role - We would not want to be turned into philosophical zombies, even if they are functional duplicates, suggesting we value consciousness for its own sake - If consciousness is valuable for its own sake, this suggests our appreciation of it is aesthetic rather than merely pragmatic ### B. The question of how we can aesthetically appreciate consciousness - If we can aesthetically appreciate conscious experience, we need to explain how we do this - Typically, we aesthetically appreciate things in the world via perception - It is not obvious that this perceptual model can be straightforwardly applied to the appreciation of consciousness itself - This leads to the question: How can we aesthetically appreciate consciousness? - 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 - However, this paper will focus on a specific approach based on the interplay of transparency/opacity and agency ### C. The role of transparency/opacity and agency in this appreciation - The degree of transparency/opacity of conscious states may affect how we can appreciate them aesthetically - Our ability to actively modulate the transparency/opacity of our experience through attentional control may also be relevant - While the appreciation of consciousness could potentially be modeled on various approaches, including those derived from environmental aesthetics, this paper will pursue a specific approach focusing on the interplay of transparency/opacity and agency ### D. Main Aim/Structure - The central aim of this paper is to argue that the aesthetic appreciation of consciousness involves an interplay of passive opacity and active "opacification" through attentional control - The paper will first introduce key aspects of Metzinger's theory of transparency/opacity and its relevance to the aesthetic dimension of consciousness - It will then explore the role of attention in appreciating vehicle properties and the agentive dimension of aesthetic experience - The interplay of passive opacity and active opacification will be examined, leading to a model of the aesthetic appreciation of consciousness that involves both passive and active elements - Finally, broader implications and future directions for this approach will be considered, situating it within the wider context of issues in philosophy of mind and aesthetics ## 2. Degrees of Opacity in Conscious Experience ### 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 - Harman (1990): In perceptual experience, we are not aware of the "mental paint" by which the experience represents the world, only the world itself ### B. Key aspects of Metzinger's theory 1. Transparency and opacity come in degrees based on attention - Definition: "For every phenomenal state, the degree of phenomenal transparency is inversely proportional to the introspective degree of attentional availability of earlier processing stages." (p. 356) - Transparency results from the attentional unavailability of earlier processing stages, while opacity results from increased attentional availability of these stages - Example: In consciously experienced thoughts, such as inner speech, the degree of transparency depends on how much attention is allocated to the representational process itself (the "verbal" quality of the thoughts) vs. the represented content (what the thoughts are about) 2. Rejection of a clear vehicle/content distinction - Traditional view: Transparency is explained by access to content but not vehicle properties - However, Metzinger rejects a sharp vehicle/content distinction: "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." (p. 358) - He argues that the traditional view is phenomenologically inadequate: "Transparency is not a necessary condition for phenomenality, because opaque forms of phenomenal content do exist. [...] Transparency is a gradual property of phenomenal states, because the distribution of transparency/opacity in phenomenal space possesses variance." (p. 359) - On the attention-based view, the distinction between vehicle and content becomes blurred, as both are aspects of an ongoing representational process that can be more or less available to attention - Example: In inner speech, as attention is shifted towards the representational process, the "vehicular" properties (the auditory-verbal qualities) become increasingly salient, blurring the line between vehicle and content 3. Transparency and opacity are not limited to perceptual states - Traditional views focus on transparency in perceptual states, but Metzinger extends the transparency/opacity framework to non-perceptual states - Metzinger: "Opaque phenomenal representations do exist as well. Here are some preliminary examples of opaque state-classes: Most notably consciously experienced thoughts [...]" (p. 360) - Example: Just as perceptual states can vary in transparency/opacity based on attentional allocation, so can cognitive states like inner speech or abstract reasoning ### C. The aesthetic significance of opacity 1. Opacity as revealing the representational process behind conscious contents 2. Appreciating the interplay of vehicle and content ## 3. Attention and the Appreciation of Vehicle Properties ### A. Metzinger's attentional model and vehicle properties 1. Attention as providing access to earlier processing stages 2. Attending to the "construction process" underlying conscious experience ### B. Examples of appreciating vehicle properties through attention 1. Perceptual case: attending to the "graininess" of blurry vision, the "flickering" of afterimages 2. Cognitive case: attending to the "verbal" quality of inner speech, the "pictorial" nature of mental imagery ### C. Comparison to the aesthetic appreciation of pictures 1. Appreciating how the material properties of the medium (brushstrokes, pixels) realize the depicted content 2. Attention as a means of "seeing through" the depicted content to the underlying medium ### D. The aesthetic significance of appreciating vehicle properties 1. Experiencing the "artifactual" nature of consciousness 2. Appreciating the creative process of conscious representation ## 4. The Agentive Dimension of Aesthetic Appreciation ### A. Passive vs. active appreciation of conscious vehicles 1. Passive cases: blurriness, afterimages, spontaneous imagery 2. Active cases: controlled attention, mental rotation, etc. ### B. Attention as a mechanism of active "opacification" 1. Metzinger's attentional model of transparency 2. Allocating attention as a form of "mental action" ### C. The aesthetic significance of agentive opacification 1. Appreciating our role in shaping the character of our experience 2. The sense of "mental agency" in modulating transparency/opacity ## 5. The Interplay of Opacity and Agency ### A. Passive opacity as enabling active opacification 1. Opacity "opens the door" to appreciating representational processes 2. Passive cases provide the "material" for active attentional control ### B. Active opacification as enhancing and transforming passive opacity 1. Attention amplifies and sustains opacity, allowing for deeper appreciation 2. Agentive control allows for "playing" with degrees of transparency/opacity ### C. The combined aesthetic effect 1. A multi-layered appreciation of consciousness involving both passive and active elements 2. An appreciation of both the representational "depth" of consciousness and our agentive role in navigating this depth - #thought unless our experience is at least somewhat opaque. Can we aesthetically appreciate consciousness? - #thought When we introspect our conscious experiences are we aware of something like design properties? - "Of course, pictures are objects in the world, too. They have physical properties that vary with their physical composition, size, age, and the like. Among these is a privileged set of visual properties, those by means of which pictures represent their subjects. I shall speak of these properties as making up pictures’ ‘designs’. An incomplete list of pic- torial design properties would include marks, directions, boundaries, contours, shapes, colours, hues, relative contrasts between light and dark, and also textures, such as smoothness of surface or invisibility of brushwork. Design properties are typically laid down in paint, ink, charcoal, or some other substance, on a flat surface. (However, the image of a slide projected on a screen shows that pictorial colours and shapes need not be comprised of any pigmented substance.). " from Understanding Pictures - Others make manifest features of the process of their production, as a Pollock drip painting manifests the direction and force of the artist’s movements, the liquidity and stickiness of the paint, and the effects of gravity.4 Expression and manifestation are species of representation in so far as they draw our attention to features of the world— subjective mental states in one case and processes of making in the other. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hq876339f07w7hxbm2q2p2tm)) from Understanding Pictures - Metzinger describes transparency/opacity in terms of the attentional availability of earlier processing stages see Phenomenal Transparency and Cognitive Self-Reference -What would it be like if all of our mental states, including thoughts, were entirely transparent? - from Metzinger: - *There are, however, examples of sensory opacity, for instance, during extremely short transition phases in bistable phenomena, e.g., if a con- sciously experienced Necker cube switches from one interpretation to the next and back, or during the phenomenon of binocular rivalry (see, e.g., Leopold and Logothetis 1999). * - ## To Read - MEDITATION AND CONSCIOUSNESS Can We Experience Experience as Broken? By Davies # Plan ## 1. Introduction ### A. The idea of aesthetically appreciating consciousness - Intuitively, we think of consciousness as worthy of aesthetic appreciation - The phenomenal character of experience seems valuable in itself, beyond its practical or epistemic role - We would not want to be turned into philosophical zombies, even if they are functional duplicates, suggesting we value consciousness for its own sake - If consciousness is valuable for its own sake, this suggests our appreciation of it is aesthetic rather than merely pragmatic ### B. The question of how we can aesthetically appreciate consciousness - If we can aesthetically appreciate conscious experience, we need to explain how we do this - Typically, we aesthetically appreciate things in the world via perception - It is not obvious that this perceptual model can be straightforwardly applied to the appreciation of consciousness itself - This leads to the question: How can we aesthetically appreciate consciousness? - 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 - However, this paper will focus on a specific approach based on the interplay of transparency/opacity and agency ### C. The role of transparency/opacity and agency in this appreciation - The degree of transparency/opacity of conscious states may affect how we can appreciate them aesthetically - Our ability to actively modulate the transparency/opacity of our experience through attentional control may also be relevant - While the appreciation of consciousness could potentially be modeled on various approaches, including those derived from environmental aesthetics, this paper will pursue a specific approach focusing on the interplay of transparency/opacity and agency ### D. Main Aim/Structure - The central aim of this paper is to argue that the aesthetic appreciation of consciousness involves an interplay of passive opacity and active "opacification" through attentional control - The paper will first introduce key aspects of Metzinger's theory of transparency/opacity and its relevance to the aesthetic dimension of consciousness - It will then explore the role of attention in appreciating vehicle properties and the agentive dimension of aesthetic experience - The interplay of passive opacity and active opacification will be examined, leading to a model of the aesthetic appreciation of consciousness that involves both passive and active elements - Finally, broader implications and future directions for this approach will be considered, situating it within the wider context of issues in philosophy of mind and aesthetics ## 2. Degrees of Opacity in Conscious Experience ### 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 - Harman (1990): In perceptual experience, we are not aware of the "mental paint" by which the experience represents the world, only the world itself ### B. Key aspects of Metzinger's theory 1. Transparency and opacity come in degrees based on attention - Definition: "For every phenomenal state, the degree of phenomenal transparency is inversely proportional to the introspective degree of attentional availability of earlier processing stages." (p. 356) - Transparency results from the attentional unavailability of earlier processing stages, while opacity results from increased attentional availability of these stages - Example: In consciously experienced thoughts, such as inner speech, the degree of transparency depends on how much attention is allocated to the representational process itself (the "verbal" quality of the thoughts) vs. the represented content (what the thoughts are about) 2. Rejection of a clear vehicle/content distinction - Traditional view: Transparency is explained by access to content but not vehicle properties - However, Metzinger rejects a sharp vehicle/content distinction: "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." (p. 358) - He argues that the traditional view is phenomenologically inadequate: "Transparency is not a necessary condition for phenomenality, because opaque forms of phenomenal content do exist. [...] Transparency is a gradual property of phenomenal states, because the distribution of transparency/opacity in phenomenal space possesses variance." (p. 359) - On the attention-based view, the distinction between vehicle and content becomes blurred, as both are aspects of an ongoing representational process that can be more or less available to attention - Example: In inner speech, as attention is shifted towards the representational process, the "vehicular" properties (the auditory-verbal qualities) become increasingly salient, blurring the line between vehicle and content 3. Transparency and opacity are not limited to perceptual states - Traditional views focus on transparency in perceptual states, but Metzinger extends the transparency/opacity framework to non-perceptual states - Metzinger: "Opaque phenomenal representations do exist as well. Here are some preliminary examples of opaque state-classes: Most notably consciously experienced thoughts [...]" (p. 360) - Example: Just as perceptual states can vary in transparency/opacity based on attentional allocation, so can cognitive states like inner speech or abstract reasoning ### C. The aesthetic significance of opacity 1. Opacity as revealing the representational process behind conscious contents 2. Appreciating the interplay of vehicle and content ## 2. Degrees of Opacity in Conscious Experience ### A. The idea of aesthetically appreciating consciousness - Intuitively, we think of consciousness as worthy of aesthetic appreciation - The phenomenal character of experience seems valuable in itself, beyond its practical or epistemic role - We would not want to be turned into philosophical zombies, even if they are functional duplicates, suggesting we value consciousness for its own sake - If consciousness is valuable for its own sake, this suggests our appreciation of it is aesthetic rather than merely pragmatic ### B. The question of how we can aesthetically appreciate consciousness - If we can aesthetically appreciate conscious experience, we need to explain how we do this - Typically, we aesthetically appreciate things in the world via perception - It is not obvious that this perceptual model can be straightforwardly applied to the appreciation of consciousness itself - This leads to the question: How can we aesthetically appreciate consciousness? - Various models for the aesthetic appreciation of consciousness might be considered, analogous to models for the aesthetic appreciation of nature - However, this paper will focus on a specific approach based on the interplay of transparency/opacity and agency ### C. The role of transparency/opacity and agency in this appreciation - The degree of transparency/opacity of conscious states may affect how we can appreciate them aesthetically - Our ability to actively modulate the transparency/opacity of our experience through attentional control may also be relevant - While the appreciation of consciousness could potentially be modeled on various approaches, including those derived from environmental aesthetics, this paper will pursue a specific approach focusing on the interplay of transparency/opacity and agency ### D. Main Aim/Structure - The central aim of this paper is to argue that the aesthetic appreciation of consciousness involves an interplay of passive opacity and active "opacification" through attentional control - The paper will first introduce key aspects of Metzinger's theory of transparency/opacity and its relevance to the aesthetic dimension of consciousness - It will then explore how this provides a manner of appreciation similar to seeing design properties in images, with reference to examples like the blurry fan and inner speech - The paper will consider a potential objection from environmental aesthetics, namely that this approach ignores the immersive phenomenology of consciousness - In response, it will argue that agentive awareness of attention provides a way to reconcile opacified and immersive appreciation, linking the appreciation of vehicle properties to the modulation of consciousness - Finally, broader implications and future directions for this approach will be considered, situating it within the wider context of issues in philosophy of mind and aesthetics ### A. Key aspects of Metzinger's theory Transparency/opacity as a graded property linked to attention - "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) Opacity involves introspective access to the representational process itself #### Examples of transparency/opacity - Conscious thought as the paradigm of opacity - In conscious thought, "we are phenomenally representing a cognitive reference to certain aspects of an internal system state, the intentional content of which is being constituted by a part of the world depicted as external." (Metzinger, p. 366) - Pseudo-hallucinations and the attentional availability of early visual processing - In pseudo-hallucinations induced by psychoactive substances, "the subject will immediately have doubts about the veridicality of her experiential state, cognitively 'bracket' it and take back the 'existence assumption'" (Metzinger, p. 360) - Sensory rivalries like the Necker cube - "There are ... examples of sensory opacity, for instance, during extremely short transition phases in bistable phenomena, e.g., if a consciously experienced Necker cube switches from one interpretation to the next and back" (Metzinger, p. 360) - The fluctuation of transparency/opacity in emotional states - "As opposed to sensory and cognitive states, emotions are neither a paradigmatic example of transparency nor of opacity. Our emotional states frequently seem to be directly given forms of subjective self-representation." (Metzinger, p. 361) ### B. Aesthetic implications of Metzinger's view Opacity and the appreciation of vehicular/content interplay - Attentional access to earlier processing makes the "medium" of representation available - Enables appreciation of how representational properties constrain representational content - "In particular, we are introspectively aware of earlier processing stages, namely the formation of thoughts. Cognitive reference is phenomenally opaque." (Metzinger, p. 361) Opacity and the appreciation of inter-level realization relations - Metzinger's claim that opacity results from attentional access to earlier processing suggests that opacity exposes the realization relations between levels of consciousness - In consciously experienced thought, the attentional availability of the thought formation process may allow the appreciation of how lower-level cognitive vehicles (linguistic, imagistic, etc.) inform and constrain the higher-level thought content - Similarly, in pseudo-hallucinations, the attentional availability of early visual processing may reveal how these earlier stages shape the anomalous perceptual content - In emotional states, the fluctuation between transparency and opacity may highlight how lower-level affective processing informs higher-level emotional content - The Necker cube case illustrates how even transient sensory opacity during gestalt shifts can expose the dependence of perceptual content on constructive processing - Generalizes the vehicle/content point: opacity makes the process/product interplay available for appreciation across multiple scales Challenges to the perceptual model of aesthetic experience - Metzinger's multilevel analysis of opacity subverts the idea of experience as a flat plane of content - Points towards an aesthetics of process, transformation, realization - "Phenomenally opaque 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." (Metzinger, p. 360) ### A. Key aspects of Metzinger's theory Transparency/opacity as a graded property linked to attention - "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) Opacity involves introspective access to the representational process itself #### Examples of transparency/opacity - Conscious thought as the paradigm of opacity - In conscious thought, "we are phenomenally representing a cognitive reference to certain aspects of an internal system state, the intentional content of which is being constituted by a part of the world depicted as external." (Metzinger, p. 366) - Pseudo-hallucinations and the attentional availability of early visual processing - In pseudo-hallucinations induced by psychoactive substances, "the subject will immediately have doubts about the veridicality of her experiential state, cognitively 'bracket' it and take back the 'existence assumption'" (Metzinger, p. 360) - Sensory rivalries like the Necker cube - "There are ... examples of sensory opacity, for instance, during extremely short transition phases in bistable phenomena, e.g., if a consciously experienced Necker cube switches from one interpretation to the next and back" (Metzinger, p. 360) - The fluctuation of transparency/opacity in emotional states - "As opposed to sensory and cognitive states, emotions are neither a paradigmatic example of transparency nor of opacity. Our emotional states frequently seem to be directly given forms of subjective self-representation." (Metzinger, p. 361) ### B. Aesthetic implications of Metzinger's view Opacity and the appreciation of vehicular/content interplay - Attentional access to earlier processing makes the "medium" of representation available - Enables appreciation of how representational properties constrain representational content - "In particular, we are introspectively aware of earlier processing stages, namely the formation of thoughts. Cognitive reference is phenomenally opaque." (Metzinger, p. 361) Opacity and the appreciation of inter-level realization relations - Metzinger's claim that opacity results from attentional access to earlier processing suggests that opacity exposes the realization relations between levels of consciousness - In consciously experienced thought, the attentional availability of the thought formation process may allow the appreciation of how lower-level cognitive vehicles (linguistic, imagistic, etc.) inform and constrain the higher-level thought content - Similarly, in pseudo-hallucinations, the attentional availability of early visual processing may reveal how these earlier stages shape the anomalous perceptual content - In emotional states, the fluctuation between transparency and opacity may highlight how lower-level affective processing informs higher-level emotional content - The Necker cube case illustrates how even transient sensory opacity during gestalt shifts can expose the dependence of perceptual content on constructive processing - Generalizes the vehicle/content point: opacity makes the process/product interplay available for appreciation across multiple scales Challenges to the perceptual model of aesthetic experience - Metzinger's multilevel analysis of opacity subverts the idea of experience as a flat plane of content - Points towards an aesthetics of process, transformation, realization - "Phenomenally opaque 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." (Metzinger, p. 360) ### A. Key aspects of Metzinger's theory 1. Transparency and opacity come in degrees based on attention - Definition and relation to attentional availability of earlier processing stages - Examples of degrees of transparency/opacity in perception and cognition 2. Rejection of a clear vehicle/content distinction - Traditional view vs. Metzinger's attentional, process-oriented view - Implications for the appreciation of representational structure 3. Transparency and opacity are not limited to perceptual states - Extension to cognitive states like inner speech and abstract thought ### B. Aesthetic implications of Metzinger's view 1. Opacity enables the appreciation of representational structure (vehicle/content interplay) - Comparison to appreciating design properties of images (Lopes) - Examples: blurry fan, inner speech (non-linguistic properties of the "inner voice") 2. Challenges the traditional perceptual model of aesthetic appreciation - Suggests alternative "design appreciation" model based on attentional modulation of opacity ## 3. The Immersion Challenge ### A. The objection from environmental aesthetics 1. Carlson's critique of approaches that ignore immersive experience of environments - Frames, static viewpoints as inappropriate to dynamic, engaged environmental appreciation 2. Analogous worry for the "opacified" approach to consciousness - Does attending to vehicle properties preclude immersive phenomenology of consciousness? ### B. Response: Agentive attention enables "immersed opacification" 1. Agentive attentional modulation as a form of immersive interaction with consciousness - Phenomenology of attentional control, "sculpting" the conscious field - Analogy to active exploration of environments 2. Attentional modulation links vehicle property appreciation to immersive phenomenology - Shifting attention highlights representational structure while preserving phenomenal immersion - Appreciating the interplay of opacity and agency in shaping consciousness ## 4. Implications and Directions ### A. Aesthetic appreciation of consciousness as an interplay of opacity and agency 1. "Immersed opacification" reconciles vehicle property appreciation with phenomenal immersion 2. Agentive attention links the appreciations of representational structure and conscious control 3. An appreciative stance unifying active and passive dimensions ### B. Relevance to issues in philosophy of mind and aesthetics 1. Implications for debates about the nature of consciousness and aesthetic experience 2. Highlights the intertwining of representational structure and agentive phenomenology 3. Indicates new avenues for interdisciplinary research at the intersection of aesthetics, philosophy of mind, and phenomenology ### C. Future directions 1. Further developing the phenomenology of "immersed opacification" and attentional modulation 2. Empirical investigation of the links between attentional control, opacity, and aesthetic appreciation 3. Exploring the aesthetic dimensions of other mental states and processes beyond perceptual consciousness In this revised plan, Metzinger's theory is introduced with a focus on its aesthetic implications, particularly the way opacity enables an appreciation of representational structure analogous to appreciating design properties in images. This is illustrated with examples like the blurry fan and inner speech. The potential objection from environmental aesthetics is then raised, namely that this "opacified" approach may ignore the immersive phenomenology of consciousness, just as some approaches to environmental aesthetics are critiqued for ignoring immersive experience. In response, the plan develops the idea of agentive attentional modulation as a way to reconcile opacified and immersive appreciation. By actively modulating the focus and structure of consciousness, we can appreciate vehicle properties while preserving phenomenal immersion. This is unpacked in terms of the phenomenology of attentional control and the analogy to active environmental exploration. The final section brings together these ideas, characterizing the aesthetic appreciation of consciousness as an interplay of opacity and agency, an "immersed opacification" that unifies the appreciations of representational structure and agentive control. Broader implications for debates in philosophy of mind and aesthetics are considered, and future directions for developing the phenomenology and empirically investigating these links are proposed. Throughout, the aim is to integrate the new ideas and examples seamlessly into the existing structure, using them to develop and support the central theme of the interplay of opacity and agency in the aesthetic appreciation of consciousness. The result is a more comprehensive and nuanced plan that still maintains a clear overall arc and argumentative thrust.