It seems to me (from the little I've read) that the "ordinary person" is an entirely abstract construct that (I'm speculating here) is likely to be the given philosopher's projection of modified own beliefs and feelings. The contingency of what seems absolutely self evident to thinkers and writers and researchers is obvious even if looking at a small selection of the last 80 years cultural output, anyway.
On the other hand, there likely ARE certain human-universal takes on matters related to broadly defined consciousness (I don't have the list handy, but I'm pretty sure that Donald Brown listed some in the eponymous book or later updates of the list). Whether they could be seen as "correct" in any meaningful sense is another matter.
It seems to me (from the little I've read) that the "ordinary person" is an entirely abstract construct that (I'm speculating here) is likely to be the given philosopher's projection of modified own beliefs and feelings. The contingency of what seems absolutely self evident to thinkers and writers and researchers is obvious even if looking at a small selection of the last 80 years cultural output, anyway.
On the other hand, there likely ARE certain human-universal takes on matters related to broadly defined consciousness (I don't have the list handy, but I'm pretty sure that Donald Brown listed some in the eponymous book or later updates of the list). Whether they could be seen as "correct" in any meaningful sense is another matter.
I don't think this is very impactive on the whole. what matters about phenomenal states is the hard problem of consciousness. The HP exists in relation to physicalism: with an assumption of physicalism, phenomenal states need to be reducecitvely explained as physical states; without an assumption of physicalism, phenomenal states can be taken as fundamental and in need of no further explanation.
It might also be the case that phenomenal states can't even be defined except in contrast to to something else, such as physical or cognitive states -- but that doesn't make matters any worse. Neither the HP , nor phenomenality need to be intuitively understood by the layperson to be troublesome.
>"What ordinary people mean by consciousness ARE the phenomenal properties."
>"even if they have some notion, it would appear to differ from what philosophers have in mind."
I wonder whether the impasse that you often find yourself reaching in these conversations might come about because you are thinking in terms of an internalist account of meaning and mental content, while your interlocutors are thinking in terms of an externalist account. On an externalist account, it is possible for ordinary people to "mean" something by a term even if that meaning is not what they "have in mind" (e.g. the classic externalist position that the English word "water" meant H2O, even before hydrogen or oxygen had been discovered).
I suspect you may be unsympathetic to these forms of externalism, but they are very popular among analytic philosophers (27% "accept" / 31% "lean towards" mental content externalism in 2020 Philpapers Survey). Next time you are in one of these debates it might be worth highlighting the issue — it may be that one reason people are arguing with you about what "consciousness" means is be that they disagree with you about what "means" means.
Those differences might explain how some philosophers view these issues, but in some cases philosophers either (a) appear to be making empirical claims about what nonphilosophers themselves think or intend to say, which would make externalist accounts very implausible or (b) explicitly acknowledge that they are making empirical claims.
Note several of the quotes I provided:
“phenomenal consciousness is the most folk psychologically obvious thing or feature that the positive examples [of conscious mental states] possess” (Schwitzgebel, 2016, p. 230, as quoted in Wyrwa, p. 47)
Note the phrase “psychologically obvious” and it is in reference to the content of mental states. It is not plausible that this is some kind of externalist claim about the meaning of words. This is a psychological claim.
And consider this remark: “even if we cannot say what it [consciousness] is, nonetheless each of us in the privacy of our own minds knows what it is” (Humphrey, 2006, p. 3, as quoted in Wyrwa, p. 47). I see no plausible interpretation of this other than a psychological claim about our psychology: it’s talking about the privacy of our minds, not a claim about semantics.
Philosophers are sometimes explicit about making empirical claims. Other times, it’s just unclear what they mean. It’s still not clear to me how much of 20th century metaethical claims are intended to consist of empirical claims about actual usage or some other sort of claims. I have come across quotes in that literature that likewise look like empirical claims about what people intend to mean, or psychological claims about what they think.
I can't tell what Dominik thinks from that remark. However, it's worth noting that Dominik also claims most people are moral realists, and has explicitly stated that the empirical literature supports this claim, so that would indicate Dominik takes folk realism to be an empirical question.
I agree that clarity on the meaning of meaning would be helpful at the outset of many disputes. I definitely am not sympathetic to externalism. Unfortunately I have found it difficult to spark productive discussions with people who hold contrary views on these issues.
Schwitzgebel: I parse that phrase as "folk-psychologically obvious," i.e. obvious according to folk psychology. It is a bit sloppy to attribute the concept of "phenomenal consciousness" to folk psychology, since I assume Schwitzgebel elsewhere uses the same phrase to refer to the technical philosophical concept — sort of like saying "the law of universal gravitation is one of the obvious facts of folk physics": there is indeed a folk concept of universal gravitation ("everything falls downwards"), but it is not the same as F=Gm1m2/r^2. (I like a lot of what Schiwtzgebel writes, but he does sometimes glide a bit carelessly over this sort of thin ice. Your criticisms of the concept of "folk" theories are certainly relevant here.)
Humphrey: I haven't read Humphrey's book, but to me this sentence doesn't look like an empirical psychological claim about about people's *belief* in the technical philosophical concept of phenomenal consciousness. Instead, it looks like an attempt to define the problem of what consciousness *is*, gesturing towards it as an aspect of personal experience that we (typically) cannot describe, but nevertheless "know" through direct acquaintance. (The tricky parts here are to pin down the precise sense of the word "know" and explain the ontological status of the object of that "knowledge" — but these are philosophical problems, not questions of empirical psychology.)
So I don't think those soundbites are sufficient to show that Schwitzgebel or Humphrey are making the mistakes you attribute to them. Schwitzgebel and Humphrey might indeed make those mistakes (or closely related ones) but the meanings (!) of those sentences need to be understood in context.
Among the soundbites you quote here, the really egregious one is Goff's: "Almost everyone believes that there is something that it’s like to be a hamster, but there is nothing that it’s like to be a rock or a planet" is just plain false.
I grant that it's totally possible these quotes are not indications that the people in question are making it empirical claims. It's also possible other philosophers are not making empirical claims, either.
However, if so, they're making extremely unclear remarks, and I would pivot to criticizing them for making remarks that are very hard to interpret. Second, while I appreciate your efforts to offer other interpretations, they do strike me as strained. Yes, sure, maybe they're not making empirical claims. But I could say the same of any remark, even the remark, "It is an empirical fact that ordinary people have a concept of phenomenal consciousness." One can always interpret any remark to mean pretty much anything. What is motivating you to seek non-empirical interpretations of these remarks? They sure look empirical to me! I'm also wary of what people would say when asked. I worry philosophers will make empirical claims but, when confronted about the fact, hesitate or claim not to have made such claims. It may even be that they are simply making unclear claims and retroactively judging themselves to have not meant something empirical, when really their meaning was just too unclear to be determinate. Much of the discussions in metaethics strike me this way. A lot could be interpreted in externalist semantic terms, but consider this one from Smith's 1994 book, "The Moral Problem": "we seem to think moral questions have correct answers; that the correct answers are made correct by objective moral facts [...]” I don't think it would reasonable to say that this doesn't at least appear to be an empirical claim, even if it isn't intended to be one. And I suspect similar remarks could be unearthed for folk notions of phenomenal consciousness.
A few other considerations:
(1) Why would Sytsma, Machery, Knobe, Prinz, and others conduct empirical research if they didn't think these were empirical questions? Are there replies from the philosophers in question saying "Hey! we weren't making empirical claims!" (maybe there are some, though this may indicate some weren't making them even if others are).
(2) We could just ask some of the philosophers in question. Thanks for acknowledging the Goff quote. I've spoken with Goff before (and Schwitzgebel, for that matter) and could just drop Goff a message to confirm, but it might make more sense to ask Schwitzgebel. I'd ask Dominik but I'm not on Twitter and have no idea how to contact Dominik. Also Dominik appears to dislike me and probably wouldn't want to engage.
(3) As I noted, Dominik has elsewhere remarked on folk moral realism, and explicitly claimed that the empirical evidence supported this view. I take this to be *definitive* evidence that Dominik takes the question of folk moral realism to be an empirical question. So while Dominik may not take folk consciousness to be an empirical question, the fact that Dominik takes a similar issue to be empirical is more consistent with my interpretation (that these are empirical claims) than yours.
I agree that many philosophers make empirically refutable claims about folk beliefs without a strong basis of evidence, or without even realizing that they are making claims that are susceptible to empirical investigation. I'm also not particularly trying to defend Schwitzgebel or Humphrey here (and certainly not Dominik-on-Twitter). To clarify:
(i) I agree that the Schwitzgebel quote is making an empirically investigatable claim about "folk psychology," but in a breezy sort of way that doesn't signal strong commitment. As far as I know, he seems to be fairly open-minded about that sort of issue — he isn't the sort of philosopher who will just ignore empirical evidence that is presented to him.
(ii) I don't think the Humphrey quote is the sort of thing that is empirically investigable, for all the reasons you and others have written about. It's not as if you would expect to get useful data from a survey asking "Even if you cannot say what consciousness is, in the privacy of our own mind you know what it is: Agree/Disagree"? And since it isn't empirically investigable, I wouldn't consider the sentence to be making a primarily empirical claim. (This is not to deny that related questions might be suscepticable to empirical investigation.)
In response to your numbered points:
(1) I'm a bit confused by this one: are you considering Sytsma, Machery, Knobe, Prinz as your dialectical opponents here? I would have thought you would be on the same side, at least regarding the basic question "Should we conduct investigations into non-philosophers' opinions concerning philosophical issues, or should we just pretend that we already know the answers?"
(2) My impression of Goff is that he, like Schwitzgebel, is quite open-minded about these sorts of questions. I would guess that both have greater interest in a style of philosophical dialogue more closely approaching "adversarial collaboration" than "debate." (Also that they are both fairly busy and might not be able to engage just for lack of time.) Agree that there generally isn't much point pursuing dialogue with people who dislike you personally or whose vibe doesn't match what you're going for. Life's too short, etc.
(3) My understanding is the current situation in metaethics is somewhat different from (i.e. worse than) that in philosophy of mind, with moral realists being much more willing to claim flatly that their own position is really what everyone believes deep down. Philosophers of mind tend more to incline towards "every possible position you can take on this issue is weird in some way."
(1) I agree about Schwitzgebel; I am confident he's receptive to empirical evidence and it'd be very strange if he weren't. He has, after all, conducted his own studies.
(2) I think philosophers can make empirical claims even if the claims aren't actually capable of being investigated in practice. I don't think it follows that if the claim can't be investigated that it wasn't an empirical claim. It just means the person is both making an empirical claim and the claim can't actually be investigated in practice. For comparison, if someone said, "There were exactly 1,086 T-rexes at time T" this would be an empirical claim but we wouldn't be able to confirm it with any available tools (short of a time machine).
(3) No, they're not my opponents. My point is that a bunch of competent philosophers clearly take the question to be empirical. Wyrwa then quotes professional philosophers, presumably taking them to be making empirical claims a bout which they may be wrong. This while body of research would make less sense if no philosophers were actually making empirical claims.
(4) Goff may be open-minded. My only point is that I think these philosophers are making empirical claims.
(5) I don't know how to compare the situations. I mostly work in metaethics. But that assessment seems plausible. Moral realists will sometimes claim, and have said to me, that their semantic analyses and various claims about commonsense thinking aren't empirical claims.
It's frustrating indeed, trying to explain that, yes, I have naive intuitions about phenomenal consciousness, but they're *much* less strong that many other of my naive intuitions that have been overridden, e.g. "the Earth is still and the Sun crosses over it each day", "oysters and humans could not share a common ancestor", "there are fewer permutations of a standard deck of cards than grains of sand in the Sahara".
Fascinating. [Not A Philosopher]
It seems to me (from the little I've read) that the "ordinary person" is an entirely abstract construct that (I'm speculating here) is likely to be the given philosopher's projection of modified own beliefs and feelings. The contingency of what seems absolutely self evident to thinkers and writers and researchers is obvious even if looking at a small selection of the last 80 years cultural output, anyway.
On the other hand, there likely ARE certain human-universal takes on matters related to broadly defined consciousness (I don't have the list handy, but I'm pretty sure that Donald Brown listed some in the eponymous book or later updates of the list). Whether they could be seen as "correct" in any meaningful sense is another matter.
Fascinating. [Not A Philosopher]
It seems to me (from the little I've read) that the "ordinary person" is an entirely abstract construct that (I'm speculating here) is likely to be the given philosopher's projection of modified own beliefs and feelings. The contingency of what seems absolutely self evident to thinkers and writers and researchers is obvious even if looking at a small selection of the last 80 years cultural output, anyway.
On the other hand, there likely ARE certain human-universal takes on matters related to broadly defined consciousness (I don't have the list handy, but I'm pretty sure that Donald Brown listed some in the eponymous book or later updates of the list). Whether they could be seen as "correct" in any meaningful sense is another matter.
I don't think this is very impactive on the whole. what matters about phenomenal states is the hard problem of consciousness. The HP exists in relation to physicalism: with an assumption of physicalism, phenomenal states need to be reducecitvely explained as physical states; without an assumption of physicalism, phenomenal states can be taken as fundamental and in need of no further explanation.
It might also be the case that phenomenal states can't even be defined except in contrast to to something else, such as physical or cognitive states -- but that doesn't make matters any worse. Neither the HP , nor phenomenality need to be intuitively understood by the layperson to be troublesome.
>"What ordinary people mean by consciousness ARE the phenomenal properties."
>"even if they have some notion, it would appear to differ from what philosophers have in mind."
I wonder whether the impasse that you often find yourself reaching in these conversations might come about because you are thinking in terms of an internalist account of meaning and mental content, while your interlocutors are thinking in terms of an externalist account. On an externalist account, it is possible for ordinary people to "mean" something by a term even if that meaning is not what they "have in mind" (e.g. the classic externalist position that the English word "water" meant H2O, even before hydrogen or oxygen had been discovered).
I suspect you may be unsympathetic to these forms of externalism, but they are very popular among analytic philosophers (27% "accept" / 31% "lean towards" mental content externalism in 2020 Philpapers Survey). Next time you are in one of these debates it might be worth highlighting the issue — it may be that one reason people are arguing with you about what "consciousness" means is be that they disagree with you about what "means" means.
Those differences might explain how some philosophers view these issues, but in some cases philosophers either (a) appear to be making empirical claims about what nonphilosophers themselves think or intend to say, which would make externalist accounts very implausible or (b) explicitly acknowledge that they are making empirical claims.
Note several of the quotes I provided:
“phenomenal consciousness is the most folk psychologically obvious thing or feature that the positive examples [of conscious mental states] possess” (Schwitzgebel, 2016, p. 230, as quoted in Wyrwa, p. 47)
Note the phrase “psychologically obvious” and it is in reference to the content of mental states. It is not plausible that this is some kind of externalist claim about the meaning of words. This is a psychological claim.
And consider this remark: “even if we cannot say what it [consciousness] is, nonetheless each of us in the privacy of our own minds knows what it is” (Humphrey, 2006, p. 3, as quoted in Wyrwa, p. 47). I see no plausible interpretation of this other than a psychological claim about our psychology: it’s talking about the privacy of our minds, not a claim about semantics.
Philosophers are sometimes explicit about making empirical claims. Other times, it’s just unclear what they mean. It’s still not clear to me how much of 20th century metaethical claims are intended to consist of empirical claims about actual usage or some other sort of claims. I have come across quotes in that literature that likewise look like empirical claims about what people intend to mean, or psychological claims about what they think.
I can't tell what Dominik thinks from that remark. However, it's worth noting that Dominik also claims most people are moral realists, and has explicitly stated that the empirical literature supports this claim, so that would indicate Dominik takes folk realism to be an empirical question.
I agree that clarity on the meaning of meaning would be helpful at the outset of many disputes. I definitely am not sympathetic to externalism. Unfortunately I have found it difficult to spark productive discussions with people who hold contrary views on these issues.
Schwitzgebel: I parse that phrase as "folk-psychologically obvious," i.e. obvious according to folk psychology. It is a bit sloppy to attribute the concept of "phenomenal consciousness" to folk psychology, since I assume Schwitzgebel elsewhere uses the same phrase to refer to the technical philosophical concept — sort of like saying "the law of universal gravitation is one of the obvious facts of folk physics": there is indeed a folk concept of universal gravitation ("everything falls downwards"), but it is not the same as F=Gm1m2/r^2. (I like a lot of what Schiwtzgebel writes, but he does sometimes glide a bit carelessly over this sort of thin ice. Your criticisms of the concept of "folk" theories are certainly relevant here.)
Humphrey: I haven't read Humphrey's book, but to me this sentence doesn't look like an empirical psychological claim about about people's *belief* in the technical philosophical concept of phenomenal consciousness. Instead, it looks like an attempt to define the problem of what consciousness *is*, gesturing towards it as an aspect of personal experience that we (typically) cannot describe, but nevertheless "know" through direct acquaintance. (The tricky parts here are to pin down the precise sense of the word "know" and explain the ontological status of the object of that "knowledge" — but these are philosophical problems, not questions of empirical psychology.)
So I don't think those soundbites are sufficient to show that Schwitzgebel or Humphrey are making the mistakes you attribute to them. Schwitzgebel and Humphrey might indeed make those mistakes (or closely related ones) but the meanings (!) of those sentences need to be understood in context.
Among the soundbites you quote here, the really egregious one is Goff's: "Almost everyone believes that there is something that it’s like to be a hamster, but there is nothing that it’s like to be a rock or a planet" is just plain false.
I grant that it's totally possible these quotes are not indications that the people in question are making it empirical claims. It's also possible other philosophers are not making empirical claims, either.
However, if so, they're making extremely unclear remarks, and I would pivot to criticizing them for making remarks that are very hard to interpret. Second, while I appreciate your efforts to offer other interpretations, they do strike me as strained. Yes, sure, maybe they're not making empirical claims. But I could say the same of any remark, even the remark, "It is an empirical fact that ordinary people have a concept of phenomenal consciousness." One can always interpret any remark to mean pretty much anything. What is motivating you to seek non-empirical interpretations of these remarks? They sure look empirical to me! I'm also wary of what people would say when asked. I worry philosophers will make empirical claims but, when confronted about the fact, hesitate or claim not to have made such claims. It may even be that they are simply making unclear claims and retroactively judging themselves to have not meant something empirical, when really their meaning was just too unclear to be determinate. Much of the discussions in metaethics strike me this way. A lot could be interpreted in externalist semantic terms, but consider this one from Smith's 1994 book, "The Moral Problem": "we seem to think moral questions have correct answers; that the correct answers are made correct by objective moral facts [...]” I don't think it would reasonable to say that this doesn't at least appear to be an empirical claim, even if it isn't intended to be one. And I suspect similar remarks could be unearthed for folk notions of phenomenal consciousness.
A few other considerations:
(1) Why would Sytsma, Machery, Knobe, Prinz, and others conduct empirical research if they didn't think these were empirical questions? Are there replies from the philosophers in question saying "Hey! we weren't making empirical claims!" (maybe there are some, though this may indicate some weren't making them even if others are).
(2) We could just ask some of the philosophers in question. Thanks for acknowledging the Goff quote. I've spoken with Goff before (and Schwitzgebel, for that matter) and could just drop Goff a message to confirm, but it might make more sense to ask Schwitzgebel. I'd ask Dominik but I'm not on Twitter and have no idea how to contact Dominik. Also Dominik appears to dislike me and probably wouldn't want to engage.
(3) As I noted, Dominik has elsewhere remarked on folk moral realism, and explicitly claimed that the empirical evidence supported this view. I take this to be *definitive* evidence that Dominik takes the question of folk moral realism to be an empirical question. So while Dominik may not take folk consciousness to be an empirical question, the fact that Dominik takes a similar issue to be empirical is more consistent with my interpretation (that these are empirical claims) than yours.
I agree that many philosophers make empirically refutable claims about folk beliefs without a strong basis of evidence, or without even realizing that they are making claims that are susceptible to empirical investigation. I'm also not particularly trying to defend Schwitzgebel or Humphrey here (and certainly not Dominik-on-Twitter). To clarify:
(i) I agree that the Schwitzgebel quote is making an empirically investigatable claim about "folk psychology," but in a breezy sort of way that doesn't signal strong commitment. As far as I know, he seems to be fairly open-minded about that sort of issue — he isn't the sort of philosopher who will just ignore empirical evidence that is presented to him.
(ii) I don't think the Humphrey quote is the sort of thing that is empirically investigable, for all the reasons you and others have written about. It's not as if you would expect to get useful data from a survey asking "Even if you cannot say what consciousness is, in the privacy of our own mind you know what it is: Agree/Disagree"? And since it isn't empirically investigable, I wouldn't consider the sentence to be making a primarily empirical claim. (This is not to deny that related questions might be suscepticable to empirical investigation.)
In response to your numbered points:
(1) I'm a bit confused by this one: are you considering Sytsma, Machery, Knobe, Prinz as your dialectical opponents here? I would have thought you would be on the same side, at least regarding the basic question "Should we conduct investigations into non-philosophers' opinions concerning philosophical issues, or should we just pretend that we already know the answers?"
(2) My impression of Goff is that he, like Schwitzgebel, is quite open-minded about these sorts of questions. I would guess that both have greater interest in a style of philosophical dialogue more closely approaching "adversarial collaboration" than "debate." (Also that they are both fairly busy and might not be able to engage just for lack of time.) Agree that there generally isn't much point pursuing dialogue with people who dislike you personally or whose vibe doesn't match what you're going for. Life's too short, etc.
(3) My understanding is the current situation in metaethics is somewhat different from (i.e. worse than) that in philosophy of mind, with moral realists being much more willing to claim flatly that their own position is really what everyone believes deep down. Philosophers of mind tend more to incline towards "every possible position you can take on this issue is weird in some way."
(1) I agree about Schwitzgebel; I am confident he's receptive to empirical evidence and it'd be very strange if he weren't. He has, after all, conducted his own studies.
(2) I think philosophers can make empirical claims even if the claims aren't actually capable of being investigated in practice. I don't think it follows that if the claim can't be investigated that it wasn't an empirical claim. It just means the person is both making an empirical claim and the claim can't actually be investigated in practice. For comparison, if someone said, "There were exactly 1,086 T-rexes at time T" this would be an empirical claim but we wouldn't be able to confirm it with any available tools (short of a time machine).
(3) No, they're not my opponents. My point is that a bunch of competent philosophers clearly take the question to be empirical. Wyrwa then quotes professional philosophers, presumably taking them to be making empirical claims a bout which they may be wrong. This while body of research would make less sense if no philosophers were actually making empirical claims.
(4) Goff may be open-minded. My only point is that I think these philosophers are making empirical claims.
(5) I don't know how to compare the situations. I mostly work in metaethics. But that assessment seems plausible. Moral realists will sometimes claim, and have said to me, that their semantic analyses and various claims about commonsense thinking aren't empirical claims.
It's frustrating indeed, trying to explain that, yes, I have naive intuitions about phenomenal consciousness, but they're *much* less strong that many other of my naive intuitions that have been overridden, e.g. "the Earth is still and the Sun crosses over it each day", "oysters and humans could not share a common ancestor", "there are fewer permutations of a standard deck of cards than grains of sand in the Sahara".