Part 1. Introduction.<\/p>\n
This blog puts Lisa Barrett\u2019s constructivist theory of mental events, especially of emotions, with the phenomenological view. <\/p>\n
The question emerges from (1) the seeming incompatibility between the two views and that, (2) simply due to phenomenology being a branch of philosophy instead of empirical science, it by nature cannot investigate the sub-personal processes supposedly grounding all of consciousness. As Barrett builds her the mainstay of view, the construction of meanings via concepts, in the sub-personal level of emotion formation, phenomenology seems to be already have lost. Thus established, should and how could we salvage phenomenologist view?<\/p>\n
The next part treats the question from firstly the side of the phenomenologist view, how it is still valid and instead possesses a more foundational vantage over the constructivist view. The concept of \u201cpriority of the first-personal\u201d supports this reply. Secondly, I display a way that a weaker phenomenologist conception of the first-personal view might reconcile or even integrate with the constructivist view.<\/p>\n
Part 2. Context that clarifies the question; lay out the question.<\/p>\n
\u201c[N]o matter how hard you try, you cannot observe or experience yourself constructing the image.\u201d (Barrett, 2017, pp.26) This is an opposite position against Descartes\u2019 partial assumption of Transparency Thesis. The Thesis states, at a certain level, the thinker can establish (as well as in theorizing, retroactively justify) metaphysical truths based purely on his thoughts or intuition, such as the existence of me as a thinking thing, or that my body is distinct from my mind. Lisa Barrett\u2019s views can be approximately put in relation of representationalism in the philosophy of mind, inspired by the transparency of experience. Take Gilbert Harman (1990)\u2019s formulation of representationalism as an example, both agree that we\u2019re radically and pre-consciously embedded in the supporting functions of our consciousness to the point that we just cannot directly \u201csee\u201d these functions themselves. Harman (1990) invites us to \u201ctry to turn your attention to intrinsic features of [our] visual experience\u201d. He predicts that we cannot introspect the experience itself [1], instead we can only see the intended content or object of that experience. <\/p>\n
But here is where Lisa Barrett diverges from representationalism. After observing this inability to observe directly our experiential states on our own, representationalism still clings to the certitude of our introspective self-knowledge. As a result, our experiences are solely representing the external objects, without carrying along with them some additional qualities, at least not in a way that is open to introspection.
\nIn contrast, perhaps due to Barrett\u2019s starting point as a neuroscience researcher, she resumes her theory by exactly diving into the active, underlying brain mechanisms that made possible (or pre-consciously grounded) our appearance-level feelings of transparency with our own experiences. Barrett has no limitations that condition philosopher or a phenomenologist, who can rely on perhaps nothing but their introspection. Unsurprisingly, Barrett\u2019s confidence in taking a theoretical direction philosophers cannot take, couples with a general scientific view that those consciousness-grounding functions are so primarily because they serve immediate goals in particular situations. For example, the boundaries that make out an individual object in our perceptions, in Barrett\u2019s view, are so \u201cnot because the boundaries are natural, but because they\u2019re useful or desirable\u201d (Barrett, 2017, pp.28).<\/p>\n
The problem I try to struggle with is the following: can the type of philosophy that studies our experiences and emotions from strictly what we experience, that is, from roughly the phenomenologist point of view, remain justified anymore in light of Lisa Barrett\u2019s constructivist theory? [2]<\/p>\n
This question is prima facie heavily tilted in favor of Barrett, due her theory\u2019s exceptional explanatory power over much facts observed from neuroscience and that she\u2019s justified in tapping in an area of human emotion formation by principle unavailable for philosophers, classical and phenomenological alike. Moreover, in the case that constructivist view is indeed correct, it seems to fully nullify the phenomenologist approach. \u201cBut these personal experiences, no matter how compelling they may seem, do not reveal how the brain creates emotion\u201d (Barrett, 2017, pp.41). Unfortunately, phenomenological perspective strictly works within the realm of the personal \u201cseeming\u201d. <\/p>\n
Part 3. Explaining or solving the problem: (1) phenomenological view stringently opposes the constructivist view on the grounds of the priority of first-personal view; (2) proposal for a possible reconciliation. <\/p>\n
To first put the matter in perspective, I\u2019d like to succinctly highlight how the constructivist view agree with some of the conclusions about human experience central to phenomenology. For both sides, emotions as well as all other human experiences are necessarily embodied, necessarily in the world and necessarily interwoven with the intersubjective, social contexts.<\/p>\n
A strong case for phenomenology refers to the perhaps irreducible priority of the first-personal view. This can also be understood as how the sub-personal brain mechanisms, despite their factual correctness and explanatory power over observed facts of human experiences, can never in fact surface from the sub-personal to guide the meaningful realm of personal (though also perfectly capable of being pre-conscious). For these sub-personal mechanisms to be meaningful for us, they had to be first idealized and abstracted into theory. The most unmistakable theorizing move (away from the first-personal) Lisa Barrett uses is the necessary replacement of an embodied person in the world for the brain that is \u201clike a black box\u201d in the body that navigates the world. The brain is like a black box because Lisa thinks it faces deluge of sensory inputs that are inherently without meanings, without functions or even regularities to the brain itself. The producer and bringer of all those are concept-using, sub-personal constructions or categorizations in the constructivist view. <\/p>\n
Agreeing so far with the constructivist view, a phenomenologist view might deliberately ask Barrett for why we should choose to begin with the brain, in an abstracted state of being in the very earliest state of infancy, instead of the person, as she\/he is in the state of her\/his current living? Is it not because that the constructivist view needs to first theorize [3] out a state of human consciousness that is bombarded by highly different and redundant sensory inputs, therefore in need of an explanatory mechanism to account for the felt meaningfulness of our experience? There is a danger that the need to go beyond bare sensations is merely a theoretical abstraction; that maybe the need for constructing and imposing meanings unto bare sensations, is helplessly dependent on the legitimacy of a state of bare sensations. It seems the trade-off for the scientist\u2019s being able to study and reliably theorize on matters of the mind beyond the personal capacity of possible self-reflections, is taking for granted of the approach to reduce the human to her\/his brain, albeit necessarily in a body that necessarily exists in the physical world and the social reality. <\/p>\n
The phenomenologist view here sees itself as having the upper hand in this very first assumption about person-brain relations, for it assumes nothing of them, but \u201csuspend these kinds of questions and all judgments about them. They start with experience.\u201d (Gallagher, 2008, pp.6) And \u201c[t]o the extent that phenomenology stays with experience, it is said to take a first-person approach.\u201d (Gallagher, 2008, pp.7)<\/p>\n
A less acerbic and more reconciling assertion of the priority of the first-personal for the constructivist view was formulated by Michelle Maiese (2014). She identifies an essential constituent of emotional experience, \u201caffective framing\u201d, defined as \u201ca spontaneous, non-inferential, pre-reflective, bodily, and active way of making sense of our worldly and interpersonal affairs by sorting out and selecting first-personally relevant information\u201d (Elpidorou, 2014). This concept is more reconciling because it allows the constructivist view of emotions to try to incorporate [4], to some degree, the significance of the first-personal by wedging \u201caffective framing\u201d somewhere into the continuous processes of construction (retrieving a population of relevant and perhaps similar instances from past experiences) and categorization (choosing winning instances of a category of emotion, to impose meaning on this given instance of sensory inputs, or making successful predictions of this instance). It\u2019s likely that \u201caffective framing\u201d, choosing from all present sensory inputs by the standard of being first-personally relevant (as well as, perhaps, effortlessly arranging the chosen inputs in a way that is first-personal), would happen at the stage of attention spotlighting by the control network (selecting and area of sensory inputs from the bare deluge of inputs to pay attention to). <\/p>\n
Footnotes:
\n[1]: To be accurate, Lisa Barrett doesn\u2019t think we are categorically barred from being able to see how underlying constructions of the brain from an everyday perspective, outside to neuroscience and the constructivist view of emotion: \u201cyou actively participate in determining what you see, \u2018most\u2019 of the time you have no awareness you are doing so.\u201d (Barrett, 2017, pp.40). Emphasis on \u201cmost\u201d is not in the original text.<\/p>\n
[2]: To be unreservedly honest, I do recognize the problem is formulated with a strong bias for the phenomenologist view. Fairer and more specific questions may be raised, such as \u201ccan we identify areas of human emotions that are better enlightened by phenomenology?\u201d, or \u201care there areas of emotion experiences previously unsolved by phenomenology be instead better enlightened by Barrett\u2019s constructivist view?\u201d I shall focus provisionally only on this one biased and general question, as the explanations to it drew out two substantial observations, developing the two views more globally. <\/p>\n
[3]: I use the word theorize\u201d, precisely because we can only imagine such a bombardment of bare sensory inputs, being both incapable of experiencing it and having never in the past experienced it.
\nCases of actually experiencing something like this might be hallucination of eidetic imagery or highly animated sensory experiences, induced by mental illness or drug use. The case that a normal human that comes the closest to experience this, according to Barrett in chapter 5, is the very earliest states of infancy, to which we can have no direct access as a past experience. It seems that, even all cases considered, no first-personal experience of black-box brain can actualize.
\nThe lack of grounding in first-personal reality of this starting case, the black-box brain, implies in the eyes of the phenomenologist, the danger that the case might just be an abstraction, a theoretical invention, produced with the foundational theoretical utility to be built upon by the constructivist view.<\/p>\n
[4]: It does however seem unlikely that the constructivist view can incorporate into itself, a theoretical part unsupported by empirical evidence.<\/p>\n
References:
\n1.\tBarrett, F. L. (2017). How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. (1st ed.). Boston, MA: Mariner Books.
\n2.\tHarman, G. (1990). The Intrinsic Quality of Experience. Philosophical Perspectives: Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind, 4, 31-52. doi: 10.2307\/2214186.
\n3.\tElpidorou, A., & Freeman, L. (2014). The Phenomenology and Science of Emotions: An Introduction. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 13(4), 507-511.
\n4.\tGallagher, S. & Zahavi, D. (2008). The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science. London & New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.<\/p>\n
Word count:
\nPure text (excluding section titles, in-text citations and footnotes): 1313.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Part 1. Introduction. This blog puts Lisa Barrett\u2019s constructivist theory of mental events, especially of emotions, with the phenomenological view. The question emerges from (1) the seeming incompatibility…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barret"],"splot_meta":{"author":"Wallace Li","license":"","source":"Screen shot from Oyasumi Punpun (2007-2013), magnum opus of Inio Asano."},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":653,"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions\/653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}