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The Structure of Experience.

紀錄類型:	書目-電子資源 : Monograph/item
正題名/作者:	The Structure of Experience./
作者:	Lee, Andrew Y.
出版者:	Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, : 2019,
面頁冊數:	153 p.
附註:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 81-06, Section: B.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International81-06B.
標題:	Philosophy. -
電子資源:	http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=13862132
ISBN:	9781392668009

The Structure of Experience.
Lee, Andrew Y.

The Structure of Experience. - Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2019 - 153 p.

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 81-06, Section: B.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--New York University, 2019.

This item must not be sold to any third party vendors.

This dissertation addresses some foundational issues about the structure of conscious experiences. Structure is what is represented through formal tools, such as mathematics; as concerning how things relate to each other, as opposed to what those particular things are; and as about form, rather than substance. Some canonical categories include quantitative structure (e.g., a 2kg object has twice the mass of a 1kg object), mereological structure (e.g., a brick is a part of a building), and similarity structure (e.g., red is more similar to orange than to green).Conscious experiences are richly structured. Your color experiences have three independent dimensions of variation (hue, saturation, brightness), your pain experiences come in different magnitudes, and your visual experiences have different parts representing different objects. But while it is easy to recognize that experiences have structure, and while there has been both empirical and theoretical work on the structures of specific kinds of experiences, there has been little consensus on what kinds of structure experiences generally have, how we can investigate that structure, and how we can model that structure. The aim of this dissertation is to address some of these foundational questions, and in doing so, to make a case that investigating the structure of experience is a promising avenue for future progress in consciousness research.The first chapter-"Objective Phenomenology"- argues that the structure of experience is the key to developing an objective phenomenology, or a way of understanding the phenomenal character of experiences that does not require one to have had the kinds of experiences under consideration In other words, even if we could not understand facts about the qualitative character of the experiences of other creatures (such as bats or octopuses or aliens), we could still understand facts about how those experiences are structured. Along the way, I also provide a diagnosis of what makes any given phenomenal fact subjective and argue for a new kind of explanatory gap between physical facts and structural facts about experience.The second chapter-"The Microstructure of Experience"-argues that experiences can have microphenomenal structures, where the macrophenomenal properties we introspect are realized by non-introspectible microphenomenal properties. After explaining what it means to ascribe a microstructure to experience, I defend the thesis against its principal philosophical challenge: namely, the idea that if a subject has an experience, then that subject is in a position to know the phenomenal realizers of that experience. I appeal to considerations concerning pain, visual experience, and flavor experience to argue that subjects are generally not in a position to know the basic phenomenal realizers of their experiences. Towards the end, I consider our prospects for investigating the microphenomenal realm.The third chapter-"Modeling Mental Qualities"-develops a formal framework for modeling mental qualities that is more powerful and flexible than existing models. The core idea is to represent mental qualities using regions in multidimensional spaces. The principal motivation is that my framework can capture not only the similarity and magnitude structure of mental qualities, but also their precision structure. For example, the contrast between seeing an object as crimson (e.g., in foveal vision) versus seeing an object as merely red (e.g., in peripheral vision) is a matter of precision. I explain how the framework I develop has the formal structure needed to represent imprecise qualities, how different formal constraints within the framework correspond to different classes of theories about the space and structure of imprecise qualities, how the framework identifies two distinct dimensions of phenomenal similarity, and how empirical methods can be used to construct particular models within the framework. An upshot is that the structure of the mental qualities of conscious experiences is fundamentally different from the structure of the physical qualities of external objects.

ISBN: 9781392668009Subjects--Topical Terms:

516511
Philosophy.
Subjects--Index Terms:

consciousness

The Structure of Experience.
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520 $a This dissertation addresses some foundational issues about the structure of conscious experiences. Structure is what is represented through formal tools, such as mathematics; as concerning how things relate to each other, as opposed to what those particular things are; and as about form, rather than substance. Some canonical categories include quantitative structure (e.g., a 2kg object has twice the mass of a 1kg object), mereological structure (e.g., a brick is a part of a building), and similarity structure (e.g., red is more similar to orange than to green).Conscious experiences are richly structured. Your color experiences have three independent dimensions of variation (hue, saturation, brightness), your pain experiences come in different magnitudes, and your visual experiences have different parts representing different objects. But while it is easy to recognize that experiences have structure, and while there has been both empirical and theoretical work on the structures of specific kinds of experiences, there has been little consensus on what kinds of structure experiences generally have, how we can investigate that structure, and how we can model that structure. The aim of this dissertation is to address some of these foundational questions, and in doing so, to make a case that investigating the structure of experience is a promising avenue for future progress in consciousness research.The first chapter-"Objective Phenomenology"- argues that the structure of experience is the key to developing an objective phenomenology, or a way of understanding the phenomenal character of experiences that does not require one to have had the kinds of experiences under consideration In other words, even if we could not understand facts about the qualitative character of the experiences of other creatures (such as bats or octopuses or aliens), we could still understand facts about how those experiences are structured. Along the way, I also provide a diagnosis of what makes any given phenomenal fact subjective and argue for a new kind of explanatory gap between physical facts and structural facts about experience.The second chapter-"The Microstructure of Experience"-argues that experiences can have microphenomenal structures, where the macrophenomenal properties we introspect are realized by non-introspectible microphenomenal properties. After explaining what it means to ascribe a microstructure to experience, I defend the thesis against its principal philosophical challenge: namely, the idea that if a subject has an experience, then that subject is in a position to know the phenomenal realizers of that experience. I appeal to considerations concerning pain, visual experience, and flavor experience to argue that subjects are generally not in a position to know the basic phenomenal realizers of their experiences. Towards the end, I consider our prospects for investigating the microphenomenal realm.The third chapter-"Modeling Mental Qualities"-develops a formal framework for modeling mental qualities that is more powerful and flexible than existing models. The core idea is to represent mental qualities using regions in multidimensional spaces. The principal motivation is that my framework can capture not only the similarity and magnitude structure of mental qualities, but also their precision structure. For example, the contrast between seeing an object as crimson (e.g., in foveal vision) versus seeing an object as merely red (e.g., in peripheral vision) is a matter of precision. I explain how the framework I develop has the formal structure needed to represent imprecise qualities, how different formal constraints within the framework correspond to different classes of theories about the space and structure of imprecise qualities, how the framework identifies two distinct dimensions of phenomenal similarity, and how empirical methods can be used to construct particular models within the framework. An upshot is that the structure of the mental qualities of conscious experiences is fundamentally different from the structure of the physical qualities of external objects.
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