The role of imagination and recollection in the method of phenomenal contrast
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20143547 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hamid Nourbakhshi (0000-0002-6893-3451, Philosophy Department University of Missouri in Columbia Columbia Missouri USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 89 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 710-733 |
| Publication date | 2023-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Theoria (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0040-5825 • E-ISSN: 1755-2567 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/theo.12489 |
| OpenAlex | W4386715299 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 66 |
The method of phenomenal contrast (in perception) invokes the phenomenal character of perceptual experience as a means to discover its contents. The method implicitly takes for granted that ‘what it is like’ to have a perceptual experience e is the same as ‘what it is like’ to imagine or recall it; accordingly, in its various proposed implementations, the method treats imaginations and/or recollections as interchangeable with real experiences. The method thus always contrasts a pair of experiences, at least one of which is imagined or remembered rather than occurrent. Surveying all eighteen forms of implementing the method, I argue that in all of the proposed pairings, the substitution of imagination or recollection for perceptual experience in the method, is either inconceivable or impermissible. I identify four reasons why I think imagination cannot be substituted for real experience, and three reasons why recollection cannot be substituted for real experience. If my argument works, there is no form of implementing the method that is useful for discovering the contents of experience, and thus the method is not a well‐functioning tool to study the contents of perception
Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis) · Character (mathematics) · Cognitive psychology · Contrast (vision) · Epistemology · Perception · Recall · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Mathematics · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Visual perception and processing mechanisms
Mental Time Travel
The meaning of ‘meaning’
Which Properties are Represented in Perception?
An Experimental Study of Imagination
Perceptual causality and animacy
Episodic Memory
The Transparency of Experience
The Varieties of Consciousness
Consciousness and the World
Ten Problems of Consciousness
Mental Reality
Defending Discontinuism, Naturally
Perceiving expressions of emotion
A reappraisal of Wilhelm Wundt
Perceptual Phenomenology
Visual experience
The Unreliability of Naive Introspection
Seeing‐As in the Light of Vision Science
Is Perceptual Phenomenology Thin
The Phenomenology of Cognition Or What Is It Like to Think That P
Phenomenal Contrast Arguments for Cognitive Phenomenology
How many memory systems are there
Individualism and the Mental
Perception and the Reach of Phenomenal Content
The Visual Experience of Causation
The positivist repudiation of Wundt
Seeing Causings and Hearing Gestures
Experience and Content
Twelve Conceptions of Imagination
Object Perception
Recent issues in high-level perception
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |