Phenomenology—self-observation—thereby turns into an ontology of the self, and if you’ve done it correctly (I’m not saying this is easy), you have the beginning of a new ontology which by design accommodates the manifest realities of consciousness… My way [of pursuing this program] is to emphasize the phenomenological unity of consciousness as indicating the ontological unity of the self...
Have you ever burned yourself on, say, a hot dish? Typically, people automatically recall such experiences in the following time sequence: simultaneous touch and burn sensation, followed by sharp involuntary withdrawal of limb. This time sequence is a trick our brains play on us: the withdrawal reflexarc is entirely spinal; withdrawal of the limb happens before the damage signal even has time to reach the brain. (After becoming aware of this fact, I had a burn experience in which I seemed to feel my brain trying to switch the time ordering of my perceptions from motion-prior-to-pain to pain-prior-to-motion and consciously intervened in the process to preserve my original perceptions.)
I bring this up because I believe that a brain capable of that trick cannot possibly give an accurate ontology of self through mere self-observation. You might be able to rescue your program by expanding the definition of self-observation to include the findings of modern neuroscience.
I see the ontological role of phenomenology as about establishing the qualitative features of consciousness. Certainly you can combine this first-person data with third-person data. That’s how you get to know that the time-sequence illusion is an illusion. It’s what we’re doing when we try to locate neural correlates of consciousness.
But the potential for error correction ought to go both ways. If you can make a mistake on the basis of ideas derived from first-person observation, you can also do it on the basis of ideas derived from third-person observation. My thesis here is that people feel compelled to embrace certain mistaken conclusions about consciousness because of their beliefs about physical ontology, which derive from third-person observation.
Have you ever burned yourself on, say, a hot dish? Typically, people automatically recall such experiences in the following time sequence: simultaneous touch and burn sensation, followed by sharp involuntary withdrawal of limb. This time sequence is a trick our brains play on us: the withdrawal reflex arc is entirely spinal; withdrawal of the limb happens before the damage signal even has time to reach the brain. (After becoming aware of this fact, I had a burn experience in which I seemed to feel my brain trying to switch the time ordering of my perceptions from motion-prior-to-pain to pain-prior-to-motion and consciously intervened in the process to preserve my original perceptions.)
I bring this up because I believe that a brain capable of that trick cannot possibly give an accurate ontology of self through mere self-observation. You might be able to rescue your program by expanding the definition of self-observation to include the findings of modern neuroscience.
I see the ontological role of phenomenology as about establishing the qualitative features of consciousness. Certainly you can combine this first-person data with third-person data. That’s how you get to know that the time-sequence illusion is an illusion. It’s what we’re doing when we try to locate neural correlates of consciousness.
But the potential for error correction ought to go both ways. If you can make a mistake on the basis of ideas derived from first-person observation, you can also do it on the basis of ideas derived from third-person observation. My thesis here is that people feel compelled to embrace certain mistaken conclusions about consciousness because of their beliefs about physical ontology, which derive from third-person observation.