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First-Person Experiments: A Characterisation and Defence

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Abstract

While first-person methods are essential for a science of consciousness, it is controversial what form these methods should take and whether any such methods are reliable. I propose that first-person experiments are a reliable method for investigating conscious experience. I outline the history of these methods and describe their characteristics. In particular, a first-person experiment is an intervention on a subject’s experience in which independent variables are manipulated, extraneous variables are held fixed, and in which the subject makes a phenomenal judgement about the target experience of the investigation. I examine historical and contemporary examples of first-person experiments: Mariotte’s demonstration of the visual blind spot, Kanizsa’s subjective contours, the Tse Illusion, and investigations of the non-uniform resolution of the visual field. I discuss the role that phenomenal contrast plays in these methods, and how they overcome typical introspective errors. I argue that their intersubjective repeatability is an important factor in their scientific status, however, it is not the only factor. That they control for extraneous factors and confounds is another factor which sets them apart from pseudoscience (e.g., the perception of auras), and hence another reason for classifying them as genuine experiments. Furthermore, by systematically mapping out the structure of visual experience, these methods make scientific progress. Praises of such first-person experimental approaches may not always be sung by philosophers and psychologists, but they continue to flourish as respectable scientific methods nevertheless.

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Notes

  1. Dennett (1991, p. 356) argues that the visual blind spot is not in fact filled in but rather ignored. See Churchland and Ramachandran (1994) for empirical evidence that filling in does occur.

  2. Helmholtz (1860/1925, p. 205-216) discusses a number of variations on this experiment.

  3. See Meketa (2012) for criticism of the experiment-observation distinction in scientific practice.

  4. This example is complicated by the question of whether colours are mind-independent properties of the world or mind-dependent properties. If colours are considered to be mind-dependent then the judgement would be about the way the world normally looks under certain conditions, as opposed to the world of physics, hence the distinction between phenomenal and perceptual judgements would break down. For the purposes of this example, the actual metaphysics of colours does not matter only what the subject believes; here I have in mind a subject that believes a version of naïve realism.

  5. Thank you to Jérôme Sackur and an anonymous reviewer for highlighting the importance of this distinction.

  6. For other versions of the experiment see Hill (2011, p. 27) and Schwitzgebel (2011, p. 125-127).

  7. Irvine (2012) criticises these methods for not being significantly different from third-person methods. Indeed the only difference between the methods is whether subjects are making a judgement about the stimuli (perceptual judgement) or about their experience (phenomenal judgement). Irvine proposes: ‘It could be argued that asking if an object appears clear to me is just to ask how precisely I can discriminate it, and how confident I am in my judgments about it. That is, objects may appear clear if I can confidently detect exactly where their edges are, if I can identify the patterns on its surface, and so on. If this is the case, is not immediately clear if trained introspective reports can add to the body of already existing behavioural evidence about the boundaries of conscious experience’ (Irvine 2012, p. 633). The problem with this analysis is that things seem unclear in the visual periphery whether or not I am making a judgement about them. How things seem hence does not reduce to discriminative capacities. On the face of it, the difficulty in discriminating shapes in the periphery of vision is because they look blurry. Irvine’s proposal seems to get the explanation backwards. That is, typical visual discriminations depend upon visual experience (for further arguments along these lines see Horst 2005). This would explain why in such cases first-person and third-person methods obtain virtually identical results.

  8. For defences of the reliability of introspection see: Bayne and Spener (2010), Kriegel (2013), Hohwy (2011), Ramm (2016), Peels (2016), Smithies (2013), Watzl and Wu (2012).

  9. See also Watzl and Wu (2012).

  10. For defences of first-person methods in a science of consciousness, see Goldman (2004), Hatfield (2005), and Shear and Verela (1999).

  11. A quibble over history: A popular illustration of the fatal disagreement between Introspective schools has been to cite Boring (1942), as reporting that Külpe’s laboratory found less than 12,000 discriminable sensations, while Titchener’s laboratory discovered more than 44,435 (e.g., Guzeldere 1995, p. 39; Nahmias 2002, p. 6; Velmans 2000, p. 48–49). This is an apparently very large disagreement. However these numbers exaggerate the difference because the 44,435 was the total number from Titchener’s laboratory, while the 11,916 from Külpe’s laboratory is the sum of the numbers provided by Boring. Boring does not actually provide the number of smells identified by Külpe – he merely says that he discovered ‘numerous smells’ (Boring 1942, p. 10). This unspecified number is in addition to the sum of 11,916, so there is no way of calculating the actual total of sensations from Külpe from the numbers provided by Boring. The only numbers that are directly comparable are tastes (each laboratory identifying 4), and tones which was 11,063 for Külpe and 11,600 for Titchener. These are hardly large differences.

  12. In a reviewer comment, Jérôme Sackur argues that it is an empirical question whether or not a specific experiment will convince a scientific community and hence be considered ‘scientific’. I agree that establishing community consensus is important in scientific practice, however, I do not think that it reductively defines what is scientific. The theoretical dispute between Titchener’s and Külpe’s laboratories provides a case where community consensus did not seem to track the reliability of the methods in question. The different methods of each school converged on the same findings (an indicator of scientific reliability) and yet theoretical bias prevented the forming of a community consensus.

  13. Dennett (1991, 2003, 2007) classifies methods by whether they are private (first-person) or public (third-person). Dennett’s interchangeable use of ‘third-person methods’ and ‘public methods’ obscures the fact that all ‘third-person observations’ are made from a first-person perspective. There are no third-person observations, just first-person observations, and all first-person observations are private (Velmans 2000, chapter 8). I observe the star by experiencing it, and my experience is private. I do not have access to your experience of the star. Nevertheless each experience has a common cause (the star) and each of us can verify the other’s experience when suitably positioned. In this sense the observation is public – that is, intersubjectively repeatable. As all observations are irreducibly subjective, the division between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ methods is a false dichotomy (ibid.). I take this fact into account by classifying an approach as a first-person method when it involves the observer making phenomenal judgements.

  14. Chalmers (2004, p. 1117) and Goldman (1997) use ‘first-person data’ to refer to phenomenal experience, hence entailing that it is private. Here, I follow Piccinini’s (2009) usage of ‘first-person data’.

  15. A method has external validity when its results reliably generalise to other subjects and populations.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to David Chalmers, Declan Smithies, and Daniel Stoljar for helpful comments on the manuscript. Thank you also for reviewer comments from Jérôme Sackur and an anonymous reviewer, both of whose comments helped to significantly improve the manuscript.

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  1. School of Philosophy, HC Coombs, Building 9, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT, 0200, Australia

    Brentyn J. Ramm

  2. Department of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 350 University Hall, 230 N Oval Mall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    Brentyn J. Ramm

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Ramm, B.J. First-Person Experiments: A Characterisation and Defence. Rev.Phil.Psych. 9, 449–467 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-018-0388-1

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