Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T03:54:05.319Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Science, Publicity, and Consciousness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Alvin I. Goldman
Alvin I. Goldman*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona
*
†Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona, P.O. Box 210027, Tucson, AZ 85721-0027.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A traditional view is that scientific evidence can be produced only by intersubjective methods that can be used by different investigators and will produce agreement. This intersubjectivity, or publicity, constraint ostensibly excludes introspection. But contemporary cognitive scientists regularly rely on their subjects' introspective reports in many areas, especially in the study of consciousness. So there is a tension between actual scientific practice and the publicity requirement. Which should give way? This paper argues against the publicity requirement and against a fallback version of it, viz. that evidence-conferring methods must at least have their reliability publicly validated.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 64 , Issue 4 , December 1997 , pp. 525 - 545
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

Some of the research for this paper was done under the sponsorship of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Philosophy of Science, which I gratefully acknowledge. Various earlier versions of the paper were given at the University of Pittsburgh, Southern Methodist University, Bowling Green State University, University of Arizona (Cognitive Science Program), and University of Arkansas. Audience comments at all of these forums were helpful. I am especially indebted to Philip Kitcher, Christopher Hill, Paul Bloom, William Lycan, Gerald Massey, Mary Peterson, Joel Pust, and three anonymous referees for Philosophy of Science.

References

Alston, W. (1973), “Can Psychology Do Without Private Data?”, Behaviorism 1: 71–102.Google Scholar
Alston, W. (1993), The Reliability of Sense Perception. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Anton, G. (1899), “Ueber die Selbstwahrnemung der Herderkrankungen des Gehirns durch den Kranken bei Rindenblindheit und Rindentaubheit”, Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten 32: 86–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauer, R. (1984), “Autonomic Recognition of Names and Faces in Prosopagnosia: A Neuropsychological Application of the Guilty Knowledge Test”, Neuropsychologia 22: 457–469.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Block, N. (1995), “On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18: 227–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, R. (1985), “Observations, Explanatory Power, and Simplicity: Toward a Non-Humean Account”, in Achinstein, P. and Hannaway, O. (eds.), Observation, Experiment, and Hypothesis in Modern Physical Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 47–94.Google Scholar
Chalmers, D. (1996), The Conscious Mind, New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dennett, D.C. (1991), Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown and Co.Google Scholar
Ericsson, K. and Simon, H. (1984/1993), Protocol Analysis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Estes, W. (1975), “The State of the Field: General Problems and Issues of Theory and Metatheory”, in Estes, W. (ed.), Handbook of Learning and Cognitive Processes, vol. 1. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 1–24.Google Scholar
Feigl, H. (1953), “The Scientific Outlook: Naturalism and Humanism”, in Feigl, H. and Brodbeck, M. (eds.), Readings in the Philosophy of Science. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, pp. 8–18.Google Scholar
Goldman, A. (1986), Epistemology and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hempel, C. (1952), Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lycan, W. (1996), Consciousness and Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lyons, W. (1986), The Disappearance of Introspection. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Marcel, A. (1988), “Phenomenal Experience and Functionalism”, in Marcel, A. and Bisiach, E. (eds.), Consciousness in Contemporary Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 121–158.Google Scholar
Marcel, A. (1993), “Slippage in the Unity of Consciousness”, in Ciba Symposium 174, Experimental and Theoretical Studies of Consciousness, pp. 168–180.Google Scholar
McGlynn, S. and Schacter, D. (1989), “Unawareness of Deficits in Neuropsychological Syndromes”, Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 11: 143–205.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Metcalfe, J. and Shimamura, A. (eds.) (1994), Metacognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, G. and Buckhout, R. (1973), Psychology: The Science of Mental Life, 2nd ed. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Milner, B., Corkin, S., and Teuber, H. (1968), “Further Analysis of the Hippocampal Amnesic Syndrome: 14 Year Follow-Up Study of H.M.,” Neuropsychologia 6: 215–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moscovitch, M. (1982), “Multiple Dissociations of Function in Amnesia”, in Cermak, L. (ed.), Human Memory and Amnesia. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 337–370.Google Scholar
Nelson, T. (ed.) (1992) Metacognition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.Google Scholar
Newell, A. and Simon, H. (1972), Human Problem Solving. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Nisbett, R. and Wilson, T. (1977), “Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes”, Psychological Review 84: 231–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Popper, K. (1959), The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Railton, P. (1985), “Marx and the Objectivity of Science”, in Asquith, P. and Kitcher, P. (eds.), PSA 1934, vol. 2. East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 813–825.Google Scholar
Schacter, D. (1989), “On the Relation between Memory and Consciousness: Dissociable Interactions and Conscious Experience”, in Roediger, H. and Craik, F. (eds.), Essays in Honor of Endel Tulving. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 355–389.Google Scholar
Shapin, S. and Schaffer, S. (1985), Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Shoemaker, S. (1994), “Self Knowledge and ‘Inner Sense’”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54: 249–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tranel, D. and Damasio, A. (1985), “Knowledge without Awareness: An Autonomic Index of Facial Recognition by Prosopagnosics”, Science 228: 1453–1454.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tranel, D. and Damasio, A. (1988), “Non-conscious Face Recognition in Patients with Face Agnosia”, Behavioral Brain Research 30: 235–249.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Velmans, M. (1991), “Is Human Information Processing Conscious?”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14: 651–669.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, J. (1913), “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It”, Psychological Review 20: 158–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiskrantz, L. (1986), Blindsight: A Case Study and Implications. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Young, A. and de Haan, E. (1993), “Impairments of Visual Awareness”, in Davies, M. and Humphreys, G. (eds.), Consciousness. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 58–73.Google Scholar