Let me take stock. I have been through the claims made in Schooler’s main underlying argument (see p. here) So far, I have discussed claim (1), the initial conceptual distinction been experiential consciousness and meta-awareness, a distinction Schooler sets up as a dichotomy. I then discussed his second claim that there is empirical evidence that this conceptual distinction is something we find in cognitive abilities in cases of dissociations, especially in temporal dissociations like mind-wandering and in emotional transitional dissociations. I then argued that his empirical criteria developed in claim (3) are useful for cognitive accounts in general, independently of the worries one might have about claims (1) and (2). Finally I suggested a finer-grained conceptual distinction between different levels of awareness, different kinds of reflection, and “taking stock”. I will turn now to the last issue we shall examine, which is Schooler’s last and main claim (see p. here): Schooler claims that this can be used for a new theoretical and ontological framework for studying consciousness, and this is the declared goal of the target paper. He claims that his perceptual perspective-shifting analogy, together with insights from the sections before, gives us a new ontological perspective on the mind–body problem, not just a new methodological strategy. I found this section of the paper surprising. In my opinion, it is relatively independent of the main project he undertakes. Schooler starts by describing the main thought experiments in the philosophical literature used to challenge reductive physicalism.[23] He concludes that the main problem with the reductive positions is that it needs to “reject” those aspects of first person experience “that are not readily handled by a third-person account” (Schooler this collection, p. 25).
I am not convinced that this is correct. It seems a viable alternative solution to me to just subscribe to the traditional reply, and point to some kind of epistemic gap between the third-person approach and the first-person approach instead of an ontological one. One can admit that there is a gap, but it is an explanatory gap between physical processes and conscious experience. One could even state that the gap may be uncloseable in principle, but that consciousness is nonetheless physical (Levine 1983). That is, there is an epistemological gap, but no ontological gap. That we intuitively see a gap might be true; it does not follow that there actually is a gap in what exists. All one can conclude is that, epistemologically, there is gap. In addition, our intuitions might simply be wrong: we might be “innate dualists” and that this is the reason why to so frequently slip back in dualist talk (despite knowing better; Papineau 2011). That is the real reason why commonsense intuition pumping thought experiments work so well. According to this view, the feeling that some part of reality is “left out”, i.e., the “explanatory gap”, arises only because we simply cannot stop ourselves thinking about the mind–brain relation in a dualist way, though this is actually the wrong thing to do. One can be a reductive physicalist without having to reject the phenomenon of conscious experience, despite the fact that we cannot (yet) reduce it or have proper explanations available as to why we experience certain phenomena the way we do. We can experience a gap, have the intuition that something is “left out”, and nonetheless that very intuition might very well be wrong. I simply do not see the need for Schooler’s solution, the postulation of a new realm, that gives rise to both the physical and subjective reality.
I am also not sure about the meaning of the perceptual perspective-shifting analogy itself. Because it rests on a purely metaphorical use of “perspective”, the analogy does not go through. Perceptual perspective-shifting happens at a personal level, moreover, shifting experience at the personal level. The supposedly analogous case occurs at the level of theories or accounts, which emphasize either the first- or third-person perspective. But individual experiences differ in principle from the focus certain theories have. Schooler suggests that the resolution of the conflicting perspectives lies in a meta-perspective that acknowledges the existence and irreducibility of both, even though both are somehow equally valid, such that the solution to this tension is a new realm, a meta-perspective which gives us a “higher-order outlook” (Schooler this collection, p. 26). However, Schooler agrees “that [i]t is easier to recognize the need for a meta-perspective than to identify precisely what such a view might be” (Schooler this collection, p. 26). He admits the character of the introduced meta-perspective is “speculative and highly underspecified” (Schooler this collection, p. 28) but thinks that it has intuitive appeal. He also concedes that this is the most speculative part of the paper. I must admit that I struggle with the concept. I fail to see the intuitive appeal. Mostly because it eludes my understanding what the proposed meta-perspective might be and how it is helpful despite acknowledging our commonsense intuition, not at an epistemological but an ontological level. As a result, I do not find it explanatory. Moreover, it does not follow from the analogy. For an argument by analogy one needs properties shared by both parts of the analogy. Even if we admit that in perceptual perspective-shifting both personal-level interpretations of an ambiguous figure are equally valid, it does not seem to follow that the first-person perspective and the third-person perspective in strategies to study consciousness require a meta-perspective not identical with either of these perspectives. Both the cases seem to have only one thing in common, “persepective shifting”. But “perspective” is used purely metaphorical in the second case. Moreover, bridging the first- and third-person perspectives seems to be an epistemic challenge. But from an epistemic observation or claim an ontological claim does not follow. Even if we admit an epistemic gap and agree that we cannot help but see an explanatory gap in all these cases, the postulation of an independent higher-order meta-level, an ontological claim, is not well supported. In addition, both of these issues, the ontological as well as the epistemological claim, differ from the methodological approach defended by Schooler. To summarize, in my opinion this section, and the preferences regarding solutions of the mind–body problem, are conceptually relatively independent from the main project, which I take to be the development of a useful strategy to study consciousness and mind-wandering. Schooler’s strategy might be helpfully independently of whether one is a reductive or non-reductive physicalist. I think that such a methodological reading of his approach strengthens the project, because it disassociates it from a completely different issue.