First, as Mroczko-Wąsowicz quite rightly points out, there are different understandings of what phenomenology is, with concomitant differences in what phenomenal adaptation might mean. The distinction drawn is between phenomenal conservatism, and phenomenal liberalism; the former being constrained to the vicinity of sensory features, and the latter including various cognitive phenomena, such as expectations and associations, among others.
We chose to use the term in the more restrictive sense for a number of reasons. First, as the more restrictive of the two, it is less controversial that what is included counts as genuinely phenomenological. Second, in many circles at least, the more restrictive understanding seems to be what people generally have in mind. The more liberal understanding is one that is endorsed more commonly only among specialists.
What I am about to say may be a matter of splitting hairs – and so I ask for forgiveness in advance. I am in complete agreement that the distinction is a valuable one to make, and that in our original article we just ran with the more restrictive definition. That said, it doesn’t seem to me that with this distinction in hand one is raising “alternative interpretations” of our results; rather one is providing a different way of describing the same result. On a conservative definition of what counts as phenomenal, we did not find phenomenal adaptation. But if one adopts a liberal understanding of the term that includes various cognitive phenomena, then it would be correct to say that we did, in fact, find some phenomenal adaptation. So long as there is clarity on what exactly was found, and on how one intends to use the key terms, then this shouldn’t be cause for confusion or concern.
Where things could get interesting would be on a possible third way to understand phenomenal – call it the radical understanding. On the radical view, there is nothing to phenomenology other than the sort of cognitive phenomena that the liberal view intended to add to the more narrowly sensory understanding. For one who holds such a view, we may very well have found the beginnings of phenomenal adaptation tout court when we found the beginnings of elements of cognitive adaptation.
This hairsplitting aside, I couldn’t agree more with Mroczko-Wąsowicz’s point that when getting into the details of discussions about phenomenal adaptation, a solid understanding of the different ways that the key terms might be understood is crucially important, and in this respect her commentary is an excellent supplement to the discussion we provided.