Consciousness studies use first-person, second-person, and third-person methods {consciousness, studies}. First-person methods are purely subjective. Second-person methods are both subjective and objective. Third-person methods are purely objective.
People can analyze their thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and subjective experiences. First-person methods {first-person methods} involve existence, infallibility, introspection, phenomenology, privileged access, and subjective knowledge.
Perhaps, sense qualities are different existence-or-being kinds than physical things. Both existence kinds can connect using thinking mind [Searle, 1983] [Searle, 1992] [Searle, 1997].
Perhaps, people can have special subjective knowledge about their sense qualities, knowledge that differs from objective knowledge. Both knowledge kinds can connect using thinking mind [Metzinger, 2003].
In early first-person methods {introspection}|, people trained themselves to attend to, and think about, their subjective experiences, then report their observations.
People can introspect only mental states that are subjective or have subjective, phenomenological characteristics. Introspection does not reveal body processes [James, 1890] [Titchener, 1904] [Wundt, 1873].
Individuals have large phenomenal-experience differences, and introspective reports are not reproducible. Observing always requires hypotheses about what is happening [Lyons, 1986]. Introspection does not always understand, predict, or control [Barlow, 1987] [Barlow, 1995].
In early first-person methods {phenomenology method}, people trained themselves to try to suspend all judgments and hypotheses while they attended to their subjective experiences [Heidegger, 1996] [Husserl, 1905] [Husserl, 1907] [Husserl, 1913] [Merleau-Ponty, 1945] [Richardson and Velmans, 1997] [Stevens, 1997] [Stevens, 2000]. Consciousness study today uses some phenomenology methods [Depraz, 1999] [Hut, 1999] [Stevens, 2000] [Varela and Shear, 1999].
Methods {second-person methods} can involve consensus, intersubjective analysis, intersubjectivity, and neurophenomenology. Comparing experience reactions and subjective-knowledge reports can result in objective knowledge. By observing from both their and other viewpoints and comparing responses, people can reach consensus about subjective experiences. Operational procedures that reproducibly and reliably report sensations allow objective study of subjective experience [Velmans, 1996] [Velmans, 1999] [Velmans, 2000].
Rather than only considering first-person viewpoint, experiencer can include a second person. Two people can try to understand consciousness by each asking what other is experiencing and then exchanging asker and asked roles {intersubjective analysis of consciousness} [Thompson, 2001].
Interchanging experiencer and researcher roles can help understand experience. People can exchange reports about same stimulus {intersubjectivity} and so agree on subjective-experience aspects. Combining first-person and third-person provides intermediate second-person intersubjective viewpoints. Consciousness includes phenomena experienced in world, plus body feelings and thoughts [Velmans, 2000].
Human-experience reports constrain cognitive-science objective knowledge, and vice versa {neurophenomenology}. Neural assemblies built over time represent recent past, now, and immediate future and correlate with specific sense qualities [Varela, 1997] [Varela, 1999] [Varela et al., 2001].
Mental models or experiences are in surrounding three-dimensional space, where they seem to be. Consciousness includes phenomena experienced in world, plus body feelings and thoughts {reflexive model of consciousness} [Velmans, 2000].
Third-person methods {third-person method} involve experimental phenomenology, heterophenomenology, and reports. People can gather objective knowledge about subjective experience. Animals, robots, and software can model consciousness [Dennett, 1997] [Dennett, 2001].
Time interval between sensations and verbal report is 100 milliseconds {span of apprehension, report} {apprehension span, report}.
Verbal reports describe stimuli, which are independent variables, and subjective impressions or responses, which are dependent variables. If stimulus spatiotemporal organization changes, responses and response categories change quantitatively and qualitatively. Phenomenological can equate with phenomenal. Subjective phenomena relate to stimuli and their objects {experimental phenomenology}, allowing theories of contents {eidology} and relations between contents {logology} [Stumpf, 1890].
Fundamentally, experiences report brain-activity output or results. Researchers can ask people to report their experiences, observe their behaviors, and scan their brains. Researchers can build stories about subject experiences {heterophenomenology}. Stories can be as close to experience truth as time and effort allow [Dennett, 1991] [Dennett, 2001].
A conscious report to oneself {higher-order thought method} can accompany conscious mental states, so brain can monitor itself. Such control system allows recursion, through self-representations [Hofstadter, 1979] [Hofstadter and Dennett, 1981].
Feeling has content {phrastic meaning}, which differs from mood and force {neustic meaning} [Hare, 1952] [Hare, 1981].
People can attend to, learn, perceive, or remember {reporting}| organisms, objects, features, times, and locations. People can make verbal or non-verbal objective reports about subjective experience, during or after experience. Reports are about perceptions, memories, imaginings, beliefs, cognitive states, higher-order thoughts, mental events, mental states, and phrastic meanings. Reporting requires former sensation, perception, memory, and awareness. People cannot report unconscious thoughts or perceptions. Reports about sensations indicate that most people's experiences are similar. Only humans can report using complete language, but all mammals can communicate.
types
People can report their feelings, and judge emotion reports, objectively [Hare, 1952] [Hare, 1981].
People have private stimuli and responses, only inside themselves and not observable by others. Private stimuli and responses are like reports to oneself {verbal report}. People learn to be self-aware by verbal reports [Skinner, 1938] [Skinner, 1953] [Skinner, 1957].
properties
People can report only some conscious thoughts and perceptions.
People do not express thoughts {unexpressed thought} about which they have no intention to report.
Reports are objective and verifiable, allowing scientific analysis and theories.
criticism
Methods similar to literary criticism can analyze reports about consciousness. Criticism can use only actual words, only actual work, emotional reactions, feelings, history, meaning, objective standards, other works, personal viewpoint, principles, relativity, true wording, and theory.
People can report their perceptions {testimony method}, which depend on object recognition.
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Date Modified: 2022.0225