thesis

ample, Varela and Shear (1999) and Stanley (1999) suggest ways in which the vast range of
experiences can be systematised and broken down. I will briefly describe two such avenues.
First, as mentioned above with regard to heat and cold, we noted that science is often
able to proceed by positing continuity between what seemed, on first glance, to be unrelated
phenomena. It would have been inconceivable several hundreds years ago for a single natu-
ralistic conceptual framework to explain how contagious disease, plant life, insects, birds,
fishes and mammals arose – the range of this planet’s life seemed so diverse and complex
that only a personal explanation (i.e. God) could ever suffice. Yet, neo-Darwinism is, at the
very least, a promising potential replacement candidate.
Could a similar thing be done with phenomenology? One point counting against is the
fact that, with the contents of consciousness, there is no distinction between appearance and
reality. Whereas the natural world’s complexity could be (and apparently was) an illusion,
how could a subject be wrong about what she experiences 15 ? If phenomenology cannot be re-
defined, is there any other way forward? One alternative is to simplify by interpolation – to
most of us, whose phenomenology includes every shade of grey, darkness seems a linear,
one-dimensional property. But, if there are subjects who only ever experience charcoal black
or fluorescent white, the two shades might well be considered as unrelated, much like we
think of red and blue. Just as our phenomenal range is wider, yet its representation is simpler,
perhaps we may discover through brain experimentation that certain seemingly heteroge-
neous phenomenal feels actually lie along a continuous scale.
However, this is a far less likely prospect when we come to consider thoughts, concepts
and feelings, including those that are combined with our raw sense data to produce a
meaningful internal image of the world around us. Here, we seem to need as many modali-
ties of phenomenology as there are ideas that have occurred, or indeed could occur, to man-
kind – it is hard to see how there could be continuity between most human thoughts. Is
15 Although see Benson and Greenberg (1969) for evidence which may challenge this assumption.
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