William James’ greatest achievement is, arguably, his analysis of the fringe — or, as he sometimes called it, transitive experience. In trying to understand this vague, elusive, often peripheral aspect of consciousness, James broke new ground. But in so doing he also began to lay down the first stratum of a radically new methodology, one that intersects first- and third-person findings in such a way that each is able to interrogate the other, and so further our understanding of both....\ud
\ud
But I think it is important to see that explanatory phenomenology can be completely scientific without necessarily having to (1) consider the neural substrate, (2) employ reductive arguments, or (3) operate at the third-person level. If I am right, explanatory phenomenology can be a remarkably plastic member of the set of first-person methodologies for the study of consciousness

Mangan, Dr. Bruce B.

English

CogPrints Cognitive Sciences Eprint Archive

The Fringe: A Case Study in Explanatory Phenomenology

Cognitive Sciences ePrint Archive

THE FRINGE:
A CASE STUDY IN EXPLANATORY PHENOMENOLOGY
Bruce Mangan, Institute of Cognitive Studies, University of California,
Berkeley CA, USA. Email: mangan@cogsci.berkeley.edu
William James’ greatest achievement is, arguably, his analysis of the fringe — or, as
he sometimes called it, transitive experience.15 In trying to understand this vague,
elusive, often peripheral aspect of consciousness, James broke new ground. But in so
doing he also began to lay down the first stratum of a radically new methodology, one
that intersects first- and third-person findings in such a way that each is able to inter-
rogate the other, and so further our understanding of both.
James was a trained physician, and he was impressed by the then new understand-
ing of neural processes as both dynamic and (as we now say) massively parallel and
distributed. It may even be that it was James’ prior sense of neural dynamics, learned
as a medical student, that gave him the hint for his later and most distinctive pheno-
menological findings (Mangan, 1991). In any case, James linked neural and
phenomenological structure closely in his writings, at times explaining features of
our phenomenology as consequences of our underlying neural dynamics.16 This
aspect of James’ enterprise I would call ‘explanatory’ phenomenology.
After lying dormant for most of this century, research has started to return to the
method James helped pioneer. One example is Varela’s neurophenomenology. It, too,
aims to go beyond phenomenological description, and take the next step — to explain
to some degree why our phenomenology is the way it is. For example, Varela’s paper
on present-time consciousness in this special issue (see section III, especially) brings
out some intriguing ideas about the levels of temporal constraints on neural process-
ing that may condition the time horizon in the fringe. Some of my own work (Man-
gan, 1991; 1993a, b) is also concerned with explaining fringe phenomenology as
conditioned by neural factors, especially overall features of network integration that
are conveniently captured by PDP models.
But I think it is important to see that explanatory phenomenology can be com-
pletely scientific without necessarily having to (1) consider the neural substrate, (2)
employ reductive arguments, or (3) operate at the third-person level. If I am right,
explanatory phenomenology can be a remarkably plastic member of the set of first-
person methodologies for the study of consciousness.
PEER COMMENTARY AND RESPONSES 249
Journal of Consciousness Studies
www.imprint-academic.com/jcs
[15] In this special issue, Bailey makes a sharp distinction between the terms ‘fringe’ and ‘transitive’
experience. On my reading of James, these terms are rough synonyms. There can be no question that
for James both terms refer to the same basic phenomenological fact: feelings of relation. It is true that
when James wants to emphasize the dynamic and integrative function of feelings of relation, he will
often call them transitive experience; and when he wants to consider feelings of relation as context
feelings around a single definite image (or ‘nucleus’ as he sometimes calls it) James will more often
use the term fringe. But as Bailey himself notes, James sometimes writes of the fringe as having all the
attributes of transitive experience (e.g. 1890, V. 1, p. 253). And Bailey forthrightly notes other
difficulties with his own interpretation. I must point out that contrary to Bailey’s assertion, the relation
between transitive experience and the fringe has been considered in the literature — briefly in Mangan
(1993a), and more extensively in Mangan (1991). Bailey cites Galin (1996); but this paper simply
recapitulates some of my previous work on the fringe, though this fact is not always clear. Galin does,
however, offer some original ideas on alternatives to James’ terminology.
[16] See, for instance, James’ discussion of the neural/phenomenological linkage using the brilliant
analogy of a kaleidoscope (1890, Vol 1, pp. 247–8).
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2010
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
Let me expand slightly on these contentions, and at the same time illustrate them
with a concrete example — an analysis of one aspect of fringe phenomenology, in
particular its diaphanous, indistinct, unarticulated character. I will do this solely from
the first-person stance, but I believe this nevertheless begins to explain the structure
of our phenomenology just as biologists explain many aspects of organic structure. If
we wish, we can go further and integrate the following first-person analysis with
additional third-person findings. But even so, this would not entail a third-person
reduction, nor otherwise make the first-person stance subservient to the third. My
basic point will be that we can identify a conservation principle operating in con-
sciousness: that as something becomes clear, something else must become vague; but
throughout a huge number of clear–vague phenomenological transformations, a
rough parity in articulation capacity is preserved.
First of all, it is crucial to see that (neo-positivist dogma notwithstanding) some
standard methods of explanation in science are not restricted to ‘person’ — be it first,
second or third. Science already possesses what I would call ‘person-independent’ or
‘stance-independent’ explanatory principles. One of them is to explain a phenome-
non by identifying a salient constraint or limitation.
Consider for a moment how explanation via limitation is used in third-person
research. Probably the most mathematically precise instance of this is the principle of
conservation of energy in physics. And in biology, too, third-person explanations will
often rest on identifying the right limitation, i.e., the operative limitation that helps
explain the phenomenon in question.
Probably the most successful example of this is Malthus’ insight that the environ-
ment puts an upper limit on the number of organisms able to survive at any given
time. In Darwin’s hands, this became the basis of the most powerful explanatory the-
ory in the history of biology, natural selection. But explanations that identify an
operative limitation can be very mundane. Why does eating yogurt reduce gastro-
intestinal disorders? One might think that yogurt somehow attacks harmful bacteria
directly. But according to a current theory, yogurt protects us because of ‘competitive
exclusion’. The area on the surface of the intestine is limited, and the bacteria in
yogurt occupy this limited area so completely that little room is left for harmful bacte-
ria. So by recognizing the relevant limitation — there is only so much room in the
intestine — we explain why yogurt works to reduce digestive problems.
Now one kind of limitation is a trade-off. A trade-off occurs when an advantage can
only be ‘bought’ by giving up an alternative advantage. The notion of a trade-off is
stance-independent, and this is our point of departure for explaining the vague or
indefinite phenomenology of fringe experience.
But first a final third-person example showing how a trade-off limitation helps
explain the distribution of receptive fields in the human eye. An ideal eye would not
have to trade off acuity for sensitivity. But in fact the limited surface area of the retina
imposed a trade-off in the size and distribution of the eye’s receptive fields. Narrow
(acute) receptive fields cluster around the fovea, wide (sensitive) receptive fields are
peripheral. Wide receptive fields are inherently less able to resolve details than are
narrow receptive fields, and wide receptive fields of necessity yield relatively blurry
or fuzzy output. But a wide receptive field, because it covers a larger area, is more
sensitive to light, and so gives us some visual information when a narrow receptive
field is in effect blind. Our night vision would improve if we had more wide receptive
250 PEER COMMENTARY AND RESPONSES
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2010
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
fields in the eye, but this would then of necessity reduce the area left for narrow recep-
tive fields, and our ability to see details would suffer. Again, we explain a trade-off by
identifying the operative limitation that underlies it — in this case, the limited area of
the retina.
Now, in some ways fringe phenomenology is quite like the fuzzy or ill-defined
quality of peripheral vision produced by wide receptive fields. But a note of caution.
While this analogy is helpful, it should not be pressed too far. The fringe is found in
all sensory and non-sensory modalities of experience, not just vision. (James’ own
examples of the fringe are drawn from non-sensory experience.) And even in visual
experience, fringe effects can be separated completely from those of peripheral vision
(Rock and Gutman, 1981).
A good illustration of the fringe in sensory experience is the cocktail party effect.
Two conversations are in earshot, but we cannot clearly attend to both of them at the
same time. The best we can do is shift attention back and forth; at any given moment,
we can only experience one or the other conversation clearly. For once we shift atten-
tion away from the clear conversation, its phenomenology is immediately trans-
formed. What had been a clear conversation is now a vague, hazy background of
ill-defined words and voice timbres.
This is a standard example, but I believe we can now extract a new point from it:
there is a trade-off strategy at work in consciousness. This is hardly an ideal situation;
it would be more efficient if we could experience both conversations clearly at the
same time. But for some reason the resources of consciousness are not up to this task.
(By contrast, we have very good evidence that this limitation does not apply to non-
conscious processing. See Baars, 1988). In general, consciousness represents the
unattended or background conversation with very sketchy strokes. And if, for an
unstable moment, we do succeed in attending to both conversations simultaneously
(and aren’t just shifting attention quickly back and forth), we experience the two con-
versations at an intermediate level of clarity. Neither conversation is experienced as
clearly as it would be if it were alone in the foreground, but neither is experienced as
vaguely as it would be if it were completely in the background. At an intermediate
level of clarity, there are more contents in consciousness, but via the trade-off they are
less phenomenologically defined than if there were fewer contents.
In general we explain a trade-off by grasping its operative limitation. And so if we
can do this in the case of consciousness, we will have begun to explain in purely first-
person terms and using a stance-independent explanatory principle why conscious-
ness has a fringe.
What, then, is the operative limitation on the trade-offs in consciousness? At this
point the answer should be evident: Articulation capacity. At the deepest level, con-
sciousness IS the limited but infinitely plastic capacity to articulate experience. This
overall capacity is conserved during a huge number of phenomenological transforma-
tions. Normally, when something becomes clear, something else becomes vague —
the ‘sum’ of total articulation remains at least roughly constant.
But we can apply the idea of the conservation of consciousness to more extreme
cases. At a low articulation level throughout the field of experience, our standard
‘amount’ of consciousness would be spread out as an extremely diffuse, vague,
diaphanous field, and without a clear focus. On the other hand, we would expect that
lacking clarity the field of consciousness would have immense extension. At the other
PEER COMMENTARY AND RESPONSES 251
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2010
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
extreme, we could experience very high articulation, with a focal object more finely
detailed than we usually experience, but at the cost of giving up our background sense
of setting, horizon, context relations, etc., that the fringe normally gives us.
From this perspective, the actual structure of consciousness is remarkably lop-
sided. At any given moment, most of its resources are devoted to the high articulation
of a single object in attention, consisting of only a few clear component features (its
7  2 ‘chunks’). Again, only the smallest bit of consciousness articulation capacity is
reserved for the fringe and transitive experience. Of course this raises a further ques-
tion. Why does consciousness have the particular ratio of clear/vague articulation we
actually find? Perhaps the answer here will take us beyond the limits of first-person
analysis, and into third-person biological considerations, perhaps a process of evolu-
tionary tuning for optimum efficiency given the antecedent limitation on the capacity
of consciousness to articulate experience.
References
Baars, B.J. (1988), A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness (New York, Cambridge University Press).
Mangan, B.B. (1991), Meaning and the Structure of Consciousness: A Essay in Psychoaesthetics
Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
Mangan, B.B. (1993a), ‘Taking phenomenology seriously: the ‘fringe’ and its implications for
cognitive research,’ Consciousness and Cognition 2 (2), pp. 89–108
Mangan, B.B. (1993b), ‘Some philosophical and empirical implications of the fringe,’
Consciousness and Cognition, 2 (2), pp. 142–54
Rock, I. & Gutman, D. (1981), ‘The effect of inattention on form perception’, Journal of
Experimental Psychology, 7 (2), pp. 275–85.
BUILDING MATERIALS FOR THE EXPLANATORY BRIDGE
Eduard Marbach, Institute of Philosophy, University of Bern, Laenggasstra.
49A, CH-3000 Bern 9, Switzerland.
In recent years, David J. Chalmers (1995; 1996; 1997) has forcefully made a point
that I consider to be extremely important for the study of consciousness, also from a
Husserlian perspective. The point is that conscious experience is ‘an explanandum in
its own right’ (1995, p. 209). In order to make progress in addressing the problem of
the explanatory gap between physical processes and conscious experience, new
approaches are therefore to be explored. As Chalmers has it, ‘a mere account of the
functions stays on one side of the gap, so the materials for the bridge must be found
elsewhere’ (1995, p. 203). Now, as I see it, the editors of this Special Issue pursue,
precisely, the most promising avenue for adequately studying the problem of con-
sciousness in such an exploratory spirit. For, in their excellent Introduction, they un-
equivocally propose to include first-person, subjective experience as an explicit and
active component of a science of consciousness, to be elaborated with appropriate
methods by a research community. Jonathan Shear already put it very clearly else-
where: ‘what is needed . . . is not so much new conceptualizations of science or new
objective methodologies for exploring relationships of the phenomena of conscious-
ness to physiology and behaviour . . . but new systematic methodologies for the
exploration of the subjective phenomena of consciousness’ (in Shear, 1997, p. 369).
Among such methodologies, the editors now include ‘the most important western
252 PEER COMMENTARY AND RESPONSES
Journal of Consciousness Studies
www.imprint-academic.com/jcs
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2010
For personal use only -- not for reproduction


1996; 1997) has forcefully made a point that I consider to be extremely important for the study of consciousness, also from a Husserlian perspective. The point is that conscious experience is ‘an explanandum in its own right’

The Fringe: A Case Study in Explanatory Phenomenology

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

CogPrints Cognitive Sciences Eprint Archive

Cognitive Sciences ePrint Archive