UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Experience of Reading Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/88m889zk Author Moore, Alan Tonnies Publication Date 2016 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 4.0 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE The Experience of Reading A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy by Alan Tonnies Moore June 2016 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Eric Schwitzgebel Chairperson Dr. John Perry Dr. Peter Graham Copyright by Alan Tonnies Moore 2016 The Dissertation of Alan Tonnies Moore is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgments This dissertation often felt like an argument for panpsychism, a sentient creature with experience and intentions of its own, maturing in fits over six years. It owes its life to my dissertation committee. More than anyone, the support and guidance from Eric Schwitzgebel was indispensable. He helped me see through the stretches of nihilism, and in the process, showed me how weird philosophy can be a source of joy. John Perry’s unswerving encouragement has made me, and many others, into sharper thinkers, but more importantly, he shows the world what true mentorship looks like. This is what makes a great philosopher. Thank you Peter Graham for the insightful comments, and you are right, the point of philosophy should not be a secret. As you can see, I’ve taken this to heart. There’s no mistaking my reasons here. I also want to thank the faculty at UC Riverside, the people who made an impersonal institution into an inviting place to learn: Howard Wettstein, Carl Cranor, John Fischer, and Sally Ness. Thank you to Lawrence Rosenblum, Charles Siewert, and Robin Jeshion for participating in my masters, proposition, and prospectus committees. I’ve also been incredibly lucky to have some amazing fellow graduate students: Megan Stotts for the friendship and place to stay, Megs Gendreau and Daniel Ehlrich because they’re my favorites, and many others. Without Gerardo Sanchez and Jayne Gales in the office, I doubt I would have filled !iv out all of the paperwork and forms that needed signing, often on short notice. In addition, I spent a wonderful year as a visiting researcher in Basque Country at the Institute of Logic, Cognition, Language, and Information at the University of Basque Country, or as it is properly called, Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea. Thank you to the friends and colleagues I made out there: Kepa Korta, Josu Acosta, Eros Corazza, and Jerome Dokic. The list goes on and on. My heartfelt love goes out to Mom and Dad, Vanessa Carlisle, Alex Rasch, Sasha and Bud Donahue, as well as Noah Peller and Thomas Dwyer for reading the final draft. Most of all, I am indebted to my partner, Charlotte Tonnies, for her continued support, year after year, for a project that often seemed more of like an abstract thought than a concrete piece of writing. Now we both get a break from the nights and weekends on my computer. !v To everyone living a precarious life, May you always find joy in the hustle. !vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Experience of Reading by Alan Tonnies Moore Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Philosophy University of California, Riverside, June 2016 Eric Schwitzgebel, Chairperson What do you experience when you read? You are reading right now, so ask yourself, do you have an inner voice, visual imagery, or a perceptual experience of the words on the page. Perhaps, while you read this abstract, you simply find your mind wandering. Philosophers and psychologist provide radically conflicting descriptions of the commonplace experience of reading, and my own introspection feels incomplete and unclear. I begin, in Chapter 1, by making the case for a healthy skepticism towards introspective reports, even those of experts describing their current experiences. In Chapter 2, I contrast the experience of reading with perceptual experiences and discuss the sources of introspective error: inference error, overgeneralization, and memory limitations. Due to these sources of error, we can not take introspective reports at face value, and I argue for the need to compare subjective and objective measures of experience using the Subjective and Objective Measures of Experience !vii (SOME) method. Chapter 3 is an examination of the cognitive processes that underlie the act of reading, and I discuss the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad, situational models of narrative comprehension, flow, and mind wandering. In Chapter 4, I describe a series of experiments on the phenomenology of reading that use SOME method. Chapter 5 is a general discussion of the results. These experiments suggest that there is extensive variability in the experience of reading. Experts have been blind to this variability because introspective error creates systematic biases in descriptions of experience. I argue that our confidence in introspective reports is always high, regardless of accuracy, so we must evaluate methods of measuring introspective reports, not the reports themselves. Further, these results suggest that coarse-grained aspects of experience, such as modal experiences while reading, are functionally isolated. They are what I call paraphenomena. When our experiences are not functionally isolated, the relationship between experience and behavior is often one of interference instead of facilitation. I finish by laying out the implications for the relationship between phenomenal and functional notions of consciousness. !viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface .................................................................................................................xvi Chapter 1 What’s It Like to Read? ..........................................................................................1 I. Guided Introspection .......................................................................................1 II. The (New) Hard Question of Consciousness ................................................10 III. Descriptive Disagreements ...........................................................................18 IV. What’s to Come ..........................................................................................26 Chapter 2 Concepts + Methods .............................................................................................30 I. Action Experience and Phenomenal Worms ...................................................33 II. Sources of Introspective Error .......................................................................50 III. Methods of Studying Consciousness ............................................................62 Chapter 3 Psychology + Reading ...........................................................................................71 I. The Phonological Loop ..................................................................................75 II. The Visuospatial Sketchpad ..........................................................................83 III. The Visual System and Flow ........................................................................95 IV. Mind Wandering .......................................................................................105 V. Applications and Optimism ........................................................................109 !ix Chapter 4 Experimental Phenomenology ............................................................................111 I. Experiment One ...........................................................................................115 II. Experiment Two .........................................................................................135 III. Experiment Three ......................................................................................142 IV. Experiment Four .......................................................................................153 V. Experiment Five .........................................................................................165 VI. Conclusion ................................................................................................175 Chapter 5 Phenomenal Variability + Functional Isolation ...................................................176 I. Introspective Reports ...................................................................................178 II. The Other Moore’s Law .............................................................................188 III. Subjective and Objective Measures of Experience ......................................200 IV. Paraphenomena and Phenomenal Interference ..........................................205 V. Further Research ........................................................................................216 VI. Autobiographical Introspection .................................................................219 References ..........................................................................................................222 !x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.1 .............................................................................................................89 The stimuli from Brooks (1967), including the spatial set of sentences, the nonsense set of sentences, and the four-by-four matrix used as a mnemonic device. Figure 3.2 .............................................................................................................99