Thanks for the interesting argument. Before I can evaluate it, however, Iād need you to clarify your terms a bit for me. In particular, Iād need to know more about what you mean by āfrequency of conscious experience.ā Based on my best reconstruction of the argument, it canāt mean temporal resolution or rate of subjective experience.
My intention was rate of subjective experience. I can rephrase Premise 1:
Premise 1: Any observed conscious temporal resolution frequency for an individual X (within some set of possible conditions C) is a lower bound for the maximum frequency of subjective experience for X (within C).
Does it make sense to interpret the rate of subjective experience as a frequency, the number of subjective experiences per second? Maybe our conscious experiences are not sufficiently synchronized across our brains for such an interpretation?
Even if it does make sense, Premise 1 could still be false. Or, even if Premise 1 is true, it could be that the actual maximum frequency of subjective experience isnāt well correlated with the observed maximum temporal resolution frequency (say as measured by CFF). Maybe the gap is huge, and our max frequency of subjective experiences is millions of times faster than our max temporal resolution frequency.
Itās tempting to think that temporal resolution is like the frame rate of a video, and as the temporal resolution goes up or down, so too must the rate of subjective experience. But the mechanisms that govern the intake and processing of perceptual information are a lot more complicated than that, and the mechanisms that govern the subjective experience of time appear to be more complicated still.
Premise 1 depends on interpreting temporal resolution like a lower bound for the frame rate of the video which is our subjective experience, although it isnāt committed to the claim about correlation between temporal resolution and the rate of subjective experience.
There is no conceptual tension between the claim that a creature consciously perceives the flicker-to-steady-glow transition at some high threshold (200 Hz vs 60 Hz for humans, say) and the claim that the creature has the same rate of subjective experience as a typical human. (Similarly, there is no conceptual tension between the claim that some creature consciously perceives the transition at the same threshold as humans but has a different rate of subjective experience.)
How this could look is that the 60 Hz max CFF for humans is a bad lower bound for our frequency of subjective experience, which is actually much faster, but to match an individual with a CFF of 200 Hz, our maximum frequency of subjective experience would have to be at least 200 Hz.
Great, thanks Michaelāthat clarifies the argument for me.
Premise 1: Any observed conscious temporal resolution frequency for an individual X (within some set of possible conditions C) is a lower bound for the maximum frequency of subjective experience for X (within C).
While I think itās plausible that oneās temporal resolution sets some sort of bound on oneās rate of subjective experience, I just want to reiterate that I believe this is an empirical claim, not a conceptual claim. Iām open to the possibility that temporal resolution is just totally irrelevant to the subjective experience of time.
(As an aside, I think we have to be a bit careful how we (myself included) use the word āconsciousā in this context. In the post I distinguish behavioral methods for determining CFF from ERG methods for determining CFF. But even bees can be trained on the behavioral paradigm. This of course doesnāt settle the question of whether theyāre conscious.)
Does it make sense to interpret the rate of subjective experience as a frequency, the number of subjective experiences per second? Maybe our conscious experiences are not sufficiently synchronized across our brains for such an interpretation?
This is another good question for which I donāt have the answer. A related issue is whether experiences are discrete (countable) in the relevant sense. There are arguments that pull in either direction here. But, just to clarify, even if experiences are countable in the relevant sense, it would be an astounding coincidence if our experience frequency exactly matched our critical flicker-fusion frequency (i.e., 60 experiences per second).
My intention was rate of subjective experience. I can rephrase Premise 1:
Premise 1: Any observed conscious temporal resolution frequency for an individual X (within some set of possible conditions C) is a lower bound for the maximum frequency of subjective experience for X (within C).
Does it make sense to interpret the rate of subjective experience as a frequency, the number of subjective experiences per second? Maybe our conscious experiences are not sufficiently synchronized across our brains for such an interpretation?
Even if it does make sense, Premise 1 could still be false. Or, even if Premise 1 is true, it could be that the actual maximum frequency of subjective experience isnāt well correlated with the observed maximum temporal resolution frequency (say as measured by CFF). Maybe the gap is huge, and our max frequency of subjective experiences is millions of times faster than our max temporal resolution frequency.
Premise 1 depends on interpreting temporal resolution like a lower bound for the frame rate of the video which is our subjective experience, although it isnāt committed to the claim about correlation between temporal resolution and the rate of subjective experience.
How this could look is that the 60 Hz max CFF for humans is a bad lower bound for our frequency of subjective experience, which is actually much faster, but to match an individual with a CFF of 200 Hz, our maximum frequency of subjective experience would have to be at least 200 Hz.
Great, thanks Michaelāthat clarifies the argument for me.
While I think itās plausible that oneās temporal resolution sets some sort of bound on oneās rate of subjective experience, I just want to reiterate that I believe this is an empirical claim, not a conceptual claim. Iām open to the possibility that temporal resolution is just totally irrelevant to the subjective experience of time.
(As an aside, I think we have to be a bit careful how we (myself included) use the word āconsciousā in this context. In the post I distinguish behavioral methods for determining CFF from ERG methods for determining CFF. But even bees can be trained on the behavioral paradigm. This of course doesnāt settle the question of whether theyāre conscious.)
This is another good question for which I donāt have the answer. A related issue is whether experiences are discrete (countable) in the relevant sense. There are arguments that pull in either direction here. But, just to clarify, even if experiences are countable in the relevant sense, it would be an astounding coincidence if our experience frequency exactly matched our critical flicker-fusion frequency (i.e., 60 experiences per second).