In Consciousness Explained, (Dennett, 1991) I described a method, heterophenomenology, which was explicitly designed to be...

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             In Consciousness Explained, (Dennett, 1991) I described a method, 
        heterophenomenology, which was explicitly designed to be
      
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         the neutral path leading from objective physical science and its insistence on the 
        third-person point of view, to a method of phenomenological description that can (in 
        principle) do justice to the most private and ineffable subjective experiences, while 
        never abandoning the methodological principles of science. (CE, p72.)
      
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        How does it work?  We start with recorded raw data. Among these are the vocal sounds 
        people make (what they say, in other words), but to these verbal reports must be added all 
        the other manifestations of belief, conviction, expectation, fear, loathing, disgust, 
        etc.,  including any and all internal conditions (e.g. brain activities, hormonal 
        diffusion, heart rate changes, etc.) detectable by objective means. 
      
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                        I guess I should take some of the blame for the misapprehension, in some 
        quarters, that heterophenomenology restricts itself to verbal reports. Nothing could be 
        further from the truth. Verbal reports are different from all other sorts of raw data 
        precisely in that they admit of (and require, according to both heterophenomenology and 
        the 1st-person point of view) interpretation as speech acts, and subsequent assessment as 
        expressions of belief about a subject’s “private” subjective state. And so my discussion 
        of the methodology focused on such verbal reports in order to show how they are captured 
        within the fold of standard scientific (“3rd-person”) data. But all other such data, all 
        behavioral reactions, visceral reactions, hormonal reactions, and other changes in 
        physically detectable state are included within heterophenomenology. I thought that went 
        without saying, but apparently these additional data are often conveniently overlooked by 
        critics of heterophenomenology.
      
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                        From the recorded verbal utterances, we get transcripts (e.g., in English 
        or French, or whatever), from which in turn we devise interpretations of the subjects’ 
        speech acts, which we thus get to treat as (apparent) expressions of their beliefs, on all 
        topics. Thus using the intentional stance (Dennett, 1971, 1987), we construct therefrom 
        the subject’s heterophenomenological world. We move, that is, from raw data to  
        interpreted data: a catalogue of the subjects’ convictions, beliefs, attitudes, emotional 
        reactions, . . . (together with much detail regarding the circumstances in which these 
        intentional states are situated), but then we adopt a special move, which distinguishes 
        heterophenomenology from the normal interpersonal stance: the subjects’ beliefs (etc.) are 
        all bracketed for neutrality. 
      
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                        Why? Because of two failures of overlap, which we may label false positive 
        and false negative. False positive: Some beliefs that subjects have about their own 
        conscious states are provably false, and hence what needs explanation in these cases is 
        the etiology of the false belief.
      
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        For instance, most people–naive people–think their visual fields are roughly uniform in 
        visual detail or grain all the way out to the periphery. Even sophisticated cognitive 
        scientists can be startled when they discover just how poor their capacity is to identify 
        a peripherally located object (such as a playing card held at arm’s length). It certainly 
        seems as if our visual consciousness is detailed all the way out all the time, but easy 
        experiments show that it isn’t. (Our color vision also seems to extend all the way out, 
        but similar experiments show that it doesn’t.)  So the question posed by the 
        heterophenomenologist is:  
      
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                        Why do people think their visual fields are detailed all the way out? 
      
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        not this question:
      
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        How come, since people’s visual fields are detailed all the way out, they can’t identify 
        things parafoveally?  
      
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