The Philosophical Zombie versus the Tennis Playing Zombie: A Philosophical Explanation of the Zone Phenomenon. Part (2).

Introduction
‘The Philosophical Zombie versus the Tennis Playing Zombie: A Philosophical Explanation of the Zone Phenomenon’ Part (1) raised many questions about the nature of consciousness. The main purpose of the paper was to provide non-professional athletes the opportunity of experiencing the zone phenomenon on a regular basis by practising passive meditation while on court. This follow-up paper attempts to address some of the unanswered questions in relation to perception, consciousness and qualia. It goes without saying that some sort of definition of consciousness would be a useful starting point.

The definition I settled for centred on the idea of 'What is it like to be a tennis player'. This was a useful definition of consciousness from the point of view of passive meditation. I am happy to stick to the idea that consciousness is a particular type of feeling when we find ourselves involved in a tennis match. On this basis I will make use of David Chalmer's consciousness as 'the easy problem' and consciousness as 'the hard problem’.

Consciousness

It was suggested in Part (1) that a tennis-playing zombie lacked cognitive consciousness and this accounted for the zombie-like nature of a tennis player.  It was argued that lacking cognitive consciousness is an important part of any zombie argument. I believe a good argument was put for a tennis- playing zombie lacking 'What is it like?' experiences. This is what David Chalmers would call 'the easy problem'. 

The easy problem deals with such things as focusing one's attention, the reportability of mental states and deliberate control of behaviour.1  I was and still am of the opinion that if I can get my players out of the habit of thinking about what they are experiencing while on court, then they can overcome the problem of cognitive consciousness or 'What is it like?' experiences getting in the way of a solid performance. This is especially true if players get into the habit of having mainly negative thoughts.

 A possible objection to the zombie-like nature of tennis players might be that even though these players might lack cognitive consciousness they are still  perceptually aware of their environment. This perceptual consciousness is sometimes called phenomenological consciousness. Phenomenological consciousness might be a better term when talking about the tennis environment, however I am happy to use perceptual/ phenomenological consciousness interchangeably. David Chalmers refers to phenomenological consciousness as 'the hard problem'. To quote Chalmers: 

"If one problem qualifies as the problem it is this one. In this central sense of ‘consciousness’, an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is something it is like to be that state. Sometimes such terms as 'phenomenological consciousness' and 'qualia' are also used here, but I find it more natural to speak of 'conscious experience’, or simply ‘experience’2

My goal is to turn out tennis-playing zombies; that is players who—as far as humanly possible—don't have cognitive consciousness. From my point of view 'the hard problem' doesn't exist while players are 'in the zone'. This is because I see these players as having perception without awareness as opposed to 'the easy problem', which is perception with awareness. On this basis, consciousness could be seen as perception with or without awareness.

 As outlined in Part (1), tennis players could be considered ‘partial zombies' if they lacked ‘What is it like?’ experiences. These experiences were portrayed as the process of thinking. What was also understood was this thinking process produced non-physical thoughts. The objection to the zombie-like nature of tennis players is that they still have experience of the external world, i.e. the tennis court and this can be generally regarded as part of their consciousness while playing. The thing they don’t appear to have while in the zone is the cognitive part of consciousness.  

Can we take this a step further and claim that a tennis player in the zone doesn’t have phenomenological/perceptual consciousness and cognitive consciousness? We could if phenomenological consciousness isn’t really a form of consciousness. In other words, tennis players 'in the zone' experience a form of perception without awareness. Why is this the case on a tennis court? 

Consider the difference between perceiving a tennis ball coming towards you as opposed to thinking about a tennis ball coming towards you. Thinking about a tennis ball coming towards you would be perception with awareness. For example, wondering if it is a Dunlop or a Slazenger ball.  Based on this, perception without awareness could easily be misunderstood as lacking knowledge of the type of tennis ball we are playing with. But this is not perception without awareness. We are aware of the ball coming towards us, but we simply are unaware of certain facts about the ball, eg. brand name. It is also possible that we could be mistaken about the facts as well; “it bounces like a Penn ball”.  Mistaken or not this does not add anything to perception without awareness. The whole thing can be rectified at some stage by simply examining the ball.

It would seem that all that is required for perception with awareness on a tennis court is that something round and yellow is coming towards me. It is irrelevant as to whether this round yellow thing is a tennis ball or a meatball painted yellow; the fact that I am thinking about it is all that matters. When playing tennis in the zone, is the player really exercising perception with awareness? The answer to this is ‘no’ if the player is ‘in the zone’. 

Is it possible to perceive something round and yellow and later claim to have been perceptually unaware of it?  It was noted in Part (1) that players in the zone attempt to operate without reflective awareness, so ‘What is it like?’ experiences are kept to a minimum. It was also noted that upon reflection after a performance, athletes find it difficult to elaborate on their zone experience.

There is no denying that the main thing of interest is the tennis ball. There is also no doubt that if a player is attempting a passing shot they are interested in the ball - they have to be. But the ball is no more significant or important to ‘pulling off’ a passing shot than the net, the opponent or the lines. All three objects/things can be regarded as a composite the moment before the shot is played. In other words, the player is aware of all three at the same time. Is it possible for a player to be perceptually aware of three or more things at once that are spatially separated?  Before this question can be answered it is necessary to further examine the so called ‘it’ of perceptual awareness.

I deliberately chose the word ‘it’ for a tennis ball because I don’t think we can look at a tennis ball while playing tennis in isolation. In other words, experienced players don’t just perceive a tennis ball, don’t just perceive an opponent, don’t just perceive the net and somehow become aware of these objects in some type of sequence. I would argue that while playing tennis players don’t perceive objects in isolation. The ‘it’ of perception on a tennis court includes every object and everything (including the ball) relevant to the game of tennis at that particular moment.

When my opponent throws the ball into the air and hits a serve I perceive the ball, but I also perceive many other things at the same time. I am aware of his racquet action, aware of the spin he imparts. I am aware of the court surface so I will know how the ball will behave once it reaches my side of the court. All of this amounts to certain expectations based on a variety of information perceived at a given moment. Expectations are fluid because no- one experiences exactly the same serve twice. Therefore, I need to react without any type of consciousness. 

The reality is that there simply isn’t time to think because of the split- second it takes the ball to reach my end of the court. I cannot perceive the ball, perceive my opponent’s racquet, perceive the spin, perceive the court surface and then make a decision and then make a return. It is not possible for perception with awareness to initiate a return of serve. But it is possible for perception without awareness to initiate a return. 

I am suggesting that when we play tennis ‘in the zone’ we perceive the tennis environment including the ball in a composite way. There is no thinking about what the ball is like, what the net is like or what my opponent is like. At the end of the match I may well ask myself “what did this composite ‘ball-net-lines-racquet thing’ seem like to me?” Even though all of these things are necessary for playing in the zone, it is impossible to think about them all at once, but it is possible to experience them all at once.

 I am of course arguing that a zone-like performance requires us to perceive all of these things at once. I use ‘perceive’ to mean look without thinking. Supporters of qualia would argue for an extra element being present in the act of perceiving which is absent when thinking. The difference here is that when playing tennis we cannot perceive just one thing; when playing in the zone we perceive many things all at once. While trying to perceive many things at once we find it difficult if not impossible to think about what we are perceiving. This accounts for the passive meditative element of the zone phenomenon which was investigated in "The Philosophical Zombie versus the Tennis Playing Zombie"Part (1).

 Questions about zone-like performances were investigated in Part (1). Study by sports psychologists suggests that athletes can perform automatic performance of actions without the need for cognition. This was discussed as an ecological model of performance. A similar idea is expressed in an article by Koch and Crick entitled ‘On the Zombie Within’. There is credible evidence for the existence of sensory-motor systems in the primate brain that function in the absence of consciousness, however Koch and Crick investigate this phenomenon in more detail. As far as consciousness is concerned, they make a distinction between ‘vision for perception’ and ‘vision for action’.3 I am wanting to put forward the possibility that 'vision for perception' is really 'perception with awareness' and 'vision for action' is really 'perception without awareness'. In exactly the same way, ‘vision for action perception’ is ‘the easy’ problem’ and ‘vision for action’ is ‘the hard problem’.

 Koch and Crick draw on the Goodale and Milner study which shows that a subject with an unusual mental defect caused by an accident is unable to give a visual account of what they are seeing. Yet they have little trouble in using their hands to grasp objects that are visible to most people, but ‘invisible’ to them. In other words, subjects have little trouble in reaching out and grasping an object such as a cup even though they cannot give a visual account of what this thing actually is. This is what Koch and Crick understand by ‘vision for action’.4 ‘Vision for action’ means to perceive the environment without the need or ability to think about it because the focus is not on any one thing/object. In other words, not looking at the object directly, but perceiving the object and the surroundings at the same time.

Even though the subject cannot describe what he/she is seeing, it does not mean they are not seeing anything. It could be argued they are seeing a composite of something. That is, an object that only has relevance in relation to its surroundings or other objects. While it is clear that this unfortunate subject could not give a visual account of a cup, a pencil or any other object in their field of vision, they can nevertheless arrange their fingers in the appropriate ‘pick up shape’.  Again this does not necessarily mean that when looking at a cup or pencil they see nothing, even though the subject denies seeing any of these objects. Nonetheless, there must be some object form their hand moves towards. It would seem reasonable they are unable to give an account of, 'what is it like?' to view an object, simply because they can’t separate the object from its surroundings or background. 

 Conclusion

Things such as tennis balls, lines, nets and racquets are all things that can be taken in isolated 'what is it like?' experiences. I am suggesting that during a professional or high-standard game of tennis these objects and many others become indistinguishable from each other because the player is interested in as much of the tennis environment as they can possibly take in. They are engaging in perception without awareness.

 I think this is enough to suggest that tennis-playing zombies not only lack cognitive consciousness but perceptual/phenomenological consciousness as well. On this basis, the tennis-playing zombie is a little closer to a philosophical zombie than previously thought. It also suggests that David Chalmer’s division of consciousness into ‘the easy problem’ and ‘the hard problem’ could be a useful tool when it comes to explaining the zone phenomenon.

Footnotes

1. David J Chalmers,  “Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness”. Philosophy Programme. Research School of Social Sciences. Dept of Philosophy Washington University, Dec 16, 1994. P. 2.
 (Retrieved June 2010) Available online at http://consc.net/papers/facing.pdf   

2. ibid. p.3

3. Christof  Koch and Francis Crick, “On the Zombie Within”  Concepts Magazine.
(Retrieved June 2010) Available online at www.klab.caltech.edu/refweb/paper/397.pdf

4. ibid.