The Heterophenomenological Fallacy, Part 4: Conclusion

(Sorry, Dear Reader, I couldn't come up with a good title for this post.)

I hope I have shown that Heterophenomenology is not taking us Philosophers of Mind one step closer to the Hard Scientists, but actually one step further away.  What could justify this regression?

I think that the major intuition that makes Heterophenomenology so appealing is that experiences are (supposed to be) Subjective, whereas the objects studied by physics, chemistry and biology are supposed to be Objective.  I did my basketball experiments alone.  No one else was watching, or at least, no one else was paying attention.  But *in principle* others *could have* been watching, and those others would have seen the *very same* basketball that I saw.  The entire Scientific Community could have been watching, in principle if not in practice.

I agree that this is a real difference between physics and phenomenology, a true difference between images of pencils and real basketballs.  However, I do not agree with the conclusions that Dennett and the Heterophenomenologists draw from this difference.

In practice, the entire Scientific Community could not have seen my basketball, and in fact, the Scientific Community has no interest in *my* basketball.  What the scientific community really cares about is the universal basketball.  The universal basketball is intersubjective in exactly the same way that seeing double is intersubjective.  The Law of Falling Basketballs is intersubjective in exactly the same way as The Law of Double Pencils is intersubjective.