My recent innocent question to Tom Clark (Globus, 24 Apr) stimulated some rather derisive posts by Paul Bains (26 Apr), Keith Sutherland (25 Apr) and David Wilson (25 Apr), so maybe I am on to something! Here's a capsule of the issue I raised: Clark takes qualia to be re-presentations of the world (including the body). Representations are, of course, essential to the functionalist account, and qualia fulfill that role. But it has long been established (see Sellars and Gibson in the 60s) that qualia are not phenomenal. You don't actually experience red sensations when you see a red tomato. The tomato is there, red-colored, in the world, that bulgy round hand-graspable object over there. What actually happens is that you find yourself thrown amidst a world that includes a tomato. There are no additional *experiences* of qualia, over and above experience of the world with its qualities. (BTW, Keith exercises himself needlessly by missing my central distinction between mental qualia and world qualities; I nowhere attribute qualia to the world.) So putative qualia must be inferred; they have no evidential basis in immediate experience. My question to Clark, finally, was: What is the basis of this inference to qualia? Of course, I don't think there is one.
In trying to appreciate why the issue I raised evoked such a strong response--Keith compares me to creationists while Paul places me back with Epicurus!--I realized that I had not reaffirmed a methodological principle I mentioned in previous posts, Husserl's *epoche*. Under the *epoche*, one suspends one's belief in the reality of the world there before us.
Husserl's method is really an extension of Cartesian doubt. As Descartes had already seen, the authenticity of the dream world and the indiscernability (in well developed dream experiences) from the wake world, calls into doubt the reality of the wake world. In the purification of Husserl's Cartesian meditations, better suspend judgment on the reality of the wake world, and go on to find some firmer basis for philosophy that can not be doubted.
I kinda doubt that Keith and David were operating under any dang *epoche* in their posts. They strike me as stout chaps fully confident of the ground under their feet. But if you really embrace the *epoche*, then while you go on living your life believing in the reality of the world, just like non-aficionados, you don't base your philosophical ideas on something so uncertain.
For my purposes here (which are not to achieve technical phenomenological reduction), the *epoche* serves to loosen the profound hold on our thought by common sense belief in the reality of the quotidian world. I want to open to unconventional ways of thinking; surely if conventional thought was going to get us out of the qualia mess, it would have happened long ago.
So when I talked (24 Apr) of the surface color of the tomato there in the phenomenal world, I made no ontological commitments. I never said the tomato was real or otherwise. David and Keith, however, were lustily believing in the reality of their worlds. Given this fundamental incompatibility between us, there is no way that there could be a meeting of the minds. No, if you want to understand my position then you just gotta put aside your common sense belief in the reality of the quotidian world. (Consider your own dream world to help undermine common sense in this regard (Globus 87).)
Back to qualia, I say there are no such things, but there are world qualities--the sound coming from the oboe, the odors Keith's dog prefers, the color of the tomato. (It seems difficult to grasp the sense in which a bodily feeling, like a toothache, is a world quality, I think because of the semantic structure of language, but my tooth is in my mouth which is in the world, and my toothache is precisely located in that part of the world. Believe me, the pain's not in my mind, it's in my tooth!) I have made no ontological commitments thus far, only the claim that there are world qualities. I can even say I always find myself already thrown in some world or other, without insisting that the world is real; maybe the way I always find myself already thrown is just *maya*.
Just because there are no qualia, doesn't mean there's no problem. How do we explain the qualities of the world? I think this is the right issue, not the explanation of mental qualia, since world qualities are experienced, whereas mental qualia are merely theoretical entities. *Zu den Sachen!* The hard problem is not that the physical brain can produce mental qualia but that the physical brain can produce world qualities. That's a very deep puzzle, and one I claim is more profitable to consider, then the qualia tar-baby which has got us ever more stuck.
Dogleg
David Wilson quotes my statement, "The red of a ripe tomato is on the surface of the tomato, not in my qualitative experience," and then responds: "Actually, there is good evidence that the red of a ripe tomato is not necessarily on the surface. Under certain light conditions...the light coming off of the tomato, as measured by a physical instrument, will have more intensity of green wavelengths than red. However, the tomato will still look red to our conscious perceptions... So, the red of a ripe tomato may, at times, only be in your experience, not in the object, as can be shown by other physical instruments."
David makes quite a category mistake here. The wavelengths that physical instruments measure have no color; his reference to red wavelengths is strictly speaking impermissible (since there has to be a tacit observing subject who supplies the red quale that correlates with certain long wavelengths). David's physical instruments can't show the color of objects, only the wavelengths of light.
What actually happens is that a changing electromagnetic wave front impinges on the retina, brain activity takes place--and we find ourselves in a world with an invariantly red tomato. ***That's the puzzle!*** To think that the wave front impinges and the brain generates qualia is not supported by an examination of our experience and needlessly proliferates ontology. The brain generates world qualities, not mental qualia. Nor is there a world plus our image of it; there is only one world. (Just check out your experience.)
David also quotes my statement that "when I hit my thumb with a hammer, the pain is in my thumb, not my mind," and responds: "Then let's try the following. Let's cut off the finger all together. Then the poor finger will continue to have pain, but the pain in the subject's mind should disappear!"
David's move has intriguing symbolic overtones but lets take it at face value. When I hit my thumb with the hammer, pain receptors send volleys into the central nervous system, the brain does what it does, with the result that the part of the world that is my thumb has a painful quality. Cut it off, a little less sensory input comes in, the brain does its thing, and I am thrown in a world without a painful thumb. If I develop a painful phantom thumb, then maybe the nerve endings are crackling enough to simulate an attached thumb, or maybe it has to do with engrained ways the brain is doing its thing, whatever; in any case, I am thrown again in a world with a painful thumb.
David is thinking, it seems, that the thumb is a reality in the world and the brain re-presents it. So when I say the pain is in the thumb, he construes this as the patently silly claim that the detached thumb would feel pain. But I have denied any re-presentation. Input under scientific description comes in (e.g. action potentials in C fibres), the brain does its thing, and we find ourselves thrown in some world or other, with or without a painful thumb, depending on the specific input and just how the brain does what it does. Suppose there is brain damage (Keith). Then the brain does its thing differently and we find ourselves thrown in a different kind of world
Paul's position somewhat overlaps with mine; he, too, thinks the brain generates the world. "What is difficult to 'see' is that our perceived bodies are 'in' our heads. We are _not_ looking 'out' through transparent eyes at our bodies." But Paul also unfortunately retains allegiance to sensations. "Our sensations are located topologically 'in' our brains _not_ on the surface of objects in the 'world'... A 'postmodern' brain should be quite happy with colour being a cerebral product and _not_ being 'out there' on the surface of the tomato." Having brought in sensations, he is forced to distinguish between what's in the brain (sensations) and what's in the world (objects with colored surfaces). So Paul inconsistently has on the one hand sensations inside the brain and world outside, like Keith and David, and on the other hand (more consistent with mystical teachings) the world inside the brain, like me. Despite his ridicule of my view, I suspect his basic predilection is with me.
So against the deeply rooted belief in the tomato outside the brain, I claim the tomato, and the entire world for that matter, are hoisted by the brain and there are no sensations. There are as many human worlds as there are human brains, and there is no single autonomous world that is our common reality (Globus, 25 Mar 96).
What the whole fracas comes down to, I think, is this: If you are a friend of mental qualia, then you--sigh of relief--save the reality of the world-in-common but are left with a vexing, seemingly interminable, hard problem. If you are a friend of world qualities, then you--anxious sigh--relinquish the one world-in-common for many coherent parallel worlds (which entails a scary existential isolation), but at least the problem finally dissolves. With these high stakes, mental qualia v. world qualities seems worthy of serious discussion.
Sellars, W. (1963). "Science, Perception and Reality." New York: Humanities Press.
Gibson, J.J. (1966). "The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems." Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
Husserl, E. (1960). "Cartesian Meditations." The Hague: Martins Nijhoff.
Globus, G. (1987). "Dream Life, Wake Life." Albany: State Univ. of N.Y. Press.
Gordon Globus
Globey@usa.pipeline.com
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