from the notebook
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Epiphenomenal Qualia
original paper by - Frank Jackson
There are certain perceptual experiences which no amount of purely physical information includes…the hurtfulness of pains, the pangs of jealousy, tasting a lemon, smelling a rose and nothing you can tell of a physical sort captures the smell. So physicalism is false.
I.The Knowledge Argument for Qualia : Say Fred has exceptional color vision. We ask Fred how he distinguishes between the color of the tomatos and he says they look differet colors to him. To him, red1 and red2 are different colors, just as different yellow is from blue. That means Fed can see one more color than we can and we are to Fred as a totally red-green color blind person is to us. He may have an additional color cone, or his cones respond differently to the spectrum of red color wavelength. We can map his brain patterns. But it still does not tell us what it is to see the extra red color. The physical description leaves something out. Thus, physicalism must always leave something out.
Mary, the brilliant scientist, or neuroscientist, brought up in a black and white room, knows everything about colors and brains. But her understanding of colors is incomplete till she leaves the room and discovers colors. What is it like to ‘see’, ‘feel’ colors ? Will she learn something additional ? If she does, then her earlier knowledge was incomplete. Ergo, physcialism is incomplete.
II. The Modal Argument : No amount of physical information about another logically entails that they’re conscious or feel anything. The world of zombies who look like us, live in a world exactly like ours. They still differ from us I some ways. Thus there is more to us than purely physical. Thus physicalism is false.
Modal argument misconceives Physicalism in that the doctrine is advanced as a contingent truth. If we in our world have features additional to those of our replicas in other possible worlds, then we have non-physical features or qualia. Some sincerely deny there can be replicas who lack consciousness.
Connection between physical and qualia is like the difference between aesthetic qualities and natural onesand even though two possible world naturally identical should be aesthetically identical, aesthetic poperties cannot be reduced to natural.
III. The ‘What It Is Like To Be’ Argument : Nagel argues that we human beings can never know what it is like to be a bat as that is not explainable in physical terms which are terms for understanding equally from many points of view. With regard to Fred, we were trying to figure out about his ‘experience’ with color, and not what it was to be Fred. No amount of knowledge about Fred, physical or not, can explain his experiences. Fred knows his experience of seeing red differs from other people. AND he can experience the red. If Physicalism were true, enough physical information about Fred would obviate any need to extrapolate feats of imagination to tell us about his experience. The information was in our possession, but it wasn’t enough to tell us about his experience.
IV. The Bogey of Epiphenomenalism : Proof against epiphenomenalism.
Epiphenomenalists argue that :
i) Qualia are causally impotent with respect to the physical world.
ii) Mental states are efficacious with respect to physical world. Certain properties of certain mental states, like qualia, are such that their possession or their absence makes no difference to the physical world.
iii) Mental is totally causally inefficacious. Instantiation of mental states makes a difference to other mental states but not to anything physical.
(i) A quale like hurtfulness must be causally efiicacious and its instantiation must make a difference to what happens in the brain.
Explanation : Hurtfuless of pain is assumed to be responsible for the subject seeking to avoid pain. The epiphenomenalist can simply say that in connection with hurtfulness and behavior. It may simply be a consequence of the fact that certain happenings in the brain cause both.
(ii) According to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution of natural selection, the traits that evolve over time are those conducive to physcial survival.
Explanation: Since qualia evolved over time, it must be essential for survival. The objection to this thought is that they could hardly help us to survive if they do nothing in the physical world. Polar bears have thick coats, which are also heavy. Heaviness is an unavoidable by product of thickess. The epiphenomenals hold that conciousess is a by product of certain brain processes that are highly conducive to survival and evolution.
(iii) We know of other minds by knowing about their behavior, at least in part. That’s why we think that stones do not feel whereas dogs do feel. How can a person’s behaviour provide reasons to thik he has qualia like mine unless his qualia can be regarded as the outcome of the qualia. An epiphenomenalist cannot regard behavior or anything else as an outcome of qualia.
Explanation : If the same piece of news is reported in two newspapers, they each send their reporters to the event and corroborate each other’s story. When I read the news item in one newspaper, I know the event occurred and that caused it to be reported in the paper I was reading, but the event also caused the other paper to report it. Neither newspaper is causally related except thru the event. Qualia cause events in the brain. They also cause consciousness and experience. Its like the news being reported in two newspaper, and may not be directly related.
They do nothing, they explain nothing, they serve merely to soothe the intuitions of the dualists and we do not understand how and why of them. Epiphenomenal qualia are totally irrelevant to survival and at no stage of our evolution did natural selection favor those who could make sense of how they are caused and the laws governing them. And that is why we can’t.
It I very likely that there is a whole scheme of things, which our evolution may never bring us close to because the study and knowledge of it may be irrelevant to our survival. It is wonder that we understand as much and there is no wonder that we may not understand any more than this. Kinda like an intelligent sea slug living at the bottom of the ocean. It would always have a very limited conception of the world even though their sciences worked great in their world and within the framework of their existence. And there might exist super beings which stand to us like we stand to sea slugs. We cannot adopt the perspective of these superbeings because we’re not them…
Addendum : From What Mary Didn’t Know
I. Three Clarifications :
(i) Powers of imagination are not the point – its not that logoically you cannot imagine what sensing red is like unless you have sensed red. Despite her grasp on neurophysilogy, she would not know. But if physicalism is true, she would know and no great powers of imagination should be needed. Imagination is a faculty that those who lack knowledge have to fall back on.
(ii) Intentionality of knowledge is not the point either. If S knows a is F and if a=b, then S should know that b=F. She could not know what it was to see color, which is like not knowing b=F even though she knew a=F and a=b. She could not have said “I could have worked logically some more and worked out the experiences of redness”.
(iii) What Mary really lacked was knowing about experiences of others, not about her own. Its not an objection to physicalism that she learns something on ebing let out. There were no facts of being red to know before she was let out. Physcialist may thus assume that new facts emerge, and her brain state may change on observing red. The problem for physcialism, however, is that she will realize that her conception of mental life of others had been impoverished all along. But she knew all physical facts about people, so the color perception is NOT a physical fact then, it’s an experience about them.
II. Churchland’s Three Objections :
The knowledge argument contains a defect that is simplicity itself. Churchill tightens the argument.
(a) Mary knows everything there is to know about brain states and their properties.
(b) It is not the case that Mary knows everything about the sensation and their properties.
Therefore by Leibniz’s law :
© Sensation and their properties are not brain states and their properties.
Type and kind of knowledge involved in (a) is different from that in (b). The first could be called knowledge by description and second the knowledge by acquaintance. But the argument involves highly dubious use of Leibniz’s law.
In reality, Mary does not know everything there is to know about brain states and their properties because she doesn’t know certain qualia associated with them. A better way of saying this is :
(a) Mary knows everything physical there is to know about other people.
(b) Mary doesn’t know everything there is to know about other people.
Therefore :
© There are truths about other people (and herself) which escape the physicalist story.
The kind, manner and type of Mary’s knowledge is not the point, more like WHAT Mary knows. She kows everything physical, but is that all there is to know ? |
