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Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Reduction, Qualia, and the Direct Introspection of Brain States Author(s): Paul M. Churchland Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 82, No. 1 (Jan., 1985), pp. 8-28 Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2026509 Accessed: 07-08-2015 19:14 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Journal of Philosophy, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Philosophy. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 142.58.129.109 on Fri, 07 Aug 2015 19:14:45 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 8 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY structureof this idiom, moreover-its embeddingof a subordinate sentence-would have been clearly dictatedby its primitiveuse in assessing children's acquisition of observationsentences. Analogi- cal extension of the idiom to other than observation sentences would follow inevitably,and the developmentof parallel idioms for other propositional attitudeswould then come naturally too, notwithstanding their opacity from a logical point of view. Naturalness is one thing, transparencyanother; familiarityone, clarityanother. W. V. QtJINE Harvard University REDUCTION, QUALIA, AND THE DIRECT INTROSPECTION OF BRAIN STATES* DO the phenomenological or qualitative featuresof our sen- sations constitutea permanentbarrier to thereductive aspi- rations of any materialisticneuroscience? I here argue that theydo not. Specifically,I wish to address the recentanti-reduc- tionist argumentsposed by Thomas Nagel,' Frank Jackson,2and Howard Robinson.3 And I wish to explore the possibility of human subjectiveconsciousness within a conceptual environment constitutedby a maturedand successfulneuroscience. If we are to deal sensiblywith the issues here at stake, we must approach themwith a general theoryof scientificreduction already in hand, a theorymotivated by and adequate to the many instances and varietiesof interconceptualreduction displayed elsewherein our scientifichistory. With an independentlybased account of the nature and grounds of intertheoreticreduction, we can approach *Research forthis paper was supportedby a grantfrom the Institutefor Advanced Study, by a research/studyleave fromthe Universityof Manitoba, and by SSHRC grant no. 451-83-3050.An earlierdraft was presentedto the Conferenceon Methods in Philosophy and the Sciences, convened in honor of Ernest Nagel, at the New School of Social Research in April, 1983. My thanks to that audience for theirin- sightfulcriticisms and helpful suggestions.Thanks also to Thomas Nagel, Frank Jackson,Daniel Dennett,Philip Hanson, Charles Marks,and Brian Loar forcritical discussions of thatearlier draft. ' "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", Philosophical Review, ILXXXIII, 4 (October, 1974): 435-450; page referencesto Nagel are to this paper. 2"Epiphenomenal Qualia," Philosophical Quarterly, xxxii, 127 (April 1982): 127-136. 3Matterand Sense (New York: Cambridge, 1982), p.,4. 0022-362X/85/8201/0008$02.00 ? 1985 The Journalof Philosophy, Inc. This content downloaded from 142.58.129.109 on Fri, 07 Aug 2015 19:14:45 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE DIRECT INTROSPECTION OF BRAIN STATES 9 the specificcase of subjectivequalia, freefrom the myopia thatre- sults fromtrying to divine the proper conditions on reductionby simply staringlong and hard at the problematiccase at issue. I. INTERTHEORETIC REDUCTION We may begin by remarkingthat the classical account of intertheo- retic reduction4now appears to be importantlymistaken, though the repairs necessaryare quickly and cleanly made. Suppressing niceties,we may state the original account as follows. A new and more comprehensivetheory reduces an older theoryjust in case the new theory, when conjoined with appropriate correspondence rules, logically entails the principles of the older theory.(The point of the correspondencerules, or "bridge laws," is to connect the disparate ontologies of the two theories: often these are ex- pressed as identity statements,such as Temperature= mv2/3k.) Schematically, TN & (CorrespondenceRules) logically entails To Difficultieswith this view begin with the observationthat most reduced theoriesturn out to be, strictlyspeaking and in a varietyof respects,false. (Real gases don't reallyobey PV = ,RT, as in classi- cal thermodynamics;the planets don't reallymove in ellipses, as in Keplerian astronomy;the acceleration of falling bodies isn't really uniform,as in Galilean dynamics; etc.) If reductionis deduction, modus tollens would thus require that the premisesof the new re- ducing theories(statistical thermodynamics in the firstcase, New- tonian dynamicsin the second and third)be somehow falseas well, in contradictionto theirassumed truth. This complaint can be temporarilydeflected by pointing out that the premises of a reduction must often include not just the new reducing theorybut also some limitingassumptions or coun- terfactualboundary conditions (such as that the molecules of a gas enjoy only mechanical energy,or that the mass of the planets is negligible compared to the sun's, or thatthe distanceany body falls is negligiblydifferent from zero). Falsity in the reducing premises can thus be conceded,since it is safelyconfined to thoselimiting or counterfactualassumptions. This defensewill not deal with all cases of falsity,however, since in some cases the reduced theoryis so radically false that some or 4Ernest Nagel, The Structuresof Science (New York: Harcourt, Brace &zWorld, 1961), ch. 11. This content downloaded from 142.58.129.109 on Fri, 07 Aug 2015 19:14:45 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 10 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY all of its ontology must be rejectedentirely, and the "correspon- dence rules" connectingthat ontology to the newerontology there- foredisplay a problematicstatus. Newly conceived featurescannot be identical with,nor even nomically connectedwith, old features, if the old featuresare illusoryand uninstantiated.For example, rel- ativisticmass is not identical with Newtonian mass, nor even coex- tensivewith it, even at low velocities.Nevertheless, the reductionof Newtonian by Einsteinian mechanics is a paradigm of a successful reduction. For a second example, neitheris caloric-fluid-pressure identical with, nor even coextensivewith, mean molecular kinetic energy.But an overtlyfluid thermodynamics(i.e., one committed to the existenceof caloric) still findsa moderatelyimpressive reduc- tion within statisticalthermodynamics. In sum, even theorieswith a nonexistentontology can enjoy reduction,and this fact is pro- blematic on the traditionalaccount at issue. What cases like these invite us to give up is the idea that what gets deduced in a reductionis the theoryto be reduced. A more ac- curate, general, and illuminating schema for intertheoreticreduc- tion is as follows: TN & LimitingAssumptions & BoundaryConditions logically entails IN [a setof theoremsof (restricted)TN] e.g.,(x) (Ax D Bx) (x) ((Bx & Cx) D Dx) which is relevantlyisomorphic with To (theolder theory) e.g.,(x) (Jx DKx) (x) ((Kx & Lx) D Mx) That is to say,a reductionconsists in thededuction, within TN, not of To itself,but ratherof a roughly equipotent image of To, an image still expressed in the vocabulary proper to TN. The corre- spondence rules play no part whatever in the deduction. They show up only later, and not necessarilyas material-modestate- ments,but as mereordered pairs: (Ax, Jx), (Bx, Kx), (Cx, Lx), (Dx, Mx). Their functionis to indicate which termsubstitutions in the image IN will yield the principles of To. The older theory,accord- ingly,is neverdeduced; it is just the targetof a relevantlyadequate mimicry.Construed in this way, a correspondencerule is entirely consistentwith the assumption that the older predicate it encom- passes has no extension whatever.This allows that a true theory mightreduce even a substantiallyfalse theory. This content downloaded from 142.58.129.109 on Fri, 07 Aug 2015 19:14:45 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE DIRECT INTROSPECTION OF BRAIN STATES 11 The point of a reduction,according to this view, is to show that the new or more comprehensivetheory contains explanatoryand predictiveresources that parallel, to a relevantdegree of exactness, the explanatoryand predictiveresources of the reduced theory.The intra-theoreticdeduction (of IN within TN), and the inter-theoretic mapping (of To into IN), constitutea fell-swoop demonstration that the older theorycan be displaced wholesale by the new, with- out significantexplanatory or predictiveloss.5 Material-modestatements of identitycan occasionally be made, of course. We do wish to assert that visible light = EM waves be- tween .35 ,Amand .75 ,Am,that sound = atmosphericcompression waves, that temperature= mean molecular KE, and that electric current= net motion of charged particles. But a correspondence rule does not itselfmake such a claim: at best, it recordsthe fact that the new predicate applies in all those cases where its To- doppelganger predicate was normally thought to apply. On this view, full-fledgedidentity
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