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1 What Did Mary Know? Russellian Monism Without Intrinsics Jussi Jylkkä Note

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1 What Did Mary Know? Russellian Monism Without Intrinsics Jussi Jylkkä Note What did Mary know? Russellian Monism Without Intrinsics Jussi Jylkkä Note: this is a non-peer reviewed preprint. Abstract. The Mary thought experiment aims to demonstrate that science cannot capture what experiences feel like. Russellian Monism (RM) avoids this problem by claiming that phenomenality is an intrinsic (non-relational and non-dispositional) property of matter and beyond the scope of science, which is limited to describing extrinsic (relational and dispositional) properties. Against RM, I argue that metaphysical intrinsicality is not compatible with neuroscientific theories where experiences are considered as causal processes. Second, I argue that if intrinsic properties have causal power, they can also affect neuroscientific measuring devices and be scientifically modeled. Thus, intrinsic properties are not inscrutable, as RM holds. In the third part of the article, I sketch the outlines of RM without intrinsics. I propose that the core Kantian thesis of RM about limits of science can be maintained without postulating metaphysical intrinsics. I argue that metaphysical intrinsicality can be replaced with Weak Intrinsicality, meaning model-independence. Science is confined to observations and models, whereas an experience is the concrete, model- independent process that produces observations of its neural mechanisms. On this account, the epistemic gap is difference between a model and the modeled. Keywords: Knowledge argument, Hard problem of consciousness, Russellian Monism, Kant, Transcendental idealism, Intrinsic properties, Neural correlates of consciousness, Constitutive mechanisms of consciousness 1 1. Mary and the limits of science Jackson's (1982) Knowledge Argument, also known as the Mary thought experiment, is one of the most influential arguments against physicalism, i.e., the view that experiences are physical phenomena. It aims to demonstrate that science cannot afford knowledge about certain aspects of experiences, namely what it feels like to undergo them (see also Feigl, 1958; Maxwell, 1965; Meehl, 1966; Nagel, 1979; Robinson, 1982). More generally, the argument aims to show that physicalism is false: because science doesn’t afford knowledge of what experiences feel like, that feel cannot be physical. If it were, science could describe it like it describes all other physical phenomena. Jackson (1982, p. 130) formulates the thought experiment as follows: Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal chords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’ […] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then is it inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that, and Physicalism is false. Despite her complete scientific knowledge, Mary does not know what seeing red feels like: upon leaving the room, she learns the phenomenal or qualitative character of red experiences. There are a range of responses to the Mary argument, from purely epistemic or philosophy of language –based (e.g., the phenomenal concepts strategy; Stoljar, 2005), through naturalistic ones (e.g., the ability hypothesis; Nemirow, 1980), to heavily metaphysical ones (e.g., Russellian monism [Goff, 2017; Russell, 1927; Strawson, 2003] or property dualism [Chalmers, 1996]). Here I focus on Russellian Monism (RM), whose most central claim I take to be Kantian: science is in some sense limited. On the standard Russellian view, the limits of science are assumed to stem from what types of properties it deals with: Science can only model extrinsic (relational or causal-dispositional) properties of matter, but not their intrinsic categorical basis. Phenomenal properties, in turn, are assumed to form the intrinsic or categorical basis of causal dispositions, which, unlike the dispositions themselves, are beyond science (Alter & Nagasawa, 2012; Goff, 2017; Russell, 1927). These properties are also called quiddities (Chalmers, 1996) or inscrutables (Montero, 2015). I argue that we can accept the core Kantian claim of RM that science is limited without postulating metaphysical intrinsics. As an alternative to RM’s notion of intrinsicality, I propose Weak Intrinsicality which means model- or representation-independence: science has no access to reality beyond observations and models. On my approach, an experience is the concrete process that produces observations of its neural mechanisms. On the account I put forth, science can indeed model all aspects of experiences, including what they feel like, but only model. Thus, the epistemic gap between an experience and its scientific model doesn’t reflect an ontological difference, but rather only the difference between a model and the modeled. I will proceed as follows. The first part of the paper (§2) is negative and presents against RM’s notion of intrinsics two problems. First, I argue that the notion of intrinsics as non-relational and non- dispositional is incompatible with neuroscientific theories which consider the neural mechanisms of consciousness as relational processes. A plausible approach for the Russellian is to hold that the phenomenality that we are familiar with is the intrinsic nature of what neuroscience models as constitutive mechanisms of experiences (CMEs). However, given that the CMEs are relational processes, they cannot have intrinsic (non-relational) natures. This is closely related to the combination problem of RM (Chalmers, 2017; Goff, 2017), i.e., the problem of how the intrinsic natures of fundamental particles combine to form human experiences. My second argument against the Russellian notion of intrinsics relates to the claim that they are supposed to be scientifically inscrutable; something that science cannot describe (Montero, 2015; see also Goff, 2017; Strawson, 2006, 2019). I present a dilemma against RM: If intrinsics are causally efficacious, 2 then they can also affect the senses and measuring devices of observers. Thus, intrinsics are not inscrutable as RM would hold. Again, if intrinsics are not causally efficacious, then they can’t be scientifically observed and modeled, but neither is there mental causation, given that phenomenal properties are (a subset of) intrinsic properties. The take-home message is that one cannot integrate intrinsics or phenomenal properties in causal processes and simultaneously hold that they are in some strong sense private: it they have causal power we can observe them through their effects. These problems stem from the metaphysically strong notion of intrinsics in RM. On my view, the postulation of metaphysically distinct class of properties (intrinsic and extrinsic) is not justified at least by the Mary case alone—it is an epistemic problem that requires an epistemic explanation. In the second part of the paper (§3), I argue that the core Kantian thesis of RM can be preserved without postulating metaphysical intrinsics. Whereas traditional RM resembles metaphysical interpretations of Kant (e.g., Langton, 2001), I propose an alternative account that is similar to epistemic interpretations (e.g., Allais, 2015; Allison, 2004). I suggest that we replace RM’s metaphysically strong notion of intrinsicality with the epistemic notion of Weak Intrinsicality. Whereas RM’s metaphysical intrinsicality means a thing considered independent from all its relational properties, an object’s weakly intrinsic nature is the way it is independent of our modes of representing it. As Allais (2015) argues, we can only know objects as they manifest to us in experience, not as they are independently of being related to us. The way objects appear to us is shaped by our conscious-cognitive system, types of measuring devices, and the theories we use to conceptualize our observations. We cannot abstract ourselves away from how objects appear to us, since the appearance is determined not only by the observed object, but also ourselves. In short, we can’t represent objects as they are independent of our representing them. On the account I propose, science is limited simply because it is based on observations and models of external phenomena; science cannot say anything of objects beyond scientific representations. Again, we can know our experiences independently of models and observations. I call the nature of an object in abstraction from how it is represented by an observer its “weakly intrinsic nature”. I argue that Weak Intrinsicality can do the same explanatory work as the traditional Russellian metaphysical notion of intrinsicality but is more parsimonious and compatible with neuroscience of consciousness. On my approach, science is limited simply because it is “shaped by the lens of human consciousness” (Hawking & Mlodinow, 2010) or based on “pointer-readings” (Eddington, 1929): Any scientific
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