Quining the Quining of Qualia
Quining the Quining of Qualia
William Webb Sir Wilfrid Laurier University, CA
I will argue that in his attempt to quine qualia, Dennett has overlooked certain aspects of both the inter-person inverted spectrum hypothesis (ISH) and the intra-person ISH. Consequently, Dennett is not successful in arguing that qualia are not immediate properties. In the first section I will define what is generally meant by qualia and explain Dennett’s methodology. In the second section I will show how Dennett’s discussion of the inter-person ISH overlooks important aspects of it. In the third section I will argue that Dennett’s characterization of the intra-person ISH is misguided. I
In ‘quining qualia’ Dennett aims to deny the existence of qualia by suggesting that conscious experience does not have any special properties in the ways that qualia are supposed to be special (1988, 42). Moreover, Dennett claims that the concept of ‘qualia’ is so confused that even if one took the most basic elements of qualia, “any acceptable version… would be tactically obtuse… to cling to” (ibid., 44). Dennett identifies the basic elements of qualia as ineffability, intrinsicality, privateness and immediacy. Qualia are generally thought to be ineffable since one cannot exactly or fully communicate one's sensuous experiences to another person (ibid., 46). Secondly, qualia are intrinsic properties because they supervene locally on brain states, that is, qualia depend on and are determined by brain states but they cannot be reduced to brain states. Thirdly, Quining the Quining of Qualia qualia are thought to be private since two individuals cannot have the same token experiences. Fourthly, qualia are immediate in the sense that they are “directly accessible to the consciousness of their experiencer” – they are properties that one is intimately connected with (ibid., 46). In his attempt to quine qualia, Dennett uses a methodology that employs ‘intuition pumps’ as its primary mode of investigation. An ‘intuition pump’ is an argument that is meant to appeal to one’s intuitions about a given topic. Dennett argues since qualia is an intuitive or pre-theoretical concept, one should quine qualia by also using intuitions; formal arguments are ill suited to deal with qualia (ibid., 44). While Dennett explores fifteen intuition pumps in “Quining Qualia,” I will only analyze the first six of the fifteen intuition pumps. The first two intuition pumps Dennett discusses are used to show the four special properties of qualia which we have already mentioned. I will assume this basic outline of qualia and show where Dennett is mistaken in arguing qualia do not have these special properties. Specifically, I will address intuition pumps 3-6 which deal with various versions of the ISH. Dennett’s goal in using intuition pumps 3-6 is to show that qualia do not possess the special property of immediacy (ibid., 51). Briefly stated, Dennett concludes from intuition pumps 3-6 that “[n]ot only are the classical intersubjective comparisons impossible (as the Brainstorm machine shows), but we cannot tell in our own cases whether our qualia have been inverted – at least not by introspection.” II Intuition pump 3: the inverted spectrum or the inter-person ISH is a thought experiment that compares colour qualia of two individuals. The basic premise of the inter-person ISH is reflected in the question, “How do I know that you and I see the
Ephemeris 2013 ‹133› Quining the Quining of Qualia same subjective colour when we look at something?” (ibid., 49). We learn colour words by being shown “public coloured objects,” as a consequence, our verbal behaviour will be the same as every one else’s verbal behaviour even if the others experience different subjective colours. For example, Will and Jazz grow up in West Philadelphia and learn that the Philadelphia Eagles’ home jerseys are green. Let's say the subjective character of Will’s experience of the jerseys is dark green but the subjective character of Jazz’s experience is dark red. However, since they both learn that the jersey’s colour is called ‘dark green,’ they call any colour that looks like that colour on the jersey ‘dark green,’ even though their subjective experiences differ. One particular criticism of the inter-person ISH is that it is unconfirmable but Dennett notes that some people have thought this problem could be solved with the use of technology. Intuition pump 4: the Brainstorm machine attempts to show it is possible to confirm that two individuals have different colour qualia. The brainstorm machine is a neuroscientific instrument that can be attached to someone’s head and send their visual experience into some else’s brain (ibid., 50). For example, imagine that Will invents the brainstorm machine. Now imagine that the brainstorm machine is attached to Jazz’s head and feeds its visual input into Will’s brain. Will would be shocked to discover the qualitative aspect of Jazz’s visual experience where the sky is yellow, the Philadelphia Eagles' home jersey is red, etc. Thus with help from the brainstorm machine one has a way to confirm empirically that two individuals have systematically inverted colour qualia. However Dennett argues that one could never know the correct orientation of the brainstorm machine . For example, imagine that Will inverts one of the cables that is connected to Jazz’s head 180 degrees and then reattaches it to the machine. Now when Will experiences Jazz’s visual input, the sky
Ephemeris 2013 ‹134› Quining the Quining of Qualia is blue, the Philadelphia Eagles' home jersey is green, etc. Accordingly Dennett claims, “Designing and building such a device [the brainstorm machine] would require that its ‘fidelity’ be tuned or calibrated by the normalization of the two subjects reports.” He concludes there could never be an intersubjective comparison of qualia, even with the aid of technology . It appears Dennett has overlooked a possibility for determining the ‘fidelity’ of the brainstorm machine. Imagine that Will creates an addition for the brainstorm machine that allows recording the input of the brainstorm machine and playing it on a television. Next, Will attaches the brainstorm machine to his own head and records the visual footage from it. He looks at the footage and keeps adjusting the machine until it plays back the same phenomenal colours that he experiences; for instance, the recording plays back the sky as yellow but Will normally sees the sky as blue so he tinkers with the technology until it displays the sky as blue, the Eagless jerseys as green, etc. Then Will attaches the brainstorm machine to Jazz, records Jazz’s visual input for an hour and then looks at the recording from Jazz’s brain on his television; he sees that Jazz’s colour qualia is inverted, i.e., the television displays the sky as yellow, the Eagles' jerseys as red, etc. Will wants to be sure the brainstorm machine is recording correctly, so does a few more trial runs on himself and Jazz with the results remaining the same. Will concludes that Jazz has inverted colour qualia relative to his own. Ex hypothesi nothing has changed in the brainstorm machine after Will does the check on himself to make sure it is calibrated properly so there is no reason to think that the brainstorm machine is not functioning the same way as when Will tested it out on himself. Therefore, the brainstorm machine can be used to show that intersubjective comparisons of colour qualia are possible and verifiable.
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III
In Intuition pump 5: the neurosurgical prank, Dennett examines the intra- person ISH (ibid., 49-50). Imagine you wake up one day and find that the grass is red, the sky is yellow, etc. Later on you find out that an evil neuroscientist did something to your mind so it seems your colour qualia are inverted. Since you are the one who is experiencing the inversion, you are “entitled, it seems, to conclude that you have undergone visual colour qualia inversion” (ibid., 50). Therefore, verificationist counterarguments against the intra-person ISH are not persuasive because claims of qualia inversion can be justified, explained and empirically verified. However, in intuition pump 6: alternative neurosurgery, Dennett tries to show a mistake with intuition pump 5. There are two ways the evil neuroscientist could have created the apparent qualia inversion described in intuition pump 5. First, the evil neuroscientist could have inverted an “‘early’ qualia-producing channel” such as an optic nerve so that all neural signals that go through the optic nerve are inverted . Secondly, the evil neuroscientist could have inverted certain memory- anchored dispositions to react to qualia. Dennett stipulates that the second case does not invert your qualia and concludes since both surgical changes produce the same intraspective effects, “Nothing in the subject’s experience can favour one of the hypotheses over the other” and the subject can't know without outside help which scenario happened (ibid., 51). Therefore, Dennett claims, one does not have the immediate access to qualia that qualophiles maintain. While Dennett’s argument may be intuitively appealing at first, it breaks down upon closer inspection for two reasons. First, regardless of whether an individual can tell if their memory or their qualia are inverted, they are still
Ephemeris 2013 ‹136› Quining the Quining of Qualia immediately aware of the qualia they are currently experiencing. For example, I may be confused about whether my colour qualia have been inverted but this does not mean I am not immediately aware that I am experiencing the colour blue as I look at the sky right now. Regardless of memory, one is immediately aware of the colour qualia one is currently experiencing. Secondly, there are ways to tell whether qualia or memory have been inverted; if the possibility of memory inversion can be ruled out, then one would have qualia inversion.1 Before we explore this second line of attack on Dennett, I will introduce a character from another thought experiment. This character is Mary from Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument.2 Mary is a brilliant neurologist who knows a great number of the physical facts about colour neurophysiology.3 However, Mary has lived in captivity her whole life deprived of the experience of colour qualia. One day Mary’s captors decide to let her see colour for the first time but as a trick, they present her with a blue banana as her first colour experience. Upon seeing the blue banana Mary says, ‘You tried to trick me but I know bananas are yellow, not blue!’ She explains to her captors that she knew the reaction that colour would have on her nervous system so she was able to tell the banana was blue.
1 I admit it may be possible, although it appears unlikely, that there may be ways other than memory inversion that could lead a person to be uncertain of whether or not they had undergone qualia inversion. Nevertheless, it may still be possible to determine whether one has undergone qualia inversion by following my basic line of argumentation. For example, if a person could rule out the possibility that they had undergone inversion X and memory inversion, then they would be able to determine that they had undergone qualia inversion. It is beyond the scope of this paper to thoroughly deal with such a potential argument, but the basic line of argumentation I employ may be useful for dealing with concerns of this sort.
2 While there is a great deal of discussion of Jackson’s knowledge argument, I will limit my considerations to the conclusion that Dennett draws about it in Consciousness Explained pgs 398-406.
3 One of Dennett’s criticisms of Jackson is that we cannot imagine a person who knows every physical fact – the best we can do is imagine someone who knows a lot.
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One day after being released from her captors, Mary awakes and is shocked about how either her memory-anchored dispositions or her qualia are inverted. However, upon further reflection she begins to ask, ‘Why did I react in manner X when I viewed Z, but now I react in manner Y when I view Z?’ For example, Mary may ask ‘why did green rooms make me calm before, but now they make me anxious?’4 Mary may respond in this way for a number of reasons. First, basic colour psychology shows that the colour green elicits calming feelings, whereas red elicits anxiety in people (Britannica 2012). Accordingly, people often sit in green rooms before they appear on talk shows in order to ‘calm their nerves’. Moreover, remember that Mary’s memory of colour experiences is inverted so that what she once experienced as green, she now thinks she experienced as red and vice versa. Therefore, she wonders why ‘green’ rooms in the past have always produced an anxious response from her, but now they elicit a calming feeling from her. Also, imagine that similar things to the ‘green room experience’ keep happening to Mary. Consequently, Mary would begin to believe her memory-anchored dispositions had changed, not her qualia. It could not be her qualia that have changed in this case since the qualitative aspect of the colour green would still elicit a calming experience for Mary both before and after her inversion. Therefore, if Mary is not experiencing inconsistencies associated with memory inversion, she is experiencing qualia inversion.
4 Since Mary knows a great deal about neuroscience, she would presumable also be able to detect far more complex events of qualia inversion than merely a green room eliciting calmness, such as with the blue banana trick. That is, she could tell she had qualia inversion because she could introspect her own brain states, such that she would know the effect phenomenal colours have on her. However, my argument does not depend upon Mary introspecting in this mysterious way. Instead I use a more intuitive example, in order to make my argument more plausible.
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At this point one might object that the evil neuroscientist could just invert the other beliefs and qualia that are associated with Mary’s colour qualia as well. In that case Mary now believes that green has always elicited an anxious response from her. This objection may be answered by (I) the appeal to external sources and by (II) the appeal to internal sources. I imagine Dennett would say that (I) is not a legitimate option because it relies on other factors and thus appeals less to the immediacy that qualiophiles advocate (1988., 51). However, this response is misguided because one is still immediately aware of the qualia one is currently experiencing regardless of one's memory state. So Dennett’s conclusion that qualia are not immediate does not follow from his argument that one could not know whether their qualia or memory was inverted. I concede that we are not immediately aware of the colour qualia in our memories in an infallible way but this is not a large loss to qualiophiles for two reasons: first, one is still immediately aware of the qualia one is experiencing at the moment one is experiencing them and secondly, no qualiophile claims memory is infallible or that their arguments about qualia imply infallible memory. Instead what the immediacy of qualia implies is that qualia are directly accessible to their experiencer at the moment of experiencing. What about Dennett’s objection that the intra-person ISH cannot be verified? We can appeal to external sources of evidence. Imagine that Mary always has a couple of friends with her while she waits in green rooms. One day after her memory inversion, Mary has a conversation with them and they tell her she always acts calm in the green rooms before going on talk shows. However, since Mary’s memory was inverted, she would respond, ‘What are you talking about? I was always anxious before I go on talk shows, partly because the colour green makes me nervous.’ Furthermore, imagine in the past Mary has remarked to her friends that
Ephemeris 2013 ‹139› Quining the Quining of Qualia green rooms always makes her feel calm, after all she is a neuroscientist and enjoys sharing neat titbits about the effects of colour qualia on her. Her friends respond, ‘Mary, green always makes you calm, you even said so yourself.’ In fact, one of her friends has even recorded such an occasion on her phone and shows Mary she felt that green rooms made her feel calm. Eventually, Mary would realize that, in fact, it was her memory that was inverted given all the evidence that suggests she is remembering incorrectly. Therefore, if (I) Mary thinks she either has qualia or memory inversion and (II) she does not have any evidence that contradicts her memories, then (III) Mary would have good reasons for believing that she had a pure qualia inversion.5 Thus, Dennett’s verificationist critique of the intra-person ISH doesn't work because Mary has empirical reasons to believe that she had undergone a qualia inversion. Mary could also determine that her qualia are inverted through an appeal to internal sources or introspection. Recall that the evil scientist has inverted some of Mary’s beliefs as well as her memory of colour. For example, a room that was initially experienced as red and elicited an anxious response from Mary is now remembered as a green room that elicited a calming response. However other beliefs would also need to be inverted in order to keep Mary from suspecting that she had undergone a memory inversion; Mary’s memory of being ‘calmed’ (inverted from anxious) by the ‘green’ (inverted from red) room is attached to other beliefs. For example, since the room was actually red and made her anxious, she would have to think she performed poorly on the Late Night Show because of anxiety, which in
5 By pure qualia inversion I mean that only her qualia are inverted, not any of her other beliefs. I concede that if Mary had both her qualia inverted and her memories inverted, but not the colour qualia in her memories inverted, she would not be able to tell whether she was experiencing qualia inversion. However, my point is that Mary would be able to determine if she had undergone a case of pure qualia inversion.
Ephemeris 2013 ‹140› Quining the Quining of Qualia turn would have to be linked to still other beliefs such as that she was crying all night long about her poor performance. One cannot simply invert these types of complex beliefs like inverting colours; systematic colour inversion can go undetected while preserving their relational properties, i.e., they have a direct opposite on the colour wheel (Campbell 2004, 28). However, complex beliefs such as the belief, for instance, ‘I used a tissue box because I was crying,’ do not have direct opposite belief that would allow a systematically undetectable inversion. Moreover, it is not simply this one event of a green room that has to be inverted; it is every experience that Mary has ever had with colour. If a single belief cannot be inverted without inconsistency then alteration of thousands upon thousands of beliefs associated to colours would result one noticing a significant amount of confusion and inconsistencies in one’s memory. You wouldn't have to track these connections rigorously to notice discrepancies; simple introspection of the confusion and inconsistency alone would be enough to betray memory inversion. If you doubt that these inversions would necessarily cause confusion and inconsistency, there is no doubt of it when it comes to interacting with external sources such as friends. Normal individuals, not just Mary, would also be able to deduce that they had in fact undergone memory inversion if there are significant inconsistencies in their interaction with external objects and subjects. Therefore, (I) if one has the apparent experience of memory or qualia inversion and (II) but if the presence of memory inversions can be ruled out because of inconsistencies with external objects or one's other memories, then (III) one has empirically valid reasons for believing one have undergone qualia inversion. Conclusion
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It has been my aim to show that Dennett's attempt to quine qualia is misguided. Specifically, by focusing on the issue of immediacy and on various formulations of the ISH we can see that Dennett does not succeed in showing that qualia are not immediate because he has mischaracterized both the inter-person ISH, and the intra-person ISH. I have not discussed Dennett’s arguments that qualia are not ineffable, intrinsic, or private. This is a task I leave to others.
Works Cited
“The Psychology of Colour.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2012, 10 Dec 2012.
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