Abstract
Representational theorists identify experiences’ phenomenal properties with their representational properties. Qualia theorists reject this identity, insisting that experiences’ phenomenal properties can come apart from and completely outrun their representational properties. Qualia theorists account for phenomenal properties in terms of “qualia,” intrinsic mental properties they allege experiences to instantiate. The debate between representational theorists and qualia theorists has focused on whether phenomenal properties really can come apart from and completely outrun representational properties. As a result, qualia theorists have failed (1) to explain how experiences owe their phenomenal properties to their instantiation of qualia and (2) to clarify the nature of subjects’ epistemic access to qualia. I survey qualia theorists’ options for dealing with each issue and find them all wanting.
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Notes
To say of an experience that it is yellow-feeling is to assert that what it’s like to have it is the same, in a certain salient respect, as what it’s like to have (veridical) visual experiences of yellow objects. To say of an experience that it is yellow-representing is to assert that it has a veridicality condition which is not fulfilled unless yellow is instantiated at a location relative to the experience’s subject.
Proof: Smith is having a green-feeling and green-representing visual experience. Jones is having a red-feeling and red-representing visual experience. If phenomenal internalism is true, then Swamp Smith, an intrinsic duplicate of Smith, is also having a green-feeling visual experience, and Swamp Jones, an intrinsic duplicate of Jones, is also having a red-feeling visual experience. Assuming that Swamp Smith and Swamp Jones have just been created in the swamp, if strong representational externalism is true, then their experiences lack representational properties. But here we have two experiences—Swamp Smith’s green-feeling experience and Swamp Jones’s red-feeling experience—with the same representational properties, namely none, and yet with different phenomenal properties. We also have two pairs of experiences—Smith and Swamp Smith’s green-feeling experiences and Jones and Swamp Jones’s red-feeling experiences—in which the members of each respective pair are phenomenally, but not representationally, identical. Phenomenal properties can “come apart from” representational properties. Moreover, we have phenomenal properties instantiated by experiences entirely lacking in representational properties. Phenomenal properties can “completely outrun” representational properties.
For discussion of this argument, see Block (2007c), Byrne and Hilbert (1997), and Chalmers (2004).
Nothing here implies that qualia are metaphysically private. Nor does anything imply that qualia are not identical with or reducible to physico-functional properties.
Henceforth, I will write “aware of the quale” instead of “aware of the quale instance.” Since awareness of a property instance entails awareness of a property, this is a harmless simplification. (Note that it is controversial whether awareness of a property entails awareness of a property instance.)
Some might deny this, arguing that some properties of which we are aware in having our experiences are not represented by those experiences as belonging to external objects. They might cite afterimage properties (Boghossian and Velleman 1997), phosphene properties (Block 2007c), and phenomenal noise properties (Hellie 2005) as counterexamples to the Property Awareness Thesis.
I deny that these cases supply genuine counterexamples. Though afterimages, phosphene, and the crepitations involved in phenomenal noise do not strike us as familiar external objects (as everyday “medium-sized dry goods”), it does not follow that experiences involving them do not represent them as being external objects.
But even if these cases do supply genuine counterexamples, they do nothing to refute a weakened version of the Property Awareness Thesis, one which says only that if a subject is aware of a color-qualitative property in having an experience, then the subject’s experience represents the color-qualitative property as belonging to an external object. That’s all I need to press my case against belief in color qualia.
Yet another problem is noted in Shoemaker (1994). Of the position he dubs “literal projectivism,” he writes:
Remember that an experience is an experiencing, an entity that is “adjectival on” a subject of experience. It seems no more intelligible to suppose that a property of such an entity is experienced as a property of extended material objects than it is to suppose that a property of a number, such as being prime or being even, is experienced as a property of material things (p. 295).
Options 2 and 3 both involve what Shoemaker calls barely intelligible: the idea that qualia are represented as belonging to external objects.
Think of the confrontation model as the conjunction of two theses:
Confrontation—If a subject S has a visual experience e with a phenomenal property Φ, then S is visually aware of a qualitative property Q.
Instantiation—If a subject S is visually aware of a qualitative property Q, then Q is instantiated.
These theses jointly entail that if S has e with Φ, then S is visually aware of an instance of Q. Adding that qualitative properties like Q are qualia and that their instances are borne by experiences yields QTC.
This brings out a structural similarity between QTC and the sense-datum theory. If we identify qualitative properties like Q with sense-datum properties (instead of with qualia) and if we take it that their instances are borne by sense-data (instead of by experiences), then we arrive at the sense-datum theory.
Think of the possession model as the denial of both Confrontation and Instantiation and the affirmation of the claim that phenomenal properties are intrinsic mental properties. QTP is an application of this model. Note that RT is a halfway position: it accepts Confrontation while rejecting Instantiation. Representational theorists will identify qualitative properties like Q with the sensible qualities (colors, shapes, etc.) and will treat S’s being visually aware of Q as S’s having a Q-representing experience.
See Shoemaker (1994) for talk of “confrontation” in connection with phenomenal properties. There Shoemaker speaks of “the phenomenal character we are confronted with [in experience]” (p. 294).
To block the argument that follows possession qualia theorists could weaken their strong representational externalism to secure the result that Swamp You’s yellow-feeling experience has representational properties after all. Two comments. First, Block has committed himself to rejecting any such tinkering. See the discussion of the “bathtub brain” case in Block (1995). See also Block (2007c). Second, weakening strong representational externalism in this way would wreck qualia theorists’ argument for the antirepresentationalist thesis, for strong representational externalism is needed to secure the result that phenomenal properties can completely outrun representational properties.
See Dretske (1999) for o-awareness and p-awareness. Two sorts of philosophers are not comfortable with the claim that a hallucinator is o-aware of nothing. First, sense-datum theorists. Second, contemporary “intentional object” theorists like Harman (1990) and Lycan (1996). Though they are opposed to the sense-datum theory, they hold a claim in common with sense-datum theorists: that the hallucinator is o-aware of something in having his experience. While the sense-datum theorist claims that the object is an immaterial sense-datum, the intentional object theorist insists that it is a non-existent intentional object.
There is no such problem for QTC. What sets up the problem for QTP is its insistence that qualia are not objects of perceptual awareness. QTC insists that qualia are objects of perceptual awareness. Thus, if QTC is true, no subject could have an experience phenomenally identical with E without being aware of something, qualia, in having it.
See Chap. 7 of Siewert (1998) for an argument against phenomenal character without representational content.
Here’s another way of appreciating the counterintuitiveness. I am perceptually aware of nothing behind my head. So if Swamp You is perceptually aware of nothing, then should not it be for her, perceptually, the way it is for me behind my head, namely no way at all?
Note that the problematic consciousness-without-awareness I am alleging to follow from QTP is not the (in my view perfectly acceptable) consciousness-without-awareness Block has defended in recent writings. See Block (2007a). The issue there is orthogonal to the issue we are examining here.
Since most readers of this paper cannot be counted on to have a lemon handy, I must assume that you have not been engaging in phenomenological reflection while reading along. However, I can assume that you have been imagining what it would be like to engage in phenomenological reflection on an experience like E. Imagined phenomenological reflection, I submit, is good enough for coming to appreciate the points I am trying to make.
If qualia are not objects of introspective awareness, according to radical QTP, then what properties is one introspectively aware of in phenomenologically reflecting on one’s experiences? Answer: the representational properties of one’s experiences. According to radical QTP, when you engage in phenomenological reflection on your experience E of the lemon, you are introspectively aware of E’s property of being yellow-representing. But you are not introspectively aware of the Y-quale. This has the awkward consequence, given the QTP part of radical QTP, that you are not introspectively aware of yellow-feelingness—yet another difficulty for the view.
“Evans Principle” because Byrne claims to derive support for the premise from Evans (1982, pp. 227–228).
Moreover, the fact that, for all we have said so far, possession qualia theorists can reject (N) shows that the argument for intentionalism in Byrne (2001) fails. Byrne’s argument will not go through without an independent argument against QTP.
Why think that experiences are representational at all? An important issue, but one for another paper.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the members of the University of Toronto Metaphysics and Epistemology Working Papers Group for very helpful discussion of a previous version of this paper. Special thanks are due to Benj Hellie, Peter Ludlow, Mohan Matthen, Gurpreet Rattan, and Jessica Wilson.
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John, J. Against qualia theory. Philos Stud 147, 323–346 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9274-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9274-5