Hi Derek,

I'm glad some of what I've said has been helpful to you.

If you don't mind, I'd like to try to help a little more.  Here's an outline of what I'm about to do.  First, I'm going to explain some similarities between your views/intuitions and those of many analytic philosophers.  Second, I'm going to describe what I think is the basic difference between your and their views.  Third, I'm going to briefly describe my own views in relation to the situation.


1.  Agreement

I think there's some similarity (perhaps even some agreement) between your views and many of the analytic philosophers you are questioning, including David Chalmers.  (I imagine Mr. Chalmers is paying only slight attention to this discussion with somewhat detached concern, though I hope he will point it out if I incorrectly represent his views here.)

The motivating idea behind discussions of phenomenal consciousness is that we cannot know what it is like to be anything other than what we are.  I cannot know what it is like to be a bat, because the "what it is like" has an incurably subjective component/essence.  I cannot learn it or discover it by any possible means.  I am guessing you agree with, or are at least sympathetic to, this notion.

Yet, you object to the phrase "explanatory gap." I think the problem is that you are misinterpreting the phrase.  The idea is not that we have explained consciousness to any satisfactory degree already.  All we have explained are various relationships between behavior and the brain.  That is not an explanation of subjectivity, according to Chalmers and many other analytic philosophers.  The idea (in its most dramatic form) is that no matter how much we explain about brains and behavior, it will not help us understand the subjective quality of experience.  Some say that we might one day understand subjectivity and its relationship to the brain and behavior, but they claim that science (with its physicalistic/materialistic, third-person methodology) can never get the job done.

And, again, I think you and many of the analytic philosophers you are chastising are not so far apart here.  According to you, science is not the right tool for the job.  Or at least that is the impression you've given me.  Perhaps you don't want to make such a strong statement, and only want to suggest that science might not be the right tool for the job.  In any case, I think you could find analytic philosophers who feel the same way.

2. Disagreement

All that aside, I do not think your objections to analytic philosophy are completely misguided.  I think your disagreement with these analytic philosophers comes down to this:  they are hoping to come to terms with the "gap" between objectivity and subjectivity (be it epistemological or ontological or both) by developing a complex language; and you see that as a waste of time.  In your view, the mysteries of consciousness cannot be tamed with an analytic vocabulary.  Perhaps, in your view, consciousness must simply be beheld in awe and wonderment, and not analyzed or "overcome" through analysis.  Is that accurate?

In that case, there is a profound difference between your approach and that of analytic philosophy. 

Indeed, we might ask, if there is an "explanatory gap," why should we think philosophy could help us solve it?  Why should we think that a more analytical vocabulary would be of service here?  Isn't something more like poetry the answer, since at least with poetry we aren't pretending to understand more than we do?

3.  My view

Like you, I am highly skeptical of the emerging vocabulary in the philosophy of mind, though I do not think I share your views on consciousness or science.

A lot of recent discussion in the philosophy of mind revolves around the phrase "phenomenal knowledge."  Yet, the way this term is used seems problematic.

For me to be able to say there is something it is like to see red, then I must know what it is like to see red.  That is, I must have knowledge of the subjective aspect of experience. That is phenomenal knowledge.

How we understand phenomenal knowledge depends on our approach to consciousness.  If we take consciousness to be some absolutely subjective aspect of experience, then phenomenal knowledge can be understood in one of two ways: it can also be entirely subjective, or it can "bridge the gap" between subjectivity and objectivity. 

But we do not have to think there is any absolutely subjective aspect of experience, and so we need not understand phenomenal knowledge in this way.  In my view, there is no gap to bridge.  There is no abyss between subjectivity and objectivity.  There is only grammar.

In a recent email to Torin Alter (available on my blog [link]), I explained my take on phenomenal knowledge with specific reference to Frank Jackson's Knowledge Argument.  (If you're not all that familiar with Jackson's argument and "the case of Mary," I highly recommend Alter's entry on it for The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy [link].)

So how do we understand phenomenal knowledge without absolute subjectivity?  The mistake is in thinking that phenomenal knowledge is propositional knowledge, or information about any qualities of experience.  Phenomenal knowledge does not tell us anything about our experiences.  Rather, phenomenal knowledge is a specific kind of ability:  the ability to identify objects of experience using a language. 

When I say "I know what it is like to see red," all I mean is that I know how to use the word "red" to identify objects of experience.  That knowledge is now knowledge about the experience of seeing red at all.  It is only knowledge about how to use the language.

So, there is no reason to think that there will always be something to learn about color vision (or any other experience) beyond what science can teach us.  While scientific analysis and description will not give us the experience of seeing red, for example, it can tell us everything there is to know about that (and any other) experience.  And we can know all about these experiences without having them.  Indeed, the mere fact of having them does not guarantee that we will know them at all.  The point is that knowing an experience and having that experience are two different things, and neither one requires the other.  (Another way of putting this goes back to your initial observation in this discussion:  that the distinction between "what it is like to be something" and "what it is to be something" is unfounded.  Science can tell us whatever there is to know about what bats are, and we are mistaken if we think there is anything beyond that "which it is like" to be a bat.)

Thus there is no basis for claiming some "absolutely subjective" component to experience.  There is simply experience.  Whatever we mean by the word "consciousness," we should not assume there is any great mystery, or any "gap" (or even an abyss!)  There is only our language and our tendency to use it poorly.

Sorry for the length of this post.  Hopefully some readers will find it useful.