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The mind-body problem and the color-body problem

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Abstract

According to a familiar modern view, color and other so-called secondary qualities reside only in consciousness, not in the external physical world. Many have argued that this “Galilean” view is the source of the mind-body problem in its current form. This paper critically examines a radical alternative to the Galilean view, which has recently been defended or sympathetically discussed by several philosophers, a view I call “anti-modernism.” Anti-modernism holds, roughly, that the modern Galilean scientific image is incomplete – in particular, it leaves out certain irreducible qualitative properties, such as colors – and that we can solve (or dissolve) the hard problem of consciousness by accepting these properties as objective features of the external physical world. I argue, first, that anti-modernism cannot fulfill its promise. Even if the outer world is resplendent with primitive colors, color experience remains a mystery. Second, I argue that the theoretical costs of accepting irreducible colors in the world are enormous. Even if irreducible colors in the world could dispel the mysteries surrounding consciousness, the theoretical benefit would not be worth the cost. If the problems of consciousness and color require that we posit irreducible properties somewhere, it would be far more plausible to accept irreducible phenomenal properties on the side of the subject, and to reject irreducible colors on the side of the object.

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Notes

  1. See, e.g., Papineau (2002).

  2. See, e.g., Smart (1959).

  3. See, e.g., Chalmers (2018), Pautz (2020).

  4. See, e.g., Hardin (1993: 61).

  5. See, e.g., Cutter (2018: 44), Pautz (forthcoming).

  6. See, e.g., Chalmers (2006: 67), Byrne & Hilbert (2006: 97).

  7. I take the name from Byrne (2006). The color-body problem is also discussed (under different names) by Johnston (1996), Shoemaker (2003), Chalmers (2006), Kalderon (2007, 2011), Cutter (2018), Allen (2016), and Moran (forthcoming).

  8. See, e.g., Kripke (1980: 140n), Yablo (1995: 489), McGinn (1996: 554), Tye (2000: 153), Chalmers (2006: 66), Mendelovici (2018: 38–43), Cutter (2018: 40 − 3; forthcoming).

  9. For representationalist versions of phenomenal relationism, see Tye (1995), Dretske (1995), Byrne (2006), Chalmers (2006), Pautz (2010), and Speaks (2015). For naïve realist versions, see Campbell (1993), Fish (2009), Allen (2016), and Sethi (2020).

  10. Circularity objections to Lockean accounts of color that rely explicitly on phenomenal relationism can be found in Tye (1995: 144-5), Dretske (1995: 88–93), and Cutter (2016: 6–7).

  11. This notion of a “structural” description is due to Chalmers (2002), who argues that the physical sciences characterize the world in structural terms.

  12. See Campbell (1993: 268), Cutter (2018: 43 − 4), Sethi (2020: 596-7).

  13. See Fish (2009: 28, 75 − 9). Byrne (2006: 242) argues that there is no hard problem of color experience, but suggests that it would be difficult to explain color experience in physical terms if color weren’t instantiated in the world, since in that case it would be hard to explain how we could perceptually represent color.

  14. Byrne (2006: 243) writes, “There is a ‘hard problem of color’ […] There may be an unbridgeable gulf between colors and ways of reflecting light.”

  15. If anti-modernists reject primitive pain qualities, itch qualities, and ticklish qualities in our bodies, they may have to accept an explanatory gap between brain processes and bodily sensations, just as they tend to accept such a gap between physical properties and colors. But if one accepts explanatory gaps in these other domains, it is unclear why one should expect an epistemically transparent explanation of color experience. Indeed, this would be somewhat surprising given one’s other commitments. So even if such an explanation can be provided, this may not strongly confirm the overall anti-modernist outlook. Thanks to an anonymous referee for this observation.

  16. Cf. Chalmers’ (2015: 273) remarks on the “quality/awareness gap,” though here he seems to be primarily objecting to views that place sensible colors in the brain rather than on distal surfaces. Pautz (2013: 27 − 9) makes a similar point in response to Fish’s (2009) claim that naïve realism deflates the explanatory gap.

  17. This is roughly the position of Fish (2009: 75 − 9), except he holds that colors are reducible to complex physical properties of surfaces (153-4). But Fish’s commitment to color physicalism threatens to undermine his explanatory ambitions. The fact that I am having a reddish experience rather than a greenish experience is not intelligibly explained by the fact that I perceive one complex Galilean-physical property rather than a different Galilean-physical property. Imagine telling Jackson’s (1982) Mary that, when she leaves her room and sees a tomato, she will become phenomenally acquainted with a certain complex physical property (whose physical nature you specify in as much scientific detail as you like). Clearly this does not put Mary in a position to know what it’s like to see red.

  18. Cf. Chalmers’ (2015: 273) and Pautz (2013: 27 − 9).

  19. Sellars (1962).

  20. Hardin (1993), Pautz (2006), Cutter (2018).

  21. Pautz (2010, 2021, forthcoming) emphasizes, the mapping from external physical properties to sensible qualities like sound, smell, taste, and pain is, if anything, even messier and more difficult to codify than in the case of color. As noted in § 1, a fully developed anti-modernist worldview will have to incorporate these other sensible qualities. So the present objection to anti-modernism will apply a fortiori outside the domain of color.

  22. Pautz (forthcoming) makes a similar point about psychophysical laws.

  23. For an empirical overview, see Hardin (1993: ch. 2), Cohen (2009: ch. 2), and Morrison (forthcoming).

  24. But see Kalderon (2007) for a dissenting view.

  25. See Morrison (forthcoming) for a detailed empirical argument for this claim.

  26. Jameson and Hurvich (1957). See Hardin (1993: 30 − 6) for discussion of the philosophical significance of the opponent processing theory.

  27. Pautz (2021: 225) also observes that radical pluralism avoids coincidence worries faced by other forms of primitivism.

  28. Pautz (2011: 421; 2021: 167) raises a similar objection.

  29. Cutter (2021: 936) raises a similar objection.

  30. See Pautz (forthcoming: 225-6) for a somewhat different parsimony objection to radical pluralism that focuses on the complexity of its grounding laws.

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Sharon Berry for detailed comments on an early draft of this paper. Thanks also to the audience at the 2021 Pacific APA session where an early draft of this paper was presented, and to two anonymous referees for their exceptionally helpful comments.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA

    Brian Cutter

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Cutter, B. The mind-body problem and the color-body problem. Philos Stud 180, 725–744 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01875-6

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