Abstract
I distinguish between two claims of transparency of experiences. One claim is weaker and supported by phenomenological evidence. This I call the transparency datum. Introspection of standard perceptual experiences as well as bodily sensations is consistent with, indeed supported by, the transparency datum. I formulate a stronger transparency thesis that is entailed by (strong) representationalism about experiential phenomenology. I point out some empirical consequences of strong transparency in the context of representationalism. I argue that pain experiences, as well as some other similar experiences like itches, tickles, orgasms, hedonic valence, etc., are not transparent in this strong sense. Hence they constitute empirical counterexamples to representationalism. Given that representationalism is a general metaphysical doctrine about all experiential phenomenology for good reasons, I conclude that representationalism about phenomenal consciousness is false. Then, I outline a general framework about how the introspection of phenomenal qualities in perceptual experience works in light of the transparency datum, but consistent with the rejection of strong transparency. The result is a form of qualia realism that is naturalist and intentionalist (weak representationalist), and has close affinities to the adverbialist views developed in the latter part of the last century. I then apply this framework to pain experiences and their bodily locations.
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Notes
Consciously or unconsciously. If it is possible to have unconscious sensations, then pains may be unconscious but still they are necessarily sensed. This is not something true of colours and other secondary qualities: there is not even a remotely plausible sense in which colours themselves can be unconscious, although a sensation of colour can be—if sensations can be unconscious. So, I will leave this issue aside, and for convenience, assume that all sensations/experiences are conscious.
Although representationalism is a natural descendant of perceptualism, neither view, strictly speaking, implies the other. So, the issues tend to be somewhat different as representationalism is a metaphysical thesis about all phenomenal character—see below. Nevertheless, defenders of these views are natural allies.
Terminology here is not completely settled. The label ‘intentionalism’ is sometimes used interchangeably with ‘representationalism’ in the literature. Strong and weak representationalisms would then be mutually exclusive subspecies of representationalism or intentionalism. Many defenders of strong representationalists don’t bother to mark their version as strong representationalist and use ‘representationalism’ to characterize their view. I will follow this practice and use ‘representationalism’ to mean strong representationalism. I will use ‘intentionalism’ to denote the more general view. When it matters to mark a position that is intentionalist but not strong representationalist, I will use ‘weak representationalism’.
Among its defenders are Harman (1990), Dretske (1981, 1995), Tye (1995, 2000, 2006a), Byrne and Hilbert (1997, 2003), Jackson (2004, 2007), Byrne and Tye (2006) and Kulvicki (2005, 2007). For a detailed development and defense of representationalism about pain and pain affect in particular, see Tye (1995, 1996a, 1997, 2006a, b), Bain (2003, 2007, 2013), Cutter and Tye (2011) and O’Sullivan and Schroer (2012).
In Ned Block’s terms, (a) amounts to the existence of mental latex, and (b) to the existence of mental paint (Block 1996).
Thus, according to my usage, those positions that take external factors to be (merely) contributing factors to the determination of phenomenology count as phenomenal internalist. Phenomenal internalists need not deny that external factors are among the determinants of experiential phenomenology. One need not be a representationalist to endorse phenomenal externalism: disjunctivism and naive realism about perception, as well as versions of behaviorism about perceptual states, are forms of phenomenal externalism that are not (typically) representationalist. Thus, although my main target in this paper is representationalism, I take the main line of argument based on features of pain experiences to be equally effective against disjunctivists: as long as they are not eliminativist about perceptual phenomenology, they are committed to phenomenal externalism, and with it, to a strong form of transparency.
I am following Dretske (1999) and Tye (2002) in distinguishing between awareness-of and awareness-that. The latter awareness, unlike the former, requires concepts. Although the focus of this paper is representationalism about pain, the issues raised by pain are not peculiar to pain. As already mentioned, there are various other sensations (other ‘intransitive’ bodily sensations such as aches, itches, tickles, tingles, orgasms, dizziness, etc.) and phenomenal occurrences (moods, emotions, and sensory affect such as pleasantness or unpleasantness or even painfulness of certain sensations) that raise exactly the same difficulties for representationalism. I will come back to this below in Sect. 5.
Despite the existence of quite helpful literature on transparency (Crane 2000; Tye 2002; Kind 2003; Siewert 2004; Stoljar 2004; Hellie 2006; Macpherson 2006; Nida-Rümelin 2007), there is, it seems to me, still a lot of disagreement about what exactly the phenomenon is and what its significance is for theories of perception.
See also Reid (1764/1872, p. 120).
See also Harman (1990, p. 667).
Although more to be said about the meaning of ‘appear’ in location, the intended meaning, unlike in focus that follows (‘seems’), is phenomenological (not epistemological). Also, here and in what follows, I will put aside versions of idealism (if there are any) that would not allow for the existence of non-mental particulars.
This is not because I believe that location and focus would remain true under the widest scope, but because my argumentative strategy will rely on different considerations. What I have in mind particularly are the complications that affective phenomenology (hedonic valence of experiences) generates for these two claims (see Aydede and Fulkerson 2014). Otherwise, I am prepared to accept them as empirical data to be accommodated by any account of perception and introspection—see below.
However, as a matter of fact, all representationalists believe that the qualities attributed to extra-mental particulars by experiences are objective and non-mental. So, for obvious reasons, among strong representationalists we don’t find, for instance, defenders of subjectivist, dispositionalist, or relationalist views of secondary qualities. I will also assume, again along with all representationalists, that the particulars sensed or perceived are completely objective and non-mental (physical). I am aware that sense-datum theories raise delicate issues about transparency, but I cannot address them here.
See also Reid (1764/1872, p. 120) for direct introspective availability of sensations like pain.
From the writings of some representationalists, sometimes one gets the impression that they really do think that these philosophers were indeed so confused.
I will leave aside whether experiences can represent such high-level properties as being a tomato or a pine tree. The controversial issues surrounding transparency concern low level (usually sensorially detectable) properties and their representation. Also, almost all representationalists consider the representational content of experiences to be non-conceptual—whatever exactly this comes to. This is a point of agreement between me and representationalists, and what I say below about what is required for introspection does not contravene this.
The exact content may not contain an explicit reference to self. The main point here and below is that an experience is occurring with a certain worldly content. The experience may be a more determinate sensory form (like seeing, hearing, feeling, etc.).
Again, this does not contravene the claim that the representational content of perceptual experiences is not conceptual. I agree with representationalists that one need not possess concepts in order to have sensory or perceptual experiences. This is, of course, consistent with our attempt to partially specify the non-conceptual perceptual content of experiences propositionally as in (p-content). As far as I can tell, all representationalists agree with the claim made in the main text—see below.
Following standard practice, I will capitalize the name of concepts, where concepts are understood to be species of mental representations in more or less the psychologists’ sense. These representations along with the sensory representations underlying perceptual experiences are presumed to be realized in or implemented by the relevant hardware of the central nervous system.
True at least for the concepts of low-level perceptual properties such as being red or being round that are uncontroversially representable in our visual experiences. It is certainly true for the concepts of so-called secondary qualities represented in the experiences that are generated by their relevant sensory modalities. Indeed, I am assuming that every sensory modality consciously interfaced with conceptual systems comes with a proprietary range of phenomenal qualities whose concepts would require the sensory modality in question for their acquisition and direct application. The acquisition of amodal concepts for high-level properties such as being a tomato or being a pine tree, or damage (see below) may also require the actual or potential ability to make de re judgments if certain forms of an informational psychosemantics are true, but I will leave this issue aside as these are not uncontroversially experiential concepts. See Aydede and Güzeldere (2005) for more discussion.
It is interesting to note that we do not use locutions such as ‘this is pain’ or ‘that is an itch’ paralleling the de re perceptual judgments like ‘that is red’ or ‘this is an apple’. ‘This hurts’ is a different matter whose discussion is complicated and requires more space than I have here—but see the second proposal in Sect. 6.2 below which comports particularly well with the use of this expression. Although I disagree with his final analysis, Bain (2007) has a very useful discussion of this expression.
Consider the empirical facts that linguists rely on when constructing and testing theories about the deep syntactic structure of natural languages. Some of these are facts revealed by ordinary speakers’ actual grammaticality judgments. Similarly, the empirical facts that I claim falsify representationalism are facts revealed by people’s (including scientists’ and clinicians’) judgments about pain. These reveal, I claim, the actual cognitive architecture of how pain experiences interface with conceptually structured cognition in people with the relevant sort of sensory and conceptual competency. This architecture is not one predicted by representationalism—on the contrary.
It is perhaps worth noting that this point is almost explicitly stated in a note appended to the definition of pain officially recognized by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP)—the largest and most influential organization of pain researchers and clinicians in the world. For references and further discussion, see my (forthcoming-a).
Note, however, that this is not to deny that location or focus is true regarding pain experiences. Pain experiences are still transparent in that they are consistent with the Datum. I will come back to this issue below in Sect. 6.2.
A representationalist might still be tempted by the following (cf. Tye 2006b). We have in fact two concepts of pain, \(\hbox {PAIN}_{\mathrm{E}}\) and \(\hbox {PAIN}_{\mathrm{O}}\). The former applies to pain experiences. The latter applies to bodily parts where we feel pain. Sometimes I deploy \(\hbox {PAIN}_{\mathrm{O}}\) when I judge that I feel pain in my finger: my judgment is correct iff my finger is represented by my \(\hbox {PAIN}_{\mathrm{E}}\) to be damaged. That is, my finger has pain in it when and only when I experientially represent it to be damaged. So, the concept \(\hbox {PAIN}_{\mathrm{O}}\) attributes an inverse intentional (therefore, mental, subjective) property to my finger when I judge I feel pain in my finger (also cf. Bain 2007). This is an interesting suggestion. In fact, the positive account I will give later will in some ways be structurally similar to this suggestion (see Sect. 6.2 below). But it doesn’t save representationalism. Neither concept attributes a property represented by pain experiences. Both concepts, to the extent to which they have de re applications appropriately based on pain experiences, track something subjective, experiential, and to that extent, introspectable. This violates s-transparency. The features to which these concepts apply, or indeed the features/qualities they may express, are introspectable features of experiences over and above those implicated in their representational content.
Tye (1995, 1996b), responding to Block’s challenge (1996), argues that orgasm experiences are representational and thus strongly transparent. The arguments he marshals for this claim, however, establish at best that these experiences are intentional, not strongly representational. Please note that none of the arguments I present here against representationalism is meant to be an argument against intentionalism per se.
For a straightforward argument to this effect, see Aydede and Fulkerson (2014). Representationalists sometimes are tempted to provide an explanation appealing to the hedonic valence or affect of experiences (their unpleasantness or pleasantness) for why we do not have the relevant range of de re labeling concepts for intransitive bodily sensations. It is not clear whether such an explanation would be correct or entirely correct: note that there are affectively neutral or nearly neutral versions of these sensations—this is in fact the more pervasive norm—where the phenomenon still persists. But, more importantly, even if such an explanation were correct, it would not save the representationalists. For it would be an admission that we have violations of s-transparency even if there may be good naturalistic reasons for the practice. Finally, insofar as the affective aspect of experiences is a phenomenological matter, the ‘explanation’ offered would itself constitute a refutation of representationalism if the affect primarily qualifies the experiences themselves. For the explanation would amount to admitting that there are intrinsic phenomenal/affective features of experiences that are introspectively available. Note that at this point the representationalist cannot argue that the affect itself is strongly transparent. See my (2006, 2009) for further details.
An anonymous reviewer suggested that the counterexamples listed here against representationalism are all non-accidentally connected to motivation and action. This suggests that perhaps representationalists can handle these cases not with indicative representations but with directives or imperative representations. To my knowledge, there are two such attempts in the literature, one by Colin Klein (2007, 2015) and one by Manolo Martínez (2011). I agree that these attempts are more promising to handle cases like the ones used here for rescuing strong representationalism as a metaphysical project. I discuss these views elsewhere [Aydede and Fulkerson, forthcoming; Aydede (2017b)] and argue that these positions either suffer from similar problems, or else are not strongly representationalist.
Some representationalists such as Bain (2013) and O’Sullivan and Schroer (2012) think that the properties represented by the hedonic valence of experiences (in particular, the painfulness of pains) represent evaluative properties such as the goodness or badness of extra-mental objects or conditions represented by affective experiences. I will put these proposals aside since their naturalistic credentials, in the absence of any plausible psychosemantics, are moot, and it is not clear at all whether such evaluative properties are extra-mental objective properties at the end. I have criticized such views elsewhere—see Aydede and Fulkerson (2014, forthcoming).
In fact, as mentioned before, it is not clear whether these experiences are even transparent at all, strongly or otherwise. See Kind (2013) for a persuasive argument that they are not.
Indeed, there are philosophers who think that there are very powerful independent theoretical and methodological reasons to think that perceptualism or representationalism is true. So, they tend to think that if perceptualism/representationalism is true, then the ordinary as well as scientific conception of pain and other intransitive bodily sensations is just incoherent (see, for instance, Hill 2006, 2009). This is puzzling, on independent grounds: if the concept of pain with which the scientists and clinicians have been operating were incoherent, we should be seeing the troubling signs of this in both the basic scientific research at large and clinical practice. But as far as I can tell, none of the kind exist. In fact, both have been exponentially flourishing after the scientific revolution the pain science witnessed in the 1960’s, which prompted the IASP to adopt a definition of pain that in fact embraced the folk conception of pain which rejects identifying or even robustly correlating pain with tissue damage or the like—for a critical discussion of the IASP definition of pain, see my (forthcoming-a).
Batty (2010) argues that the content of olfactory experience is not referential but quantificational and the only reference to particulars are via general indexicals such as here, now. I am not sure I agree with her analysis, but even if her argument is sound, this will not pose any problem for my analysis below as my emphasis will be on the predicative structure of experiences and their introspective expression. Furthermore, if she were right, we would have more support for rejecting s-transparency. See Mole (2010) for a criticism of Batty.
This claim is not, strictly speaking, necessary for the purposes of this paper. But in what follows, I will assume a primary quality (physicalist) view of secondary qualities.
For the notion of the quality space for sensory modalities and the science behind it, see Clark (1996, 2000). Although I assume that there is a quality space for each sensory modality, this assumption is not necessary for my purposes here. See Aydede and Güzeldere (2005) and Kulvicki (2004, 2005) for elaboration of how certain physically complex properties could be phenomenologically presented as if they were simple—or at least how phenomenology could be silent about the physical complexity of secondary qualities. The point goes back to Smart (1959) and Armstrong (1968)—for a similar recent development of the idea, see Fazekas (2012).
I will use ‘#...#’ to refer to the vehicle of sensory representation. So, for instance, #F# (the sensory predicate) attributes the sensible property F to an extra-mental particular, x, picked out by #x#.
As mentioned before, I will leave aside the elaboration of how ‘F’ can range over properties that are high-level and multi-modal such as shape, size, motion, or even some physical kind properties such as being a pine tree. Here I just want to concentrate on low-level proper sensibles as I think most philosophical puzzles about perceptual phenomenology stem from their peculiar phenomenology.
Also, I leave the exact nature of particulars deliberately vague as they can be token objects, events, as well as space-time points or regions—a more careful discussion would involve distinguishing space-time points as providing the sort of ‘Kantian’ scaffolding for sensory representation and the particular items (objects, events, etc.) occupying this space-time. The point of experiences having a singular referential structure is to point out the obvious: the world our experiences disclose is a world of particulars in space-time instantiating properties. So, the representational resources of such experiences are capable of specifying the spatiotemporal distribution of sensible properties that it attributes to particulars in this space-time. This requires that experiences have referential as well as attributive functions. See Peacocke (1992), Clark (2000) and Burge (2010).
In a very sketchy form, however, my view is that perception (at least visual perception), in presenting the particulars it does, uses at a minimum, in addition to attributives/predicates, a referential device based on a spatial grid-like (functional) topography built into the vehicle of perception. The idea can be illustrated in analogy (and only in analogy) to distinct points on the display of a digital camera picking out different spatial locations in front of the camera. Here there is a pre-established isomorphism (under suitable conditions) between the topography of the display and the space in front of it (sustained by optical laws and geometry) and this isomorphic correspondence can ground reference. Property attribution (predication) would then consist of the systematic causal correspondence between two sets of property instantiations at these points/locations (correspondence between properties instantiated on the display and the properties instantiated at the locations in front of the display)—an informational psychosemantics could then ground the semantics of perceptual predicates. As mentioned, there may in fact be more than one referential scheme—for instance, schemes corresponding to representing space-time points/regions and representing particular objects/events occupying these points/regions (cf. Pylyshyn’s visual indexes or FINST’s, 2007). But these are mostly empirical matters whose discussion needs some other occasion.
More colloquially: ‘I am experiencing x as F’, which can be paraphrased as ‘x looks/appears F to me’. I will sometimes use this form. Reference and predication can take demonstrative forms as in ‘I am experiencing this as that’ where ‘this’ picks out a particular and ‘that’ attributes a quality specified demonstratively. This is usually how we achieve communicating richer and more determinate content than can be expressed by our standing non-demonstrative concepts. I will leave this aside. Also, the predicate ‘EXP’ can, of course, have more specific forms such as ‘SEE’, ‘HEAR’, ‘FEEL’, etc.
The following dialogs are inspired by Lycan (1996, p. 124; similar insightful dialogs appear in his other writings).
Here again ‘this’ refers to an extra-mental particular, and F is a sensible property of this particular.
Note the difficulties confronted by all representationalists responding to Jackson’s Knowledge Argument that requires a robust sense of introspective knowledge of what-it-is-like to experience F. form-1 cannot capture this sense—witness Dretske’s struggle in his (1995, Chapter 3).
I would not mind putting this point by saying that although we can have direct introspective knowledge of the instantiation of phenomenal properties, this is accomplished without the mental equivalent of a demonstrative singular reference to the state or event that does instantiate those properties. This is probably what direct acquaintance with phenomenal qualities comes to. But, unlike Bertrand Russell, I do not think such direct acquaintance would enable one to demonstratively pick out one’s experience whose qualities one is said to be acquainted with. Of course, internalists sometimes express their knowledge by locutions like ‘this is what it is like to experience F’ in English. But this is fine. There is not much else that could be done with the resources of natural languages—although here ‘this’ could naturally be interpreted as referring merely to the particular instantiation of a phenomenal quality to pick out its kind. There is, of course, a more natural and widely used locution to express one’s phenomenal knowledge: ‘This looks F to me’. This locution and the like, when used in the phenomenal sense (see Chisholm 1957; Jackson 1977), does a very good job of expressing one’s phenomenal knowledge. To mark this sense and avoid some issues with the semantics of ‘F’, we can use a hyphen: ‘this looks-F to me’ where ‘this’ refers to an extra-mental particular.
I have generally tried to avoid the use of ‘qualia’ in this paper. But if we wanted to associate this story with a story told in qualia terms, here is how it would go. A quale type can be identified with the or a way of experientially registering a sensible property for which a quality space can in principle be specified. If Q1 is a way of registering \(\hbox {red}_{16}\) for a certain subject, it is metaphysically (or perhaps, even empirically) possible for another subject to register \(\hbox {red}_{16}\) as Q2 (\(\ne \)Q1)—according to some matrix specified by some quality space defined for these Qs. So, this view would allow for shifted or inverted qualia. On this view, qualia play a role similar to the role Fregean contents play (see, for instance, Chalmers 2004; Thompson 2009). But qualia are not contents in my view. A particular quale type is a sensory predicate type deployed in sensory experiences whose concept is a phenomenal concept (another predicate—a conceptual one) identifying this type. Qualia, of course, normally attribute sensible properties to extra-mental objects, but sometimes not as in intransitive sensations (if we adopt my second story about pain quality in the main text—see below). So, there are no Fregean contents in any traditional sense. But it is possible to identify these predicates as ‘modes of presentations’ (MoPs) of the properties they attribute (when they do). But this is a degenerate sense of MoP, since we might as well just talk of predicates syntactically typed whose content is just Russellian (they express extra-mental properties—when they do—directly, unmediated by senses). Unlike Fregean contents, qualia do not determine which properties they express. This is determined by some informational psychosemantics—in my view, qualia are just representational vehicles with a certain functional/information-theoretic role. For details, see Aydede and Güzeldere (2005). Clearly, the view advocated here has very close affinities with the qualia friendly adverbialist views of perception developed in the 60’s and 70’s, but it does not suffer from the devastating problems those views generally thought to have. For an explicitly adverbialist account of sensory affect, see my (2014, forthcoming-b). Alter (2007) gives an account of phenomenal manners of representing in experience that is similar to the account given here—although he doesn’t make a reference/predication distinction, he seems to have predication in mind.
More needs to be said about phantom limb pains. There are extra-special difficulties with phantom limb pains due to reference to absence of limbs in our judgments/reports. I cannot discuss these here. See Bain (2007) for an insightful discussion of the problems in understanding the locations of pain in phantom limbs.
Consider an apprentice among alchemists in the pre-modern world pointing to the vapor coming out of boiling water. He utters, ‘this is phlogiston’. Given my Russellianism and the fact that there is no property of being phlogiston, the apprentice is not making a genuine property attribution—although his reference is successful. But although his utterance is not strictly speaking true or false, there are nevertheless appropriateness or suitability conditions to his utterance that are not satisfied in this particular case. And that is what would be pointed out to him when his tutors point out his ‘mistake’—this description is of course from the perspective of a semanticist. Pain experiences, on this option, are like this utterance. We might say that they do not make genuine property attributions, or we might even say that they do not genuinely make property attributions. Either way, they are not fully representational (or perhaps: they are attempted but ‘failed representations’). And this view has been the dominant view pretty much throughout the history of philosophy—See Reid (1764/1872, p. 120) for instance. Or here is McGinn (among many others): ‘We distinguish between a visual experience and what it is an experience of; but we do not make this distinction in respect of pains. Or again, visual experiences represent the world as being a certain way, but pains have no such representational content’ (McGinn 1982, p. 8). For many other references to such traditional views, see Bain (2003, p. 502).
Another option to characterize the ‘property’ attributed by pain experiences might be provided by Pautz’ view (2010). If I understand him correctly, Pautz takes this property to be a primitive one that lives only in the intentional content of these experiences somehow projected to bodily parts in a way that does not generate accuracy conditions. If this is meant to be consistent with the kind of non-representationalism this second option explores, I am sympathetic (barring my worries about how to naturalize such a content)—however, I am not confident that I got Pautz’ view right.
Note that this is not a form of projectivism—there are no representational mistakes anywhere in the system. One robust mark of projectivism is that it makes experiences under consideration and our judgments based on them massively illusory or somehow mistaken.
Many thanks to John Kulvicki, Tyler Burge, Matthew Fulkerson, Brendan O’Sullivan, David Bain, Michael Brady, Adam Bradley, Andrew Wright, and two anonymous reviewers of this journal for useful feedback on earlier versions of this paper. Thanks also to my colleagues, Evan Thompson and Adam Morton, for their insightful comments and questions during a departmental “work-in-progress” session in which parts of this paper were discussed.
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Aydede, M. Is the experience of pain transparent?. Synthese 196, 677–708 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1528-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1528-3