This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
Tye (2013, p. 4). Unless otherwise noted, all references to Tye’s work in what follows are to this paper.
Tye, pp. 3–4.
Harman (1990, p. 667). Emphasis mine.
See Tye, p. 7.
Thanks to Michael Martin for the suggestion.
A side note: one might also wonder whether we could construct a parallel argument against (2). It seems somewhat plausible that we could, if it is in general possible to perceptually represent token events as taking place; presumably it is metaphysically possible for a creature to perceptually represent events in its own nervous system. I won’t pause to consider this further, because (2) seems irrelevant to the dispute between the transparency theorist and the qualia realist.
Lewis (1983, p. 111).
To be fair, this is a bit quick—because it might be that phenomenal character does supervene on the intrinsic properties of subjects, but not on the intrinsic properties of certain events—experiences—involving those subjects. Whether this is a real possibility depends on exactly which events we take experiences to be—on, for example, how much of the subject’s nervous system we take them to involve. I worry that this sort of question about the individuation of experiences often ends up being a bit of a verbal question, so I bypass this issue here.
Distinctness is stronger than [C+E], since it entails that some things have phenomenal character—this won’t matter, I think, for what follows.
See Tye, p. 15.
Nida-Rümelin (2007, p. 434). For a similar sort of phenomenological point, see Consciousness Revisited, p. 120.
Tye, p. 28.
There’s an oddity about this thesis which is worth mentioning in passing. If it really is true that
red = the phenomenal character of an experience of red
then red seems to be identical to a property involving itself. Even if this is coherent, it seems to lead to a regress of sorts. For if the above identity is true, then by substitution so must be
red = the phenomenal character of an experience of the phenomenal character of an experience of red
and
red = the phenomenal character of an experience of the phenomenal character of an experience of the phenomenal character of an experience of red
and so on. This is not obviously vicious, but it can seem a bit odd, since it makes it seem as though even the simplest experience of a red expanse attributes to that expanse infinitely many (and indefinitely complex) properties. But of course this can’t be right, since each of these properties is supposed to be identical to redness, and hence must be, really, the same property. This seems to lead to a pretty coarse-grained view of properties. Perhaps this is not objectionable, but it does seem to me to be a consequence of the view.
One might reply by saying that substitution is invalid here, since the context does not permit substitution of terms referring to the same property. This does not seem very plausible to me—since it seems to follow from your having an experience of x plus the fact that x = y that you are having an experience of y—but perhaps it could provide a way out.
Tye (2011, p. 119).
There’s obviously some sloppiness in the formulation here, as I’m switching back and forth between using ‘red’ and ‘red’ as abstract singular terms and as predicates—this could be fixed up in a more precise version of the argument.
Actually, even panpsychists can’t simply accept the argument as sound. For if (5) is true, then it is also true that being red entails having a certain specific ‘what it’s like’ property. And even panpsychists who think that there is something that it’s like to be a pen don’t think that what it’s like to be a pen is fixed by its color.
There are of course nuances here about identities involving rigid designators for entities which exist only contingently. Those worries aren’t relevant here both because the relevant properties plausibly exist necessarily, and because we aren’t worried about worlds where nothing is red.
It may also be that Tye would deny that these terms are rigid designators. While he does say in Consciousness Revisited that terms like this are rigid designators, he also says things which seem to contradict this view; see note 22 below.
Only ‘almost’ because we’d still need a theory of experiences.
The gap between these may be worth a brief discussion. Saying that x is identical to the property of standing in relation R to y is not to say that x and y are identical—even ‘under certain conditions.’ This would be a bit like saying that the property of believing that grass is green is identical to a proposition which meets certain further conditions—which is just not true, since there are no conditions under which a proposition is identical to a mental state. Indeed, given the plausible principle that nothing is identical to the property of standing in a relation to itself, the two sorts of claims are inconsistent.
We may also be able to raise a parallel problem without making use of merely conceivable worlds which will be, by materialist lights, impossible. To see this, consider a world w just like ours except that a single subject, Bob, has an illusory experience of the color of an apple in w. (Suppose that the apple is green, but he represents it in w as a shade of yellow; in the actual world, he gets it right.) It seems as though, despite this difference between the two worlds in what it’s like to be Bob, the two worlds can be alike with respect to the facts about phenomenal character—couldn’t, after all, the same things be green, and yellow, and red, in these worlds?
To this the proponent of the red/red identity has a reply, if a mildly unsatisfying one. She might say that (given some suitable materialist global supervenience thesis) there must be some physical difference, presumably involving Bob’s brain, between the actual world and w. But this will presumably involve some difference in the color, shape, or location, of something. But presuming, as the general denial of Phenomenal Experience requires, that if the red/red identity is true then analogous theses will be true of shapes, locations, and other perceptible properties, then any such difference in Bob’s brain will entail a difference in the facts about phenomenal character, blocking the failure of global supervenience.
Part of the reason why this is unsatisfying is that it is unclear that this response will be generally available. It seems quite plausible that two worlds could differ physically only in non-perceptible ways—such as, for example, in the magnetic properties of certain objects—but still in ways which lead to a difference in what it is like to be one or more subjects. If this is possible, then we’ll have an argument against the supervenience of phenomenal consciousness on phenomenal character which is no argument against materialist supervenience theses—which suggests that, if anything, there is, given the red/red identity, a bigger gap between phenomenal character and phenomenal consciousness than between the physical facts and phenomenal consciousness.
Tye’s discussion of this in Consciousness Revisited is a bit equivocal. On the one hand, he says that ‘the phenomenal character of an experience of red’ is rigid, and designates redness. But on the other hand, he says that there are some worlds with respect to which ‘the phenomenal character of an experience of red’ does not refer to anything, even though redness exists in those worlds (See Tye 2009, pp. 121–122). But these are inconsistent given the usual understanding of rigid designation, according to which n rigidly designates o iff n designates o at every world in which o exists, and never designates anything else.
Though much of the same work could be done by examples of times at which things are red but there are no conscious subjects, so what is really needed is probably the claim that ‘the phenomenal character of experiences of red’ designates different things with respect to different worlds, and with respect to different times within a world. I set aside this complication in what follows.
Tye, p. 27.
Though this might be a bit tricky for the proponent of the red/red identity who wishes to accept this biconditional but also accept Distinctness, since she’ll need a relatively fine-grained view of properties to do this, but seems committed to a relatively coarse-grained theory of properties to make sense of the red/red identity in the first place. See the discussion in note 14.
Here’s one reason to doubt that we can so easily dispense with experiences: you might think that what it’s like to be a subject at a time is usefully factored into (say) that subject’s visual phenomenal properties, her auditory phenomenal properties, and so on. But if we think of things this way, then it is natural to think of what it’s like to be that subject at a time as explicable in terms of that subject having several distinct experiences at a single time, each of which contributes something to the total phenomenal character. In the context of this sort of view, focusing on the properties of experiences would make more sense, I think. I don’t think that this sort of ‘factoring’ approach to what it’s like is very useful, but I don’t argue that point here. If the factoring approach is adopted, the present point could just be stated as the claim that if we are to talk about experiences and their properties, these should be posited as part of a proposed explanation of the relevant subject-level properties rather than as the starting point for discussion. Thanks to Joe Levine for helpful discussion of this point.
A fourth is that it would give us a statement of the theses about experience in which we’re interested which is independent of the claim that there are such things as experiences. For an argument that we should be skeptical of the existence of experiences in the relevant sense, see Byrne (2009).
References
Bayne, T. (2009). Perception and the reach of phenomenal content. Philosophical Quarterly, 59(236), 385–404.
Byrne, A. (2009). Experience and content. Philosophical Quarterly, 59(236), 429–451.
Harman, G. (1990). The intrinsic quality of experience. Philosophical Perspectives, 4, 31–52.
Lewis, D. (1983). Extrinsic properties. Philosophical Studies, 44(2), 197–200.
Nida-Rümelin, M. (2007). Transparency of experience and the perceptual model of phenomenal awareness. Philosophical Perspectives, 21(1), 429–455.
O’Callaghan, C. (2011). Against hearing meanings. Philosophical Quarterly, 61(245), 783–807.
Siegel, S. (2006). Which properties are represented in perception? In T. S. Gendler & J. Hawthorne (Eds.), Perceptual experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Speaks, J. (2009). Transparency, intentionalism, and the nature of perceptual content. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 79(3), 539–573.
Speaks, J. (2010). Attention and intentionalism. Philosophical Quarterly, 60(239), 325–342.
Tye, M. (2007). The problem of common sensibles. In R. Schumacher (Ed.), Perception and status of secondary qualities. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Tye, M. (2009). Consciousness revisited: Materialism without phenomenal concepts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Tye, M. (2013). Transparency, qualia realism, and representationalism. Philosophical Studies. doi:10.1007/s11098-013-0177-8.
Acknowledgments
Thanks for helpful discussion to audiences at the Oberlin Colloquium in philosophy, Rutgers University, and to Joe Levine, Susanna Schellenberg, and Michael Tye.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Speaks, J. What are debates about qualia really about?. Philos Stud 170, 59–84 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0176-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0176-9