Abstract
In “Consciousness and the Introspection of ‘Qualitative Simples’” Paul Churchland criticizes a familiar family of anti-physicalist arguments, including Thomas Nagel’s (1974) “What is it like to be a bat?” argument, Frank Jackson’s (1982, 1986, 1995) knowledge argument, and related arguments developed by David Chalmers (1996, 2010) and others. In Churchland’s view, those arguments lead to the pessimistic view that science can shed no light on the qualitative features of conscious experience. He provides good reasons to reject that pessimistic view. However, I will argue, he is wrong to associate it with at least two of the anti-physicalist arguments he considers: the knowledge and conceivability arguments. Proponents of those arguments can share Churchland’s more optimistic view about the science of consciousness. Indeed, at least some proponents, including Chalmers, advocate a similar view. Churchland also attacks the anti-physicalist arguments more directly, identifying and criticizing assumptions that he sees as underlying them. But, I will argue, those attacks are at best inconclusive, at least with respect to the knowledge and conceivability arguments.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
I restrict my claims to the knowledge and conceivability arguments mostly because the other anti-physicalist arguments Churchland discusses have been less well developed. But I suspect that parallel conclusions about those other arguments could be defended on similar grounds.
- 3.
Page numbers taken from Chap. 4 of this volume. Citations refer to that chapter unless otherwise specified.
- 4.
The qualification “as traditionally conceived” is vital. Physical science might be conceived broadly so as to include, for example, protophenomenal properties (Stoljar 2001). In that case, the knowledge and conceivability arguments would be compatible with the claim that physical science might exhaustively explain consciousness.
- 5.
- 6.
If the Hurvich-Jameson model (or the model plus other physical truths) appears initially to explain all qualitative features of seeing red, this may stem from a tendency to conceive of the model in phenomenal terms, for example, in terms of what it is like to see a certain after image. I have been assuming that the model is characterized in entirely physical terms. Otherwise, if the model is specified partly in phenomenal terms, then even if Mary could deduce the phenomenal character of seeing red from the model this would not support physicalism or threaten the knowledge argument.
- 7.
See also Chalmers’ (1995, 1996) discussion of the principle of structural coherence. Churchland’s view also seems to align well with Thomas Nagel’s (1974, p. 449) suggestion that we develop “an objective phenomenology not dependent on empathy or the imagination” the goal of which “would be to describe, at least in part, the subjective character of experiences in a form comprehensible to beings incapable of having those experiences.”
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- 9.
I assume that “scientific knowledge” refers to knowledge of the sort Mary learns pre-emergence by watching science lectures on black-and-white television; and that “subjective knowledge” refers to knowledge of what it is like, otherwise known as phenomenal knowledge.
- 10.
That summary omits various details. For example, as Chalmers (2004b, 2010) argues, it is best to formulate the knowledge argument so that the conclusion comes out as a disjunction: either physicalism is false or Russellian monism is true. Also, references to the complete physical truth should strictly speaking be to a conjunction of the complete physical truth, a second-order ‘that’s all’ truth, and the complete indexical truth (loc cit.).
- 11.
- 12.
Or if he does not, and he is suggesting instead that knowledge of what it is like is only partly non-propositional, then the propositional part is left over to fuel the knowledge argument.
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- 14.
However, Friends of Mary would quibble with the first sentence in the quoted paragraph if it is meant to refer to every conceivable cognitive creature.
- 15.
For more on protophenomenal properties and Russellian monism, see Alter and Nagasawa (2012).
- 16.
(C) involves some simplification. Here is a more precise formulation: there are truths about consciousness that are not metaphysically necessitated by the conjunction of the complete truth about causal/nomic spatio-temporal structure-and-dynamics, the complete indexical truth, and a second-order “that’s all” truth. See footnote 10.
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- 18.
- 19.
See Balog (1999) for a development of this challenge.
- 20.
For helpful comments, I thank David J. Chalmers, Robert J. Howell, Rekha Nath, and Derk Pereboom.
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Alter, T. (2014). Churchland on Arguments Against Physicalism. In: Brown, R. (eds) Consciousness Inside and Out: Phenomenology, Neuroscience, and the Nature of Experience. Studies in Brain and Mind, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6001-1_5
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