“Quining
Qualia.” Daniel
C. Dennett.
Qualia
is a concept that stems from the last 300 to 400 years of the philosophical
tradition.
According
to Dennett, the traditional attributes of qualia are as follows:
Qualia;
is ineffable, intrinsic, private, and directly apprehensible to individual
consciousness.
A
working definition of qualia; is that it is our subjective experience of
reality.
His
objective is to show the unworkable nature of the traditional concepts of qualia.
Dennett
states that despite his belief that “qualia” do not exist as currently
defined, and yet he does not deny that people experience reality, and that those
experiences have properties. (p. 409)
He
also claims that “Conscious properties” could be many different things in
actuality, but that the actual properties of experience are so unlike the
traditional definitions of qualia that it would be misleading to call subjective
conscious experiences qualia. (p. 409)
Dennett
goes on to state that qualia are supposed to have special properties in some
“hard to define” way, but that subjective conscious experience has none of
these special properties of as is defined by the traditional notion of quaila.
According
to Dennett, the big mistake made by most, is in (reference to qualia), in the
assumption that it is “safe” to speak of the properties of subjective
experience with certainty, or as a legitimate appeal to authority or
information. Here he uses the quick reference by example to Descartes’
certainty based on his individual conscious experience. (p.409)
Dennett
wants to shift the burden of proof to whoever wants to appeal to qualia. To
speak of qualia, one must first prove that they are not in error to be doing so.
He
wants to make it uncomfortable for people to talk about qualia or subjective
experience under the assumption that they actually “know” what they are
talking about.
He
goes on to claim that it is tactically obtuse to speak about qualia, it is
better (tactically) to say that there are no qualia at all.
Dennett
says that his “four fold” essence of qualia may be a bit opinionated.
To
define qualia more simply: “The qualitative or phenomenal features of sense
experience(s) in virtue of having which they resemble and differ from each
other, qualitatively, in the ways that they do.” (Shoemaker 1982. p. 367)
Dennett
pointedly says that rigorous arguments only work on well defined material, but
to destroy intuitive beliefs in qualia he must use intuitive demonstrations or
as he would say, intuition pumps, to debunk the traditional notions of qualia.
To
illustrate this, the quote used was, “It is not a something, but not a nothing
either! The conclusion was only that nothing would serve as well something about
which nothing could be said.” (Wittgenstein 1958. esp. p 102)
Through
the entire lay out concerning the format Dennett uses to debunk the notion of
the traditional concepts concerning Qualia’s definition he maintains that
although there is no qualia this in turn does not mean that there is no
conscious experience, for there is and this is not denied, it is just that this
conscious experience is not Qualia.
To
be precise he states, “Everything real has properties, and since I don’t
deny the reality of conscious experience, I grant that conscious experience has
properties. He goes on to claim
that “conscious properties” could be many things in actuality, but that
these properties are so unlike the traditional properties attributed to qualia
that, it would be misleading to call “Subjective Conscious Experience”
qualia. (p.409)
To
begin Dennett introduces “Intuition Pumps” (IP). He is using these pumps in the manner of rationalizing the
fact that he is refusing to use a formal argument in regards to a topic that is
base more on intuition than on rationality.
The intention of an IP is to flush out and away offending intuitions
concerning qualia. Basically he is arguing in this manner to illustrate the
difficulties and hindrances in regards to intuitions that are involved in
qualia’s definitions. (p409)
It
is this notion that Dennett wants to extricate. To simplify (clarify) here intuition pumps serve the purpose
of extricating unwanted if not outright useless intuitions concerning qualia.
That is he wants to free qualia from the entanglement of its inherent
difficulties and hindrances. (P.409)
The
basic lay out:
Section
1: is the introduction of intuition
pumps and the traditional definition of qualia, as he understands it.
Qualia’s
four fold traditional definition according to Dennett’s understanding is;
1. Ineffable
2. Intrinsic
3. Private
4. Directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness.
Intuition
Pumps main purpose is to illustrate the big mistake in believing the above
definition as acceptable because of the falsity and incompleteness of the
definition.
Blatantly
states as this: The definitions (traditional) that qualia has is not what qualia
is, he goes on to show the falsity of qualia and continues to say that there is
no qualia as is traditionally believed. That there is no conscious experience is NOT the argument.
The argument here is that qualia is non-existent for it does not follow
by the traditional definition. Therefore
because the definition in itself is false and incomplete it follows that qualia
is in it’s self, false and incomplete therefore, as there is no definition for
qualia there is no qualia.
Conscious
experience exists and it differs from person to person, this Dennett does NOT
deny.
Section
2: is the use of IP 1 & 2 to focus attention on the traditional notion of
qualia.
IP1-
The cauliflower
This example is intended to illustrate the differentiation between tastes
and yet this differentiation cannot be adequately explained to another being
why.
IP2-
The wine-tasting machine (p.411)
This is used to show that despite the accuracy a machine can have in
distinguishing a differentiation between tastes it will never be as good at it
as a wine taste tester would be (despite the same job as the wine tester)
because it lacks subjective conscious experience. Intuitively it cannot “be”
the same as it is a machine.
Section
3: Consists of the next four IP’s. These
are used with the intent to create a paradox that lurks in tradition, is a
powerful argument, non-formal, and pitted against attractive ideas.
IP3-
Inverted Spectrum
How does one know they see the same objective color for example as
another person. Dennett goes on to
state the formulation of a paradox against qualia due to the if in readily
apprehensible to know that one sees the same as another.
IP4-
The Brainstorm Machine
Basically Dennett’s moral here is that even technology does not provide
an intersubjective comparison of qualia. It
is not possible.
IP5-
Neurosurgical Prank
Here he illustrates that it is a mistake in presupposing you can
empirically verify and explain qualia. Also
Dennett requires the need to reinforce this pump explicitly in order to reveal
the mistake in depth.
IP6-
Alternative Neurosurgery
This is suggesting that without outside information the state of our own
qualia is as unknowable to you (him) as anyone else’s qualia is.
In
short if there is qualia then it is even more inaccessible to us than we
originally thought. The classic
intersubjective comparisons are impossible for we cannot tell anything about our
own qualia by introspection.
Section
4: utilizes the next 6 IP’s and the purpose are to dissipate that
attractiveness of ideas presented in section three.
IP7-
Chase and Sanborn
Here this shows qualia/experience will change.
Dennett illustrates this through the usage of Chase and Sanborn ‘s
experience in their change in taste concerning coffee and how the accounted for
it – each differently.
Basically you can never know precisely how and why your tastes change –
they just do that’s it. Empiricism
can shed some light on this yet a strait forward explanation will and cannot be
provided in this way.
IP8-
Gradual Postoperative Recovery
This IP goes into more depth to point out the non-apprehensible nature of
experience. The example of Chase and Sanborn is still used to explain the
limitations of both introspective and outside 3rd person verification
of qualia.
IP9-
Experienced beer drinker.
Shows that if your reactions to the experience help constitute the
qualities of the experience, means that you have more or less guaranteed a
change in the property. If you change the property, it cannot be an intrinsic
property. In fact, the opposite occurs, and the properties of experience become
extrinsic relational properties.
IP
10- worldwide eugenics experiment.
Makes clear that values of experience change and are different, and that
there are no immediate resources for the individual to make a finer distinction
about the how’s and why’s of these kinds of changes in quale experiences.
IP
11- Cauliflower cure.
Demonstrates that conscious experience has no intrinsic properties, just
a change in experience. If qualia have intrinsic properties, then the existing
definition of qualia is incoherent.
IP
12- Visual inversion spectacles.
Offers further proof that conscious experience is neither subjective or
intrinsic. To suppose that experience is subjective and intrinsic is fallacious.
Your change in experiences does nothing to change the extrinsic relational
properties of the world around us.
Section
5: Some puzzling real world cases.
Here Dennett refers to actual case studies of people experiencing
neurological anomalies of differentiated conscious experiences. He uses these
examples to point out that we can be aware or unaware of shifts in our
perceptions of everyday life, but that we cannot tell what has changed through
introspection. To wit: you do not always know how you know what you know, you
know what I mean.
Final
section: The last three IP’s to introduce and motivate replacements for the
banished notions of qualia.
IP
13- The osprey cry.
Purpose here is to show that individual experience is practically
ineffable, but not beyond our reach.
IP
14- The jello box.
Most of what could be called qualia, is in reference to a public
relational property. The differences experienced are due to our idiosyncratic
capacity to respond differently to experience.
IP
15- The guitar string.
This is used to show that subjective experiences may change, but that the
phenomenal informational properties (pip’s) have not changed. The different
experiences of the guitar were intrinsically present in the guitar to begin
with, only individual experiences have changed.
Conclusion
(The filling of the Vacuum):
To transform the fact that there is a limit to human perception, into the
idea that this is proof of completely indescribable properties of human
experience is a fallacy. There is nothing to be found to fill the criteria of
the four-fold essence of qualia.
What are found are practically ineffable public properties, that can only
be referred to indirectly through our private experiences. Experiences that are
only private through the idiosyncratic nature of individual sensory experience.
As to the authority of subjective experience, we can speak with only some
surety, if and only if we restrict ourselves to discussing the relational
extrinsic properties of the world.
So, despite what seems to be obvious about the ineffable, intrinsic,
private, readily apprehensible, subjective, conscious nature of qualia, it seems
that they’re quite simply no qualia. Therefore it makes no sense, logically or
otherwise, to speak of qualia at all.