Hetero phenomenology definition in philosophy

[Mentat]

Zombie do not believe anything. Believing requires consiousness, just as knowing does. By your presentation of the argument zombies are no different to human beings. This is a misunderstanding of zombies as used by Chalmers etc. Zombies are defined as behaving like us, but they are not conscious. If they are able to believe things and to believe that they are having experiences then human beings are zombies and we don't have to argue about whether they can exist or not, we know they do.

But just because you don't like the logical conclusion of a certain line of reasoning, doesn't mean that that line of reasoning is wrong.

Belief, as I've stated before, can be (and has been; numerous times, numerous ways) explained in terms of a neural activity. Thus, "belief" would fall into the realm of "a-consciousness", and we would be able to believe that we had "p-consciousness" even if we were zombies.

This is all irrelevant. There's no need for an Orwellian hypothesis. Some flashes were experienced and some weren't. I suppose some people would like to know why this happens, but it has no bearing an this discussion. We are disussing how to explain why or how subjects experience things, not why they sometimes don't. Clearly if they don't experience something then it was not an experience, and we are supposed to talking about experiences not non-experiences.

The fact that the same thing can occur (a flash of light, photons entering the retina, etc), without the subject claiming "conscious experience" of it, is indeed relevant.

An important result. When we don't pay attention to something we tend not to notice it. I could have predicted that given two minutes to think about it.

But is "paying attention" a vital part of conscious "experience"? If not, then why was it the deciding factor in this experiment (as to whether the flashes were "consciously experienced" or not)? If so, then it is indeed a relevant prediction.

I haven't solved anything. I am talking about the definition of an experience. I define it as something we experience.

That's self-referential nonsense, Canute (no offense). How can you expect anyone to argue with a "bligs are something we blig, of course" argument? Or to even take it seriously?

What's the relevance of this? You haven't yet shown that experiences exist in a manner consistent with heterophenomenology, so it's a bit premature to start talking about where they occur.

This is, once again, indicative of your misunderstanding heterophenomenology. Heterophenomenology does not explain "in what manner experiences exist", it is a method for scientific understanding of verbal reports about consciousness.

No offence, but if you don't mind I'll drop out of this discussion before it becomes any more surreal.

Well, no one's going to stop you, but I would very much prefer it if you didn't leave just yet. If you do, it will certainly not be the first time that you've done that (on one of my threads, no less), and I find it to be as insulting as it is unfortunate. If you're not going to fully flesh out your arguments (and the arguments of others), why even begin discussing?

 

[StatusX]

I just came up with a thought experiment that might help demonstrate the point. Let me know if this is helpful to anyone: (by the way, this is sort of a continuation of the Mary character used by Jackson, but I have only heard that argument second hand, so I apologize for any inconsistencies)

Mary, the famous neuroscientist who only saw red when she was an adult, has had a child, Michael. Being so deprived her whole life, she has become bitter at the world, and has taken it out on her son - she doesn't let him see any colors, just like her. She tells him about the colors, about how the sky is blue and bananas are yellow. But she purposely tells him nothing about the colors red and green; she wants them to be a suprise.

Then one day, she decides it's time for Michael to learn about these colors, but she reveals them to him in a peculiar way. She has prepared a room with a white floor and ceiling and walls of alternating vertical red and green stripes. She brings Michael into the room and let's him look around for a few minutes, telling him the names of the two colors, but not which is which. Then she brings him back to their discolored home.

Now we subject Michael to a heterophenomenological examination. What will we find? He knows red and green are different. Is that it? If you showed him a red slide, could he tell you which it was? No. If you asked him which is the color of an apple, could he answer? No. If you asked him which color was warmer, could he say? This is harder, since it is possible we have innate responses to colors, but assume for simplicity Michael has no such inborn traits. If so, then no, since he doesn't know what colors tend to accompany heat.

So all he knows is that they're different. What about his behavior? If shown one of the colors and asked a question, is there any possible way he could give an answer that depended on which color was being shown? Is there any way his behavior in general could be different as a result of which color he was seeing (again, assume he has no innate response to colors)? Presumably not, which means the colors play the exact same functional role.

All we have found is that a) he knows red and green are different and b) they play the same causal role. In other words, heterophenomenology has told us they are completely symmetric, according to Michael.

Now Michael is finally let out into the colorful world. According to the model we have just made of "the world accornding to Michael", we could switch every instance of red and green and absolutely nothing would be different to him. But cleary, something is different. What has changed? The experiences are different. The experience that he calls "red" in the red-green world corresponds to "green" in the green-red world. There is clearly a natural difference to Michael between the two worlds, but heterophenomenolgy completely fails to account for it.

 

[Mentat]

StatusX,
Michael can only tell you that "red" is different from "green", in the first place, because he knows that there are two colors, and he knows that their names are "red" and "green". Unless he were capable of physically distinguishing between the two, he would have to disbelieve his mother about there being two colors. As it is, he can physically distinguish between the two colors (though not knowing which is which), and so he agrees that there are indeed "red" and "green" stripes.

Now, when he gets out into the world, and see the colors for himself, he will still be able to distinguish between them. He won't know which is which (but then, he didn't know that to begin with...and neither did you, until someone told you), but the process of distinguishing and categorizing is merely a process of computation (no "extra ingredient" required).

 

[StatusX]

Michael can only tell you that "red" is different from "green", in the first place, because he knows that there are two colors, and he knows that their names are "red" and "green". Unless he were capable of physically distinguishing between the two, he would have to disbelieve his mother about there being two colors. As it is, he can physically distinguish between the two colors (though not knowing which is which), and so he agrees that there are indeed "red" and "green" stripes.

Now, when he gets out into the world, and see the colors for himself, he will still be able to distinguish between them. He won't know which is which (but then, he didn't know that to begin with...and neither did you, until someone told you), but the process of distinguishing and categorizing is merely a process of computation (no "extra ingredient" required).

That was my point. A computational model of his brain will only capture the fact that he distinguishes them. So according to this model, nothing would be different to Michael if when he walked out into the world, it was a normal one, or if it was one where stop signs are green and grass is red. The model would predict his inner subjective world would see the two identically. But clearly this isn't true, because his experiences of what he calls red and green would be switched.

If you want to preserve the completeness of heterophenomenology, you have to either claim there really is no difference to Michael between the two worlds, or offer a way heterophenomenology could account for a difference, by finding some asymmetry in the functional role of the colors.

 

[selfAdjoint]

That was my point. A computational model of his brain will only capture the fact that he distinguishes them. So according to this model, nothing would be different to Michael if when he walked out into the world, it was a normal one, or if it was one where stop signs are green and grass is red. The model would predict his inner subjective world would see the two identically. But clearly this isn't true, because his experiences of what he calls red and green would be switched.

I don't get this. Michael can ask around and find out which of the two shades he can distinguish is generally called red and which is called green. Asking around doesn't strain the computational-described brain at all, does it? This is how we learn colors ourselves; our brains provide us with distinguishable, recallable entities (congeries of neural activity) and we learn to give these names by social interaction.

Computer/software systems alreay can do what I have described here.

 

[StatusX]

I don't get this. Michael can ask around and find out which of the two shades he can distinguish is generally called red and which is called green. Asking around doesn't strain the computational-described brain at all, does it? This is how we learn colors ourselves; our brains provide us with distinguishable, recallable entities (congeries of neural activity) and we learn to give these names by social interaction.

Computer/software systems alreay can do what I have described here.

I admit, it isn't worded very clearly. I meant if you had put him in an inverted red-green world instead, where everyone still calls grass green, etc, it would be no different to him than if you had put him in a regular world.

Maybe it's more clear if instead, you put him in a normal world for a day, erase his memory, and then put him in a red-green inverted world. Of course he won't notice a difference, but is it still a meanigful question to ask if there is one? (this subtlety is part of the reason I didn't go with this scenario first) And if so, is there a difference?

 

[loseyourname]

The ideal heterophenomenological neuroscientist (which can exist, since this is only a thought experiment) would look for the neural response that accompanies the human experience of "green" and "red" and be able to identify them in your hypothetical Michael. Even if he didn't know what they were, the ideal neuroscientist would. That is precisely why heterophenomenology does not restrict itself to using only verbal and behavioral reports as primary data.

Let me reformulate your thought experiment. Imagine Michelle, Michael's sister. She has been raised completely without any knowledge of geometry. One day, after turning 10, Michelle is shown a sheet of paper with two figures on it, a circle and an ellipse. When the heterophenomenologist asks Michelle what she sees, she cannot answer. She doesn't know the words "circle," "ellipse," "flatter," "round," or any other word that refers to traits of conic sections, nor has she ever seen any of these things (just as Michael doesn't know "hue," "warmth," etc.). When formulated thus, do you still think this is a failing of heterophenomenology?

 

[StatusX]

The ideal heterophenomenological neuroscientist (which can exist, since this is only a thought experiment) would look for the neural response that accompanies the human experience of "green" and "red" and be able to identify them in your hypothetical Michael. Even if he didn't know what they were, the ideal neuroscientist would. That is precisely why heterophenomenology does not restrict itself to using only verbal and behavioral reports as primary data.

Yes, but does heterophenomenology include the specific neural responses as part of that set S of subjective data? Michael doesn't know what his neurons are doing, so how could that be considered part of his subjectivity?

Let me reformulate your thought experiment. Imagine Michelle, Michael's sister. She has been raised completely without any knowledge of geometry. One day, after turning 10, Michelle is shown a sheet of paper with two figures on it, a circle and an ellipse. When the heterophenomenologist asks Michelle what she sees, she cannot answer. She doesn't know the words "circle," "ellipse," "flatter," "round," or any other word that refers to traits of conic sections, nor has she ever seen any of these things (just as Michael doesn't know "hue," "warmth," etc.). When formulated thus, do you still think this is a failing of heterophenomenology?

Just because she doesn't know those words doesn't mean she couldn't explain the difference. She could motion with her fingers, or draw them. But there is no way to explain colors besides identifying them with objects (red is the color of a stop sign) or by words we've associated with certain colors (red is the warmest color). That is precisely the trouble that expereinces present, because they can't be defined completely in terms of structure or function. While two shapes with the same structure necessarily are identical, two colors with the same structural and functional roles (red and green in this example) are not necessarily identical.

 

[loseyourname]

Yes, but does heterophenomenology include the specific neural responses as part of that set S of subjective data? Michael doesn't know what his neurons are doing, so how could that be considered part of his subjectivity?

Heterophenomenology considers all relevant data, including neural responses, behavioral responses, and verbal reports.

Just because she doesn't know those words doesn't mean she couldn't explain the difference. She could motion with her fingers, or draw them. But there is no way to explain colors besides identifying them with objects (red is the color of a stop sign) or by words we've associated with certain colors (red is the warmest color). That is precisely the trouble that expereinces present, because they can't be defined completely in terms of structure or function. While two shapes with the same structure necessarily are identical, two colors with the same structural and functional roles (red and green in this example) are not necessarily identical.

If Michelle can draw another circle and another ellipse to explain the difference between a circle and an ellipse, then Michael can paint one sheet of paper green and the other red to explain the difference between green and red. Either way, they're just referring to what they've seen by relating it to something else they can see. This experiment can be twisted to include any manner of objects or qualities that a human can visually perceive.

By the way, what makes you think that the colors green and red have the same structural/functional roles and more than circles and ellipses do? Green and red result from different wavelengths of light and evoke different nervous responses. I've never understood why antiphysicalist arguments are so obsessed with color.

 

[Tournesol]

If Michelle can draw another circle and another ellipse to explain the difference between a circle and an ellipse, then Michael can paint one sheet of paper green and the other red to explain the difference between green and red. Either way, they're just referring to what they've seen by relating it to something else they can see. This experiment can be twisted to include any manner of objects or qualities that a human can visually perceive.

By the way, what makes you think that the colors green and red have the same structural/functional roles and more than circles and ellipses do? Green and red result from different wavelengths of light and evoke different nervous responses. I've never understood why antiphysicalist arguments are so obsessed with color.

I can write down the mathematical formulae for a cricle and an ellipse.
I know of no such formulae for the way-red-seems and the-way-green-seems. Do you ? (NB-- not talking wavelengths).

 

[StatusX]

Heterophenomenology considers all relevant data, including neural responses, behavioral responses, and verbal reports.

This experiment is ideal, and I'm saying that the functional roles of red and green are identical. That means that the neural circuits that cause red reactions and the ones that cause green reactions could be interchanged, and Michael would still behave the same. Whether his experiences would be the same is a further question, and to even ask it would be to assume the incompleteness of heterophenomenology.

If Michelle can draw another circle and another ellipse to explain the difference between a circle and an ellipse, then Michael can paint one sheet of paper green and the other red to explain the difference between green and red. Either way, they're just referring to what they've seen by relating it to something else they can see. This experiment can be twisted to include any manner of objects or qualities that a human can visually perceive.

How could you meaningfully replace circles and ellipses for red and green in this experiment? That would mean you'd have to create a world where circles and ellipses are switched, but every structural and functional property is unchanged. That is logically impossible.

By the way, what makes you think that the colors green and red have the same structural/functional roles and more than circles and ellipses do? Green and red result from different wavelengths of light and evoke different nervous responses. I've never understood why antiphysicalist arguments are so obsessed with color.

In general they don't. But the point of this experiment was to point out that heterophenomenology says that the only reason we see red as different than green is because they have different functional roles. If their functions were identical, they would be interchangeable. But we (or at least I) know from experience that isn't true, that red and green are different because they look different. In other words, heterophenomenolgy is built from bare differences, and experiences are not.

 

[selfAdjoint]

To Dennett's CADBLIND machine, which can input frequency information from a screen and store it internally as numbers, the red and green in the example would be two different numbers. It compares by subracting the numbers; if it gets a nonzero difference, they are different. The machine could answer the question that they are different, and the only thing it would need to answer more questions is a vocabulary. Function has nothing to do with it. Apples of identical shapes might be red or green.

 

[loseyourname]

This experiment is ideal, and I'm saying that the functional roles of red and green are identical. That means that the neural circuits that cause red reactions and the ones that cause green reactions could be interchanged, and Michael would still behave the same.

So you start off with an impossible situation. Okay, let's see where you're going.

How could you meaningfully replace circles and ellipses for red and green in this experiment? That would mean you'd have to create a world where circles and ellipses are switched, but every structural and functional property is unchanged. That is logically impossible.

Why? Where is the contradiction in saying that Michelle's neural circuits can't be switched so that every time she is shown a circle, she sees an ellipse? She would still behave the same, and you'd still have the same problem.

In general they don't. But the point of this experiment was to point out that heterophenomenology says that the only reason we see red as different than green is because they have different functional roles.

No it doesn't. Heterophenomenology says that we should remain neutral about whether our subjects beliefs about their experiences are correct until their claims can be verified in some way. It isn't a model of consciousness or cognition; it's just a methodology.

If their functions were identical, they would be interchangeable. But we (or at least I) know from experience that isn't true, that red and green are different because they look different. In other words, heterophenomenolgy is built from bare differences, and experiences are not.

Please rephrase that. I have no clue whatsoever what you are trying to say here.

 

[loseyourname]

I can write down the mathematical formulae for a cricle and an ellipse.
I know of no such formulae for the way-red-seems and the-way-green-seems. Do you ? (NB-- not talking wavelengths).

Can you write down formulae for the way an ellipse seems or the way a circle seems? You completely missed my point anyway. It was only that if Michelle had no concept of these things (she doesn't know any geometry and can't write formulae), they would be foreign to her and she would have no way of describing the difference between a circle and an ellipse, any more than Michael could describe the difference between green and red.

 

[StatusX]

So you start off with an impossible situation. Okay, let's see where you're going.

Please explain which part of it is impossible. If you really think this is true, you shouldn't have tried to see where I was going, you should have stopped right here and explained why the premise is flawed.

Why? Where is the contradiction in saying that Michelle's neural circuits can't be switched so that every time she is shown a circle, she sees an ellipse? She would still behave the same, and you'd still have the same problem.

How could she be made to respond to circles in the same way she responds to ellipses? They have different structures. A simple explanation of what an ellipse is could verify that her perception is wrong. With colors, there is no way to determine that what Michael is seeing is really red, or if he sees it as green but calls it red.

Of course, a heterophenomenologist would probably say there is no meaningful distinction here. But this experiment, just like any other argument to take the hard problem seriously, can only help us look to our own experiences for evidence. We know that red looks like something, and could logically imagine it looking like something else, or nothing at all, and still filling the same causal roles. All I can do is point out exactly what you're denying when you say heterophenomenology is complete. A perfectly consistent theory could probably be constructed that ignores experience and explains all behavior, but it would be wrong, or at least incomplete.

No it doesn't. Heterophenomenology says that we should remain neutral about whether our subjects beliefs about their experiences are correct until their claims can be verified in some way. It isn't a model of consciousness or cognition; it's just a methodology.

Again, the argument is about whether heterophenomenology is capable of completely decribing the mind. You keep going back to the claim that heterophenomenology is neutral, but we aren't talking about that. I'm saying there are real phenomena it will never be able to account for, whether it makes a judgement about their existence or not.

Please rephrase that. I have no clue whatsoever what you are trying to say here.

We don't just know that red is different than green, or that red is the color these things are, and green is the color those things are. We know what they look like. Rosenberg talked about this. Of course, you can deny this and still produce a perfectly consistent theory. If we ignored high speed objects, Newtonian physics would work fine. But ignoring data to preserve an ideology is not something I want to do.

 

[StatusX]

To Dennett's CADBLIND machine, which can input frequency information from a screen and store it internally as numbers, the red and green in the example would be two different numbers. It compares by subracting the numbers; if it gets a nonzero difference, they are different. The machine could answer the question that they are different, and the only thing it would need to answer more questions is a vocabulary. Function has nothing to do with it. Apples of identical shapes might be red or green.

Who's side are you arguing here? Michael is functionally identical to one of those machines, except there is no question he experiences. His experiences of red and green are not accounted by merely saying he can distinguish them. If he sees red and green anything like we do, there is clearly a lot being missed.

 

[loseyourname]

Please explain which part of it is impossible. If you really think this is true, you shouldn't have tried to see where I was going, you should have stopped right here and explained why the premise is flawed.

Inverted qualia without any associated neural difference is empirically impossible. Even Chalmers admits as much, which is why I continue to find it odd that he and others still use it as an arguing point. It is logically possible, sure, but it is also logically possible that gravity can be inverted or that any number of physical laws could be other than what they are. It's like the epiphenomenal ectoplasm argument. I can imagine a physically identical universe with epiphenomenal ectoplasm in it. Physicalism cannot account for this ectoplasm, therefore physicalism is false.

How could she be made to respond to circles in the same way she responds to ellipses? They have different structures. A simple explanation of what an ellipse is could verify that her perception is wrong.

Why should inverted qualia be constrained to colors, though? For all we know, Michelle and Michael could have a cousin Michel that experiences the perception of a buffalo every time he sees a horse. He still calls it a "horse" and uses the same descriptive terms we use. His neural responses are even exactly the same as ours. Logically possible, right? Just as much as inverted colors. But it aint going to happen and its in fact rather irrelevant.

With colors, there is no way to determine that what Michael is seeing is really red, or if he sees it as green but calls it red.

Same with anything. When aunt Marsha looks at the moon, she might really be seeing Mars. What she calls craters are actually the canals. What she calls the man in the moon is actually Mons Olympus and that George Washington face. How can we determine what she is really seeing if she says the same things we do when describing the moon and her neural activity is exactly the same?

We know that red looks like something, and could logically imagine it looking like something else, or nothing at all, and still filling the same causal roles.

There are better arguments supporting the hard problem than this. Your argument is analogous to saying that we can logically imagine animism being true without any change in natural patterns and therefore any theory of natural causation is imcomplete if it cannot account for animal and vegetable spirits. If you're going to make an argument from direct experience, stick with direct experience. You've never directly experienced inverted qualia nor is there any reason whatsoever to believe that such a phenomenon could actually occur without any ability to detect it.

All I can do is point out exactly what you're denying when you say heterophenomenology is complete.

Can you please find an example of me making such a claim? I'm pretty sure that all I've claimed is that heterophenomenology is the best method we have and that it can account for any phenomenon that any other known method can.

A perfectly consistent theory could probably be constructed that ignores experience and explains all behavior, but it would be wrong, or at least incomplete.

Kind of like a theory of inverted qualia? Internally consistent and so logically possible, but can never actually be the case?

Again, the argument is about whether heterophenomenology is capable of completely decribing the mind.

Since when? The only argument I've made is that if heterophenomenology can't do it, there is no other method I've ever heard of that can.

You keep going back to the claim that heterophenomenology is neutral, but we aren't talking about that. I'm saying there are real phenomena it will never be able to account for, whether it makes a judgement about their existence or not.

I know, and you are saying this based on arguments that fail. Address the failings of these arguments or come up with better ones. The more important thing for you to do is to show me a method that can account for what you think heterophenomenology cannot. If you can't do that, you may as well complain about the imcompleteness of science because it cannot answer ethical questions. At least people that make those complaints try to think of methods that can answer ethical questions.

We don't just know that red is different than green, or that red is the color these things are, and green is the color those things are. We know what they look like.

I think you're going to have to develop this concept of what it means to "know" a fact such as this. I'm not convinced yet that such knowledge is even factual knowledge. You certainly aren't using the word "know" in a way that it is typically used. It seems more accurate to say that we are "acquainted with" the quality of color perception, or something to that effect. Why don't we forget this inverted qualia stuff and move down this road? This one might actually get us somewhere.

Rosenberg talked about this. Of course, you can deny this and still produce a perfectly consistent theory. If we ignored high speed objects, Newtonian physics would work fine. But ignoring data to preserve an ideology is not something I want to do.

Well, I'm glad to hear that you value your integrity so much. So do I.

 

[StatusX]

I have to admit I'm a little confused as to your where you stand, loseyourname. You don't really seem to be claiming qualia aren't real, or that they're within the scope of heterophenomenology. You're just saying that heterophenomenology will do as well as any other method in explaining them. If that's the case, I don't see why you have a problem with this thought experiment. I'm just trying to point out what it is that the method is missing. I'm not suggesting another way to answer these questions. I don't know if one exists that will answer them, but that doesn't mean we can't ask them.

There are still a few points I'd like to clear up though:

Your argument is analogous to saying that we can logically imagine animism being true without any change in natural patterns and therefore any theory of natural causation is imcomplete if it cannot account for animal and vegetable spirits. If you're going to make an argument from direct experience, stick with direct experience. You've never directly experienced inverted qualia nor is there any reason whatsoever to believe that such a phenomenon could actually occur without any ability to detect it.

There is no primary data for animism, but there is for qualia. And I don't quite understand how anything can be proven about qualia, such as inverted qualia being impossible. But even if it somehow could be shown empirically, it is still a priori possible that red and green be switched while preserving functional roles. Don't you see the importance of this? You can't switch the moon for mars, or circles for ellipses and preserve every last functional and structural role. It isn't even logically possible. You can have very confused people, but there is always a way to clear up the confusion by spelling out the terms precisely. If Mary points to a circle and says that one side is longer than the other, she is wrong and can be corrected. If Marsha points to the moon and describes the face she sees in enough detail (maybe excrutiating detail, down to the grains of sand, depending on the extent of her delusion), we'll find out she's talking about something else.

The reason is that we can verbalize structural and functional differences. But how could you ever verify that you see red the same way I do? There is no way, which is why the logical possibility that we could see it differently arises in the first place. The logical possibility is all that's important here. I'm not saying they could actually be different in this world, I'm saying that nothing in the definition would make this logically impossible.

Now, getting back to Michael, I have asserted he responds to green and red in exactly the same way. The neurons attatched directly to his eye obviously react differently, but the way they are connected to the rest of his brain is completely symmetrical, so that they could be interchanged without an effect on his behavior. Don't think this is possible for a human? Fine, use a machine like the one selfadjoint mentioned, as long as you're willing to admit that machine can experience. (unless you think an inherent assymetry to color processing is a necessary condition to experience) Now, I think that Michael (or the machine) has specific, distinct experiences of red and green. If so, then switching every instance of red and green in the world will not affect his behavior, but will affect his experience.

Let me go over this once more, questioning any assumptions I've made. We have a boy (or machine) that responds to two colors, but does so symmetrically. That is, if you switched every instance of the two colors, he (it) would behave identically. If this is agreed to be possible (for a very simplistic human, or if not, a machine), then we need to ask does he have an experience associated with the two colors? If so, switching the colors changes the experience. So the only question left is, has heterophenomenology allowed for this change? I don't think any reasonable interpretation of the method could. If every single aspect of his behavior is identical, everything the theory could possibly talk about is identical.

The only possible loophole is in that nerve right behind his eye. But the functions of the nerves are identical, so a switch between worlds only changes which of them is being activated in a given situation. For simplicity, we might assume the two circuits are mirror images of each other, flipped about Michael's center. Then the question is, could reflecting Michael about his center (I'm starting to feel bad for this kid) have a meaningful impact on his subjective world, as heterophenomenology describes it?

Any reasonable physicist would have to say there could be no change. And yet, if Michael does have distinct experiences accompanying these colors, there must be one. And if Michael can tell them apart, he must have distinct experiences. This leads into the second issue:

I think you're going to have to develop this concept of what it means to "know" a fact such as this. I'm not convinced yet that such knowledge is even factual knowledge. You certainly aren't using the word "know" in a way that it is typically used. It seems more accurate to say that we are "acquainted with" the quality of color perception, or something to that effect. Why don't we forget this inverted qualia stuff and move down this road? This one might actually get us somewhere.

This is a pretty deep issue. It seems to me that what we know is exactly what we experience. We know facts because we experience the thoughts about those facts. (note that I'm talking about what the experiencer knows at a given instant of time) Since what we experience can be correlated to what our neurons are doing, you might think we are restricted to the knowledge "in" our neurons, ie, that which could be extracted in a detailed scan of our brain. But we also "know" what the experiences are like. We know what it feels like to know a fact or see a color.

This may not be the traditional defintion of knowledge, but I think on a little reflection you'll see it's accurate. You can't justifiably claim that what we know is what is in our neurons. How do we have access to those neurons? This might seem like a ridiculous question to an eliminativist, who would simply say we are those neurons. But there really is a seperation. If we were just our neurons, why don't we know what all our neurons are doing, or for that matter, what our stomach cells are doing? How do we even know for certain that we are made of neurons and not chinese people? This might be getting pretty far from the original topic, but these are all important issues to the overarching mind problem.

 

[Tournesol]

Can you write down formulae for the way an ellipse seems or the way a circle seems?

Yes -- in that it is the same thing. (Well, a circle looked at from
an angle appears elliptical,but that can all be dealy with mathematically too).

You completely missed my point anyway. It was only that if Michelle had no concept of these things (she doesn't know any geometry and can't write formulae), they would be foreign to her and she would have no way of describing the difference between a circle and an ellipse, any more than Michael could describe the difference between green and red.

And *my* point (as per the original Mary gedanken) is that a complete
knowledge of maths, science etc leaves you with specific gaps in understanding experience. You would be able to predict what a dodecahedron looks like, without having seen one , but not what colours look like
or tastes taste like.

Inverted qualia without any associated neural difference is empirically impossible.

I agree. It's a useless way of arguing for quaia anyway, since it implies they are epiphenomenal.

I think you're going to have to develop this concept of what it means to "know" a fact such as this. I'm not convinced yet that such knowledge is even factual knowledge. You certainly aren't using the word "know" in a way that it is typically used.

Au contraire, people are always saying "you don't know what it is like"
(about childbirth, for instance) -- meaning that you have no first-hand experience.

 

[loseyourname]

First off, I was trying to say that you can't write an equation to describe the experience of seeing an ellipse or a circle. That's the argument with colors, right? Because certainly you can write an equation that describes the physical underpinning that causes that experience. I fail to see a difference between the two categories of experience.

Au contraire, people are always saying "you don't know what it is like" (about childbirth, for instance) -- meaning that you have no first-hand experience.

Yeah, I know. We were just talking about this in a class I'm taking on why humans have such a propensity for war. What I was saying is that I don't think what you are talking about is factual knowledge. It is more of a personal acquaintance. I'm not going to go so far as to say it's a misusage of the verb "to know," simply because it is so commonly used, but clearly there is a distinction.

I'm reminded of an argument against the omniscient of God. It is said that God does not know what it is like to ride a bike. He has no legs or body, and even if you are Christian and believe that God took human form 200 years ago, there were no bikes. Since God doesn't know what it's like to ride a bike, God doesn't know everything and so cannot be omniscient. The theist responds by saying that this is nonsense; having the experience of riding a bike is not in the category of factual knowledge.

Anyway, let's get back to what we were talking about in my class earlier today. We read Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others over the weekend, a short book about photographic depictions of wartime atrocity and how these effect the viewer. Certain people in the class were arguing, drawing from Sontag, that unless you've been directly exposed to war, you'll never know war, you'll never understand war. I got to thinking, however, about all of the research I've done in the past about the US Civil War. I know the name of every commanding officer and the death tolls from every major battle. I've read the letters written by Abe Lincoln, describing his decision-making process. In fact, forget about me and consider men who are actually scholars of the Civil War, who have spent their entire lives looking at every single motivating factor that went into the creation of this conflict. These men know the Civil War far better than the rural farmer in western Georgia that had her farm blazed over during Sherman's March and saw her husband, both sons, and a brother die. They understand the war better, even though they never experienced it.

It seems compelling to conclude, in light of these and other cases, that there are really two different things meant by the verb "to know."

 

[loseyourname]

I have to admit I'm a little confused as to your where you stand, loseyourname. You don't really seem to be claiming qualia aren't real, or that they're within the scope of heterophenomenology. You're just saying that heterophenomenology will do as well as any other method in explaining them.

You'll have to be clearer on what you mean by "qualia" as it can be a rather loaded term. I don't think I really have a stance on this in a way that would please you. I think that the argument's I've seen from you claiming to demonstrate that a heterophenomenological method cannot, in principle, account for these qualia fail. I'm not going to make the opposite claim, though. What I will claim is that, from what I've seen, I have every reason to believe that if a heterophenomenological method won't answer your questions, neither will any other method. It might just be one of those "inert facts" that Dennett talks about, like the gold in his teeth. No amount of historical or chemical research can ever tell us whether or not this gold was every owned by Julius Caesar, but nobody considers this a failing of history or chemistry. Sometimes there are simply factual question, meaningful factual questions that do have answers, that nonetheless cannot be answered.

There is no primary data for animism, but there is for qualia. And I don't quite understand how anything can be proven about qualia, such as inverted qualia being impossible.

The point is that there is absolute no evidence, no primary datum, to suggest that inverted qualia is possible, despite the fact that a theory inclusive of such a phenomenon would lead to no contradictions. Sure, it is logically possible to have inverted qualia, but for the purpose of which you seem to want to use that fact, it makes no difference.

I'm just taking your argument form and substituting in different instantiations of the statement variables to make it clear that it is not a valid argument form. I suppose I could construct a truth table, but I don't know how easy that would be using the LaTex tags we have available. Keep in mind that I'm not saying that I think all of your arguments are invalid in this way. I just don't understand why it is that people seem to think it's okay to claim one hypothesis must be incorrect simply because it is logically possible for that to be the case, or it is logically possible for a competing hypothesis to be true. The simple fact is, no theory of consciousness needs to account for things like zombies and inverted qualia any more than evolutionary biology needs to account for the sequential divine creation of individual species.

The reason is that we can verbalize structural and functional differences. But how could you ever verify that you see red the same way I do?

I still don't see why you are singling out colors. Think about Michelle once again, if you will, but this time granting her geometric knowledge. Every time she sees looks at a circle, she sees an ellipse. But because of the way she has always experienced this sight, she refers to the shape as being "round" and as having the equation of a circle. She says that it is equal in width and height, even though it is not. She just misunderstands these terms! How would you be able to tell the difference here? It's the same as the example with colors. Every time Michael looks at the color red, he sees green. He calls it "red," however, and describes it as a warm color with a long wavelength of light. I honestly can't tell the difference between these two situations! What the heck is the fascination with color?

This is a pretty deep issue. It seems to me that what we know is exactly what we experience. We know facts because we experience the thoughts about those facts. (note that I'm talking about what the experiencer knows at a given instant of time) Since what we experience can be correlated to what our neurons are doing, you might think we are restricted to the knowledge "in" our neurons, ie, that which could be extracted in a detailed scan of our brain. But we also "know" what the experiences are like. We know what it feels like to know a fact or see a color.

This may not be the traditional defintion of knowledge, but I think on a little reflection you'll see it's accurate. You can't justifiably claim that what we know is what is in our neurons. How do we have access to those neurons? This might seem like a ridiculous question to an eliminativist, who would simply say we are those neurons. But there really is a seperation. If we were just our neurons, why don't we know what all our neurons are doing, or for that matter, what our stomach cells are doing? How do we even know for certain that we are made of neurons and not chinese people? This might be getting pretty far from the original topic, but these are all important issues to the overarching mind problem.

First off, I don't think the question of whether or not our minds are built up of Chinese people is one that needs to be taken seriously by philosophers of mind. The rest of this I began to address with my response to Tournesol. I'll see what the two of you have to say before elaborating. I think that this dual usage of the verb "to know" is involved in Paul Churchland's refutation of the Mary argument. Perhaps I will look into that.

 

[StatusX]

First of all, I'm not arguing for the actual, metaphysical possibility of inverted qualia in normal people. I'm saying that it is possible that two colors could fill the exact same functional role for some very simplistic human, or machine. If inverted qualia are impossible, it is because of some inherent structural difference between red and green, like maybe that there are more shades of green than red, or red is closer to orange than green. But if they really could fill identical functional and structural roles (which might require some change to the thought experiment to further restrict what Michael is allowed to see and do), there is clearly no reason the experiences couldn't be switched. (I'm suprised you're still not seeing why this can't be true with shapes. "Longer" and "distance" are non-subjective, unambiguous terms. How could she misunderstand width and height in some amazingly contrived way that would allow her to see circles as ellipses, but still function normally in the rest of her life?) It is possible Michael doesn't see red and green the same way we do, but if he sees them as anything, then heterophenomenology is predicting a symmetry that isn't really there.

Which is connected to what I was saying about knowledge. If Michael knows red and green are different, he must have distinct accompanying experiences of them, because our experiences are all we can know. Undoubtedly, neurons can explain why he reports they are different. But we're talking about the inner experiencing being. And whether this kind of knowledge is the standard one or not, it is a natural phenomenon and thus something that needs to be explained.

One more thing. The analogy to inert historical facts is one of the most absurd things I've ever heard. Clearly the problem there is either that it would require an unreasonable amount of calculation, or that we're limited by uncertainty. But there is no hard problem of inert historical facts, and scientific methods aren't inherently incapable of answering those questions. And even more importantly, those are trivial, specific facts, where as experience is arguably one of the most fundamental phenomena of the the universe.

EDIT: Can you explain how Michelle would see the shape in the attached picture?

 

[Tournesol]

First off, I was trying to say that you can't write an equation to describe the experience of seeing an ellipse or a circle.

That isn't quite the question. The question is about what things look
like. A circle will look like a circle or an ellipse -- either way what-it-looks-like is describable mathematically.

That's the argument with colors, right? Because certainly you can write an equation that describes the physical underpinning that causes that experience. I fail to see a difference between the two categories of experience.

Meaning neither is describable, or both are describable ?

Yeah, I know. We were just talking about this in a class I'm taking on why humans have such a propensity for war. What I was saying is that I don't think what you are talking about is factual knowledge. It is more of a personal acquaintance. I'm not going to go so far as to say it's a misusage of the verb "to know," simply because it is so commonly used, but clearly there is a distinction.

It isn't supposed to be objective knowledge -- that is kind of the point.
What are you implying? That subjective knowledge isn't proper knwoledge ?

I'm reminded of an argument against the omniscient of God. It is said that God does not know what it is like to ride a bike. He has no legs or body, and even if you are Christian and believe that God took human form 200 years ago, there were no bikes. Since God doesn't know what it's like to ride a bike, God doesn't know everything and so cannot be omniscient. The theist responds by saying that this is nonsense; having the experience of riding a bike is not in the category of factual knowledge.

I think the theist could reply that God could know this miraculously.

It seems compelling to conclude, in light of these and other cases, that there are really two different things meant by the verb "to know."

Well yyyeeeesss. Qualiaphiles aren't saying subjective knowledge overrides
objective knowledge -- they are just saying that the two are different.

 

[Tournesol]

You'll have to be clearer on what you mean by "qualia" as it can be a rather loaded term.

C.I Lewis's original definition of qualia:-

"There *are* recognizable qualitative characters of the
given, which may be repeated in different experiences,
and are thus a sort of universals; I call these "qualia."
But although such qualia are universals, in the sense of being
recognized from one to another experience, they must
be distinguished from the properties of objects. Confusion
of these two is characteristic of many historical
conceptions, as well as of current essence-theories.
The quale is directly intuited, given, and is not the
subject of any possible error because it is purely subjective."

The point is that there is absolute no evidence, no primary datum, to suggest that inverted qualia is possible,

surely you mean indetectable inverted qualia. Things like colour blindness are not too far from real inverted qualia.

I still don't see why you are singling out colors. Think about Michelle once again, if you will, but this time granting her geometric knowledge. Every time she sees looks at a circle, she sees an ellipse. But because of the way she has always experienced this sight, she refers to the shape as being "round" and as having the equation of a circle. She says that it is equal in width and height, even though it is not. She just misunderstands these terms! How would you be able to tell the difference here?

I think it would be very easy to spot someone who systematically misunderstands the word "equal". This isn't even a logical possibility.

First off, I don't think the question of whether or not our minds are built up of Chinese people is one that needs to be taken seriously by philosophers of mind.

Errmm..it's a reductio ad absurdum...it's supposed to be silly.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Things like colour blindness are not too far from real inverted qualia.

Color blindness is completely explained by physical factors. How can it be "qualia" which by the definition you gave ("purely subjective") are not?

 

[loseyourname]

First of all, I'm not arguing for the actual, metaphysical possibility of inverted qualia in normal people. I'm saying that it is possible that two colors could fill the exact same functional role for some very simplistic human, or machine. If inverted qualia are impossible, it is because of some inherent structural difference between red and green, like maybe that there are more shades of green than red, or red is closer to orange than green.

The structural difference is pretty clear. They are caused by different wavelengths of light. Higher frequency photons have more energy and react with our retinae in a different way than lower frequency photons. Because they are different reactions, our brain perceives them differently. Any difference in perception from person to person would have to be a difference in the way their brain processes information - a difference that should be detectable empirically.

"Longer" and "distance" are non-subjective, unambiguous terms. How could she misunderstand width and height in some amazingly contrived way that would allow her to see circles as ellipses, but still function normally in the rest of her life?)

They are no less subjective or ambiguous than the terms we use to describe color. Hue and richness and warmth are every bit as measurable as length and distance. She wouldn't understand these terms in any contrived way. Her misperception would need to be fairly systematic, but I see no contradictions arising, which is all that "logically possible" means. This situation, no matter how impossible, could occur without a paradox arising.

It is possible Michael doesn't see red and green the same way we do, but if he sees them as anything, then heterophenomenology is predicting a symmetry that isn't really there.

No clue what you mean here. I wasn't aware that heterophenomenology predicted anything other than that some of our beliefs about our experiences are incorrect.

Which is connected to what I was saying about knowledge. If Michael knows red and green are different, he must have distinct accompanying experiences of them, because our experiences are all we can know. Undoubtedly, neurons can explain why he reports they are different. But we're talking about the inner experiencing being. And whether this kind of knowledge is the standard one or not, it is a natural phenomenon and thus something that needs to be explained.

I agree. Why humans see colors in the way they see them is indeed something that any science of consciousness should have to explain.

One more thing. The analogy to inert historical facts is one of the most absurd things I've ever heard.

Why? One is something that clearly does not need to be explained, simply because it cannot be. The other is yet another thing that may not be explainable. If that is the case, they are analagous.

Clearly the problem there is either that it would require an unreasonable amount of calculation, or that we're limited by uncertainty. But there is no hard problem of inert historical facts, and scientific methods aren't inherently incapable of answering those questions. And even more importantly, those are trivial, specific facts, where as experience is arguably one of the most fundamental phenomena of the the universe.

Two situations needn't be congruent to be analagous. Don't try to put words in my mouth. All I said was that they had the one similarity I've noted above.

EDIT: Can you explain how Michelle would see the shape in the attached picture?

I suppose she would see one circle. That's a good point. Perhaps I should change her misperception to mistaking triangles for quadrangles. How would Michael see sub-green wavelengths of light? As infrared?

 

[StatusX]

The structural difference is pretty clear. They are caused by different wavelengths of light. Higher frequency photons have more energy and react with our retinae in a different way than lower frequency photons. Because they are different reactions, our brain perceives them differently. Any difference in perception from person to person would have to be a difference in the way their brain processes information - a difference that should be detectable empirically.

But we're not talking about photons, were talking about his experience. We can have visual experiences in the absence of photons, so they are not necessary prerequisites. And I'm saying Michael processes them identically. All he can do is distinguish them.

Imagine a simple circuit that can detect radio waves of a certain frequency. Two of these are built, one that outputs a pulse if a low frequency (lf) wave hits the antenna, and the other outputs a pulse if a high frequency (hf) wave hits it. Attatched to these two circuits is a simple digital processor. Now, two waves are sent in succession. As they are received, the appropriate detector circuit passes on a signal. The digital processor's job is to determine if both signals came from the same detector, that is, if the two waves were the same or not. That's all it can do. This system is symmetric in hf and lf waves, in that if you switched all the instances of hf waves for lf waves and lf for hf, it would respond the same.

Clearly, the output of the system, and the digital circuit which creates that output is symmetric. But the detectors themselves are not. When you switch the instances of the colors, you are switching which detector is activated when. Now assume this system has a subjective world. (since this is just a simpler model of Michael's brain). I've been saying a heterophenomenologist shouldn't care about this difference, because it has no bearing on the system's behavior.

Now, maybe I'm wrong, and they would claim the subjective world is different because of this change. But here's my main point: Since the difference has no functional effect, the heterophenomenologist would have to be admitting that there are aspects of the subjective world that aren't acounted for by the subject's behavior. They'd be saying that changing the way a subject is internally constructed could affect this abstract notion of subjectivity, even if every interaction the subject has with its environment is unaffected. From what I've read, I don't think that they would call such a change significant.

In fact, a method very similar to heterophenomenolgy (differing mainly in interpretation) could use this thought experiment to claim that the machine's experience of hf and lf waves arises in the detector circuits, not the digital circuit, because switching hf for lf would obviously switch experiences, but only the detector circuits would be different. Bringing this back to human beings, it means that our experience of colors arises somewhere between the retinas and the place where judgements about colors are made.

They are no less subjective or ambiguous than the terms we use to describe color. Hue and richness and warmth are every bit as measurable as length and distance. She wouldn't understand these terms in any contrived way. Her misperception would need to be fairly systematic, but I see no contradictions arising, which is all that "logically possible" means. This situation, no matter how impossible, could occur without a paradox arising.

Perhaps I should change her misperception to mistaking triangles for quadrangles. How would Michael see sub-green wavelengths of light? As infrared?

Again, I'm talking about experience. Maybe Michael would experience subgreen wavelengths the same way some birds experience infrared wavelengths. How would we ever know? And clearly the triangle/quadrangle confusion would not be possible, as is the case with any shapes. It would mean she'd have to confuse the numbers three and four, which you could straightforwardly derive a paradox from. (eg, ask her to take away three apples from a pile of four).

If my thought experiment fails, it is because I'm incorrectly assuming heterophenomenology would ignore the non-behavioral change caused by the switch, as I described above. If this is the case, then I don't really have a problem with the method, although I would take it as a starting point (ie, axiom) that qualia really do exist. But it does not fail because you could replace arbitrary objects for "red experience" and "green experience" and reach an absurdity. The only things you could switch in are things that have no functional or structural properties, ie, intrinsic experiences.

 

[Tournesol]

Color blindness is completely explained by physical factors. How can it be "qualia" which by the definition you gave ("purely subjective") are not?

Colour blindness is only "completely explained" in terms of antomical differences and funcitonal competencies. If you are awkward enough to want to know
how things look to someone with red-green colour blindness, the explanation
is not going to tell you.

 

[Mentat]

Colour blindness is only "completely explained" in terms of antomical differences and funcitonal competencies. If you are awkward enough to want to know
how things look to someone with red-green colour blindness, the explanation
is not going to tell you.

How do things "look" to someone who isn't color blind?

 

[selfAdjoint]

Colour blindness is only "completely explained" in terms of antomical differences and funcitonal competencies. If you are awkward enough to want to know
how things look to someone with red-green colour blindness, the explanation
is not going to tell you.

This is just petitio principli, aka begging the question. You assume the explanation is incomplete because of qualia, but qualia and their existence was the point of the excercise. I don't accept qualia, so I believe the explanation is complete.

 

[loseyourname]

Clearly, the output of the system, and the digital circuit which creates that output is symmetric. But the detectors themselves are not. When you switch the instances of the colors, you are switching which detector is activated when. Now assume this system has a subjective world. (since this is just a simpler model of Michael's brain). I've been saying a heterophenomenologist shouldn't care about this difference, because it has no bearing on the system's behavior.

Now, maybe I'm wrong, and they would claim the subjective world is different because of this change. But here's my main point: Since the difference has no functional effect, the heterophenomenologist would have to be admitting that there are aspects of the subjective world that aren't acounted for by the subject's behavior.

I think you've just misunderstood heterophenomenology, which is what I've been suspecting all along. There really are a lot of misconception about it out there, mostly due, I would suspect, to the fact a given person disagrees with Dennett generally, so they just assume that they disagree with this as well. Heterophenomenology is equipped to deal with the situation you just described. Switching the individual detectors, though the system itself might never know the difference, is something that can be detected. A heterophenomenologist does not only take into account a subject's behavior - that is behaviorism, not heterophenomenology. Also taken into account is any detectable change in neural architecture - the analog of the change made to your radio detector's input circuits.

 

[Tournesol]

How do things "look" to someone who isn't color blind?

If you are not colour blind, you already know the answer.

 

[Tournesol]

This is just petitio principli, aka begging the question. You assume the explanation is incomplete because of qualia, but qualia and their existence was the point of the excercise. I don't accept qualia, so I believe the explanation is complete.

Which is question-begging too. This kind of two-way QB is quite common in philosophy.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Which is question-begging too. This kind of two-way QB is quite common in philosophy.

In which case, philosophy is futile, that part of it anyway. I think of philosophy as an art form. This isn't to deny that it has "truth", but Picasso has "truth" too.

 

[Mentat]

If you are not colour blind, you already know the answer.

So your entire premise is based on "aw, you know what I mean" reasoning? Sounds like Chalmers to me .