The Mind-Body Problem

• THE PROBLEM
• The Easy, Medium and Hard Problems of Consciousness
• More on Qualia
• CRUDE SOLUTIONS
• Eliminative Materialism
• Idealism
• Interactive Dualism
• Epiphenomenalism
• SUBTLE SOLUTIONS
• Lumps and Statues: Issues of Identity Outside the Mind-Body Problem
• Two-Language View
• The Dual-Aspect Theory
• What Is Physicalism Anyway ? Quantities, Qualities and Russell's Alternative.
• Emergence and the Grain Problem(TBD)
• Panpsychism
• Panexperientialism
• Consciousness and Information
• Emergence, supervenience and information.
• APPENDIXES
• Qualia Inversion and Logical Possibility
• How unlikely are qualia ?
• Phenomenality and Intentionality (TBD)?
• Colours and Shapes: Exactly What Qualifies as a Quale ?
• Words and Qualia: Wittgensteinian considerations
• What is there to consciousness ? (TBD)
• Consciousness, communication and mathematics
• Is first-personhood more fundamental than qualia ?

As Newton himself drolly pointed out in a letter to Henry Oldenburg: “… to determine by what modes or actions light produceth in our minds the phantasm of colour is not so easie.”

Altogether the Soul is an outbirth of that sort of philosophizing whose great maxim…is: “Whatever you are totally ignorant of, assert to be the explanation of everything else.” (James 1890, 329)

Consciousness presents a number of features and problems. In increasing order some of them are:-

• What you are aware of, and what you are aware with.
• Behaviour: Consciousness as opposed to unconsciousness.
• Sense of Self
• Intentionality
• Binding/synthesis
• Phenomenality

People who have read Marx or with leftish political leanings often use "consciousness" to mean the mindset of an individual or group -- so that is is possible to "raise" one's consciousness by becoming aware of more or different things. For the purposes of investigating the metaphysical implications of the Mind-Body Problem, that is not what the word "consciousness" means . We take it to mean what you are aware withnot what you are aware of.

The word "conscious" can also be used to indicate that someone is awake and interacting with their environment, as opposed to somnolent. If this were all the philosophical problem consisted of, it would be a lot simpler! The philosophical problem is about the nature of the faculty of consciousness, not whether it is "switched on" -- whether someone is displaying it at a certain point in time. Nonetheless, this tells us that there is an external behavioural aspect to consciousness. We should not think of it as a deely hidden, impenetrable mystery. Hopefully, we should not think of it as nothing butbehaviour either. We can and do attribute consciousness to other individuals (quite possibly including non-humans) on the basis of their behaviour, but what we attribute to them is not just behaviour -- it is an "inner world" of thoughts and feelings we introspectively detect in ourselves, and link with certain kinds of our own external behaviour.

The sense of self is perhaps the easiest feature of consiousness to deal with. It is easy to see why organisms need a sense of self -- they would not want to absent-mindedly chew off one of their own limbs, as Daniel Dennett reminds us. We can naturalistically understand consciousness as a kind of virtual reality system, and the sense-of-self as a kind of figure that is manipulated within the simulation to explore counterfactual situations.

The sense of the self is made to explain other aspects of consciousness in "homuncular" theories in which an inner self lends intentionality, phenomenality and so on to consciousness in some inexplicable way. This class of theory is often and rightly criticised for its infinite regress, yet remains eternally popular.

Of course I have been talking about the "sense of self" in a rather fictive sense, not as an actually existing entity. But, as philosophers from Buddha to Hume have noticed, an inner self -- above and beyond both the body and mental contents such as thoughts and feelings is not discernable. There may be a thought "I am" which accompanies all other thoughts, as Kant believed (or a felling or quale that fulfils a similar role) -- but they are thoughts and feelings of self -- not selves ! Of course such an inner self is not detectable objectively within the brain, which seems to be fairly decentralised organ, either,

I strongly suspect that people who believe in an inner self, do not detect an inner self as such within themselves. Rather they feel they must have a "little (wo)man" inside them to make everything work; i.e. it is a theory masquerading as a fact.

Intentionality is regarded as the very mark of the mental by some. Intentionality means "aboutness", the ability of mental contents such as thought and beliefs to be about something. If you think about a rock, you do not have a rock in your head, you have, in some sense, a thought. Intentionality is closely allied to the ability to form representations -- examples of external representations include words and pictures --which is not particularly mysterious. Whilst intentionality has its puzzles, it does not challenge physicalism in any basic way. Moreover, it is now universally acknowledged that there can be unconscious mental contents, and therefore unconscious inentionality. so intentionality is part of the problem of mind rather than the problem of consciousness.

Binding or synthesis is the way that different sensory modalities combine into a unified representation of the world. This was known to ancient philosphers like Aristotle, who thought it required a "sixth sense", to modern philosophers like Kant who called it the Synthetic Unity of Apperception, and to neurologists who call it the Binding Problem. A magic homunculus, a central Scrutiniser suggests itself to some as an solution to this problem; everything comes together at the Central Scrutiniser. But, as usual, this is not very explanatory. Does the Scrutniser have another scrutiniser within it ?

Ultimately the Binding problem is structural and behavioural, and therefore within the grasp of a scientific approach. The real problem -- the Hard Problem -- is subjective experience.

Whilst subjective experience can be analysed into aspects that are unchallenging physically (see Appendix) there are other aspects which are much more problematical. The technical term for them is "qualia". Qualia are the way things seem to us, experiences considered purely as experiences. They are conceptually distinct from the physical experiences outside the cranium that cause them (if any--dreams and hallucinations are qualia as much as anything), and are also defined without prejudice to whatever intra-cranial events may or may not accompany or implement them. An example would be the way lemons taste to you, as opposed to their chemical composition.

More on Qualia

C.I Lewis' Original Definition of Qualia

The problem of qualia is the problem of their relationship to the physical description of the world. Many people have the intuition that showing a brain-scan of someone, John, eating lemons to someone else, June, with no sense of taste would not tell June what lemons taste like even if she knew everything there is to know about neurology. This intuition is called the 'explanatory gap'. Many people also have an intuition that everything can be explained by the behaviour of matter at the most fundamental level, i.e that all sciences will eventually be reduced to physics. This intuition is called reductionism and has the clear implication that there cannot ultimately be any explanatory gaps. If you have both intuitions, you are going to have a problem with qualia. (If you do not have an intuition in favour of the explanatory gap, you might as well stop reading now).

Some people try to resolve the tension by denying that they have qualia. One objection (made by Daniel Dennett) is that they are not empirically detectable -- that is not empirically detectable to another person, using some kind of scientific apparatus. This is a rather strange argument since no scientific instrument tell tell you anything unless you have the ability to experience its read-out somehow. since qualia are basically just conscious experiences, this is equivalent to claiming that you are not conscious. Philosophers call this 'feigning anaesthesia'.

Others admit the existence of qualia, but deny them any causal powers, retaining the reductionist intuition that everything that happens, happens at the physical level. But this is almost as incredible as anaesthesia-feigning. Jim prefers strawberry ice-cream to chocolate because it taste better to him. His behaviour is influenced by this preference, and the preference is based on how things taste to him, and the ways things taste to him are qualia. A believer in epiphenomenalism has to accept that she doesn't go "ouch!" because she has a pain, since a pain is an experience, and therefore a quale, and therefore causally inert. A variation on this approach is not to adopt epiphenomenalism sincerely, but to use it to mount reductio ad absurdum:-

1. If qualia exist, they are epiphenomenal.
2. Epihenomena are absurd
3. Qualia don't exist.

But this leads straight back to anaesthesia-feigning.

Yet another approach is to admit the existence for qualia, but maintain that they are identical to brain-states. Thus, reductionism is not threatened (since qualia are no longer non-physical in any way), whilst epiphenomenalism is avoided (since qualia are physical brain states, they have the casual powers of brain states). The problem is that qualia are by definition appearances, and the only way that an appearance can be something is by appearing to be it. So if qualia are physical brain states, neurons firing, they must seem to be. But they don't. It is perfectly possible to have all sorts of qualia, sounds and sights, without having the faintest idea that neurons, or even the brain is involved. (In ancient times many people thought mentation took place in the heart).

We are dealing with a threefold tension here, between:

1. qualia exist
2. qualia are not explainable in physical terms
3. everything is physical

So far it has been (1), the existence of qualia which has been denied or modified to resolve the tension. The success of physics doesn't necessarily mean the world is made out of numbers. You can take the view that the mathematical structures of physical theories are isomorphic to the structures of the real world, but the real world is made out of stuff congenial to a non-Physicalist (or neutral or mixed) ontology, e.g that qualia are basic components of the world.(ie that (3) is true, but only to a weak extent that doesn't imply the opposite of (2)). The problem is that this could again suggest epiphenomenalism -- that all the predicting that can be done is done by quantities and that qualities/qualia, even if they exist are just along for the ride.

what is the solution ?

The two-language view -- that physics and 'folk psychology' are both predictive, not really in competition with each other and simply operate at different levels of detail ?

or the emergentist that, since physics is de facto not strictly deterministic, there is room for qualia to have real and not merely nominal effects, without disrupting the laws of physics (which are de facto statistical) ?

Crude Solutions

Eliminative Materialism

Behaviourists often start from the assumption that everything we know about other people's behaviour, we attribute to them on the basis of their behaviour. Of course, it doesn't follow from this that consciousnes actually is behaviour. We have introspective insight into our own consciousness, and when we attribute consciousness to others, what we attribute to them is a similar insight, a similar inner world. We do so on the basis of their behaviour, but what we attribute is not just the behaviour itself.

Behaviourism has the consequences that AI is almost certainly possible,and that the Turing Test is infallible.

Idealism

1. An abandonment of the external world
2. An account of the external world which works like the material world but is in fact "in the head"
3. An account of the external world that is mental but not consisting of ideas in human minds -- rather of minds in their own right.

Idealists of the second kind want to retain the idea of an external world, but construct it out of mental qualities -- not impressions that are actually in the mind, but qualities like those of the mind. Again, the motivation is simplification. And the problem is recovering a scientific world-view. Simplification is only a virtue if it retains equal explanatory value -- "things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler". As it stands, our science posits all sorts of unobserved, behind-the-scenes, entitites in order to explain observed phenomena. Smooth sheets of glass are made of discrete atoms, the planets are guided by the invisible force of gravity and so on. Idealists of the second kind simply do not have an elegant and comprehensive theory to replace standard, realistic scientific theory.

Interactive Dualism

Epiphenomenalism

Subtle Solutions

Lumps and Statues: Issues of Identity Outside the Mind-Body Problem

The Two-Language View

 According to the two-language view, there is one world made out of one kind of stuff. There is a way of describing the world in general, and brains in particular, in quantitative structural terms, which we call "physical". There is a way brains represent their own activities to themselves which we call "consciousness". The physical way of talking is not good at capturing the flavour of consciousness. But both descriptions overlap; they are not talking about two different things (no substance dualism). Consciousness is a real feature of brains (no eliminativism). Since the consciousness description and the physical description overlap, what is happening causally in the physical description is not happening instead of what is happening causally in the consciousness description -- it is just another way of describing it (no epiphenomenalism). The two descriptions do not overlap entirely; one brings out things the other does not (no identity theory).

While the tow-laguage view removes many of our worries about the causal efficacy of consciosuness (epiphenomenalism) it says little about what the different vocabularies ar reffering two -- how the actual properties picked out by physicalese and mentalese fit together.

The Dual-Aspect Theory.

The peculiarity of Mind-Body problem is that although there is an external observer for the brain there is not one for the mind. It seems we must say that the brain is the way the mind/brain appears from the outside, and the mind is the way the mind/brain appears from the inside.

Can we identify either of the two "modes of presentation" with the real intrinsic properties of matter ? (It may be that physicalism is only partly true, in which case the real properties may not be captured entirely by the language of physics).

If we go down the road of saying that physical properties are the only real properties, and mental properties are some kind of illusion, we are faced with a severe problem. The ability to generate illusions of delusions is itself a mental capacity. If the mind is identical with the brain, and the properties of matter appealed to in physics are the only real properties of the brain, then there must be a possible (probably very cumbersome, but possible) account of the brain in the language of physics which captures its ability to generate illusions. But such an account must somehow include the illusions themselves. Thus, "physical properties are the only real properties" implies explanatory physicalism -- the key difficulty in the mind-body problem, the problem of explaining qualia in physicalese.

It is easy enough to explain delusions -- false beliefs -- in physicalist terms, but qualia are not cognitive like beliefs, they are phenomenal. An illusion, as opposed to a delusion, is a phenomenon, but not all phenomena are delusions. We can imagine an entity -- a computer, say -- which was systematically deluded that is had non-physical mental states, when in fact it did not. But we can not imagine that we are in that situations, since there is a clear difference between a cognitive belief -- for instance, that lemons taste sharp -- and the a phenomenal experience -- "that lemon tastes sharp!". This is brought out partiuclarly clearly in optical illusions; for instance, in the Muller-Lyon(???) illusion, we know the lines are of equal length, but nonetheless still see them as unequal.

The other road is that of saying that mental properties are the real deal, and physical properties are derivative. In fact, the idea that physical properties are in a sense secondary can be argued on the basis of the way physical science iteself works -- it is not a unwelcome "bullet" that has to be "bitten" in accepting the truth of some other proposition. The way physical theories are tested looks for a structural mapping between mathematical formulae and experimental results -- an isomorphism. What the relationships are relationships between is not of essential importance. Science tends to answer questions about what things are in terms of a structure composed of some simpler things -- a proton is three quarks, for instance -- but the nature of the simpler things is left unaddressed. This vision of science as always being at one remove from the actual nature of things may falls short of the degree of physicalism that some would like to espouse, but it is adequate to explain the success and methodology of science.

However, showing that physical science does not capture the innermost essence of things is only half the problem: the other half is to show that mental properties -- or at least the more troublesome ones -- are a natural candidate for what physical descriptions leave out.

What Is Physicalism Anyway ? Quantities, Qualities and Russell's Alternative.`

Yet there is a wealth of evidence that the mental is strongly correlated with the physical. One way out of this impasse is that physical descriptions do not "capture" the mental, but the mental is nonetheless "there". This is a kind of two Language view. It is a departure from the strongest varieties of Physicalism without entertaining any supernaturalism about the mind. (Of course, if in some underlying way the mental is the physical, albeit under a different description, there is no causal problem.The mental story , in terms of intentions and actions, and the physical story in terms of neural firings and muscular twitches are two different descriptions of the same event, so neither the physical nor the mental is squeezed out of the causal picture).

But why don't physical descriptions capture the mental? Consider the way physical theories are verified. An experiment is set up; a theoretical calculation is made of the expected outcome; the experiment is performed and a comparison is made between expectation the actual outcome. The outcome matches the expectation , or it doesn't. But the outcome and the expectation relate to instrument-readings. There is no further requirement to capture the essence of the thing being investigated. The height of a column of mercury in a thermometer is not very much like heat (subjectively or objectively!), but that doesn't matter; it only matter whether it is the expected value of not. The instrument reading only has to track -- vary in line with -- the underlying phenomenon. The other ingredient is the theoretical apparatus, the graphs and formulae used to generate the expectation. These are abstract mathematical structures. If the theory is correct, the abstract structures it uses will stand in a certain relationship to the real phenomenon, one of "modeling" or "mapping" it , so the interrelationships of the elements of the abstract theory will mimic the structure and behaviour of the real phenomenon. nothing further is required, and this relationship of modeling between theory and reality is itself an abstract structure.

So these are the ingredients of physical: modeling, mapping, isomorphism, abstraction, relation, quantities.

But it is almost tautologous that the real world cannot be made of those ingredients alone (particularly that is can't be a mere abstraction). Thus we have candidates for real properties of the world not captured by physics: concreta, intrinsic properties and qualities.

The last is of the most interest, of course. The resemblance between "qualia" and "quality" might not be coincidental. Qualities might be intrinsic to matter yet incapable of being "seen" through the "spectacles" of physics. Our own qualia might be a direct insight into these qualities, not something else in disguise. We need not suppose that all qualities are like human qualia; qualia might be only a tiny subset of the possible range of qualities.

Not all qualities need to be had consciously by a being with a mind (human qualia are necessary constituents of full human consciousness, but might not be sufficient constituents). If they are, and they are intrinsic to matter, that suggests panexperientialism. If not, there is an extra factor to conscious experience beyond the nature of experience itself.

An objection that could be raised at this point is that if qualia are intrinsic to the matter of the brain, and we have a direct insight into them, they should give a fine-grained physical picture of the brain. Another is that we are not not conscious of all our mental contents -- most of what is going on in our heads it unconscious. So there is a "grain" problem -- relating to the amount of detail in the contents of consciousness -- and, relatedly a "level" problem.

Emergence and the Grain Problem

1. Non-emergence: a high level property is merely the sum of the properties of low-level parts (the mass of the whole is the mass of its constituent atoms)
2. Weak emergence: A high-level property is not possesed by the component parts, but can be reduced to their properties (temperature is average molecular velocity)
3. Medium emergence: of properties A high-level property is not possesed by the component parts, but can be explained in terms of (and thereby reduced to) their properties, and also relations and causal interactions (e.g. wetness).
4. Medium emergence with independent laws: A high-level property is a mere pattern of behaviour entirely composed of lower-level compionents, However, the explanation of higher-level behaviour in terms of the lower-level components brings no benefits in terms of simplification, leading to doubt as to whether the causality is actually happening at the lower level. (eg economics)
5. Medium emergence: of properties with independent laws: A high-level property is not possesed by the component parts, but can be explained in terms of (and thereby reduced to) their properties, and also relations and causal interactions (e.g. wetness). However, the explanation of higher-level behaviour in terms of the lower-level components brings no benefits in terms of simplification, leading to doubt as to whether the causality is actually happening at the lower level. (eg economics)
6. Strong Emergence: A high-level property is not possesed by the component parts, and cannot be reduced to their properties , relation and causal interactions.
7. Strong Emergence with Downward Causation:There are two kinds of causality at work in the world: a "horizontal" kind, characterised by the laws of the special sciences and a "vertical" kind operating between levels. In the case of consciousness vertical, top-down causation explains volition

All forms of emergentism are forms of dualism (or pluralism). The weaker forms are closer to predicate (or two-langauge) dualism, the stronger to ontological or property dualism. No form is equivalent to substance dualism. All forms of accept that mind is in some way generated from, or caused, the brain. The existence of consciousness as a high-level property may be a special case, or it may be only one example of a higher-level property.

Since emergentism is not a sharply dualistic theory, higher-level properties, whether characterised as mind or in some other way, share many of the qualities of matter (or what would be agreed to be matter under any theory). They are made of the same basic substance, located in the same place, and so on. Since higher-level properties are not, strictly speaking immaterial or non-physical, it is convenient to speak of (micro)physical to mean the base-level properties that are physical under any account.

I have stated emergentism is general terms. One of the outstanding issues of emergentism is whether it requires special pleading for consciousness. At the time of its greatest popularity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was taken almost for granted that almost every science emerged in some way from a lower-level science. The most popular example was chemistry; chemical properties are not merely sums of forces, in the way that physical ones are. Combining chemicals lends compounds with properties quite different from their constituents. Salt is quite different to both sodium and chlorine. Yet the discovery of Schrodinger's Equation shows that the whole of chemistry can be reduced to physics. Whilst it remains the case that chemical compounds have properties that are not the properties of their constituents, they are not novel properties because they can be deduced from the laws of physics in conjunction with the structure of the compound.

Anything that can be deduced from (micro) physical facts can be analysed into (micro)physical facts. Therefore, the weak-to-medium forms of emergentism do not predict any kind of Explanatory Gap between higher an lower level properties. The mere posession of high-level properties is not enough to explain conscious experience.

On the other hand, there are stronger forms of emergentism according to which higher-level properties are not only different properties, but a different kind of property. (The obvious candidate for a different kind of property is a basically qualitative kind).

However, this will suffer from the familiar problems of ontological dualism. There will be a Reduplication Problem: since qualia are there to inform us about the outside world, and since that information is already present at the (micro)physical, neuronal level, it must be present twice: once in the lower-level properties, once in the higher-level properties. Even if we assume the information is divided rather than reduplicated, that still means half of it disappears from the physical level.

There will also be at least the strong suspicion of a causal problem. According to Jaegwon Kim's famous argument, if the phsyical level is causally closed, then higher-level properties cannot have any causal powers -- or at least not without breaking physical laws, or, again, reduplicating the causal work of the physical; so that every human action has a physical cause and a mental cause both leading to exactly the same result. Of course, negating the causal powers of the mental leads to epiphenomenalism.

But this conclusion rests on the contingent idea that there is a sufficient physical cause for every event. This has been challenged by quantum mechanics, which indicates that physical causation is merely probablistic. Where this is the case, there is the potential for another kind of causality to operate, so long as it allows the statistical quotas to stay in balance. To take a simple analogy, where physical laws say half of all coins will land one way, and half the other, there is room for some additional influence to determined which coin falls which way, so long as the 50-50 split is observed.

Even if there is a closed system of (micro)physical laws, we should perhaps resist the conclusion that that is where the causality is really happening. We have been wrong about what the "basic" level of reality is several times in the past (molecules, atoms, protons, quarks..). There is no clear apriori reason why all the causality should happen at the most basic level. There are apriori reasons why causal explanation needs to include more than one level, but only in a "relative" sense -- there is no requirement that one of the levels is the most basic.

Mind everywhere: Panpsychism

Panpsychism vs. Emergentism.

When they are not appealing to emergentism, panpsychists are dismissing it as incomprehensible. The objection seems to be that that is an arbitrary, brute fact that higher-level properties emerge, that it cannot be deduced apriori with strict necessity. This is surely setting the bar rather high. If there are brute facts in the horizontal direction, why can't there be "vertical" ones ? The panpsychist critics of emergentism seem to think that the only way A can bring abiout B is by somehow containing it already. Whilst that is a rather arbitrary requirement itself , it can be fulfilled without incurring the Flying Rock problem -- mentality could be a potentiallity in all matter, not an actuallity in all matter. CE as 'subset' of mentality. Special conditions not so special. Panprotoexperienentialism. not all mental contents are conscious

Consciousness everywhere: Panexperientialism

Consciousness and information

All information exists in some concrete medium or other. Qualia are the form in which sensory information exists for humans. Even where there is only 1 bit of information, there are further facts about the form the information takes.

A printed book of the complete works of Shakespeare contains the same information as a CD ROM of Shakespeare. But you can hardly say they are the same thing, ontologically. Transforming the book into the CD-ROM -- by scanning and destroying the original book for instance -- is a noticeable event, just as a qualia-inversion is. And while they both contain the same information, there are further facts, meta-information, about them -- "this is a book", "that is a CD_ROM". (ie there is information *in* the system, and information *about* the system).

The physical representation of information in the brain is fine-grained. It could be thought of as a long string of signal states (an activation vector), where each signal state can only take a few values. (A binary representation is of course the last word in that sort of thing). Subjectively, the sensorium, our sensory experience, is a denser representation, a shorter string string (or 2 dimensional array) where each place in the array is filled out with one of a wide range of values. But these are differences in informational form, not necessarily in content. I say "subjectively" without any prejudice as to whether or how the represented form is real or physically implemented. I say "not necessarily", but it is almost certain the information content of the sensorium is identical to a subset of the information content of the physical brain -- how could we become subjectively informed of phsycial events taking place outside us, if the information did not pass through the physical brain? (I have expressed the point in somewhat dualistic language, but of course it is even truer if there is identity between the mind and brain!)

So the information Mary gets from reading an ultra-detailed description of the brain-state of someone looking a tomato and the information about tomatoes she gets from looking at a tomato are the same information. But I say "the information about tomatoes". She also obtains higher-level meta-information about the mediumthe (1st level) information takes. (A parallel would be someone -- Martha, say -- who knows the complete works of Shakespeare from top to bottom, but knows nothing of books. When Martha sees a printed copy of Shakespeare for the first time, the information *in* it is familiar to her, but the fact that it can be found in book form is news).

One way of emphasising the point that there is more to Mary's sensory experience than the information content is to consider spectrum inversion -- swapping black for white or blue for green. (This is not the contentious kind of qualia inverstion which can supposedly occur without physical changes). Such a change would be indisputably noticeable -- yet it preserves the information content. Swapping 1's for 0's and 0's for 1 in a string is bound to preserve the information content. (If you cannot see this, consider that two such swaps restore the original string). So whatever is changing is not information content, so there is more to the sensorium than information content!

Another way of putting the point is that sensory experience is not *just* information is that we can introspectively tell the difference between bare, cognitive information and vivid, perceptual information. Some people claim that the difficulty in communicating qualia comes about because there is nothing much to communicate -- differences in qualia are just bare differences. But a bare difference can be expressed cognitively by some expression such as "X does not equal Y" which -- I mean the concept expressed, not the symbols -- obviously has no perceptual or phenomenal qualities associated with it.

But if the uncommunicability of qualia does not consist of a sheer lack of information -- what does it consist of ? It is a mistake to say that qulia are intriniscally ineffable. There are two elements to a communication problem: what is being communicated, and the means used to communicate it. Conveying qualia -- capturing feelings and "moments" -- is very much the stock-in-trade of poets and artists. The "incommunciability" of qualia becomes progressively worse as the language being used becomes more technical and mathematical. (That is one of the reasons why physical reductivism is so relevant to the whole issue of qualia). (It is equally the case that it is difficult to convey accurate technical information in artistic language!).

Qualia are properties, in that they disinguish one thing from another (even if the "things" don't reall y exist, and are mere appearances). Some properties are are amounts shapes, processes, functions and structures -- the kind of properties that can be readily communicated in physicalese. But there is no apriori reason why all properties should fall into this category. There are two elements to a communication problem: what is being communicated, and the means used to communicate it. So part of the problem of communicating qualia is what qualia are. Prima facie, at least, they are non-quantitative, non-structual properties. They are hard to communicate because they cannot be broken down and analysed further. (This dovetails with what we said earlier about qualia being part of a rich, dense information space)

So considerations of information have led us to the same conclusion as considerations of physics; qualia are qualities.

Emergence, supervenience and information.

Qualia Inversion and Logical Possibility

Colours and Shapes: Exactly What Qualifies as a Quale ?

Words and Qualia?

Phile:"There is something there subjectively. You understand something about oysters the first time you taste them".

Phobe:"You can't indicate what you're defining in any way. You can't say, "By 'pain' I mean this," and then concentrate very hard on whatever it is."

Phile:"As you said, there is the initial defintion of the word and there is 'further information'. We may define a quale-word by public, objective principles, but that doesn't rule out the Further Information being subjective. Indeed that is what the Mary story is all about. When Mary sees a tomato for the first time, she knows what she is seeing is called "red" because of the objective information she has obeserved, but she still aquires further information."

Phobe:"There can be no 'inner ostension', as Wittgenstein goes to lengths to demonstrate".

Phile:"Witt was demonstrating (contra William James, IIRC) that words are not defined subjectively; that doesn't mean their referents cannot have subjective aspects, beyond what is given in the definition, just as their referents have objective aspects which are not given in the defintions."

Phobe:"Instead of inner ostension you learn to use the word "pain" in certain ways in certain circumstances."

Phile:"Yes; that is the Initial Definition, not the Further Information. Witt's arguments establish, that the Initial Definition cannot be subjective, that it cannot come from inner ostentation. But that does not mean the Further Information cannot. The Mary story is clearly about Further Information".

Phobe:"And you can investigate the physical underpinnings of pain, what causes you to feel pain (stimulation of certain nerves in certain ways, etc). But if you ask what pain really is in itself, then you run into difficulties because, independently of the surrounding circumstances, there's nothing there to point to".

Phile:"Yes there is: I can compare this feeling to that feeling. That is no good for establishing the definition of a word, which needs to be public, but it is still something we can learn about what kind of thing pain is. Knowing what something really is, is not the same as knowing how to use a word. We used the word "water" before discovering it is really H20. The subjective aspect of pain can be used to fill out what it really is even if it can't be used in a definition. Indeed, if you have never felt pain yourself, you don't understand much about it".

Phobe:"It's not that the physical picture misses something out which is nonetheless there, waiting to be grasped by the appropriate language."

Phile:"It is there whether it can be grasped by language or not".

Phobe:"It's rather that, if you don't want to talk about the circusmtances and underpinnings, etc, then there comes a point at which, well, "pain is sore" and there's nothing more there to be said."

Phile:"why shouildn't you want to talk about the underpinnings ? If you are trying to explain how brains produce consciousness, isn't that exactly what you should be doing ?"

What is there to consciousness ? (TBD)

Consciousness, communication and mathematics

Consciousness is a problem for all forms of materialism and physicalism to some extent, but it is possible to discern where the problem is particularly acute. There is no great problem with the idea that matter considered as a bare substrate can have mental properities. Any inability to have mental proeprties would itslef be a property and therefore be inconsistent with the bareness of a bare substrate. The "subjectity" of consciouss states, often treated as "inherent" boils down to a problem of communicating one's qualia -- how one feesl, how things seem. Thus it is not truly inherent but depends on the means of communication being used. Feelings and seemings can be more readily communicated in artistic, poetice language, and least readily in scientifi technical language. Since the harder, more technical a science is, the more mathematical it is, the communication problem is at its most acute in a purely mathematical langauge. Thus the problem with physicalism is not its posit of matter (as a bare substrate) but its other posit, that all properties are phycial. Since physics is mathematical, that amounts to the claim that all properties are mathematical (or at least mathematically describable). In making the transition from a physicalist world-view to a mathematical one, the concept of a material substrate is abandoned (although it was never a problem for consciousness) and the posit of mathematical properties becomes, which is a problem for consciousness becomes extreme.

Is first-personhood more fundamental than qualia ?