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Originally Posted by
asking
I think it would be hard to get through infancy without seeing several shades of red unless the person was completely blind.
Hence Jackson's thought experiment.
The question isn't what's serviceable: For nearly all non-philosophical purposes it works perfectly well to assume that Mary-style cases never present themselves. But the question here is what is a mental state, and to answer this question we have to consider counterfactuals. Thus, what would it be like for Mary, etc. The question I asked isn't on its face an empirical one, although a case can curely be made that the answer to that question is. But I don't think there's anything problematic about casting about for an account of mentality that isn't just an empirical generalization from cases but that is criterial, that speaks to counterfactual cases. I don't think that's idle--at least, not on its face.
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I accept that this is possible. I accept that senses vary in how they operate--which has a clear biological basis. For example, some garter snakes like to eat slugs. Others won't touch them. They are revolted. Separate from the senses is perception as a product of the brain (or mind, depending on your bent).
Sure, but the issue isn't about whether senses differ in how they operate. The issue is whether there is something irreducibly subjective about mentality and what, if anything, that means for the prospects of a science of mentality.
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It MIGHT be possible to see differences in brain imaging. But even then there would be no external trait to associate that with, so still no way to ever know how something looks like inside someone's mind. If it doesn't affect the physical body or behavior, then it's inaccessible to study. And, frankly, there's no evidence that it exists.
Inaccessibility to (scientific) study certainly doesn't entail absence of evidence. There are lots of things that aren't objects of scientific study: aesthetics, literary studies, etc. These aren't science, but they aren't fantasyland either. And, as it happens, I have plenty of evidence, as do you. My evidence is that there is something that it is like for me to be me, to have the experiences that I have; and yours is that there is something that it is like for you to be you and have the experiences that you have. It's just that this evidence isn't intersubjectively accessible. Maybe you want to say that means it doesn't count as evidence. But testimony does, and there's plenty of testimonial evidence for its existence. Again, it would be question-begging for the purposes of this discussion to assume that the standard of evidence is what counts as evidence in the physical sciences, this because we aren't taking it for granted that mentality is an object for scientific scrutiny. That can't be assumed; it has to be argued for. My interest is less in the question whether science is the measure of all things than whether mental states are through-and-through physical. If they are, then it is a further question whether and how they are to be studied scientifically.
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I'm not arguing for no variation in perception. But I am arguing that in most mammals, pain is an unpleasant experience, by definition. And while some people may feel no pain at all (and so jump off buildings and break their legs), such variants are anomalous not only among humans, but among vertebrates generally.
Fair enough. But notice, then, that the definition of pain is one that invokes its qualitative character and not its physical properties. And there is good reason to favor this sort of definition: Pain is multiply realizable, which is to say that the sensation of pain can be realized in different sorts of physical systems. The physical realization of pain may be very different in humans than in octopi or extraterrestrials. This suggests that pain is not identical to any given physical property or event and so is not itself physical, even though its realizations are physical. Behavioral criteria for pain also fail since although the vast majority of the members of a population will exhibit avoidance behavior in the face of pain some members do not. Behavior cannot therefore serve as a criterion for being in pain. There are regularities, that much is uncontroversial; the controversy erupts when we try to discern anything like a criterion (even a really long disjunctive criterion) for pain.
A really long disjunctive criterion might look something like this: A subject S is in pain just in case S exhibits behavior x, or S exhibits behavior y, or S exhibits behavior z...
The list of disjuncts would have to be massively long, and it would leave us without a way of handling counterfactual cases (like extraterrestrials or massively abnormal human beings, say). And at some point at least some of those disjuncts are going to overlap with the criteria by which other states are defined, this because for some people pain looks like pleasure.
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Okay. No one will ever know if you see yellow to my red. Or if Wondergirl tastes bittersweet to my milk chocolate. But I'm not yet convinced that this is a massive part of our psychology. There is good behavioral evidence that pain perception varies. Of course, preferences vary and we know they have a physical basis. But the mechanism for that is not likely to be something totally inaccessible to science.
Whether the mechanisms of variation are accessible to science or not, the qualitative properties of experience are. Science cannot even look for the physical realizations of these properties because it would first have to describe them. But they aren't even linguistic. The question whether this account for a massive part of our psychology is something that may or may not have stakes. I'm inclined to think that it is, in fact, of great importance, and fundamentally related to our ability to have an interior life at all. And surely interiority, access from within, is a huge deal.
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If I prefer yellow because to me it looks like your red, and you prefer red because it looks like red--so that we both really prefer the interior experience of red--all you've really done is redefine a way of understanding color preferences, and without being able to demonstrate that your mechanism has any reality.
Color preferences is peripheral to the central point, though. Color preferences surely are related in all sorts of ways to color experiences, but it is the experiences that are the issue. If the preferences turn on the experiences, and the experiences aren't accessible outside the subject's point of view, then it is difficult for me to see how there could ever be anything like an adequate account of the mechanisms of preference. Not that I really care why some people prefer blue to green. They are clearly just bad people if they do.
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I agree. Same brain, same experiences (within limits).
But similarity isn't only a function of relatedness, it's also a function of habits. Think of parrots. They are social, fruit-eating, tropical animals that move in three dimensions--a lot like our ancestors. We are not related but we both have color vision, talk a lot, socialize with others. We have a lot in common with parrots.
This paragraph threw me. I don't think I understand what you're saying.
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From my perspective, if you can't evaluate a mental state from behavior or other physical measures, it effectively doesn't exist.
I guess a lot turns on what you mean by "effectively". If you mean that it isn't an object of study by the physical sciences, then sure. But I can't see any good reason why that should the standard of existence. Science is just one field of human endeavor, it isn't the be all and end all, even of knowledge. To say that mentality is something that science cannot explain isn't at all to say that mentality doesn't exist. And, besides, that begs the question against the anti-materialist. This is in no way a shot at science. It's just to say that there are certain things for which science isn't a good tool. After all, being a good chemist doesn't make you a good art critic.
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Well, some of that inaccessibility is because the sense of smell is connected to the older parts of the brain and our vocabulary for odor is hugely impoverished. By comparison, it's relatively easy to describe how something looks or how we feel. It's even possible to describe pain in fairly accurate terms despite its subjective nature.
The word "fairly" is doing a lot of work there.
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Why would I assume that some natural expression of an organism is totally unrelated to its evolutionary history, its genetics, its development, or its lifelong experiences?
I'm not suggesting that you assume any such thing. I am just pointing out that there is an alternative to materialism, in fact there are several, and to assert that similarity of physical constitution guarantees sameness of mentality begs the question against those. If mental states are in each case realized in some physical system, then the mental states aren't identical to a physical state of the system but similarity of physical constitution would guarantee similarity of mentality. But that is something that has to be argued for, otherwise it is question-begging.
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I am laughing. But quite seriously, why would I assume that? I could likewise assume that about a great many things. I could assume that blood pressure, which is certainly affected by thoughts, is not just a biological problem but a psychological or theological one. Once you make that assumption, you are outside of science and you are operating without rules that can be tested against reality (from my perspective). Since science is consistently predictive--that is, it works--I'm satisfied to stay in my cozy box.
Again, you're not being asked to assume that. I'm simply saying that you can't *assume* that similarity of physical constitution guarantees sameness of mentality.
And, again, there is a question whether when we talk about mentality we are outside of science. That's what the argument is about. Which view is the right view, and why? The physical sciences are very successful regarding physical phenomena. But we aren't entitled just to assume that mental states are physical phenomena. That's precisely the point under consideration. Besides, psychology isn't exactly a rigorous science in any case.
