Phenomenal Externalism or If Meanings Ain't in the Head, Where Are Qualia

Phenomenal Externalism or If Meanings Ain't in the Head, Where Are Qualia? Fred Dretske Philosophical Issues, Vol. 7, Perception. (1996), pp. 143-158. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1533-6077%281996%297%3C143%3APEOIMA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5 Philosophical Issues is currently published by Ridgeview Publishing Company.

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PHILOSOPIIICAL ISSUES, 7 Perception, 1995

Phenomenal Externalism or If Meanings Ain't in the Head, Where Are Qualia? Fred Dretske

~ a t e r i a l i s t s 'should be willing to tolerate some degree of externalism about the mind. It is hard to see how to avoid it. Beliefs are prominent citizens of the mind, and beliefs are individuated in terms of what they are beliefs about. I know of no plausible psychosemantics, no plausible theory of what makes one thing about another, that isn't externalist in character. It is the relations -causal, informational, historical, or whatever- that, on a given Sunday afternoon, makes something in my brain about football rather than philosophy. Thoughts are in the head, but what makes them the thoughts they are is not there. Though prominent, beliefs (propositional attitudes in general) are not the only inhabitants of the mind. There are also experiences or sensations -the sort of mental state that exhibits a qualitative character. There is a big difference between seeing and hearing, and the difference does not consist in what (if anything) one ends up 'Who are realists (i.e., not eliminativists) about the mind.

believing. Nor does it seem to consist in what the experiences are experiences of. For the experiences associated with seeing Clyde play and hearing him play, though much different, can be experiences of the same thing -Clyde playing the piano. They are, nonetheless, quite different, and the difference seems to lie in the character of the experiences themselves quite apart from what, if anything, they are of or about. So even if externalism about thought is more or less plausible, externalism about experience is not. Even if physically identical heads can harbor different thoughts, they cannot be having different sensations. As I gauge the current situation in the philosophy of mind, this is the accepted wisdom, the orthodox picture (at least among materialists), about perceptual belief and perceptual experience. To put the point in Putnam's familiar form, Fred and Twin Fred may end up with different perceptual beliefs about the puddle they both see Fred that it is water, Twin Fred (miraculously transported to Earth and looking at the same puddle) that it is twater- but they must, if they are physically indistinguishable, be having the same experiences of the puddle. It must look the same to both of them no matter what differences might exist in their resulting beliefs. Perceptual beliefs may not supervene on the biological substrate -this, indeed, is what the Putnam and Burge examples show- but perceptual experience, sensations, qualia, do. If two individuals are physically the same, then, surely, the fact that they grew up in different worlds, had different histories, exist in different linguistic communities, or evolved in different ways, is irrelevant to their phenomenal state. If one has a headache, so does the other. If one is having a visual experience of the kind I have when I see water, so is the other. I want to challenge this orthodox picture of sense experience. I do so, not because I can show it is wrong. I can't. Nor because I regard it as intuitively implausible. I do not. I challenge it, rather, because I have no alternative, no other way of making sense out of another fact about the mind that I find equally (indeed, more) evident -the fact, namely, that the qualities that individuate one experience from another, the qualities that make seeing so much different from hearing, and seeing red so much different from seeing green, are (or need be) nowhere in the person wherein resides the experiences of these qualities. The experiences themselves are in the head (why else would closing one's eyes or stopping one's ears extinguish them?), but nothing in the head (indeed, at the time one is having the experiences, nothing outside the head2) need have the qualities that 'During, say, hallucination.

distinguish these experiences. How is this possible? How is it possible for experiences to be in the head and, yet, for there to be nothing in the head that has the qualities we use to identify and distinguish between them? One possible answer3 is the answer externalism provides: the qualities by means of which we distinguish experiences from one another are relational properties -perhaps (on some accounts of these matters) intentional properties- of the experiences. Just as we distinguish and identify beliefs by what they are beliefs about, and what they are beliefs about in terms of what they stand in the appropriate relations to, so we must distinguish and identify experiences in terms of what they are experiences of. Thus does externalism -and, as far as I can see (if we ignore dualism), only externalism- explain why the properties that individuate experiences (red, green, sour, sweet, hot, cold) are not (or need not be) properties of the experiences. The experiences are in the head, but what makes them the experiences they are -just like what makes beliefs the beliefs they are-- is external. That is why I think the orthodox view- the view that holds that sensations are (whereas beliefs are not) locally supervenient- must be challenged. There seems to be no other plausible way to makes sense of the qualitative character of perceptual experience. But this leaves us with a problem. The problem is to see whether, and if so, how, an externalist account of sensation (what I will call phenomenal externalism) can overcome the powerful intuition that sensations, unlike beliefs, supervene on what is in the head -that physically identical beings must be having the same sensations.

1 Experience as Awareness of Internal Objects Some philosophers may reject phenomenal externalism because of an adherence -if only implicit- to an act-object analysis of experience. According to this familiar (from sense-data accounts of perception) story, an experience of an external object is to be understood as an awareness of an internal image, an image that, in certain respects, and when things are working right, represents or resembles the external object. Seeming to see a red tomato, for example, is 3I ignore dualism. I'm exploring options open t o a materialist. It may b e supposed t h a t short-armed functionalism is another possible answer. I doubt it, but I will not here go into t h e reason (it has t o d o with t h e necessity of going t o long-arm functionalism t o capture t h e relevant distinctions, and long-arm functionalism is a version of externalism).

the mind's awareness of an internal datum that is red, round, and bulgy. For an object to look red is for it to cause a red datum to appear in the theater of the mind. The mind, the only spectator in this theater, becomes directly aware of this datum -its color and shape. One thereby becomes indirectly ("inferentially") aware of the properties of the external object that caused it. According to this way of thinking about experience, an external object's looking red to S is S's awareness of an internal object that is red. If this is what is involved in something looking red, then it is hard to see how anything could look different to two people who were physically the same. For if k (some external object) looks red to Fred, Fred must be directly aware of something inside himself that is red. If it looks green to Twin Fred, then Twin Fred must be aware of something inside him that is green. Since they have differently colored things inside them, the twins cannot -not if materialism is true- be in the same physical state. Physically indistinguishable beings must have the same experiences. This argument doesn't work with thoughts because thoughts are not conceived of as having the properties the objects thought about are thought to have. Thinking that k is red is not itself red nor does it consist of an awareness of something internal that is red. It is, in fact, not quite clear how thoughts must differ in their intrinsic properties to be different thoughts. Maybe thoughts are like utterances; two utterances (in different languages, say) could be the same (consist of exactly the same sounds) and, nonetheless, express quite different propositions, make quite different assertions. Maybe thoughts are like that: two tokens of the same physical type, because they occur in "different languages" (in different heads) manage to be different thoughts. One is the thought that k is red, the other the thought that k is green. Experiences of red and experiences of green, though, have to be physically different. Why? Because an experience of red and an experience of green, unlike a thought about red and green, are constituted by an awareness of an internal image or datum that is the color the experience is an experience of. Since the image or datum we experience when we experience different colors is subjective and, therefore, internal- different color experiences cannot occur in physically indistinguishable beings. If one took phenomenal experience to be an awareness of internal objects that had the properties external things appeared to have, it would be understandable why one would regard an externalist theory of experience as false. But, as we all know, one person's modus ponens is another's modus tollens. This argument is as larne a n d that is very lame, i n d e e d as is a sense-datum theory of perception.

Nobody -at least none of the philosophers I mean to be arguing with- is going to object to phenomenal externalism because (or simply because) it conflicts with a sense-data theory of perception. If there is something wrong with externalism about experience, it is something else. This, though, is only a hunch, a speculation about possible motivations. I suspect that some philosophers (though they would be loath to admit it) resist phenomenal externalism (without resisting conceptual externalism) because they subscribe, if only half-consciously, to an act-object account of experience. If that is, indeed, a motivation for the resistance, my hope is that exposure -making it explicit- will suffice to eliminate it. If different sense experiences are not experiences of different internal objects, why suppose that Fred and Twin Fred could not be having different experiences? They can have different parents, wives, and friends -not to mention (if conceptual externalism is true) different thoughts and memories. Why not different experiences?

2

Phenomenal and Doxastic Appearances

In the case of perceptual experience, qualia, the properties by means of which experiences are identified and distinguished from one another, are the way things s e e m or appear in the sense modality in question. If k looks red to me and green to you, then our experiences differ. We have different qualia. So if yonder puddle (I will call it k) doesn't look the same to Fred as it does to Twin Fred, then their experiences of the puddle are different. They have different visual qualia. If this is what it means to have different experiences, then the question we are asking about Fred and Twin Fred is: despite being in exactly the same physical state, could the puddle they see4 (from the same angle, distance, etc.) look different to them? 4 ~ order n t o keep the focus clear, I will continue to suppose that Twin Fred, after growing u p in a n alien environment, has been miraculously transported t o Fred's habitat, and is looking a t the same stuff: k . Differences in what they believe about what they see will thus be determined not by a difference in the object they see (what their beliefs are beliefs about), but by what they believe about it -the conceptual content of their perceptual beliefs. For the sake of exposition, I will also use the property of being water. I do not, however, think it necessary to run t h e example with natural kinds (if water is, indeed, a natural kind). W h a t is important t o the argument is that what Fred sees k t o be (call it F ) is external in the sense that there are circumstances in which non-Fs can be made t o affect Fred in exactly the way Fs do. If this condition is met, then it will be possible t o construct Twin-Earth type situations

There is, of course, a sense in which k (the puddle of water) doesn't look the same to Fred and Twin Fred. It looks like water to Fred, like twater to Twin Fred. This is how they will describe the appearance of the puddle.5 I will call this sense of appear-verbs the doxastic sense. It signifies a sense of "look" ("appear", "seem", etc.) which implies something about the beliefs (or belief dispositions) of the person to whom something looks F. To say that k looks F to S in this doxastic sense is to say that S believes, or tends to believe, or would believe if he didn't have countervailing evidence, on the basis of his perception of k, that k is F. Since Fred and Twin Fred are caused to believe different things about k on the basis of their perception of it, k looks different to them. If we distinguished experiences on the basis of differences in the way objects (like puddles) looked in this doxastic sense, then Fred and Twin Fred would be having different experiences of the puddle. This, though certainly true, merely shows that experiences should not be classified in terms of how things appear in a doxastic sense. Qualia, the features in terms of which experiences are identified and distinguished from one another, are, instead, to be understood in terms of the way things seem in a phenomenal sense. Whatever else the phenomenal sense of "appear" ("look", "seem", etc.) is supposed to be (it is not always clear) it seems safe to say (at least in this context6) that it is supposed to be independent of the doxastic. It is independent of the doxastic in the sense that k can look, phenomenally, the same to two people without looking the same to them doxastically. If we denote the phenomenal appearances with capitalized words (LOOK, SEEM, APPEAR) and doxastic by words in lower case (look, seem, appear), then things can LOOK the same to S without looking the same (phenomenal sameness does not require doxastic sameness), and they can LOOK different without looking different (phenomenal differences do not require a doxastic difference). For anyone who understands, or thinks she understands, what the phenomenal is supposed to be, the first point is more or less obvious. If I am able to recognize petunias when I see them and a two-year old child cannot, a flower might look like a petunia to me but not to the child. I am led to believe it is a petunia on in which Fred and Twin Fred can be imagined t o be in t h e same physical state while differing in t h e sort of external relations t h a t (according t o conceptual externalism) determine t h e content of their thoughts. 5 0 f course, Twin Fred will utter t h e same words ("It looks Like water"), but t h e word "water" in Twin Fred's mouth means twater, not water. '"Safe t o say" since otherwise there would be no basis for resisting a n externalist theory of experience by those embracing a n externalist theory of belief.

the basis of my perception of it, but the child is not. Yet, though the flower looks different to us, we can easily imagine it LOOKING the same to us: our visual experiences are similar -perhaps, given that we have the same visual acuity and are looking at the flower from the same angle, at the same distance, in the same light, and so on, exactly the same. So phenomenal sameness does not require doxastic sameness. The second point -that phenomenal differences do not require doxastic differences- is an immediate consequence of inverted spectrum possibilities.7 In the phenomenal sense, it is possible for something to LOOK different to us -red to me, green to you- when we both believe (and say) the same thing about it -that it is red.8 So things can LOOK different to us without their looking different to us. Though they LOOK different, we end up believing the same thing. Aside from maintaining this independence of phenomenal from doxastic appearances, I will not attempt to define the phenomenal sense of appearance verbs (I know of no successful effort to do so). It will be enough for my purposes if we operate with an intuitive idea, one that is, in the respects just specified, independent of what we believe, or are disposed to believe, about the things that appear this way. This will be enough, I think, to argue that if you are an externalist about belief -a conceptual externalist- there is no reason not to be an externalist about experience -a phenomenal externalist. If you are an externalist about how things seem- as most materialists are these days -you can also be what few (if any) materialists are- an externalist about how things SEEM.

3 The Accessibility of Phenomenal Appearances Whatever is the case with their phenomenal experience of the puddle (whether it is the same or different), what Fred and Twin Fred think about their phenomenal experience will differ. If we can speak of how 7 0 f course, some people do not believe in the possibility of inverted spectra. But these are precisely the people who are sceptical of phenomenal qualities and should have no trouble accepting an externalist theory of experience if they accept an externalist theory of belief. '1 assume here that what we say (and believe) of the external object is not affected by this phenomenal difference. I assume, that is, that, having grown up in the same linguistic community, etc.), we both mean the same thing by "red". I shall return in a moment t o possible differences in belief about the way things appear in the phenomenal sense (i.e., possible differences in belief about the way they APPEAR).

one's experience of k (as opposed to k itself) seems to one, Fred's experience of the puddle will not seem to him the way Twin Fred's experience of the puddle seems to him. Fred will think c o r r e c t l y as it turns o u t that his experience of the puddle (the way the puddle LOOKS to him) is exactly like his experience of water (is exactly the way water normally LOOKS to him). So Fred will think o n c e again c o r r e c t l y that k LOOKS like water to him. Twin Fred, on the other hand, will think that k LOOKS like twater to him. He will think -correctlythat k LOOKS the way twater always looked to him in normal conditions. The twins' phenomenal experience of the water will prompt in them, not only different beliefs about the water, but different beliefs about their phenomenal experience of it. How their experience seems to them will therefore be different. It may be supposed that this does not follow. Just because water is not twater does not mean that water does not LOOK (phenomenally) like twater. Babs and Betsy are not the same person, but, being twins, they LOOK alike. Although believing something is Babs is not the same as believing it is Betsy, believing k LOOKS like Babs is the same as believing k LOOKS like Betsy since Babs and Betsy LOOK the same. For the same reason, Fred's belief that k LOOKS like water is really no different from Twin Fred's belief that k LOOKS like twater since LOOKING like water is LOOKING like twater. So if Fred thinks that k LOOKS like water and Twin Fred thinks k LOOKS like twater, then what Fred and Twin Fred think about the LOOK of k is the same. This is not so. The belief that k LOOKS like Babs is a different belief from the belief that k LOOKS like my sister even if, in fact, Babs LOOKS like my sister. Even if, in fact, Babs is my sister. And we are now making a claim, not about the LOOK of Babs and the LOOK of my sister (these might be the same), but about the LOOKS-like-Babs-belief and the LOOKS-like-my-sister-belief. These are not the same. I can have the one without having the other. So the twins' beliefs about their experiences of k, their belief about the way k LOOKS to them and, thus, the way their phenomenal experience seems to them, must be different. As a result of his perception of k Fred is prompted to have a LOOKS-like-water belief about k while Twin Fred, seeing the same k, is caused to have a LOOKS-like-twater belief. Hence, their phenomenal experience of k, as defined by the way k LOOKS to them, seems different to them. Their experience of k prompts them to have not only different beliefs about k, but different beliefs about their own phenomenal experience of k. Even if they have the same phenomenal experience of k, it will not seem that way to them.

There is an important philosophical lesson in this result. It is this. The access one has to the quality of one's experience (unlike the access one has to the qualities of the external objects this experience is an experience of) is only through the concepts one has for having thoughts about experience. One does not (I a m assuming) have experiences of one's puddle experiences as one has experiences of puddles. Hence, there is no way one can become aware of the phenomenal qualities of one's experience of the puddle (as one can become aware of the qualities of the puddle itself) except through a belief that it has this quality e x c e p t , that is, via a belief that something (external) LOOKS to have this quality. By experiencing (e.g., seeing) a puddle, S can be made aware of its watery quality (i.e., it can LOOK watery) without S having the concept of water -without the puddle looking like water. One cannot, however, become aware of the watery LOOK of the puddle without such a concept. For in the absence of experience of one's puddle experience, awareness of the watery LOOK of a puddle can only be awareness that the puddle LOOKS watery, that one is having a phenomenal experience of this kind, and this requires the concept WATER. What this means is that If k does not look F to S in the doxastic sense of "look", then even if it LOOKS F to S, S will not (S cannot) be made aware of this fact. If we imagine, furthermore, that the reason k does not look F t o S is that S completely lacks the concept of F so that, until he acquires the concept, nothing can look F to S, then although something can still LOOK F to S, although S can still have F-ish experiences, S cannot be made aware of this fact. Without the concept of F , S is "blind" to the F-ish quality of his phenomenal experience though not, of course, to the F-ish quality of the external objects this experience is an experience of. He cannot be made conscious of it. His experience can have this quality -things can LOOK F to h i m but he cannot be made aware of it. With apologies to Kant, without concepts we are blind to our intuition^.^ Let me illustrate this result with two examples. Consider, first, a case in which k LOOKS F to S and, though S has the concept F (is, therefore, able to believe that k is, or LOOKS, F ) , nothing looks, nothing seems, nothing appears F to S.1° S is in no way caused to

ant said t h a t without concepts, intuitions were blind. If intuitions are experiences, it isn't t h e intuitions t h a t are blind; it is by their means, by t h e fact t h a t they occur in us, t h a t we are made aware of (i.e., see and hear) t h e objects around us. I t is, rather, t h e intuitions t h a t we cannot be made aware of. ''There are a variety of reasons why, though possessing the concept F, things might not look F t o S even though they LOOK F. Inattention is probably t h e

believe that anything is F by k's LOOKING F to him. You hold up seven fingers, and I see all seven. Without enough time to count, but enough time to see all seven, I mistakenly take there to be eight. That is how many I think I see. When asked how many fingers there appear to be, I say eight. On the basis of my perception of the fingers, that is how many I think there are. That, therefore, is how many there appear (doxastically) to me to be. But how many does there APPEAR to me to be? What are the phenomenal facts? Believing that I see eight fingers, I will (if I understand the question) describe the phenomenal appearances by using the number "eight". I have no choice. If I didn't think there APPEARED to be eight fingers, why would I think that I saw -and that, therefore, there w e r e eight fingers? I must think the fingers produced in me an experience of the kind (numberwise) that eight fingers normally produces in me. In this case, though, I am wrong. Given that (by hypothesis) I see only seven, the correct answer to a question about how many fingers there APPEAR to be is seven. At the phenomenal level seeing (exactly) eight fingers is not the same as seeing (exactly) seven fingers. How could it be? There is as much difference between seeing eight fingers and seeing seven fingers as there is between seeing one finger and seeing two fingers. The only difference is that, as the numbers get larger, the difference is harder to appreciate, harder to detect, harder to notice. That is, as the numbers grow larger, things do not as easily seem to be what they SEEM to be. There is, therefore, a fact about my experience t h a t there APPEARS to me to be seven fingersof which I am not conscious. Knowing how to count -having the concept SEVEN- I can, of course, become conscious of (i.e., learn) this fact by counting the fingers.'' I will then become aware that most common reason: I must have seen t h e color of your tie (I looked straight a t it several times), but I was so engrossed in our conversation t h a t I didn't pay any attention. T h a t is t o say, your tie must have LOOKED blue t o me, but, because of inattention, it did not look blue t o me (did not cause me t o believe it was blue). Sensory overload is another: you see more t h a n you can possibly have beliefs about. For this possibility, Sperling's (1960) experiments are particularly suggestive: subjects see a n array of numbers under very brief exposure conditions. They can identify, a t most, three or four items, but t h e fact t h a t they can identify a n y three or four (which ones they identify depends on later cueing) suggests t h a t , a t t h e phenomenal level, there is information about all the letters in t h e subjects' experience of them. T h a t is, a n unidentified "5" must LOOK like a "5" even though, because of such brief exposure, it does not look like a "5". For more exotic instances of t h e disassociation of phenomenal and doxastic consciousness, there is also sleep walking, hypnosis, various types of associative agnosia, commissurotomy, and unilateral visual neglect. "Assuming t h a t one (originally) saw all the fingers one (thereafter) counts.

my experience of the fingers (before I counted) was not what I took it to be: it was a seven-finger experience, not (as it seemed to me a t the time) an eight-finger experience. Hence, when the way things SEEM # the way things seem, the person is necessarily unaware of how things SEEM. If things SEEM F to S, S is not aware that this is so.12 Consider, next, a case in which S lacks the relevant concept the concept needed to make k appear to S to have the properties it APPEARS to S to have. We are listening to a recording of Goible's 93rd Symphony. Thinking there has just been a change of key, but uncertain about it, you turn to me and ask whether it didn't sound that way to me. I am musically ignorant. I do not know what a chan e of key is, and I do not know what a change of key sounds like.'' So I answer "No" to your question. It did not sound to me like they changed key. If truth be told, nothing ever sounds like a change of key to me. To suppose that anything sounds like a change of key to me -someone ignorant of what a change of key is and what a change of key sounds like- is like supposing that an attractive young woman look like your sister to me. If I don't know who your sister is or what she looks like, how can anyone look like your sister to me? Clearly, in this exchange about the music, I am describing how things sound to me in what I have called the doxastic sense -what I believe, or would normally believe, about what I hear on the basis of hearing it. But if we take your question to be a question not about how the music sounds to me, but how it SOUNDS to me, a question about my auditory experience, not my perceptually induced beliefs (or tendencies), then the answer is not so clear. Not knowing what T h e possibility exists, of course, t h a t , in counting t h e fingers, one sees (sequentially) more fingers than one (originally) saw (all a t t h e same time). But, often enough, and despite Dan Dennett's (1991) protests t o the contrary, when t h e numbers are small, it is entirely reasonable t o suppose t h a t one saw all of the fingers one counts. One just doesn't (without counting) know how many one sees. As Farah (1990, 18) points out, counting requires seeing more t h a n one object a t a time. I t seems clear t h a t it also requires seeing more t h a n one knows (though not necessarily more t h a n one thinks) one is seeing. Why else would one count? See Perkins (1983) for helpful discussion on this point. 12For more on this, see Dretske (1993). 1 3 ~ v e nif one knows what a change of key is, one may not be able t o hear it. If I know enough musical theory t o know what a change of key is, but lack t h e capacity t o identify changes of key auditorily, then when I hear a change of key (when it SOUNDS t o me like a change of key), I know what t h e property is t h a t I a m hearing but I d o not know and cannot tell (at least not by hearing) whether I a m hearing it.

a change of key SOUNDS like, I a m not an expert on what the music SOUNDS like to me. CHANGE O F KEY is not a concept I have available for describing my auditory experience. Hence, even if the music SOUNDS to me exactly the way changes of key normally SOUND to me,14 I cannot, become aware that this is so. A conceptual deficiency "deafens" me, not to the quality of the sound (I hear -thus I experience -the change of key), but to this quality of my experience. The fact that a person would not say, does not think, perhaps would even deny, that k LOOKS or SOUNDS F does not show that k does not LOOK or SOUND F. All it shows is that the person isn't aware that it LOOKS or SOUNDS this way. How a m I -someone who has never met your sister- supposed to know whether the woman we now see LOOKS like your sister to me, whether she is causing in me an experience which is like the experience your sister causes (or, if I've never seen her, would cause) in me under normal viewing conditions? YOUare probably in a better position to say whether she LOOKS like your sister to m e than I am. And this holds, not only for concepts like SISTER and CHANGE O F KEY, but for all ways of describing the way things LOOK. If I don't know what it is to be red, I cannot be made aware of the fact that anything LOOKS red to me, that my experience has this qualitative character. Without the concepts, things will still LOOK red and green to me. I will still be aware of these colors, but I will be aware of them in the same way I a m aware of seven fingers (when I mistakenly think there are eight) and a change of key (when I don't know what a change of key is). I will have no awareness that I am aware of them. It will not seem to me as though I a m aware of them. This is not simply a matter of not knowing the right labels or words for perceptual differences. It is, rather, a matter of lacking the right discriminatory powers. We are sometimes aware of a dzfference between the way two things APPEAR (k and h LOOK different, and we realize this) without knowing how to describe the APPEARANCE of either k or h. S can taste the difference between Coke and Pepsi, but he doesn't know which is which. He may not have heard of these soft drinks -may not, therefore, know that this is the Pepsi taste and that the Coke taste. He can discriminate the two 14And this is different from what no change key SOUNDS like t o me. It is important t o add this qualification since nothing need SOUND like a change of key t o me just because it SOUNDS the way changes of key normally SOUND t o me. If I am virtually deaf and almost everything SOUNDS the same to me, then changes of key need not be part of my phenomenal experience even if the music causes in me an experience just like the experience a change of key causes in me. I here ignore this complication since it is not relevant t o the point I a m making.

tastes, consistently distinguishing Pepsi from Coke, but not know that this is the Pepsi and that the Coke taste. Nonetheless, if S responds (or can respond; he may not choose to respond) to one taste in a way different from the way he responds to the other, we give S credit for rudimentary knowledge of taste types and, for present purposes, such discriminatory power with respect to taste types is sufficient for crediting S with rudimentary knowledge of what the liquids TASTE like. Coke and Pepsi not only TASTE different to S, they taste different to S -not like Coke and Pepsi, of course, but like this (call it the P-taste) and that (call it a C-taste). Words and language are irrelevant. The key question is whether S groups or classifies liquids according to taste. If so, then whatever quality or qualities it is that leads him to do so are the qualities that Pand C-tasting liquids seem to S to have. If S does not distinguish between Coke and Pepsi, has no tendency to classify or sort liquids in this way, then even if Coke TASTES different from Pepsi to S, even if S experiences this sensory quality, it will not taste that way to him in the doxastic sense. He will have no thought of the form, "Aha, this tastes the same as that, and these are different". This is the situation I imagined myself to be in when listening to the music. Even if I heard the change of key, I did not -not even mentallygroup or classify changes of key together. I do not, as a result of hearing sounds with this auditory quality, think, believe, or judge them to be the same in some respect. That, and not simply because I lacked the words, is what made me "deaf" to the change of key I heard. That is why it (may have) SOUNDED like a change of key to me without it sounding like a change of key to me -without it being able to sound like a change of key to me until I train myself to hear it.15

4

Conclusions

Where does this leave us with respect to Fred and Twin F'red? None of this shows -it was not intended to show- that they have different experiences of the puddle, that the puddle LOOKS different to them. That was not my purpose. The strategy is not to show that experience is externally grounded (I don't know how to show that), but that it could be and that denials that it could be are based on a 15Strictly speaking, of course, one doesn't train oneself to hear it. One is already hearing it. What training provides is the ability to consistently distinguish -to make things that SOUND different sound (doxastically) different.

faulty picture of the relation between thought and experience. I have tried to do this by showing that qualia -experiential qualities- are not, as it were, on display in the shop window of the mind. Awareness of phenomenal properties (that one is experiencing redness, the taste of strawberries, or a change of key) is not achieved by a process of direct inward inspection, a process in which one becomes aware of the qualities of experience in the way one becomes aware of the qualities of the external objects that that experience is an experience of. An awareness of phenomenal properties (that something LOOKS red, that one is, as they say, experiencing redly) is a much more indirect process, a process that requires the possession and use of the concepts needed to think that something is (or LOOKS) red. When illumination is normal and there is a red object in front of you, you are made aware of the color red by merely opening your eyes. You do not need the concept RED to see red, to experience this quality. But you do need this concept to become aware of the quale red, to become aware that you are having an experience of this sort. This being so, qualia (understood as the qualities in terms of which we identify and distinguish experiences) necessarily remain "hidden", inaccessible, until one acquires the conceptual resources for becoming aware of them. You can become aware of the color red without the concept RED (just as -see a b o v e I can be made phenomenally aware of seven fingers without the concept SEVEN), but you cannot be made aware of the quale red without this concept. For to become aware of the quale red is to become aware that one is having an experience of a reddish sort, and this is something one cannot be made aware of without understanding what it means to be red. If (as we are assuming) Fred and Twin Fred have different concepts for sorting and identifying the objects they perceive, then, even if they are having the same phenomenal experience of k , the quality of this experience, what it is that makes it the same experience, will be inaccessible to them. They cannot be made aware of this quality. What Fred's experience seems like to Fred will not be what Twin Fred's experience seems like to Twin Fred. If, despite this difference in the way their experiences seem to them, these experiences are, nonetheless, the same (they are, let us say, both of the Q-ish sort), then the quale Q will be a quality that neither Fred nor Twin Fred can be made aware of. They will be introspectively blind to that aspect of their experience that makes it the same experience. They will be as completely unaware of the phenomenal quality Q as I was to a change of key. From a subjective standpoint, it will be as if their experience (of the puddle) was not Q.

If a conceptual externalist (that is, an externalist about belief) is willing to accept this result, then she has, I think, taken a big step. She no longer has a reason to resist phenomenal externalism (= externalism about experience). For if one accepts the conclusion of this line of reasoning, then the qualities of experience which allegedly must be the same in physically identical persons are qualities that the persons in question may not be able to become aware of. If Fred and Twin Fred are having the same phenomenal experience of the puddle, the respect in which their experience is the same is not a quality of their experience that they can be made aware of. They cannot be made aware of it because of the conceptual differences that exist between them. If they cannot be made aware of Q, though, why suppose that Q is an intrinsic property of their experience? If the only way Fred and Twin Fred can be made aware of Q is via an appropriate change in their external relations (those that ground their concepts), what better explanation is there for why this is so than that Q itself is externally grounded. This, indeed, seems like the most plausible explanation of why Q, a feature of one's experience, remains inaccessible to one without the right concepts. Even if one concedes this point, though, it does not mean phenomenal externalism is true. It only means that, from the point of view of the conceptual externalist, there is no longer any reason to think it is not true. Hence, it might be true. That, though, is what I set out to show. The conclusion can be put this way. Either phenomenal experiences are identified with thought-like entities -such things as potential beliefs (Armstrong 1969), suppressed inclinations to believe (Pitcher 1971) or micro-judgments (Dennett and Kinsbourne, 1992)-in which case the conclusion that sensations have their p r o p erties externally grounded if thoughts do follows trivially; or (as in the present study) phenomenal appearances (= the way things APPEAR) are distinguished from thoughts (from the way they appear). If experiences are distinguished from thoughts, so that k can LOOK F to S without S believing, or being disposed to believe, that anything is F (i.e., without anything looking F to S), then it turns out that qualia can be completely inaccessible (in the way the music's SOUNDING like it was changing key is completely inaccessible to one who doesn't know what a change of key SOUNDS like). If one takes qualitative states as essentially knowable, as many philosophers do, this is not possible. If, on the other hand, one is willing to tolerate unknowable qualia, what reason is there to insist that physically identical beings share the same qualia? Indeed, what better explanation is there for why conceptually different twins (e.g., Fred

a n d Twin Fred) cannot b e made aware of t h e qualia they allegedly share t h a n t h a t they don't really share t h e s a m e qualia? T h e puddle Fred a n d Twin Fred see doesn't LOOK t h e same t o them.

Armstrong, D.M. 1968. A Materialist Theory of the Mind. New York: Humanities Press. Dennett, D.C. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Little Brown. Dennett, D.C. and Kinsbourne, M. 1992. Time and the observer: The where and when of consciousness in the brain. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol 15, No 2, pp. 183-247. Dretske, F. 1993. Conscious experience. Mind, vol. 102.406, pp.263-283. Farah, M. J. 1990. Visual Agnosia. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Perkins, M. 1983. Sensing the World. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Company. Pitcher, G. 1971. A Theory of Perception. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Sperling, G. 1960. The information available in brief visual presentations. Psychological Monographs, 74, No. 11.

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[Footnotes] Conscious Experience Fred Dretske Mind, New Series, Vol. 102, No. 406. (Apr., 1993), pp. 263-283. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-4423%28199304%292%3A102%3A406%3C263%3ACE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5

References Conscious Experience Fred Dretske Mind, New Series, Vol. 102, No. 406. (Apr., 1993), pp. 263-283. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-4423%28199304%292%3A102%3A406%3C263%3ACE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5