Reply to Lopes

Citation preview

Reply to Lopes Fred Dretske Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 60, No. 2. (Mar., 2000), pp. 455-459. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205%28200003%2960%3A2%3C455%3ARTL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J Philosophy and Phenomenological Research is currently published by International Phenomenological Society.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/ips.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

http://www.jstor.org Fri May 18 08:35:36 2007

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LX, No. 2, March 2000

Reply to Lopes

FRED DRETSKE

Stanford University

There is a terminological matter that should be settled before getting down to business. Lopes himself is not confused about this, but a reader-especially one who doesn't pay much attention to footnotes (I am thinking of footnote 2)-might easily be. On the first page I am accused of denying the existence of qualia. I was shocked to read this because (although we didn't call them that then) I have been a staunch fan of qualia for at least thirty years. Lopes says that I "must" deny their existence because qualia, the what-it-is-like qualities of phenomenal experience, are, he assures us, intrinsic, non-representational, properties of experience. Since I defend a representational theory of qualia, my theory, it seems, is false by definition. What is going on here? An ambiguity. Since the ambiguity infects a great many discussions of qualia, it is, I believe, worth taking a moment to get clear about it. Qualia are certainly intrinsic to experience if by "intrinsic" we mean something like "essential to," "inherent in," or "constitutive o f ' experience. The quale red, for instance, is essential to the experience of red. Change this quale to green, for instance, and you get a different experience-an experience of green. Change this quale to the sound of thunder and the experience becomes an experience in an altogether different perceptual modality. Since the quale makes the experience the kind of experience it is-an experience of red rather than an experience of green or thunder-the quale is intrinsic to an experience in the sense of being essential to its being the kind of experience it is. If this is what we mean by "intrinsic," then I am happy to agree that qualia are intrinsic to phenomenal experience. But in this sense intrinsic does not contrast with representational. A representational theory of qualia, in fact, explains why qualia are intrinsic in this sense. For if experiences are internal representations and qualia are the properties that these internal representations represent things as having, then qualia are intrinsic (i.e., essential) to experiences. If two representations represent X differently-one as red, the other as

REPLY TO LOPES

455

green-then, qua representations, they are different.' A difference in the property represented makes a difference in the representation just as a difference in qualia makes a differences in the experience. Representations are typed by content in the same way phenomenal experiences are typed by qualia. A representational account of qualia neatly captures, in this sense, the intrinsicness of qualia. But "intrinsic" can also mean something quite different. It can be used to contrast with extrinsic where this is understood to pertain to an object's external relations (vs. internal properties). The ball's color and shape are intrinsic properties of the ball while its distance from Chicago and its ownership (my ball vs. your ball) are extrinsic. Intrinsic in this sense signifies something more like a monadic property-a property the object has that is independent of its relations to other things. If this is what is meant by intrinsic, then, as a good materialist, I am, of course, committed to denying that qualia are intrinsic. Phenomenal experiences are in the head, but there is nothing in the head that has (or rnust have) the qualities one is aware of in having that experience. There is (or need be) nothing orange and pumpkinshaped in the brain of a person who sees (or hallucinates) an orange pumpkin. So qualia-in this case, the shape and color one experiences when one sees (or hallucinates) an orange pumpkin-are not intrinsic (i.e., monadic) properties of the experience. Pumpkin experiences need not (and, as a matter of empirical fact, do not) look like pumpkins. They are not orange and pumpkin shaped-something they would have to be if qualia were intrinsic to experiences in the present (monadic) sense of this term. So if qualia are not intrinsic (monadic) properties of experience, what are they? Well, if they are not intrinsic in this sense, they must be either extrinsic (relational) properties of experience (e.g., various causal theories of qualia) or, perhaps, intentional2 properties of experience (e.g., properties the experience represents). The latter, of course, is my own view. On this view, qualia are intrinsic-in the sense of essential-to experience, but they are not intrinsic-in the sense of monadic-properties of experience. Lopes is right to say I deny the existence of qualia, but we are now in a position to see that this denial is no more than a denial that qualia are monadic properties of experience. It is a denial that experiences of orange are themselves orange. Who, I wonder, would disagree with this? I am not denying that there are intro-

The representations needn't be different in their material constitution. The word "red" might occur in another language and mean green. In this case identical physical objects (events, utterances, statements) could be different representations of the color of something. I do not take intentional (and, in particular, representational) properties to be a species of relational property since I take relations to require the existence of their relata while intentional properties do not.

456

FRED DRETSKE

spectible qualities of phenomenal experience that are essential to its being the kind of experience it is. With this-possibly misleading-terminological matter behind us, we are ready to look at Lopes' main argument against the view that qualia are intentional properties of experience, properties the experience represents objects (if there are any3) as having. His argument, basically, is that we can see and hear (via "facial vision") the same property. These visual and auditory experiences, therefore, are of, they represent, the same property. Yet, phenomenally speaking, seeing the property is not at all like hearing it. The qualia of these experiences are quite different. So qualia-what it is like to see vs. what it is like to hear a property-are not to be identified with what property the experience is an experience of, what property the experience represents things as having. What properties we are visually aware of does "facial vision" enable us to hear? Lopes gives the following examples: shapes, motions, sizes, spatial relationships, and (perhaps even) textures (e.g., "velvety") of objects at a distance. It is important to notice that I ask not what objects, but what properties, echolocation enables us to hear. For it is, of course, obvious (and completely irrelevant) that I can hear, see, feel, smell and taste the very same object. I can, for instance, see, hear, and feel-maybe even smell and taste-a crying baby, a bell, or a squeaky hinge. Common sensibles are common properties-properties that we can perceive through more than one sensenot common objects. Common objects-objects we can perceive through more than one sense-are commonplace. They show nothing about the commonalty of the qualities we experience in different modalities because the properties of the baby (bell, hinge) I hear are not the properties I see, smell, or feel. I mention this obvious point not, once again, because I think Lopes is confused about it (he isn't), but because some of his language is a bit careless on this score. He says, for instance, that what it is like to hear a round, velvety object three metres away is not what it is like to (dimly) see a round, velvet object three metres away. And so it isn't. But neither is hearing a (crying) baby what it is like to see or smell a crying baby. What does this show? Only that an object can have a variety of different properties, some of which we see, others of which we hear, still others of which we smell. What Lopes should have said (what he obviously meant) was that we can both see and hear the same properties-the roundness, the velvety texture, and the distance (three metres away) of the round, velvet object three metres away. When one sees (veridically) an orange pumpkin, the visual experience represents the pumpkin as orange and pumpkin shaped. When one hallucinates an orange pumpkin, the experience represents the same properties, but (I would argue) there is nothing-no object-the experience represents as being orange and pumpkin shaped. If this sounds opaque, see Dretske (1995), Chapter 1, 54, for further discussion. REPLY TO LOPES

457

This is what his argument requires. But why does he think this? Why does he think we can both see and hear the shape of distant objects? The only reason I can figure out is because he assumes that if we can tell what shape X is via modality M, then we must be M-aware of X's shape. If S can tell by listening (even if he doesn't know how he tells) that X is round, then S hears the roundness of X. Lopes assumes, in other words, that if S can hear (see, taste, smell) that X is F, if he can know, find out, or discover, in this way that X is F, then S must be hearing (seeing, tasting, smelling) the F-ness of X. It is, perhaps, only necessary to state this assumption to see that it is false. It conflates fact-awareness-a (conceptual) awareness that X is F-with property-awareness-a (sensory) awareness of the F-ness of X. I can tell (come to know) that water is hot by feeling it, yes, by I can also tell that it is hot by looking at an immersed thermometer (or by seeing it boil). I both feel that it is hot and see that it is hot. But just because I can tell, by vision, that water is hot does not mean that I can see, that I am visually aware of, heat. An ability to tell that X is F via modality M does not mean that one is aware of the property F in modality M. It only means that information about instantiations of F can be transmitted in M. What properties we are aware of in M that make us aware of the fact that X is F is quite another matter. Instrumentation, in fact, is a way of making information about various properties (e.g., pressure, temperature, humidity, velocity, hardness, acidity, ) available on the face of measuring instruments in the position of some pointer. This does not mean we can see temperature, charge, hardness, and acidity. It only means that we can build instruments so that the properties we can see (position of a pointer) carry information about properties we cannot see. Well, if we (or some people) can not only see, but hear, that X is round (velvety, big), what properties do these people hear that "tell" them X is round (velvety, big)? We can argue about exactly which properties our sense of hearing makes us aware of, but to avoid complications let me just say that we hear sound. S hears that X is round by detecting subtle variations in the sound reflected from X. That seems to me like the best way of describing what is happening. If S can tell that X is a red wine (e.g., a cabernet) by tasting, we do not want to conclude that S tastes colors because he can tell, by tasting, what color the wine is (that it is red). Maybe we can say that he can taste that it is red, but, unless we are looking for paradoxical ways of expressing ourselves, that, surely, isn't the same as tasting its redness. For the same reason, we should not conclude that the blind can hear spatial locations, textures, shapes, and sizes merely because they can hear where things are, what shape they are, and how big they are. So even if we can tell the shape of things by touch (i.e., feel that it is square), I do not think this shows we feel the object's shape. What we feel when we tell the shape of objects in this way is pressure and (if this is really 458

FREDDRETSKE

different) texture. It is differences in pressure we feel as we move our hand around the object that (together with what we know about how we are moving our hand) tell us what shape an object is. But though we can tell, by touch, that something is square, we do not, strictly speaking, feel shape (unless that simply means "feel what shape it is"). If this is to count as feeling shape, then wine connoisseurs must be tasting colors. To confuse property-awareness, a sensory mode of awareness (of F), with fact-awareness, a conceptual form of awareness (that X is F), is to mislocate what a theory of qualia is supposed to be a theory of. Qualia are the properties we are aware of in experience, not the properties that we become aware (in having the experience) that something has. I think, therefore, that a representational account of qualia does what it should do. It tells us what qualities make an experience the kind of experience it is. A representational theory does, therefore, what Lopes says it can't do: it "individuates the sense modalities in a principled and intuitive manner." What it doesn't do is what it needn't do: tell us what we can come to know by having experiences.

REFERENCES Dretske, F. 1995. Naturalizing the Mind. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

REPLY TO LOPES

459