Abstract
We are left with few resources in our attempt to construct a plausible account of the realization of our experience. Nothing with the characteristic intrinsic phenomenal properties remains. The only coherently conceivable resources still available are causal microevents, standing in spatio-temporal relations. But that may seem enough. Our post-galilean tradition holds, at least on one natural interpretation, that the true and objective properties and relations of things are those which our physics uncovers, and those properties and relations seem to be causal powers and spatio-temporal relations. The charge of an electron and its mass seem to be capacities to affect other particles in various ways, as the electron moves through space.
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Notes
Stephen Yablo, “Is Conceivability a Guide to Possibility?”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LIII, 1993, 1–42.
Leibniz gives what I take to be one early form: “Supposing that there were a machine whose structure produced thought, sensation, and perception, we could conceive of it as increased in size until one was able to enter into its interior, as he could into a mill. Now, on going into it he would find only pieces working upon one another, but never would he find anything to explain Perception.” See Monadology17, translated by George Montgomery, revised by H. Chandler, in Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, Correspondence with Arnauld, Monadology(La Salle, EL: Open Court, 1902), 254. But some authors hold that there is a distinction between knowledge arguments and arguments from explanation. For instance, see Brian Loar, “Phenomenal States”, in James Tomberlin (editor), Philosophical Perspectives 4 (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview, 1990), 81–108.
Michael Tye, The Metaphysics of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 138. Frank Jackson, “Epiphenomenal Qualia”, The Philosophical Quarterly32,1982,127-32.
Frank Jackson, “Epiphenomenal Qualia”, 129.
B.D. Farrell, “Experience”, in Vere Chappell (editor), The Philosophy of Mind (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962). Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like To Be a Bat?”, Philosophical Review83, 1974,435-50.
For instance, see J. Levine, “Materialism and qualia: The explanatory gap”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64, 1983, 354–361. But also see note 2.
Michael Tye, The Metaphysics of Mind, 133–150. Terence Horgan, “Jackson on Physical Information and Qualia,” The Philosophical Quarterly,1984,147-151. David Lewis, Postscript to “Mad Pain and Martian Pain”, in Philosophical Papers,vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 130-132. Sydney Shoemaker, “The Inverted Spectrum”, Journal of Philosophy79,1982,357-381. L. Nemirow, Review of T. Nagel’s Mortal Questions, Philosophical Review 89,1980,473-477.
Some authors, for instance Loar, distinguish between the Nemirow-Lewis “ability” response we have been discussing and the “mode of presentation” view proper. But, in any case, what they mean by the latter we discuss in the next section.
Paul Churchland, “Some Reductive Strategies in Cognitive Neurobiology”, Mind 95, 1986, 279–309. This is not the only current of argument in Churchland on this topic. He sometimes deploys the argument we considered in the last section, and it is also important that he views phenomenal properties as confused or unanalyzed versions of the true properties of things. He certainly wouldn’t think that everyone can introspect the nature of the phase space which characterizes the form of their experience. See also his “Reduction, Qualia, and the Direct Introspection of Brain States”, Journal of Philosophy82, 1985, 8-28; and “Knowing Qualia: A Reply to Jackson”, in his A Neurocomputational Perspective(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 67-76.
Bernard Harrison, Form & Content (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973).
C. L. Hardin, Color for Philosophers, 134–154.
See Hardin for the details.
Brian Loar, “Phenomenal States”, and William G. Lycan, “What is the’ subjectivity’ of the Mental?”, in James Tomberlin (editor), Philosophical Perspectives 4, 109–130. See also Carolyn McMullen, “‘Knowing What It’s Like’ and the Essential Indexical”, Philosophical Studies48,1985, 211-233.
Lycan, 122-123.
If we for the moment ignore the possibility that we have no experience of the sort we have been presuming.
Colin McGinn, The Problem of Consciousness.Sometimes McGinn suggests an inconceivable sort of connection between neurophysiology and experience, which sounds a bit objectual. But he also sometimes suggests something which sounds non-objectual to me.
More about that qualification in Chapter Nineteen.
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Mendola, J. (1997). Mere Phenomenal Experience. In: Human Thought. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 70. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5660-8_15
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