(A Laconic Exposition of) a method by which the internal compositional features of qualitative experience can be made evident to subjective awareness

Abstract

In this paper I explicate a technique which can be used to make subtle relational features of experience more evident to awareness. Results of this method could be employed to diffuse one intuition that drives the common critique of functionalist-information theoretic accounts of mind that “qualia” cannot be exhaustively characterized in information theoretic-functional terms. An intuition that commonly grounds this critique is that the qualitative aspects of experience do not entirely appear in consciousness as informational-functional structures. The first section of the paper is a schematic overview of nature of the qualitative and the problem that qualia are taken to create for information theoretic-functionalist theories of mind. §2 contains a précis of the concept of different levels of functional scale in mental activity that was developed by Armstrong and the Churchlands and that is needed to interpret (possible) results of the proposed experiment. In §3, I outline a method whereby analogies would be generated between purely relational forms, structures, configurations, etc. and purely qualitative aspects of experience. These analogies would be created by subjects through forced choice selection of presented images of structures that “most resembled” a pure quality. Repeated choices would then be shaped by a genetic program into the structural configuration that “most resembled” the pure quality. The final section of the paper explores how consistent, reliable results from the experiment would make information-theoretic functionalism more intuitively plausible in spite of the “fact” that the qualitative aspects of experience do not immediately appear as entirely relational/structural.

Keywords:

• Form Constants
• Information-Theoretic Functionalism
• Qualia
• Qualitative

Notes

Notes

[1] Immediacy, privilege, and incorrigibility of access to the qualitative all concern the relation between experience and the subject of experience. They concern how experiences are to the subject of those experiences. Some thinkers have construed the qualitative exclusively as what experience is like for the subject of experience. This conception is thoroughly explored by Stubenberg (1998). De Sousa (2002) critically reviews the jumble of notions of subjectivity that are found in current work on consciousness.

[2] In a similar vein, Lucretius (trans. 1951) employed a pleasant metaphor when trying to demonstrate that though the atoms of which everything is composed are in ceaseless motion, they do not appear as such at higher levels of scale. He noted that a flock of sheep grazing on a high mountain meadow appears from across the valley as a single stationary object—the constant gamboling of the lambs is indiscernible (bk. 2, l. 314). A shepherd standing in the middle of the flock would see it quite differently.

[3] The strength of functionalist theories of mind lies in recognition of the fact that information structures are multiply realizable. Human mentation happens to be patterns of the activity of nerve cells. Presumably some other system, made out of different material, could carry the same functional patterns of activity—e.g., a complex network of silicon chips might be able to instantiate, at the appropriate levels of scale, patterns of activity that are identical to human mental activities. The simplest elements of the functional information structures carried in that system would appear in/to such a mind as simple unanalyzable qualities (though they would in fact consist in patterns of activity of the silicon chips). Some have claimed that the qualitative character of experience is entirely due to the peculiarities of the material in which patterns are embodied (Putnam, 1981). This is a commonplace of the traditional Aristotelian theory of nature—the same form can inform different matters. It is also a commonplace of information theory—the same information can be carried in different media. In both conceptions, the matter/carrier affects the quality of the form or information. There is a gain or loss of form/information when the form/information is instantiated in some types of matter/carriers relative to other types of matter/media that can carry the “same” form/information. The problem with this conception of the qualitative in experience is that it renders it impossible to understand how one could have any sense whatsoever of the quality of one's own experience. Developing such a sense would require that one's mind be realized (in part or alternatingly) in something other than nerve cells that could give rise to experience with a different quality. Only from such a contrast in qualities (assuming that the contrast could somehow be retained in awareness) could one derive a sense of the qualitative as such, and since this alternative realization has never occurred, we should have no sense of the qualitative. Hence, the conception of the qualitative as the matter of realization of functions is controverted by the simple fact of our awareness of qualities as such.

[4] In what follows, only the qualities found in sensory experiences are used as examples. I assume that the method could be generalized to other types of psychological acts/states.

[5] In people with synaesthesia, such inter-modal associations occur automatically and uncontrollably—upon stimulation of one sense mode, another mode is also experienced (with equal vividness and intentional projection). The most common form of this benign condition is “colored-hearing,” where stimulation of the ears causes coloring of the visual image. There have been several waves of research into synaesthesia over the last 120 years. Cytowic (2002) and Marks (1978) both provide exhaustive overviews; for a sampling of research see Hertz (1999), Hubbard (1996), Wells (1980), Williams (1976), and a host of studies on synaesthia in the arts has been published in the MIT Press’ Leonardo: The Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Science and Technology. With respect to the relation between synaesthesia and the experiment I propose here, see the next note.

[6] The parameters of the extraordinary number of compositional analogies generated in all these ways would form the phase space. A specific location in this phase space would be determined by the features constitutive of a specific configuration. A quality would be tagged to the location in this phase space of its analogized compositions. It is important to note that qualities arrayed in this fashion would be ordered in a manner other than by degrees of difference and similarity among them as sheer qualities. It is also worth emphasizing that the analogies generated in these ways would not be synaesthetic since they would not be the associating of one quality with another quality of a different type. Nor would the analogues be the form constants of sensation, which are simply the overall patterns in which qualitatively simple sensations tend to occur and which are common to different sense modalities. The goal of this type of analogizing is to “cognitively penetrate” (to use Gustafson's, 1998, apt phrase) the simple quality itself and reveal its hidden (from consciousness) inner structure.

[7] Compare this with the “FacePrints” program developed by Johnston (1999, ch. 3, 7) and used by police departments for generating pictures of criminals from witnesses.

[8] Why do I imagine that these experiments would produce any coherent results at all? Though my evidence, like Köhler's, is anecdotal, the reader can gather and assess it for him or her self. An enjoyable parlor game involves having dinner guests draw pictures of three colors using only white paper and pencil and without drawing pictures of things that have those colors. The drawings are then shuffled and displayed to all whereupon everyone has to guess the color being pictured. Results from this sort of “experiment” can be quite startling—often complete agreement is immediately reached concerning the identity of a pictured color. Furthermore, such configurational similitudes of qualities are the stock in trade of illustrators as is especially evident in older illustration that does not employ color. The experiments I propose would consolidate (or not) such folk scientific results.

[9] Of course, it would not follow that being aware of the configurations consistently and reliably judged as similar to a quality would amount to actually having experience with that quality (or having experience of that quality). There is no internal structure to the content of awareness that one is conscious of as structure, when one is aware of a simple quality—that is just what ‘simple’ means. There is structure in awareness that one can be conscious of when one is aware of a complex arrangement of elements that has been likened to that simple quality. Therefore, being aware of the quality is not the same state as being aware of that configurational similitude. The point of the proposed experiment is that the structure in awareness when one was aware of the analogized configuration would be the hidden (from consciousness) structure of the qualitative awareness. In someone who is blind to that simple quality, the articulated compositional structure does not or cannot function as a unit and, accordingly, a simple quality does not or cannot appear in that person's awareness.

[10] Strictly speaking, neither the possibility nor the actuality of absent or inverted qualia count against functionalist-information theoretic conceptions of the mind. If the qualitative character of experience is conceived as identical to functional-information structures then both inverted and absent qualia can be perfectly accounted for. The current physicalist assumption is that a qualitative mental state Q ₁ is identical to some functional information state FIS ₁. It is perfectly possible that FIS ₁ is one among several possible functional information states FIS ₂, FIS ₃, etc., any one of which would give the same output information states from the same input information states as that given by FIS ₁. If each of these “functional alternatives” were identical to a different quality Q ₂, Q ₃, etc., then Q ₁ would be invertible with respect to any of these other qualities (with no functional differences). If the qualitative character of an experience is identical to a “superfluous” function then it is capable of being absent. In the case of a superfluous function, even though a specific output does in fact result from a specific input to an information state (the state actually functions in the organism), that same output could follow directly from the input without the intervening functioning of that information state. If such a functionally superfluous information state of the human nervous system realized (or was identical to) a qualitative mental state, then that quality could be absent from an identically functioning organism or machine. Clearly, such superfluous functions would be weeded out over time since they would use up energy to no purpose. Nonetheless, at some points in the history of some species, organisms of that type have superfluous functions that are on their (slow) way out of the gene pool. (Dennett, 1991, ch. 12, § 5) The point to note here is that, not only do the possibilities of absent qualities and quality inversions not count against the functionalist-informational account of mind, such a theory provides a perfect explanation of them.