Josh Rasmussen has argued on pp. 85-7 of How Reason Can Lead to God that we have immediate awareness of the fact that conscious states, such as feelings and sensations, are distinct from material states:
[C]onsider the following aspects of mind and matter, respectively: (1) the sense of an itch and (2) being triangular. These aspects are different. Here is how you can tell: by your power of awareness. If you focus on an itch and then focus on a triangle, you can see some differences. You can see, for example, that an itchy feeling doesn’t have three sides . . . The feeling is not a triangle. In fact, it is not any shape.This power to see differences is the same power by which you can see that a triangle is different from a square. A square has four sides, while a triangle has only three sides. You see that four is not three. How? By direct awareness . . . [J]ust as you can see that your sense of an itch is different from a triangle, you can use this same power to compare your sense of an itch with any complicated pattern of shapes, motions, networks, or function. Use the following procedure: focus on a sensation, compare its aspects with any geometric structure, and notice any differences.
Notice that Josh sets out to establish that there’s a difference between “aspects” of mind and matter, like the sense of an itch and being triangular. Being triangular is clearly a property, so I’m tempted to interpret Josh as speaking of properties when he says “aspects.” But instead of sticking with this talk of aspects, Josh goes on to conclude that there’s a difference between particular mental and material objects, like an itchy feeling and a triangle (or triangular chunk of matter). He says we see that an itchy feeling and a triangle are different simply by seeing that the latter has three sides and the former doesn’t. But how do we see that an itchy feeling doesn’t have three sides? I agree that we see a thing needn‘t, conceptually speaking, have three sides to count as an itchy feeling, whereas a thing does need to have three sides to count as a triangle. That’s not to say that no itchy feeling actually has three sides.
I’ll admit the idea of an itchy feeling with three sides may seem weird. However, even a physicalist can account for this intuition in a few ways. One way is to explain away the intuition as ingrained in us by our culture, immersed as it is in the Cartesian dualist tradition. Another way is to view feelings as more like material processes (e.g., chemical reactions in the brain) than static material items. Processes don’t seem like the right kind of thing to have a certain number of sides, even if they involve an object with that number of sides. As such, our intuition could just be picking up on the process-like character of feelings.
How about the contention that mental and material aspects/properties differ, though? It is plausible that the property of being (or having) an itchy feeling and the property of being triangular are distinct, since we can coherently conceive of something having either property while lacking the other. Josh believes this distinction between conscious and non-conscious properties is unmistakable, and I take it that he thinks this confutes reductive physicalism:
[S]ome people have suggested that differences in perspective create an illusion of distinction [between the brain and the mind]. A feeling of happiness may seem different from chemical reactions, just as Clark Kent may seem different from Superman. Yet, the sober truth, they say, is that the brain and the mind are the same thing viewed from different perspectives.There is at least something right about this proposal. We can indeed view a single thing from different perspectives. For example, we can look at a coin from its tails side or from its heads side. Similarly, Lois can view Clark Kent as a news reporter or as a superhero. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to infer that one thing thereby lacks multiple properties. The one coin has two different sides, after all. Similarly, Clark Kent’s superhero properties differ from his news reporter properties.
In fact, the different perspectives are themselves windows into the different properties. You can see a coin, for example, from different sides precisely because the coin actually has different sides. Similarly, we can describe different states of a person precisely because a person has different states. For example, a neuroscientist can view a women’s brain activity while she sleeps without also viewing her dream of a fish. That’s precisely to be expected if a person has different sides—the conscious side (e.g., thoughts, feelings, emotions, mental images) and (ii) the non-conscious side (e.g., neural patterns, quantities, and motions). The perspectives objection doesn’t undermine this result; it points to it.
(Source: p. 108 of Is God the Best Explanation of Things?)
True, the properties that make Clark Kent a superhero differ from the ones that make him a news reporter. Likewise, the properties that make pleasure a feeling may differ from the ones that make it, say, a chemical reaction. But that only means that there’s no inconsistency in there being an instance of the feeling of pleasure that isn’t a chemical reaction. For just as there’s no contradiction in something’s having all of Clark Kent’s superhero properties without having his news reporter properties, there’s no contradiction in something’s having all of an instance of pleasure’s feeling properties without having its chemical reaction properties. It doesn’t follow from this that any actual instance of pleasure is not a chemical reaction, nor does it follow from this that it’s metaphysically possible for pleasure to lack the aforementioned chemical reaction properties. I mean, Clark Kent still is both a superhero and a news reporter, right? And it’s not even obvious that a superhero could be Clark Kent without also being a news reporter. So maybe every instance of pleasure is both a feeling and a chemical reaction, even though its feeling properties differ from its chemical reaction properties. If Josh’s argument fails to rule out this possibility, it fails to rule out reductive physicalisms such as the token identity theory, which says every instance of a mental state just is an instance of a physical state (although kinds of mental states may not be identical to kinds of physical states).
Also, to say that a neuroscientist can view a woman’s brain activity while she sleeps without viewing her dream of a fish begs the question against the objection Josh is addressing. If the objection is right, even though the neuroscientist views the woman’s brain activity without viewing it as her dream of a fish, the brain activity is her dream of a fish. So the neuroscientist is in fact viewing the woman’s dream, albeit from a perspective that obscures the features of the dream that the woman experiences while dreaming. Likewise, even though prescientific humans viewed water without viewing it as H2O, water has always been H2O. So prescientific humans were in fact viewing H2O, albeit at a macroscopic scale obscuring its chemical composition.
Good post.
Josh and I have talked extensively about this argument. Ultimately, it seems to come down to a particularist epistemology of the function and nature of arguments. Consider the claim: “I can be directly aware of my thoughts without thereby being directly aware f neurophysiological states.”
On one level, this is flatly question-begging. After all, if thoughts are in fact identical to neurophysiological states, then it is simply impossible for one to be aware of one without ipso facto being aware of the other. Hence, any claim that one could have such awareness must presuppose the distinctness of the things in question — the very thing in need of demonstration.
But on another level, this may boil down to how things seem to each individual given his or her priors, seemings, and so on. If it simply seems more plausible to one that compared to , then one can use this argument to justify the falsity of non-identity theory on the basis of one’s conparative seemings — and this, too, regardless of whether such an argument would be regarded by committed identity theorists as question-begging.
This brings us into the nature and purpose of arguments, the nature of justification, and the epistemology of argumentation. It gets highly technical very quickly. But this seems to be a sketch of how Josh would respond to this article.
Josh has, for instance, agreesd that on some level his awareness argument is question-begging — but whether this has any justificatory or argumentative force depends, for instance, on whether we can be epistemological particularists with respect to argumentation and/or justification.
Good post.
Josh and I have talked extensively about this argument. Ultimately, it seems to come down to a particularist epistemology of the function and nature of arguments. Consider the claim: “I can be directly aware of my thoughts without thereby being directly aware f neurophysiological states.”
On one level, this is flatly question-begging. After all, if thoughts are in fact identical to neurophysiological states, then it is simply impossible for one to be aware of one without ipso facto being aware of the other. Hence, any claim that one could have such awareness must presuppose the distinctness of the things in question — the very thing in need of demonstration.
But on another level, this may boil down to how things seem to each individual given his or her priors, seemings, and so on. If it simply seems more plausible to one that compared to , then one can use this argument to justify the falsity of non-identity theory on the basis of one’s conparative seemings — and this, too, regardless of whether such an argument would be regarded by committed identity theorists as question-begging.
This brings us into the nature and purpose of arguments, the nature of justification, and the epistemology of argumentation. It gets highly technical very quickly. But this seems to be a sketch of how Josh would respond to this article.
Josh has, for instance, agreesd that on some level his awareness argument is question-begging — but whether this has any justificatory or argumentative force depends, for instance, on whether we can be epistemological particularists with respect to argumentation and/or justification.
Coercion: If it simply seems more plausible to one that “I can be aware of thoughts without thereby being aware of neurophysiological states” compared to “thoughts are identical to neurophysiological states”
Coercion: If it simply seems more plausible to one that “I can be aware of thoughts without thereby being aware of neurophysiological states” compared to “thoughts are identical to neurophysiological states”
The second thing Josh may say is that there may be more striking agreement between you two than may first seem apparent. For consider that Josh would agree that a single bearer of properties can, of course, bear different properties. After all, the single person — Clark Kent — bears the super man properties and reporter properties.
Similarly, Josh agrees there is one reality, one bearer — the unified substantial person, you — which bears the different properties of qualitative, subjective, inner states (on the one hand) and properties of quantitative, objective, outer states (on the other). So, Josh would agree with you that, even if these properties are distinct, it doesn’t follow that their bearers are distinct. All Josh’s argument intended to do, from what I can tell, is affirm that the one things (qualitative, first-person aspects) are not identical to the other things (third-person aspects). There is one bearer of these different things — you.
Now, you may object: okay, so perhaps we can establish that such qualitative properties or aspects are distinct from the quantitative, third-person, objective, properties like shape, mass, size, motion, extension, and so on. But, you continue, perhaps the one bearer of such properties is just the material brain states. And, moreover, perhaps these are both sets of physical properties — just different *types* of physical properties, similar to how “mass properties” are different types of properties compared to “shape properties”, yet both are nevertheless physical properties.
In response, Josh may even agree, but then argue that now we essentially lose our grasp of what, precisely, “physical” properties are. After all, under this hypothetical response, we cannot adduce shape, size, extension, mass, or other third-personal properties as constitutive of physicality. What, then, are physical properties? We seem to undermine the bey foundations upon which we built any form of physicalism to begin with.
Just some thoughts.
The second thing Josh may say is that there may be more striking agreement between you two than may first seem apparent. For consider that Josh would agree that a single bearer of properties can, of course, bear different properties. After all, the single person — Clark Kent — bears the super man properties and reporter properties.
Similarly, Josh agrees there is one reality, one bearer — the unified substantial person, you — which bears the different properties of qualitative, subjective, inner states (on the one hand) and properties of quantitative, objective, outer states (on the other). So, Josh would agree with you that, even if these properties are distinct, it doesn’t follow that their bearers are distinct. All Josh’s argument intended to do, from what I can tell, is affirm that the one things (qualitative, first-person aspects) are not identical to the other things (third-person aspects). There is one bearer of these different things — you.
Now, you may object: okay, so perhaps we can establish that such qualitative properties or aspects are distinct from the quantitative, third-person, objective, properties like shape, mass, size, motion, extension, and so on. But, you continue, perhaps the one bearer of such properties is just the material brain states. And, moreover, perhaps these are both sets of physical properties — just different *types* of physical properties, similar to how “mass properties” are different types of properties compared to “shape properties”, yet both are nevertheless physical properties.
In response, Josh may even agree, but then argue that now we essentially lose our grasp of what, precisely, “physical” properties are. After all, under this hypothetical response, we cannot adduce shape, size, extension, mass, or other third-personal properties as constitutive of physicality. What, then, are physical properties? We seem to undermine the bey foundations upon which we built any form of physicalism to begin with.
Just some thoughts.