Science and 'qualia'
I've been thinking about 'science' and 'qualia' recently. I'm not sure that I've come to any conclusions, really, so I'll set out the train of my thoughts and maybe I'll have a notion of the direction my thoughts are heading. Or maybe not.
Anyway, I've been reading a book called 'Philosophy' by Anthony O'Hear who is a Professor of Philosophy at Bradford University. It was to me not a very satisfying book, since it favoured common sense over deep analysis. O'Hear rejects both the 'technical approach of the Anglo-Americans which is inaccessible to most and oracular obscurantism of the Continental approach which does violence to sense and reason', to quote from the book's flyleaf. However he doesn't have anything substantial to replace either of these approaches.
However, one opinion of O'Hear's that I find interesting is his assertion that 'we should treat with caution the ideology which tells us that scientific accounts give us the whole truth'. Um, yes, well.
O'Hear doesn't want us to reject science per se, but suggests that there are things which science cannot tell us. I find this arguable on several accounts, a couple of which I shall go into here.
Firstly, science does not claim to know everything now. Science is quite happy with the partial picture. Science however does purport to be able to, eventually, explain everything (if the end of the Universe does not come first, of course!)
The fact that it cannot describe the how and the why of things like feelings, beliefs, emotion, and experiences - the things that make us humans - doesn't mean that it will never get a handle on these things. Science is essentially descriptive, mathematical description piled on mathematical description, like a house of cards piled one on another. (Albeit, the scientific house of cards is founded on substantial foundations and is far more stable than the metaphorical house of cards - a discussion left for another time.)
The view that everything has a physical explanation is sometimes called physicalism. The version of physicalism I'm describing could be called 'descriptive physicalism' - everything can be described by science.
Which brings me to 'qualia'. Qualia are roughly 'what it feels like to experience various physical sensations'. Such as a blue sky, the feeling or pain or sorrow. Are these qualia susceptible to scientific description? Are they physical phenomena themselves?
The usual counter to physicalism, as described by Frank Jackson, is Mary, a person who has been brought up in a black and white world. Jackson describes her as shut in a black and white room, but perhaps a better analogy would be that she suffers from colour blindness. Mary is a brilliant scientist and learns all the physical facts that it is possible to know about human vision, colour, and the effects on the brain of 'seeing a blue sky'.
Mary undergoes an operation (in my version of the tale!) which allows her to experience colour vision for the first time. Does she say 'Uh-huh! That's exactly what I knew it would be like from my studies. After all, everything is physical and I already knew all the physical facts about vision. Nothing new there'. Or would she say 'Wow! That's what it is like to experience colour. I never knew, even though I knew all the physical facts. Qualia are non-physical!'
There's two approaches to solving this dilemma.
Either you can argue that qualia are non-physical. I dislike this approach because science is not limited to what we know now. I'd say that the jury is still out, but I'd argue that in the future, when we know more about minds and brains and consciousness and the way that they work, we could have a physical description of qualia.
Or you can argue that qualia (and for that matter all secondary qualities of objects) are physical or at least physically describable and that Mary would give the 'Uh-huh' response above to actually experiencing qualia.
The non-physicalists have a real problem - if qualia are not physical, how can they affect the physical world? There is no mechanism. But it is certainly true that seeing a blue sky can raise one's spirits, especially if some enjoyable activity that relies on good weather is planned!
Anyway, I've been reading a book called 'Philosophy' by Anthony O'Hear who is a Professor of Philosophy at Bradford University. It was to me not a very satisfying book, since it favoured common sense over deep analysis. O'Hear rejects both the 'technical approach of the Anglo-Americans which is inaccessible to most and oracular obscurantism of the Continental approach which does violence to sense and reason', to quote from the book's flyleaf. However he doesn't have anything substantial to replace either of these approaches.
However, one opinion of O'Hear's that I find interesting is his assertion that 'we should treat with caution the ideology which tells us that scientific accounts give us the whole truth'. Um, yes, well.
O'Hear doesn't want us to reject science per se, but suggests that there are things which science cannot tell us. I find this arguable on several accounts, a couple of which I shall go into here.
Firstly, science does not claim to know everything now. Science is quite happy with the partial picture. Science however does purport to be able to, eventually, explain everything (if the end of the Universe does not come first, of course!)
The fact that it cannot describe the how and the why of things like feelings, beliefs, emotion, and experiences - the things that make us humans - doesn't mean that it will never get a handle on these things. Science is essentially descriptive, mathematical description piled on mathematical description, like a house of cards piled one on another. (Albeit, the scientific house of cards is founded on substantial foundations and is far more stable than the metaphorical house of cards - a discussion left for another time.)
The view that everything has a physical explanation is sometimes called physicalism. The version of physicalism I'm describing could be called 'descriptive physicalism' - everything can be described by science.
Which brings me to 'qualia'. Qualia are roughly 'what it feels like to experience various physical sensations'. Such as a blue sky, the feeling or pain or sorrow. Are these qualia susceptible to scientific description? Are they physical phenomena themselves?
The usual counter to physicalism, as described by Frank Jackson, is Mary, a person who has been brought up in a black and white world. Jackson describes her as shut in a black and white room, but perhaps a better analogy would be that she suffers from colour blindness. Mary is a brilliant scientist and learns all the physical facts that it is possible to know about human vision, colour, and the effects on the brain of 'seeing a blue sky'.
Mary undergoes an operation (in my version of the tale!) which allows her to experience colour vision for the first time. Does she say 'Uh-huh! That's exactly what I knew it would be like from my studies. After all, everything is physical and I already knew all the physical facts about vision. Nothing new there'. Or would she say 'Wow! That's what it is like to experience colour. I never knew, even though I knew all the physical facts. Qualia are non-physical!'
There's two approaches to solving this dilemma.
Either you can argue that qualia are non-physical. I dislike this approach because science is not limited to what we know now. I'd say that the jury is still out, but I'd argue that in the future, when we know more about minds and brains and consciousness and the way that they work, we could have a physical description of qualia.
Or you can argue that qualia (and for that matter all secondary qualities of objects) are physical or at least physically describable and that Mary would give the 'Uh-huh' response above to actually experiencing qualia.
The non-physicalists have a real problem - if qualia are not physical, how can they affect the physical world? There is no mechanism. But it is certainly true that seeing a blue sky can raise one's spirits, especially if some enjoyable activity that relies on good weather is planned!
posted by Barzoomian at 2:29 AM
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