Representing qualia: an epistemic path out of the hard problem

Farhan Rafiq Lakhany

doi:10.25820/etd.006966

In attempting to make sense of consciousness, one popular approach is to appeal to cognitive science: at this point, most everyone in the debate seems to agree that consciousness is somehow related to brain processes. Over the last few decades, cognitive science has been very successful in explaining how parts of our brains (often in conjunction with our bodies) function. Consciousness, being intimately related to brain processes, would seem well within the purview of cognitive science, but here is where the difficulty arises. Explanations in cognitive science are best suited to a functional or computational style of explanation and consciousness appears to be something of a mixed bag on this score: some aspects of it appear amenable to a functional/computational explanation and other parts do not. The parts that do not are those that have to do with qualitative experience. In my dissertation, I argue against the claim that qualitative experience falls outside of the scope of a neuroscientific explanation and articulate an error theory for the belief that it does. To keep my project focused, I primarily engage David Chalmers’s “Hard Problem of Consciousness” (HPOC) and set up the problem as one of reduction. For a successful reduction, three pieces need to be place: the phenomena being reduced, the reductive relation that is being employed, and the base that it is being reduced to. In this case, the first is qualitative experience, the second a supervenience relation and the third is the structure and functioning of the brain. To provide an explanatory account, philosophers have often attempted to modify either the second or the third piece to provide a satisfactory account, but I decide, instead, to focus on the first aspect: qualitative experience. Many assume that little, if anything, can be known with more certainty than qualitative experience and thus we are supposed to have a firm grip on the nature of what needs to be explained. Building off this, philosophers often have, after directly introspecting their own experiences, concluded that qualitative experience has the second-order property of being non-functional and as neuroscientific explanation only apply to entities that are defined functionally, no neuroscientific account can be provided. I argue that it is a mistake to think that qualitative experience cannot be given a functional definition and I argue for this point by focusing on the epistemic access that we have to our own conscious states. More specifically, I claim that what motivates non-reductive arguments is the, sometimes implicit, assumption that an epistemic relation of acquaintance is thought to hold between a subject and their qualitative states. This relation is supposed to provide the subject with non-inferential justification for the belief that qualitative experience has the second-order property of being non-functional. With the main target in hand, I respond to it in two steps. First, I articulate the specific permutation of acquaintance that is being assumed in many non-reductive arguments. With it in focus, I provide three different arguments against the acquaintance relation. Second, I provide an error theory for why we might believe that we are acquainted with phenomenal properties (properties of qualitative experience) and for why we believe that phenomenal properties have the second-order property of being non-functional. With this project, I endorse a form of illusionism about conscious experience. More specifically, I argue against the claim that, in having an experience, some non-functional phenomenal properties are instantiated that cause one to believe that they have a certain nature that is incompatible with a neuroscientific explanation. Nevertheless, I do argue that it does seem as if my experience instantiates such properties and thus, I conclude the dissertation by articulating a unique error theory for why it seems to us to be this way. To make sense of this seeming, I appeal to work done in predictive coding to explain how we expect our phenomenal states to be functionally analyzable and how, due to the state’s introspective opacity, such an expectation is flouted. This, in turn, results in a faulty, unconscious, inference about the nature of the state: they are non-functional. After this, a further inference is made to explain how we can directly confront these non-functional, qualitative properties: we are acquainted with them. The form of illusionism I adopt in this project does not deny that there are phenomenal properties but rather argues that our difficulties are due to an introspective illusion about their nature. In lieu of the mistaken conception, I articulate a unique representational theory of consciousness and identify phenomenal properties with properties of the representation (not the object that is represented). On my view, representations (the intentionality of experience) can be defined functionally and thus falls within the purview of a neuroscientific research program. That said, what the representations are about – non-functional phenomenal properties – do not exist and are fictional objects in the same sense that Sherlock Holmes is understood to be a fictional entity. The upshot of this project is a dissolution of the Hard Problem of Consciousness by showing how, despite initial appearances, phenomenal properties do not pose the difficulty that many thought. More synoptically, this project is split into five chapters. The first chapter sets up the debate by delineating between multiple phenomena associated with consciousness and homing in on the relevant aspect. From here, I further define this aspect and explicate, by appealing to work done by David Chalmers, why it poses such a difficult problem. I articulate six different ways of responding to the difficulty before picking one of them – analyzing the nature of phenomenal properties – to engage with for the rest of the project. In the second chapter, I focus in on the specific intuition that serves to prop up the “Hard Problem of Consciousness” (HPOC) and clarify my proposal. This chapter also articulates one way that advocates of the HPOC will seek to justify the intuition: by relying on Frank Jackson’s famous Knowledge Argument. I provide six further ways of responding to the Knowledge Argument and consider a move that I think advocates of the HPOC will make. This move appeals to a specific epistemic relation of acquaintance that exists between a subject and their mental states as a way of short-circuiting all the responses. In the third chapter, I articulate exactly which permutation of acquaintance certain advocates of the HPOC are appealing to and the kind of justification that it is supposed to provide. To do this, I canvas different types of justification, the nature of the justifiers in question and how they are supposed to confer justification. After this, I consider five different questions for an acquaintance theorist and answer each to better home in on the interpretation of acquaintance that is most relevant for this project. In the fourth chapter, I argue against the relation of acquaintance. To do this, I highlight three, each individually necessary, components of an acquaintance relation. The first is some object that a subject is acquainted with, the second is a subject that is acquainted with some object and the third is the relation of direct awareness itself that is supposed to hold between the two. From here, I argue against each in turn. For the first, I discuss the Myth of the Given and how it introduces the problem before applying the discussion to David Chalmers’s analysis of phenomenal belief. I argue that Chalmers’s analysis is flawed and raise difficulties for how he “takes up” some phenomenal property into a concept. The second argument appeals to work done by Miri Albahari and argues against the reality of a specific notion of self that is supposed to become acquainted with some object. The third argument considers two further arguments for establishing the reality of the relation itself – an inference to the best explanation and the idea of being acquainted with acquaintance. I argue that the first has a rival, equally plausible, interpretation insofar as we represent ourselves as being acquainted (even though we are not) and that the second is phenomenologically implausible. The fifth chapter wraps up the project by providing an error theory for why philosophers have thought that there is a relation of acquaintance and that phenomenal properties are non-functional. To do this, I appeal to work done in predictive coding and other work in contemporary neuroscience. In this chapter, I also articulate my own positive proposal for what phenomenal properties are: I argue that they are representational properties. When we have, for example, an experience of a red object, we do not instantiate phenomenal redness but rather represent ourselves as instantiating phenomenal redness (we misrepresent). This chapter concludes by raising and answering some outstanding questions, setting up future research projects and recapping the project as a whole.

Representing qualia: an epistemic path out of the hard problem

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