The Phenomenological Fallacy

According to Place , if consciousness is a brain process, then the introspective observations reported by a subject must be accountable for in terms of brain processes. Place notes that, typically, the neuroscientists concern is not self-contradiction in asserting that consciousness is a brain process, but rather the apparent irreducibility of conscious states into the language used to describe well-known properties of the nervous system. As has been pointed out time and time again, there seems to be a fundamental disconnect there. This is a well-known concern of philosophers as well, cf. Jackson’s knowledge argument and other appeals to qualitative mental states as irreducible.

Place has a straightforward criticism of arguments from qualia that is interesting insofar as it doesn’t appeal to the functional role of any particular qualitative state, though it seems to hint in that direction. The Argument from Irreducibility, as I’ll call it, rests crucially on the following error in reasoning:

The Phenomenological Fallacy (PF)

When a subject s describes his ‘introspective’ observations of so-called qualitative states (i.e. his experience of looks, smells, sounds, feels, and other seemings), s describes literal properties of objects and events experienced in the ‘phenomenal field’.

The idea is that s reports on experiences that he is having in a kind of phenomenological theatre; reminiscent of the very Cartesian idea that the mind is necessarily better known than anything ‘external’ to the mind. What is the problem with this line of reasoning?

To use Place’s example, allow that s experiences a green after-image. s reports something like, ‘When I close my eyes I see a green object in front of me.’ The phenomenological fallacy is to claim that s literally experiences or actually sees a green object. Of course, such an object clearly does not correspond to any object in s’s environment, nor is likely to be manifest in any particular brain process where we to open up s’s head and look inside. Echoing the original argument from the conceptual independence of CONSCIOUSNESS and BRAIN PROCESS, the conclusion is just that COLOR, for instance, is not the sort of concept applicable to brain processes at all.

According to Place, here is the error: PF depends on the assumptions, more or less equivalent, that:

(1) Our ability to describe things in our environment depends on our consciousness of them.
(2) Our descriptions of things are primarily descriptions of our conscious experience and only inferentially descriptions of objects in the environment.

In effect, we infer real properties from phenomenal ones, but Place claims that the opposite is just the case. It is true that “We begin by learning to recognize the real properties of things in our environment.” But the fact that we learn to recognize real properties by the way they look, smell, etc. does not entail that we have to learn how to describe those looks, smells, tastes, etc. before we can describe the real objects themselves. It is simply a myth to assume that we describe experience with reference to phenomenal properties; rather we have from the beginning access to actual physical properties/objects. It is these real properties and objects that in turn ‘give rise’ to conscious experience we then try to describe.

So, to return to the subject s, when he says, ‘When I close my eyes I see a green object in front of me’, we should analyze this claim into, ‘When I close my eyes I have the sort of experience I normally have when I look at a green patch of light.’ The distinction is that the second claim makes it clear that there isn’t anything there, really: no green ‘object’. It is interesting to think about how this line of reasoning might apply to other phenomenal ‘objects’ and states. Place might be read as implying, for example, that pain would be somehow likewise ‘unreal’, or at least provide an interesting argument to the effect that pain is not an intentional object, as other have argued.

Now, Place’s argument seems to rest on some pretty substantial metaphysical/epistemological assumptions about the nature of objects and our access to those objects. But I’m sure there are some strategies to draw on there. What’s interesting to consider is the possibility that if we lose phenomenal objects (as they’re construed by the folks Place is concerned with), we may be free to posit the kind of identity Place wants. At least, there is nothing inconsistent or contradictory in saying for instance, that a particular experience of pain, or a green- after image is anything over and above a brain process. Again, if we can have contingent identity of the kind Place argues for early on, then the ‘irreducibility’ of the conscious states to physical states becomes a matter of a subject’s just not being able to verify the former introspectively. But we can’t learn the general identity of LIGHTNING and ELECTRIC CHARGES IN MOTION by introspection either.