There’s no escaping from Kant, his whole system is set up as a genius ontological/epistemological trap. Kant famously ate qualia for breakfast, phenomena for lunch and philosophy of mind for dinner!
Hi Daniel. I’ve been challenging people like Dennett and Frankish too. I’m not sure if Kant will get you there in the end, but also consider my approach.
What do illusionists deny? I gained a good answer from Eric Schwitzgebel’s innocent/wonderful conception of consciousness, a paper written as a challenge to Keith Frankish. It taught me that they simply deny magical conceptions of consciousness, as in “ineffable”, “private”, and all the rest. So fine, I don’t believe in magical consciousness either (or magical anything). But here’s the thing. Illusionists do believe in one thing regarding consciousness that seems quite magical.
I began with Searle’s Chinese room. Don’t illusionists grasp the magic of saying that a room where Searle is using a rule book to assess Chinese input characters so that appropriate output characters can be created, will not “understand” Chinese? No? Maybe this is because “understanding” is a slippery term? We all understand thumb pain however, don’t we?
Here I observed that when my thumb gets whacked, associated information is neurally sent to my brain about the event. This should in some sense then be processed into new information, or the very thing that illusionists consider to mandate my thumb pain. Thus theoretically if there were marks on paper that were highly correlated with the information that my whacked thumb sends my brain, and it were scanned into a computer for algorithmic processing to print out paper with marks on it that highly correlate with my processed brain information, then something here should feel the very same thing I do when my thumb gets whacked! I consider this magical because in a causal world, information should only exist as such to the extent that it informs something causally appropriate. So my brain’s processed information should be informing something not yet determined which exists as me the experiencer of thumb pain.
If you check out my full post, first go directly to the AI podcast from Notebook LM. This was my first experiment with it, and I’m still blown away by how much better these “people” were able to say what I was trying to.
Somehow people have to develop an understanding of illusionism that doesn't leave the illusionists saying that things don’t seem the way things seem. If you think illusionists are denying a tautology, you have dismissed them without finding out what they are actually saying. Or trying to say.
To some extent, illusionists have made the mistake of saying that they don't believe in phenomenal consciousness, without first insisting on a coherent definition. The rebuttal or denial of an incoherent position will itself be at risk of incoherence, and saying that something does not exist before that something has been characterised is a waste of time.
To that extent, I agree with Mandik, though I believe there are concepts in the wreckage worth salvaging, whereas qualia quietism seems to deny that anything needs explaining.
Oh, I don’t think illusionists are denying a tautology. What I’m trying to do is deflate qualia to the extent that being an illusionist about that *might* be silly. So notice that I’m talking about what I call K-phenomenal properties, not classical phenomenal properties.
Of course, it might be the case that k-phenomenal properties need to go as well, but the jury is out.
Of course, in the article, i do characterise what I mean by k-phenomenal properties before I explore the implications of rejecting them… I hope that much was clear?
I agree with you that there is a “wreckage” and I should be read as exploring what’s worth salvaging, even if unsuccessful.
Can you give a one-line version of what a K-phenomenal property is?
If so, do you think that the provided definition is something that points to a property that can be coherently denied? I don’t think anyone is denying that things seem a certain way — or, if they do, they have assigned a special academic scaffolding to the word “seem”. Without tying ourselves in semantic knots, all the ontological caution we could ever wish for is there in the word “seem”. To say that things seem a certain way is to claim so little that it is hardly worth defending. I think people defend this minor truism while claiming to have defended something much more impressive.
Yes. A k-phenomenal property is just a way something appears or seems to be. At least that’s what I was claiming in the article.
In Pete’s response, he argues they would need to be thicker than mere seemings. He makes a distinction between phenomenal and doxastic appearances. I may ultimately agree, though I’m not sure how straightforwardly that distinction can be made. I quite like trivialising them (maybe this is why some think they are infallible/indubitable etc.).
But assuming it’s right to distinguish them, I’d differentiate between perceptual seemings on the one hand and doxastic seemings on the other, where a phenomenal seeming is just a perceptual seeming. The thing is, I think our beliefs/categorisations etc. affect our perceptions so this brings me back to the thinner notion of k-phenomenal properties being appearances, independently of the phenomenal/doxastic distinction.
Can it coherently be denied? Given the way I see currently see things, no. But I can imagine someone making some distinctions that make it possible for them to be coherently denied. As far as I understand Pete’s position, he thinks we can do without even perceptual appearances in favour of doxastic appearances only.
Pete’s position could be seen as eliminativist, and might be a coherent way of doing that, but if I opt for the thinner characterisation of k-phenomenal properties, then you could interpret him as identifying k-phenomenal properties with doxastic appearances.
I would take it that the standard illusionist position would be to agree that there are appearances (which might not be as well-specified as we think even within the space of appearances) but to insist that appearances have no fixed ontological claims and that the default, natural ontological backing that our brain provides is misguided. Some might put the blame on philosophers, more than the brain, for making ontological assumptions from specific theory-laden vantage points. I think it is a collaborative effort, with brains hardwired to misrepresent ontology and many philosophers making things worse.
But all of that can be discussed without denying appearances being how they seem. Seeming is just having an appearance, not reaching that appearance by any specific ontological method. The illusionist is challenging the assumed ontological backstory for the appearance more than the appearance itself, though terminology varies, and “appearance” could be interpreted as appearing in some Cartesian space at some time T with fixed qualitative properties Q, all of which is highly dubious, because there is no fixed phenomenal screen with a stable observer (as per Quining Qualia).
All characterisations of illusionists as people who deny that things seem to them the way things seem to them are just failing to engage. You are not necessarily doing this, but you seem to wander close to doing it.
I mostly agree with Pete here, but I think it would take pages and pages to explain.
I also disagree with him on one key issue: I think the notion of phenomenal properties is important, and coming to grips with the phenomenal will be an important part of a mature theory of the mind.
I think language lets us down, though, so it is barely possible to discuss the issues with the available tools. In that sense, I am firmly on Pete’s side. Qualia realists do not even know what they are realists about. illusionists have been very vague about what aspect of qualia realism is wrong, and should spend far more time insisting on better definitions.
I would add that Block’s terminology is not just confused in its application by others; it was confused in his original paper. I don't think the term "phenomenal consciousness" can be rescued from the current mess. He uses it with 3-5 different meanings.
Great post! I can tell you from my personal experience that if you have something like Kantian phenomena in mind (or just qualitative, not quantitative, experience) and you read Dennett's Quining Qualia paper without realizing what contemporary philosophers are saying, you are going to get very confused.
"But even if you don’t go all the way with Kant, a phenomenon is just a fancy word for how something appears, which I take it no one really wants to reject."
I don't love the word 'phenomena' insofar as it evokes the Kantian phenomena-noumena divide, but I don't want to collapse the experiential distinction you're pointing to in the example about the lemons. There's a shift in our mode of experience which gives us the sense we are bringing something to the table, something "subjective" that "belongs to me", something separate from the object. As you point out, this makes it seem unclear what belongs to the object. Kant thinks this state of affairs means our minds must bind the thing itself (whatever that is) into a coherent subjective experience. But this Kantian synthesis is never actually experienced, it's an assumption about the experiential shift in mode you're describing. I think such shifts can be preserved if we tread carefully. It just seems easier to leave Kant out of it.
"Interestingly, the best free pass to the noumenal realm is to say either that the phenomenal realm exhausts the noumenal realm, or that the phenomenal realm is part of the noumenal realm. Neither of which reject the reality of Kantian phenomenal properties."
This terminology could get very confusing, especially for those who don't quite grasp what Kant meant by noumena. But again, I think I see what you mean.
Anyway, great work on this post. You went through quite a lot of philosophical history without getting bogged down, and I think you're on the right track.
The k-zombie need not make discriminations by chance if one wants to assume that qualia, while real, is epiphenomenal. But then, of course, we don’t make our discriminations because of our phenomenal properties either! Now, epiphenominalism is crazy imho, and probably incoherent, but it haunts all zombie-arguments, and strictly speaking the discrimination need not be random in the zombie; it’s made “mechanically” but still deterministically.
(Only for those so provoked; ie what’s the point of all this?) Are ordinary minds (analytical intellects) – with a touch of intellectual education/discrimination – not able to ‘perceive’ & then ‘think about their perceptions’ without referring to the big names of philosophy? Apparently (doxastically) not; ordinarily we (all of us poor stupid humans) are terminally confused by the continuum of certainty & uncertainty & need the likes of Kant & Block to help us out. Help us to do what? Ground ourselves in authorised conceptions? What happens if we simply observe the ordinary everyday normal interplay between perception & conception - characterised & underpinned as it is by certainty & uncertainty - & articulate it in plain & simple language? ‘Astonishingly naïve’ is the standard response because to do that would not be ‘skillful’ (analytically philosophically perspicacious & unyielding) enough. Okay. (Something has gone very badly wrong somewhere, & we need to take refuge in ever-increasing conceptual complexity?)
What I was referring to here is about attention, not about perception. I don’t “perceive” the way I am perceiving- that would be impossible by my lights. I can however turn my attention to that matter.
There’s no escaping from Kant, his whole system is set up as a genius ontological/epistemological trap. Kant famously ate qualia for breakfast, phenomena for lunch and philosophy of mind for dinner!
Hi Daniel. I’ve been challenging people like Dennett and Frankish too. I’m not sure if Kant will get you there in the end, but also consider my approach.
What do illusionists deny? I gained a good answer from Eric Schwitzgebel’s innocent/wonderful conception of consciousness, a paper written as a challenge to Keith Frankish. It taught me that they simply deny magical conceptions of consciousness, as in “ineffable”, “private”, and all the rest. So fine, I don’t believe in magical consciousness either (or magical anything). But here’s the thing. Illusionists do believe in one thing regarding consciousness that seems quite magical.
I began with Searle’s Chinese room. Don’t illusionists grasp the magic of saying that a room where Searle is using a rule book to assess Chinese input characters so that appropriate output characters can be created, will not “understand” Chinese? No? Maybe this is because “understanding” is a slippery term? We all understand thumb pain however, don’t we?
Here I observed that when my thumb gets whacked, associated information is neurally sent to my brain about the event. This should in some sense then be processed into new information, or the very thing that illusionists consider to mandate my thumb pain. Thus theoretically if there were marks on paper that were highly correlated with the information that my whacked thumb sends my brain, and it were scanned into a computer for algorithmic processing to print out paper with marks on it that highly correlate with my processed brain information, then something here should feel the very same thing I do when my thumb gets whacked! I consider this magical because in a causal world, information should only exist as such to the extent that it informs something causally appropriate. So my brain’s processed information should be informing something not yet determined which exists as me the experiencer of thumb pain.
If you check out my full post, first go directly to the AI podcast from Notebook LM. This was my first experiment with it, and I’m still blown away by how much better these “people” were able to say what I was trying to.
https://eborg760.substack.com/p/post-3-the-magic-of-computational
Somehow people have to develop an understanding of illusionism that doesn't leave the illusionists saying that things don’t seem the way things seem. If you think illusionists are denying a tautology, you have dismissed them without finding out what they are actually saying. Or trying to say.
To some extent, illusionists have made the mistake of saying that they don't believe in phenomenal consciousness, without first insisting on a coherent definition. The rebuttal or denial of an incoherent position will itself be at risk of incoherence, and saying that something does not exist before that something has been characterised is a waste of time.
To that extent, I agree with Mandik, though I believe there are concepts in the wreckage worth salvaging, whereas qualia quietism seems to deny that anything needs explaining.
Oh, I don’t think illusionists are denying a tautology. What I’m trying to do is deflate qualia to the extent that being an illusionist about that *might* be silly. So notice that I’m talking about what I call K-phenomenal properties, not classical phenomenal properties.
Of course, it might be the case that k-phenomenal properties need to go as well, but the jury is out.
Of course, in the article, i do characterise what I mean by k-phenomenal properties before I explore the implications of rejecting them… I hope that much was clear?
I agree with you that there is a “wreckage” and I should be read as exploring what’s worth salvaging, even if unsuccessful.
Can you give a one-line version of what a K-phenomenal property is?
If so, do you think that the provided definition is something that points to a property that can be coherently denied? I don’t think anyone is denying that things seem a certain way — or, if they do, they have assigned a special academic scaffolding to the word “seem”. Without tying ourselves in semantic knots, all the ontological caution we could ever wish for is there in the word “seem”. To say that things seem a certain way is to claim so little that it is hardly worth defending. I think people defend this minor truism while claiming to have defended something much more impressive.
Yes. A k-phenomenal property is just a way something appears or seems to be. At least that’s what I was claiming in the article.
In Pete’s response, he argues they would need to be thicker than mere seemings. He makes a distinction between phenomenal and doxastic appearances. I may ultimately agree, though I’m not sure how straightforwardly that distinction can be made. I quite like trivialising them (maybe this is why some think they are infallible/indubitable etc.).
But assuming it’s right to distinguish them, I’d differentiate between perceptual seemings on the one hand and doxastic seemings on the other, where a phenomenal seeming is just a perceptual seeming. The thing is, I think our beliefs/categorisations etc. affect our perceptions so this brings me back to the thinner notion of k-phenomenal properties being appearances, independently of the phenomenal/doxastic distinction.
Can it coherently be denied? Given the way I see currently see things, no. But I can imagine someone making some distinctions that make it possible for them to be coherently denied. As far as I understand Pete’s position, he thinks we can do without even perceptual appearances in favour of doxastic appearances only.
Pete’s position could be seen as eliminativist, and might be a coherent way of doing that, but if I opt for the thinner characterisation of k-phenomenal properties, then you could interpret him as identifying k-phenomenal properties with doxastic appearances.
Okay, thanks.
I would take it that the standard illusionist position would be to agree that there are appearances (which might not be as well-specified as we think even within the space of appearances) but to insist that appearances have no fixed ontological claims and that the default, natural ontological backing that our brain provides is misguided. Some might put the blame on philosophers, more than the brain, for making ontological assumptions from specific theory-laden vantage points. I think it is a collaborative effort, with brains hardwired to misrepresent ontology and many philosophers making things worse.
But all of that can be discussed without denying appearances being how they seem. Seeming is just having an appearance, not reaching that appearance by any specific ontological method. The illusionist is challenging the assumed ontological backstory for the appearance more than the appearance itself, though terminology varies, and “appearance” could be interpreted as appearing in some Cartesian space at some time T with fixed qualitative properties Q, all of which is highly dubious, because there is no fixed phenomenal screen with a stable observer (as per Quining Qualia).
All characterisations of illusionists as people who deny that things seem to them the way things seem to them are just failing to engage. You are not necessarily doing this, but you seem to wander close to doing it.
I think I’ll re-read your post. I found myself disagreeing, but might have been applying the wrong concepts to your words.
Do you have a link to Pete’s discussion of doxastic appearances?
Sure: https://open.substack.com/pub/petemandik/p/kant-cannot-protect-your-qualia?r=3etv8w&utm_medium=ios
I mostly agree with Pete here, but I think it would take pages and pages to explain.
I also disagree with him on one key issue: I think the notion of phenomenal properties is important, and coming to grips with the phenomenal will be an important part of a mature theory of the mind.
I think language lets us down, though, so it is barely possible to discuss the issues with the available tools. In that sense, I am firmly on Pete’s side. Qualia realists do not even know what they are realists about. illusionists have been very vague about what aspect of qualia realism is wrong, and should spend far more time insisting on better definitions.
I would add that Block’s terminology is not just confused in its application by others; it was confused in his original paper. I don't think the term "phenomenal consciousness" can be rescued from the current mess. He uses it with 3-5 different meanings.
Fair.
Great post! I can tell you from my personal experience that if you have something like Kantian phenomena in mind (or just qualitative, not quantitative, experience) and you read Dennett's Quining Qualia paper without realizing what contemporary philosophers are saying, you are going to get very confused.
"But even if you don’t go all the way with Kant, a phenomenon is just a fancy word for how something appears, which I take it no one really wants to reject."
I don't love the word 'phenomena' insofar as it evokes the Kantian phenomena-noumena divide, but I don't want to collapse the experiential distinction you're pointing to in the example about the lemons. There's a shift in our mode of experience which gives us the sense we are bringing something to the table, something "subjective" that "belongs to me", something separate from the object. As you point out, this makes it seem unclear what belongs to the object. Kant thinks this state of affairs means our minds must bind the thing itself (whatever that is) into a coherent subjective experience. But this Kantian synthesis is never actually experienced, it's an assumption about the experiential shift in mode you're describing. I think such shifts can be preserved if we tread carefully. It just seems easier to leave Kant out of it.
"Interestingly, the best free pass to the noumenal realm is to say either that the phenomenal realm exhausts the noumenal realm, or that the phenomenal realm is part of the noumenal realm. Neither of which reject the reality of Kantian phenomenal properties."
This terminology could get very confusing, especially for those who don't quite grasp what Kant meant by noumena. But again, I think I see what you mean.
Anyway, great work on this post. You went through quite a lot of philosophical history without getting bogged down, and I think you're on the right track.
Thanks for your thought comment, and for taking the time to read 🙏🏻
The k-zombie need not make discriminations by chance if one wants to assume that qualia, while real, is epiphenomenal. But then, of course, we don’t make our discriminations because of our phenomenal properties either! Now, epiphenominalism is crazy imho, and probably incoherent, but it haunts all zombie-arguments, and strictly speaking the discrimination need not be random in the zombie; it’s made “mechanically” but still deterministically.
(Only for those so provoked; ie what’s the point of all this?) Are ordinary minds (analytical intellects) – with a touch of intellectual education/discrimination – not able to ‘perceive’ & then ‘think about their perceptions’ without referring to the big names of philosophy? Apparently (doxastically) not; ordinarily we (all of us poor stupid humans) are terminally confused by the continuum of certainty & uncertainty & need the likes of Kant & Block to help us out. Help us to do what? Ground ourselves in authorised conceptions? What happens if we simply observe the ordinary everyday normal interplay between perception & conception - characterised & underpinned as it is by certainty & uncertainty - & articulate it in plain & simple language? ‘Astonishingly naïve’ is the standard response because to do that would not be ‘skillful’ (analytically philosophically perspicacious & unyielding) enough. Okay. (Something has gone very badly wrong somewhere, & we need to take refuge in ever-increasing conceptual complexity?)
What I was referring to here is about attention, not about perception. I don’t “perceive” the way I am perceiving- that would be impossible by my lights. I can however turn my attention to that matter.