Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind, and Language

Qualia conceived of as the qualitative character of experience—the philosophers’ conception The temptation to extend the concept of consciousness to encompass the whole domain of ‘experience’ was greatly strengthened by philosophers’ misconceived introduction of the notion of qualia. Neuroscientists unfortunately picked up this aberrant idea and the misconceptions associated with it. The term ‘qualia’ was introduced to signify the alleged ‘qualitative character of experience’. Every experience, it is claimed, has a distinctive qualitative character. Qualia, Ned Block holds, ‘include the ways it feels to see, hear and smell, the way it feels to have a pain; more generally, what it’s like to have mental states. Qualia are experiential properties of sensations, feelings, perceptions and … thoughts and desires as well.’¹ Similarly, Searle argues that ‘Every conscious state has a certain qualitative feel to it, and you can see this if you consider examples. The experience of tasting beer is very different from hearing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and both of those have a different qualitative character from smelling a rose or seeing a sunset. These examples illustrate the different qualitative features of conscious experiences.’² Like Block, Searle too holds that thinking has a special qualitative feel to it: ‘There is something it is like to think that two plus two equals four. There is no way to describe it except by saying that it is the character of thinking consciously “two plus two equals four”.’³ The subject matter of an investigation of consciousness, Chalmers suggests, ‘is best characterized as “the subjective quality of experience”’. A mental state is conscious, he claims, ‘if it has a qualitative feel—an associated quality of experience. These qualitative feels are also known as phenomenal qualities, or qualia for short. The problem of explaining these phenomenal qualities is just the problem of explaining consciousness.’⁴ He too takes the view that thinking is an experience with a qualitative content: ‘When I think of a lion, for instance, there seems to be a whiff of leonine quality to my phenomenology: what it is like to think of a lion is subtly different from what it is like to think of the Eiffel tower.’⁵

Neuroscientists follow the philosophers Neuroscientists have gone along with the notion of qualia. Ian Glynn contends that ‘Although qualia are most obviously associated with sensations and perceptions, they are also found in other mental states, such as beliefs, desires, hopes, and fears, during conscious episodes of these states.’⁶ Damasio states that ‘Qualia are the simple sensory qualities to be found in the blueness of the sky or the tone of a sound produced by a cello, and the fundamental components of the images [of which perception allegedly consists] are thus made up of qualia.’⁷ Edelman and Tononi hold that ‘each differentiable conscious experience represents a different quale, whether it is primarily a sensation, an image, a thought, or even a mood …’⁸, and go on to claim that ‘the problem of qualia’ is ‘perhaps the most daunting problem of consciousness’.

Explaining the qualitative character of experience in terms of there being something it is like to have it The subjective or qualitative feel of a conscious experience is in turn characterized in terms of there being something it is like for an organism to have the experience. What it is like is the subjective character of the experience. ‘An experience or other mental entity is “phenomenally conscious”’, the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy tells us, ‘just in case there is something it is like for one to have it.’⁹ ‘Conscious states are qualitative’, Searle explains, ‘in the sense that for any conscious state … there is something that it qualitatively feels like to be in that state.’¹⁰ The idea, and the mesmerizing turn of phrase ‘there is something which it is like’, derive from a paper by the philosopher Thomas Nagel entitled ‘What is it like to be a bat?’. Nagel argued that ‘the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism…. Fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism.’¹¹ This, i.e. what it is like for the organism, is the subjective character or quality of experience.

It is important to note that the phrase ‘there is something which it is like for a subject to have experience E’ does not indicate a comparison. Nagel does not claim that to have a given conscious experience resembles something (e.g. some other experience), but rather that there is something which it is like for the subject to have it, i.e. ‘what it is like’ is intended to signify ‘how it is for the subject himself’.¹² It is, however, striking that Nagel never tells us, with regard to even one experience, what it is like for anyone to have it. He claims that the qualitative character of the experiences of other species may be beyond our ability to conceive. Indeed, the same may be true of the experiences of other human beings. ‘The subjective character of the experience of a person deaf and blind from birth is not accessible to me, for example, nor is mine to him.’ But we know what it is like to be us, ‘and while we do not possess the vocabulary to describe it adequately, its subjective character is highly specific, and in some respects describable in terms that can be understood only by creatures like us.’¹³

Philosophers and neuroscientists concur Philosophers and neuroscientists have gone along with this idea. It seems to them to capture the essential nature of conscious beings and conscious experience. Thus Davies and Humphries contend that, ‘while there is nothing that it is like to be a brick, or an ink-jet printer, there is, presumably, something it is like to be a bat, or a dolphin, and there is certainly something it is like to be a human being. A system—whether a creature or artefact—is conscious just in case there is something it is like to be that system.’¹⁴ Edelman and Tononi agree that ‘We know what it is like to be us, but we would like to explain why we are conscious at all, why there is “something” it is like to be us—to explain how subjective experiential qualities are generated.’¹⁵ And Glynn holds that with respect to our experiences, e.g. of smelling freshly ground coffee, hearing an oboe playing, or seeing the blue of the sky, ‘we know what it is like to have these experiences only by having them or by having had them…. Just as it feels like something to smell freshly ground coffee, so it can feel like something (at least intermittently) to believe that …, or to desire that …, or to fear that …’

Qualia, then, are conceived to be the qualitative characteristics of ‘mental states’ or of ‘experiences’, the latter pair of categories being construed to include not only perception, sensation and affection, but also desire, thought and belief. For every ‘conscious experience’ or ‘conscious mental state’, there is something which it is like for the subject to have it or to be in it. This something is a quale—a ‘qualitative feel’. ‘The problem of explaining these phenomenal qualities’, Chalmers declares, ‘is just the problem of explaining consciousness.’¹⁶

The primary rationale for extending the ordinary concept of consciousness One reason given for extending the concept of consciousness beyond its legitimate conservative boundaries was that what is distinctive, remarkable, indeed mysterious, about experiences is that there is something which it is like to have them. An experience, it is argued, is a conscious experience just in case there is something which it is like for the subject of the experience to have it. Consciousness, thus conceived, is defined in terms of the qualitative feel of experience. There is a specific way it feels to see, hear and smell, to have a pain, or indeed ‘to have mental states’ (Block); every conscious state has a certain qualitative feel to it (Searle), and each differentiable conscious experience represents a different quale (Edelman and Tononi). This qualitative feel, unique to every distinguishable experience, is what it is like for the subject of the experience to have the experience. Or so it is held.

Our suspicions should be aroused by the odd phrases used to invoke something with which we are all supposed to be utterly familiar. We shall examine ‘ways of feeling’ first, and there being ‘something which it is like’ subsequently.

Is there always a way it feels to have a ‘conscious experience’? Is there really a specific way it feels to see, hear, smell? One might indeed ask a person who has had his sight, hearing or sense of smell restored ‘How does it feel to see (hear, smell) again?’ One might expect the person to reply ‘It is wonderful’, or perhaps ‘It feels very strange’. The question concerns the person’s attitude towards his exercise of his restored perceptual capacity—so, he finds it wonderful to be able to see again, or strange to hear again after so many years of deafness. In these cases, there is indeed a way it feels to see or hear again, namely wonderful or strange. But if we were to ask a normal person how it feels to see the table, chair, desk, carpet, etc., etc., he would wonder what we were after. There is nothing distinctive about seeing these mundane objects. Of course, seeing the table differs from seeing the chair, desk, carpet, etc., but the difference does not consist in the fact that seeing the desk feels different from seeing the chair. Seeing an ordinary table or chair does not evoke any emotional or attitudinal reaction whatsoever in normal circumstances. The experiences differ in so far as their objects differ.

One may say, clumsily, that there is a way it feels to have a pain. That is just a convoluted way of saying that there is an answer to the (rather silly) question ‘How does it feel to have a pain?’, e.g. that it is very unpleasant, or, in some cases, dreadful. So, one may say that there is a way it feels to have migraine, namely very unpleasant. That is innocuous, but lends no weight to the general claim that for every differentiable experience, there is a specific way it feels to have it. Pains are an exception, since they, by definition, have a negative hedonic tone. Pains are sensations which are intrinsically disagreeable. Perceiving, however, is not a matter of having sensations. And perceiving in its various modalities and with its indefinitely numerous possible objects can often be, but typically is not, the subject of any affective or attitudinal quality (e.g. pleasant, enjoyable, horrible) at all, let alone a different one for each object in each perceptual modality. And for a vast range of things that can be called ‘experiences’, there isn’t ‘a way it feels’ to have them, i.e. there is no answer to the question ‘How does it feel to …?’

One cannot but agree with Searle that the experience of tasting beer is very different from hearing Beethoven’s Ninth, and that both are different from smelling a rose or seeing a sunset, for perceptual experiences are essentially identified or specified by their modality, i.e. sight, hearing, taste, smell and tactile perception, and by their objects, i.e. by what they are experiences of. But to claim that the several experiences have a unique, distinctive feel is a different and altogether more questionable claim. It is more questionable in so far as it is obscure what is meant. Of course, all four experiences Searle cites are, for many people, normally enjoyable. And it is perfectly correct that the identity of the pleasure or enjoyment is dependent upon the object of the pleasure. One cannot derive the pleasure of drinking beer from listening to Beethoven’s Ninth, or the pleasure of seeing a sunset from smelling a rose. That is a logical, not an empirical, truth, i.e. it is not that, as a matter of fact, the qualitative ‘feel’ distinctive of seeing a sunset differs from the ‘feel’ distinctive of smelling a rose—after all, both may be very pleasant. Rather, as a matter of logic, the pleasure of seeing a sunset differs from the pleasure of smelling a rose, for the identity of the pleasure depends upon what it is that pleases. It does not follow that every experience has a different qualitative character, i.e. that there is a specific ‘feel’ to each and every experience. For, first, most experiences have, in this sense, no qualitative character at all—they are neither agreeable nor disagreeable, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, etc. Walking down the street, we may see dozens of different objects. Seeing a lamp post is a different experience from seeing a postbox—did it have a different ‘feel’ to it? No; and it didn’t have the same ‘feel’ to it either, for seeing the two objects evoked no response—no ‘qualitative feeling’ whatsoever was associated with seeing either of them. Second, different experiences which do have a qualitative ‘feel’, i.e. which can, for example, be hedonically characterized, may have the very same ‘feel’. What differentiates them is not the way they feel, in as much as the question, ‘What did it feel like to V?’ (where ‘V’ specifies some appropriate experience) may have exactly the same answer—for the different experiences may be equally enjoyable or disagreeable, interesting or boring.

The qualitative character of experiences correctly construed Both having a pain (being in pain) and perceiving whatever one perceives can be called ‘experiences’. So can being in a certain emotional state. And so, of course, can engaging in an indefinite variety of activities. Experiences, we may say, are possible subjects of attitudinal predicates, that is, they may be agreeable or disagreeable, interesting or boring, wonderful or dreadful. It is such attributes that might be termed ‘the qualitative characters of experiences’, not the experiences themselves. So one cannot intelligibly say that seeing red or seeing Guernica, hearing a sound or hearing Tosca, are ‘qualia’. Consequently, when Damasio speaks of the blueness of the sky as being a quale, he is shifting the sense of the term ‘quale’—since if the colour of an object is a quale, then qualia are not the qualitative characteristics of experiences at all, but the qualities of objects of experience (or, if one holds colours not to be qualities of objects, then constituents of the contents of perceptual experiences). Similarly, when Edelman and Tononi claim that each differentiable conscious experience represents a different quale, whether it is a sensation, an image, a mood or a thought, they are shifting the sense of the term ‘quale’. For it patently does not mean ‘the qualitative character of an experience’ in the sense we have been investigating. What it does, or is supposed to, mean is something we shall examine shortly (§10.34).

It should be noted that to say that an experience is a subject of an attitudinal predicate is a potentially misleading façon de parler. For to say that an experience (e.g. seeing, watching, glimpsing, hearing, tasting this or that, but also walking, talking, dancing, playing games, mountain climbing, fighting battles, painting pictures) had a given qualitative feel to it (e.g. that it was agreeable, delightful, charming, disagreeable, revolting, disgusting) is just to say that the subject of experience, i.e. the person who saw, heard, tasted, walked, talked, danced, etc., found it agreeable, delightful, charming, etc. to do so. So, the qualitative character of an experience E, i.e. how it feels to have that experience, is the subject’s affective attitude (what it was like for him) to experiencing E.

To avoid falling into confusion here, we must distinguish four points:

(1) Many experiences are essentially individuated, i.e. picked out, by specifying what they are experiences of.

(2) Every experience is a possible subject of positive and negative attitudinal predicates, e.g. predicates of pleasure, interest, attraction. It does not follow, and it is false, that every experience is an actual subject of a positive or negative attitudinal predicate.

(3) Distinct experiences, each of which is the subject of an attitudinal attribute, may not be distinguishable by reference to how it feels for the person to have them. Roses have a different smell from lilac. Smelling roses is a different experience from smelling lilac. One cannot get the pleasure of smelling roses from smelling lilac. But the experiences may well be equally agreeable. So, if asked how it feels to smell roses and how it feels to smell lilac, the answer may well be the same, namely ‘delightful’. If that answer specifies the way it felt, then it is obviously false that every distinct experience can be uniquely individuated by its distinctive qualitative character or quale. We must not confuse the qualitative character of the experience with the qualitative character of the object of the experience. It is the latter, not the former, that individuates the experience.

(4) Even if we stretch the concept of experience to include thinking that something is so or thinking of something, what essentially differentiates thinking one thing rather than another is not how it feels or what it feels like to think whatever one thinks. Thinking that 2+2 = 4 differs from thinking that 25 × 25 = 625 and both differ from thinking that the Democrats will win the next election.¹⁷ They differ in as much as they are essentially specified or individuated by their objects. One can think that something is thus-and-so or think of something or other without any accompanying affective attitude whatsoever—so there need be no ‘way it feels’ to think thus. A leonine whiff may accompany thinking of lions, of Richard Coeur de Lion, or of Lyons Corner House, but, contrary to Chalmers, to specify the associated whiff is not to characterize how it feels to think of such items, let alone uniquely to individuate the thinking. That one associates thinking of one of these with a leonine whiff is no answer to the (curious) question ‘How does it feel to think of lions (Richard Coeur de Lion, Lyons Corner House)?’, and certainly does not distinguish one’s thinking of lions as opposed to thinking of Lyons’s or Richard I.