What’s It Like to Hear a Dog-Whistle?

Let’s put Sookie out of our minds for a moment and focus our attention instead on Sam Merlotte. Let’s assume that there’s a full moon in the sky and that Sam is unable to restrain himself from shapeshifting into his preferred form, a collie, and going out to explore the woods. Let’s also suppose that somebody in the distance blows a dog-whistle. Dog-whistles sound at a pitch that humans can’t hear, but Sam can hear it with no difficulty when he’s in his dog form. Let’s explore all of the facets of this event.

Much of what’s going on involves physical objects that interact in ways that could in theory be described by anybody with the right scientific background. Such a description can be given from a “third-person” perspective, meaning a descriptive point of view not specific to any particular person. From this perspective we could describe a causal chain of physical events that lead ultimately to Sam’s hearing the sound—the blowing of the whistle, the vibration it causes in the air, the waves formed by this vibration, the contact of these waves with Sam’s ear-drums, the firing of nerve cells in response to this contact, and as a result the firing of neurons in Sam’s brain. With enough information we could give an extremely detailed account that notes the motion of every atom in the causal chain that extends from the blowing of the whistle and the firing of neurons in Sam’s brain. Or we could just say something as simple as “Somebody blew a whistle, and Sam heard it.”

But can even the most detailed description of this chain of causes tell us everything about the event? No, because what this account is unable to capture is the quality of Sam’s subjective conscious experience when hearing the dog-whistle, that is, what it’s like to hear a dog-whistle.¹ We still would not know what it’s really like for Sam to hear the dog-whistle; we wouldn’t know the quality of his experience. Sam possesses a type of information unavailable to everyone else who may witness this event, even if they make precise measurements of all of its objective elements, such as the air particles set in motion when the whistle is blown. Sam knows something that no human being can—what a dog—whistle sounds like to a dog. Such qualitative conscious experiences are known by philosophers as qualia.² Qualia is a plural term. When we speak of a single qualitative conscious experience, we use the term quale.

Even though physical descriptions don’t seem to entail qualia, that doesn’t make it self-evidently true that qualia must be nonphysical. There are indeed many philosophers who think that qualia must be something nonphysical. But other philosophers believe that qualia are physical; it’s just that they are inaccessible to minds other than the one experiencing them. Some of these philosophers even think that once we fully understand the workings of the brain, an objective description of a brain state would entail a description of the person’s subjective experiences. If they’re right, then Sookie’s telepathy wouldn’t provide her with any information about the content of other minds that nontelepaths couldn’t theoretically learn through scientific measurements of brain activity. (Of course, we might have to wait a while for technology to become sufficiently sophisticated.) But let’s proceed on the assumption that Sookie does have access to information about other minds in a way that other human beings don’t. Would there be any built-in limitations to her powers?

Hunting the Elusive Quale

Qualia seem to represent a special kind of knowledge that’s directly accessible only to one person, namely the person to whose mind they belong, the person immediately conscious of them. But maybe it’s not yet clear why—at least in a world without telepathy—we think of qualia as private, in our minds but inaccessible to others. Considering our reasons for regarding qualia as private should help to sharpen our understanding of these elusive entities.

Suppose Sam wanted to describe what hearing the dog—whistle was like to the waitress Arlene Fowler. What could he tell her? He could describe the physical events in the way we did earlier, from the blowing of the whistle to the motion of the atoms, but we already know that an objective third-person description can’t convey what it’s like to hear the dog—whistle. Maybe he could say something like “It’s kind of painful, a higher pitch than the high frequency whine that you sometimes hear when the television or another piece of electronics is malfunctioning.” He might even come up with a more clever use of similes or turns of phrase to explain his experience to her. But all Arlene knows at this point is what the experience she would label as “pain” is like to her, not the experience of pain that is peculiar to experiencing the sound of a dog—whistle. And although she knows that some sounds are “higher” than others, the only pitches she can ever really know are those that she has experienced herself.

It might be tempting to think that the only reason Arlene could not know what it’s like to hear the dog-whistle is that she is unable to hear the same frequencies that Sam can when he is in dog form. But this would be a mistake. Qualitative experiences are necessarily incommunicable. You can never know exactly what my subjective experience of eating chocolate ice cream is like, for example, even if you’ve eaten plenty of chocolate ice cream yourself. To help make this barrier in communication clearer, let’s look at a variation of an argument first advanced by the philosopher John Locke (1632—1704), the inverted spectrum argument.³

First, imagine yourself looking at something green, and then fix firmly in your mind what the quale of that experience is like. Next, imagine that Jason Stackhouse experiences the color green in exactly the same way you do. In other words, what it is like for you to see green is exactly what it is like for Jason to see green. Now imagine yourself seeing something red, and again fix in your mind what that experience is like. Finally, imagine that the quale you have when seeing the color red is exactly what Tara Thornton experiences when she sees something green. Tara and Jason therefore experience the color green differently, but as we’ll see, they have no way of expressing this difference to each other.

Suppose that Jason and Tara are talking to each other during the Christmas season one year. Jason points at a storefront window and says, “Look at that artificial Christmas tree! It’s as green as Astroturf. Maybe Sookie will forgive me for insulting Bill if I get it for her.” Tara responds by saying, “Sookie doesn’t want some fake-ass tree no matter how green it is, and you’re crazy if you think you can just buy her forgiveness.”

Now notice that while both Jason and Tara use the same color word (“green”) to describe the tree, they experience the color of the tree in different ways. Jason experiences the tree’s color in exactly the same way you do, but Tara experiences it the same way you would if it were what you call “red.” Although they have no difficulty talking to each other about the tree and making themselves understood, they’re experiencing completely different qualia. It follows that each knows something about the tree that the other can’t know, namely, how it appears from his or her subjective point of view.

Communicating the difference in their experiences isn’t just difficult—it’s impossible. Both Jason and Tara learned the word green by observing the behavior of others. Perhaps Jason’s mother pointed to the grass and said “green,” and then to leaves and said “green,” and then to Astroturf, and so on until Jason came to associate the word green with the quale or experience of color that all of those objects produce in him. He learned other words in much the same way. The same is true for Tara.

Consequently, Tara and Jason would completely agree about which objects should be called green, although their qualia differ and neither has any access to the other’s conscious experience. They each know how the word green is used, what types of items are described as green, and what it is like to experience green for themselves. But they have no way of knowing whether their own experiences are at all like the experiences of anybody else viewing the same objects. This is not simply a quirk of language. Everything Jason and Tara know about green things comes from observing the behavior of others and their own conscious experiences, which now appear to be entirely private.

Our own conscious experience seems to consist of what we know most directly and surely, but at the same time this experience is impossible for others to verify and for us to communicate to them. So, in terms of at least one type of knowledge, our direct firsthand experience of our minds’ own qualia, philosophers often argue that our minds are completely isolated from one another. This isolation is called privacy of mind.

But of course, the philosophers who have argued for privacy of mind in the past were never confronted with a telepath like Sookie. We might agree that for beings such as ourselves, the qualia of others are forever hidden, but is such knowledge hidden from Sookie as well? Or are there truly no secrets from Sookie?

A Slow Day at Merlotte’s

Since it will again be useful to have a concrete example, let’s suppose that Sookie is waiting tables at Merlotte’s during a slow lunch shift. She’s serving coffee to Maxine Fortenberry, her only customer at the moment. Maxine’s reading a tabloid article, the title of which shouts out in large boldfaced letters: “Get Rich with Your Own Personal Astrological Stock Adviser!”

The article claims that growing numbers of people are achieving financial independence through stock market investments suggested by their personal astrologers. Best of all, these astrologers charge only ten percent of what you gain. Their work is guaranteed, since if you don’t earn money, they don’t get paid. Maxine is reading intently.

Sookie, even without the benefit of her telepathic powers, knows that Maxine is a fervent believer in astrology and can see that she’s wholly engrossed in the article. But even in a world full of vampires, shapeshifters, werewolves, maenads, and fairies, Sookie still retains enough skepticism to recognize that astrology is nonsense. As she mentally fires off a crack about fools and their money, she suddenly wonders what it would be like to believe in astrology. It just seems like such nonsense to her! What could stars, so many light-years away that they might not even exist anymore, possibly have to do with the Dow Jones industrial average? What would it really feel like to believe that kind of stuff? Curious, she dives into Maxine’s mind. What would Sookie experience? What would she learn as a result?

For the purposes of our discussion we need consider only two possibilities: First, while reading Maxine’s mind, Sookie could become so caught up in her thoughts that she herself becomes a believer in astrology. Alternatively, she could retain her skepticism during the time she’s reading Maxine’s mind. Given the setup, it must be one or the other. Sookie either retains her doubt or she does not. Since there are only two possibilities, let’s examine both of them in turn.

Let’s first suppose that while in Maxine’s mind Sookie’s consciousness is so altered that she’s totally convinced by the article. That, of course, is what would have to happen in order for Sookie to have the same qualitative experience as Maxine. It turns out that Maxine is not only reading but also thinking about hiring an astrologer as a stock adviser, recalling a childhood memory about how impressed she was by an astrological reading at the circus, feeling greedy and excited at the prospect of all of that money she’s going to make, and so on. Let’s suppose that as long as Sookie applies her telepathic powers to Maxine’s mind, all of these conscious experiences are not only Maxine’s but Sookie’s as well. For the time being, Sookie’s qualia are identical to Maxine’s.

But there seems to be a problem. Sookie can know what it is like to have someone else’s conscious experience only if it is Sookie herself who’s doing the knowing. But while looking into Maxine’s mind, Sookie seems to have lost herself, since her own subjective consciousness is no longer hers but just a copy of Maxine’s. Before she began to read Maxine’s mind, Sookie had memories, values, and beliefs that were completely different from her gullible tabloid-reading customer. Sookie doesn’t believe in astrology. She wouldn’t feel excitement at the prospect of getting rich by hiring an astrologer. That just isn’t who Sookie is—and, therefore, whatever is “sharing” Maxine’s consciousness is in a very real sense not Sookie Stackhouse during that time. It’s really just a duplication of Maxine’s consciousness, indistinguishable from the original. So if our first possibility is true and Sookie’s experiences become the same as Maxine’s for as long as she’s reading her, then Sookie loses her own character while inside Maxine’s mind. But then Sookie herself is actually never aware of Maxine’s experiences at all. It is no longer Sookie who is experiencing what it’s like to be Maxine—it’s a consciousness with a psychological character entirely different from Sookie’s.

Perhaps somebody would object that although Sookie would lose herself during the telepathic experience, she could remember the experience after she exits Maxine’s mind and in this way know what it is like to believe in astrology. But that only pushes the problem one step backward. Sookie’s memories are subject to the same dilemma that her telepathic experience was subject to in the first place. Either Sookie’s own psychology and personality are swept aside when she remembers her telepathic experience inside Maxine’s mind, or they’re retained. If her experiences are just like Maxine’s, then Sookie’s own psychology disappears and the problem pops back up again as quickly as a vampire accidentally staked with Formica. If not, then the situation amounts to accepting the second possibility, which we’ll now consider.

The second possibility is that when Sookie enters Maxine’s mind she doesn’t lose herself but retains her own psychological characteristics, including her skepticism about astrology. But this possibility has its own problems. Imagine that Sookie’s psychology remains intact during her journey into the mind of Maxine. That would mean that during her telepathic excursion, her own consciousness is active and in some way combined with Maxine’s. The result is that Sookie doesn’t know what it is like to be Maxine while believing in astrology. After all, Maxine isn’t experiencing a mixed consciousness at all. She isn’t even aware of Sookie’s telepathic intrusion. While Sookie experiences whatever it’s like to disbelieve in astrology while peering into a mind that has unshakable faith that astrology is true, Maxine experiences only her unshakable faith.

The upshot is that if Sookie’s conscious states are different from Maxine’s, then she doesn’t really know what it is like to be Maxine. On the other hand, if her conscious experiences are the same as Maxine’s, then those experiences aren’t really being known by Sookie, since the Sookie we know has for all intents and purposes left the building, along with all of the memories and psychological characteristics that define her as a distinct individual.

The Final Nail in the Coffin

In the event that this argument seems like some sort of logical glamouring, consider yourself. We can even find it impossible to access the qualia of our own experiences as our psychologies change. Try to remember something that you enjoy now but had to acquire a taste for. For my part, I’ll remember what it’s like to drink coffee. Perhaps that example will work for you as well.⁴

When I think of how I experienced coffee recently, my mouth waters a bit and I wish that it wasn’t too late in the evening to go and pour myself a cup. But I also remember that I didn’t always like the taste of coffee. In fact, I can remember that when I was a child, my father gave in to my pleadings for a taste, and I regretted it immediately. Repulsed by the taste, I thought that my parents must be crazy for ordering the stuff every time we went out to eat. But while my memory of this event seems to be intact and I can remember that I didn’t like the taste of coffee when I was a child, I cannot recall the qualia of tasting coffee and not enjoying the taste.⁵

This isn’t surprising. After all, I now like the flavor of coffee. Nevertheless, when I was a child, just thinking about the taste of coffee would make me shiver with disgust. Now I crave what once disgusted me. Clearly my qualitative conscious experience of the same event, drinking coffee, is now very different from how I experienced it as a child, although the rest of the memory seems to have remained intact. One likely reason may be that we interpret sensations (including our remembered sensations) through the complex maze of our own unique psychologies, which are shaped by different past experiences. My psychology has changed since I was a child and now interacts with coffee stimulus in a way that I find pleasurable. Twenty—five years ago this wasn’t the case. Yet, if access to the qualia of my own past can change so drastically during what is hopefully still the first half of my life that I cannot access them, how could someone hope to access the qualia of a completely different individual?

So if you ever find yourself in Bon Temps talking to a fetching blond waitress with an unusual name, rest assured that even if the inclination to read your mind should overtake her, there are some things about you she can never know. Most important, she’ll never know what it’s like to experience things as you.

NOTES

1 This line, which provides the title of this section, is a deliberate homage to Thomas Nagel’s famous philosophical article, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” Philosophical Review 83 (1974): 435—450. For more on Nagel and his relevance to True Blood, see Susan Peppers-Bates and Joshua Rust’s chapter in this volume, “A Vampire’s Heart Has Its Reasons That Scientific Naturalism Can’t Understand,” and William M. Curtis’s chapter, ‘“Honey, If We Can’t Kill People, What’s the Point of Being a Vampire?’: Can Vampires Be Good Citizens?”

2 The modern use of this word was first introduced by the great pragmatic philosopher C. 1. Lewis. See his Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1929).

3 John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Boston: Adamant Media Corporation, 2001), p. 435.

4 It turns out that while I originally thought the coffee example was my own, the famous philosopher of mind Daniel C. Dennett used the example of coffee with the idea of changing tastes in his paper “Quining Qualia,” in Mind and Cognition: A Reader, ed. by William G. Lycan (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1999), pp. 519-547. I am making a slightly different point here. Dennett argues that in such a case it could be that either the quale of the coffee has changed or the standards of taste for that person have changed (or both). The qualia I am referring to, however, relate to the entire conscious experience, which includes both the tasting of the coffee and either liking it or not liking it. Since I am referring to the entire qualitative experience of what it is to taste coffee as a person with particular tastes, a change from disliking coffee to liking coffee (since these are themselves experiences) indicates a qualitative change in the experience as a whole.

5 Or think of a vampire like Bill Compton, who perhaps can no longer enjoy his favorite foods from 150 years ago because since then not only his psychology but also his physiology has undergone a dramatic change as a result of becoming a vampire. He might also not be able to recall the qualia of liking crawfish or sweet-potato pie or whatever food may have been popular in Bon Temps back in antebellutn days, while nonetheless remembering that he did like them.