Some moral propositions

Just a quick attempt to sketch out some moral views:

• Actions in and of themselves can't be good or bad.
• What makes them good or bad are their consequences/logical implications.
• Actions can be "intrinsically wrong" if they necessarily imply/lead to a bad consequences. For example murder is intrinsically wrong since it necessarily implies the unjustified death of someone.
• Actions can also be "contingently wrong", if, practically, they lead to bad consequences, but don't necessarily. For example, incest is only contingently wrong: in most circumstances it would lead to problems, but it is possible for people to engage in incest without any repercussions.
• A lot of confusion in thinking and discussions about morality come from not properly distinguishing between intrinsically wrong and contingently wrong.

NOTE: I'm seriously rethinking my statements in this post. More to come.

One statement that never ceases to frustrate me is "I'm fine with so and so believing X, I just wish they wouldn't get in everyone's faces about it." For example, "I'm fine with vegetarians, I just wish they wouldn't get in my face about it." Well, it would certainly seem to me that if one believes that killing animals for food is murder they should be getting in everyone's face about it. To stand idly by while people continue to benefit from murder would be gross neglect of one's moral duty, akin to ignoring the Holocaust when you know it to be deeply wrong.

Take another example. "I'm fine with such and such a religious group, I just wish they would stop trying to convert me." Once again, this ignores the fact that, because of the very nature of someone's beliefs, for them to not try to convert you would be to neglect their moral duty. After all, they believe that if you are not converted you will suffer, which means, in fact, that not attempting to convert you would not only be neglecting their moral duty but, specifically, neglecting their moral duty towards you. To not try to convert you would be akin to letting you drown when they had an opportunity to try to rescue you. Similarly, it is absurd to expect the religious to keep their faith separate from their politics: if one believes, for example, that homosexuality is a sin and dangerous to our nation's spiritual well-being, it would be negligent for them to not try to combat it.

Now, one can argue whether the killing of animals for meat does constitute murder*, or whether such and such is the path to salvation, or whether homosexuality is a sin. But this is exactly the issue that is at stake: whether or not someone's beliefs themselves are sound.

*incidentally, I myself am conflicted on this point and, as such, have not become a vegetarian.

Born This Way

So one subject that keeps getting discussed in the gay marriage debate is whether or not homosexuality is innate. Gay advocates argue that if it is (and the evidence seems to be that it is), then homosexuals are being discriminated against for something they did not choose.
However, it has always seemed to me that this question - of whether homosexuality is innate - is a red herring. In fact, while it's an interesting scientific question, it has no bearing on whether or not homosexuals have the right to engage in their preferred lifestyle.
Suppose (as is almost certainly the case) that homosexuality is innate. Why should this give homosexuals the right to engage in their lifestyle? After all, many mental disorders are innate, but that doesn't mean that a psychopath has the right to go out and kill people. Someone who has a mental disorder that causes them to engage in immoral behavior has one of two options: either overcome the disorder, or be removed from society. This is regardless of whether the disorder is curable or not. And one can't say "God made me this way", because God made people with destructive mental disorders too.
And what if it isn't innate? Well, neither are most lifestyles people choose. We aren't born, for example, to live a certain religious lifestyle: we choose it (or are forced into it). But as long as lifestyle isn't hurting others, it does not concern them (obviously, there ARE some cases where a lifestyle might be hurting the person engaged in it in a way that is of concern to society as a whole). This is the important point. The question isn't whether one was born homosexual or chose the lifestyle: it's whether people have the right to behave the way they would like as long as it doesn't hurt others (offense doesn't count). This is why I'm an ally.

* * *

While I'm on the subject of bad arguments for causes I support, let's talk about abortion. I am pro-choice in a fuzzy way: I believe that the abortion of, say, a week-old embryo is completely blameless regardless of circumstances, partial-birth abortions are immoral unless for extreme medical reasons, and the time in between is one big gray fuzzy mess. I discuss my views in detail here.
So, obviously, I do not agree with the pro-lifers. However, I think the argument that a woman has the right to do what she wants with her body completely misses the point. It is the pro-lifers who are actually talking about what matters in this case: namely, whether the fetus is a human life. My beliefs are that it isn't (until fairly late in its development), and this is why I think abortion is OK. But if it is, then it seems to me that a woman's right to choose becomes questionable at best. It is intuitively likely that one's right to choose what to do with one's body stops at the point that that choice entails killing another human being. We could justify it on utilitarian grounds that the psychological and physical distress of carrying and giving birth to the child outweighs the value of its life (which is how I'd look at it): but even in this case the woman's right to choose is only considered relative to the what the value is of the human to be destroyed.

Blah blah blah

So, first, I totally failed in regards to the whole "keeping up with this blog" thing. Obviously I tried to pretend that I wasn't failing by posting my papers from college, but...that's cheating. I know this now.

Anyway, I've been thinking about the following:

Understanding. I may end up doing my Div III (senior dissertation for all you non-Hampshire people) on it. Here's the problem: what does it mean to "understand" something? It is not an intentional state ("intentional state" is a fancy philosophical way of saying "thought", although it specifically refers to thoughts about things in the world: for example, when I think to myself "The Eiffel Tower is in Paris" [as I am wont to do] the thought is about the Eiffel Tower. Beliefs are also intentional states, since if you believe something, you believe something about something [once again, my belief that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris is about the Eiffel Tower]), since it doesn't correspond to anything. I.e. when I say "I understand the theory of relativity" I'm not making a statement about anything out there in the world. So maybe "understanding" is a subjective sensation. But no! We can't be wrong about our subjective sensations. But we can be wrong as to whether we do, in fact, understand something, so it seems. We can think we've understood something without understanding it at all. And is the converse possible? Can we not think we understand something when in fact we do? Why is any of this important? Because it's at the core of almost all arguments. Namely, we have to understand something in order for it to mean anything.

Meat n' Stuff

So I was think about all the commercials for dog food where they're like "it's made with fresh ingredients" "you're dog knows it's delicious" etc. and they show beautiful images of fresh ingredients. I decided there should be a dog food brand called "Meat n' Stuff", which is exactly that: low quality meat and various nutrients that your dog needs to survive. Here are some slogans I came up with (NSFW):

Meat n' Stuff: because your dog doesn't give a fuck

Meat n' Stuff: because your dog is eating it, not you

Meat n' Stuff: for crying out loud, your dog likes to eat it's own shit

Did I lock the door? The cognitive neuroscience of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Hampshire College

Brain and Cognition

Introduction

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a common disorder that appears in both children and adults. It consists of obsessions, compulsions, or both. Obsessions consist of recurring thoughts or impulses that are intrusive and unwarranted by the environment (but still perceived as originating from the patients own mind, distinguishing them from “though-insertion”), causing distress or anxiety, and compulsions are repetitive behaviors the obsessive-compulsive feels he/she must perform. Compulsions are often related to the obsessions, and are meant to neutralize the distress caused by such obsessions. Some of the most common obsessions include germaphobia, fear of causing harm to oneself or to others, and worrying that important tasks have been left undone, for example being unsure whether one has locked the door, and compulsions include behavior such as hand washing, counting, and checking. The patient is usually aware of the absurdity of their thoughts and actions, but nevertheless feels powerless to stop them (American Psychological Association, 2000).
In this paper, I will discuss the neurocognitive findings regarding OCD, particularly as they relate to the SEC/OCD model proposed by Huey et al (2008). I will begin with an overview of some of the brain studies of OCD, moving on to some popular models of the disorder. Finally, I will discuss the SEC/OCD model.

The Brain Regions Implicated in OCD and their Functions

Despite copious amounts of research, the precise neuropsychology of OCD is uncertain (Markarian et al, 2010). Different studies often provide different and even contradictory results. Despite this, there are some generally agreed upon neuroanatomical features of OCD. Specifically, it has been consistently found that obsessive-compulsives reveal anatomical and functional abnormalities in the orbitofrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex, and also the basal ganglia, prefrontal cortex, and thalamus (Markarian et al, 2010; Huey et al, 2008).

Several studies have reported reduced bilateral orbitofrontal cortex volumes in obsessive-compulsives, and there seems to be a correlation between greater reductions and worse symptoms (Maia, Cooney, & Peterson, 2008). The orbitofrontal cortex seems to be involved in reward learning and emotions, and the regulation of complex behavior. It has been found that the orbitofrontal cortex responds to reward stimuli, but not when the desire for the stimuli has been satiated. Macaques with orbitofrontal have difficulty learning the reward value of stimuli, and are slow to change their behavior when reward conditions change (Huey et al, 2008).

There is evidence of increased anterior cingulate cortex activation in obsessive-compulsives (Fitzgerald et al, 2005). The anterior cingulate cortex is implicated in decision-making. In particular, it acts as a conflict and error detector, responding when there is a discrepancy between expected and actual events. Activation of the anterior cingulate cortex seems to lead to negative emotional states, such as anxiety (Huey et al, 2008).

It has been found that damage to the basal ganglia through infection can lead to obsessive-compulsive symptoms. The basal ganglia seem to play an important role in the generation and regulation of motor activities. Specifically, it has been suggested that the basal ganglia acts as a sort of gate for motor signals, facilitating certain motor actions while suppressing others (Huey et al, 2008).

The thalamus shows higher activation in subjects with OCD compared to controls, and has been reported to be larger in obsessive-compulsives (Maia, Cooney, & Peterson, 2008; Huey et al, 2008)). The thalamus seems to be a gateway for interactions between brain areas involved in OCD (Huey et al, 2008).

Some Models of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Based on behavioral and neuroanatomical evidence, there have been numerous models proposed for OCD.

The Cognitive-Behavioral Model: According to this model, OCD arises from dysfunctional beliefs regarding the importance of thoughts. Almost everyone has had intrusive thoughts that are perceived as inappropriate: for example, the fleeting, unwarranted, and unwanted mental image of stabbing a loved one with a knife. Healthy subjects recognize this as just meaningless junk in the stream of consciousness. However, obsessive-compulsives, according to the cognitive-behavioral model, incorrectly view these thoughts as highly significant—for example, as evidence that one will, in fact, lose control and stab someone. Because of the importance attached to these thoughts, they develop into obsessions, and compulsions arise as a way to attempt to get rid of these unwanted thoughts and/or neutralize the danger associated with such thoughts. These compulsions are then reinforced by the temporary reduction in anxiety they cause and the fact that they prevent the obsessive-compulsive from learning that harmful consequences will not arise as the result of their thoughts (McKay & Abramowitz, 2010). This model has gathered a lot of support (with some exceptions), but does not provide a neuropsychological explanation.

The Standard Model: The standard neuroanatomical model of OCD proposes that the disorder arises as a dysfunction of elements of a post-frontal cortex-basal ganglia-thalamic loop. This model is consistent with most of the data collected on the neuroanatomy of OCD and forms the basis of many following models. However, it does not explain the psychological mechanisms of OCD (Huey et al, 2008).

The “Feeling of Knowing” Model: Szechtman & Woody (2004) propose a model wherein OCD is caused by an inability to create the “feeling of knowing” that a task has been completed. Specifically, they argue that the common symptoms of OCD—washing, checking, fear of causing harm, etc.—are those that evolutionarily would have been related to the security of the organism and its fellows. This need for security leads to the evolution of a security-seeking system. Because there are no external stimuli that indicate the completion of a security-seeking task (for example, there could always a predator that the animal has missed), the completion of such tasks is indicated by an internally generated “feeling of knowing”. Obsessive-compulsives have a deficit in generating this subjective sensation, leading to the odd phenomena in which the obsessive-compulsive is perfectly aware, objectively, that, for example, their hands are perfectly clean, but they do not feel clean, leading to further washing.

The SEC/OCD Model

Huey et al’s (2008) model of OCD expands on Szechtman &Woody’s model and also on their own earlier work where they propose that complex behaviors with beginnings, middles, and ends are stored in the prefrontal cortex in the form of Structured Event Complexes, of SECs. For example, the knowledge of how to correctly eat dinner at a restaurant—finding a seat, ordering, eating, paying the bill, leaving—would be an SEC. SECs are usually implicitly recalled, and in this respect are similar to procedural memory. SECs are stored when a complex sequence of behavior leads to a reward, in order that such a sequence may be repeated. As evidence of these SECs, patients with damage to the prefrontal cortex have often reported difficulty with ordering and sequencing events and actions.

Just as the completion of an SEC can be rewarding, so too can the inability to complete an SEC can feel punishing. Furthermore, there are SECs that are themselves punishing but which bring about the removal of punishment: for example, few people feel good about doing their taxes, but most are relieved when their taxes are finally done.

In the SEC/OCD model, it is proposed that the initiation of an SEC is accompanied by a motivational signal, experienced as anxiety encouraging the animal to complete the SEC. In healthy subjects, the completion of the SEC is accompanied by a reward signal. According to the model, obsessive-compulsives have a deficiency in this latter process. Although the SEC is complete, the obsessive-compulsive does not have the sensation that it is done. This leads the anterior cingulate cortex to produce an error signal. The orbitofrontal cortex responds to this error as punishment, leading to a feeling of anxiety. This feeling is unconscious, leading the obsessive-compulsive to attempt to assign an explicit cause to it. This interpretation forms the basis of an obsession. The compulsion is caused by the fact that the completion of an SEC, for example hand washing, gives the obsessive-compulsives only partial relief, so that they feel they must repeat the SEC.

In regards to the basal ganglia, Huey et al suggest that just as it facilitates some motor actions while suppressing others, so too does it gate SECs. It is proposed that the basal ganglia sets thresholds for the activation of SECs, and when this threshold is lowered, for example by damage, it can lead to the overactivation of SECs, causing symptoms of OCD.

Conclusion

The cognitive neuroscience of OCD is still in its infancy. Much work is still to be done. However, Huey at al’s model provides a useful paradigm for further work. It shares and integrates elements from many of the previous models: along with expanding on Szechtman & Woody, it provides an explanation of why undue importance would be attached to fleeting thoughts as per the cognitive-behavioral model (the brain is looking for an explicit source of anxiety), and explains the possible psychological mechanisms of OCD that the standard model leaves out.

References

American Psychiatric Association (2000). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV-TR, 4th ed Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association Text Revision.

Fitzgerald, K., Welsh, R. C., Gehring, W. J., Abelson, J. L., Himle, J. A., Liberzon, I., & Taylor, S. F. (2005). Error-Related Hyperactivity of the Anterior Cingulate Cortex in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Biological Psychiatry, 57(3), 287-294.

Huey, E. D., Zahn, R., Krueger, F., Moll, J., Kapogiannis, D., Wassermann, E. M., & Grafman, J. (2008). A psychological and neuroanatomical model of obsessive- compulsive disorder. The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 20(4), 390-408.

Maia, T. V., Cooney, R. E., & Peterson, B. S. (2008). The neural bases of obsessive- compulsive disorder in children and adults. Development and Psychopathology, 20(4), 1251-1283.

Markarian, Y., Larson, M. J., Aldea, M. A., Baldwin, S. A., Good, D., Berkeljon, A., & ... McKay, D. (2010). Multiple pathways to functional impairment in obsessive– compulsive disorder. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(1), 78-88.

McKay, D., Taylor, S., & Abramowitz, J. S. (2010). Obsessive-compulsive disorder. In D. McKay, J. S. Abramowitz, S. Taylor, D. McKay, J. S. Abramowitz, S. Taylor (Eds.) , Cognitive-behavioral therapy for refractory cases: Turning failure into success (pp. 89-109). Washington, DC US: American Psychological Association.

Szechtman, H., & Woody, E. (2004). Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder as a Disturbance of Security Motivation. Psychological Review, 111(1), 111-127.

Epiphenonema: can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em

Hampshire College

Philosophy of Mind

Introduction

Frank Jackson, in his paper “Epiphenomenal Qualia”, argues that we could know all the physical facts about the world, yet we would never know of qualia, and that therefore qualia are not contained in the physical world. Furthermore, he claims that qualia are epiphenomenal: that is, that they are caused by physical processes, but do not have any effect on the physical world. In this paper, I will argue that this claim that qualia are epiphenomenal destroys the Jackson’s first argument, and yet, this same argument does not work without epiphenomenalism. I will conclude by discussing the reasons I think that we should continue to believe a physicalist thesis regarding qualia.

Epiphenomenalism

In the second half of his paper, Jackson argues that there is no good reason that one should not accept that qualia might be epiphenomena—caused by physical processes, yet with no causal power whatsoever in the physical world. I do not believe that he establishes the epiphenomenalism as a sound hypothesis.

Jackson lists three major objections that he feels philosophers often have against epiphenomenalism:

1. “It is supposed to be just obvious that the hurtfulness of pain is partly responsible for the subject seeking to avoid pain, saying ‘it hurts’ and so on.”
2. “According to natural selection the traits that evolve over time are those conducive to physical survival. We may assume that qualia evolved over time—we have them, the earliest forms of life do no—and so we should expect qualia to be conducive to survival. The objection is that they could hardly help us to survive if they do nothing to the physical world.”
3. “…how can a person’s behavior provide any reason for believing he had qualia like mine, or indeed any qualia at all, unless this behavior can be regarded as the outcome of the qualia…And an epiphenomenalist cannot regard behavior, or indeed anything physical, as an outcome of qualia.”

The first objection, as Jackson phrases it, is silly, as all arguments resting on “obvious”-ness are, and so his reply to it is not very interesting for our purposes. The second objection betrays a substantial misunderstanding of evolutionary theory, and I think Jackson’s reply to it is correct[1]. The third objection, however, is very interesting, and it is in his reply to this objection that Jackson makes the argument that I now wish to deconstruct.

Jackson’s reply to this third objection is in the form of an analogy, which I will paraphrase. Suppose I read in the New York Times that the mayor of NYC is cutting funding for police. I can reasonably infer that the New York Post also reports on this fact, even though the New York Times and the New York Post may not have any influence on each other. I can do this because I know that the New York Times and the New York Post both report on issues of interest to New Yorkers, that the New York Times reporting that the mayor is cutting funding for police is a good indication that the mayor is, in fact, doing such a thing, that this is an issue of interest to New Yorkers, and that therefore the New York Post has also probably reported on this fact. The analogous case for qualia (which Jackson never explicitly lays out) is that given that my nervous system produces both qualia and certain types of behaviors (analogous to how the mayor’s actions “produce” the stories in both the New York Times and the New York Posts), and that your behaviors are similar to mine, I can infer that you have the sort of nervous system that would also produce qualia.

The difficulty with this argument, as Daniel Dennett (“’Epiphenomenal Qualia?”) points out, comes from the fact that, according to Jackson’s account, qualia have no causal powers in the physical world. Because of this, qualia cannot influence my behavior in any way[2]: otherwise what we have is not epiphenomenalism, but interactionist dualism. For this reason, it is impossible for me to know that I myself have qualia, as their existence or non-existence would make no difference to the workings of my brain.

“Ah,” it may be replied, “but just because qualia do not have any effect on the workings of your brain, they may still have an effect on the workings of your mind, say, your belief that you have qualia.” This is, strictly speaking, a valid move. However, it has troubling consequences: for example (referencing Dennett), if I lost my qualia, I would presumably no longer believe that I had them, but I would still act exactly as if I did. Mental states could no longer be said to influence behavior, as those mental states are potentially influenced by qualia and qualia cannot influence behavior[3]. It seems, then, that the epiphenomenalist is left with two options. One, they could say that qualia influence mental states, in which case mental states cannot influence behavior and my mind is completely severed from the physical world, or two—if we want to preserve the influence of mental states on behavior—that qualia do not influence mental states, in which case it is impossible for me to know whether I myself have qualia. The first option is unpalatable (as I will discuss below), yet if the epiphenomenalist takes the second position, he/she must admit that there is no way for me to infer the existence of qualia in others, since I cannot even use myself as an example!

The Knowledge Argument

“Alright,” says the epiphenomenalist. “Let us assume your analysis is correct. If qualia have no effect on the physical world, then it is impossible for us to know whether we ourselves have qualia. However, there may be many things that it is impossible for us to know about, but which nevertheless exist. For example, there might be creatures that live beyond—and will always live beyond—the area of the universe that we can observe. It would be impossible for us to ever know about them, yet that does not change their existence.”

Against this, many would argue that, in the absence of any sort of evidence, it is useless to speak of some thing’s “existence”. There is a much larger philosophical issue at stake here. Happily, we do not need to discuss this issue now. For if qualia are truly epiphenomenal, then Jackson’s Knowledge Argument—the central part of his paper—completely falls apart.

This argument is as follows. Imagine that there is a neuroscientist, Mary, who for some reason has been forced to live her whole life inside a black-and-white room[4]. Despite this, Mary becomes a specialist in color vision and, eventually, learns everything that it is possible to know about how color vision works: complete descriptions of the physical mechanisms, the functional roles that color perception and various colors play, etc. One day, Mary’s captors decide to let her out of the room. She gets handed a tomato—the fruit of choice for released prisoners—and finds that, despite her omniscience regarding color vision, the color of the tomato is a completely new experience for her. “Aha,” she exclaims, “so this is what ‘red’, the color I know is associated with tomatoes, actually looks like!” She has learned a new fact about color that was not amongst any of the physical facts: what such color is like. This would seem to imply, then, that this fact about what red is like—the quale associated with red—is not part of the physical world.

However, this story does not make any sense if we accept that qualia are epiphenomenal. Firstly, if qualia have no influence on the physical world, it cannot be the new quale that caused Mary to make any sort of exclamation. She would have said the same thing, quale or not. This objection does not mean much, though—it can easily be countered that even though we cannot know from her actions whether or not Mary has learned a new fact, it is still the case that her subjective experience obviously now includes that fact. Perhaps we can imagine that Mary merely thought about the fact that she now had this new qualia, so we don’t have to worry about its effect on her actions. This does not help, though, as we must now ask whether Mary’s thoughts are reflected in the workings of her brain. I.e., could some sort of neuroscientific Laplace’s Demon, who knows everything about the physical structure of Mary’s brain at any time, be able to tell us what she is thinking? I think Jackson would want the answer to this to be yes. Yet, if it is true that qualia can influence Mary’s thoughts, and that thoughts are reflected by brain states, then one of two options become must be chosen: either qualia can influence brain states, and are therefore not epiphenomenal, or thoughts—and this would seem to include all thoughts, not just those specifically about qualia, as any given thought could always have qualia as part of its causal history—are entirely distinct from those brain states, even though they are reflected by them. If we choose this latter option, then the causal relationship between thoughts and brain states, if one exists, must be a one-way street: thoughts are caused by the brain states, but thoughts cannot influence brain states, and are, in fact, epiphenomenal. However, if thoughts are epiphenomenal, then anything that can be influenced by thoughts would have to be epiphenomenal too (otherwise, thoughts could exert some sort of influence on the physical world). This would likely include any mental state Mary might have (thoughts are, after all, quite influential in the mental world). In fact, if the entity called Mary can learn a new fact from experiencing a new quale—Mary can be influenced by qualia—then Mary herself must be an epiphenomenon: something caused by the lump of matter that has just been released from its black-and-white room, but with no ability to influence that lump of matter in any way.

Does the Knowledge Argument work without Epiphenomenal Qualia?

We have seen that if qualia are truly epiphenomenal, and yet I can learn a new fact from experiencing new qualia, then I myself must be epiphenomenal—otherwise, qualia can influence the physical world through me. While there is no immediately apparent logical reason why this view could not, possibly, be true, I think very few would be willing to accept it. If I am epiphenomenal, then, by definition, I have no power over the physical world—not even my own body. I am merely experiencing the effects of processes over which I have no control. In my mind this consequence is a sort of informal reductio ad absurdum, and I think most philosophers would agree[5].

However, perhaps we have been too concerned with epiphenomena. Perhaps Jackson’s Knowledge Argument still works—perhaps he just made a mistake by attaching epiphenomenal qualia to it. Of course, there are numerous objections to the Knowledge Argument not related to epiphenomenalism: perhaps what Mary learns is not a new fact, but a new mode of knowing some fact—not a “what”, but a “how”, or perhaps, as Dennett points out, our reaction to the Mary story merely reflects that we cannot conceive of what it would mean for Mary to know everything physical that there is to know—perhaps, with that knowledge, she would be able to reconstruct the subjective experience of seeing red. According to Dennett’s objection, Jackson is merely begging the question by pre-supposing that knowing all the physical facts will not allow Mary to have the experience. However, I want to take a different tack. I want to argue that, without epiphenomenalism, the Knowledge Argument does not work. Of course, we also just saw that with epiphenomenalism the Knowledge Argument doesn’t work. This means that if I’m successful, the Knowledge Argument will have nowhere to go.

If qualia do exist, but are not epiphenomenal, that is, they do have some sort of influence on the physical world, how does this affect the story of Mary? Let’s go back to before Mary left the room, when she knew everything physical there is to know about color vision. If the qualia associated with seeing color have a physical effect, then this effect would have to be included in Mary’s knowledge. This would lead to one of two options: either qualia are non-physical, in which case Mary’s description of the physical mechanism of color vision would have to have some sort of causal hole in it—that is, she could say only that A causes B, and then B causes something or other, and that something or other causes D—or that qualia is included in the physical description, in which case Mary would already know the subjective sensation of seeing red before leaving the room. Obviously, the second option leads to physicalism (although it is possible that the physical description might include stuff that we have not yet incorporated into our neuroscience), so it is obviously the first option that anyone who wants to say that qualia are non-physical must choose. This option implies that the physical world is not closed under physical causation—that is, that there are non-physical things that can nevertheless have physical effects. Now, there is no prima facie reason why this isn’t a viable option. However, there is also no prima facie reason to choose one of the two options over the other (at least, not until one considers the arguments of those such as Dennett). Once again, we are faced with the problem of begging the question: Jackson must pre-suppose that qualia would not be included in a complete physical description. Of course, those who want non-physical qualia could say that the physicalist is also guilty of question begging. The question is empirical.

Qualia of the Gaps

The question is empirical, but we must ask: can it, in fact, be answered? We move now to the realm of personal opinion. It seems likely to me that there is no possible empirical evidence that could allow us to choose between the two options until such time as we do find a physicalist description of qualia. That is, there is no way that we could determine whether the causal gap we have encountered—the place where we throw up our hands and say “well, something happens”—is, in principle, impossible to bridge. The question now becomes: what assumption shall we make when we encounter a seeming explanatory gap? Do we assume that it is intrinsically inexplicable, or do we assume that we just don’t know enough, or may not even be smart enough? I think the latter is a much more satisfactory option, as it allows and motivates us to continue searching for an answer. Furthermore, the history of science includes numerous examples of the solution of seemingly insoluble problems, problems that were declared to be permanently insoluble. Physicalism has triumphed in the past, and I believe that we can reasonably assume that it will continue to do so.

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[1] Namely, that the fact that some trait exists does not mean that it was evolutionarily selected for. It may, instead, be a necessary byproduct of some other trait that was selected for.

[2] To clarify, in all following discussion I assume that epiphenomenalism defines the inability to influence the physical world as a necessary property of qualia instead of a contingent one. I.e., I take it to mean not only that qualia do not happen to influence the physical world, but that they cannot influence the physical world (at least not in our reality).

[3] At this point a particularly legalistic reader might have begun to object to my characterization of “influence”. “Qualia influence mental states, and mental states influence behavior, but you have failed to show that qualia influence behavior,” that reader may say. To this I would reply: imagine that qualia were taken out of the causal chain. Would this not change the behavior of things further down in the chain? At least one property of influence/causal power is that if in order to give a complete causal account of the behavior of B one must describe the behavior of A, then A influences B.

[4] We may suppose also that, for whatever reason, she cannot see the colors of her own body.

[5] It may be objected I am pre-supposing the existence of free-will here, which would be ironic, as I do not believe in free-will. However, I think the objection is unfounded. Even though we may not have control over our volitions, it still seems very hard to hold that those volitions do not have the causal powers that we feel they do.