From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Sat Dec 18 1999 - 02:54:41 MST
'What is your name?' 'Robert Owen.' 'Do you deny having written the
following?':
> Is "now" a qualium?
I answered your question before, but I'm just SO curious to see what
you've got up your sleeve that I'll play devil's advocate for a moment and
give the answer which, IMO, someone who believed in qualia would believe.
I'll also take a guess at just what you might be driving.
------ Here, I adopt a position which I do not believe. ------
Yes, "now" is a quale. It, like other indexicals such as "here" and "I,"
cannot be written 3rd personally, non-indexically, in direct speech, in
precisely the same sense as it would be said/thought 1st personally in
direct speech by someone who used the indexical.
The thought experiment which demonstrates this involves sensory
deprivation and selective amnesia. Indeed, suppose I bashed David Kaplan
over the head and dragged him to my secret laboratory, where I drugged him
and blindfolded him and waited for him to awake. Upon awakening, suppose
that he had forgotten whom he was, and, indeed, every other property he
has (such as his gender, his occupation, his address, etc.) and is totally
incapable of detecting any part of his body. (That's where the drugs came
in; he's under my experimental super-anaesthetic.) Upon awakening, he
could meaningfully point out to himself: "I don't know how long I've been
here like this."
The odd part comes in when we notice that there is no non-indexical
assertion in direct speech with exactly the same proposition behind it,
where it is assumed that if I fear that X, and Y is a sentence which
states the same proposition as X, then I fear that Y. Similarly, if I
believe that X, I believe that Y. And if I wonder if X, I wonder if Y.
Suppose we tried: "David Kaplan doesn't know how long he has been in Dan
Fabulich's secret laboratory, blindfolded and drugged." Surely, this
sentence has the same truth conditions as the sentence "I don't know how
long I've been here like this" as uttered by David Kaplan under those
conditions, but the two sentences do not express the same proposition,
since David Kaplan does NOT believe that "David Kaplan doesn't know ...
laboratory ... drugged." He doesn't know that HE'S David Kaplan, or where
he is, or exactly what situation he's in. Rather, he believes that he
himself (whomever that is!) does not know how long he has been in the very
location he's in (wherever that is) in the very condition he's in
(whatever condition that may be).
I just can't say that in direct speech quite the same way David Kaplan can
say it in my secret laboratory, blindfolded under super-anaestetic.
Because any way I refer to him, I have to ascribe a property to him, such
as "the guy who is David Kaplan" or "the guy Dan Fabulich is talking
about" or "the man who wrote 'dThat.'" And, by hypothesis, he doesn't
know any 3rd personal properties about himself. So nothing but an
indexical will do, and only when said by him.
Indeed, earlier today I was just thinking to myself about the idea of
qualia as the meanings, or propositions, of a certain kind of text,
namely, the organization of my neurons. Words on a page have an
organization which gives them meaning, which we regard to be behind or
above the words themselves; the same goes for brain states and qualia.
The analogy extends even further, since philosophers of language are in
the HABIT of talking about thought examples in which otherwise physically
identical words-on-paper have different meanings, or situations in which
one instantiation of the word-on-paper has meaning, and the other doesn't.
If my little analogy is correct, then talking about identical
scratches on paper, one having meaning, the other not, is exactly
akin to discussing the idea of two identical PEOPLE, one of whom's brain
states would have qualia, the other not.
This sort of position can be exceedingly difficult to refute, because it's
not a well-regarded move to swoop in and say "there is no meaning to
any organization," where an organization might be a sentence or a brain
state, because that sentence is itself an organization, and if true, then
it is meaningless. Or, to put it another way, if it is meaningful, then
it is false.
------- All done ------
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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