The Phenomenal Principle

Ed Buckner sends this:

“If there sensibly appears to a subject to be something which possesses a particular sensible quality then there is something of which the subject is aware which does possess that sensible quality”. (Howard Robinson, Perception, 1994, London: Routledge, p. 32)

That is the question. If it sensibly appears to Jake that there is a green after-image, does it follow that there is something green of which Jake is aware?

I’m inclined to answer yes. But then we have the problem that there is nothing green and physical outside Jake’s brain, nor inside Jake’s brain. So what is it that is green? We agree that it can’t be a physical item, if Robinson’s Principle is true.

I recommend Robinson’s 1994 book, and also his November 2022 book Perception and Idealism.

Ed seems to be coming around. Robinson is asking the right question, and Ed answers in the affirmative or at least is so inclined. (By the way, I read Robinson's excellent Matter and Sense: A Critique of Contemporary Materialism, Cambridge UP, 1982, when it first came out. I expect his later work, which I haven't read, is equally good.)

It is best to approach the question from the first-person point of view. A green after-image sensibly appears to me. (It appears visually and so sensibly.) Does something appear or does nothing appear? The datum is not nothing, so it is something.  It is indubitably something. And it is a describable, definite something: green, pulsating, etc. The green item is not outside my head. But it is not inside my head either. (As Bill Lycan says, if I have something green inside my head, then I am in big trouble.)

It follows that the indubitable phenomenal datum cannot be a physical item that is green, pulsating, etc. The inference is correct and the conclusion is true.  What Ed should do is simply admit that there are sensory qualia.  But he appears loathe to do so. He needs to explain why. Is he ideologically committed to materialism? I don't think that's it. 

We know that Ed reasonably rejects the characteristic Meinongian thesis that (i) some of the items to which we refer both in thought and in language have no being (Sein) whatsoever (not Dasein, not Bestehen, not intentionales QuasiSein, not any Seinsmodus) but nevertheless (ii) are mind-independent Soseine that actually (not merely possibly) instantiate properties. But this rejection of Meinong cannot be a good reason for Ed to refuse to countenance the green after-image, and this for two  reasons. First, the sensory quale in question is not mind-independent. Second, it exists. In its case, esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived. The green after-image is perceived, and by the same stroke, it is/exists.

But it may be that Ed is confusing the green after-image with the green unicorn. And we did catch him in that confusion in an earlier thread. Suppose I am thinking about a green unicorn. Let's use 'thinking' in the broad Cartesian way to refer to any object-directed act of awareness, including imagining. Imagining a green unicorn, I am not imagining an image since a unicorn is an animal, not an image; I am imagining a unicorn. The object-directed act of mind purports to display a mind-independent animal,  not a mind-dependent image. 

But of course there are/exist no unicorns!  For that very reason, a sensory quale such as a green after-image cannot be assimilated to a green unicorn. What's more, unicorns are not mind-dependent. Qualia are; ergo, etc. 

Your move, Ed. Give us some good reasons why you will not admit qualia. If your reasons are neither pro-materialist not anti-Meinongian, what are they?

Comments

[oz]

>For that very reason, a sensory quale such as a green after-image cannot be assimilated to a green unicorn.<

You misunderstand my argument of the last thread. Consider the two consequences:

(1) I am thinking of a green after-image, therefore something is green
(2) I am visually experiencing a green after-image, therefore something is green

I continue to reject (1) on the grounds that “is thinking of” is an intentional verb phrase. You remember we discussed the Intentionalist Fallacy a while. This is the fallacy of supposing that an intentional verb is non-intentional.

But I am open to (2). Visually experiencing does not seem to me like thinking. In the case of after-images, also mirror images, there really is something there. So “is visually experiencing” is plausibly a non-intentional verb. It implies that something corresponds to its grammatical accusative.

Note that the argument as I have rephrased it does not depend on any purported difference between after-images and unicorns.

> Give us some good reasons why you will not admit qualia.

I have already agreed that in the case of (2), there really is something green. And given that nothing is green either inside or outside my brain, it seems to follow that some mental but non-physical green item exists.

Where does that leave us?

[BV]

But Ed, what is at issue is not thinking about a green after-image or any sensory quale; what is at issue is the experiencing (of) a green after-image. Your problem, I think, is that in your language-analytic excess you resolutely refuse to do any phenomenology.

Try this: stare for a moment at a very bright light. Then shut your eyes. If you see an after-image, THAT is what the discussion is about.

[oz]

>what is at issue is not thinking about a green after-image

I agree, which is why I accept (2) but reject (1). Experiencing is not the same as thinking. Why? Because I have done the 'phenomenology'. I am agreeing with you.