Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Another argument that qualia aren't fundamental

I once gave a theological argument against qualia (or at least all qualia) being fundamental properties. Here’s a non-theological one.

  1. Temporal Purity: that x has a fundamental temporary property F at t is a fact solely about x at t and not at other times.

  2. Essential Consciousness: it is impossible to have a quale without the corresponding awareness.

  3. Temporal Resolution: no ordinary state lasting less than a nanosecond (say) can consciously experienced by us.

Now consider an ordinary quale Q (e.g., of pain) and a time t. Obviously, ordinary qualia are temporary properties. For a reductio, suppose Q is fundamental. By Temporal Purity and a plausible rearrangement principle, it is possible that I have Q only during a half-nanosecond interval of times. By Essential Consciousness, I have the corresponding awareness during that interval. By Temporal Resolution, I don’t have the corresponding arrangement. Contradiction!

As a friend of distributional properties, however, I am somewhat worried about Temporal Purity. Couldn’t there be a temporary property that isn’t had at a time but at an interval of times?

Why the restriction to ordinary qualia? Well, the Temporal Resolution thesis might not apply to something supernatural, like the beatific vision.


Martin Cooke said...

Hi again Alex,

What if time is not like the real number line, but is more blotchy? Time being part of spacetime, which is likely to have a quantum-mechanical side to it on the smallest scales, this does not seem too far-fetched. And what if the most highly mutated brain possible, when in some chemically altered state, could support awareness of ordinary qualia at such scales? Just wondering...

Alexander R Pruss said...

But the scale of quantum blotchiness will probably be Planck time, which is way smaller than a nanosecond. And that's about 40 orders of magnitude from our short-event perception ( which is probably at best something of the order of magnitude of one millisecond: ), so that it seems unlikely a being like us could experience that.

Could one modify the human body so it could perceive things that short? Even if one could, the point is irrelevant to my argument. For we unmodified humans wouldn't perceive such fast states, though it seems we could *have* them if they are fundamental properties (e.g., God could give you the quale one nanosecond before you died).