Thomas Metzinger
& Bettina Walde
Commentary on Jakab’s
Ineffability of Qualia
Zoltan Jakab has presented an interesting
conceptual analysis of the ineffability of qualia in a functionalist and
classical cognitivist framework. But he does not want to commit himself to a
certain metaphysical thesis on the ontology of consciousness or qualia. We
believe that his strategy has yielded a number of highly relevant and
interesting insights, but still suffers from some minor inconsistencies and a
certain lack of phenomenological and empirical plausibility. This may be due to
some background assumptions relating to the theory of mental representation
employed.
Jakab’s starting assumption is that there is no
linguistic description of a given experience such that understanding the
description would result in someone who has never had the experience being
described undergoing an experience of that type. (In terms of the well-known
Mary case: No description could reveal what colors are like to Mary.) This is
what Jakab means by the ineffability of qualia. And this is Jakab's
explanation: Understanding in the standard sense involves our
linguistic-conceptual abilities; but our linguistic-conceptual abilities are
not involved in undergoing simple sensory experiences; so they cannot deliver
knowledge by acquaintance, which means linguistic descriptions of sensory
experiences cannot result in someone who understands the description undergoing
the experience being described. (We do not agree with the assumption that our
linguistic-conceptual abilities are not at all involved in undergoing simple
sensory experiences; such processes can be involved in undergoing simple
sensory experiences, but they need not be the only thing involved in undergoing
simple sensory experiences; in undergoing simple sensory experiences something
else is involved which cannot be captured by descriptions. The crucial point is
that descriptions do not give us knowledge by acquaintance.)
Jakab argues that the ineffability of qualia
results from representational and computational mechanisms in the mind-brain.
According to his explanation many sensory experiences are syntactically
unstructured or representationally atomic; their function is just to
distinctively indicate certain external state of affairs, but not to
systematically map their structural attributes. If syntactic structure is present and if (with a certain degree
of reliability of a “probabilistic link”; see p. 42) it maps a certain pattern
of relations in the external world then this structural information about the
world can be expressed in language. Jakab explains that limits of
expressibility as in the case of qualia are tied to the limits of the
information represented by some state. In his opinion the ineffability of
qualia arises out of their limited representation of information - these limits
in representing information correspond to the missing structuring of qualia or
sensory experiences, and unstructured states are ineffable. The reason for the
ineffability of qualia is missing syntactic structure.
To understand fully what this means let us look
at Jakab’s conceptual toolkit: By complex representations he means a pattern of
relations among certain constituents mapping a certain external pattern of
relations; complex representations have syntax and constituent structure.
Unstructured or atomic representational states are syntactically and semantically
unstructured; they have distinctive
physical properties, but these properties only serve as indicators of external
states of affairs. Jakab formulates the following conditions on which an
experience E has constituent
structure.
An experience E has constituent structure iff it has constituents that stand in
specific relations to each other; for something to be a constituent of E, it has to satisfy the following two
conditions:
(CS1) C1, C2, ..., Cn are discernible
in E. Discernibility means that C1, C2, ..., Cn are introspectively
accessible on undergoing E (hence they can give rise to a verbal
report that lists the constituents, or
discriminative responses). This personal-level description is interpreted in
machine-level terms, thus C1,
C2, ..., Cn
must be accessible to those processing mechanisms that define access
consciousness.
(CS2) Each
discernible element C1, C2,
..., Cn is a full-blown experience that can be undergone
independently of the other constituents (i.e., independently of “the rest” of E).
Assuming (CS1)
and (CS2) Jakab offers necessary and
sufficient conditions on the expressibility of experiences:
[CN] The
experience to be imagined (E) has to
have constituent structure. Elementary perceptual states can be recalled as wholes by activating
previously learned associative links; they cannot be constructed in imagination.
[SN3] The
constituents of E have to be known
to the subject. This means that they have to be labeled; it is not enough that
the subject has already undergone them. For instance, the instruction “Imagine
a blue triangle” can help the listener only if, in the listener’s mind, the
experience of blue is associated with “blue” and some pictorial representation
of a triangle is associated with “triangle”. If these associations are not in
place, the instruction cannot work; e.g., “blue” cannot recall the
corresponding perceptual state from the listener’s memory.
[SN4] The
perceptual modality, which is supposed to perform the imagination, has to be
properly trained. This explains why, e.g., a congenitally blind subject
immediately after sight restoration cannot visually imagine shapes or complex
scenes; she cannot even perceive them
because her visual system is not yet trained.
In the color domain, all simple sensory
experiences satisfy (CS1); they have
a dimensional position consisting of hue, brightness, and saturation. But not
all sensory experiences satisfy (CS2);
a system or subject cannot experience single values of the dimensional position
of a simple sensory experience independent of the other two values (it cannot
experience hue without saturation and brightness). Jakab distinguishes having
elementary color experiences (yellow, red, green, blue, black, and white) and
having nonelementary color experiences, as, for example, orange, which is
composed from yellow and red. While nonelementary color experiences have
constituent structure [they satisfy conditions (CS1) and (CS2)]
elementary color experiences fail to have constituent structure [they do not
satisfy condition (CS2)]. Jakab
assumes that the constituent structure of nonelementary states is
representationally irrelevant. Elementary color experiences are ineffable
because they do not meet condition (CN)
of the necessary and sufficient conditions on the expressibility of
experiences; they do not have constituent structure (hue, saturation, and
brightness cannot be undergone independent of each other).
For (CN)
to be met in the case of elementary color experiences a subject must have
undergone the experience before. But even if a subject has undergone elementary
color experiences, they are still not expressible in language. In Jakab’s
opinion the reason is this: If we describe red, we are basically confined to
the hue dimension itself; unique red has no constituent structure, only one of
the dimensional positions of red seems to be relevant to its intrinsic
character; but all that a description can convey on the intrinsic character of
redness is that it is unmixed, unstructured, or unitary. Unique hues lack
constituent structure; therefore it is not possible to extract any relevant
information from elementary color-experiences that could be coded in language (a
perceptual state having constituent structure is a necessary condition on the
expressibility of that state in language). Any coupling between a
linguistically coded structure and a perceptual state will turn out to be
arbitrary (in the case of unique hues). Any representational structure,
conveyed by a description, will mismatch equally well with the unstructured
experience of a unique hue.
So Jakab’s explanation of the ineffability of
qualia is based on the assumption that it is syntactic structure that sets up
the limits of expressibility; absence of syntactic structure entails
representational atomism. We agree with Jakab's starting assumption that there
is no linguistic description of a given experience such that understanding the
description would result in someone who has never had such an experience
undergoing an experience of that type. Ineffability is an interesting and
relevant feature of simple sensory content, and a representationalist analysis
certainly is promising. But within this framework of agreement there are a few
points on which we want to raise questions.
First, it is at least questionable that missing
syntactic structure causes the ineffability of qualia. It seems that even if
qualia would have syntactic structure, the only thing expressible by language
would be this syntactic structure, but not the experiential content. Imagine a
situation in which qualia have syntactic structure: Orangequalia, for example,
have syntactic structure, they satisfy conditions (CS1) and (CS2), and
they are composed from red and yellow; but in spite of having syntactic
structure, orangequalia are not expressible in language. Jakab explains that
the reason for the ineffability of an orangequale is that red and yellow do not
have syntactic structure. Now assume that red and yellow have syntactic structure: Yellow could be composed from experiences
Z1 and Z2, and red could be composed from experiences Z3
and Z4. We would end up with the following situation: (a) Either Z1
- Z4 have themselves syntactic structure and satisfy
conditions (CS1) and (CS2) or (b) they do not have
syntactic structure like elementary
color experiences in Jakab's account. In case (b) we again end up with
ineffability, because according to Jakab's explanation Z1 - Z4
lack syntactic structure. In case (a) things are not so easy: We also end up
with ineffability if the further components of Z1 - Z4
are atomic and lack syntactic structure, and we do not end up with ineffability
if the further components of Z1 - Z4 have themselves
syntactic structure. At no stage of decomposition of an experience with
syntactic structure do we get full
expressibility. The reason is this:
To get expressibility we have to assume that all the components of an
experience with syntactic structure again have syntactic structure ad infinitum! So, even if we assume
“syntacticity all the way down,” at no finite stage of decomposition of an
experience with syntactic structure is that experience expressible (in spite of
its having syntactic structure). To really get expressibility we would have to
stop the infinite regress of decomposition, but then we would again end up with
something atomic and with ineffability. This seems to suggest that missing
syntactic structure is not the reason for the ineffability of qualia. In other
words: even if qualia would have syntactic structure this would not be enough
to get expressibility; only the syntactic structure would be expressible.
Second, the notion of representational “atomicity” is slightly
unfortunate because it implicitly presupposes an entity that can, in principle,
“stand alone,” phenomenologically, but possibly even in an ontological sense.
An atom is something that is not only indivisible, but, like a substance in the
ontological sense, can in principle exist all by itself. A hydrogen atom can be
part of an H2O molecule or part of an H2S
molecule, but at any time it can be reisolated from the “molecular context” of
water or hydrogen sulfide. For the conscious experience of color, this is
phenomenologically as well as empirically false. In other words, our second
question amounts to the claim that (CS2)
is empirically false for color.
As is well known, under conditions of
homogeneous visual stimulation by a Ganzfeld
the conscious experience of chromatic color vanishes completely. That is, the
respective phenomenal content is not a context-invariant property of subjective
experience, but one that crucially depends in its existence on a specific
perceptual context. If, as Jakab proposes, its “intrinsic” character, e.g., of unitary,
phenomenal “red,” is taken as a “particular ‘value’ of a single subjective
dimension (hue),” then this dimension is not an absolute dimension, independent
of the overall context in which phenomenal experience is generated. In
particular, no full-blown experience of phenomenal red can be undergone, if all of the visual field is filled with
the paradigmatic physical stimulus. Instead, color experience typically
vanishes within 3 - 6 min; and in some cases visual experience as such even
disappears completely.
What is the resulting phenomenal configuration
in these cases? Typically, after a 3-min adaptation, an achromatic field will
be described in 80% of the reports, with the remaining 20% only describing a
faint trace of consciously experienced color (cf. Cohen 1958, p. 391).
Representative phenomenological reports are “A diffuse fog,” “A hazy insipid
yellow,” “A gaseous effect,” “A milky substance,” “Misty, like being in a lemon
pie,” “Smoky” (cf. Cohen 157, p. 406), or “swimming in a mist of light which
becomes more condensed at an indefinite distance” or the experience of a “sea
of light” (Metzger, 1930; and Gibson & Waddell 1952; as quoted by Avant,
1965, p. 246). This shows how a simple sensory content like “red” cannot “stand
by itself,” but that it is bound into the relational context generated by other
phenomenal dimensions. One prediction following from this is that a homogeneous
Ganzfeld stimulation of all sensory organs would lead to a
complete collapse of phenomenal consciousness (originally made by Koffka, 1935,
p. 120; see also Hochberg, Triebel, & Seaman 1951, p. 153) or to a taking
over by autonomous, internal activity, i.e., through hallucinatory content
exclusively generated by internal top-down mechanisms (see, e.g., Avant 1965, p.
247; but also, e.g., ffytche & Howard, 1999; Leopold & Logothetis,
1999). As a matter of fact, even during ordinary chromatic stimulation in a
simple visual Ganzfeld many subjects
lose phenomenal vision altogether,
i.e., all phenomenal dimensions, including saturation and brightness, disappear
from the conscious model of reality. Cohen (1957, p. 406) reported a complete
cessation of visual experience in 5 of 16 tested observers. He also presented
what he took to be a representative description of the shift in phenomenal
content: “Foggy whiteness, everything blacks out, returns, goes. I feel blind.
I’m not even seeing blackness. This differs from black and white when the
lights are out.”
Individual differences do exist. Interestingly,
the fade-out effect is even wavelength dependent, i.e., in viewing a short
wavelength, fading periods are long and the additional phenomenal experience of
darkness (i.e., of being darker than a nonilluminated Ganzfeld) after turning lights off is strong, while just the
opposite is true for viewing long wavelengths (with the magnitudes of all three
shifts in conscious content (i.e., the loss of chromaticity, brightness, and
the addition of darkness after lights are turned off) being linearly related to
the logarithm of stimulus intensity; see Gur, 1989). In general, the Ganzfeld effect is likely to result from
an inability of the human visual system to respond to nontransient stimuli. As
Moshe Gur writes: “In the Ganzfeld, unlike normal viewing, the ever-present
eye-movements do not affect the transformation from the object to the retinal
plane and thus the stimulus temporal modulations are faithfully depicted at the
retinal level. ... It is the spatial uniformity of the stimulus that assures
that although different retinal elements may receive different amounts of
light, each element, in the absence of temporal changes in the stimulus,
receives a time-invariant light intensity” (Gur 1989, p. 1335).
What does this mean in terms of conceptual constraints for our philosophical concept of conscious color experience, in particular for the ineffability of color experience? In Section 4.2 Jakab, when discussing theoretical option [1] (the constituent structure assumption for binary hues like orange), writes that, for orange, (CS2) amounts to the claim that the experience of red and yellow can be undergone separately. Second, Jakab reaches an interesting conclusion about the dimensional positions of individual colors as compared to those of phenomenally experienced tones: Because binary, unsaturated hues satisfy both (CS1) and (CS2), they can be said to have “constituent-based dimensional positions.” As originally introduced, however, (CS2) states that for every discernible element of a perceptual experience E it is true that it is a full-blown experience
that can be undergone independently. We now see
how (CS2) is empirically and
phenomenologically false for conscious color vision. Therefore the conclusions
just mentioned are not tenable as well. Not only is it impossible to experience
hue without saturation or brightness, but it is also impossible to experience
hue plus saturation plus brightness without an integrated percept - typically
segregated from a background. Conscious experience seems to start on the object
level, and elementary states in the true sense of the word do not exist.
The underlying philosophical mistake consists
in importing the “combinatorial semantics” associated with Fodor’s classical
“language-of-thought” approach to mental representation into a
representationalist analysis of phenomenal content. Simple phenomenal content
(e.g., the color orange) is not related to complex phenomenal content (e.g.,
the robust, multimodal object in terms of the orange in your hand, which you
consciously feel and smell and the weight of which you sense as you view it) in
the same manner as elements are related to a set, but like parts are related to
wholes. Ineffable forms of simple sensory content are not building blocks or
atomic constituents, but attentionally available, discriminable aspects of higher order phenomenal
wholes (cf. Metzinger, 1995). There is no “machine-level” (see Jakab’s
definition of introspectively accessible constituents C1, C2, ..., Cn on p. 16) because human brains simply are
not machines (at least not machines with a classic von-Neumann architecture).
They are dynamical systems binding features they detect in their environment
into perceptual objects by ultrafast, complex forms of self-organization taking
place (a) in a non-rule-based representational medium, which (b) unfolds on a
subsymbolic level, and (c) at least in perceptual processing “operates” on
entities for which the syntax/semantics distinction is not easily applied.
Jakab says he wants to apply the Fodorian picture and the notion of an “atomic
symbol” to perceptual representation. But the orange in your hand is not a
perceptual molecule constituted from perceptual atoms, a mere combination of
content-blocks or a bag full of features, it is phenomenally experienced as integrated in a much stronger sense. A
theory of consciousness has to do justice to this fact or it will be
descriptively implausible. The relevant phenomenal content does not result from
constituent-structure syntax and a combinatorial semantics, but from a
nonlinguistic process that we are currently beginning to understand in a much
better way (for a recent review, see Tallon-Baudry & Bertran 1999). Mixture
does not imply constituent structure; other theoretical options are open to us:
Complex phenomenal content (even if it is subjectively invariant, like the
orange in your hand) can be understood as an ongoing, integrated, and holistic process, the individual causal
components of which do not necessarily have to possess the potential of
“standing alone” on the conscious level of representation. Even binary colors,
introspectively mixed as they are, cannot “stand alone” - they have to be
integrated into a perceptual object to reach the level of introspective
accessibility.[1] Therefore,
the conclusion to constituent structure is not a necessary one.
Jakab plausibly differentiates relational and
intrinsic similarity, with the latter characterizing phenomenal contents along
the same experiential dimensions, and he also points out that a metric of
similarity relations within the hue dimension “fails to capture the particular
values of the particular subjective (hue) scale… .” However, one should be
careful in analyzing this kind of “particularity” as “atomicity” or
“constituency” - this simply is a non
sequitur. Particularity (depending on what we would like to call the level
of “granularity” involved in phenomenal content) differs with respect to the
higher order mechanism reading out the relevant information. For instance, it
differs for attention and for cognition[2].
What appears as a particular value under one mechanism may not do so under
another one. A Churchlandian type (see, e.g., Churchland 1986, 1989) of
“state-space semantics for phenomenal content” could be more promising because
it does more justice to the continuous and extremely fine-grained nature of the
real dynamics of the perceiving brain and to the context sensitivity of the
states it generates - even if simple, perceptual qualia might then turn out to
be “simply the activation of a conceptual category
embodied in a hidden layer that is maximally close to the sensory transducer
end of the processing hierarchy” (Churchland 1998,
p. 32). In any case, the second point
we want to make is that Jakab arrives at phenomenologically unconvincing
results because he unnecessarily imports a classicist computational approach
into his background assumptions. Better options are available.
Third, Jakab suggests that the function of
representationally atomic sensory experiences is distinctive indication. They
indicate the presence of a particular kind of external event with a certain
degree of reliability and they are distinguishable
representational states (for the closely related notion of an “analog
indicator,” see Metzinger, 1993; for the concept of “presentational content,”
see Metzinger, 1997). As Jakab writes:
“One might want to add that A [an
atomic state; TM & BW] has to be recognizable on reoccurrence.” But, as
Jakab adds, many sensory experiences do not meet this condition, they are not
recognizable on reoccurrence; all we can do is to discriminate them if we experience them simultaneously. This is an
important point, and it may help to differentiate Jakab’s original notion of
“atomicity.”
Let us stay with the example of conscious color
vision. As Diana Raffman (1995) has shown, we do not possess transtemporal
identity criteria that allow us to introspectively reidentify different shades
of phenomenal color: Due to a limitation of our perceptual memory (Raffman
calls this the “memory constraint”), we are not able to reidentify, i.e., type-identify, single token experiences.
The only exception to this rule is formed by the four pure phenomenal colors,
red, yellow, green, and blue. Obviously, philosophers have ignored this simple
empirical fact for much too long, and it certainly should function as a
conceptual constraint in future theorizing. What it demonstrates is how the
notion of “indivisibility” only makes sense when explicitly related to a
processing mechanism for which some
individual token of active sensory content is impenetrable, for which it is indivisible, and for which it is an atom. To keep things
simple, we distinguish only two such metarepresentational mechanisms: attention
and cognition. Cognition is a process of mental concept formation, whereas
attention is not.
Attention is a process of “representational
resource allocation” that helps to highlight or “zoom in,” e.g., on a specific
currently active color state. Such states then are attentionally available, i.e., a subsymbolic process of
metarepresentation can read out their informational content. However, for the
large majority of non-unary hues, their content is not cognitively available, i.e., for the application of a “phenomenal
concept.” Because we are systems that possess no internal transtemporal
identity criteria for this kind of content, we cannot recognize it on reoccurrence. This point may be important in
further strengthening Jakab’s original philosophical intuition: According to
Raffman these states are not only ineffable in that we cannot speak about them, the deeper point is
that we cannot even think about them.
Keeping in mind our previous criticism about the combinatorial approach to
perceptual content, let us call these states “attentionally atomic.” They are
the atoms of introspective attention; at least at any given time they form the
primitive units of color experience. (It is interesting to note how plastic
these atoms can actually be under practice, e.g., when undergoing a systematic
training in refining your color experience; for instance, when studying the history
of art, learning to paint, or during an excursion to the Antarctic or a
rainforest). Let us call the unary hues “cognitively atomic.” They are the
atoms of introspective cognition; they are the only maximally determinate
states that we can reliably type-identify on reoccurrence, by applying a
phenomenal concept to them. Jakab does justice to this point, but then goes on
to note that different inner “lightbulbs,” which covary with external events
while ”the processing system” cannot handle them differently and therefore
cannot give rise to systematically different effects, do not distinctively
indicate those events for the system.
This conclusion is too strong: If the system is in a situation of pairwise
comparison and if the processing mechanism is attention, then they can be handled differently and they can
be systematically distinguished as well. We can
distinguish turquoise34 and turquoise35, if
presented with both stimuli simultaneously in a laboratory situation. However,
if the task is recognition after only
one of those two color samples is being represented to the subject after a
short break, we fail. What mechanism can play what role for the system depends on the perceptual context. It may, in
joining Jakab in taking a teleofunctionalist, evolutionary perspective on
phenomenal content, be interesting to note how it was in precisely those
situations in which our ancestors needed fine-grained sensory discrimination
(e.g., when telling ripe from rotten fruits), i.e., in a situation where many
objects slightly differing in color are simultaneously present and a quick
“on-line decision” has to be made - in which attentional availability would
have been helpful in generating systematic, adaptive responses. For memory
functions, however, it would have been very uneconomic to increase the
computational load on functions of categorization and recall by taking all of
the immense informational richness of the actual confrontation with a stimulus
source into off-line processing. Atomicity is relative to context and
representational mechanism. If the conceptual differentiations introduced above
are applied, Jakab’s approach can explain distinctive indication, at least in
some perceptual contexts. There is attentional on-line distinction, and there
is cognitive off-line distinction. In other words, for conscious color content
there are only four maximally determinate cognitive atoms, but thousands of
maximally determinate attentional atoms. We tend to see this as a strength and
not as a weakness of the human system of color vision. Jakab’s point about
format conversion is well taken, but it is interesting to see how ineffability
in this stronger sense expands into the realm of the cognitive: We cannot even
think about all those maximally determinate shades which are attentionally
available to us because we can, in principle, not form the necessary phenomenal
concepts.
In closing, let us have a brief look at the
notion of a “phenomenal concept.“ Let us now turn to the second question,
regarding the notion of phenomenal
concepts, frequently occurring in the philosophical literature [see
Raffman, 1993, 1995 (giving further references), Raffman in preparation; Burge
1995, p. 591; Loar, 1990; Lycan, 1990; Rey, 1993; in particular Tye, 1995, pp.
161, 174, 189; 1998, pp.468; 1999, pp. 713; 2000]. First of all, one has to see
that this is a terminologically unfortunate matter of speaking: Of course, it
is not the concepts themselves, which
are phenomenal. Phenomenal states are something concrete; concepts are
something abstract. Therefore, one has to separate at least the following
cases:
Case 1 is not the topic of our current
discussion. Case 2 is the object of the other referenced criticism. We find
this criticism very convincing; however, we do not discuss it further here —
among other reasons because the assumption of a language of thought is already,
from an empirical point of view, highly implausible. Case 3a assumes that we
can form rational and epistemically justified beliefs with regard to simple
forms of phenomenal content in which certain concepts appear. The underlying
assumption is that formal, metalinguistic identity criteria for such concepts
can exist which rest on material
identity criteria, which the person in question uses on the object level to
mark the transtemporal identity of
these objects — in this case, the simple forms of active sensory content — for
herself. A fulfilment of those material identity criteria, according to this
assumption, is something that can be directly read off from subjective
experience itself. This, the thought is, works because in our subjective
experience of sensory sameness we carry out a phenomenal representation of this
transtemporal identity on the object level in an automatic manner, which
already carries its epistemic justification in itself. It is precisely this
background assumption which is false in most conceptual contexts: The empirical
material seems to show that those transtemporal identity criteria are simply
not available to us. It follows that the corresponding phenomenal concepts can in principle not be introspectively
formed. To put it differently: The phenomenological approach in philosophy of
mind, at least with regard to those simple forms of phenomenal content, is due
to failure; a descriptive psychology cannot come into existence with regard to
almost all of the most simple forms of phenomenal content. The only promising
strategy, in order to generate further epistemic progress in terms of a conceptual progress, is characterized by
Case 3b. The neural and functional correlates of the corresponding phenomenal
states can, in principle, provide us with transtemporal identity criteria as
well as with those logical identity criteria for which we have been looking.
Neurophenomenology is possible; phenomenology is impossible. For the most
subtle and fine-grained level in sensory consciousness, we have to accept the
following insight: Conceptual progress by a combination of philosophy and
empirical research programs is possible; conceptual progress by introspection
alone is impossible in principle.
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[2] Actually, the situation is much
more complicated than this. If “introspective access” is analyzed as
“consciously experienced access,” then a single phenomenal object
representation will not be enough to yield the full-blown experience of “a self
in the act of introspecting”: An ongoing phenomenal representation of a subject-object relation is necessary.
For the notion of a “phenomenal model of the intentionality relation,” see
Metzinger, 2000.