One of the major themes in modern philosophy was concerns about the way that our contact with the world is mediated by our “ideas”. Thus, you are looking at a tree. But are you really seeing the tree, or are you just seeing your sense-impression, which doesn’t have much in common with the tree? Even direct realists like Reid who say you are seeing the cat still think that your conscious experience involves qualia that aren’t like a tree.
Thinking about this gives us the impression that an epistemically better way to relate to the tree would be if the tree itself took the place of our sense-impressions or qualia. Berkeley did that, but at the cost of demoting the tree to a mere figment of our perception. But if we could do that without demoting the tree, then we would be better kinds of perceivers.
However, that on some theory we would be better kinds of perceivers is not a strong reason to think that theory is true! After all, we would be better perceivers if we could see far infrared, but we can’t. It’s not my point to question the orthodoxy about our perceptions of trees.
But now think about beatitude, where the blessed see God. If seeing God is like seeing a tree in the sense that there is something like a mediating supersense-impression in us, then something desirable is lacking in the blessed. And that’s not right. Such a mediated vision of God is not as intimate as we could wish for. Would it not be so much more intimate if it were a direct vision of God in the fullest sense, where God himself takes the place of our qualia? We shouldn’t argue from “it would be better that way” to “it is that way” in our earthly lives, but in beatitude it does not seem such a terrible argument.
But where this kind of argument really comes into its own is when we think of what the epistemic life of a perfect being would be like. The above considerations suggest that when God sees the tree (and it is traditional to compare God’s knowledge of creation to vision), the vision is fully direct and intimate, and the tree itself plays the role of sense-impressions in us. We would expect a perfect being’s vision to be like that.
Now notice, however, that this is an account of God’s vision of the world on which God’s vision is partly extrinsically constituted: the tree partly constitutes God’s conscious experience of the tree. This is the extrinsic constitution model of how a simple God can know. We have thus started with us and with considerations of perfection, and have come to something like this model without any considerations of divine simplicity. Thus the model is not an ad hoc defense of divine simplicity. It is, rather, a model of the perfect way to epistemically relate to the world.
I’m sure different direct realists treat qualia differently, but from my direct realist perspective, I don’t find this argument persuasive.
ReplyDeleteFirst, it seems to me that the perfection of my vision either should be measured entirely in terms of veridicality, without any reference at all to the mechanism by which the vision is achieved, or else should be measured by veridicality plus the extent to which the mechanism of my vision is proper for my nature. (So by the second measure, Geordi La Forge’s vision might be less perfect than if his eyes were unaided by technology, and mine might be less perfect than if I didn’t need glasses.) By neither standard could we improve human vision by removing direct-realist qualia.
Second, the unlikeness of my qualia to their objects isn’t *as such* a barrier to my having an intimate connection to those objects. There’s something it is like to smell a rose, to hold somebody’s hand, and so on. To wish that this what-its-likeness were more like the rose or more like the hand just seems like a misunderstanding of what qualia are for. And I say this even without having a positive account of what qualia are for. I just know that, whatever they’re for, they aren’t going to be made better at it by eliminating all unlikeness with their object. And for human beings, at least, an eternity without *any* qualia doesn’t sound like heaven to me. (Maybe one purpose of qualia is to achieve a kind of unity with the object, but it’s going to have to be the sort of unity that respects the otherness of the object, and that’s going to *require* some sort of unlikeness, at least in the case of human beings.)
I suppose what one says about this depends on whether one thinks the semantic properties of qualia are necessary or contingent. If they are necessary, then what you say isn't unreasonable--though I still think it would be better not to have the mediation but to have direct consciousness. But if they are contingent, then the indirectness becomes multiplied. If grass could just as well look like sky, its green quale is not revealing that much to us.
ReplyDeleteHi Dr.Pruss,
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about Rasmussen and Bailey's argument for dualism from Cantor and cardinality?
It seems pretty strong to me on the surface at least, but I rarely see it brought up.
This question took a lot of thought. See my blog post for today.
ReplyDelete