What is it for a lemon to be “objectively bitter”? According to the philosopher Daniel Dennett (who died in April), it’s “to produce a certain effect in the members of the class of normal observers”. To Dennett, then, bitterness is a relational property. That basically means that a specific instance of a bitter taste is not a quale.
Daniel Dennett demanded that bitterness be objective (or intersubjective). And it can only be objective if it’s somehow behaviourally expressed by the class of normal observers.
Yet even if there are examples of uniform overt behaviour (such as verbal reports), do we learn anything about bitterness itself via such behavioural responses? Don’t we, instead, just learn about how people react to bitterness?
The qualiaphile argument will be that uniform reactions to bitterness aren’t themselves bitterness. So this is almost equivalent to arguing that the throwing of a ball isn’t the same as the smashing of a window. In other words, the throwing of a ball resulted in the smashing of a window, just as the tasting of something bitter leads to a certain effect in the members of the class of normal observers.
Moreover, it’s possible that the same piece of food could have a uniform “certain effect” even if it tastes differently to each person tested. Or, alternatively, something that tastes the same can have different certain effects in the class of normal observers…
So does this mean that Dennett was fusing (or conflating) cause and effect here?…
Possibly not.
How could investigators (or laypersons) know that the same piece of food tastes differently to different people, or that it tastes the same?
Dennett argued that we could only know this with the help of overt behaviour, as well as by noting physiological changes…
These standard philosophical possibilities (e.g., a piece of food having a uniform “certain effect” even if it tastes differently to each person tested) will have been rejected by Dennett simply because they’re all unscientific in nature. He might have told us that we have no way of knowing if these possibilities are ever realities. So, if that’s the case, then such possibilities are merely idle from a scientific — if not a philosophical — point of view…
But hang on a minute here.
Haven’t qualiaphiles — and many others — simply assumed that uniform reactions to bitterness aren’t themselves constitutive of what bitterness is?
What is the remainder which qualiaphiles believe is being left out?
The quale that is bitterness?
What is that?
More importantly, what is this bitter quale that is something more than the verbal reports, reactions, physiological changes, etc. of human persons?
Isn’t such a quale an example of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s own beetle-in-a-box?
Well, if the quale of bitterness is private, directly apprehensible, atomic, intrinsic (i.e., non-relational), exhaustive, ineffable, incomparable, and incorrigible, then it pretty much seems to be a beetle in a box.
[All this partly depends on whether Dennett’s characterisation of qualia — or his account of what qualiaphiles take qualia to be — is the only one available or possible. In fact, there are alternative approaches. See my ‘Did Daniel Dennett Believe that Qualia Are Real?’ in which Owen Flanagan’s alternative take on “the way things seem to us” is tackled.]
Daniel Dennett’s Wittgensteinian Position
The American philosopher Alvin I. Goldman expressed Dennett’s position on these possibilities when he says that Dennett’s
“claim is that there is no way to distinguish between these competing stories either ‘from the inside’ (by the observer himself) or ‘from the outside’, and he appears to conclude that there are no genuine facts concerning the putative phenomena experience [or differences] at all”.
This reiterates Dennett’s Wittgensteinian point that there are no facts, data… or anything available about the intrinsically private. In other words, we can know nothing of other people’s qualia — as least as qualia are seen by qualiaphiles. And, on an another Wittgensteinian theme, if we can’t know anything about other people’s qualia, then we can’t know anything about our own qualia either.
To be clear.
Qualiaphiles deem qualia to be private… things. Public language, on the other hand, is intersubjective. Yet we use a public language to communicate supposedly private qualia.
If a quale were genuinely private, then how would we know that other people were referring to the same thing which we refer to (say, the bitterness of a particular lemon)? To us (if not to them), then, other people’s qualia would be like beetles in a box. That’s partly why Ludwig Wittgenstein concluded that our language for sensations (if not qualia) isn’t only public: it must also refer to public items.
To sum up.
A particular quale (e.g., the bitterness of a lemon) can’t be a beetle in a permanently-closed box. If it’s in any kind of box, then it’s in an open and publicly-accessible one. Thus, the named “object” (i.e., the quale) must “drop out of consideration as irrelevant”.
Yes, but qualia are real!
Despite all the above, there must still be a sense that qualia are indeed private. This seems to be (literally) self-evident.
For example, if I don’t communicate my experiences of qualia with either linguistic or physical behaviour, then no one else would know that I’m experiencing the bitter taste of a lemon. However, I’m still experiencing this case of bitterness. Thus, only I know that I’m tasting a lemon which is bitter. Therefore, this bitter quale is private.
Moreover, surely there’s more to qualia than our knowledge of them. They must have both an ontological and an experiential status…
The problem is that (as Wittgenstein himself argued about sensations) as soon as we say anything about qualia (especially when using the jargon of philosophy — and the term “qualia” is itself jargon!), then they become (for other persons, and even for oneself) public things…
What’s more, this means that such things aren’t qualia at all!
Moreover, many philosophers will deem the very idea of a quale-in-itself suspect.
Does that idea even make sense?
Does it serve any purpose?
Conclusion
Yet, again, isn’t it possible that one can accept that qualia have no factual or scientific status at the very same time as accepting that they are… well, real?
It’s here that Dennett might have asked the following question:
If qualia have neither scientific nor factual status, then exactly what kind of status do they have?
What is the answer to that question?
