David Chalmers’ Unanswerable Questions: “Why do I have THIS experience?” and “Why do we see red, rather than hear a trumpet?”

The philosopher David Chalmers believes that there are answers — or just possible answers — to his questions about conscious experiences. But what if there aren’t any answers — or even any possible answers? So perhaps it’s fair to say that Chalmers simply assumes that there are answers to his questions.

Left: W.H. Auden. Right: David Chalmers. The source of this quote can be found here.

Firstly, David Chalmers isn’t asking for answers which refer to anything physical, functional, structural, etc.:

(1) He isn’t asking for the “physical correlates” of experiences. 
(2) He isn’t asking for the causal and physical connections between the brain and experiences — or any connections between experiences and anything physical. 
(3) He isn’t asking for the functional (or otherwise) underpinnings of experiences.
(4) And he isn’t asking for any evolutionary answers either.

As Chalmers is keen to stress, all the physical things referred to above can be instantiated, and the experiences may still not occur. Alternatively, all these things can be instantiated and the experiences could still be very different.

[All David Chalmers’ questions in this essay come from his book, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory.]

Question (or Questions) 1

“At a more basic level, why is seeing red like THIS, rather than like THAT? It seems conceivable that when looking at red things, such as roses, one might have had the sort of color experience that one in fact has when looking at blue things. Why is the experience one way rather than the other? Why, for that matter, do we experience the reddish sensation that we do, rather than some entirely different kind of sensation, like the sound of a trumpet?”

[The source of this passage can be found here.]

Surely there are evolutionary and physical reasons as to why “seeing red is like THAT”. However, these reasons won’t satisfy Chalmers.

In other words, whatever reasons are given, Chalmers can still ask:

But why is experience E like THAT?

From an evolutionary perspective (perhaps also from a purely chemical and sensory perspective too), it wouldn’t make sense to hear a trumpet when looking at a red rose. Indeed, there’s an entire evolutionary history of sound and its relation to species’ sensory systems that can explain all this.

Yet Chalmers would say that none of that would explain the redness of a red rose or the trumpety sound of a trumpet when being blown. And it wouldn’t explain why we see red rather than hear the sound of a trumpet when we look at a (red) rose.

So exactly why is it conceivable that human beings could, say, smell dogshit when they look at a red rose?

What, exactly, is being conceived here?

More strongly, are these things actually being conceived in the first place?

After all, if I ask:

What, exactly, are you conceiving?

And Chalmers answers:

I’m conceiving that it’s possible to smell dogshit when I look at a red rose.

Then that’s neither an answer nor an explanation. Chalmers (or anyone else) would simply be uttering a single statement.

Chalmers will of course argue that he’s not talking about imagining smelling dogshit when he looks at a red rose. He’d claim that he’s simply conceived that this is possible. (Here’s one Cartesian account of this distinction.)

To repeat. Chalmers isn’t claiming to be carrying out any acts of imagination in which when he looks at a red rose he smells dogshit. He’s claiming that it’s conceivable that when he looks at a red rose, he could smell dogshit.

But isn’t that conceiving-imagining distinction a difference which doesn’t really make a difference?

[In the following, the panpsychist Philip Goff commits himself to this distinction: “The zombie argument is generally known in the academic philosophical literature as the ‘conceivability argument.’ I think this is something of a misnomer, as it suggests that the argument has something to do with what can be imagined.”]

Alternatively, Chalmers is also saying that he wants to know why we don’t smell dogshit (or see blue) when we look at a red rose.

Yet there may be evolutionary, structural, physical, etc. reasons for seeing red when looking at a (red) rose.

Now take this reformulation of Chalmers’ question:

Given that water is H₂O, why does it have this “particular nature”?

Chalmers would, of course, reject this parallel between H2O/water and physical states/experience.

Firstly, Chalmers would (correctly) say that water simply is H₂O. However, he’d also add that experience E isn’t brain state B — or any physical conglomerate. (Chalmers believes that E isn’t anything physical at all.) In other words, experience E is over and above any physical conglomerate C, whereas water isn’t over and above the molecule (or set of molecules) H₂O.

So the fact that Chalmers already believes that experience E isn’t physical means that he’s always free to ask his initial question. If E were physical, on the other hand, then his question would make less sense.

That said, even if experience E isn’t physical, then it may still the case that Chalmers’ question can’t be answered. It may be a brute fact.

[Chalmers, incidentally, accepts brute facts in other areas of science, philosophy and logic. So why not here? For example, Chalmers tells us that physics “does not tell us why there is [matter] in the first place”. So it may not be able to tell us why many properties in physics “have their nature”. Thus, such things are deemed to be — to use Chalmers’ own word — “primitive”. That is, they can’t be “deduced from more basic principles”.]

Of course we’d need to explain what brute facts actually are and why we should accept them. More relevantly, why should we accept that experience E’s nature is simply a brute fact?

So a (to use Valerie Gray Hardcastle’s term) “water-mysterian” can now ask:

Why does H₂O have its particular nature?

That is, he can also ask:

Why is H₂O wet and transparent?

Well, chemists, neuroscientists, physiologists, etc. can provide an answer to these questions.

Yet, as stated before, Chalmers wouldn’t accept the parallel between water and experience E. That is, chemists (along with neuroscientists, evolutionary theorists, physicists, etc.) can provide a physical, causal, structural, evolutionary, etc. story as to why water is wet and transparent. However, Chalmers will argue that no physical, causal, structural, biochemical, functional, etc. story will tell us why experience E has its particular nature (say, why it is red).

However, is Chalmers right to believe that the two cases aren’t at all parallel?

Now take this evolution- and sensory-based account of water’s transparency:

“Water is transparent because eyes first evolved in water. The range of the electromagnetic spectrum we detect corresponds to the spectrum for which water is transparent (absorbs the least). Had we evolved in mercury, we would think mercury is transparent and detect EM waves that pass through mercury.”

Yet this part-evolutionary account can still elicit a Chalmersesque question:

Yes, but why transparency?

So Chalmers can still ask his question after being supplied with a ton of such evolutionary and other physical (or chemical) reasons. After all, if there are evolutionary reasons as to why dogshit smells bad, then the question can still be asked as to why it smells bad or why it smells bad in that particular way.

Question 2

“When I open my eyes and look around my office, why do I have THIS sort of complex experience?”

Chalmers had to have some kind of “complex experience” when he looked around his office. And cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, etc. would happily answer his question — and do so in great detail. However, Chalmers will still ask:

“[But] why do I have THIS sort of complex experience?”

Again, the physical, causal, structural, etc. story about things in the world and their relations to experiences will always leave Chalmers unhappy because he can still ask his question.

Question 3

“Given that conscious experience exists, why do individual experiences have their particular nature?”

We have x and we have y. x and y are taken to be different things. This means that because y isn’t x, then we can always ask why x and y must be placed (or come) together or whether y really tells us everything about x.

However, what if x and y are one and the same thing under different modes of presentation? This would mean that any questions as to why x and y occur together, or why y is correlated with x, would make less sense.

Yet even if x = y, Chalmers could still ask his questions. That is, even if a conglomeration of physical conditions and particular experience were one and the same thing, then Chalmers could still ask why that experience is the way it is. So even if an identity were established, Chalmers could still ask his question.

************************************

Note: The H₂O/water and physical/experience comparison will be tackled in more detail soon.

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Did Mathematics “Know” the Universe is Expanding, When Einstein Didn’t?

A New Scientist writer asks her readers two questions: (1) “How did Einstein’s equations ‘know’ that the universe was expanding, when he did not?” (2) “How is it possible that mathematics ‘knows’ about Higgs particles?”… What do these questions mean? Are they anthropomorphic in nature?

(i) Introduction: Mathematics Knows Things

(ii) Einstein Rejects the Universe’s Expansion

(iii) Input and Output

(iv) Pure Maths and Describing the World

(v) Eugene Wigner

(vi) Max Tegmark

(vii) Lee Smolin

Introduction: Mathematics Knows Things

In an article called ‘Reality: Is everything made of numbers?’, the New Scientist’s Amanda Gefter sets the scene in the following way:

“When Albert Einstein finally completed his general theory of relativity in 1916, he looked down at the equations and discovered an unexpected message: the universe is expanding.”

However:

“Einstein didn’t believe the physical universe could shrink or grow, so he ignored what the equations were telling him.”

What is directly relevant to this essay is Gefter’s following question:

“How did Einstein’s equations ‘know’ that the universe was expanding, when he did not?”

Interestingly, Amanda Gefter then applies the very same reasoning to Higgs particles. Indeed, she even uses the word “knows” again. (Which is also put in scare quotes.) She writes:

“How is it possible that mathematics ‘knows’ about Higgs particles or any other feature of physical reality?”

These questions have an anthropomorphic ring to them. Indeed, they’re more anthropomorphic (see here too) than some comments about ants or dolphins

So is Amanda Gefter excused from accusations of anthropomorphism simply because she puts the word “know” in scare quotes?

The problem here is that if her words aren’t taken literally, then it’s hard to think of an alternative way of taking them.

So it all depends.

Perhaps Gefter’s use of the word “know” is, at least partly, explained in the following passage from her article:

“‘Maybe it’s because math is reality,’ says physicist Brian Greene of Columbia University, New York. Perhaps if we dig deep enough, we would find that physical objects like tables and chairs are ultimately not made of particles or strings, but of numbers.”

This maths-is-reality stance will be tackled later.

So now let’s return to Gefter’s comments on Einstein ruling out an expanding universe.

Einstein Rejects the Universe’s Expansion

Much has been written about the scientific, philosophical and even religious reasons why Einstein might have (initially) ruled out the expansion of the universe. So these reasons may explain why he also rejected (to use a phrase used by many writers about many physicists) “what the mathematics was telling him” or what the maths knew.

However, the maths might not have been (as it were) running off in its own direction at all. Instead, Einstein might have simply rejected his own equations for all the reasons just mentioned. [See Einstein’s ‘Physical cosmology’.]

So it was still (perhaps paradoxically) Einstein’s own maths (or equations) which supposedly knew stuff which he didn’t know. That is, it wasn’t someone else’s maths. And it wasn’t (as it were) math’s very own maths either.

This means that maths itself (or maths alone) didn’t know that the universe is expanding.

That’s mainly because maths — i.e., on its own — doesn’t include the notions of the universe, expansion, gravity, space, matter, mass, etc. These are terms from physics and cosmology, not (pure) mathematics.

Thus, the equations which Einstein both created and used led to (physical) consequences which Einstein rejected. However, that didn’t mean that there was any genuine independence of the equations from Einstein himself. (This isn’t a reference to maths — as it were — in the abstract, but to the equations which Einstein himself created.) After all, if Einstein hadn’t recognised his famous cosmological “blunder”, then the maths still couldn’t have known anything he didn’t know. And, again, Einstein arguably rejected his own equations for reasons that had nothing to do with maths. Yet it was still his own equations which he rejected. That is, the equations which Einstein rejected didn’t create themselves, let alone show that they has applications to the notions in physics which were around in the early 20th century.

Input and Output

The New Scientist’s Amanda Gefter continues with this basic input-output scenario:

“If mathematics is nothing more than a language we use to describe the world, an invention of the human brain, how can it churn out anything beyond what we put in?”

We humans “put in” all sorts of stuff into all sorts of things. These things “churn out” all sorts of other stuff which is different to what we put in.

For example, we put coal into a stove and it churns out heat and smoke. We put data into a computer and it churns out all sorts of information which we didn’t put in.

There are literally innumerable examples of this.

So what we put in is transformed into something else. That something else is still a byproduct of what we put in. Thus heat and smoke are byproducts of putting coal in a stove. And, as many people who’re critical of the claims of artificial intelligence are keen to tell us, computers wouldn’t churn out anything if we hadn’t firstly put in the data (as well as if we hadn’t built the computer in the first place).

So perhaps this New Scientist writer has something distinct in mind when it comes to mathematics.

Well, mathematics is definitely distinct from a stove and what we we put into it. Similarly, its not like a computer or the data we put into it (though mathematical data can be fed into a computer).

But so what?

A stove isn’t a computer either. And an apple isn’t an orange.

Amanda Gefter also says that some (or many) scientists believe that maths is “nothing more than a language we use to describe the world”.

Pure Maths and Describing the World

Very few mathematicians and physicists have ever claimed that mathematics “is nothing more than a language we use to describe the world”. There is, after all, such a thing as pure mathematics (see also ‘Applied Mathematics’). That is, there is much maths which doesn’t — and perhaps even couldn’t — have any use in terms of “describing the world”.

This may be debatable, however.

Even some arcane mathematics in history came to have a use in physics. However, such maths obviously had a previous independence from physics for the simple fact that it existed for years — even hundreds of years — before physicists found a use for it.

Similarly, even those people who claim that maths is (to use Gefter’s words again) “an invention of the human brain” don’t see it simply in terms of its use in describing the world. So maths can be such an “invention”, and yet still have no use in physics — or anywhere else.

Predictably, Amanda Gefter then mentions and quotes the theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner (1902–1995).

Eugene Wigner

Gefter writes:

“‘It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here,’ wrote physicist Eugene Wigner in his classic 1960 paper ‘The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences’ (Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol 13, p 1).”

Wigner himself also wrote:

“The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.”

So, relevantly, now let’s requote Gefter quoting Brian Greene:

“‘Maybe it’s because math is reality,’ says physicist Brian Greene of Columbia University, New York. Perhaps if we dig deep enough, we would find that physical objects like tables and chairs are ultimately not made of particles or strings, but of numbers.”

Isn’t it best to state that reality is maths (or, less strongly, reality is mathematical), rather than Brian Greene’s “math is reality”? At least that’s how Pythagoreans and many physicists have put it over the years. That said, if you reverse a mathematical identity, then nothing is really changed. Thus if we have 2 + 2 = 4, and then reverse it to 4 = 2 + 2, then we get the same result. So perhaps stating that maths is reality is the same as stating that reality is maths.

In any case, why does it automatically follow that maths knows things simply because maths is reality?

That is, even if maths is reality, it would still require physicists to know that. Physicists also need to realise that maths and reality are one and the same thing. That is, if maths is reality (or if reality is maths), then physicists would still need to construct the equations and theories which help show us that that this is the case.

Indeed, if there is a necessary — and indeed blindingly obvious — contribution from physicists to this (as it were) maths = reality equation, then that equation may not hold at all. After all, physicists often get the maths-of-reality wrong. They also offer us contradictory maths-of-reality.

The physicist and cosmologist Max Tegmark also mentions Eugene Wigner a couple of times (i.e., in his book Our Mathematical Universe). Tegmark is clearly inspired by Wigner’s well-known questions and points.

Max Tegmark

So we have the following passage from Wigner, which Tegmark quotes:

“The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it.”

Albert Einstein also asked the same question in the following:

“How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?”

… But hang on a minute!

Einstein’s following oft-quoted conclusion (as found in his ‘Geometry and Experience’) appears to be radically at odds with both Wigner’s and Tegmark’s positions:

“[] In my opinion the answer to this question is, briefly, this: As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”

So does the “unreasonable effectiveness” of electricity or roads also “demand an explanation”? That ironic question is asked because there are indeed explanations of maths effectiveness. However, I feel that they won’t satisfy mathematical mysterians like Max Tegmark.

The theoretical physicist Lee Smolin (1955-) also refers to “the obvious effectiveness of mathematics in physics”.

Lee Smolin

Smolin initially refers to the purely pragmatic utility of mathematics when it comes to physics.

Thus, we can all happily accept the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physics.

But where do we go from there?

Smolin himself goes on to state that he has

“never heard a good a priori argument that the world must be organised according to mathematical principles”.

Again: mathematics is useful — extremely useful — in physics. So much so that there wouldn’t be any modern physics without maths. That said, it still can’t be concluded from this effectiveness that (to use Smolin’s words again) “the world must be organised according to mathematical principles”.

In other words, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics doesn’t mean — or have the consequence — that the world itself is (or must be) organised according to mathematical principles. Of course, it gives physicists reasons — even very good reasons — to believe that. However, the effectiveness of mathematics in physics — alone — doesn’t have the (logical) consequence that the world itself must be organised according to mathematical principles.

And it certainly doesn’t mean that (as Brian Greene put it) “math is reality” (or that reality is maths).

More specifically, when Smolin uses the words “a good a priori argument” (or simply when he uses the epistemological term a priori), he seems to be saying that many physicists simply assume that “the world” (or Nature) is mathematical precisely because of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physics…

All this is very close to being a circular position. Thus:

(i) Mathematics is unreasonably effective in physics because the world itself is mathematical. 
(ii) Because the world itself is mathematical, it logically follows that the mathematics in physics will be unreasonably effective.

However, isn’t the above like making the following (admittedly much weaker or less sexy) claim? —

(i) Cement is unreasonably effective when it comes to building houses. 
(ii) Therefore houses must be built on cement-based principles.

Later on in the same chapter, Smolin goes on to be even more explicit about these assumptions when he writes the following words:

“[W]hat is both wonderful and terrifying is that is absolutely no reason that nature at its deepest level must have anything to do with mathematics.”

At first sight, this seems like an incredible claim.

Or at least one would presume that many— or even most — physicists would have (deep?) problems with Smolin’s statement.

However, that shock may simply be down — again — to the false inference (which many physicists make) from the the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics to the conclusion that nature itself (“at its deepest level”) must be mathematical.

To repeat: we have the following line of reasoning from some (or even many) mathematical and theoretical physicists:

(i) Mathematics is unreasonably effective in physics. 
(ii) Therefore the world itself must be organised according to mathematical principles.

Now it must be borne in mind that not all (or even most) physicists actually express (or even think — in great detail — about) these almost purely philosophical issues.

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Are the questions “Why is water wet?” and “Why does the physical give rise to experience?” bogus?

The philosopher Valerie Hardcastle tackles the mysterian’s questions, “Why is water H₂O?”, “Why is water wet?” and “Why couldn’t water be XYZ?”. Gordon Park Baker once stated that “the unexamined question is not worth answering” and that “questions, just as much as assertions, carry presuppositions”. So can we apply Baker’s words to this mysterian’s questions?

(1) Introduction

(2) Valerie Hardcastle’s Chat With a Water-Mysterian

(3) Bogus Questions?

(4) Is This Water-Mysterian Really a Materialist?

(5) Water = H₂O

(6) Modal Imagination

This essay is primarily about Valerie Gray Hardcastle’s analysis of what she calls a “water-mysterian” and the latter’s philosophical position on water’s constitution and wetness. (This analysis is found in Hardcastle’s paper ‘The Why of Consciousness: A Non-Issue for Materialists’, which was published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies.)

The American philosopher Valerie Gray Hardcastle discusses the views of a water-mysterian because such a person is meant to be equivalent to a (well) consciousness-mysterian (see ‘New Mysterianism’). That is, mysterianism about water is supposed to be analogous (or simply comparable) to mysterianism about consciousness. Hardcastle’s example of water is, therefore, simply used to get the point across.

To show that all this is really about consciousness, on a page after all the quotes used from Hardcastle in this piece, she explicitly tells us that we have

“a good reason to think that the mind is nothing more than activity in the brain”.

More relevantly, Hardcastle tackles the water-mysterian’s questions, “Why is water H₂O?” and “Why is water wet?”.

Thus we can now rewrite Hardcastle’s words directly above:

We have a good reason to think that water’s wetness is nothing more than H₂O or the activity of H₂O molecules.

Hardcastle does indeed raise some interesting points. However, she may not be entirely fair to her opponents or correct on everything she says. What’s more, Hardcastle mightn’t have been fair to this fictional water-mysterian (or mysterians generally). Indeed, the term “water-mysterian” may itself be deemed to be a (as “postmodern” academics put it) rhetorical trope.

Valerie Hardcastle’s Chat With a Water-Mysterian

Valerie Hardcastle sets up a fictional discussion with the water-mysterian with these words:

“Let us return to the example of water being wet. Consider the following exchange. A water-mysterian wonders why water has this peculiar property. She inquires and you give an explanation of the molecular compositions of water and a brief story about the connection between micro-chemical properties and macro-phenomena.”

This water-mysterian even fully accepts the science (or chemistry) of water. Or at least Hardcastle has her state the following:

“Ah, she say, I am a materialist, so I am convinced that you have properly correlated water with its underlying molecular composition. I also have no reason to doubt that your story about the macro-effects of chemical properties to be wrong. But I still am not satisfied, for you have left off in your explanations what I find most puzzling. Why is water H₂O?”

The water-mysterian then indulges in some modal philosophy, which is strongly in hock to the (vast) philosophical literature on this subject. She finishes off with this passage:

“Why couldn’t it be XYZ? Why couldn’t it have some other radically different chemical story behind it? I can imagine a possible world in which water has all the macro-properties that it has now, but is not composed of H₂O.”

Bogus Questions?

The basic point which Valerie Hardcastle is making above (at least as I see it) is twofold:

(1) Just because a question can be asked (or simply framed), then that doesn’t mean that it can be answered. 
(2) Just because a philosophical question can be asked (or framed), then that doesn’t mean that it has any meat to it.

It can be suspected, however, that Hardcastle is actually opting for point (2), not both (1) and (2).

The problem we have here was once summed up by the American-English philosopher Gordon Park Baker.

In his ‘φιλοσοφια: εικων και ειδος’ (which can be found in Philosophy in Britain Today), Baker wrote:

“We should [] make serious efforts at raising questions about the questions commonly viewed as being genuinely philosophical. Perhaps the proper answers to such questions are often, even if not always, further questions!”

Indeed, all sorts of philosophical questions have been deemed to be profound, deep and worthy of serious thought. However, perhaps it’s just as important — and indeed just as philosophical — to ask questions about these questions (i.e., not simply to attempt to answer them). Or as Gordon Baker put it:

“The unexamined question is not worth answering.”

Baker then added the following words:

“To accept a question as making good sense and embark on building a philosophical theory to answer it is already to make the decisive step in the whole investigation.”

It’s now worth saying that there’s no need to use the word “nonsense” about the questions considered in this piece. So arguing that a particular question simply assumes that there’s an answer (or that a question can’t be answered at all), for example, isn’t a point about logical grammar (or logical form) or to claim that it’s nonsense.

[The word “nonsense” wasn’t actually used — by philosophers in the 1930s and beyond — in its everyday sense: it usually had a precise technical meaning and usage.]

Another problem is summed up by Gordon Baker:

“Questions, just as much as assertions, carry presuppositions.”

This is especially true in philosophy.

The relevant type of questions which need to be noted here are the following:

1) Why does the chemical composition of water give rise to water’s wetness?

2) “Why do physical processes give rise to experience?” (David Chalmers’ question.)

Just because a question is grammatical and even makes (some kind of) sense, then that doesn’t mean that it’s a philosophically (or otherwise) legitimate question.

To back this up, let’s use an adaptation of a well-known surreal sentence from Noam Chomsky and simply turn it into a question. Thus:

Why do colorless green ideas sleep furiously?

As stated before, one obvious “presupposition” to a question is that there’s an answer — or at least a possible answer — to it.

So what (to use Baker’s word) “presuppositions” are hidden in the following questions? -

(1) Why is water H₂0?

(2) Why is water wet?

(3) Why couldn’t water be XYZ?

So can the same kind of point be made about this well-known question from the Australian philosopher David Chalmers? Namely:

“Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all?”

As stated in the introduction, Chalmers’ question is quoted because Valerie Hardcastle is actually using the case of water as an analogy: she really has consciousness-mysterians in mind.

Is This Water-Mysterian Really a Materialist?

It seems odd that Hardcastle's fictional water-mysterian should class herself as a “materialist”. So I suspect that Hardcastle classes her as a “materialist” simply to get her point across.

That point is that this water-mysterian is a materialist purely and simply because she accepts literally all the science about water’s chemical composition.

That isn’t materialism.

So in the water-mysterian’s (or Hardcastle's) words, she is

“convinced that [the scientist has] properly correlated water with its underlying molecular composition”.

Indeed, she has

“no reason to doubt that [the scientist’s] story about the macro-effects of chemical properties to be wrong”.

However, this water-mysterian also believes that there’s still something which is over and above the science: the wateriness of water!

But is there?

This debate connects to a larger issue.

Water = H₂O

One main focus in this larger debate has been on the differences between water’s “microscopic” (or “microstructural”) properties and its “macroscopic” properties. Added to that (though related to macroscopic properties) is the emphasis which has inevitably been made on our phenomenological (or phenomenal) experiences of water.

Thus, it seems to be the phenomenal experiences of water which Hardcastle’s water-mysterian focusses upon.

However, does she also take these (as philosophers put it) phenomenal feels to be intrinsic to water (or H₂O) itself?

Thus, partly because of these distinctions, one immediately wonders what more this water-mysterian would want after being being given

“an explanation of the molecular compositions of water and a brief story about the connection between micro-chemical properties and macro-phenomena”.

What more could there possibly be to this story?

Unless the (as it were) remainder is how water feels to human beings (i.e., how water feels wet, tastes, looks, etc.).

But that wouldn’t be a chemical story about water itself.

Instead, it would be a more general story about H₂O and its effects on the physiological and sensory systems of human beings, as well as on human minds. Thus, it wouldn’t really be about water’s wetness as it exists separately from minds or experiences — that’s if water can be deemed to be wet in this context.

What’s more, when this fictional water-mysterian (or Hardcastle!) says that the chemist has “properly correlated water with its underlying molecular composition”, this clause is a little problematic.

In one sense, water isn’t correlated with its “underlying molecular composition”: it is its underlying molecular composition!

Yet in terms of Saul Kripke’s a posteriori necessity, when it comes to our knowledge of water’s phenomenal properties and their relations to the underlying molecular composition (or structure) of water, then such correlations are indeed made. That is, even though water = H₂O, it still doesn’t follow that we could know that simply by examining water’s phenomenal properties or even by analysing water in any other (non-chemical) ways. (Conceivably, chemists might have got things wrong about water’s chemical constitution.)

So what we know about water is indeed correlated with its underlying molecular composition. Yet, in another sense, you can’t literally correlate water with H₂O with H₂O with water. Thus such correlations must be between what we phenomenally experience and know, and water’s underlying molecular composition.

Yet water’s wetness is water’s being H₂O.

Or is it?

Hardcastle’s water-mysterian then makes much of her own powers of imagination. So now let’s tackle that.

Modal Imagination

In the following passage, the water-mysterian puts her case for the importance of what can be called modal imagination:

“Why couldn’t it be XYZ? Why couldn’t it have some other radically different chemical story behind it? I can imagine a possible world in which water has all the macro-properties that it has now, but is not composed of H₂O.”

It can be seen that this water-mysterian relies a hell of a lot on the fact that she can (to use her own word) “imagine” various things. Or, to put that another way, she relies on possible worlds.

That said, the water-mysterian relies on possible worlds because she can imagine possible worlds (as well as their nature and what occurs in them). So, in at least some instances, possible-worlds-talk is utterly dependent on imagination — or at least on (as philosophers usually put it) conceiving possible worlds, their nature and what occurs within them.

Yet what does it mean to claim that water “could [] have some other radically different chemical story behind it”?

Could it?

More relevantly, what, exactly, is this water-mysterian imagining?

Surely it’s the case that in order to imagine that water is XYZ (i.e., rather than H₂O), then wouldn’t this mysterian need to do more than simply invent (or simply use) the letters XYZ? And wouldn’t she also need to do far more than simply ask, “Why couldn’t it be XYZ?”? Wouldn’t she need — at the least — to tell us something about XYZ itself? That is, wouldn’t she need to tell us at least something about XYZ’s chemical nature and its resultant “macro-effects”? In other words, we’d need an

“explanation of the molecular compositions of [XYZ] and a brief story about the connection between micro-chemical properties and macro-phenomena”.

Surely, then, it simply isn’t enough to state that you imagine XYZ or ask, “Why couldn’t it be XYZ?”. After all, if all we’ve got are the letters XYZ, then she’s not really imagining anything at all. Basically, so far there’s nothing scientific, empirical or even metaphysical about her claim. Indeed, even her acts of modal imagination may be completely empty. In other words, perhaps there’s simply no meat on what she states.

Of course, mountains of papers and articles have been written about possible worlds, the powers of conceiving (or imagining), etc. by philosophers. However, it’s not clear if any of that vast literature would answer these questions.

But that’s another story.

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