A phenomenal theory!

So, I've been thinking a lot about qualia, and trying to get a paper together on why they shouldn't be seen as such a problem for materialism.  It seems to be generally accepted that features of mental life which can be analyzed functionally are not problematic for materialism, so my line is that, contrary to superficial appearances, qualia can actually be adequately characterized by their functional role in our minds.  I propose that what is characteristic of qualia is something like what Hume called "force and vivacity"; their tendency to bring associated ideas to mind, and enliven ideas in the sense of making them more believed or plausible.

First, some of the reasons for thinking this could be the place to look to understand qualia.  There does seem to be a connection between phenomenal experiences and something like Humean vivacity.  The psychologists Nisbett and Ross report, on the basis of a wide variety of studies, that people's beliefs are much more heavily influenced by what they call "vivid" evidence, which usually involves some kind of experience or detailed imagining (sometimes literally vivid personal observations or photographs), than by objectively much more informative evidence presented in a non-vivid form (e. g. statistical data).

Furthermore, when there is more than one path to the same vivacious awareness, we don't seem to distinguish different associated qualia.  It seems clear to me that perceptions of distance have a phenomenal feel to them, but we cannot tell introspectively whether something we observe seems distant because of binocular vision, focus, perspective, or any of the other clues our perceptual systems integrate into our depth perception (if we could, it would be easier to see through depth illusions, as we'd be aware of the various conflicting evidence present in such cases, instead of just having a seeming as if the most powerfully active of the clues were right).

Conversely, mental activity with a high level of vivacity is inevitably associated with phenomenal feels.  The products of reasoning are, sadly, lacking in vivacity most of the time, but when reasoning is particularly clear and well-understood, it seems almost universal for people to start employing metaphors with the phenomenal; the skilled mathematician or logician almost always "sees" the truth of some striking theorem.

So, what are the obvious problems with equating phenomenal content with vivacity?  Obviously, I can think of some lines of objection myself (and lines of response to those objections), but I'm curious as to where others think this goes astray.

Comments

[Richard]

Are "force and vivacity" subject to purely behavioural/functionalist analysis? I would've thought the associated or enlivened "ideas" are themselves phenomenal, no?

[Aaron Boyden]

Some of the associated or enlivened ideas may well have notable phenomenal character, sure. So? I don't see exactly what the objection here is. I'm saying that phenomenal character is constituted by what the ideas do in the mind (and so functional). This will also apply to any associated ideas which have phenomenal character (they'll have associations and enlivening effects of their own). Where is the difficulty?

[Richard]

I was thinking of a possible circularity worry, since your reduction basis itself presupposed phenomenology ('enlivening ideas'). But you respond that we can simply repeat the reduction -- "they'll have associations and enlivening effects of their own". That solves the worry about 'ideas'. But you'll also need a non-phenomenlogical notion of 'enliven' here, so you can't appeal to the idea or belief seeming more plausible (because seemings are phenomenal). It must be a purely functional/computational property: e.g. being such as to increase the credence value that the system applies to the proposition. Something like that. But then it no longer seems (to this non-reductionist) that qualia are still in the picture. It seems like you've changed the subject and are talking about something else instead -- the functional properties of association and credence-raising, rather than what it is like to be in some state.

[Aaron Boyden]

I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I fail to see where the subject changed; it seems to me that I was continuing on the same topic. Why do you think what it's like isn't a matter of association and credence-raising? Why do you think those can come apart?

[Richard]

Zombie intuition: you could have a being which exhibits all that same behaviour, processes the same computations, but without there being "anything it is like" for it to go through this process.

Is your account meant to be an analytic reduction? ('Conscious' just means 'credence-raising in a certain way'?) Presumably not. But then it seems we're just left with nomological coincidence or correlation (at most); there's no reason to think the correlation is metaphysically necessary as the materialist would require.

[Richard]

To answer your question, then: they're distinct concepts, and distinct concepts (usually) imply distinct properties (modulo Kripkean complications which don't apply here).

[Aaron Boyden]

I'm not sure what you mean by an analytic reduction. Is Lewis engaged in an analytic reduction in "An Argument for the Identity Theory"? He speaks of the analytic necessity of experiences having certain causal roles. If that's analytic reduction, I'm sure I'm guilty as well, but I'm not sure why you presumed I wasn't doing it. If that isn't analytic reduction, you'll need to further explain what analytic reduction is.

It is certainly not for Kripkean reasons that I find the inference from distinct concepts to distinct properties suspicious; I am no fan of Kripke. I should think anyone would find it suspicious.