Monday, June 13, 2011

Qualia and Ontological Ineffability

I can't resist putting up some stuff about qualia. Once again, things hinge on ontological ineffability.

1. qualia are inter-subjectively ineffable.
2. qualia are ontologically subjective and epistemologically objective.

Therefore, there are ontologically ineffable things. I take it qualia ontologically exist, the way some philosophers take numbers to ontologically exist. The question is how do we model ontologically ineffable qualia?

In the picture below, b1 and b2 are physical people, or at least their brains (or, more generally, they are physical information bearers). g1 is the quale green as experienced by b1, and similarly g2 is b2's experience of green. 'g1' is the name/concept/interface b1 has given to it's experience g1. b2 has a name for g1 also, namely, 'g1'. Strictly speaking these should be 'g1'b1, and 'g1'b2, but my point is that while g1 and g2 are ineffable, the names 'g1'b1, and 'g1'b2 are "effable"--independent of who's word they are, so we can refer to them as just 'g1'. Similarly, 'g2', 'b1', and 'b2' are names for their respective things.


Notice b1 has access to g1 and the names 'g1' and 'g2', but it does not have access to g2. This is equivalent to the common idea that I know the green that I see when I look at a tree, but I can't know for sure that when you look at the tree your green is qualitatively the same as mine, in this model. The green I see is g1 and the green you see is g2. However, we still have names for these experiences: 'g1' and 'g2'. Your name for my green should be interchangeable with my name for my green (in both cases they are "my green"), so we let 'g1'b1 = 'g1'b2 = 'g1'. Similarly for "your green", 'g2'.

Here's the point. We agree on all truths/propositions/concepts/instantaneous interactions (TPCI) that are given in terms of the names 'x', 'y', ... But b1 has the further resources of using g1 as a term, but not g2. Similarly b2 has the further resources of using g2 as a term, but not g1. In this universe information is instantiated information, so there are no TPCI in terms of both g1 and g2 simultaneously. There is no brain/mind that encompasses both g1 and g2 simultaneously. All of the facts of this universe are exhausted by the functions

(1) fb1(g1, 'x', 'y', ...), gb2(g2, 'x', 'y', ...)

There are also each bearers' functions restricted to the words 'x', 'y', ..., i.e., hb1('x', 'y', ...), jb2('x', 'y', ...). h and j are the "effable" parts of the ontology, so we'll assume h = j and, usually, these are even independent of there being any information bearers in the universe, so to the functions in (1) we add

(2) k('x', 'y', ...)

In particular, there is no function l(g1, g2, ...) because there is no ontological fact of the matter involving the simultaneous apprehension of both g1 and g2.

Some Examples

Consider the proposition

(3) Bubbles the cat weighs 20 lbs.

There is nothing particularly ineffable about (3). The word "Bubbles" refers to a particular cat, and "weighs 20 lbs." may, for our purposes, be taken to be a word that refers to a comparison between Bubbles and a standardized unit of weight. So the idea is

(4) k('Bubbles', 'weighs in lbs.') = 20

and this is independent of b1 and b2.

Now consider

(5) my green is

This is an ontologically different question for every ontologically distinct subject that understands it, necessarily. (5) is not independent of its instantiations. If I read (5) it means one thing, and if you read it it means something different. (5) would be analyzed as

(6) fb1(g1, 'g1') = what 'g1' refers to is g1

and

(7) fb2(g2, 'g2') = what 'g2' refers to is g2

Both (6) and (7) are true, maybe tautologously so. The statement that b2's green is qualitatively the same as b1's green is, from b1's perspective,

(8) fb1(g1, 'g2') = what 'g2' refers to is g1

This is false whenever b1 and b2's greens are qualitatively different. (4) as a logical function takes as input only names of things: its not necessary to do any physical lifting to assert (4). So (4) is usually understood to be independent of its instantiations. (5) can't be. The assertions 'g2' = 'g1' and 'g2' = g1 make sense whether true or not, but g2 = g1 is not even defined.

The cluster of (hard) mind-body problems is given by instances such as

(9) why is my green ?

I have to confess I find the materialist answer to this question incomprehensible, since any answer necessarily involves g1 itself, and not merely 'g1'.

Existence isn't 1st-order

The above seems to confirm existence isn't a 1st-order property. Suppose b1 is a person (who exists) and b2 is a unicorn (who doesn't exist). Suppose also that existence is ineffable, and call b1's existential "property" e1. Then b1's name for it's own existence is 'e1', and the name for b2's existence is 'e2'. But, while there is a class of relationships between 'e1' and e1, there is a strictly smaller class of relationships between 'e2' and e2. We can imagine the unicorn as existing, so we can suppose there is an e2. But the unicorn can't connect its name for existence 'e2' with its own existence e2. There is nothing to do the connecting. So if we imagine b2 to exist we are really only using another word (in this case "b2's existence"), which is really just another 'e2'. b1 cannot use b2's actual existence in b1's assertion of b2's existence any more than we can use the actual weight of Bubbles in asserting he/she weighs 20 lbs.

Ineffable Category

What's the form of mathematical theories that have ineffable objects in their ontologies? It's not that you have two functions that agree on a subdomain. The key is that the theories must themselves be instantiated in some way in their ontologies.

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