The ``Fixed-Up'' Harman Argument

Harman claims that having a phenomenal property, such as the property of seeing something red, is identical to making use of a certain kind of concept. That is, someone will have the phenomenal property of seeing red, if and only if they are representing as red something they are currently seeing, and in doing so, they are using the ``full concept'' of redness in their representation.

My previous paper, ``The Knowledge Argument'', pointed out some flaws in Harman's conception of the concepts involved in phenomenal properties. One mistake is Harman's requirement that someone can represent something as being red only if they possess the ``full concept'' of redness. I will fix this up, as we shall see later on in this paper, by allowing that there may be many concepts of redness, but that it is a certain concept of redness that provides the phenomenal property of seeing red.

Harman's biggest mistake, however, is to characterize the concept of redness dispositionally. He claims someone cannot have the ``full concept'' of redness unless they are disposed to represent something as being red as a ``natural and immediate consequence'' of seeing something red. He also supposes that Mary, the incredibly brilliant scientist protagonist of Jackson's Knowledge Argument, cannot be so disposed. But, as Dennett has successfully argued, we have no reason to believe that Mary cannot be so disposed.

I plan to to fix up Harman's argument by eliminating these problematic assumptions while taking a very similar path to arrive at the same conclusion. To do this, I am going to assume that functionalism is true and then explain how Mary will come to have the phenomenal property of seeing red when she is let out of her room and shown a ripe tomato. I will also explain why she could not have had this phenomenal property earlier. I don't actually believe that functionalism (or any variety of physicalism) is true, but I present this argument as the biggest obstacle for phenomenalists such as Chalmers or myself to overcome.

Before going any further, I am going to assume that Mary is so constructed as to have the following properties:

1. There is a mental state R that Mary will enter when she is shown something red for the first time and whenever she sees something red in the future. Before actually seeing something red, Mary does not have the ability to will herself into mental state R, nor does she have the ability to will herself into a mental state similar to R.

2. Once Mary has been in mental state R at least once, she has the ability to ``remember'' this mental state, by which we mean that she will have the ability to put herself into a mental state similar to R at will.

When Mary sees something red for the first time, what she has gained is not necessarily an externally obvious ability; she might already have had the disposition to readily identify red objects through her incredible knowledge of her own reaction to stimuli. And even if Mary were, in the future, to lose her disposition to readily activate mental state R upon seeing something red---perhaps through some sort of trauma to her head---she might retain the ability to activate mental state R through some other means, such as through imagination or concentration.

From now on, I will refer to the property perceived when one is in mental state R as `` Redness'', with a capital, italic `` R''. This is to distinguish it from the multitude of other properties that red objects might share.

Now let us consider what we mean by the word ``concept''. I would like to say that before release from her room, Mary doesn't have the concept of Redness because she doesn't have the ability to put herself into mental state R. In order to use the concept of Redness to represent something as being Red, Mary must involve mental state R in the representation. Why should we want to say this? I'll come back to this later. Once we agree that Mary acquires a new concept, the concept of Redness, upon being released from her room and being shown a ripe tomato, we can also agree that Mary has learned a new fact: ``Ripe tomatoes are Red''. Mary could not have known this fact earlier because she did not have the concept of Redness.

It may be the case that Mary has other concepts of redness---concepts she had for quite some time before being released from her room. These concepts, however, are not the same concept as the concept of Redness because they don't involve mental state R.

This leaves the following question open: What's the big deal with the difference between any old concept of redness and the concept of Redness? Maybe they are not the same concept, but why do we feel that Mary is impoverished if she doesn't have the later concept?

Mary, as it happens, is wired up so that when she acquires the concept of Redness for the first time she will be surprised and delighted. She will have the feeling of experiencing something completely new, different, and pleasant, and this feeling will cause her to be surprised and delighted. Because of Mary's incredible knowledge, she is sure to know in advance that she will be surprised and delighted, but because of Mary's construction, this knowledge doesn't lessen the impact. We can therefore see that the concept of Redness functions quite differently from the other concepts of redness---it has a much more direct ability to affect her mood, her emotions, and her ability to enjoy her experiences.

A phenomenalist is likely to object sometime about now: This theory of how Mary is constructed doesn't account for the fact that there is ``something it is like'' for Mary to see Red. It offers an explanation for why Mary might be surprised or delighted, but the real issue has been swept under the rug.

The functionalist will reply, ``No, nothing has been swept under the rug. This theory offers a complete account of what it is like to see Red: When Mary sees something Red, she is put into mental state R. Being in mental state R is not like being in the mental state of knowing a dry fact; rather, mental state R has a profound effect on the functioning of Mary's brain. When Mary enters mental state R, this triggers many other mental states. Some of the other mental states triggered by mental state R may be difficult or impossible for Mary to achieve without being in mental state R. For instance, there may be certain emotional states that occur mostly only when Mary is in mental state R. And by now being able to remember Redness---that is to visualize Red things---Mary, can to some degree invoke this whole complicated collection of mental effects at will. Furthermore, when Mary pays attention to how she feels---that is, when she examines the model she maintains in her head of own mental state---when she sees or imagines something Red, she will be able to model the changes she perceives in her own mental functioning. This model Mary has of how her mental functioning changes when she sees something Red is `what it is like' for her to see something Red.''

A possible objection comes immediately to mind: ``Surely you don't want to deny that my beloved dog Fido has phenomenology. Surely it is like something to be ol' Fido. But it also seems quite likely that Fido does not have sophisticated enough mental facilities to maintain a model of his own mental processes.''

The functionalist will not be phased by this objection. Just because there is something it is like to be Fido does not mean that Fido has to know what it is like to be himself. All that is required is that there exists such a model; Fido, himself, does not have to possess it. For instance, let's assume for a moment that I were to possess such a model. Then I would know what it is like to be Fido, even if poor Fido himself does not. Of course, for reasons similar to the reasons that Mary cannot acquire the concept of Redness without seeing something red, it is probably impossible for any human to acquire the concepts necessary to have such a model of a dog's mental processes and consequently know what it is like to be Fido. However, we can imagine that in some possible world there is a really smart dog, a superdog, who has the capability to acquire a model of what it is like to be Fido. This possibility is all that is required for there to be something it is like to be Fido.

The phenomenalist is no doubt getting somewhat upset about now and is likely to burst out, ``You're very clever to co-opt our term `what it is like' and make it mean something completely different from what we have intended! But, of course, you haven't addressed the issue because that's not what we have in mind by `what it is like'.''

The functionalist will, of course, at this point respond, ``Well, please do tell us what you have in mind then! I can't think of anything that has not been accounted for.''

This is the place where the difficulty for the phenomenalist becomes apparent. If there is something that hasn't been accounted for in the fixed-up version of Harman's account, how is a phenomenalist to describe or point to it? As far as I am aware, Chalmers does not have an argument which stands up to the functionalist argument presented above. Nor am I aware of any phenomenalist who has been able to provide a good argument for anyone to believe in qualia. Certainly, there is no argument that a functionalist can give to disprove the existence of qualia, but at the moment qualia seem to belong to the same category as Dennett's fourteen invisible gremlins that live in each cylinder of your automobile's engine; we can't disprove their existence, but it seems quite silly to believe in them.