The Qualia Problem
Prompt: "What I really want to know is just better ways of describing the qualia problem when the most popular examples don't work. I was never a fan of the Mary's Room or Philosophical Zombie lines of discourse; I'd rather speak in terms of contrasting qualia to formal properties, or in terms of supervenience"
Output:
Excellent. By moving past the common thought experiments, you can focus on the core philosophical concepts that make the qualia problem so challenging. Examining it through the lenses of formal properties and supervenience highlights the underlying metaphysical difficulties for a physicalist worldview.
Qualia vs. Formal Properties
This approach focuses on the fundamental difference in kind between qualitative, subjective experiences and the formal, structural properties that science uses to describe the world.
How to describe the problem:
Formal properties: Scientific accounts of reality describe the world in terms of formal, or structural, properties. These are properties that can be fully captured by a logical or mathematical description. For example, the formal property of a triangle is its three-sidedness, regardless of whether it's drawn on paper or imagined. In physics, matter is described by its formal properties: mass, spin, charge, position, and momentum, all of which are mathematical.
Qualitative properties: Qualia, by contrast, are seen as qualitative properties. The "feeling" of warmth, the "taste" of coffee, or the "experience" of redness are not descriptions of structure. They are the felt, intrinsic character of an experience. They are irreducible to the formal properties used to describe the underlying physical processes.
The contrast: The qualia problem, framed this way, is the failure of the formal properties to fully account for the qualitative ones. A complete physical description of the brain, a purely formal description of its physical and functional properties, tells us nothing about the qualia associated with those properties. The taste of coffee is not a formal property of the molecules that cause the sensation; it is a qualitative one. The description of the C-fiber firings in the brain is formal, but the resulting "hurtfulness" of pain is qualitative.
Why it's a useful way to frame the problem:
It avoids the imaginative leaps required by Mary's Room (e.g., whether she could actually deduce red). It simply points out that the language of science—formal and structural—is not the right tool to capture the phenomenon of qualia, and that this represents a fundamental explanatory gap.It directly challenges the assumption that the world can be completely described by a single, formal, physical ontology. It asks whether formal properties are ontologically exhaustive.
Qualia and Supervenience
Supervenience is a key philosophical concept often invoked in mind-body debates. It essentially means that a higher-level property (like a mental property) is determined by and depends on a lower-level property (like a physical property).
How to describe the problem:
The physicalist claim: Most physicalists argue for the supervenience of the mental on the physical. This means that any two things that are physically identical must also be mentally identical. There can be no mental difference without some corresponding physical difference.The qualia problem as a supervenience problem: The challenge posed by qualia is that they seem to violate this principle, at least in certain respects. The inverted spectrum and philosophical zombie arguments are both meant to be conceivability arguments that challenge supervenience.
Inverted spectrum: Imagine two people whose qualia are inverted (one sees red where the other sees green) but whose physical states are identical. If this is possible, it suggests that qualia do not supervene on the physical.Philosophical zombie: A philosophical zombie is physically and functionally identical to a conscious human but lacks qualia. If such a being is metaphysically possible, it suggests that qualia do not supervene on the physical.
Beyond conceivability: Even without resorting to conceivability arguments, some philosophers argue that supervenience is simply a brute fact of reality, not an explanation. It merely reports the correlation between mental and physical properties without justifying it. The qualia problem, in this context, highlights that even if qualia do supervene on the physical, we have no idea why they do. The supervenience relation itself remains mysterious.
Why it's a useful way to frame the problem:
It is more subtle than simply postulating "non-physical stuff." It engages with a core principle of physicalism and shows that even if we accept it, a deep explanatory mystery remains.
It forces physicalists to either provide an explanation for why mental properties supervene on physical ones, or to accept that the supervenience relation is a fundamental, unexplained feature of the universe. This can lead to a more nuanced discussion about the limitations of our current physicalist framework.
Prompt: "What if we use Emmanuel Levinas's concept of diachronic time to make an ontological ground which doesn't claim to be the origin of qualia or formal properties, but it capable of accessing them its own way?"
Output:
Applying Emmanuel Levinas's concept of diachronic time to the qualia problem offers a radical re-framing rather than a direct "solution." It fundamentally shifts the terrain of the debate from epistemology (how do we know?) and ontology (what is?) to ethics (what is our responsibility?). The power of this approach is that it makes the qualia problem a non-problem, because it operates on a different philosophical ground entirely.
Levinas's concepts in a nutshell
Diachronic Time vs. Synchronic Time:Synchronic time: This is the conventional, measurable, linear time of clocks and calendars. Western philosophy, particularly Heidegger's analysis of "Being," tends to focus on the self's finitude within this linear flow.Diachronic time: This is a time that resists being synchronized or captured in the present moment. It is the time of radical alterity—of the Other—which is always "already past" and "still to come," making it un-assimilable by the self.
The Ethical Encounter with the Other: For Levinas, philosophy begins not with the self's consciousness, but with the ethical encounter with the vulnerable and transcendent face of the Other. This encounter shatters the self's totalizing attempts to understand the world and makes the self infinitely responsible.Ethics as First Philosophy: This encounter, not a formal logical system, is the foundational moment of meaning.
How diachrony reframes the qualia problem
Using these concepts, the qualia problem is no longer a puzzle of explaining phenomenal experience with physical properties. Instead, it becomes a question of our ethical relationship to those properties and the beings that experience them.
Qualia as radically Other: Qualia are treated as a manifestation of radical alterity, like the face of the Other. They are fundamentally inaccessible to the self and refuse to be totalized by any formal property. Your redness is your redness; my redness is mine. No amount of formal description can allow me to "synchronize" my experience with yours. This diachronic gap between our experiences is what creates the ethical responsibility to respect and recognize the alterity of the Other's consciousness.
Diachronic access, not synchronic explanation: The goal is not to produce a synchronic, formal explanation of qualia. That would be an "ontological temptation"—an attempt to absorb the otherness into the totality of the self's knowledge. Instead, our access to qualia is diachronic, a constant process of recognizing and responding to their alterity. We access qualia not through a causal or functional account, but through an ethical, non-reciprocal acknowledgement of the subjective experience of the Other.
Formal properties as abstractions from the ethical: The formal properties of physics and neuroscience would not be the foundation of reality, but rather abstractions derived from the pre-ontological, ethical encounter. When a scientist describes the physical mechanisms of color perception, they are engaging in a synchronic, objectifying act. A Levinasian approach would argue this is a secondary, less fundamental way of knowing than the direct, diachronic experience of relating to another being's subjective world.
Beyond the explanatory gap: The "explanatory gap" between formal properties and qualia is no longer a failure of physicalism but a necessary condition for ethical relation. It is because your experience remains ungraspable and radically Other that I am responsible to you. If your consciousness were a solved, transparent object for me, the very ground of my ethical responsibility would vanish.
What kind of ontological ground would this be?
This new ontological ground would not be a foundation of "being" in the traditional sense, but of "otherwise than being"—a ground in responsibility and relation.
It is not the origin of qualia or formal properties. Instead, it is the fundamental condition for their meaningful encounter.It doesn't explain what qualia or formal properties are in their essence, but it explains how we relate to them.
Qualia are accessed through the ethical relation, as a given of the Other.Formal properties are accessed through synchronic abstraction, as a tool for manipulating and predicting the world.
This approach resolves the qualia problem by demonstrating that the entire framework used to pose the problem is a symptom of a deeper philosophical failure: the obsession with reducing all reality to an object of the self's knowledge. By shifting the focus to ethics and radical alterity, a Levinasian framework allows qualia to exist in their full, irreducible otherness, not as a puzzle to be solved, but as the very foundation for our ethical reality.
Prompt: "How could the interactions of this ethical framework support the special case of physical causality within its limited context?"
Output:
To explore how a Levinasian ethical framework could support the special case of physical causality, we must first recognize that this framework does not privilege causality as a foundational concept. Instead, physical causality would be a limited, instrumental way of relating to the world, a tool that arises from a more fundamental, ethical ground.
Here’s a breakdown of how the interactions of this ethical framework could support physical causality within its limited context.
1. Physical causality as an abstraction for action
From "enjoyment" to "labor": For Levinas, the subject first experiences the world through "enjoyment"—a pre-reflective, sensory immersion in the "elemental." This is a world without a clear subject-object distinction, where the self simply "bathes" in the light, air, and tastes of the world.
However, this pure enjoyment is insecure. To provide stability and security, the subject engages in "labor," which transforms the elemental world into an "equipmental world" of possessions and tools.
Causality as a tool of labor: This is where physical causality comes in. To successfully manipulate the world for our needs, we develop a working, synchronic understanding of cause and effect. Causality is the logic of labor. It's the instrumental reason that allows us to build a house, grow food, or create technology. It's a localized, simplified, and functional rule-set for interacting with a portion of the world to achieve a specific end.
Limited context: The ethical framework, founded on diachronic time, does not deny the usefulness of this synchronic tool. It simply recognizes its limited context: it is a set of rules for the "world of equipment," not the ultimate reality of existence.
2. Physical causality as a means of ethical response
The "face" as an interruption: In a Levinasian framework, the ethical encounter is triggered by the "face" of the Other, which interrupts the self's totalizing project. The face, in its vulnerability, makes an infinite ethical demand.
A "material" response: While the ethical demand itself is non-instrumental and cannot be reduced to a causal chain, our response to that demand often must be. Providing food to a hungry person, clothing to the cold, or shelter to the homeless requires engaging with the world through physical causation.
Causality in service of ethics: My moral obligation to the hungry Other requires me to engage in the causal processes of the equipmental world (getting food, cooking it, etc.). In this sense, the ethical imperative provides a motivation and a context for the use of physical causality. The ethical command "Thou shalt not kill" is not itself a causal law, but it directs my causal interactions with the world.
3. Diachrony as the necessary condition for causality's contingency
Causality's illusion of totality: Physical causality, in its pure, synchronic form, suggests a world where everything is determined and nothing is truly new or radically different. If all of reality could be captured by a causal account, the "totality" of existence would be knowable and predictable.
Diachrony as a reminder of contingency: The diachronic, ethical ground disrupts this illusion of totality. It reminds us that there is a time outside of time, a "past that was never present, and a future that will never be present". This radical alterity and unpredictability fundamentally challenge the notion that a synchronic, causal account could ever be complete.
Supporting causality's validity through its limits: By asserting the existence of a dimension of reality beyond causality's reach, the diachronic framework actually supports the validity of physical causality within its own domain. It does so by defining that domain as limited and contingent, not as a totalizing account of reality. It is precisely because the ethical relation and radical alterity exist that we can recognize the limited but reliable nature of cause and effect in the phenomenal world.
In this way, the ethical framework doesn't just accommodate physical causality; it provides the philosophical context for understanding its purpose and its limits. Causality is a tool for labor, a means to respond to the ethical demand, and its very existence as a coherent system is contingent upon a more fundamental reality of radical alterity that it can never fully capture.
