Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

It is important to realize that his example requires the existence of this something. If something did
not change in Mr. Chase or Sanborn, then Dennett’s intuition pump would amount to the story of when
Mr. Chase and Sanborn worked at Maxwell House and nothing happened to them.
Both premises (a) and (b) must be true for proposition 1 to be true. It is also true that we cannot
know which disjunct of premise (b) is true: we cannot know whether it was the qualia that changed or the
standards of judging those qualia, and thus we can conclude no further fact from premise (b). Where
Dennett errs is when he says that because we can extrapolate no facts from premise (b), we cannot
extrapolate any facts from proposition 1. I have shown that we can know and must know from premise (a)
that something has happened to Chase/Sanborn and this fact is necessarily present, but his argument requires
the absence of facts from proposition 1. Thus Dennett’s argument is logically flawed because we know for a
fact that something has changed with Chase/Sanborn and this something exists, and his argument rested on our
inability to know this.
However, let us take his example and see what we can make of it. I have established that something
has changed in Chase/Sanborn and that it exists. Let us now analyze what this something must be. Focus
again on premise II: this thing that changed was either the qualia or the judgments of those qualia. What
changed cannot be a physical event, for by hypothesis the physical system is completely unaffected by the
changes in Mr. Chase and Sanborn. This thing that was there to be changed can be seen as the experience of
what the coffee tastes like; I cannot conceive what it would be otherwise. I will show that whether it was
the qualia or his standards that changed does not matter, as both are still in the realm of the qualitative states
Dennett is trying to deny.
Obviously, the qualia disjunct in question fall under the umbrella of qualia. What may not be
apparent is that the alternative disjunct “change of standard” is also under the umbrella of qualia. For this
disjunct to be an option, at some point Chase and Sanborn have to compare the qualia of the old coffee with
the current coffee. How do they do this? They introspect, asking themselves whether this or that quale is
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