Reduction and Elimination in Philosophy and the Sciences

their relations both to the physical and to each other.”
(Bennett unpublished, 15) Now, the fundamental
protophenomenal properties can again be either
phenomenal or nonphenomenal. If they are
nonphenomenal, it is hard to see how they can generate
the phenomenal properties we are familiar with. “[W]e now
need a story about how the phenomenal arises from the
protophenomenal. […] The explanatory gap has not been
closed; it has just been shunted into the space between
the protophenomenal and the phenomenal. The hard
problem rearises there.” (Bennett unpublished, 16-17) If,
on the contrary, protophenomenal properties are
phenomenal themselves, then we need to explain how the
physical can give rise to them. “More precisely, we have
lost out on the attempt to systematize and unify the
relationships between the physical and the phenomenal.”
(Bennett unpublished, 17) Bennett sums up the problem
as follows: “The more similar the protophenomenal
properties are to phenomenal ones, the less headway can
be made on the project of systematizing the macrocorrelations;
we may as well take each and every
phenomenal property, each and every macro-correlation,
as fundamental. And the more removed the
protophenomenal properties are from phenomenal ones,
the less point there is to postulating them at all. We still
cannot see how human experience – genuine, full blown
consciousness – arises from complicated relations among
such fragmentary shadows of phenomenality.” (Bennett
unpublished, 17) By postulating a third category of
properties the dualist “only answers the letter of the hard
problem”. (Bennett unpublished, 18) The spirit of the hard
problem – the question of how the phenomenal arises from
the nonphenomenal – is as pressing as ever. (Bennett
unpublished, 18)
3 The subjectivity of the mental
I believe that Bennett is right with her criticism of
Chalmers’s position. I believe that, just like the physicalist,
the dualist cannot solve the hard problem. I disagree,
however, with Bennett’s claim that this amounts to an impeachment
of dualism. Therefore, I will first explain why a
fully satisfying explanation of how the mental arises from
the physical is not to be expected and second why the
prospects for dualism are nevertheless intact.
Mental properties 1 can be characterized as
essentially subjective, in the sense that, while every
physical property is in principle accessible to everyone,
every mental property is principally accessible only from a
certain subjective perspective. (Nagel 1974, 442) A tree’s
height can be measured by everyone around. No one is
privileged here. A person’s pain, however, can be
experienced only by the person herself. Even though we
can adopt the person’s point of view, we cannot actually
feel her pain. Therefore, the instantiation of mental
properties brings with it a change of perspective. It is this
change of perspective that makes the occurrence of
mental properties such a mystery. In contrast, there is no
big mystery involved in explaining how one neural process
generates the other and how one thought follows the
1 So far, I have restricted the discussion to phenomenal properties, following
the terminology of the authors discussed. Phenomenal properties are mostly
seen as one kind of mental properties, the other kind being psychological
properties such as learning. Psychological properties, it is assumed, can be
functionalized, whereas in the case of phenomenal properties this is questioned.
(Chalmers 1996, 11-31) Since I have doubts about the phenomenal/psychological-distinction
I will from now on be speaking of mental properties
only. On the ontological level, of course, this doesn’t have any consequences.
The position discussed remains dualist all the same.
No Bridge within Sight — Daniel Wehinger
other. Here the entities involved are on a par, so to say:
They are both objective in the first case and both
subjective in the second case. Therefore, all we need to do
in order to achieve a fully satisfying explanation is to keep
track of every turn they take. When trying to explain, on the
contrary, how neural processes give rise to mental
properties and how thoughts yield neural changes we have
a much harder time. Here the entities involved are tied to
different perspectives. A fully satisfying explanation,
however, would have to lead us all the way from the
physical to the mental, or conversely from the mental to
the physical without changing the perspective. In view of
the subjectivity of the mental and the objectivity of the
physical such an explanation is not to be expected. Adding
up objective facts doesn’t seem to get us any nearer to
something essentially subjective. It is only by changing the
perspective that we come to know there are mental, and
therefore subjective, properties. Hence, a bridge between
the physical and the mental is not within sight: Such a
bridge would again have to be either subjective or
objective and either way the hard problem, which can by
now be reformulated as the question of how you get
something essentially subjective out of something
essentially objective, rearises.
Many physicalists concede that mental properties
indeed appear to be subjective in the sense described
above. If, however, they really are subjective in that sense,
then they cannot be physical, for the physical is certainly
objective. Therefore, the physicalist is confronted with the
difficult task of having to point out how the mental, contrary
to appearance, can be objective without thereby turning it
into something it is not. Admittedly, it is not quite clear by
now how this could be done and, thus, how the physicalist
claim that everything there is, including mental properties,
is physical could be made true. But this, it is argued, does
not ultimately rule out the possibility of its truth. The
following quote from Thomas Nagel is revealing here: “If
we acknowledge that a physical theory of mind must
account for the subjective character of experience, we
must admit that no presently available conception gives us
a clue how this could be done.” But, as Nagel goes on,
“[n]othing is provided by the inadequacy of physicalist
hypotheses that assume a faulty objective analysis of
mind. It would be truer to say that physicalism is a position
we cannot understand because we do not at present have
any conception of how it might be true.” (Nagel 1974, 445-
446) Such a line of argument, however, puts physicalism
at risk of becoming something close to an article of faith.
Dualists, on the contrary, claim that mental
properties are indeed the way they appear to be, i.e.
subjective, and therefore nonphysical. This claim, of
course, does not solve the hard problem. But this must not
be seen as a lack of the dualist position. The dualist is not
committed to solving the hard problem. All she is
committed to is the thesis that, in addition to the lots and
lots of physical properties, there are at least some mental
properties that are not physical. In fact, I believe that, if the
mental is essentially subjective, the insolubleness of the
hard problem follows: A fully satisfying explanation of the
arisal of mental properties from physical processes does
not allow for a change of perspective. We are not satisfied,
if the explanans does not lead us straightly to the
explanadum. If, however, the mental is essentially tied to a
certain subjective perspective, objective facts won’t guide
us there. Therefore, the insurmountability of the gap
between the physical and the mental is part of the dualist
claim.
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