Churchland on Reduction, Qualia, and Introspection

Author(s): Sydney Shoemaker

Source: PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association,
Vol. 1984, Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers (1984), pp. 799-809
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 Churchland on Reduction, Qualia, and Introspection

Sydney Shoemaker

Cornell University

Churchland (1985) is much struck with the possibility that we might

learn to make introspective reports in "the conceptual framework of a
matured neuroscience"* He thinks that this would yield "a quantum
leap in self-apprehension". And he apparently thinks that the possi-
bility of this strengthens the case for reductionism. I will not ques-
tion the claim that we might learn to make in a quasi-introspective
way the sorts of reports Churchland envisages, about dopamine levels
in the limbic system, spiking frequencies in neural pathways, and so
forth; nor will I question that this might have a beneficial effect on
our aesthetic appreciation, our emotional self-understanding, and the
like. I will question whether the awareness Churchland envisages
would be genuine introspective awareness, although in some sense it
would involve it. And I will argue that the possibility of our having
such awareness is pretty much irrelevant to the question of whether
phenomenological and other mental states are reducible to physiological
ones. Since I will be focusing on points of disagreement, I ought to
say at the.outset that I am in complete agreement with Churchland that
the phenomenological features of our sensations do not constitute a
"permanent barrier" to a materialist account of mind, and that I agree
with much of what he says in response to arguments purporting to show
the contrary.

Let me start with a preliminary point about Churchland's account of

reduction. I have no quarrel with the main lines of the account, which
seems to me admirable. But I think that he needs to qualify his claim
that when property reduction is "smooth" it licenses straightforward
property identities. He tells us at one point that in a smooth reduc-
tion the causal powers of the reduced property (as outlined in the old
theory) are a subset of the causal powers of the reducing property (as
outlined in the new theory) (Churchland, p. 11). But of course, if
the subset is a proper subset, the relation of the properties cannot
be identity--the set of causal powers of a property cannot be a proper
subset of itself. Yet it is entirely compatible with Churchland's ac-
count of reduction that the subset should be a proper subset. Property
F might be reducible to property G, and also to a different property H,
in virtue of the fact that the causal powers of G and H overlap and the
causal powers of F are a subset both of the causal powers of G and of

PSA 1984, Volume 2, pp. 799-809

Copyright (D 1985 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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800

the causal powers of H. This is, in fact, precisely the situation we

have in the case in which F is a functional property and G and H are
different "realizations" of it. Functional properties are reducible
to their realizations in Churchland's sense, but they are of course
not identical to them.

Since it is clear from his other writings that Churchland is well

aware of the view that mental properties are functional properties,
it is curious that in this paper he assumes that if mental properties
are smoothly reducible to physiological properties they are identical
to them. I think that this assumption gives more plausibility than it
deserves to the idea that reports of dopamine levels in the limbic sys-
tem could be introspective reports. I will return to this later.

I now come to what will be my main topic, namely Churchland's idea

that introspective reports might be couched in physiological terms.
Consideration of the following imaginary case will help me bring out
what I want to say about this.

Peter and Paul are, to all appearances, identical twins. They were
left on someone's doorstep as babies, and were brought up together.
They display the remarkable psychological affinities characteristic of
identical twins. Each has an uncanny ability to know what the other is
feeling or thinking, and their tastes, interests, and emotional re-
sponses are as similar as they could be. Both are talented and well
trained musically, and their talk about music shows all of the effects
of musical training and knowledgeability that Churchland describes.
Both are chemically well-informed connoisseurs of wine, and are unex-
celled in their ability to estimate by taste the relative concentra-
tions of ethanol, glycol, fructose, etc., in a sample of wine. And
lately (this is a bit in the future) they have become experts on
neuroscience, and, following Churchland's recommendation, have taken
to using the conceptual scheme of neuroscience in their introspective
reports--their reports are full of references to dopamine levels in
the limbic system, and that sort of thing. Both testify to the bene-
ficial effects of this on their appreciation of music, painting, wine,
etc., and on their understanding of their own feelings and emotions.

As it happens, however, Peter and Paul, while they are functional

twins, are not identical twins in the ordinary sense. They are not
even of the same species. While Peter is a normal human being, with a
normal human neurophysiology, Paul has, beneath the skin, an utterly
different physical makeup. He was constructed by Martian scientists to
be Peter's functional twin--the object was to see whether human psy-
chology could be realized in Martian physiology and biochemistry. It
was agents of the Martian scientists who left the two of them on that
doorstep, the rearing of the two of them together in a terrestial en-
vironment being the final stage of the experiment. Arnd in fact the
experiment was a splendid success. Peter and Paul really are func-
tional twins. Not only do their inner states realize equally well the
same folk psychological states; they are also psychologically indis-
tinguishable (except in trivial ways) by the most sophisticated tests
devisable by experimental psychologists (except, of course, those that
involve going inside the skin).

It could be that what I have described is nomologically

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 801

impossible. Maybe there is, as a consequence of laws of nature, just

one way of realizing the sort of psychology Peter has, namely the way
it is realized in him. But I know of no reason for thinking this to
be so, and it certainly seems imaginable that other sorts of realiza-
tions are possible. So let us consider the consequences of there
being such.

What goes on when Peter and Paul compare notes about their gusta-
tory, aesthetic and emotional experiences, talking about dopamine
levels and the like? I want to suppose that Paul's introspective re-
ports are just as illuminating to Peter as Peter's are to Paul. But
literally construed, Paul's reports are (unbeknownst to him) con-
sistently false; he has no dopomine levels, and has no lateral geni-
culate nucleus for there to be inhibitory feedback in. But this
falsity, if falsity it is, has no adverse effects. Paul is of course
mistaken in thinking that his neurophysiology is like Peter's, and
this mistaken belief may have adverse effects if it leads him to raid
Peter's medicine cabinet if he has cold symptoms or a headache. But
the deliverances of his introspection seems consistently to lead to
enhanced aesthetic perceptiveness and psychological insight.

All of this suggests that we should not interpret Paul's intro-

spective reports as consistently false. Notice that if Peter and Paul
had simply been taught to use the neurophysiological vocabulary in
formulating their introspective reports, without being taught the
neurophysiological theory, then it would not be plausible to inter-
pret Paul's reports so as to make them consistently false. In this
version of the example, the only use Peter and Paul have of the
physiological terms is in the description--in the first instance the
introspective description--of experiences. Here the most plausible
account would say that the "physiological" terms in their reports do
not have their original physiological meanings, and instead have de-
rived phenomenological meanings that make Paul's reports true, or at
any rate true to the same extent that Peter's are. It is less clear
what we should say about the meanings of these terms in "introspec-
tive" reports in the original example. It is built into the example
that Peter's reports are true if the physiological terms in them are
interpreted literally; and given that he understands the physio-
logical terms (he knows the physiological theory), and intends to be
self-ascribing the physiological states they stand for, it can
scarcely be denied that the terms have their physiological meanings in
his reports. But while it may be true that these terms would also
have those meanings in Paul's reports, this can scarcely be the whole
story. While Paul is getting something wrong, he is also getting some-
thing right; and for most purposes what he is getting right is impor-
tant and what he is getting wrong is irrelevant. Perhaps, then, we
have here a case of divided reference, or partial denotation. The
terms in Paul's report have their normal physiological meanings and
have the phenomenological meanings they would have had if he had been
taught to use them in making his reports without being taught any
physiology. Interpreted one way they are consistently false, inter-
preted the other way they are (mostly) true; and normally the con-
textually relevant interpretation is that which makes them true.

If we say this of Paul, I think we ought to say the same thing of

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802

Peter, the only difference being that his reports come out true on both
interpretations. While Peter's reports are both introspective reports
of phenomenological states and reports of neurophysiological states,
this is manifestation of ambiguity; on the interpretation on which they
are phenomenological they are not physiological, and on the interpre-
tation on which they are physiological they are not phenomenological,
and are not introspective.

What I have been saying suggests that while Peter and Paul differ
in their physiological states, they share a repertoire of phenomeno-
logical states, namely those designated by their "physiological"
terminology on its phenomenological interpretation. It is built into
the example, remember, that Peter and Paul are functional twins, and
have, among other things, exactly the same discriminatory capacities,
both with respect to the external senses and with respect to intro-
spection. The phenomenological states they share, in virtue of this,
will be functional states. And it is the fact that they share these
that makes it rewarding for them to talk to one another about music,
wine, and their emotional lives. The capacity to self-ascribe these
states seems fundamentally different from the capacity to self-
ascribe the physiological states in which, in a particular person,
these functional states are realized, even though it can happen, as
in the case of Peter, that these capacities are acquired together.

At this point someone will raise a familiar objection. When Peter

self-ascribes a state of which he gives a certain phenomenological de-
scription (in terms of dopamine levels and all that), and Paul self-
ascribes a state to which he gives the same description, how can we be
sure that the states are phenomenologically, or qualitatively, the
same? May it not be that "what it is like" for Paul to be in the
state he describes that way is quite different from "what it is like"
for Peter to be in the state he describes that way? This is of course
related to the notorious inverted spectrum problem. In Moritz
Schlick's terminology, the suggestion might be put by saying that while
the "form" of Paul's experience of Chateau Lafite Rothschild '59 is just
like the form of Peter's experience of that wine, the "content" is dif-
ferent.

Obviously this is a large issue which I can only touch on here.

The first observation I want to make is that even if the suggestion
is right, and there is some sense of "phenomenological character" in
which the character of Paul's experience differs systematically from
that of Peter's, it is doubtful that this is the sense that matters
for any of the purposes we care about in everyday life. This dif-
ference can't make it less profitable for Peter and Paul to compare
notes on their aesthetic, gustatory and emotional experiences--for
those purposes the differences, if there are any, cancel out. So it
seems to me reasonable to allow that there is a sense of "phenomeno-
logical quality" in which the phenomenological qualities of experi-
ences are functional properties and are not to be identified with, al-
though they can be realized in, neurophysiological properties. Let
us dub these "F-phenomenological properties" ("F" for "functional").

One view would be that the only notion of a phenomenological qual-

ity that we can make sense of is that of an F-phenomenological

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quality. A proponent of this view must hold that spectrum inversion,

and other sorts of "qualia inversion", are a conceptual impossibility.
I am not persuaded that this view is correct, and in several papers I
have tried to show that a functional account of mind can accommodate
a conception of phenomenological properties of experience which al-
lows for the possibility of "qualia inversion", and also for the pos-
sibility that the experiences of Peter and Paul are phenomenologically
different despite being alike with respect to F-phenomenological prop-
erties.1 If the latter possibility is realized, let us say that the
experiences of Peter and Paul differ in their N-phenomenological prop-
erties ("N" for "narrow," or, if you like, for "non-functional").

If one accepts the former view, which allows only for F-phenomeno-
logical properties, then one clearly cannot equate Peter's awareness
of his neurophysiological states with his awareness of phenomenological
properties. On this view, he is aware of two different sets of prop-
erties, the phenomenological ones and the neurophysiological ones, and
there seems to be a clear sense in which his awareness of the former
is epistemologically prior to his awareness of the latter; he is aware
of the neurophysiological ones by being aware of the phenomenological
ones, the former awareness being the joint product of the latter
awareness and his non-introspective knowledge of his own physiology.
To be sure, we are imagining that his ability to discriminate the phe-
nomenological properties was enhanced by his knowledge of neurophysio-
logical theory and his practice in using the conceptual scheme of
neuroscience in making his introspective reports. But as the case of
Paul shows, it was not essential to his discriminatory abilities being
enhanced in this way that the neurophysiological theory he used be one
actually true of him--all that matters is that it be one that could be
true of someone having his repertoire of F-phenomenological states.

Suppose, however, that there are N-phenomenological properties as

well as F-phenomenological properties. While it is out of the ques-
tion that F-phenomenological properties should be identical to neuro-
physiological properties, this is not true of N-phenomenological
properties--it could be held that they are identical to the neuro-
physiological properties in which the corresponding F-phenomenological
properties are realized. And in that case, it might seem, a neuro-
physiological property, being identical with an N-phenomenological
property, could be introspectively self-ascribed. So even if Peter's
self-ascriptions are ambiguous, it may be held, both are phenomeno-
logical (F-phenomenological on one interpretation, N-phenomenological
on the other), and both can be introspective.

Now it is only on a generous conception of what counts as a neuro-

physiological property that I think it is plausible to allow that even
N-phenomenological properties could be identical to neurophysiological
properties. For surely the following is conceivable. In Peter there
are two different neurophysiological properties that realize the F-
phenomenological property that is shared by the experiences Peter and
Paul get from a sip of Lafite Rothschild '59. Sometimes his ex-
perience has the one, sometimes the other--and he cannot tell the dif-
ference introspectively. Given that Peter's discriminatory abilities
have been refined as far as they can be, we surely do not want to
allow that there can be significant phenomenological differences

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804

between experiences that are absolutely indistinguishable by him. So

if the N-phenomenological property is identical with a physiological
property, it will have to be identified with the disjunction of all
of the neurophysiological properties that can realize in Peter the
corresponding F-phenomenological property. From the point of view of
physiological theory, the disjuncts might well not form a natural
kind.

This means that if there is much variety in the way a given F-

phenomenological property can be realized in an individual, then if
that individual uses the conceptual scheme of neuroscience in his in-
trospective reports, his reports might have to be of a highly disjunc-
tive character. This raises a question as to whether the way of
formulating introspective reports championed by Churchland could be
feasible for creatures having the limited memories and other intel-
lectual capacities human beings in fact have. There is another con-
sideration that raises the same question. As I have observed else-
where, in speaking of the "realizations" of a functional state we need
to distinguish between "core realizations" and "total realizations"-2
To use the stock example, if C-fiber firing is a core realization of
pain, then the total realization is having C-fiber firing plus having
an overall physiological makeup such that C-fiber stands in various
causal relations to the core-realizations of various other mental
states, and perhaps to sensory inputs and behavioral outputs. It is
only the total realizations of phenomenological properties (or dis-
junctions of such realizations) that could possibly be identical to
them. But it is at best the core-realizations of them that one could
learn to self-ascribe "introspectively". For presumably a description
of a total realization of the property of being in pain would dwarf the
Encyclopedia Britannica, and would vastly exceed the reporting capaci-
ties of any human being. But this means that if a person learns to
self-ascribe neurophysiological states "introspectively'", there is no
hope that the neurophysiological properties he self-ascribes are
literally identical to the phenomenological properties he has at the
time.

But let me waive this difficulty about complexity, and about the
multiple realizability of even N-phenomenological properties, and pre-
tend for a moment that each N-phenomenological property is identical
to some relatively simple physiological property, one that can be
characterized physiologically in twenty-five words or less. Even then
it seems to me wrong to count a self-ascription of such a property as
an introspective report of a phenomenological quality.

If "pain" is known by me to be coreferential with "C-fiber firing",

does that make "I have C-fibers firing" an introspective report when I
assert it on the basis of feeling pain? Well, consider this: the
word "I" is known by me to be coreferential, when used by me, with "The
worst softball player in the Cornell Philosophy Department", yet I would
not want to say that "The worst softball player ... etc. is in pain"
would be an introspective report if said by me on the basis of feeling
pain. Rather than being itself a deliverance of introspection, it
would be the joint product of my introspective knowledge that I am in
pain and my nonintrospective knowledge that I am the worst softball
player.... The word "I" seems suited for use in introspective reports

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in a way "Sydney Shoemaker", "The worst softball player ...", etc. are
not, even though all of these expressions have, in my mouth, the same
reference. This suggests that whether a judgment should count as in-
trospective depends on the sense of the terms in it, and not only on
their reference. It seems plausible that it is the special sort of
sense mental terms have that suits them for use in introspective
judgments, and that neurophysiological terms are never so suited, even
if some of them should turn out to be co-referential with mental terms.
This is certainly in accord with the traditional conception of intro-
spection.

I am sure that Churchland would be resistant to the view I have

just suggested, largely because, like many recent philosophers, he
tends to assimilate introspective awareness to perceptual awareness.
It is true that the restriction I have suggested on what is to count
as an introspective judgment has no analogue in the case of perceptual
judgments. If "x is F" is a perceptual judgment, and F-ness is iden-
tical to G-ness, then it is possible for "x is G" to be a perceptual
judgment--if "F" is already part of our perceptual vocabulary, and we
come to know the truth of "F-ness = G-ness", then "G" is automatically
added to the perceptual vocabulary of those who know this. Thus I have
no objection to the claim that for the trained taster reports about the
ethanol, glycol, etc. content of wine can count as perceptual. For
reasons I cannot go into here, I think that it is in general a mistake
to construe introspection on the model of sense-perception.3 And I
think that our notion of introspective knowledge is the notion of a
kind of knowledge which we are capable of having simply in virtue of
having the states in question and having the mental concepts of them,
and so is necessarily knowledge of them under mentalistic descriptions.
But rather than trying to persuade Churchland of this, I want to show
in the remainder of my remarks that this issue between us is totally
irrelevant to the issue of whether mental states can be given a physi-
calist reduction.

One passage in Churchland's paper suggests that he thinks that we

must allow physiological self-ascriptions to count as introspective in
order to reject the "modalized" version of an argument he finds in
Nagel. The argument is as follows:

(1) My mental states are knowable by me by introspection.

(2) My brain states are not knowable by me by introspection.

(3) My mental states # my brain states.

The argument is to be understood as free from any intensional fallacy.

Churchland criticises it by comparing it to a parallel argument which
if sound would establish the conclusion that temperature is not iden-
tical to mean molecular kinetic energy. The parallel argument rests
on a premise, that "Mean kinetic energy is not knowable by tactile
sensing." that is false. And Churchland says that a physicalist can
maintain that premise (2) of Nagel's argument is false in the same
way--or at any rate that it is for all that Nagel has shown. What in-
terests me is what he says in defense of this. "Just as one can learn
to feel that the summer air is about 70 0F, or 210 C, so one can learn

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to feel that the mean KE of its molecules is about 6.2 x 1021 joules
.... And if one can come to know, by feeling, the mean KE of atmo-
spheric molecules, why is it unthinkable that one might come to know,
by introspection, the states of one's brain?" (Churchland, p. 782).
What this passage suggests is that Churchland thinks that in order to
reject premise (2) of Nagel's argument one must maintain that one can
have introspective knowledge that one's brain is in such and such a
state. I want to show that this is a mistake.

Premise (2) of Nagel's argument is ambiguous: it could mean either

(2') My brainstates are not states I can introspectively know

myself to have.

or

(2'') My brainstates are not states I can introspectively know

myself to have qua brainstates of such and such physio-
logical descriptions.

These are obviously different. (2') implies (2''), but not vice versa;
and, accordingly, while one cannot deny (2'') without denying (2'), one
can deny (2') without denying (2''). Churchland seems to think that to
reject Nagel's argument he must deny (2''). But all that he needs to
do is to deny (2'). Someone who denies (2') but accepts (2'') will say
the following: "What are in fact brainstates of a person may be states
he can know himself to have by introspection, for being in pain may be
such a state, and one can know by introspection that one is in pain.
But it is only under their mental descriptions that states can be self-
ascribed introspectively. So knowledge that one's C-fibers are firing
cannot itself be introspective knowledge, although it may be grounded
on introspective knowledge (that one is in pain) together
with nonintrospective knowledge (that pain is C-fiber firing)." Since
this view is obviously open to a reductionist, the possibility of reduc-
tion does not depend on the possibility of introspective knowledge of
neurophysiological facts.

I now want to tell a new version of the story of Peter and Paul.
This time the difference between Peter and Paul is ideological rather
than physiological; they really are identical twins, and are physio-
logical near-duplicates, but while Peter is a materialist and a be-
liever in the psychophysical identity theory, Paul is a Cartesian
dualist. As before, both are equally adept at making quasi-introspec-
tive reports couched in physiological terminology. But while Peter
believes that the physiological states he thus reports are identical
to phenomenological states, Paul believes that the physical states he
reports are the immediate causes of his phenomenological states and not
identical to them. He regards his ability to report them as having the
same status as, although much more sophisticated than, the ability all
of us have to know, on the evidence of how we feel, that there is ex-
cess acidity in our stomachs or congestion in our sinuses, and the
ability people can now be trained to have to make reliable reports
about such internal states as blood pressure. No one would regard the
latter reports as themselves introspective, but it is quite plausible
to suppose that acquiring the ability to make them could heighten one's

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 807

ability to make introspective discriminations among the phenomenological

states on which they are based. And that is what Paul thinks about his
ability to report his dopamine levels and the like.

Now I have suggested that even if Peter's version of the identity

theory is right, and the physiological states Peter and Paul self-
ascribe are identical with mental ones, it would still be wrong to
characterize the self-ascriptions as introspective. But suppose I am
wrong about this. Even so, it is clear that the question of whether
the identity theory is true is prior to the question of whether physio-
logical states can be introspectively self-ascribed. If Paul is to
be converted to Peter's way of thinking, it willhave to be by evidence
for the identity theory that is totally independent of the issue of
whether physiological states are introspectively self-ascribable--for
if that question can be settled in Peter's favor, this can only be by
first establishing the truth of the identity theory. It therefore
seems to me that Churchland puts the cart before the horse when he
says that the possibility of an introspective access to physiological
states "suggests that there is no problem at all in conceiving the
eventual reduction of mental states and properties to neurophysio-
logical states and properties." (p. 779). And it seems to me that the
question of whether such an access is possible is doubly irrelevant to
the issue of reductionism--first, because (as we saw earlier) it is
open to a reductionist to refuse to count anything as introspective
access to physiological facts (qua physiological), and, second, because
even if it is allowed that in principle something could count as this,
the question of whether such an access is a real possibility is pos-
terior to the question of whether reductionism is true.

I have not, however, addressed Churchland's suggestion that the

possibility of such an access helps answer Jackson's argument. On this
I will limit myself to three brief comments. First, I think that
Jackson's argument is adequately answered by the first response Church-
land makes to it, that which invokes the distinction between "knowledge
by description" and "knowledge by acquaintance'. Second, the sugges-
tion that our sensations are "structured sets of elements", or "chords
in some neural medium" (Churchland, p. 27), does not help against
Jackson's argument if it is applied to bats, Martians, and other crea-
tures not of our species. Chords are composed of notes that are not
chords; and knowing what notes a chord is composed of will enable me
to imagine what it is like to hear the chord only if I already know
what it is like to hear the notes. If a creature's physiology is sig-
nificantly different from my own, it will at least be a question
whether the phenomenological "notes" of which its experience is com-
posed are the same as those of which mine are composed. Finally, the
suggestion that our sensations are "structured sets of elements", and
that knowledge of physiology might help one learn the structure of a
sensation one has not experienced and thereby enable one to imagine
it, could be true even if physicalism were false, and it could be true
if, as I think, physicalism is true but nothing would count as intro-
spective awareness of physiological facts.

Let me briefly summarize my main claims. I suggested first that

what might appear to be cases of someone expressing introspective re-
ports in physiological terms are best regarded as cases in which the

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808
person is simultaneously making two different claims, one of them phe-
nomenological and one of them physiological. I further suggested that
in such cases the phenomenological state is best regarded as functional,
and so not something that could literally be identical with (as opposed
to being realized in) a neurophysiological state. But I claimed that
even if we allow (as I am prepared to) a category of "N-phenomenological
states" that can be identical to neurophysiological states, reports of
these couched in neurophysiological terminology cannot count as intro-
spective. Finally, I argued that even if I am wrong in these claims the
alleged possibility of couching introspective reports in physiological
terminology need not be appealed to in order to answer Nagel's argument
against physicalism, since that argument fails even if this is not a
possibility, and cannot be used to support physicalism, since in order
to know that physiological reports were introspective one would first
have to know that physicalism is true.

Notes

'See my (1975), (1981a), and (1982).

2See my (1981b).

3Some reasons are given in my (1986).

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 809

Referenges

Churchland, Paul. (1985). "Reduction, Qualia, and The Direct

Introspection of Mental States." The Journal of PhilosoDhy 82:
8-28.

Shoemaker, Sydney. (1975). "Functionalism and Qualia." Philosophica1

=di= 27: 291-315.

-----------------. (1981a). "Absent Qualia are Impossible."

PhilosoDhical Review 90: 581-599.

-----------------. (1981b). "Some Varieties of Functionalism."

PhilosoRhical Topics 12(1): 83-118.

-----------------. (1982). "The Inverted Spectrum." Journal of

hil.02p2h 74: 357-381.

-----------------. (1986). "Introspection and the Self." In Studies

in the Philos2Dhy of Mind. (Midwest Studies in Philosophv, Volume
10.) Edited by Peter A. French; Theodore E. Uehling, Jr.; and
Howard K. Wettstein. Minneapolis: University Minnesota Press.
Pages 101-120.

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