Abstract
According to non-reductive physicalism, mental properties of the phenomenal sort are essentially different from physical properties, and cannot be reduced to them. This being a quarrel about properties, I draw on the categorical / dispositional distinction to discuss this non-reductive claim. Typically, non-reductionism entails a categorical view of phenomenal properties. Contrary to this, I will argue that phenomenal properties, usually characterized by what it is like to have them, are mainly the manifestation of dispositional properties. This paper is thus divided into two parts. In the first part, after tracing a working distinction between categorical and dispositional properties, I argue that there is a form of incoherence looming behind the idea of taking phenomenal properties as categorical. In the second part, I argue in favor of the view that phenomenal properties are dispositional properties with an essential manifestation. This interpretation allows us to broaden dispositionalism so as to include the sciences of mind, thus ultimately favoring a physicalist view on the mind.
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Notes
For instance, those that differentiate thoughts about water when you confront yourself with water or twin-water (Putnam 1975).
Even if Chalmers (1996) considers that phenomenal properties are covered by psychophysical laws, these laws are not essential to what phenomenal properties are. Clearly, categoricalists mention dispositions. As Barbara Vetter observes: “Categoricalists hold that the world, at bottom, does not contain dispositional properties. All the sparse, the perfectly natural properties are categorical. Of course, we use dispositional idioms, and we say true things in using them.” (Vetter 2013, p. 344).
See Malzkorn (2001) for a history of these attempts.
Hugh Mellor (1974) has provided a dispositional analysis of triangularity, while Prior (1982) has defended the categoricity of this and other properties. Some philosophers reject the distinction altogether (Martin 1994; Heil 2003; Mumford 1998). Others have reformulated the distinction (Choi 2011a, b; Handfield 2008) by using other criteria and by considering dispositional and categorical properties to be mutually exclusive (Prior et al. 1982). See Choi and Fara (2012) and Cross (2011) for reviews.
Basically, I’m endorsing the “Eleatic principle”, the reality of a property lies in the dispositions it bestows. See Shoemaker (1980).
A referee, whom I thank, observed that this is not the only option: some scholars, such as Pereboom (2011), have stressed that neither dispositional properties, nor mental properties, need be functional properties: they can instead be compositional properties, where their constitutive entities can be different, given the multiple realizability view. As I read him, Pereboom thinks that taking pain to be functional doesn’t cut much ice between reductive and non-reductive physicalism. It is an important point. However, unless one declares that a compositional property cannot receive a functional interpretation, taking mental properties to be compositional doesn’t sidestep the issue.
It is fair to say that not all authors agree on this reading of Jackson’s argument: David Chalmers and Galen Strawson, for instance, draw a different lesson from it.
The idea is that we cannot err on our being in pain; empirical research is a further step in our privileged acquaintance with pain. The privilege is epistemic in that if we do not know which sensations we have, we are in no position to say anything about our phenomenal life at all, pretty much in analogy with Evans point on immunity to error (Evans 1982, p. 221). See Williamson (2000) for a critical perspective.
For a proto-intentional perspective on phenomenal properties see Pereboom (2011).
One could argue that the categoricalist may just accept that phenomenal properties are categorical and their bases are physical properties of the brain. This move, however, would run against the idea that the zombie world is physically indiscernible from the actual world.
A thesis that is also crucial for Schaffer, who has argued that a common source of the skepticism ensuing from Humility is captured by the following argument: (i) If there are worlds that differ solely over which property confers which power, then we do not know which properties exist; (ii) We do know which properties exist; (iii) Therefore: there aren’t worlds that differ solely over which property confers which power” (2005, p. 16, steps renumbered). So, premise (ii) is the general version of the Identification Thesis.
I thank a referee for having stressed this point.
Dretske (2005) stresses that an animal can be aware of being in pain but not aware that what it is aware of is pain, so not aware of the concept of pain. This is an example of the further epistemological steps I was mentioning.
Inter alia, this shows that the identification of categorical and dispositional properties, suggested by Heil and Molnar, is not acceptable to the phenomenal categoricalist, who would be at risk of giving up the crucial difference between phenomenal and psychological properties.
I am very much indebted to an anonymous referee for having pressed me on this point.
The variety of pain experiences is very articulated, ranging from hyperalgesia to asymbolia for pain. See some of the papers in Aydede (2005).
Molnar (2003) too considers the intentional character of dispositions to be crucial. I can just note that I’m not begging the question against the categoricalist’s view that properties are independent of causal roles and laws. The intentionality here revealed is an internal relation of sensations. However, it runs against Armstrong’s assertion: “Properties are self-contained things, keeping themselves to themselves, not pointing beyond themselves to further effects brought about in virtue of such properties” (Armstrong 1997, p. 80).
In feeling pain one can wince, cry, or resist stoically, so physical behavior may differ. However, if pain is pain, psychological aversion ensues. Masochistic attitudes are positive attitudes toward aversive sensations.
Bird, however, thinks that talk of capacities should be replaced by a teleological view of mental dispositions. It is not possible to explore this further issue here, but see note 23.
Notice, however, that the above dispositional construal of phenomenal properties doesn’t rely on having a type identity theory of mental to physical states. Defending a multiple realizability view is compatible with a dispositionalist account, provided that the causal relations that hold stable across possible worlds are those that realize P-capacities, P-manifestations and avoidance attitudes.
A vexing problem for dispositionalism is that it may engender regresses. Recently, Yates (2017) argued that the two regresses that threaten dispositionalism, concerning causation and identity, can be blocked by appealing to a functional individuation of properties. Specifically, Yates thinks that the identity regress can be blocked by getting non-mental properties (input/output relations with the external world) into the causal picture, thus determining which fundamental properties are at stake. I think that the strategy I pursue regarding phenomenal properties can do the same job if the identity of the phenomenal and the physical is admitted.
Mimicking the behavioral reaction to pain is not mimicking the feeling of pain, of course.
See Vetter (2015) for some difficulties related to this strategy.
The case, raised by a referee for this journal, whom I thank, is interesting and would deserve a better discussion, but I cannot face it in details here.
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Acknowledgements
For comments and suggestions on previous drafts of this paper, I wish to thank Francesco Berto, Gabriele Contessa, Donatella Donati, Andrea Iacona, Giorgio Lando, Derek Pereboom, Daniele Sgaravatti, two referees and the Editor for Topoi.
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Gozzano, S. The Dispositional Nature of Phenomenal Properties. Topoi 39, 1045–1055 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9597-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9597-6