Quality Space (Structural Information)

Quine introduced his crucial notion of a 'quality space' in (Quine, 1960, pp. 82-84) to solve the problem of how a subject could distinguish some things as more similar to each other than others. For instance, a child might distinguish cyan as being more similar to green than to red. As Quine notes, it follows naturally from considerations on such similarity and difference relations to ―credit the child with a sort of prelinguistic quality space‖ (Quine, 1960, p. 82).133

Notice that a quality space is not just a set of discriminations, but a structured set of

discriminations. The structured set of information gives rise to many dimensions along which particular discriminations are related according to similarity and difference relations.

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One might think that the comment fro m Lycan above is inconsistent with a sc ience of such phenomenal information. Ho wever, it is just the accessibility of such information that is ‗intrinsic.‘ Just like a

mathe matica l formula of grav ity is not itself gravity, the scientific e xplanation of phenomena l consciousness in terms of integrated information is not itself integrated information.

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Specifica lly, Tononi identifies phenomenal consciousness with a complex of Integrated Information; the space and timescale on which a single system reaches the ma ximu m quantity of integrated information. He

forma lizes all this in (Ba lduzzi & Tononi, 2009; Tononi, 2004; Tononi & Sporns, 2003). Responses by philosophers to the theory have been mixed. David Chalmers, perhaps most neutrally, has commented that ―It‘s the sort of proposal that I think people should be generating at this point: a simple and powerful hypothesis about the relationship between brain processing and conscious experience,‖ (Zimmer, 2012).

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83 Chalmers comes to a similar notion partly from reflection on phenomenology. Chalmers simply notes that we ―find information realized in our phenomenology. States of experience fall directly into information spaces in a natural way‖ (Chalmers, 1996, p. 284). Chalmers justifies this by appealing to the ―natural patterns of similarity and difference between phenomenal states, and these patterns yield the difference structure of an information space‖ (Chalmers, 1996, p. 284). While Quine wanted to rigorously rely on behavioral measures, Chalmers finds it natural to appeal directly to the difference relations in our phenomenology to establish that it involves (what I call) structural information.

Shoemaker agrees with Chalmers point that, if we assume physicalism there ―must be a similarity ordering on the physical states that realize experiences having complex contents; there must also be a similarity ordering on the physical properties of these states that

contribute to their similarity or difference along particular dimensions‖ (Shoemaker, 1996, p. 63). Shoemaker comes to such conclusions based on philosophical considerations akin to the argument from color- inversion.

Shoemaker agrees that two phenomenal characters, green in individual x and green in individual y, can have different representationa l content in virtue of individual x and y‘s differing relation to the external environment. However, he also believes that there is a striking similarity between them, insofar as they have the same phenomenal character, green. In particular, ―given a background of externalist constraints on content, the qualitative similarities and differences can be said to determine the intentional similarities and

differences; and, with the same qualification, the qualitative character of an experience can be said to determine its representational content‖ (Shoemaker, 1996, p. 63). Thus, while it may be possible to invert our quality color space, this is only possible insofar as we keep most or all of the similarity and difference relations intact. In particular, Shoemaker holds that the inversion thought experiments, that he focused on already in (Shoemaker, 1982), are not to be taken as arguments against using phenomenal characters as a resource in content-

individuation. In fact, Shoemaker argues ―that a satisfactory account of perceptual experience requires qualia‖ (Shoemaker, 1996, p. 61). Shoemakers thinks that phenomenal characters are constitutive to an account of perceptual experience. He argues this by holding that perceptual

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experience is constitutively related to a qualitative space, and that the ―notion of a quale is implicit in the very notion of a quality space‖ (Shoemaker, 1996, p. 62). 134

To make sense of perceptual representational content, Shoemaker appeals to two different things. On the one hand, Shoemaker holds that ―A color experience represents an object as having a ‗phenomenal‘ property that is constituted by a relation to sense-experience‖

(Shoemaker, 1994, p. 35). This ‗phenomenal‘ property is what according to Shoemaker ―gives the experience its phenomenal character‖ (Shoemaker, 1994, p. 35). On the other hand, ―the experience also represents the object as having a certain color‖ (Shoemaker, 1994, p. 35).That is, the representation of this property also constitutively depends on its external relation to a specific, say, reflectance property or photon wavelength.

Churchland comes to a similar conclusion based on philosophical and scientific reflection on psychological theories of perception. Churchland holds similar to Shoemaker that the

representational content is given by two things. For Churchland, this means that the content of a given position in an information-space (―a point in activation space‖) is given by two

different things. It is given both by ―(1) its spatial position relative to all of the other contentful points within that space‖ and by ―(2) its causal relations to stable and objective macrofeatures of the external environment‖ (P. M. Churchland, 1998, p. 8).

While Chalmers, Shoemaker and Churchland may hold that phenomenal character is always associated with or even constitutively explained in terms of structural infor mation, only Shoemaker holds that a notion of a quality space is constitutively linked to phenomenal character.135 All three, with the very slightly possible exception of Chalmers, hold that structural information is constitutive of phenomenal experience.

Shoemaker partly argues from philosophical inversion thought experiments, Chalmers partly argues from reflection on phenomenology and Churchland partly argues from perceptual psychological considerations. That so many different thinkers and methodologies converge on

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Note that this removes one reason for supposing that phenomenal consciousness is not necessary, name ly, that different phenomenal characters can represent the same thing, and the same phenomenal character can represent different things. For now we have some defin ite structural information invariantly attached to a particular phenomena l character, a lthough it does not directly pertain to what the representation is of.

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He does not simply mean this in triv ial terminologica l sense, that quality space consists of the word ‗quality‘ and for this reason somehow constitutively entails ‗qualia.‘

85 the explanation of phenomenal experience in terms of such a similar notion of structural information should be taken seriously. In particular, that these thinkers give an account of phenomenal characters explained partly in terms of a quality or a n informational space suggests that structural information is constitutive of phenomenal characters.136

Related to the view I want to espouse here, Robert Stalnaker in his book Our Knowledge of the Internal World (Stalnaker, 2008) outlines a view which makes use of this feature of phenomenal characters that they are informative. In a recent interview, Stalkner explains that ―while the information expressed by saying ‗seeing red is like this‘ is not detachable from the context in which it is expressed or thought, it is (I want to say) a piece of information about what the world is like, which means that we understand the content of the thought b y the way it distinguishes between alternative possibilities‖ (Marshall, 2013). Being on a track similar to the one I am on, Stalnaker wants to understand how such information can be ―a way of

connecting the content of a thought to the thinker who is thinking it‖ (Marshall, 2013). Next, we look at Tononi‘s theory of the phenomenal consciousness. Tononi gives a scientific, formal, testable account of a kind of information that according to the theory is both necessary and sufficient for experience. To simplify, Tononi conjectures that whenever there is a

complex of Integrated Information there is consciousness.137

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Note that this way of talking of phenomena l characters squares with research on the phenomenal consciousness. For instance, when (G. M . Edelman et al., 2011, p. 4) notes that ―the experience of qualia occurs in each individual as a set of discriminations: ‗heat‘ is not ‗green,‘ ‗green‘ is not ‗touch,‘ etc.‖ Thus, even researchers in the field think of the very nature of these phenomenal characters as somehow inherently, intrinsically e xcluding these other possible phenomenal characters (or neurologica l states).

137 _{Less simp lified, Tononi forma lizes a measure of integrated information, and holds that whenever integrated}

informat ion reaches a ma ximu m, there is what he calls a co mple x of integrated information, which is he conjectures is the formalized essence of phenomenal consciousness (Tononi, 2008, p. 216). (In the sense that a mathemat ical theory say, of gravity may be conjectured to be the forma lized essence of gravity.)

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