Sweet Dreams by Daniel C. Dennett

Author:Daniel C. Dennett [Dennett, Daniel C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-02-05T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

no way of arguing that the case is logically impossible. Clapgras, as described, has a strange combination of spared abilities and shocking new inabilities; dispositions that are normally tightly linked are here dissociated in unprecedented ways; but is his condition any more radical in this regard than either prosopagnosia or Capgras delusion? I am not sure Clapgras’s condition is even physiologically impossible; there are well-studied cases of subjects who can discriminate colors just fine but cannot name them (color anomia), and of subjects who become color-blind but don’t notice their new deficit, blithely confabulating and naming colors at chance without any recognition that they are guessing. Clapgras, like a Capgras sufferer, has no problems with recognition or naming; it is the subtle ineffable flavoring that has gone all askew in him—all the personal dispositions that make paintings worth looking at, rooms worth painting, color combinations worth choosing. The subjective effects of colors that contribute to making life worth living have changed in Clapgras—in other words (if Sellars is right), his color qualia.

But as before, in the case of change blindness, we should put the issue to Clapgras and ask him if his color qualia have been inverted. He has three possible answers: Yes, No, and I don’t know. Which should he answer? If we compare my story of Clapgras with the many tales of inverted qualia that have been carefully promulgated and discussed at great length by philosophers, the most disturbing innovation is the prospect that Clapgras might have his qualia inverted and be none the wiser. Dr. Chromaphil has to propose this hypothesis to his skeptical colleagues, and Clapgras may well share their skepticism. After all, he not only hasn’t complained of any problem with his color qualia (as in the standard stories), he in fact satisfies himself that his color vision is just fine in the same way Are Qualia What Make Life Worth Living?

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he satisfies the researchers: by easily passing the standard color vision tests. This ought to cause some discomfort in philosophers: surely those tests have no bearing at all on qualia, or at least so it is commonly assumed in the philosophical literature.

Those tests are standardly characterized as having no power to illuminate or constrain qualia quandaries. But, as my variation shows, philosophers’ imaginations have overlooked the prospect of somebody’s being at least tempted to rely on these tests to secure his own confidence that his qualia have not changed. Is someone thus tempted simply confused? If he shouldn’t rely on his willingness and ability to name colors just as he used to name them, what should he rely on? Can he just tell that his memory of what yellow used to look like to him is, or is not, what it looks like to him now? I gather from discussions of this thought experiment with philosophers that there is an awkward temptation here to suppose that you can just set yourself the task of imagining yellow (say) and know that you’re doing the very same thing you’ve always done when you imagined yellow in the past.

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