Epipenominal Qualia 2 - The causation problem

["David Saitch" <philosophy@saitch.net>]

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A major problem Jackson faces in attempting to show that qualia are 
epiphenomenal, is to show that they have no causal interaction with
 the body. He grasps the bull by the horn in attempting to show that
 pain has no causal effect.

It seems intuitive to us that the searing pain we feel if we pick up
 a hot pan causes us to drop it.  This intuition appears bolstered
 by countless examples of the experience of pain causing a reaction
 to lessen the pain.

Jackson argues that this is an illusion.  He uses the example of a
 film in which Lee Marvin appears to punch John Wayne and the
 apparent effect that the punch causes in Wayne.  But as we know,
 there is no real punch; it is an illusion created by the artifice
 of film making.  

(I would be tempted to question whether it is true there is no sort
 of causation here - after all, Wayne's head wouldn't snap back if
 Marving hadn't swung his arm...still, lets's leave that.) 

It is the same with pain, Jackson says. Although it appears that the
 feeling of pain always causes a reaction, this is an illusion
 caused by the fact that the epiphenomenal quale of pain is caused
 at the same time that our bodies react to the damage that is being
 caused to them. The pain has no causal impact itself.

This is a highly implausible argument.  Commonsense psychology would
 obviously claim that when our bodies suffer some form of damage,
 the brain is alerted by signals passed through the nervous system
 to the brain, which are received as the sensation of pain. Pain
 exists to alert us of a physical problem and cause us to respond
 the damage we are suffering; it is part of the survival mechanism
 we have evolved.

If pain were not part of the causal chain then why would pain exist?

Pain is a very unpleasant experience and can often be debilitating.
 If pain serves no purpose in the causal chain of physical damage,
 awareness and response, then why have we evolved in such a way as
 to feel it?  If Jackson?s argument is correct, then if we felt no
 pain then we could still respond to the physical damage we have
 suffered. 

Jackson predicts arguments about the evolution of survival
 mechanisms and attempts to counter them. He uses the example of
 polar bear?s fur coats. The polar bear, he says, has evolved a very
 thick coat which would be extremely heavy ? the weight of the coat
 must slow them down and it is therefore an evolutionary trait which
 does not aid survival.

This is another extremely poor argument. As he acknowledges, polar
 bears live in freezing sub-zero temperatures and the thick coat is
 obviously a survival aid. In pointing out the weight of the coat
 Jackson fails to mention that the polar bear is a huge and powerful
 creature and that the weight of the coat would be negligible for
 it. 

He also neglects the fact that the coat consists of hollow hairs,
 which are well oiled to stop the hair from matting and to allow the
 bear to shake off any water. 

Anyone who has ever witnessed a polar bear at play, even in
 captivity, would certainly not agree that the coat in any way
 impedes it.

Interestingly not all arctic region dwellers have heavy fur coats,
 but Jackson fails to look at fellow denizens on arctic regions who
 lack the size and strength of the polar bear and consider the
 mechanisms evolution has given them as survival aids in the absence
 of a heavy fur coat.

If, after careful consideration, that is the best example Jackson
 can come up with, it shows he has no case!

In a post-Darwinian world any assessment of the way we are, as
 biological creatures, must take evolution into account.  But the
 evolutionary process is an entirely physical process involving the
 non-random retention of random mutations, so how could non-physical
 processes have evolved?






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