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Qualia share their correlates’ locations

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Abstract

This paper presents the location-sharing argument, which concludes that qualia must share the locations of their physical correlates. The first premise is a consequence of relativity: If something shares a time with a physical event in all reference frames, it shares that physical event’s location. The second premise is that qualia share times with their correlates in all reference frames. Both physicalism and dualism benefit from having qualia share locations with their correlates, as this makes relations between qualia and physical things easier to explain.

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Notes

  1. Physicalists Malcolm (1963, 1968) and Altrichter (1973) deny location-sharing. So do non-physicalists Descartes (1637/1999, 1641/1999), Shaffer (1961), McGinn (1995), and Nagel (1998).

  2. Pierce (1866/1982), Nagel (1974), Peacocke (1980), and Block (1990).

  3. Edelman (1989) thinks correlates are re-entrant loops in thalamocortical systems. Bogen (1995) regards them as intralaminar nuclei in the thalamus. Sheinberg and Logothetis (1997) think they are particular neurons in the inferior temporal cortex.

  4. Huemer and Kovitz (2003) and Mumford and Anjum (2011) defend simultaneous causation. Maslen (2018) argues against it.

  5. Papineau (2013) argues that all causation, including mental causation, is macroscopic. It’s not clear what follows if qualia are caused by quantum-level correlates, as this turns on precise details about the correlates and on unsettled questions in the philosophy of quantum mechanics. See Ruetsche (2011) for a sophisticated discussion of causation and quantum entanglement.

  6. Lashley discusses Bergson (1911) and Sheldon (1922) as suggesting such violations of physical law.

  7. Michelson and Morley (1887), Kennedy and Thorndike (1932), Hall (1990) and Eisele et al (2009) measure light. Ives and Stilwell (1938) and Chou et al (2010) move clocks.

  8. Kitcher (1981), Schurz (1999), Myrvold (2003).

  9. Pelczar further argues that the blue-qualia don’t exist in time. His transcendental phenomenalism treats consciousness as ontologically prior to time. Considering such an awesome view is beyond the scope of this paper.

  10. See also Dowell (2006), Wilson (2006), Stoljar (2010), and Blumson and Tang (2015) on physicality.

  11. Armstrong allows universals to be instantiated in spacetime, though only derivatively as Magalhaes (2006) discusses. Opponents of bundle theory might understand properties as spatiotemporal if the particulars instantiating them are spatiotemporal. Bundle theorists can opt for Barker and Jago’s (2017) elegant view “built on a foundation of properties-in-spacetime” (p. 2971).

  12. A draft of Mike Pelczar’s Sensorama inspired this argument, and his comments improved it further. NUS Philosophy colleagues Zach Barnett, Ben Blumson, Nathaniel Gan, Qu Hsueh Ming, Lavinia Picollo, Weng Hong Tang, Joshua Thong, Dan Waxman, and Isaac Wilhelm gave helpful feedback, as did referees for this journal. John Baez confirmed that I hadn’t misunderstood the physics. Natalya Deng and Akiko Frischut had useful insights about the state of the literature. Kevin Gold and Josh Von Korff gave expert guidance on scientific issues. David Builes taught me about Markovian causation. David Braddon-Mitchell’s hearty laughter upon realizing that backwards causation would afflict reference frames moving from correlates toward qualia confirmed the importance of this point.

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  1. National University of Singapore, NUS Philosophy, 3 Arts Link, Singapore, 117570, Singapore

    Neil Sinhababu

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Sinhababu, N. Qualia share their correlates’ locations. Synthese 202, 37 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04256-6

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