1. I shall use this phrase to refer to states of being aware of an item as being of a certain quality or as being related in a certain way to something else.
2. Most recently in Naturalism and Ontology, the John Dewey Lectures for 1975 (Reseda, CA, Ridgeview Publishing Co., 1980). See also Science and Metaphysics (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967). For a discussion of awareness as which locates it in a broadly behavioristic perspective, see my "Behaviorism, Language and Meaning," in The Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, I (1980).
3. See paragraphs 152-56 of Lecture I.
5. That is, without argument on the present occasion. I have argued the point on other occasions, most recently in "Is Scientific Realism Tenable?" in the Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association, vol. 2 (1976). See, also, "Scientific Realism or Irenic Instrumentalism," in Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 2, Robert J. Cohen and Marx W. Wartofsky, eds. (New York: Humanities Press, 1965, reprinted in Philosophical Perspectives, Springfield, IL, 1967).
6. 1 am, of course, tacitly excluding certain properties which satisfy this definition, e.g., an object's property of standing in a certain relation to another object which is not a proper part of itself. In traditional terminology, I am limiting my attention to "intrinsic" properties of wholes.
7. A view of this form which rejects scientific realism might identify the pink ice cube with a volume of pink as having the causal properties characteristic of ice, e.g., the property of cooling hot tea. If the manifest coolness of the cube is given equal treatment, one is confronted with the problem of understanding the connection between the cube of coolth and the cube of pink. This problem arises in other forms as the dialectic continues.
8. See, in particular, Section IV.
9. Clearly, to spell out this metaphor would require an adequate theory of the categories and, in particular, of predication and propositional form. For a recent attempt at such a theory, see my Naturalism and Ontology, cited in n2, above.
10. That the story of color perception is far more complicated than a simple correlation of perceived quality with the wave length or frequency of the radiation which impinges on the retina, has been made clear by the work of Edwin Land. The refinements which his theory introduces, however, do not affect the main ontological issues with which we are concerned.
11. This does not entail that the perceiver believes that there is a cube of pink, out there. The taking is a propositional tokening which is essentially a response. Whether or not the perceiver comes to believe that there is a cube of pink over there involves thinking in the question-answering sense of this term, as contrasted with thinking-that-p as a conceptual response to a stimulus.
12. Cornpare, for example, Aristotelian type theories according to which the standard cause of a sense impression of a cube of pink would involve the transmission of the proper sensible form pink as well as the common sensible form cube through a transparent medium, and their reception by the eye.
13. In James Cornman, Perception, Common Sense and Science (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1975).
14. The reader should ponder Berkeley's categorial claim that "only an idea can be like an idea." A similar point, less frequently noticed, is made by Descartes. See Principles of Philosophy, LXX, The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. E. S. Haldane and G. T. R. Ross (New York: Dover Press, 1955), vol. 1, p. 249.
15. Roughly, those features of objects are physical2,which are, in principle, definable in terms of attributes exemplified in the world before the appearance of sentient organisms, i.e., attributes necessary and sufficient to describe and explain |the behavior of 'merely material' things. Physical1, features on the other hand, are any which belong in the causal order. I introduced this terminology in discussions of the mind-body problem in the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science.
16. The terminology must be watched like a hawk, for many philosophers have used -- and, for that matter, still do use -- the tem 'sensum' to stand for an object of an act of sensing, construed as a special kind of awareness as. Much of what has been said about acts of sensing is highly problematic. (See my "Sensa or Sensings: Reflections on the Ontology of Perception," in Essays in Honor of James Cornman, Keith Lehrer, ed. [Dordrecht, Holland: 1981]). The key point is that sensing, thus construed, is an epistemic rather than, as in our construal, an ontic notion. As we have been using the term, to sense a cube of pink is not to be aware of a cube of pink as a cube of pink, but is rather the very 'mode of being' of sensed cube of pink. I would have used Ayer's carefully introduced "sense content," were it not for the fact that the act-content terminology is at least as troublesome as that of act and object.
17. It must be remembered that Epiphenomenalism, like Substantial Dualism and Wholistic Materialism, is a philosophical, indeed a metaphysical, gambit -- not a part -- of scientific theory. To the extent that scientists think along these lines, they are taking a philosophical stance. The importance of this point will come out shortly.
18. For simplicity of formulation -- because none of the points I wish to make hinge on it -- I shall assume the absence of "multiple causes."
19. Cf. Descartes' use of the phrase 'material ideas' to refer to the states of the pineal gland which correspond to conscious sensations in the mind.
20. It is worth pondering Spinoza's remark to the effect that "No one hitherto has gained such an accurate knowledge of the bodily mechanism, that he can explain all its functions . . . ." (Ethics, Part III, Prop. II [Note]). He is, in effect, arguing that while we are not scientifically able -- at least not yet -- to conceive in specific terms the sort of material state of the body which could be the sufficient cause of purposive behavior, the possibility of there being such a state cannot be ruled out on logical or empirical grounds, while systematic considerations require it.
21. It should be obvious to students of Kant that his solution of the problem of free will is in essence the same as that of Leibnitz and Spinoza, though lacking in theological overtones. For Kant, as for Spinoza, it suffices that it cannot be shown to be impossible that there be, in the required sense, material counterparts of volitions. Of course, Kant is in deeper trouble when the question is posed with respect to rational thinking generally.
22. Of course, tough-minded materialists have conceived of thoughts as identical with material states of the brain, in which case their causality would be a special case of a functional correlation of physical2 variables. The wholistic materialists referred to in effect are metaphysical cousins of interactionistic dualists. The latter reify the functional correlation of variables of radically different kinds (mental and material) by assigning them as states to different substances (minds, bodies).
23. Not, of course, in any ordinary sense, parts. See my Science, Perception and Reality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 105. Cited hereafter as SPR.
24. Reflection should make it clear that the main flaw in Hume's bundle theory is that he includes only sensory items (impressions and ideas), whereas the unity of the self -- its imminent causation -- requires the inclusion of bodily states: in our terms, f2-ings as well as s-ings.
25. After all, 'physical' functions traditionally as a contrastive term.
26. Compare Plato: "We set up as a satisfactory sort of definition the presence of the power to act or be acted upon in even the slightest degree." Sophist, 248C; H. N. Fowler trans. (London: Loeb Classical Library -- Heinernan, Ltd., 1961).
27. Frontiers of Science and Philosophy, Robert Colodny, ed. (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1962) [reprinted as chap. I in SPR].