Reading Notes: April 13th, 2022

“But what about consciousness? Can we interpret the having of an after-image or of a painful sensation as something material, namely, a brain state or brain process? We seem to be immediately aware of pains and after-images, and we seem to be immediately aware of them as something different from a neurophysiological state or process. For example, the after-image may be green speckled with red, whereas the neurophysiologist looking into our brains would be unlikely to see something green speckled with red. However, if we object to materialism in this way we are victims of a confusion which U.T. Place has called “the phenomenological fallacy.” To say that an image or sense datum is green is not to say that the conscious experience of having the image or sense datum is green. It is to say that it is the sort of experience we have when in normal conditions we look at a green apple, form example. Apples and unripe bananas can be green, but not the experiences of seeing them. An image or a sense datum can be green in a derivative sense, but this need not cause any worry, because, on the view I am defending, images and sense data are not constituents of the world, though the processes of having an image or a sense datum are actual processes in the world. The experience of having a green sense datum is not itself green; it is a process occurring in grey matter. The world contains plumbers, but does not contain the average plumber; it also contains the having of a sense datum, but does not contain the sense datum.” (Smart, Materialism, 653) 

According to Smart, the “modern” materialist does not identify the “afterimage” (i.e., the “afterimage-being-had”) with a brain process,  rather they identify the “having-of-the-afterimage” with a brain process. The “afterimage” being reported does not exist (either in brains or in the world), but the “having-of-the-afterimage” does exist/occur. (cf. “act-object” distinction)