Reader K. G. writes,
I recently came across a passage in Russell's Mysticism and Logic which you may find interesting. In the essay "The Ultimate Constituents of Matter," Russell writes (p. 144), "… the existence of sense-data [qualia] is logically independent of the existence of mind, and is causally dependent upon the body of the percipient, rather than upon his mind.” [. . .] On the contrary, I propose that any tenable definition of qualia must construe them as mental items, i.e. items whose esse is their percipi. [. . .]What are your thoughts on this argument?
I think you are confusing qualia with sense data. I grant you that qualia are mental items, and that they cannot exist apart from minds. But sense data are not qualia. First of all, Russell does not use 'quale' (singular) or 'qualia' (plural) in the two essays you mention. But he does tell us what he means by 'sense data': ". . . I believe that the actual data in sensation, the immediate objects or sight or touch or hearing, are extra-mental, purely physical, and among the ultimate constituents of matter." (10th ed., 128)
Suppose I am staring at a blue coffee cup. The particular blue that I visually sense, precisely as I sense it, is a sense datum: it is the direct or immediate object of my visual sensing. It is distinct from the sensing. The sensing is something I undergo or experience or live through; it is part of my mental life. As such it is mental in nature. The sense datum, however, is not mental. It is not an episode of experiencing or part of an episode of experiencing; it is the direct object of an experiencing. For Russell, the blue sense datum is not only not mental; it is physical: it is a proper part of the coffee cup. I read Russell in these essays as a bundle theorist: physical objects are bundles of sense data both synchronically and diachronically.
Note also that while a blue sense datum is blue, a sensing of a blue sense datum is not blue. (An adverbialist who speaks of sensing-blue-ly gives up the act-object schema that Russell presupposes.)
Sense data, then, are objects of sensings. For Russell, they are extra-mental and indeed physical. Qualia, however, are the phenomenal characters of experiencings. For example, the felt quality, the what-it-is-like, of a twinge of pain, precisely as it is felt. Or the smell of burnt garlic. Or the taste of licorice.
There are many tricky questions here. Suppose I am given a piece of black, semi-soft candy and asked what it is. I put it in my mouth to find out. I discover that it is a piece of licorice. I seem to have discovered something objective about a physical object, namely, that this bit of candy is licorice. This would suggest that the object of my gustatory sensing is extra-mental and indeed physical. Or should we say merely that I had a gustatory experience with a certain phenomenal character and that the characteristic taste of the thing I put in my mouth is wholly mental in nature?
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