Counting the Colors till Friday

I've been reading Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia lately and, while I still intend to write about it when I finally finish it, his chapter on synesthesia stopped me in my tracks.

To a composer named Michael Torke, each musical key has it's own discrete, unique color. D Major is blue. G Minor is ochre or gamboge, whatever that means. (Apparently it's yellow.) D Minor is flint or graphite. F Minor is an earthy, ashy color.

Another unnamed musician actually experiences tastes corresponding to musical intervals.

• Minor second = sour
• Major second = bitter
• Minor third = salty
• Major third = sweet
• Fourth = mown grass
• Tritone = disgust
• Fifth = pure water
• Minor sixth = cream
• Major sixth = low-fat cream
• Minor seventh = bitter
• Major seventh = sour
• Octave = no taste

Not only does she taste these things whenever she hears an interval, that tastes actually occur even when she's not sure what she heard, and help her to identify sounds.

Now, I've thought that we can never really know what is going on inside another person's head at least since I was sitting in John Searle's Philosophy of Mind lectures back at Berkeley. And the reason I say I can't know what's in anyone else's head is the simple fact that I have no direct access to their brain states. You can tell me what you are thinking/feeling, and I can compare that to my own experiences, but that's it. It's understanding through analogy.

Without direct access, though, I can never know for certain that another mind actually exists. This is where we get to the wonderful idea of a philosophical zombie. (That's right. You probably thought we philosophers just sat around, staring at our hands and trying to define happiness. Nope. We have zombies.) Rather than eating brains and walking funny, though, a p-zombie acts exactly like a normal person, except there is no corresponding brain state behind their actions. Hit your p-zombie boyfriend with your car and he will say 'ouch.' Show a p-zombie the new study proving Derek Jeter is a terrible shortstop, and he'll seem outraged. (Our p-zombie is a Yankee fan. Let's call him Vinnie.) But there is no consciousness underlying either reaction. And, as an outside observer, I would be unable to tell the difference between Vinnie the p-zombie and a normal human being (although the Yankees thing might give it away).

I spent a lot of time in college defending this position. It's tough to convince people you're having a conversation with that you are under no obligation to concede the ontological status of their very consciousness. I admit it's philosophically ugly, and that it seems like the sort of thing you'd only come up with after a few too many bong loads. But now you're going to tell me that E Flat has a color? That a tritone tastes like disgust? (How great is it that something can taste like disgust? I say very.) With such phenomenal differences in our perception of the supposedly material world (I think we can all agree that this is great. Rawr.), how can I possibly pretend to know what any one else is thinking? For that matter, how can I know that anyone else actually is thinking?

I'm not saying other minds don't exist. (Although some people do.) In fact, I'd prefer it if the people around me are not p-zombies or figments of my imagination. I think it's an ultimately unanswerable question, though, whether or not there are other minds out there. I'll never have direct access to another person's consciousness, so I'll never be able to say for sure that such a consciousness exists. But I suppose I should act as if it does, just in case.

BRRRAAAAAAIIIINNNSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!