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Article 3371 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and Panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Feb1.224845.10781@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Keywords: panpsychism
Organization: Indiana University
References: <1992Jan28.164410.9509@psych.toronto.edu> <21879@life.ai.mit.edu> <1992Jan31.190338.25107@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Sat, 1 Feb 92 22:48:45 GMT
Lines: 53

In article <1992Jan31.190338.25107@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:

>But the whole notion of *mental* states (as opposed to physical or
>functional states) *presumes* some sort of phenomenal component that
>might just as well be call consciousness as anything else.

Well, no; e.g. Freudian unconscious beliefs are still mental states.
One has to distinguish between two very different conceptions of
the mental.  The first is what I call the *psychological* conception,
where the mind is identified as the entity that's responsible for
the production of behaviour, and mental states are individuated by
their causal/explanatory role.  The second is the *phenomenal*
conception, where the mind is identified as the sum total of our
subjective experiences, and mental states are individuated by the
way they feel.

It's an important point that (a) both of these are valid ways of
conceptualizing the mental, and (b) they're not in conflict, but
are rather addressing different problems.  The phenomenal mind
is the notion addressed in the traditional mind-body problem, and
is the real mystery; the psychological mind is invoked in the problem
of explaining human action.

It seems to me that many of our mental state terms, particularly
cognitive states like belief, desire, etc, are best conceived of as
psychological states with no essential phenomenal component -- e.g.
a belief may be conscious, but even it were unconscious, it's still
a belief.  What makes it a belief is the role it plays in the
production of action, and any phenomenal component needn't be
invoked here.  Other mental-state terms straddle the border, e.g.
"pain" seems to represent both a subjective feel and a cognitive
role (i.e. being caused by trauma, leading to withdrawal, etc).
There is even a phenomenal and a psychological sense of "sensation",
though I prefer to reserve "sensation" for the phenomenal part, and
use "perception" for the psychological part -- i.e. the receipt of
stimuli, processing via various discrimination and categorization
mechanisms, and so on.

Some people, most notably Ryle, and various other philosophers such
as Armstrong and Lewis, have attempted to analyze the *entire*
concept of mind along the "psychological" lines, i.e. via role in
the production of behaviour.  Now this seems entirely unsatisfactory
when it comes to dealing with phenomenal states, but it has to be
recognized that it does provide a good analysis of many of the states
that we call "mental".  In fact, insofar as cognitive science is
dealing with the mind at all (and I think that it certainly is), it's
dealing with the psychological, not the phenomenal mind.  So one
can't simply say that non-phenomenal states aren't mental.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


