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Article 3607 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Functionalist Theory of Qualia
Message-ID: <1992Feb10.032900.27301@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 10 Feb 92 03:29:00 GMT
References: <1992Feb5.220638.9673@cs.yale.edu> <1992Feb6.055620.23808@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Feb7.203648.8033@cs.yale.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
Lines: 37

In article <1992Feb7.203648.8033@cs.yale.edu> mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew McDermott) writes:

>1. The only other materialistic alternative is some kind of
>transcendent solution in which nerves don't just tingle but feel
>themselves tingle.  Better to go out on a limb with the mundane sort
>of materialism now.

i.e. "every other materialist theory is worse."  I tend to agree with
this, but it still provides flimsy grounds.

>2. The theory makes testable predictions.  Eventually we must actually
>see self-modeling neural circuits (or "software") in mammalian brains.
>If we don't, the theory is wrong.  

Well, any property dualist worth her salt will hold that there is
some physical explanation for the fact that we talk about ourselves
having qualia, and so on, so presumably these "predictions" won't
differentiate your theory from hers.

>Besides, the theory does not contradict our experience at all.  It
>predicts that our experiences should seem to us exactly as they do,
>even after the theory is understood.

This is where I disagree, obviously.  You and I both know that this
talk of "self-models" and so on is just a shorthand way of talking
about certain kinds of behavioural dispositions, complex mechanisms
of internal causation, and so on.  If one were to predict a priori
what it would feel like to be such a system, there'd be no reason
to suppose that it would feel like anything at all. (Of course we
know that in practice, we're more or less such systems and we have
qualia, but that's the very fact that needs to be explained, so it
can't be used in making the prediction.)

-- 
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."


