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Article 3686 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: <1992Feb12.222605.28046@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 12 Feb 92 22:26:05 GMT
References: <1992Feb10.192310.2777@aisb.ed.ac.uk> <1992Feb12.073418.10497@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <6170@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Indiana University
Lines: 75

In article <6170@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

>>You're imagining things (insert smiley here).
>
>Not really:
>
>>"Most people find the claim that not-P completely obvious and
>>when I assert P they give me an incredulous stare.  But the fact
>>that they find not-P obvious is no argument that it is true; and I
>>do not know how to refute an incredulous stare."  --David Lewis.
>
>This is not, of course, an argument that P is true, and given
>some of the things Lewis has argued for (real existence of possible
>worlds), the "obviously not-P" folk may have a point.

The above quote is certainly no argument for P.  It's simply a request
that those who assert not-P back up the claim with good arguments.

>In any case, can it really be that qualia are just a matter of
>some trivial information processing?  Maybe so, but if so, qualia
>turn out to be uninteresting (unless you find trivial information
>processing interesting).

That's a non sequitur.  There's no denying that qualia are interesting,
whether thermostats have them or not.  [NB I don't think that
qualia are just a "matter" of information-processing; that would be
a reductionist view.  I think that qualia *arise* (somehow) from
information processing.]

>DC has the same position on awareness and consciousness that he
>has on qualia: thermostats have it (them).

"Consciousness" is a multifaceted term, as I've pointed out.  In some
senses thereof (e.g. self-consciousness, introspective consciousness)
it requires a cognitive complexity that thermostats don't have.  But
in the key sense of phenomenal consciousness, it's more or less
synonmous with "qualia".  As for "awareness", that's such an unclear
term that I prefer to avoid it.

>But, if there's a state change, there can be awareness of the change
>or not.  This requires at least one additional state.  (Reflective
>awareness, i.e. awareness of awareness, requires more.)  All of the
>thermostat's states are devoted to reacting to temperature changes,
>with nothing left over for having awareness or not of the change.

If you like, you can think of there being a state-change in the
environment (hot->cold), and the change in the state of the thermostat
(reflected by a change in the thermostats qualia) corresponds to the
"awareness" of the change (just as a change from red->green qualia in
us corresponds to an awareness of an external change).  If you're
asking for a secondary "awareness of the qualia", this would seem to
be requiring reflective awareness.  There doesn't seem to be any
reason why such reflective awareness is required for qualia.  I have
qualia all the time, e.g. in the corner of my visual field, that I'm
not "aware" of in any strong sense.

>But I think it's better not to be in that position.  By the same
>token, it's a good strategy for DC to get control of the word qualia,
>so that I can't use qualia / no-qualia for the distinction.  It's
>also a good strategy to try to put more of the burden of proof on
>me, by such things as the Lewis quote.  But I hope that, in a
>"friendly" discussion, we can factor such things out.

Look, I devote much of my academic life to the study of qualia, I've
probably read more papers about qualia than anybody else in existence
(a dubious honour, I know), I discuss qualia all the time with
professional colleagues, and so on.  One thing you can't tell me is
that I'm using the word "qualia" in a non-standard sense.  I assure
you that when I say "qualia", I mean just what most people mean.  I
just think they're more widespread than most people do.

-- 
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."


