The Nobel prize for Philosophy does not exist. If, however, some enterprising and ingenious Philosopher were to finally mount a convincing and definitive assault on the Gordian Knot of consciousness, and somehow reconcile qualia with either functionalism or physicalism, the prize would shortly materialize. Qualia have been the bane of both functionalism and materialism alike, and its stubbornness is in direct proportion to its obviousness. The fact of qualia seems the most basic and brute fact of our existence, and yet it is precisely this phenomenon which appears to elude the essays of functionalist and materialist philosophers. No good account of the mind and its properties would fail to explain such a cornerstone of our lives.
The purpose of this post shall be to briefly analyze the character of functionalism itself, to assess its relative weaknesses where qualia are concerned, and to consider some replies the functionalist may have in her arsenal to the arguments mounted against her.
It would first do to discuss a few terms. Notwithstanding the hotly debated nature of "qualia," the term can be defined broadly as:
Quote"the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives" (Tye, 2007).
It is the pure "what-it-is-like-ness" of each subjective experience. The redness of red, the wrenching painfulness of pain, the delicious and dark sweetness of chocolate. Something that seems private and yet immediately discernible in each experience, and for each person.
The plumage in which functionalism has been arrayed would almost lend itself to an ornithology of the subject, so many are its varieties. Nevertheless, at its base it is a simple theory. As the David Chalmers states in his "Foundations" section of his compilation
Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings:
Quote"Broadly speaking, it holds that mental states correspond to functional states: states of playing a certain role within the cognitive system" (Chalmers, 2002, pg. 5).
Or as Dan Dennett prefers to put it:
Quote"Functionalism is the idea enshrined in the old proverb: handsome is as handsome does. Matter matters only because of what matter can do" (Dennett, 2006, pg. 153).
Pain is the frequent subject used in examples when discussing the mental. A mental state is a "pain" in virtue of its causal role: its specific causal relations to sensory inputs, other mental states, and behavioral outputs.
Chalmers, after defining the term in the work referenced above, goes on to make the first of many distinctions: there are functionalists who hold that the functional roles themselves are to be identified with mental states (a kind of reduction), and other functionalists who prefer to pick out the underlying mechanisms that realize or play the characteristic functional roles, identifying these "realizers" as the "mental" in "mental states" (Chalmers, 2002, pg. 5).
The advantage of either instantiation of functionalism is that it allows for a far more plausible story of the mind than is available to such accounts as the Type Identity Theory. Where the Type Identity Theory must insist that each mental state type, such as pain, is reducible to a single physical state type, such as nociception, functionalism is capable of accounting for the existence of the mental across a seemingly infinite set of potential arrangements of substances.
Why is this an advantage? John Heil, in a particularly lucid discussion of functionalism within his introductory text on Philosophy of Mind, uses the analogy of performing computations. Adding two numbers can be performed on any number of machines and devices: calculators, abacuses, computers, or
Quote"in the brian of a 6-year-old learning to do sums" (Heil, 2009, pg. 94).
So computation itself cannot be a state or process specific to the materials that perform the calculations, since the materials vary with each device. Heil continues:
Quote"...the same point applies to states of mind. Consider being in pain. Although it is perfectly possible that your C-fibres firing are in fact responsible for your being in pain – your being in pain is realized by your C-fibers firing – being in pain is not, as identity theorists would have it, a kind of C-fiber firing. If it were, then creatures lacking C-fibers could not experience pain. Yet there is every reason to think that creatures with vastly different material compositions (and perhaps immaterial spirits, if there are any) could be in pain." (Heil, 2009, pg. 94)
As a brief aside on his last point, it is important to note that, while this essay may have seemed often, so far, to associate functionalism with materialism, functionalism is not technically a materialist theory. Some functionalists allow that posited non-material Cartesian substances could play the requisite functional roles.
Through all of this, a question looms: if there is nothing more to a mental state than its causal role, its place in the causal economy of a system, then where may we locate the "subjective" in our subjective experiences? Where is the "felt" nature of a pain, and how do we account for it? Beyond pain's ability to cause certain other mental states and/or behaviors, there is surely 'something-it-is-like' to be in pain. This is nothing more than to say pain has a certain qualitative character: pains have quale associated with them.
This is, in an oblique way, the point of Ned Block's seminal paper, "Troubles with Functionalism," in which he points out that functionalism is actually guilty of "liberalism." That is, it is guilty of attributing mental states to those agents that surely lack them. (Block, 2002, pg. 96) In an ornate analogy in which Block imagines a body operated by the entire population of China, he seeks to demonstrate that once you have accounted for all the functional organization of the human body (and brain), you still may be left with a structure absent of qualia: his "homunculi-headed system." (Block, 2002, pg. 97) If his argument succeeds, qualia cannot have a functional character, something is left out of the "mental" picture, and functionalism must therefore be false.
The "homunculi-headed system" works in the following way: imagine the entire population of china each operating a radio controller connected precisely in the way a neuron is connected to an enormous body functionally identical to a human body. Each individual person is functionally a 'neuron' for the giant body. In addition, there is a giant panel in the sky observable by each person involved and which provides sensory input and instructions for each person in terms of how to respond to said sensory input. Each person then manipulates their assigned radio controller to perform their assigned function in manipulating the giant body in every way a human body can be manipulated. Would the giant body itself have qualia? If not, functionalism, and more to the point - materialism - cannot be right.
How can the functionalist respond? Michael Tye reports two possible responses in his article on qualia, from which I have previously quoted, for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. One possibility is to, odd as it may sound, 'bite the bullet' and posit that the aforementioned "homunculi-headed system" could not fail to experience qualia (remember, we are talking about the system itself, not the individual people that make up its "brain"). The functionalist could argue that our scale is all wrong: we cannot expect as an individual neuron in its vast makeup to be able to sense any consciousness that did appear
to the system itself. (Tye, 2007) Indeed: how could we tell? This is really not just a problem of size, it touches on the problem of other minds as well.
Additionally, the functionalist can respond by pointing out that a true functional copy of a fully conscious human being would need to have beliefs, and the same beliefs, such as that it can experience pain. These are surely qualitative states in some degree? (Tye, 2007)
Finally, the functionalist might reply by pointing out that Block has, in the structure of his analogy, violated a major part of author and originator of Functionalism Hilary Putnam's Functionalist hypothesis as originally put forward:
Quote
- 2. Every organism capable of feeling pain possesses at least one Description of a certain kind (i.e., being capable of feeling pain is possessing an appropriate kind of Functional Organization).
- 3. No organism capable of feeling pain possesses a decomposition into parts which separately possess Descriptions of the kind referred to in (2).
(Putnam, 2002, pg. 76)
Since each "neuron" is a fully conscious individual, this seems to preclude the homunculus from consideration as a conscious entity possessing mental states itself. Block tries to deflect this by drawing "a line between the inside and the outside" (Block, 2002, pg. 97), but this strikes one as a cheap move. But a counter-reply to the observation that Block has violated Putnam's hypothesis is that such a complaint seems like trying to escape conviction on a technicality: it does not solve the tremendous instinct that something is missing from the functionalists account.
In the end, it seems the one thing of which we most want a description, our private, mental lives and how they are possible, is left out of functionalism's account.
I find it wanting. Where do you stand?
BibliographyBlock, Ned. "Troubles with Functionalism (Excerpt)." Chalmers, David J., ed., Philosophyof Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (Oxford University Press: New York, 2002)
Chalmers, David J. "Foundations." Chalmers, David J., ed., Philosophyof Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (Oxford University Press: New York, 2002)
Dennett, Daniel C. Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2006)
Heil, John. Philosophy of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction. 2nd ed. (Routledge: New York, 2009)
Putnam, Hilary. "The Nature of Mental States." Chalmers, David J., ed., Philosophyof Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (Oxford University Press: New York, 2002)
Tye, Michael, "Qualia", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/qualia/>.
I think his trying to compare individual neurons with people (who we know experience individual qualitative states) is a bit off the mark. Can an individual neuron experience anything? I find it to be more plausible that an exchange in information is crucial to these experiences. Without some interaction, pain would be isolated and therefore not experienced at all, sort of like one person stranded on an island screaming but with nobody to hear him, to use the people/neuron example. Why even have neural connections if each neuron could experience things individually and our consciousness too by default?
QuoteBlock tries to deflect this by drawing "a line between the inside and the outside"
How so?
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on May 29, 2011, 04:28:06 PM
I think his trying to compare individual neurons with people (who we know experience individual qualitative states) is a bit off the mark. Can an individual neuron experience anything?
This is precisely Putnam's point - a conscious system can only be made up of non-conscious parts.
However, to your second question: while it seems obvious that a neuron
by itself doesn't experience consciousness, how on earth could we actually tell? We have no more ability to discern the inner states of a neuron, if it has any, than we do of a 'homunculi-headed body.' We can only infer it by its external behaviors.
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on May 29, 2011, 04:28:06 PM
I find it to be more plausible that an exchange in information is crucial to these experiences. Without some interaction, pain would be isolated and therefore not experienced at all, sort of like one person stranded on an island screaming but with nobody to hear him, to use the people/neuron example.
I think this is Ned Blocks point - functional accounts leave out a consciousness on the 'other side,' as it were, in the body, to exchange information with the neurons...but the whole point of functionalism is that you have only to account for very specific
functional aspects of a body to have consciousness. Once you have done that, there should be nothing left.
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on May 29, 2011, 04:28:06 PM
Why even have neural connections if each neuron could experience things individually and our consciousness too by default?
Very, very good point as to how it is arguable that neurons do not possess consciousness
in themselves.
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on May 29, 2011, 04:28:06 PM
QuoteBlock tries to deflect this by drawing a line between the inside and the outside
How so?
Block argues that he doesn't have to consider how an individual person's consciousness in his system would effect the functional operation of the whole entity, because he's drawing a line between the inside (the functional role played by the radio controller) and the outside (the mind of the person controlling the radio controller). But this seems like a cheap trick to me.
I'm just not convinced by his analogy. He frames it in the wrong way I think, by making it look like consciousness is something imposed from the outside when it looks more like an emergent property of the brain, and the complexity of its connections.
In the animal kingdom, for instance those with higher complexity in the organization of their brains are able to experience self-awareness (recognising themselves in the mirror even though they have never seen their own image before). This is a characteristic of animals such as chimps and dolphins, who have brains evolutionarily similar to ours, though the dolphin's evolved independently after our branches split off.
As for pain, it's one of the most primitive experiences. Evolutionarily, it makes sense because a neuron or set of neurons that didn't react negatively to certain stimuli couldn't discern harmful experiences and thus better spare themselves from them. I don't know a thing about neuroscience, but cells can react to chemical stimuli but would that still be consciousness in the same sense? After what point do you say that a cell has crossed over from reacting to stimuli (from neurotransmitors to internal chemical changes that happen within the neuron) to being conscious of stimuli?
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on May 29, 2011, 05:24:41 PM
I'm just not convinced by his analogy.
Nor am I. I'm not quite conviced by the Functionalists, either, however. It's there job to give an account of the entire breadth of consciousness, and I'm not sure they've accounted for subjective phenomenological experience itself.
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on May 29, 2011, 05:24:41 PM
He frames it in the wrong way I think, by making it look like consciousness is something imposed from the outside when it looks more like an emergent property of the brain, and the complexity of its connections.
To be fair to Block, I don't think he's saying consciousness is any particular thing or from any particular source, just that Functionalism hasn't accounted for it. In a way, they haven't for precisely the reason you cite: they haven't shown how, once you have all the functional properties of the brain accounted for, consciousness actually emerges. By the Functionalist's account, if you are able to build something like a homunculi-headed body that really does perform all the functions that a real body (and brain) would perform, if consciousness is emergent, then it should emerge - but Block is counting on our instinct that it just couldn't.
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on May 29, 2011, 05:24:41 PM
After what point do you say that a cell has crossed over from reacting to stimuli (from neurotransmitors to internal chemical changes that happen within the neuron) to being conscious of stimuli?
Aye - and there's the rub ;)
Quote from: The Black Jester on May 29, 2011, 05:46:55 PM
Nor am I. I'm not quite conviced by the Functionalists, either, however. It's there job to give an account of the entire breadth of consciousness, and I'm not sure they've accounted for subjective phenomenological experience itself.
What are your thoughts on consciousness?
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on May 30, 2011, 12:25:17 AM
Quote from: The Black Jester on May 29, 2011, 05:46:55 PM
Nor am I. I'm not quite conviced by the Functionalists, either, however. It's there job to give an account of the entire breadth of consciousness, and I'm not sure they've accounted for subjective phenomenological experience itself.
What are your thoughts on consciousness?
That's a very big question, one I'm not yet prepared to answer. Cop-out, I know. I was hoping that I could engage others on the subject here, and through discourse sharpen some ideas on the matter, but for now I'm suspending judgement as the Pyrrhonian skeptics would recommend. In truth, I've just begun my investigation into the issues involved. So far I've taken a two-pronged approach to the problem: studying neuroscience and studying academic philosophy of mind. I've taken a few courses in Philosophy of Mind, several in neuroscience, done some reading in both on my own, but feel I have much more material to get through before I could possibly hope to offer a cogent response to the problem. I need to learn more neuroscience and read more philosophy - Dennett and Chalmers in particular (a materialist and a dualist).
My initial response so far is that I cannot possibly fathom how consciousness could
not be a physical process but to date I have not read a coherent account of the subjective element in consciousness as described from a position of monism.
I like Functionalism as far as it goes, in that it raises some crucial issues about the functional nature of mental processes, but it stops short of what we want
most to know: how our subjective experiences can be the same as the physical processes with which they are correlated - and for the materialist/monist account of reality to be true, they
must be the
same thing, not merely correlated events. Even demonstrating
causality is not sufficient, because in proving that physical states
cause mental states, you are very essentially dealing with
two processes, not one - a physical initiating state - say neural activity, and a subjective mental response - say a thought. But out of what is that mental response constructed, if not some physical process? The non-supernaturalist cannot afford to admit some fuzzy "mental" element...but the mental is precisely what we are most familiar with in our daily living.
I don't understand why more non-supernaturalists aren't bothered by this.
If there is nothing in the universe but matter and energy, then consciousness
must be made out of matter and energy - for there is nothing else. Even saying it's 'emergent' is vague - what
exactly is emerging from neural processes? What "emerges" must itself be something physical, but how can a physical system be self-aware? How can self-awareness arise from non-self aware elements?
Saying it's "information" is also problematic - information is ultimately just patterned arrangements of material objects. How can one non-conscious pattern (a neural firing) recognize and decode another non-conscious pattern (another neural firing)?
I'm going to risk making this sound like total wu wu, but I think that all our experiences are just brain language* that maybe only varies in complexity based on different neural networks and which networks are interacting with which and at which time for which purpose. The more complex (evolved) a brain gets, the more complex the experiences it generates are.
Because of this interaction between not only individual neurons but also neural nets, "I" would also be an illusion, but there are instead many different "Is" on which consciousness would shift. It would be separate from the brain though not in the supernatural sense. Like I said earlier, it certainly doesn't make it any easier for us since we're not conscious of the physical processes per se but only of what has already emerged from them and we're limited to that plane that is the 'mind'. In many cases we are not conscious of our own thought processes that happen in our brain's unconscious and semi conscious states and portions, so another question is: what are we aware of and where is this awareness stemming from?
*I came across a video by the neurologist Ramachandran in which he showed a case of a colour blind epileptic who would still experience flashes of the colour he was blind to during electrical discharges. The qualities that we call colour don't exist in the world outside our minds, only electromagnetic waves that vary between a spectrum of amplitudes between colours. Though I don't know how that information is translated inside our brains, electrochemically.
Definitely an interesting subject...plenty of food for thought (or neuronal chatter perhaps).
Edit to add:
As vague as 'information' and 'emergent' are, I strongly believe that in order for qualia to exist, there must be a physical connection between networks. I also saw a video with two siamese twins that shared the part of their brain that specialises in vision. Even though both would look in different directions, both shared the experiences and saw through the other's eyes.
Though I have no idea what consciousness is made of and what the mininum necessary number of neurons are and arranged in what kind of way to jump from being non conscious units to being conscious of what's spoken in brain terms :-\
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on May 31, 2011, 03:43:06 AM
I'm going to risk making this sound like total wu wu, but I think that all our experiences are just brain language* that maybe only varies in complexity based on different neural networks and which networks are interacting with which and at which time for which purpose. The more complex (evolved) a brain gets, the more complex the experiences it generates are.
I think there is some very solid research to back up what you say (that consciousness arises from the interaction of brain networks at multiple hierarchical levels), and it is certainly the premise of folks like Ramachandran, Damasio, Koch and Dennett. It's just that those networks are describably primarily from a 3rd person perspective - nerves, tissues, electro-chemical discharges - and so describing them as the same thing as the 1st person experiences with which they are correlated is problematic. But to me, the identity seems inescapable.
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on May 31, 2011, 03:43:06 AM
Because of this interaction between not only individual neurons but also neural nets, "I" would also be an illusion, but there are instead many different "Is" on which consciousness would shift. It would be separate from the brain though not in the supernatural sense.
Totally agree with this...
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on May 31, 2011, 03:43:06 AM
*I came across a video by the neurologist Ramachandran in which he showed a case of a colour blind epileptic who would still experience flashes of the colour he was blind to during electrical discharges. The qualities that we call colour don't exist in the world outside our minds, only electromagnetic waves that vary between a spectrum of amplitudes between colours. Though I don't know how that information is translated inside our brains, electrochemically.
Great video - can you post the link?
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on May 31, 2011, 03:43:06 AM
I also saw a video with two siamese twins that shared the part of their brain that specialises in vision. Even though both would look in different directions, both shared the experiences and saw through the other's eyes.
Evidence like this is really crucial in establishing a mind/brain identity - or, if you prefer, the premise that the mind must emerge from the activity of the actual structures of the brain.
Quote from: The Black Jester on May 31, 2011, 03:29:58 PM
Great video - can you post the link?
Unfortunately I didn't bookmark it, but looking for it is a good excuse for watching a bunch of his stuff again ;D I'll add the link as soon as I find it. He doesn't go into that many details though, it's another one of his anomaly cases that he mentions during his documentaries and lectures.
Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_9fR_yYEXE&NR=1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_9fR_yYEXE&NR=1)
I was mistaken, sorry, it wasn't an epileptic patient he was talking about, but someone who had synesthesia and was colour-blind.
Quote from: The Black Jester on May 29, 2011, 04:08:40 PM
The Nobel prize for Philosophy does not exist. If, however, some enterprising and ingenious Philosopher were to finally mount a convincing and definitive assault on the Gordian Knot of consciousness, and somehow reconcile qualia with either functionalism or physicalism, the prize would shortly materialize. Qualia have been the bane of both functionalism and materialism alike, and its stubbornness is in direct proportion to its obviousness. The fact of qualia seems the most basic and brute fact of our existence, and yet it is precisely this phenomenon which appears to elude the essays of functionalist and materialist philosophers. No good account of the mind and its properties would fail to explain such a cornerstone of our lives.
My suspicion is that this problem points more to a deficiency in language than anything else.
I'll start with this: qualia is brute relative to a subject. We cannot talk of qualia
qua qualia only qualia
qua subject.
Hence the friction with materialist and functionalist accounts of consciousness. What these methods share, it seems to me, is a desire to map the component parts of consciousness. We might loosely call them
atomic methods. This means they are also largely empirical accounts. So any explanation of qualia they give is doomed to seem deficient, primarily because their theories talk of consciousness in the 'third person'.
Let us assume that I can give a perfect functionalist account of an individual experiencing an orgasm. I can perfectly map the bio-chemical and bio-electrical activity that is concurrent with the individual's experience. However let us then say I wipe the subject's memory. Then I tell them what has happened in functional terms. We would want to say that the individual has lost something; the subjective happening of the orgasm, ie the qualia. Even though they have perfect 'third person' knowledge of what happened, they would still want to say that some 'first person' information is missing.
But we must pay attention closely. What is wrong here? Why is my functionalist account insufficient? It is surely because we cannot communicate
the content of 'first person' information. It is simply something that language can't do. I cannot describe qualia univocally. (This should be readily apparent: try to describe red without reference to functional/material descriptions, at best any attempt will be poetic)
We must then be strict about this. If I cannot transmit the content of qualia (but rather only an analogical 'third person' description of it) then I cannot expect any functional account of experience to account for the 'first person' content of qualia. To do so would be to communicate the incommunicable.
A forteriori one should be suspicious of anyone who claims they can.
The ancient Chinese Taoists, who had a healthy impatience with metaphysics, would refer to qualia as something to do with the
inner nature of consciousness. To put it in more modern language, that of G E M Anscombe, we should simply accept qualia as a brute fact relative to the subject.
QuoteThe "homunculi-headed system" works in the following way: imagine the entire population of china each operating a radio controller connected precisely in the way a neuron is connected to an enormous body functionally identical to a human body. Each individual person is functionally a 'neuron' for the giant body. In addition, there is a giant panel in the sky observable by each person involved and which provides sensory input and instructions for each person in terms of how to respond to said sensory input. Each person then manipulates their assigned radio controller to perform their assigned function in manipulating the giant body in every way a human body can be manipulated. Would the giant body itself have qualia? If not, functionalism, and more to the point - materialism - cannot be right.
So does that help with this problem. I think it does. The problem is that our functional description of the "homoculi-headed system" is identical with our functional description of an individual. Setting aside the possibility of such a thing*; do we have to hold that the "homoculi-headed system" has qualia (or else that qualia does not exist in the individual) to save our functionalist account?
It would seem at first we do. Our functionalist account for the individual is indiscernible from the functionalist account of the group, so if the individual has qualia so must the group. This is Leibniz's rule, because the two things are indiscernible, so they must be identical.
But actually this is spurious. All we have shown is that the group is
functionally indiscernible from the individual so all we can say is that they are
functionally identical. To say that because two systems are
functionally indiscernible they are
really identical, is a nothing but a bare assertion (and points to a deep confusion, where the functional model is being given precedence over the reality which is being modelled).
Thus our functionalist account stands; its accuracy can be measured in terms of predictions; like any theory. There is no need for it to aspire to do more, it is constrained by the capacity of language.
To paraphrase the opening lines of the Tao Te Ching:
The qualia that can be described
is not the actual qualia;
The part that can be named
is not the real thing.*Actually I think we have good reason to discount getting a group of humans to behave in a functionally identical way to an individual consciousness as impossible. While we could get groups of humans to behave 'like' a neural network, ultimately people are not neurons, there will always be a mismatch, the relationship will never be perfect. Thus
perfect functional descriptions of each will necessarily differ.
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on June 01, 2011, 12:23:55 AM
Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_9fR_yYEXE&NR=1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_9fR_yYEXE&NR=1)
I was mistaken, sorry, it wasn't an epileptic patient he was talking about, but someone who had synesthesia and was colour-blind.
Thanks, this is great, I look forward to watching it!!
Penfold!!! You're back! ;D
You don't know me, but I followed your debate with AreEl with great interest. I'm only sorry it didn't continue. I certainly do appreciate your contributions, here, however. Lucid and cogent, as always.
Quote from: penfold on June 01, 2011, 03:28:56 AM
My suspicion is that this problem points more to a deficiency in language than anything else.
I have had an instinct in this direction for some time, but you put it more clearly than I have. You will get no argument from me there.
Quote from: penfold on June 01, 2011, 03:28:56 AM
I'll start with this: qualia is brute relative to a subject. We cannot talk of qualia qua qualia only qualia qua subject.
Quite obviously true. And a subject is closed to us - we can only describe a person in empirical terms, we cannot truly report what is 'subjective' to them, without being them, and my strong instinct is that person in question cannot even do so, not really.
Quote from: penfold on June 01, 2011, 03:28:56 AM
Hence the friction with materialist and functionalist accounts of consciousness. What these methods share, it seems to me, is a desire to map the component parts of consciousness. We might loosely call them atomic methods. This means they are also largely empirical accounts. So any explanation of qualia they give is doomed to seem deficient, primarily because their theories talk of consciousness in the 'third person'.
Let us assume that I can give a perfect functionalist account of an individual experiencing an orgasm. I can perfectly map the bio-chemical and bio-electrical activity that is concurrent with the individual's experience. However let us then say I wipe the subject's memory. Then I tell them what has happened in functional terms. We would want to say that the individual has lost something; the subjective happening of the orgasm, ie the qualia. Even though they have perfect 'third person' knowledge of what happened, they would still want to say that some 'first person' information is missing.
But we must pay attention closely. What is wrong here? Why is my functionalist account insufficient? It is surely because we cannot communicate the content of 'first person' information. It is simply something that language can't do. I cannot describe qualia univocally. (This should be readily apparent: try to describe red without reference to functional/material descriptions, at best any attempt will be poetic)
But an account of the subjective - of how the subjective point of view is even possible in a physical universe as described by science - is precisely what we want, and it is precisely what the Functionalists claim to be able to do. However, you seem to be mounting a very convincing argument that, far from being a failing of the specifically Functionalist approach, an account of the subjective is missing from ALL approaches, Dualist accounts included. Is the subjective a Hard mystery to you, a truly Hard Problem? Or do you deny the existence of the 'Hard Problem' of consciousness?
Quote from: penfold on June 01, 2011, 03:28:56 AM
So does that help with this problem. I think it does. The problem is that our functional description of the "homoculi-headed system" is identical with our functional description of an individual. Setting aside the possibility of such a thing*; do we have to hold that the "homoculi-headed system" has qualia (or else that qualia does not exist in the individual) to save our functionalist account?
It would seem at first we do. Our functionalist account for the individual is indiscernible from the functionalist account of the group, so if the individual has qualia so must the group. This is Leibniz's rule, because the two things are indiscernible, so they must be identical.
But actually this is spurious. All we have shown is that the group is functionally indiscernible from the individual so all we can say is that they are functionally identical. To say that because two systems are functionally indiscernible they are really identical, is a nothing but a bare assertion (and points to a deep confusion, where the functional model is being given precedence over the reality which is being modelled).
Thus our functionalist account stands; its accuracy can be measured in terms of predictions; like any theory. There is no need for it to aspire to do more, it is constrained by the capacity of language.
Again, I'm fairly certain this is not only Leibniz's rule, but Hilary Putnam's as well. Functionalism claims that once you have accounted for the functional properties of a system,
you have accounted for that system. So if there is 'deep confusion,' it is deep confusion embedded within the Functionalist approach, and Functionalism
fails.
Block does
not, in my reading of him, intend that the identity you posit should hold: it is precisely his point that it doesn't. He's showing that guaranteeing
functional equivalency (even if his specific analogy is deeply flawed in the technical sense), does not guarantee
actual equivalency, specifically in the property of having consciousness.
So, I may be misunderstanding your argument in some egregious way, but I think your attempted defense of Functionalism actually argues Block's point.
Quote from: penfold on June 01, 2011, 03:28:56 AM
*Actually I think we have good reason to discount getting a group of humans to behave in a functionally identical way to an individual consciousness as impossible. While we could get groups of humans to behave 'like' a neural network, ultimately people are not neurons, there will always be a mismatch, the relationship will never be perfect. Thus perfect functional descriptions of each will necessarily differ.
Two points here - one, you are absolutely correct. Although this may be a failure of imagination on my part, I'm not certain you could come up with, say, a functional equivalent, in Block's example, for something like hormones, which have a dramatic effect on consciousness. Two, Block does a lot of hand-waving about how he's not required to consider the individual consciousnesses of his 'neurons' in terms of their effect on the system as a whole. But this is quite clearly a problem for his analogy. Neurons are not conscious, themselves, and if they were, our global consciousness would be very different.
Quote from: The Black Jester on June 01, 2011, 04:55:07 AM
I followed your debate with AreEl with great interest. I'm only sorry it didn't continue.
I was sorry too, but the forum went down and by the time things were resolved I had other things to be getting on with. Actually I noted your interjection regarding the multi-textual nature of scripture, a fair point, but one has to be careful. While the synoptic gospels all share a contemporaneity that allows for cross referencing, it cannot reasonably be held that, say, John's gospel can corroborate the centuries older book of Isaiah; such supposed unity of scripture is essential to literalism. Anyhow...
QuoteBut an account of the subjective - of how the subjective point of view is even possible in a physical universe as described by science - is precisely what we want, and it is precisely what the Functionalists claim to be able to do. [...] Is the subjective a Hard mystery to you, a truly Hard Problem? Or do you deny the existence of the 'Hard Problem' of consciousness?
Tough question. For me qualia is apparent. It is also apparent that qualia is private and while I can talk
about it, I can never express its content. Is that really a problem?
I do not expect a functional, material or any scientific account of reality to actually
be that reality. A map is not the same thing as that which is mapped. So while I could happily accept a description that pointed to a process concurrent to my qualia as a valid description, I should not expect that description to be the same thing as my qualia. Just as it should not be possible to drown in a map of the ocean! [NB: it is also worth noting that it is a necessary character of any functional/material/scientific description that it be expressed in a language – just as it is a character of a map is that it can be read.]
I think the philosophical community have found in qualia (ie the subjectiveness of subjective experience) a linguistic black hole. A thing seemingly full of content but necessarily devoid of description. As to whether this implies that there is some real 'qualia-stuff' out there, a measurable quality of subjectiveness; we cannot hope to know (precisely because it cannot be described). Such ontological musings are a waste of time.
To be honest, I'm happy to leave it there; though I understand why many meta-physicians would say I have done nothing but restate the hard problem. Maybe then I fall into your last category: I deny that there is a real problem.
QuoteSo if there is 'deep confusion,' it is deep confusion embedded within the Functionalist approach, and Functionalism fails.
I think a functionalist account of the cosmos can be illuminating, but it must stay firmly embedded within epistemic truths. The description should not be confused for reality. To be fair though the functionalists are not the only offenders; materialists and even some scientists are guilty of the same error.
QuoteSo, I may be misunderstanding your argument in some egregious way, but I think your attempted defense of Functionalism actually argues Block's point.
Possibly, though I am defending functionalism in a very limited way (simply saying that just because it cannot account for qualia that does not necessarily doom functionalist accounts as useless). As for Block, he is a bit after my time, when I was studying he was just becoming known but was not an established figure, I never knew him as more than a name in philosophy of mind. Maybe I am agreeing with him.
Jester:
You may find this book interesting
http://www.amazon.com/Primacy-Subjective-Foundations-Language-Bradford/dp/B001PGXLMM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1307687874&sr=8-1