raw_thought wrote:I am not talking about an objective case of qualia. That is a contradiction. I am saying that each of us knows that pain hurts from personal subjective experience. ...
But for you to know this would be an objective contradiction?
Show me pain. Note that C fibers firing is not the definition of pain.
I agree it's not, it's a material explanation for why you have 'pain'. Are you saying that if I removed all your c-fibers you'd still have a 'pain'?
As I said previously, I do not have to explain what pain is. My point is that it cannot be physical. Similarly, I may not know what a platypus is, but I can still say that I know that it is not an elephant.
Show me a pain without their being a physicality?
Last edited by Arising_uk on Sat May 30, 2015 1:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
raw_thought wrote:
Functionalism is the proposition that mental states are defined by what they do and not by what they are.
Yes, that is what I said. Mental states are not the same as brain states they are defined by the casual or functional role.
t.
Mental states are not defined by their causal role. The behaviour they cause is not their definition. That is why I said that my mental state (pain) may cause me to say "ouch",but that is not the definition of pain.
Anyway, my wife and I are with friends drinking wine. Occasionally, I will escape the small talk and respond. However, this discussion requires deep and complex explanations. I will respond, but most likely not tonight.
Do not be offended if I only respond to less deep threads (chess and politics)!
raw_thought wrote:
Mental states are not defined by their causal role. The behaviour they cause is not their definition. That is why I said that my mental state (pain) may cause me to say "ouch",but that is not the definition of pain.
Actually, mental states are defined by their casual role if you are a functionalist. Obviously, they are non-casual if you happen to be a proponent of qualia. The other point I just made was that functionalism is not the same as behaviourism. It is generally accepted in the literature that functionalism is an alternative to behaviourism.
raw_thought wrote:I am using a tablet. My comments are in brackets. [. ] One of my quotes is bracketed in yhe quote.That last paragraph shows where eliminative materialism inevitably leads. The abandonment of science, as an explanatory tool! Feyerbrand etc. Sorry about how unorganized my last post was. Think how crazy I must feel trying to quote and respond to quotes on a cheap tablet!
My church of Neo-Luddism will appreciate information like that, as another incentive for continuing our caveman avoidance of tablets.
Ginkgo wrote:
Actually, mental states are defined by their casual role if you are a functionalist.
You are missing an important level, here. To make things easier and more qualitatively clear, lets switch from a pain qualia to a simple element redness qualia we can experience when we see something reflect something like 650-nm light. For a functionalists, the mental states cause a redness qualia we can experience, our ability to consciously detect this redness is then a different causal level, all together, and this is the cause of us reporting: "I am experiencing redness.". That second level causing us to report "redness" does not define redness, it is only the elemental redness experience that has the redness quality that defines it, not us reporting that we are experiencing redness.
raw_thought wrote:
Mental states are not defined by their causal role. The behaviour they cause is not their definition. That is why I said that my mental state (pain) may cause me to say "ouch",but that is not the definition of pain.
Actually, mental states are defined by their casual role if you are a functionalist. Obviously, they are non-casual if you happen to be a proponent of qualia. The other point I just made was that functionalism is not the same as behaviourism. It is generally accepted in the literature that functionalism is an alternative to behaviourism.
If that is true then functionalism is silly. I am not defined by my daughter. If I never had a daughter I would still be me.
If dictionaries included proper names, a functionalist dictionary would say,
Brian
The father of Mandy.
True, that is part of me.However, that is a silly definition. As bad as saying,
Brian,
A hominid that posts at Philosophy Now forum.
That doesn't define me!!! I guess functionalists dont know what "definition " means!
