JamesOfSeattle wrote:Consul, I appreciate your providing references to the literature, and I assume that you are not arguing by reference to authority. I have some serious problems with the terminology frequently used in these references, particularly with regards to the terms "state" and "feel". For example, you wrote
Arguably, experiential states or properties (qualia) are not functionally reducible and completely describable in terms of cause-effect or input-output relations.
What is an experiential state? A state is a condition in which nothing is changing. How can there be experience if nothing is changing? If a system is in a state, then that is a state prior to a given experience, or in the middle of processing, or in the state of just having had an experience.
There is a connotation to the effect that states are "unchanges", i.e. static/nondynamic; but most philosophers (of mind) use "state" in a quite general sense lacking this connotation. Nonetheless, one can draw an ontological distinction between a narrow and a broad concept of states:
1. states
1.1 narrow: only static/nondynamic ("unchanges", nonevents, nonhappenings, nonprocesses)
1.2 broad: static/nondynamic or nonstatic/dynamic (including changes, events, happenings, processes)
In the broad ontological sense of the term, events and processes can be defined as
dynamic states; but if you prefer to regard states as nondynamic by definition, you may use the term "event" or "process" instead (and speak of mental/experiential events/processes rather than of mental/experiential states).
By the way, some experiences are unchanging states. For example, when I look at a uniformly red wall without moving my head, I have a static visual impression of redness.
JamesOfSeattle wrote:Chalmers uses similarly problematic language when he writes
At the root of all this lie two quite distinct concepts of mind. The first is the phenomenal concept of mind. This is the concept of mind as conscious experience, and of a mental state as a consciously experienced mental state.
What is a consciously experienced mental state? Is that the state immediately after an experience?
No, it's simply the experiential state, the experience itself.
JamesOfSeattle wrote:Another problem is the way many of these philosophers use the word "feel". Take Chalmers statement:
On the phenomenal concept, mind is characterized by the way it feels; on the psychological concept, mind is characterized by what it does.
But feeling is just another type of doing. To say that a pin feels sharp is not really a statement about a property of a pin. It's a statement about what happens when you touch the pin.
For example, Charlie Broad writes that…
"The irreducible minimum involved in mentality would seem to be the fact which we express by the phrase 'feeling somehow'[.]"
(Broad, C. D.
The Mind and its Place in Nature. 1925. Reprint, Abingdon: Routledge, 2000. p. 634)
He and Chalmers use "feeling" or "feel" in the most general sense, in which it doesn't only refer to tactile feelings associated with the sense of touch, but to the intrinsic qualitative aspects of experiences in general—their "raw feels", as Edward Tolman called them, which term refers to what it feels or is like for a subject to experience something.
It is not the case that feelings in this sense are doings. They are the feeling-qualities, the qualia of subjective experience (sensation, emotion, and imagination), which are constitutive of it.
JamesOfSeattle wrote:Now given a model of input --[agent] --> output, I can make a case for what is a mental state. A mental state is a functional description of the state of the agent such that if the agent is presented with x, it will produce an output of y. If the agent is in a different state the output would be different (including the possibility of no output). Apparently, (by what I read in the SEP article), most (all?) functionalist accounts also refer to "states" exclusively. The functional descriptions of these states are what Chalmers refers to as psychological states. The problem is that, assuming the input --> [agent] --> output model, a functional description of the agent does not tell the whole story. Said story also requires a functional description of the input and output. I submit that the functional description of the input is what we call qualia. More specifically, qualia are references to the meanings of symbolic signs which are inputs. Thus, at a physical level the agent may be responding to an input of a specific neurotransmitter. At the functional level, that same agent may be responding to an input of "red". At the functional level, the agent doesn't know anything about neurotransmitters. It only knows about redness.
It is doubtless true that subjective experiences innerly reveal nothing about the neurophysiological processes underlying them. An introspective neurology practiced from the first-person point of view is impossible in principle.
Qualia are the intrinsic contents of experiences (experiential states/events). They may be said to result
from (body-external or -internal) input and result
in output (behavior, or inner psychological or physiological reactions), but their being is not reducible to and not exhaustively describable in terms of their causal profile or role (provided they have any, being non-epiphenomenal).
David Armstrong defines the concept of a mental state as follows:
"The concept of a mental state is primarily the concept of a state of the person apt for bringing about a certain sort of behaviour. Sacrificing all accuracy for brevity we can say that, although mind is not behaviour, it is the cause of behaviour. In the case of some mental states only there are also states of the person apt for being brought about by a certain sort of stimulus. But this latter formula is a secondary one."
(p. 82)
"[T]he mind is not to be identified with behaviour, but only with the inner principle of behaviour."
(p. 85)
"Suppose now we accept for argument's sake the view that in talking about mental states we are simply talking about states of the person apt for the bringing about of behaviour of a certain sort."
(p. 89)
"[T]he concept of a mental state is the concept of a state of the person apt for the production of certain sorts of behaviour[.]"
(p. 90)
(Armstrong, D. M.
A Materialist Theory of the Mind. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968.)
(Having been a reductive materialist, Armstrong believed that all mental states are physicochemical states of the brain; so for him mental causation was just a kind of physical/chemical causation.)
Experiential states are mental states, and a functionalist definition such as Armstrong's presupposes that mental states are non-epiphenomenal. But this presupposition certainly begs the question against those who think that they are in fact epiphenomenal, i.e. causally powerless, effectless. An epiphenomenal mental state is certainly
not "apt for bringing about a certain sort of behaviour."
Even if the qualitative contents of experiential states are non-epiphenomenal, the point is that there is more to them than their causal role or function. Qualia themselves as experiential/phenomenal qualities aren't (reducible to) functional properties.
"F is a functional property (or kind) just in case F can be characterized by a definition of the following form:
For something x to have F (or to be an F) =def for x to have some property P such that C(P), where C(P) is a specification of the causal work that P is supposed to do in x.
… Now we can define what it is for a property to 'realize,' or to be a 'realizer' of, a functional property:
Let F be a functional property defined by a functional definition, as above. Property Q is said to realize F, or be a realizer or a realization of F, in system x if and only if C(Q), that is, Q fits the specification C in x (which is to say, Q in fact performs the specified causal work in system x)."
(pp. 120-21)
"Schematically, we can think of reductions of this kind in the following three steps:
Step 1. Property, F, to be reduced is given a functional definition, or characterization, of the following form:
Having F = def having some property, or mechanism, P, such that C(P), where C specifies the causal task to be performed by P.
Step 2. Find the property, or mechanism, that does the causal work specified by C—that is, identify the 'realizer' (or 'realizers') of F, in the system, or population of systems, under investigation.
Step 3. Develop a theory that explains how the realizer(s) of F so identified perform the causal task C in the given system or population."
(p. 280)
(Kim, Jaegwon.
Philosophy of Mind. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2006.)
"Are mental properties in general functionalizable and hence functionally reducible? Or are they 'emergent' and irreducible? I believe that there is reason to think that intentional/cognitive properties are functionalizable. However, I am with those who believe that phenomenal properties are not functional properties.
…
I believe there are substantial and weighty reasons, and a sufficiently broad consensus among the philosophers who work in this area (19, to believe that qualia are functionally irreducible.
(19: To mention a few: Ned Block, Christopher Hill, Frank Jackson, Joseph Levine, Colin McGinn, and Brian McLaughlin.)"
(Kim, Jaegwon.
Physicalism, or Something Near Enough. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. pp. 26-7)