J
amesOfSeattle:
Thus the question, what kind of explanation are you looking for?
Here, I'll guess. You want an explanation of why something that feels like something feels like something, to which my answer is: it couldn't not. [I know, it's hard to read, but it was fun to write].
Here's a thought experiment. Suppose you're in the Chinese Room, except it's not THE Chinese Room, it's just a room with a slot in the wall. Outside is a panel of some number of inputs, say lights [could be buckets of water or anything]. The inputs are either on or off. Attached to each input is a piece of paper. When a light goes on, an assistant takes the paper and passes it into the room. When the paper comes in, if there is no symbol on it, you make up a random symbol and write the random symbol on the paper, write the symbol on a chalkboard (or do something else) and pass the paper back out of the room, and the assistant returns it to the input. So thereafter, whenever that input is on, you get that paper with that symbol.
Suppose further that your friend is similarly situated in such a room and you can speak to them by intercom. So when the next input comes your friend asks "Hey did you get that? What knot did you put on it?" Apparently, your friend gets strings instead of pieces of paper ... the point being you have no idea how your friend uniquely identifies each input, but you know that he can distinguish inputs somehow, and that at least sometimes his inputs seem related to your inputs. You respond "I don't know what you're talking about, but let's call that one 'red'".
I guess this is a variation on Wittgenstein's beetle in a box. The point is that there is no object there that is a "feeling". There's just an input, and the fact that you can distuinguish that input from other inputs. And the fact that some of your inputs seem to be related to other people's inputs such that you can agree on a name and hope you're talking about something similar.
I'll grant you Wittgenstein's beetle problem. I read Quine once, his radical translation and gavagi/ rabbit problems. Here is similar: My understanding of what you say regarding that particular thing rests entirely "within the language" which we share and agree on. Now, consistency of reporting and agreement between utterances in practical matters as to the gestures, the sounds made, and so on, vis a vis experienced encounters in the world and with each other does present a reason to assume things are the same for all. There is nothing of pain, for example, that is IN the language, and it is through language that not only do we communicate with each other, but communicate within ourselves, given that (I am thinking of Meade and the social nature of private language) the system of gestures in public structures out there are internalized and established as structures within. So the same matters and issues of agreement among each other is internalized.
So: if I have this right, it's a bit messy, my experience of pain is actually an input that cannot be pinned down by any language sharing. for the system of language I am using to call pain, pain never possesses any of the intuited event inside.
I may be off a bit. Haven't thought about it lately. But it does not one wit reduce the screaming unknown X I have from that spear lodged in my kidney. Which is my issue with functionalism.