I think “belief” is overloaded here. We could distinguish two kinds of “believing you’re in pain” in this context:
(1) isn’t a belief (unless accompanied by (2)).
But in order to resist the fading qualia argument along the quoted lines, I think we only need someone to (1)-believe they’re in pain yet be mistaken.
That’s not possible, because the belief_2 that one isn’t in pain has nowhere to be instantiated.
Even if the intermediate stages believed_2 they’re not in pain and only spoke and acted that way (which isn’t possible), it would introduce a desynchronization between the consciousness on one side, and the behavior and cognitive processes on the other. The fact that the person isn’t in pain would be hidden entirely from their cognitive processes, and instead they would reflect on their false belief_1 about how they are, in fact, in pain.
That quale would then be shielded from them in this way, rendering its existence meaningless (since every time they would try to think about it, they would arrive at the conclusion that they don’t actually have it and that they actually have the opposite quale).
In fact, aren’t we lucky that our cognition and qualia are perfectly coupled? Just think about how many coincidences had to happen during evolution to get our brain exactly right.
(It would also rob qualia of their causal power. (Now the quale of being in pain can’t cause the quale of feeling depressed, because that quale is accessible to my cognitive processes, and so now I would talk about being (and really be) depressed for no physical reason.) Such a quale would be shielded not only from our cognition, but also from our other qualia, thereby not existing in any meaningful sense.)
Whatever I call “qualia,” it doesn’t (even possibly) have these properties.
(Also, different qualia of the same person necessarily create a coherent whole, which wouldn’t be the case here.)
Quoting Block: “Consider two computationally identical computers, one that works via electronic mechanisms, the other that works via hydraulic mechanisms. (Suppose that the fluid in one does the same job that the electricity does in the other.) We are not entitled to infer from the causal efficacy of the fluid in the hydraulic machine that the electrical machine also has fluid. One could not conclude that the presence or absence of the fluid makes no difference, just because there is a functional equivalent that has no fluid.”
There is no analogue of “fluid” in the brain. There is only the pattern. (If there were, there would still be all the other reasons why it can’t work that way.)
Why not? Call it what you like, but it has all the properties relevant to your argument, because your concern was that the person would “act in all ways as if they’re in pain” but not actually be in pain. (Seems like you’d be begging the question in favor of functionalism if you claimed that the first-person recognition ((2)-belief) necessarily occurs whenever there’s something playing the functional role of a (1)-belief.)
That’s not possible, because the belief_2 that one isn’t in pain has nowhere to be instantiated.
I’m saying that no belief_2 exists in this scenario (where there is no pain) at all. Not that the person has a belief_2 that they aren’t in pain.
Even if the intermediate stages believed_2 they’re not in pain and only spoke and acted that way (which isn’t possible), it would introduce a desynchronization between the consciousness on one side, and the behavior and cognitive processes on the other.
I don’t find this compelling, because denying epiphenomenalism doesn’t require us to think that changing the first-person aspect of X alwayschanges the third-person aspect of some Y that X causally influences. Only that this sometimes can happen. If we artificially intervene on the person’s brain so as to replace X with something else designed to have the same third-person effects on Y as the original, it doesn’t follow that the new X has the same first-person aspect! The whole reason why given our actual brains our beliefs reliably track our subjective experiences is, the subjective experience is naturally coupled with some third-person aspect that tends to cause such beliefs. This no longer holds when we artificially intervene on the system as hypothesized.
There is no analogue of “fluid” in the brain. There is only the pattern.
We probably disagree at a more basic level then. I reject materialism. Subjective experiences are not just patterns.
(1) isn’t a belief (unless accompanied by (2)).
That’s not possible, because the belief_2 that one isn’t in pain has nowhere to be instantiated.
Even if the intermediate stages believed_2 they’re not in pain and only spoke and acted that way (which isn’t possible), it would introduce a desynchronization between the consciousness on one side, and the behavior and cognitive processes on the other. The fact that the person isn’t in pain would be hidden entirely from their cognitive processes, and instead they would reflect on their false belief_1 about how they are, in fact, in pain.
That quale would then be shielded from them in this way, rendering its existence meaningless (since every time they would try to think about it, they would arrive at the conclusion that they don’t actually have it and that they actually have the opposite quale).
In fact, aren’t we lucky that our cognition and qualia are perfectly coupled? Just think about how many coincidences had to happen during evolution to get our brain exactly right.
(It would also rob qualia of their causal power. (Now the quale of being in pain can’t cause the quale of feeling depressed, because that quale is accessible to my cognitive processes, and so now I would talk about being (and really be) depressed for no physical reason.) Such a quale would be shielded not only from our cognition, but also from our other qualia, thereby not existing in any meaningful sense.)
Whatever I call “qualia,” it doesn’t (even possibly) have these properties.
(Also, different qualia of the same person necessarily create a coherent whole, which wouldn’t be the case here.)
There is no analogue of “fluid” in the brain. There is only the pattern. (If there were, there would still be all the other reasons why it can’t work that way.)
Why not? Call it what you like, but it has all the properties relevant to your argument, because your concern was that the person would “act in all ways as if they’re in pain” but not actually be in pain. (Seems like you’d be begging the question in favor of functionalism if you claimed that the first-person recognition ((2)-belief) necessarily occurs whenever there’s something playing the functional role of a (1)-belief.)
I’m saying that no belief_2 exists in this scenario (where there is no pain) at all. Not that the person has a belief_2 that they aren’t in pain.
I don’t find this compelling, because denying epiphenomenalism doesn’t require us to think that changing the first-person aspect of X always changes the third-person aspect of some Y that X causally influences. Only that this sometimes can happen. If we artificially intervene on the person’s brain so as to replace X with something else designed to have the same third-person effects on Y as the original, it doesn’t follow that the new X has the same first-person aspect! The whole reason why given our actual brains our beliefs reliably track our subjective experiences is, the subjective experience is naturally coupled with some third-person aspect that tends to cause such beliefs. This no longer holds when we artificially intervene on the system as hypothesized.
We probably disagree at a more basic level then. I reject materialism. Subjective experiences are not just patterns.