So when I hear a claim that “subjective experience” and “qualia” are divorced from any and all behavior or functionality in the mind, I’m left with a sense that Chalmers is talking about something very different from my subjective experience, and what it seems like to be me. My subjective experience seems deeply integrated with my behavior and functioning.
That’s playing on different meanings of “isolated” and “integrated”. The claim that explanations of behaviour are not explanations of subjective experience does not by itself amount to the claim that subjective experience is epiphenomenal—causally idle, not causing or influencing behaviour.
There is fertile ground for confusion here, because there are plausible grounds for considering Chalmers to be an epiphenomenalist—but, importantly, his epiphenomenalism isn’t an assumption of the hard problem, as he states it, nor an immediate consequence.
He argues at length that property dualism is the correct answer to the HP, and that would seem to imply epiphenomenalism: if physical properties are sufficient to explain behaviour, then mental properties have nothing to do. But that means epiphenomenalism is an indirect consequence of the HP.
That’s playing on different meanings of “isolated” and “integrated”. The claim that explanations of behaviour are not explanations of subjective experience does not by itself amount to the claim that subjective experience is epiphenomenal—causally idle, not causing or influencing behaviour.
There is fertile ground for confusion here, because there are plausible grounds for considering Chalmers to be an epiphenomenalist—but, importantly, his epiphenomenalism isn’t an assumption of the hard problem, as he states it, nor an immediate consequence.
He argues at length that property dualism is the correct answer to the HP, and that would seem to imply epiphenomenalism: if physical properties are sufficient to explain behaviour, then mental properties have nothing to do. But that means epiphenomenalism is an indirect consequence of the HP.