I would essentially deny that anything is actually green, but assert that there is a mental state of “experiencing green”, which is a certain functional state of a mind. You say that reductionists believe ”...the green shape that you are seeing is the same thing as some aspect of all those billions of colorless atoms in motion.” I do not think that most reductionsts would (or should) take this position. There is nothing “the same” in the mental state of experiencing green as in the green object, there is only some property of the green object that causes us to have a green experience. My response to “If your theory still makes sense to you, then please tell us in comments what aspect of the atoms in motion is actually green.” is that the atoms in motion comprise a mental state which is the experience of seeing green, and that this is all there is to our idea of the color green. Certainly, no aspect of the green object itself is identical to any brain state. So, I deny the existence of any such thing “green” which is both a property of green objects and a mental state, but claim that what we are talking about when we say we see green is nothing more than a mental state.
I posted the following about a JJC Smart quote on the issue in your last thread, but I’ll repost it here in case you didn’t see:
JJC Smart responds to people who would conflate experiences of seeing things with the actual things which are being seen in his 1959 paper “Sensations and Brain Processes”. Here he’s talking about the experience of seeing a yellow-green after image, and responding to objections to his theory that experiences can be equivalent to mental states.
Objection 4. The after-image is not in physical space. The brain-process is. So the after-image is not a brain-process.
Reply. This is an ignoratio elenchi. I am not arguing that the after-image is a brain-process, but that the experience of having an after-image is a brain-process. It is the experience which is reported in the introspective report. Similarly, if it is objected that the after-image is yellowy-orange but that a surgeon looking into your brain would see nothing yellowy-orange, my reply is that it is the experience of seeing yellowy-orange that is being described, and this experience is not a yellowy-orange something. So to say that a brain-process cannot be yellowy-orange is not to say that a brain-process cannot in fact be the experience of having a yellowy-orange after-image. There is, in a sense,no such thing as an after-image or a sense-datum, though there is such a thing as the experience of having an image, and this experience is described indirectly in material object language, not in phenomenal language, for there is no such thing. We describe the experience by saying, in effect, that it is like the experience we have when, for example, we really see a yellowy-orange patch on the wall. Trees and wallpaper can be green, but not the experience of seeing or imagining a tree or wallpaper. (Or if they are described as green or yellow this can only be in a derived sense.)
The theory he is defending in the paper is an identity theory where brain states are identical to mental states, but the point still holds for functionalist theories where mental states supervene on functional states.
I would essentially deny that anything is actually green, but assert that there is a mental state of “experiencing green”, which is a certain functional state of a mind.
And what functional state is that? Can you write seeGreen()?
“there is a mental state of “experiencing green”, which is a certain functional state of a mind”
Alright… now, how do you explain the fact that this state of the mind has the property that it cannot be accessed/observed by anyone except its owner (I hope you know what I mean by the “owner”), while the properties of the brain can be observed by anyone in principle? Doesn’t it mean that e.g. the image in the mind is not a brain process?
I would essentially deny that anything is actually green, but assert that there is a mental state of “experiencing green”, which is a certain functional state of a mind. You say that reductionists believe ”...the green shape that you are seeing is the same thing as some aspect of all those billions of colorless atoms in motion.” I do not think that most reductionsts would (or should) take this position. There is nothing “the same” in the mental state of experiencing green as in the green object, there is only some property of the green object that causes us to have a green experience. My response to “If your theory still makes sense to you, then please tell us in comments what aspect of the atoms in motion is actually green.” is that the atoms in motion comprise a mental state which is the experience of seeing green, and that this is all there is to our idea of the color green. Certainly, no aspect of the green object itself is identical to any brain state. So, I deny the existence of any such thing “green” which is both a property of green objects and a mental state, but claim that what we are talking about when we say we see green is nothing more than a mental state.
I posted the following about a JJC Smart quote on the issue in your last thread, but I’ll repost it here in case you didn’t see:
JJC Smart responds to people who would conflate experiences of seeing things with the actual things which are being seen in his 1959 paper “Sensations and Brain Processes”. Here he’s talking about the experience of seeing a yellow-green after image, and responding to objections to his theory that experiences can be equivalent to mental states.
The theory he is defending in the paper is an identity theory where brain states are identical to mental states, but the point still holds for functionalist theories where mental states supervene on functional states.
And what functional state is that? Can you write seeGreen()?
With the aid of qualia computing and a quantum computer, perhaps ;-)
“there is a mental state of “experiencing green”, which is a certain functional state of a mind”
Alright… now, how do you explain the fact that this state of the mind has the property that it cannot be accessed/observed by anyone except its owner (I hope you know what I mean by the “owner”), while the properties of the brain can be observed by anyone in principle? Doesn’t it mean that e.g. the image in the mind is not a brain process?