consciousness - william g. lycan

[...]... without constituting or producing my sensationof -pain , or (b) my sensation-of -pain could have occurred without having been constituted or produced by my pain ( = my cfs) 12 2 Chapter But a pain just is a sensation -of -pain and vice versa; unlike physical instances of heat , pains are themselves feelings , mental entities Thus : " (3) Not -( 2-a) and not -( 2-b ) To be in the same epistemic situation... inner state-tokens We may hold onto our antiCartesian claim that mental state- and event -tokensare identical with organic state- and event -tokens in their owners , but we would do better to individuate mental types more abstractly, in terms (let us say) of the functional roles their tokens play in mediating between stimuli and responses Putnam proposed to identify mental state- and event -types with... objects simply rejecting all phenomen , individuals such as sense-data What the materialist identifies with brain items are rather mental states and events, in this case ' the having of a pain ( better: the -having -of -a-pain , or hurting ) If Kripke s essentialist thesis is to engage the materialist , then , it must be aimed at such pain -events rather than at " pains " construed as phenomenal individuals... could just be (redundantly ) a pain, or it could be an additional cognitive / epistemic state- of awareness, say- di - Functionalism and Essence 13 " ' " ' rected upon a pain , as Kripke s talk of one s epistemic situation suggests Suppose the former Then we have no reason to accept (2), since (2-a) and (2-b ) would be trivial contradictions in terms , while ' (2) s antecedent is a substantive epistemological... absence of pain is not to have a pain " [Let us call these denials of (2-a) and (2-b ) the " transparency theses." ] So: (4) It is not true that I could be " qualitatively speaking , in the same epistemic situation " vis-a-vis my pain and my cfs and still " in such a situation a qualitatively analogous statement could be false" ; (D -i ) is refuted [2,3] Moreover : (5) There does not exist any third... causal roles , or rather , that to be a mental entity (of such-and -such a -and -out type ) is to play causal role so and so; thus he is an out relationalist 18 On this interpretation , Arm strong is able to renounce chauvinism On the other hand , as a relationalist , he thereby exposes himself to the sorts of dangers that plagued Behaviorism - in particular , to the inverted objections based on the Belief... genuine pain ; and similarly for other qualitative states Now, by hypothesis , our ho munculi -head engages in quite subtle " having -a-quale " -behavior (since it realizes the program of a fully acculturated human being ) Accordingly , it seems, we have excellent evidence for concluding that the homunculi -head is having a quale , decisive in the absence of a fairly strong counterargument or body... interpretation and my Arm strongian response to it lead to a regress A sensation -of -pain distinct from the pain itself would als.ohave to be a brain state- a different one (For example , one might follow Arm strongs (1968b model and take conscious introspective ) awareness of the pain to be the output of a dedicated self-scanning device; I shall defend a version of this model in chapter 6.) So Kripke... divides the class of singular terms themselves , as expression -types But this is an error Expression -types are not per se rigid or flaccid ; it is particular usesof expressions (particular tokens ) that are rigid or flaccid There is considerable 14 2 Chapter variation from speaker to speaker and from utterance -occasion to utterance -occasion, especially in the context of philosophy of mind To... than molecular motion were producing my sensation -of -heat , and that is why heat seems separable from molecular motion even though it is not Now : (1) My pain at t and my cfs at t are distinguishable Let us try to suppose that the model of heat and molecular motion applies " (2) If I can be, qualitatively speaking , in the same" epistemic " vis-a-vis situation my pain and my cfs and still in such . question - begging assumption . In fact , a more decisive charge of question - begging can be pressed . Note carefully that if we grant Kripke ( 3 ) on this strong interpretation , he. pain (better : the - having - of - a - pain , or hurting ) . If Kripke ' s essentialist thesis is to engage the materialist , then , it must be aimed at such pain - events rather than. topic - neutral identifying properties . 5 2. Kripke 's Argument against Token Identity As all the world knows , Kripke has mounted a modal argument - specifically, an essentialist argument - against