From:	SMTP%"phayes@cs.uiuc.edu"  7-MAR-1996 23:47:57.87
To:	STAPP
CC:	
Subj:	Re: Reply to Hayes 5

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Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 01:45:35 -0600
To: klein@adage.Berkeley.EDU (Stanley Klein)
From: phayes@cs.uiuc.edu (Pat Hayes)
Subject: Re: Reply to Hayes 5
Cc: A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk, brings@rpi.edu, ghrosenb@phil.indiana.edu,
        keith@imprint.co.uk, klein@adage.Berkeley.EDU, mckee@neosoft.com,
        patrickw@cs.monash.edu.au, STAPP@theorm.lbl.gov, phayes@cs.uiuc.edu

>Pat's position is quite clear. He said:
>
>>'A is B' is true iff 'A' and 'B' denote the same thing. Nothing
>>mysterious or unusual.
>
>>The reason I dont like the 'necc and suff for' is that I see no reason for
>>it. Here are two descriptions of events. They are always exactly
>>correlated: whenever one occurs, so does the other. They always occur in
>>exactly the same place at the same time. They have the same functional
>>role. There is no way to ever distinguish them except by the language used
>>to refer to them with. Doesnt the suspicion just creep upon you that they
>>might, possibly, be the *same thing*? (Be brave! ;-)
>
>Just because the neural activity is exactly correlated with the qualia 
>doesn't seem to make them the same thing. 

No, but it suggests that they *might* be. And if the correlation is precise
and reliable enough, what could count as evidence *against* the hypothesis
that they are the same? (only a hypothesis: no proofs, we are weighing
evidence here.)

>.... Pat, I don't see why you have problems with 
>different aspects. There is the objective, 3rd person aspect, and the 
>subjective, 1st person aspect of the NCCQ. One might not be derivable from 
>the other.

My problem with it is that I have no idea what an 'aspect' is. Its not a
term from formal logic; its not from any exact science (is it? where?); its
not used in linguistics; what does it mean? Look, of course I use it
informally just like you do, but we cant expect our ordinary casual use of
language to hold up in an area as subtle and tricky as this.

> At this point I don't see how the feel of the pain is related to the 
>neural activity. I hope someday we might gain some insight into that hard 
>question.  At this point in 1996 the 1st person account is SO different 
>from the 3rd person account that it seems legitimate to me to say they are 
>not the same. 

Of course the ACCOUNTS are not the same.

>Pat, don't you see any difference between the feel of the pain and the 
>neural correlate?

I see no *reason* to not hypothesise that they are the same; and this hyp.
seems to solve a lot of otherwise impossibly 'hard' problems and settle
many confusions.

Imagine someone in the 17th century objecting to the atomic hypothesis on
the grounds that even if it were true, there would still be a 'hard
problem' to 'bridge' between different 'aspects', because chalk was so,
well, *chalky*, and clearly a collection of atoms, no matter how complex,
wasn't going to ever be *chalky*. Seems to me that this case is almost
exactly analogous.

Pat

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