From: SMTP%"phayes@cs.uiuc.edu" 8-MAR-1996 07:30:47.24 To: STAPP CC: Subj: Re: Reply to Hayes 4 Message-Id: <199603081528.JAA15080@tubman.ai.uiuc.edu> X-Sender: phayes@tubman.cs.uiuc.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 09:29:01 -0600 To: STAPP@theorm.lbl.gov From: phayes@cs.uiuc.edu (Pat Hayes) Subject: Re: Reply to Hayes 4 Cc: klein@adage.berkeley.edu, phayes@cs.uiuc.edu, A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk, keith@imprint.co.uk, mckee@neosoft.com, brings@rpi.edu, ghrosenb@phil.indiana.edu, patrickw@cs.monash.edu.au >Regarding Pat Hayes's reply (March 7) to your query, you see what sort of >problems ensue from trying to adopt a functionalist position. At the >beginning he confirmed that he was saying `the pain' IS >`the neural activity'. This seems blatantly to contradict what we normally >would mean by such a statement. How does he defend it? > >By shifting the meaning! He ends up saying something that we would normally >express by saying: there are two descriptios, one phenomenal and one >functional, of one happening. There are two different `descriptions' >of one `happening'. I must get to bed, but really!! I insist, I have not shifted the meaning one iota! Ive already explained this so carefully and thoroughly, and its such an elementary point of simple logic, that all I can ask you to do is think carefully about what you have said. To say that A is B, and then paraphrase this as, A and B are descriptions of one thing, is an EXACT paraphrase. That has been the meaning of 'is' since Leibnitz, right through Frege to Quine. Notice waht I was saying is: the pain is the neural activity (no quote marks), Clearly 'the pain' is not 'the neural activity', since the second is longer than the first and contains the letter 'v'. After all this arguing, you seem to have now agreed that the identity is true: indeed, there is one thing, 'viewed' from different 'aspects': that is, described in different ways. This seems similar to the dual-aspect position >of Rosenberg and of quantum theory, but Hayes speaks of two >`descriptions' rather than two really existing properties or activities. The term used until now was 'aspect', not 'properties or activities'. Please choose one of these three (all different!). > >So Hayes's statement that `the pain' IS `the neural activity' does not mean >what you and most people would take it to mean. It does not mean that that >`excruciating feeling that you actually feel' is the very same thing as some >equally real thing, the `motions of some particles in your head'. NO! That is exactly what it *does* mean! That these are the SAME THING, DESCRIBED DIFFERENTLY. You said it perfectly at the beginning of your last message to me, so why do you now distort it? >Its meaning is more like the assertion that `the Morning Star' IS >`the Evening Star' (both being Venus) where these phrases `the Morning Star' > and `the Evening Star' designate the *cause* of the experiences called >"the Morning Star" and "the Evening Star". NO NO NO. If 'morning star' refers to a planet, then it is true to assert that ms = es.(getting too tired to type) If it refers to an experience, then the identity is simply false. Your two kinds of quotation mark here are both just quotation marks! When we say "the Morning Star" we had better be referring to the thing called 'the morning star', whatever that is, since these are THE SAME THREE WORDS. This has nothing whatever to do with causes. ......> >Well, this is what the situation seems to me to be, but I would welcome >corrections, or improvements. (I am basing my conception of the >functionalist position on my understanding of Pat Hayes's recent >communications, but am not sure whether this is the official party line, or >simply Pat's own version Oh, its mine: I never claim to be speaking for any Party ;-) Pat PS theres a more constructive aspect to this debate. From acomputaional point of view, you see, an account of the structure of phenomena would reagard them as, in a sense, *being* descriptions: so to say that the subjective pain is the neural activity described differntly is not to dismiss the reality of the phenomenal, but rather to approach a way of understanding what its structure might be: ultimately, a syntactic structure (though very complex and made of *physical symbols*). In a word: the phemomena of pain is the way that the brain decribes the neural event in its inner phenomenal represrentation of itself. This is why what seems to you to be a denial or dismissal seems rather to me to be the beginings of a useful theory. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Beckman Institute (217)244 1616 office University of Illinois (217)328 3947 or (415)855 9043 home 405 North Mathews Avenue (217)244 8371 fax Urbana, IL. 61801 Phayes@ai.uiuc.edu ----------------------------------------------------------------------