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Summary Chapter 2 - What is it like to be (detailed)
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This is a very detailed summary on Chapter 2 - What is it like to be ? of the Consciousness book (S.Blackmore) Third Edition
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When we say that another organism is conscious we mean that ‘there issomething it is like to be that organism [. . .] something it is like for the
organism’
→ No current agreement on the definition of consciousness
Ned Block: “phenomenal consciousness”, p-consciousness or phenomenality
- experience; what makes a state phenomenally conscious is that there is
some- thing “it is like” to be in that state’
Distinguishes this from “access consciousness or A-consciousness
- Availability for use in reasoning and rationally guiding speech and action
Block asks ‘whether phenomenal consciousness includes the cognitive
accessibility underlying reportability’
→T he distinction seem unnecessary
→ when wee study phenomenality we have to listen to what people say
Reportability should be part of definition of consciousness
- places enormous significance on the role of language and the
communicative context in which language is used
- Leads us to ask whether these accessible and reportable contents are all
there is to consciousness ?
Reflective consciousness - subsection of Block “Access consciousness”
- Higher-order reflection about consciousness (thinking about thinking)
Some reject the distinction, some say there’s only reportable stuff..
Subjectivity & Qualia
Qualia: qualities of the subjective experience
- To emphasize quality and get away from talking about the physical
properties → point to experience itself
Quale: what something is like
Conscious Experience: consists of qualia & ‘The problem of consciousness is
identical with the problem of qualia, because conscious states are qualitative
states right down to the ground
problem of consciousness:
- how qualia relate to the physical world, or how objective brains and bodies
produce subjective qualia
Dennett:
- In essay (Quining qualia) sets out to convince people that there aren't
properties as qualia & what he rejects is this last use of the term
- does not deny the reality of conscious experience as something that has
properties, nor does he deny that we say things and make judgements
about our own experiences.
- Denies the existence of ineffable, intrinsic, private, directly appregensible
“raw feels” → claims people tend to mean when they talk about qualia
, Provides many ‘intuition pumps’ (his term for thought experiments designed to
draw intuitions to the surface) to undermine this natural way of thinking
- Beer example
Problem of qualia:
- What is the version that people believe in?
- Little consensus about what the term means or why it is needed at all
- We cannot do experiments on qualia (but can do thought experiments )
Perhaps what qualia really offer is a way of making it philosophically acceptable
to talk about ‘how it feels’
- trouble is that this may also tempt us into thinking that the
impressive-sounding qualia are more special, more mysterious, and more
totally separate from physical stuff than is necessarily the case.
Thought experiments: experiments done with the mind
Designed (not to manipulate the world or provide definitive answers) but to
manipulate minds and clarify thinking.
- Function is to make u think
Mary the colour scientist
If you think mary will be surprised when coming out of the black and white room
- You probably believe that consciousness, subjective experience or qualia
are something additional to knowledge of the physical world.
- Not because there are irreducibly subjective facts in the world
→ are you forced to reject materialism and adopt dualism?
Chalmer: does so
- no amount of knowledge about, or reasoning from, the physical facts
could have prepared her for the raw feel of what it is like to see a blue sky
or green grass
- the physical facts about the world are not all there is to know, and
therefore materialism has to be false
If you deny Mary will be surprised:
- You likely believe that knowing all the physical facts tells you everything
there is to know - including what it is like to experience something
Christopher Maloney:
Test: choose a color and give mary a detailed neurophysiological description of
the state associated with seeing the color
If Mary really understands all there is to know about the physical nature of
colour vision, she must be perfectly well able to imagine what seeing that
particular shade of mauve would be like → then expose her to a range of colour
samples and get her to select the pale mauve she had imagined
Maloney: believes she would pass the test
Paul Churchland
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