Estados cualitativos
Juan Camilo Espejo-Serna
Universidad de la Sabana
Algunos términos importantes
Estado funcionalmente definible
So one way of putting out question is to ask whether anything could be evidence (for anyone) that someone was not in pain, given that it follows from the states he is in, plus the psychological laws that are true of him (the laws which describe the relationships of his states to one another and to input and output), that the totality of possible behavioral evidence plus the totality of possible introspective evidence points unambiguously to the conclusion that he is in pain? I do not see how anything could be. (p. 296)
To hold that it is logically possible (or, worse, nomologically possible) that a state lacking qualitative character should be functionally identical to a state having qualitative character is to make qualitative character irrelevant both to what we can take ourselves to know in knowing about the mental states of others and also to what we can take ourselves to know in knowing about our own mental states.(p. 296)
If I see something, it looks somehow to me, and the way it looks resembles and differs, in varying degrees and various respects, the ways other things look to me or have looked to me on other occasions. It is because similarities and differences between these 'ways of being appeared to' correlate in systematic ways with similarities and differences between objects we see that we are a between objects we see that we are able to see these objects and the properties of them in virtue of which the similarities and differences obtain.Being appeared to in a certain way, e.g., things looking to one the way things now look to me as I stare out my window, I take to be a qualitative state. So seeing essentially involves the occurrence of qualitative states.(p. 299)
S sees something to be blue if and only if (1) S has a repertory of qualitative states which includes a set of states K which are associated with the colors of objects in such a way that (a) visual stimulation by an object of a certain color under 'standard conditions' produces in the person the associated qualitative state, and (b) the degrees of 'qualitative' or 'phenomenological' similarity between the states in K correspond to the degrees of similarity between the associated colors, and (2) person S (a) is at present in the qualitative state associated with the color blue, (b) is so as the result of visual stimulation by something blue and (c) believes, because of (a) and (b), that there is something blue before him.
S ve azul sii
- S tiene un repertorio de estados cualitativos que inlcuyen un conjunto de estados K asociados con colores de manera que
- Estimulación visual por parte de un objeto con tal color (bajo condiciones normales) produce en la persona el estado cualitativo asociado.
- Los grados de semejanza entre estados en K corresponde a los grados de semejanza entre los colores asociados
- y si la persona S
-
está en un estado cualitativo asociado con el color azul
- está en tal estado como resultado de la estimulación visual de algo azul
- cree que por lo anterior que hay algo azul presente
A S se la aparece azul si
- S tiene un repertorio de estados cualitativos que inlcuyen un conjunto de estados K asociados con colores de manera que
- Estimulación visual por parte de un objeto con tal color (bajo condiciones normales) produce en la persona el estado cualitativo asociado.
- Los grados de semejanza entre estados en K corresponde a los grados de semejanza entre los colores asociados
- Una persona S
-
está en un estado cualitativo asociado con el color azul
Qualia invertidos y ausentes
Suposición: es posible tener una forma de mapear la inversión de los qualia
What strikes us most about spectrum inversion is that if it can occur intersubjectively there would appear to be no way of telling whether the color experience of two persons is the same or whether their color spectrums are inverted relative to each other... And the situation seems very different when we consider the case of intrasubjective spectrum inversion. In the first place, it seems that such a change would reveal itself to the introspection, or introspection cum memory, of the person in whom it occurred. (303)
To claim that spectrum inversion is possible but that it is undetectable even in the intrasubjective case would be to sever the connection we suppose to hold between qualitative states and introspective awareness of them (between them and the qualitative beliefs to which they give rise), and also their connections to perceptual beliefs about the world and, via these beliefs, to behavior.
(303)
If we recast this view in functionalist terms, it comes out as the view that what constitutes experiences being qualitatively similar is, in part anyhow, that they give rise, or tend to give rise, to their subject's having a qualitative belief to the effect that such a similarity holds, and, in virtue of this belief, a disposition to make verbal reports to this effect. But as a functional definition of qualitative similarity this would of course be circular. If we are trying to explain what it means for experiences to be similar, we cannot take as already understood, and as available for use in our explanation, the notion of believing experiences to be similar.
(305)
If spectrum inversion is possible, we do not want to make the occurrence of any particular qualitative state a necessary condition of seeing (or seeming to see) something blue, but we do want to require that at any given time in the history of a person there is some qualitative state or other that is (at that time) standardly involved in his seeing (or seeming to see) blue things. The specification of the roles of the qualitative states in the seeing of blue things wiU no doubt invoke the notions of qualitative similarity and difference; but this causes no difficulties for a functionalist if, as I have suggested, these notions can themselves be functionally defined. (307-308)
it is characteristic of pains to give rise to introspective awareness of themselves as having particular qualitative characters, and so to give rise to 'qualitative beliefs', and I used this to argue that any state functionally identical to a state having qualitative character (e.g., a pain) must itself have qualitative character.
No doubt pains give rise to qualitative beliefs of the sort that (so I am allowing) cannot be functionally defined, i.e., beliefs to the effect that one is having some specific qualitative state. But they also give rise to beliefs to the effect that one is in pain - and if (as the 'absent qualia argument' apparently assumes) pain is necessarily a state having qualitative character, then the belief that one is in pain presumably involves (at least in the case of a reflective person) the belief that one is in a state having some qualitative state or other. And while the latter belief is a qualitative belief, its propositional content quantifies over qualitative states rather than involving reference to particular qualitative states. No reason has been given why qualitative beliefs of this sort should not be regarded as functionally definable.(309)
Para la próxima
- Dennett, D "Quineando a los qualia" Primera mitad, hasta antes del generador de intuiciones 8 (p. 234) (★)