Single Idea 6546

[catalogued under 15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / c. Explaining qualia]

Full Idea

Our phenomenal experience of pain has components - it is a complex, consisting (perhaps) of urges, desires, impulses, and beliefs, probably occurring at quite different levels of institutional abstraction.

Gist of Idea

Pain is composed of urges, desires, impulses etc, at different levels of abstraction

Source

William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.5)

Book Reference

Lycan,William G.: 'Consciousness' [MIT 1995], p.62


A Reaction

This seems to be true, and offers the reductionist a strategy for making inroads into the supposed irreducable and fundamental nature of qualia. What's it like to be a complex hierarchically structured multi-functional organism?