more from this thinker | more from this text
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 Ref
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?
12601 | The way things look is a relational matter, not an intrinsic matter [Harman] |
7387 | "Qualia" can be replaced by complex dispositional brain states [Dennett] |
7658 | Obviously there can't be a functional anaylsis of qualia if they are defined by intrinsic properties [Dennett] |
2582 | A brain looks no more likely than anything else to cause qualia [Block] |
7521 | It is question-begging to assume that qualia are totally simple, hence irreducible [Churchlands] |
7523 | The qualia Hard Problem is easy, in comparison with the co-ordination of mental states [Churchlands] |
3226 | Are qualia irrelevant to explaining the mind? [Rey] |
6546 | Pain is composed of urges, desires, impulses etc, at different levels of abstraction [Lycan] |
6547 | The right 'level' for qualia is uncertain, though top (behaviourism) and bottom (particles) are false [Lycan] |
4090 | Weak intentionalism says qualia are extra properties; strong intentionalism says they are intentional [Crane] |
7706 | If qualia supervene on intentional states, then intentional states are explanatorily fundamental [Jacquette] |
7011 | Qualia are not extra appendages, but intrinsic ingredients of material states and processes [Heil] |
4935 | The sensation of red is a point in neural space created by dimensions of neuronal activity [Edelman/Tononi] |