What Does the Nation of China Think About Phenomenal States?
BRYCE HUEBNER, MICHAEL BRUNO, & HAGOP SARKISSIAN
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~mbruno/ChinaPstates.pdf
Abstract:
Critics of functionalism about the mind often rely on the intuition that col-
lectivities cannot be conscious in motivating their positions. In this paper,
we consider the merits of appealing to the intuition that there is nothing that
it’s like to be a collectivity. We demonstrate that collective mentality is not
an affront to commonsense, and we report evidence that demonstrates that
the intuition that there is nothing that it’s like to be a collectivity is, to some
extent, culturally specific rather than universally held. This being the case,
we argue that mere appeal to the intuitive implausibility of collective con-
sciousness does not offer any genuine insight into the nature of mentality in
general, nor the nature of consciousness in particular.
