Tuesday, November 17, 2009

What Does the Nation of China Think About Phenomenal States?

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.

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