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    Functionalism may be refuted without relying on an invert... — Carmelics
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    Home/Consciousness & Mind
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    Functionalism may be refuted without relying on an inverted spectrum hypothesis

    Consciousness & Mind
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Mary the color scientist, upon leaving her black-and-white room, learns a new fact about red that no functional description captured (Jackson 1982).
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    • 2.If any fact about consciousness escapes complete functional description, then functional role cannot be identical to or sufficient for conscious experience.
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    • 3.The knowledge argument thus refutes functionalism through epistemic asymmetry alone, requiring no modal claims about spectrum inversion or zombies.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Ned Block's distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness identifies qualia whose intrinsic character outruns any causal-functional role (Block 1995).
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    • 2.If phenomenal properties are not exhausted by their causal-functional roles, then functionalism—which identifies mental states solely by such roles—is false.
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    • 3.This argument proceeds entirely from the internal structure of the functionalist thesis itself, not from the contingent possibility of perceptual inversion across subjects.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Zombie scenarios (a conscious subject and a functional duplicate who is not conscious at all) are conceptually coherent
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    • 2.If conceptual coherence entails metaphysical possibility, then zombie scenarios are possible
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    • 3.If zombie scenarios are possible, then functionalism is false
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    Topics

    Consciousness & Mind

    Connections

    1 topic

    Modality & Possibility4 linked

    Related

    If any fact about consciousness escapes complete functional description, then fu...If conceptual coherence entails metaphysical possibility, then zombie scenarios ...If phenomenal properties are not exhausted by their causal-functional roles, the...If zombie scenarios are possible, then functionalism is false
    +6 moreShow less
    Mary the color scientist, upon leaving her black-and-white room, learns a new fa...Ned Block's distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousnes...The knowledge argument thus refutes functionalism through epistemic asymmetry al...This argument proceeds entirely from the internal structure of the functionalist...Zombie scenarios (a conscious subject and a functional duplicate who is not cons...Zombie scenarios are simpler than inverted spectrum scenarios

    Similar

    Any inverted spectrum argument relying on Cartesian intuitions can be ...85%The Inverted Earth scenario sidesteps standard objections to inverted ...81%Standard objections to inverted spectrum scenarios involve complicatio...79%If the inverted spectrum hypothesis is correct, then qualia do not sup...79%

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    SEP: qualia-inverted
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    In any case, there are other conceptually coherent scenarios that are considerably more straightforward than an inverted spectrum scenario, for example a scenario containing a conscious subject and a functional duplicate who is not conscious at all (a “zombie”, in the philosophical sense). So if the move from conceptual coherence to possibility is in fact legitimate, functionalism may be refuted by a simpler argument that does not have an inversion hypothesis as a premise. (Shoemaker is a notabl
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit