Thanks for responding to my argument about functionalism. But I need more help.

You say:
"Surely there is a logical error here. One must distinguish knowing what it is
to experience something, and knowing what it is that one experiences."

A lot has been said about the best language to use in these matters.

In my way of speaking, that psychological event that happens
when I, 1) look at a red apple (that someone has placed on a table) and 2)
become consciously aware if it, I call an `experience'.
I call this experience itself the `experienced red apple'
to distinguish it from a (presumed to exist) `red apple' that is the (presumed)
cause of the occurrence of the `experienced red apple'. In any case, I want
some language that distinguishes an experience itself from some putative cause
of that experience. Thus by the `experienced pain' I mean the experience
itself. 

A pattern P of brain activity that implements a functional structure
F is a real pattern of physical activity, and it implements a real
efficacious functional structure. If one accepts the complete adequacy of
classical mechanics for dealing with the mind/brain problem then one has 
a rational model in which one can speak coherently of this real efficacious
functional structure without being forced *by the premises of the rational
model* to say anything about any experience. This is because felt experiences
are never mentioned by these principles, which therefore have no capacity
to deduce or entail when or where such things enter. Some extra postulate 
would be needed to bring experiences into classical mechanics in a well 
defined way. Thus one could perhaps postulate, in order to expand
the scope of the theory, that the theory now encompass things called 
experiences, and that ``If a pattern P of brain activity occurs that 
implements a functional structure F then an experience E(F) occurs".
One might adopt in this case the terminology that  `E(F) is the experience 
*of* the functional activity F in the brain'  But then one would have F 
*causing* E(F), rather than *being* F, and one would then have to deal with 
this awkward second level in the ontology, and with a danger of infinite 
regress. Or one could abandon classical mechanics as the basic physics, 
and go to the deeper physical theory, quantum theory, that has experience 
already inextricably woven into the basic dynamics: i.e., exploit the hard 
work the physicists have already done, and were forced to do in order to 
comprehend elementary physical phenomena. But if one stays with classical 
mechanics then one already has a clear and rationally coherent conception 
of the physical and functional levels of structure that does not logically 
entail the existence of other things, independently known to us, such as an 
`experienced pain': there is just nothing within the classical mechanics 
framework, which is logically complete, that would entail or imply the
existence of something like an `experienced pain' that is 1) independently 
known to us but 2) never mentioned in the theory.

In your counter-argument you say:

"Now, I knew before this event what it was
to experience the sounds, and even how to achieve those experiences; but
until then I did not know what I was experiencing. I didnt know what those
sounds *were*." 

That is a strange way of talking. You knew what the experience was, what 
the `experienced sound' was. What you did not know was what `caused' or
`produced' the experience. Your story emphasizes the distinction between
the experience itself, which you knew very well, and some physical activity
that is not the very same thing, since, as you yourself emphasized, you 
knew one intimately without knowing  anything about the other. Similarly, 
if the classical-mechanical conception of physical activity extends accurately
into the brain itself, then you could know the experience called 
`experienced pain' without knowing what the corresponding physical/functional
in the brain is. 

In the quantum framework, however, experience is inseparable from function.
The experiential/conceptual aspect of nature is intrinsically tied up with the 
physical/functional aspect according to (the Bohr-von-Neumann-Wigner) 
quantum mechanics. Thus quantum theory, which was designed by physicists
to provide a closed account of (experienced) phenomena, would seem to provide
a much more satisfactory foundation for a functionalist philosophy than
classical mechanics.

Henry P. Stapp <hpstapp@lbl.gov>

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Theoretical Physics Group (50A 3115)
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
University of California
Berkeley CA 94720

[http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html]
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