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Subj:	Re: Reply to Hayes 5
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Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 01:45:52 -0600
To: STAPP@theorm.lbl.gov
From: phayes@cs.uiuc.edu (Pat Hayes)
Subject: Re: Reply to Hayes 5
Cc: klein@adage.berkeley.edu, phayes@cs.uiuc.edu, A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk,
        keith@imprint.co.uk, mckee@neosoft.com, brings@rpi.edu,
        ghrosenb@phil.indiana.edu, patrickw@cs.monash.edu.au
Dear Henry-
>Your position is that P is something described in phenomenal terms, and that
>F is that same thing described in functional terms, so that P=F.
Yes, exactly. Thanks, I wish I had been able to say it so succinctly!
>This can be compared to the alternative way of describing the (same ?)
>situation in which P denotes the phenomenal aspects of something and
>F r...
Well, if you insist on speaking of 'aspects'. But then surely we need some
way of referring to the thing of which these are the (phen. or funct.)
aspects. I'm not sure how you would like to do this, but my own
understanding (admittedly partial and sketchy at present) suggests that
each 'aspect-of' is something like a function which selects 'part' of the
thing to be displayed in that aspectual manner, as it were. Lets use
lowercase letters for the corresponding functions, then we have something
like
(exists x)( P=p(x)  and F=f(x) )
My original 'identity' claim is here expressed by the single variable
occurring in both functional arguments: contrast this with
(exist x,y)( P=p(x)  and F=f(y) and x=/=y )
which would state that there were two different things, one with phenomenal
aspects and one with functional ones. I see no need to hypothesise two
things if one will do.
 >
>You resist giving any ontological status to `experience':
>"I have no idea what... `experiences'... are...  . It is one thing to say
>that I experience a pain but something else to say that therefore something
>exists, called an experience, ..."
>
>One might call your account a descriptional account and the other an
>an ontological account, in the sense that for you the different symbols
>represent the things characterized by different descriptions, whereas
>in the other account different symbols represent different ontological
>aspects.
Yes, I had thought that is how we had been using the P/F abbreviation.
Descriptions refer to the things they describe: surely this is the way that
language is normally used?  For the record, I still have no idea what an
'ontological aspect' is.
>Your account is perhaps less rich, .......
Overly rich food are bad for one. I'm a firm believer in as spartan an
ontological diet as possible. ;-)
>
>But it would not be accurate to characterize the meaning of your formula
>P=F as saying that `the pain' IS `the functional activity': you are saying
>rather that the phenomenal and functional descriptions are two descriptions
>of one and the same thing.
Thats exactly the same. If A and B are two descriptions, then asserting
that A IS B, asserts precisely that A and B describe one and the same
thing.
>You say:
>"Something is happening, and I experience it as a pain in my foot. I still
>see no reason why this description might not be taken to refer to some neural
>event in my brain. Of course this event has a phenomenal aspect *to me*,
>because its my brain in which it is taking place, so that one might expect
>that I have a rather priviledged way of sensing it and describing it."
>
>This sound very similar to my formulation: "F is experienced as P",
>and to the dual-aspect ontology, in which one single (quantum ?)
>event has both a phenomenal and a physical aspect. This makes it look like
>maybe the difference between us is mainly a matter of what the symbols P and F
>are supposed to mean, as suggested in the opening paragraphs,
Perhaps so, indeed. Clearly we need to be much more careful with
use/mention distinctions in these discussions.
 plus a
>commitment on my part to say something more about this `experiencing',
>or `I experience' that is somehow connected to the phenomenal aspect or
>phenomenal description. In my book I endeavour to explain the "I", and the
>"I experience". And I  explain, within the mathematical framework of
>contemporary science, how the phenomenal and functional descriptions are
>descriptions of the same event.
Indeed, perhaps we have simply been wasting electronic paper. It seemed to
me that you had been insisting on the exact negation of this all along. If
two descriptions are descriptions of the same thing, then the sentence
consisting of the first description, followed by "is" (or an equality
sign), followed by the second description, is *true*. That is, P=F.
Look, you can't have it both ways. Are there two entities or one? If two
(and one is the experiencing of the other, or some such) then P=/=F. If
one, described in two different ways, then P=F.
I'm still not *quite* clear what your position is.
Pat
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