Counterfactuals cannot count: A rejoinder to David Chalmers

Author: Bishop M.

Source: Consciousness and Cognition, Volume 11, Number 4, December 2002 , pp. 642-652(11)

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Abstract:

The initial argument presented herein is not significantly original—it is a simple reflection upon a notion of computation originally developed by Putnam (Putnam, 1988; see also Searle, 1990) and criticised by Chalmers et al. (Chalmers, 1994, 1996a, b; see also the special issue, What is Computation?, in Minds and Machines, 4:4, November 1994). In what follows, instead of seeking to justify Putnam’s conclusion that every open system implements every Finite State Automaton (FSA) and hence that psychological states of the brain cannot be functional states of a computer, I will establish the weaker result that, over a finite time window every open system implements the trace of FSAQ, as it executes program (P) on input (I). If correct the resulting bold philosophical claim is that phenomenal states—such as feelings and visual experiences—can never be understood or explained functionally.

Language: English

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1053-8100(02)00023-5

Publication date: 2002-12-01