Re: Problem for physicalist evolutionists


There is a distinct difference between whether there was a first
person perspective (as in the Terminator film) or there wasn't. So it
isn't really analogous to heat or temperature, unless you were
suggesting that functionalism was no different to behaviourism, and
that all its vocabulary was simply labels to behaviour.

Functionalism clearly isn't that though. Functionalism acknowledges
the identity of the first person perspective, and attempts to offer an
explanation for it.

What I am pointing out is that people being shown a balloon floating,
and them declaring that it was filled with a gas lighter than air, and
then being asked whether they would expect a difference in behaviour
if they were wrong, and them saying yes, they wouldn't expect it to
float, could justify their belief that what the balloon was filled
with was influential to the behaviour of the balloon.

That's exactly what people have been saying to you.  Possession or not
of an FPP is in virtue of physical differences.  It is you who wasn't
allowing there to be any physical differences.  In which case, the
corresponding balloon example is something like:

(Archimedes was right)
The balloon is floating, and the explanation is that it contains a gas
lighter than air.

vs.
(Archimedes was wrong)
The ballon is floating, irrelevantly it contains a gas lighter than
air.

Archimedes would have admitted that he could have been right or wrong
like *that*.
Can you not see that that isn't a climbdown on falsifiability?

As pointed out though functionalists being shown a robot behaving like
a human, and declaring that it has an FPP, and then when being asked
whether they would expect any difference in behaviour if they were
wrong and them saying no, they would expect it to behave the same
regardless, can't really say that they believe the FPP is influencing
the behaviour of the robot. (The robot is behaving just as they would
expect it to if there wasn't an FPP influencing it.)

You simply ignored the point I was making,

That's freaking hilarious coming from you. A dozen people have been
making the same points to you over and over and you can't even be
bothered to respond to them.

and at the beginning fo
your response tried to make the issue one of different builds behaving
differently.

Yet you know full well that that isn't the point here, as
we were talking earlier about a single build. The point is what the
expected behaviour would be of the build, if the functionalist were to
contemplate that their declaration might not be correct.

This is a really weak attempt at a dodge. You're comparing two
different possible states of one robot. How is that one build? Only
if you assume that FPP isn't part of the build.

As I pointed out in the baloon example which I will label ex_1a below:

(ex_1a) People being shown a balloon floating, and them declaring that
it was filled with a gas lighter than air. When asked whether they
would expect a difference in behaviour if they were wrong about their
theory of it being filled with a gas lighter than air, they respond
"yes", and state they wouldn't expect the balloon to float. Thus they
could justify their belief that whether the balloon was filled with a
gas lighter than air with was influential to the behaviour of the
balloon, as they would expect a different behaviour if it wasn't.

Contrasting with:

(ex_1b) Functionalists being shown a robot behaving like a human, and
them declaring that it has an FPP. When asked whether they would
expect a difference in behaviour if they were wrong about their theory
of it being filled with a gas lighter than air, they respond "no", and
state they wouldn't expect any difference in behaviour.

Why wouldn't they? What is that theory based on? You've been asked
this before and you can't answer. If they're just saying things off
the top of their heads, what difference does that make to anything?

A real physicalist (as opposed to your strawmen) would have to answer
that if the FPP status were different the build would be different,
and they wouldn't be able to predict behavior without knowing what the
change would be.


.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: Problem for physicalist evolutionists
    ... As for them dogmatically declaring that the FPP would not be ... could justify their belief that what the balloon was filled ... identity or perspective of the physical functioning. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: OT : - New Zealand hot-air balloon tragedy
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