How does the mind process sensory inputs? Sensory experiences in the mind have the label 'qualia' (Kim, J):
- Sensations have characteristic qualitative features; these are called "phenomenal" or "phenomenological" or "sensory" qualities-"qualia" is now the standard term. Seeing a ripe tomato has a certain distinctive sensory quality that is unmistakably different from the sensory quality involved in see a bunch of spinach leaves. We are familiar with the smells of roses and ammonia; we can tell the sound of a drum from that of a gong; the feel of a cool, smooth granite countertop as we run our fingers over it is distinctively different from the feel of sandpaper. Our waking life is a continuous fast of qualia- colors, smells, sounds and all the rest. When we are temporarily unable to taste or smell properly because of a bad cold, eating a favorite food can be like chewing cardboard and we are made acutely aware of what is missing from our experience.
How do these sensory qualities determine how we feel overall? Does the physical match up with the mental? (Kim, J):
- On the functionalist account, mental states are realized by the internal physical states of the psychological subject; so for humans, the experience of red, as a mental state, is realized by a specific neural state. This means that you and I cannot differ in respect of the qualia we experience as long as we are in the same neural state; given that both you and I are in the same neural state, something that is in principle ascertainable by observation, either both of us experience red or neither does.
So some aspects of mental states are physical and some are mental - here is another quote from the same author (Kim, J):
- In any case, is seems plausible that there are conscious mental states with no special phenomenal character. In general, mental occurrences that we call "experiences" appear to be those that possess phenomenal properties. Sensing and perceiving are experiences, but we do not think of believing and thinking as experiences. If this is so, the idea of phenomenal character and the idea of there being something it is like may come apart, though only slightly. For it certainly seems that there is something it is like to believe something, to suspend judgment about something, to wonder about something, or to hope for something. But as we saw, at least many instances of these states do not seem to have any phenomenal character.
How does someone know when they are conscious of something or in a conscious state? A good way to answer that would be to compare animals to humans, as that might illustrate how humans are more conscious. - Can you attribute intentionality without attributing consciousness? Here (Gennaro, R) asks that question:
- Can significant explanatory power be achieved by making intentional attributions without attributions of consciousness? It seems to me that the answer is clearly yes, as the animals' case in the previous paragraph shows. We would, I suggest, still rightly attribute all unconscious intentional states to such animals. would or should we withdraw intentional attributions to an animal if we later come to agree that it is not conscious? I don't think so. Such attributions are useful in explaining and predicting animal behavior, but it does not follow that they have merely "as-if" intentionality. In some cases, we may not know if they are conscious. The same i suggest, would hold for advanced robots. This is not necessarily to embrace some kind of antirealist Dennetean "intentional stance" position (Dennett 1987). For one thing, we might still agree that those systems have genuine internal mental representations.
