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two conflicting proposals

Suppose one thought that qualitative differences (or at least some of them) are accounted for by material differences in neurons. Seeing and hearing are different because of differences in neurons... neurons, that is in the visual cortex and the corresponding auditory site and/or differences in the receptor neurons (rods, cones, etc). We'll call this material/qualia theory.
Such a supposer could not at the same time agree that that functionalism is true. I.e., that the same cognition can be had in different media as long as, from the perspective of logical circuitry, they are equivalent (same combination of nand gates, etc., whether they are made of buckets with water or radio tubes or whatever). We'll call this formal/qualia theory.
The two ways of accounting for differences in cognition are inconsistent with each other: which is not the same as saying that one of them is true.

Comments

Unknown said…
Some would say that the brain is a quantum computer. If so, then it can't be represented by the logic gates you mentioned. Were a quantum computer built, it also would be impossible to mimic a particular brain configuration because of the indeterminacy of the system.
1:27 PM
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