CGSC 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Chinese Room, Readwrite, Qualia
26 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Mental states are defined in terms of their relationships to (1) sensory inputs, (ii) other mental states, and (iii) behavioural outputs. These relationships comprise the state"s functional role. On this view, mental state concepts are functional concepts. These are defined independently on their physical make-up. Relation to sensory inputs: tends to be caused by bodily damage or trauma. Relation to behavioural outputs: tends to cause wincing, nursing of affected area, swearing. Relation to other mental states: tends to cause feeling of distress, desire for pain to stop. According to functionalism, any state that plays this functional role is a pain. Turing machine: infinite tape (memory, read-write head (memory bus, machine table: table of transition rules (program) E. g. if the machine is in state 1 and the cell being scanned contains a 0", then move into state 2 and shift one cell to the right. The turing test aka the imitation game.
