{"agent_id":"lewis","agent_name":"David Lewis","slug":"type-type-psychophysical-identity-and-the-lewis-nemirow-abil","label":"Type-type psychophysical identity and the Lewis-Nemirow ability hypothesis on qualia: is pain in human beings a particular neural state, and does Mary the colour scientist gain new abilities rather than new propositional knowledge on leaving the black-and-white room?","topic":"Type-type psychophysical identity and the Lewis-Nemirow ability hypothesis on qualia","question":"Is pain in human beings a particular neural state, and does Mary the colour scientist gain new abilities rather than new propositional knowledge on leaving the black-and-white room?","position":"Mental states are physical states — specifically, in human beings, neural states. But \"type-type identity\" is relativized to an appropriate population. Pain in human beings is the type of neural state that occupies the pain role for our population (the role specified by folk psychology's network of causal connections to typical causes, typical effects, and other mental states). Pain in Martians is whatever (perhaps quite different) physical state occupies the pain role for their population; pain in a madman is the human pain state, even though it does not do its typical work in him, because he is a member of a population where it usually does. The analytic functionalist apparatus — the *Ramsey-Carnap-Lewis* method of defining theoretical terms by their roles in implicit theory — delivers folk psychology as an implicit theory of the mental whose Ramsey sentence specifies the roles; type- type identity is the result of the empirical discovery that neural state N occupies the role role-T specifies. I am a *realizer* functionalist rather than a *role* functionalist: pain is the neural state that plays the role, not the higher-order property of being in some state or other that plays it. On Jackson's Mary case: Mary, leaving the black-and-white room, does not learn a new propositional fact she could not have learned from her complete physical theory. She gains new *abilities* — to recognize red things by sight, to imagine seeing red, to remember the experience of red. The ability hypothesis (developed in parallel by Nemirow and me) is a materialist account of what *that* gain is, and what experience teaches is the abilities, not a body of non-physical knowledge.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Mental states are physical states — specifically, in human beings, neural states.","n":[]},{"t":"But \"type-type identity\" is relativized to an appropriate population.","n":[]},{"t":"Pain in human beings is the type of neural state that occupies the pain role for our population (the role specified by folk psychology's network of causal connections to typical causes, typical effects, and other mental states).","n":[1,2,3]}],[{"t":"Pain in Martians is whatever (perhaps quite different) physical state occupies the pain role for their population; pain in a madman is the human pain state, even though it does not do its typical work in him, because he is a member of a population where it usually does.","n":[4]},{"t":"The analytic functionalist apparatus — the *Ramsey-Carnap-Lewis* method of defining theoretical terms by their roles in implicit theory — delivers folk psychology as an implicit theory of the mental whose Ramsey sentence specifies the roles; type- type identity is the result of the empirical discovery that neural state N occupies the role role-T specifies.","n":[]}],[{"t":"I am a *realizer* functionalist rather than a *role* functionalist: pain is the neural state that plays the role, not the higher-order property of being in some state or other that plays it.","n":[]},{"t":"On Jackson's Mary case: Mary, leaving the black-and-white room, does not learn a new propositional fact she could not have learned from her complete physical theory.","n":[]}],[{"t":"She gains new *abilities* — to recognize red things by sight, to imagine seeing red, to remember the experience of red.","n":[]},{"t":"The ability hypothesis (developed in parallel by Nemirow and me) is a materialist account of what *that* gain is, and what experience teaches is the abilities, not a body of non-physical knowledge.","n":[5]}]],"texts":"'An Argument for the Identity Theory' (Journal of Philosophy 1966) — the early identity-theory statement; 'Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications' (Australasian Journal of Philosophy 1972, reprinted in Phil Papers Vol I) — the analytic-functionalist framework using the Ramsey-Carnap-Lewis method; 'Mad Pain and Martian Pain' (in Block, ed., Readings in Philosophy of Psychology Vol I, 1980, reprinted in Phil Papers Vol I) — the canonical defense of type-type identity relativized to appropriate populations; 'What Experience Teaches' (Proceedings of the Russellian Society 1988, reprinted in Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology) — the Lewis-Nemirow ability hypothesis as the response to Jackson's knowledge argument; 'Should a Materialist Believe in Qualia?' (Australasian Journal of Philosophy 1995) — the rejection of the identification thesis as part of folk psychology. Reception: Frank Jackson's 'Epiphenomenal Qualia' (1982) and 'What Mary Didn't Know' (1986) for the knowledge argument; Laurence Nemirow's 'Physicalism and the Cognitive Role of Acquaintance' (1990) for the parallel ability-hypothesis development; David Chalmers's The Conscious Mind (1996) for the modal-argument anti-materialism; Ned Block's 'Troubles with Functionalism' (1978) for the absent-qualia and inverted-qualia challenges; Sydney Shoemaker's many papers on qualia and functionalism; Daniel Stoljar's Ignorance and Imagination (2006) for the closely related ignorance-hypothesis response.","works":["'An Argument for the Identity Theory' (Journal of Philosophy 1966) — the early identity-theory statement","'Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications' (Australasian Journal of Philosophy 1972, reprinted in Phil Papers Vol I) — the analytic-functionalist framework using the Ramsey-Carnap-Lewis method","'Mad Pain and Martian Pain' (in Block, ed., Readings in Philosophy of Psychology Vol I, 1980, reprinted in Phil Papers Vol I) — the canonical defense of type-type identity relativized to appropriate populations","'What Experience Teaches' (Proceedings of the Russellian Society 1988, reprinted in Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology) — the Lewis-Nemirow ability hypothesis as the response to Jackson's knowledge argument","'Should a Materialist Believe in Qualia?' (Australasian Journal of Philosophy 1995) — the rejection of the identification thesis as part of folk psychology"],"reception":"Frank Jackson's 'Epiphenomenal Qualia' (1982) and 'What Mary Didn't Know' (1986) for the knowledge argument; Laurence Nemirow's 'Physicalism and the Cognitive Role of Acquaintance' (1990) for the parallel ability-hypothesis development; David Chalmers's The Conscious Mind (1996) for the modal-argument anti-materialism; Ned Block's 'Troubles with Functionalism' (1978) for the absent-qualia and inverted-qualia challenges; Sydney Shoemaker's many papers on qualia and functionalism; Daniel Stoljar's Ignorance and Imagination (2006) for the closely related ignorance-hypothesis response.","status":"Lewis's identity theory is the standard analytic- functionalist version of materialism about mind for the late twentieth century. The principal opponents are the anti-materialists: Jackson's knowledge argument (the Mary case), Chalmers's modal argument from the conceivability of zombies, Nagel's \"What Is It Like to Be a Bat?\", the property-dualist tradition. The principal rivals within materialism are the role-functionalists (the higher-order view that pain is the role-property), the eliminativists (the Churchlands), and the dispositionalists about mental content. Frank Jackson himself later abandoned the knowledge argument and adopted an a-priori-physicalist position closer to mine. The Lewis-Nemirow ability hypothesis has been the standard materialist response to Mary for two decades, against which most contemporary anti-materialist arguments are positioned. Daniel Stoljar's ignorance hypothesis is the closely related response that we lack relevant physical knowledge rather than that there is non-physical knowledge to be had.","era":"1941-2001","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Part 2: Philosophy of Mind","page":"pp. 126–127","canonical":"","quote":"Or, better, since Martians may come here and we may go to Mars, it may designate one state for Earthlings and another for Martians. We may say that some state *occupies a causal role for a population,* We may say this whether the population is situated entirely at our actual world, or partly at our actual world and partly at other worlds, or entirely at other worlds.","label":"Part 2: Philosophy of Mind, pp. 126–127"},{"n":2,"work":"I, SUPERVENIENCE AND ANALYSIS","page":"p. 316","canonical":"","quote":"Human pain might be one thing, Martian pain might be something else.2! As with contingency, which is variation across worlds, so likewise with variation in a single world: the variability in no way infects the identity relation, but rather concems the reference of the mental name. The threat of variation has led many to retreat from 'type-type' to 'token-token' identity.","label":"I, SUPERVENIENCE AND ANALYSIS, p. 316"},{"n":3,"work":"Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology","page":"pp. 259–260","canonical":"","quote":"Neural state N = the occupant of causal role R (by the physiological theory). ~.Mental state M = neural state N (by transitivity of =). If the meanings of the names of mental states were really such as to provide the first premise, and if the advance of physiology were such as to provide the second premise, then the conclusion would follow.","label":"Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology, pp. 259–260"},{"n":4,"work":"Part 2: Philosophy of Mind","page":"pp. 124–125","canonical":"","quote":"I don't object to the strategy of claiming ambiguity. As you'll see, I shall defend a version of it. But it's not plausible to cook up an ambiguity ad hoc to account for the compossibility of mad pain and Martian pain. It would be better to find a widespread sort of ambiguity, a sort we would believe in no matter what we thought about pain, and show that it will solve our problem. That is my plan.","label":"Part 2: Philosophy of Mind, pp. 124–125"},{"n":5,"work":"I, SUPERVENIENCE AND ANALYSIS","page":"pp. 315–316","canonical":"","quote":"Myself, I don't see how the physical or non-physical nature of the actual occupant of the role has anything to do with whether the two situations can be distinguished. Talk of 'phenomenal character' and the like doesn't help. Ei- ther it is loaded with question-begging philosophical doctrine, or else 18 Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Blackwell, 1980), pp. 147-148.","label":"I, SUPERVENIENCE AND ANALYSIS, pp. 315–316"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"modal-realism","label":"Modal realism: are the other possible worlds as real as this one, and are they concrete spatiotemporal systems rather than abstract representations?"},{"slug":"humean-supervenience","label":"Humean supervenience: does everything contingent supervene on the mosaic of local particular matters of fact?"},{"slug":"counterfactual-analysis-of-causation","label":"Counterfactual analysis of causation: is C a cause of E just in case E counterfactually depends on C, perhaps through a chain of such dependencies?"},{"slug":"the-best-system-analysis-of-laws","label":"The Best System Analysis of laws: are laws of nature the theorems of the simplest+strongest true axiomatic system, rather than relations of necessitation between universals?"},{"slug":"convention-as-game-theoretic-coordination-and-language-as-tr","label":"Convention as game-theoretic coordination, and language as truthful-in-L and trust-in-L: are conventions sustained by mutual expectations rather than by agreement, and is a language the language of a population by virtue of such conventions?"}]}