Mindfulness or Mindlessness?

[vulcanlogician]

...

It is rather difficult. But not impossible to parse out.

I'm having trouble, I think, with the terms 'role' and 'occupant'.  

I'm not 100% on it, but I think we can figure something out by looking at premise 1 to gather what role P is.

We know from premise 1 that role P is the sensation of pain (or state of pain, to be more precise). So if I prick you on the finger with a pin, you will enter a certain conscious state (pain). Without any knowledge of neuroscience, anyone is familiar with what premise 1 says. So role P isn't a technical term. It's just a variable. 

Role P, in premise 1, refers to the state of pain (with which we are all familiar).

Premise 2 tells us about the same event (a state of pain)... but it explains it from a neuroscientists perspective. Let's stick with the pin prick to the finger example. If I prick your finger with a pin, a neuroscientist would observe that slight tissue damage in your finger would cause the firing of your c-fibers. These c-fibers would carry the signal caused by the pin prick from your peripheral to your central nervous system.

So we have two "stories" about the pin prick. In one story, (from the first-person vantagepoint) you see me prick your finger and you experience pain. In the other "story" (gleaned from a third-person view) the pin prick caused the firing of neurons. The firing of neurons is not involved in the first story. Nor is the sensation of pain (as it is felt) involved in the second story.

So I think "occupant" means that the firing of neurons "occupies" the place where the pain state is in the first story. (Because the pain state, or sensation of pain, doesn't feature in the second story)

Let's put that in terms of "role P." In the first story (from premise 1), role P is played by the sensation of pain. In the second story, role P is played by the firing of neurons. So that (seemingly) leads to the conclusion that the sensation of pain *IS* the firing of neurons... a conclusion with which the author disagrees.