Mindfulness or Mindlessness?

[vulcanlogician]

Pain, in the functionalist view, is whatever causes attentive behaviors towards bodily damage.

That's the behaviorist's model. The behaviorist doesn't need to posit any kind of conscious experience in that formula, though. And when people hear that, they want to ask the behaviorist "How come we have conscious experiences then?" There are two ways out of this. 1) straight epiphenomenalism, and 2) functionalism. Functionalism says something like a pain state plays an intermediary role... that IT is just one causal artifact in the line of succession between the firing of neurons and a motor response. It's there because it plays a role in the causal chain. And its qualities are explicable by what role it plays in that causal chain. No other explanation, according to the functionalist, is necessary.

This is a succinct view. That's what I like about it. But then ontological irreducibility comes along as a challenge to that view.

That could be different species to species, machine to machine - and it may even be that there are phenomenal concepts absent between groups of real or hypothetical beings.

Sure. But bringing machines into the realm of potentially conscious beings raises further questions. Some postulate that any information feedback mechanism produces conscious states. If they are correct, then the back of our toilets are "slightly conscious." And if that's true, there is some law of the universe concerning production of conscious states that we have yet to discover.

You tell me..what's the mystery?  All available evidence seems to indicate that the thing we've been calling mind is very much body.  Plenty of mysteries about that body....but a mystery about some mind-body problem?  You sure that's not an example of folk intuition, itself?

It's intuition, yes. At least half of it. But I think I've done due diligence concerning exactly where my intuitions may err. Maybe that makes it less "folky"? (shrug)

You and Angrboda seem to think that asking questions about the mind is a rejection of physicalism. It isn't. I have no problems accepting the view that mind is a physical phenomenon. I thought I made this clear when I stated that I think all mental states are causally reducible to brain states. If that is the case (and that's what I believe) there is no room (or need) for the Cartesian soul in there.

My issue is the ontological reduction. It doesn't gel. There is no physical thing called "pain" on the tip of a pin that transfers into your finger during a pin prick. When you examine a neuron, or the brain, you won't find the quality of pain there. The universe is colorless. The brain is colorless. We know that. The question is: how do you produce color from non-color? How do you produce pain from non-pain? The brain does both of these things, and we have no idea how. It *IS* a mystery. Consciousness is a mystery. Plain and simple.