Monist vs. Dualist Experiment?

[genkaus]

Genkaus,

By classifying qualia as a function you hope to avoid the problem of over-determination.
You cannot avoid over-determination by assigning the same functions to brain states and qualia without also asserting that brain states and mental properties are identical, i.e. “they are the ride”.

While your position acknowledges an empirical pairing (correlation) between qualia and brain states, your position cannot supply a causal link explaining why they are so joined. You sidestep this objection by saying that no causal link is required, because mental properties are brain states, just differently described.

Let’s look more closely at your argument, as I understand it:

Premise 1: Quale Q1 performs a function, F1.
Premise 2: Brain state B1 also performs F1.
Premise 3: Q1 and B1 are identical.
Conclusion: If Q1 and B1 are identical then F1 has only a single cause and is not over-determined.

This argument fails because Premise 3 is not true. Q1 and B1 cannot be identical because you can say things about mental properties that cannot be said of brain states (Leibniz’s Law of Identicals). First, you can be certain of your own subjective experiences (privileged access) in a way not available to someone looking at only the physical facts about your brain states. Secondly, mental properties have intentionality. You can talk about mental properties, like ideas and thoughts, as being true or false. You can have feeling about something. But you cannot talk about a brain state as being true or not. A brain state isn’t about anything at all. It is what it is and nothing more.

This leaves you in a predicament. Either mental properties, like qualia, have distinct functions over and above the functions of the brain states that give rise to them OR mental properties supervene on brain states without making any contribution at all. In the first case, mental properties can improve evolutionary fitness at the cost of introducing some kind of dualism. In the second case, mental properties supervene on certain physical processes making subjective experience blind to natural selection, i.e. it has no reason for being an evolved feature.

This cannot be an accident. You succintly state my position in the first phrase and then, for the rest of the post, proceed to ignore it and argue against something else altogether. You cannot pretend that you simply misunderstood it if you were able state it in the beginning.

I'm NOT saying that qualia are brain-states.
I do NOT regard qualia and brain-states as identical.
Your Premise 1: "Quale Q1 performs function F1" is incorrect.
Q1 and B1 have not been argued to be identical.

Given that, none of your counter-arguments apply here.