

Representational Theories of Consciousness (2000) - infinity
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-representational/

======
PeterWhittaker
I got to the first logical argument - Bertie experiences a green thing - and
could not continue: _This is a valid deductive argument against materialism_.

Bollocks.

Bertie sees a green thing. Green light impinges on his eyes, which creates
electrochemical reactions in his nervous system, and, eventually, his brain.
There is never any green thing in Bertie's brain, there are communication
patterns. And they are eminently physical and material.

These patterns give rise to others, some of which are patterns of recall of
either knowledge or emotion, cascading communications, none of which are
green, sad, or have to do with the colour of the jacket in which his father
was buried, e.g. (I'm making all of this paragraph up for illustrative
purposes.)

Bertie recalls a green thing. Using mechanisms we are only now beginning to
understand, Bertie causes those patterns to repeat, triggering many of the
same reactions elsewhere in his brain. Again, none of the things in his brain
are green, sad, a jacket, a funeral, etc., but all of these things are
physical, material, measurable.

We just don't know how to measure them at fine enough detail, but we have
reliable hypotheses backed by apparently valid conceptual theories, etc., to
make us believe we are on the right track.

I find it very hard to leave this whopper of an error aside and continue with
the article.

If someone else is less lazy and more forgiving than me, please tl;dr! Thanks.

~~~
infinity
The argument does not state that Bertie really sees a green object in the
sense that light with green wave lengths enters the eye and triggers
biochemical reactions.

The argument talks about the experience of "greenness" as the after-image of a
red object:

    
    
      Suppose Bertie is experiencing a green after-image
      as a result of seeing a red flash bulb go off;
      the greenness of the after-image is the quale.
    

Indeed, there is no green object outside or inside of Bertie. The light bulb
was red, the memories or patterns in the brain are not green.

    
    
      Sensory qualities pose a serious problem for materialist
      theories of the mind. For where, ontologically speaking,
      are they located?
    

The argument is about _materialist theories of the mind_. After the argument,
which seems to me a valid argument against oldschool hardcore materialism (a
material location for the greenness is needed), the following paragraph
mentions a more modern development, namely _the modern representational theory
of sensory qualities_ , sometimes as an attempt to resolve the foregoing
dilemma compatibly with materialism.

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infinity
Somebody has added the year of the first publication of the article (2000) to
the title. More interesting is the fact that this article has gone through a
substantive revision and has been updated yesterday. For example, it now
includes references to literature published after 2000. The year 2000 in the
link title suggests that this is a 15 year old article that has not been
changed ever since.

