Thursday, January 3, 2008
Token Hypochondria
There is a theory made popular in Philosophy of Mind, defended by Donald Davidson and Jaegwon Kim, often used to explain questions of consciousness called the “Token Identity Theory.” According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the Theory:
“maintains that every token mental event is some token physical event or other, but it denies that a type match-up must be expected. So for example, even if pain in humans turns out to be c-fiber stimulation, there may be other life forms that lack c-fibers but have pains too. And even if consciousness in humans turns out to be a brain waves that occur 40 times per second, perhaps androids have consciousness even if they lack such brain waves.”
Thanks Stanford! Anyway, the idea is that mental events like pain or joy or a thought, can be explained completely in two independent ways. When a rock falls on my toe, I can say “Ouch! I feel pain” but I could also say “Ouch, my c-fibers were just stimulated.” The former is a mental description about my mental state and my feelings, but the later is a physical description (please ignore the Ouch part) about the physical fibers in my brain. What’s interesting here though is that both descriptions pick out the same event with the same efficiency, even though they are completely different.
So, I’m walking down the street the other day worried about impending lack of healthcare and my right eye is twitching, I feel like I have a hernia, and my heart is all jumping with arrhythmia. I know that this is all some psychosomatic neurotic illusion; I mean it is mostly a mental event. But, when I complain about my twitching eye I pick out the mental event in physical language. And then I realized that I can say “my eye is twitching” but I could also say “I’m stressed, and my unconscious mind is freaking out,” yet both of these would be describing the exact same event, and with the same correctness.
And here is the point. To all my illness concerned friends. We are not crazy. We are not just complaining about some imagined illness. No, we are just being technical and choosing to describe a mental event in physical terms. So…kvetch on!
“maintains that every token mental event is some token physical event or other, but it denies that a type match-up must be expected. So for example, even if pain in humans turns out to be c-fiber stimulation, there may be other life forms that lack c-fibers but have pains too. And even if consciousness in humans turns out to be a brain waves that occur 40 times per second, perhaps androids have consciousness even if they lack such brain waves.”
Thanks Stanford! Anyway, the idea is that mental events like pain or joy or a thought, can be explained completely in two independent ways. When a rock falls on my toe, I can say “Ouch! I feel pain” but I could also say “Ouch, my c-fibers were just stimulated.” The former is a mental description about my mental state and my feelings, but the later is a physical description (please ignore the Ouch part) about the physical fibers in my brain. What’s interesting here though is that both descriptions pick out the same event with the same efficiency, even though they are completely different.
So, I’m walking down the street the other day worried about impending lack of healthcare and my right eye is twitching, I feel like I have a hernia, and my heart is all jumping with arrhythmia. I know that this is all some psychosomatic neurotic illusion; I mean it is mostly a mental event. But, when I complain about my twitching eye I pick out the mental event in physical language. And then I realized that I can say “my eye is twitching” but I could also say “I’m stressed, and my unconscious mind is freaking out,” yet both of these would be describing the exact same event, and with the same correctness.
And here is the point. To all my illness concerned friends. We are not crazy. We are not just complaining about some imagined illness. No, we are just being technical and choosing to describe a mental event in physical terms. So…kvetch on!
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