On Saturday, March 1, 2014 1:57:45 AM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: > > On 28 February 2014 15:22, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]<javascript:> > > wrote: > >> On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:03:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: >> >>> On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need >>>> a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? >>>> >>>> Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that >>> it's your hand? >>> >> >> Sure, that too. It doesn't make sense functionally. What difference does >> it make 'who' the hand 'belongs' to, as long as it performs as a hand. >> > > It's important for an animal to be able to distinguish self from non-self, > as can be seen if two animals are locked in combat - one that can't tell > its own limb from its opponent's is just as likely to bite itself as its > prey. Repeat that often enough and you have a strong evolutionary pressure > to distinguish self from non-self. I would imagine alien hand syndrome is a > breakdown of this system. >
Sure, but I don't see that functionalism provides a basis to distinguish self from non-self other than function. As long as the functionality of the hand is there, and other people cannot tell any difference in what the hand can do, there should be no basis for any particular distress. We could make up a different evolutionary story too - that being physically close to your family or social group is important to survival and reproduction, so that there is a strong evolutionary pressure to suppress the difference between self and not-self. If it were the case that AHS were a breakdown in a global system like that, I would expect that victims might identify their family as strangers, etc. The particulars aren't the important thing though. I use AHS to add to blindsight and synesthesia as examples where the function-feeling equivalence which functionalism depends on appears to be violated. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
