1-3P Scheme solution to zombies and Mary's Room

I believe I have some useful elements to a solution to the mind-body problem. It is consistent with Searle's biological naturalism (Rediscovery of Mind) and Nagel's expansionist conception of physical mind. It partly comes from a dissatisfaction with the Antecedent Physicalism defended by John Perry in his Nicod Lectures (Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness). Perry defend's type-identity property physicalism, but doesn't point out how same token situation seen under differing aspects can have two compatible situation-types of an intrinsically different epitemological nature.

For me we need to recognize that mental entities are viewed from a qualitatively different aspect than reductively-physical entities. Mental-and-still-physical entities are picked out using a First-and-Third-Person scheme of individuation, while r-physical entities are picked out using a strictly Third-Person scheme. Mental entities are physical in an expanded sense, not in the reductive sense of traditional physicalism. Mental types are not directly perceived, but are "unseen things" reliably inferred from cognizing the behavior of conspecifics as meaningfully caused by internal mental states. This "theory of other minds" faculty is innate in (non-autistic) humans, and endows mental entities with qualia in addition to r-physical properties.

Qualia have a special kind of warrant compared to r-physical properties. Of course there are many physical properties we know without directly perceiving, properties that are directly inferrable from what we know about how the world works. This could be common sense constraints based on unaided perception, but in today's educated discourse in includes scientific constraints that ultimately rely on elaborate instrument-aided observations and (empiricist) theory-building within a strictly 3P scheme. Human knowledge of mental entities is warranted by 1-3P properties of entities that we don't directly observe. We have a cognitive certainty that a causal mental state token that is readily inferrable in a conspecific is of the same type (simple or compositionally constructed) that we would use to classify a possible token of that type in ourselves. We associate a 1P property with the token in ourselves, and extend it via the mental type to reliably attribute the same 1P property (qualia) to the observed conspecific with that mental state.

So from this perspective, are philosophical zombies possible? No, because the proposal of a creature that is physically identical to a thinking person, but has no qualia, ignores some of the 1-3P interactions of neural cells (and physical entities beyond) that dynamically shape a thinking person (both biological ontogenic development such as normal grammar, and cultural learning such as vocabulary). Mentally capable humans are explainable in terms of physical microparticles and their interactions, only if we admit 1-3P schemes as interactions between firing nerve cells and the intentional object situations (including situation with mental states) they are directed towards. And instances of these intentional mental types do cause behavior in the world, they do not merely supervene. Causation involves types, constraints between situation types, not just token situations. And some types are from 1-3P schemes.

What does Mary know when she comes out of the black and white room? First of all, her 1-3P scheme for colored entities is not relevantly similar to that of most color-sighted people. It is as if Mary is developmentally color-blind. If by some chance it turns out that Mary (or let us say her brother Mario) is genetically color-blind as well, then we have no reason to think that Mario will have qualia relevantly identical to normally color-sighted people, he will have a neural basis more like color-blind people with no qualia for red. Now if Mary has normal rod cells in her retina, she will be like the cats whose v1 was altered so that they do not have normal binocular rivalry. Mary will have to acquire a scheme of individuation for colors like red, and since it has a developmentally delayed neural basis, it may or may not be normal in its functional capacities, and the associated qualia may be quite different. We can't really know about the similarity of qualia, since we cannot assume a relevantly similar neural-cultural infrastructure.

Returning to the two-aspect terminology we can say that a naturalistic explanation of mind requires a recognition of supra-structural interactions in a 1-3P scheme, as well as infra-structural physical interactions at the level of neurophysiology that a reductive physicalist would recognize. The phrase supra-structural is not meant to imply anything supernatural. On the contrary, culture is embedded in nature and layered above the level of interactions that can be reduced to microparticles and the regularities of their 3P interactions.

1-3P regularities in cognitive schemes are not ontologically suspect, their existence is in the same token situations that a physiologist can observe with instruments, but the mental entities are individuated with the (innate then culturally developed) human cognitive capacity to pick out other minds, to readily infer the mental states causing observed behavior in conspecifics. Part of the the special warrant for these unseen mental entities in the attributed qualia, which to the extent we can confirm them with verbal communication give us an irrefutable confidence that other humans experience mental states just like we experience ourselves via our neuro-"kinesthetic" intuitions above and beyond our perceptual intuitions (in Kant's sense). External perceptions are extra-subjective, and thus epistemologically-objective "presentations" (Kant's representations) of uncontroversially ontologically-objective external entities. Cognition of mental states is inter-subjective, and in some way e-subjective (but grounded in e-objective perceptions of behavior, and confirmed by interactive social and verbal communication) "presentations" of inner causal states. Those inner causal states are just as o-objective as any other kind of entity, its just that they are of a kind within a 1-3P scheme, with their warrant supported by specifically 1-3P properties or qualia attributed to the observed conspecific. Socially (especially verbally) we cannot deny that other humans have experience and a mental life, the specific mental states of those unseen causes are just what we classify in ourselves with the same 1-3P scheme we use for the mental causes of all human behavior. Beliefs, desires and mental states are not mysterious supernatural entities, they are o-objective entities that we pick out with a e-subjective (or epistemologically inter-subjective, and socially certain) scheme. The extension of the mental state is not merely internal to a brain, it is the species-wide innate uniformity of neural structures, and society-wide (including speech-community-wide) conventions that make up a shared scheme of individuation. With a broad view of mental content, the world situations that shape the intentional mental states of humans are also part of the regularities in a 1-3P scheme, and are part of the extension of a mental state.

A theory of intentionality is not sufficient, though that can explain 3P schemes used to pick out reductively-physical entities. In addition, we have other kinds of social (but still physical, in an expansionist conception) interactions embodied in innate-cultural schemes. The mental types of these schemes cause behavior, that is a certainty we have about experience and mental life in ourselves and conspecifics. It is a kind of knowledge that is warranted, not by reductive empiricism, but by the special warrant of 1-3P schemes. We need an expanded physicalism that accepts those 1-3P schemes a supra-structural level of interaction between physiological bodies and their physical microparticles. The vocabulary of physical science (biochemistry, physiology) is not sufficient to explain experience and our certainties about mental life in ourselves and others, we need to expand it to cover mental entities and 1-3P schemes, things that are not ontologically suspect but a sound foundation for continuing research in cognitive science.

In a way, these elements are very much in tune with Perry's interests in reflexivity and indexicality. He pioneered with Barwise the use of schemes of individuation underlying situation-types. Although he may be still unwilling to take some of the steps I suggest, his use of the term "antecedent physicalism" makes me think that he is open to going beyond reductive physicalism, especially if the additional apparatus can account for indexicality and reflexivity. I think a broad research agenda in cognitive science is opening up along the path that Perry is blazing, and it only takes a few more steps to see key elements to a solution to the mind-body problem.